“Robert Wilson: Chairs” (August Editions). Photo: Courtesy of August Editions
Robert Wilson has a special relationship with chairs. When the legendary stage director was young, his uncle gifted him a high-backed wooden chair that he still thinks about. Today, his personal collection easily surpasses 1,000 chairs. And as his early directorial career took off, he often integrated chairs into his productions. One of the earliest was The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud (1969), for which Wilson designed a hanging chair that was progressively lowered from the proscenium across three acts before finally landing on the floor as “a kind of timepiece to measure the length of the play,” he describes in the introduction to Robert Wilson: Chairs. Published by August Editions and the New York design gallery Raisonné, the forthcoming book chronicles the extensive history of how chairs have informed Wilson’s avant-garde approach to stage design across his five-decade career.
As the publication’s title suggests, chairs—many of Wilson’s own design—are cornerstones in his experimental productions. Most were intended as props inspired by a single scene or character, but stand alone as sculptures when removed from their theatrical context. “As a consequence, they are as exploratory as Wilson’s career has been,” design historian Glenn Adamson observes in one of the book’s essays. “They alternately stretch upwards and spread out, incarnate themselves in metal or wood, sometimes vibrantly painted, sometimes plain. In this most human of typologies, he has managed to capture a wide range of the human condition.” They were recently the subject of a solo exhibition at Raisonné, which reissued a chair Wilson designed for his A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974) in an edition of ten to commemorate the production’s 50th anniversary.
![“The King of Spain” by Byrd Hoffman [i.e. Robert Wilson]. Performed by Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. Anderson Theatre, New York City, NY, January 30, 1969.](https://galeriemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/371_.jpg)
“The King of Spain” by Byrd Hoffman [i.e. Robert Wilson]. Performed by Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. Anderson Theatre, New York City, NY, January 30, 1969. Photo: Martin Bough
At Milan Design Week, Wilson reinterpreted Michelangelo’s unfinished masterpiece Rondanini Pietà through a staggering blend of light, sound, and movement at the medieval Castello Sforzesco. Commemorating the biennial Euroluce that showcases the lighting industry’s most cutting-edge technological advances, Wilson’s installation, called Mother, instead revealed the emotional resonance of illumination and its potential to elevate how we experience our homes. “Light is what gives shape to space,” he says. “Light is not just a technical element—it’s a living presence, an actual protagonist.” When paired with a soundtrack by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, the Rondanini Pietà exudes an extraordinary presence that, Wilson observes, allows “those who observe her to lose themselves in their own thoughts and emotions.”
Ahead of the release of Robert Wilson: Chairs, Galerie spoke with the director about the one chair that shaped how he approaches furniture, reinterpreting a Michelangelo sculpture, and why minimalism resonates.
“Robert Wilson: Mother” at Castello Sforzesco. Photo: Lucie Jansch, courtesy of Salone del Mobile
The Rondanini Pietà is accompanied by the music of Arvo Pärt. It is a balancing act of how to hear his music, to see the Pietà and have my own input. I must give a space for the music. The best way to hear is to close your eyes. My work will begin in darkness where I can listen to the music without any distraction and then begin to see the Pietà. To me it is like an open door, or a window in the room that allows me to think and dream. To find a special place of mind where I can experience both the music and the sculpture without them competing.
Working with Rondanini Pietà is a challenge. Being historically preserved, the castle is not a space that is equipped with light. One can’t hang lighting instruments. One can’t touch the walls. One can’t get near the Pietà. There are many restrictions which limit the way I usually work. It is a real challenge.
“Parzival: On the Other Side of the Lake” by Robert Wilson and Tankred Dorst. Thalia Theater, Hamburg, Germany, September 11, 1987. Photo: Friedemann Simon
As a child, I always took chairs and moved them from against the wall in my family’s house and put them in space. For me, chairs were sculptures regardless of their size, shape, or form. Even as a young man, I liked to draw them. My first chair I designed in 1969 for Sigmund Freud was a hanging chair of wire mesh when it was hung. Seen at a certain distance with its shadow, one couldn’t distinguish between the object and the shadow. It was all a drawing in space.
I do not view my chairs as props but as independent objects. My work in the theater will not exist in the future. But perhaps some chairs I have designed will remain. They would not be remembered as being in a theatrical production. Marcel Breuer once said: “In the detail of this chair are all my aesthetics. The same aesthetics that go to designing a building or even a city.”
Robert Wilson’s residence, 67 Vestry Street, New York, 1998. Photo: Dominique Nabokov
When I was a young man, my uncle showed me a chair he found in New Mexico. It was a tall, thin, high-backed chair with no arms made of raw tree branches. I still think about that chair.
When working on an installation or in the theater, I start with a blank space with darkness and then add light. The light creates the space.
Comfort is a state of mind.
“Amadeus Chairs” (1991). Photo: Martien Mulder
“Charles Honi Cowles Chair” (1991). Photo: Martien Mulder
“Gorlaeus Side Chair” (1989). Photo: Martien Mulder
“Time Rocker Chair” (1996). Photo: Martien Mulder
“Woyzeck Chair” (2000). Photo: Martien Mulder
“Old Man and the Sea Chair” (1998). Photo: Martien Mulder
