The first conversations I had regarding this project and the needs of the exhibition design suggested that the main components might be furniture (benches and tables, rather than plinths and walls). It felt like this furniture should have a definite character too, that might refer to the content of the show.

Initial thoughts immediately reminded me of an extended email conversation I’ve been engaged in with a Dutch/Finish artist called Lucien den Arend. The conversation started after using an image from his website to illustrate a talk about art/design at the Whitechapel Gallery. The image was a photograph of Donald Judd, clearly slouching on a chair at a dining table. I was interested in the image as it was a kind of conclusive proof of the inadequateness of Judd's own chairs or chair-designing logic (his dismissal of ergonomic fact).

Sometime after the talk and reflecting on the image, I contacted Lucien, keen to find out more. The image caption online described the event as a dinner marking the occasion of a trade of some Gerrit Rietveld furniture with some pieces by Donald Judd.

Lucien, who at the time was mid-way between moving back to Finland after many years in Holland, then told me the backstory, which gradually unravelled as we emailed back and forth.

The Rietveld benches were actually pews (made in Parana pine and painted steel), that were designed around 1963 for the Hoeksteen church in Uithoorn in the Netherlands; the only church designed by Rietveld, and one of his last (if not last) designs. At some point during the 1980's the church was re-modelled as a library, and all the furniture was sold off. Lucien had suggested that they contact the Kröller-Müller Museum, an art museum and sculpture garden only an hour and a half away. The museum bought twenty eight benches. Lucien and a friend bought eight benches, and two small holy supper tables. The remainder of the pews were passed on to a small church somewhere else in Holland. Lucien ended up with five benches and one table.

Sometime later, Lucien met Donald Judd at a Barnett Newman exhibition at the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach, Germany. Judd had heard that Lucien owned some of these benches of Rietveld's, and was interested in purchasing one. Lucien suggested a trade, which they agreed: a Rietveld bench for a small wall piece of Judd's.

Then, a year after that, Judd asked if they could trade two more benches for another of his works. Lucien's own words probably best describe the deal that was finally made:

"My friend and colleague, Wim Smits (who took that photo of the dinner), and I left Holland in the morning for a day's drive down to Switzerland. I had traded three of my Gerrit Rietveld church benches with Don in exchange for two of his works. The year before, I had picked up one of his works at the gallery of Anne-Marie Verna in Zurich. At first we had agreed to trade one bench for a work by Don. But Anne-Marie phoned me beforehand to ask if I would bring three of my five benches and trade something else for the other two. During the opening of Judd's show at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, he asked me if I’d agreed with the offer Anne-Marie had made me. She had proposed a smaller work than the one I already had; but I thought it would be reasonable if the next trade (for two Rietveld benches) would be a larger work. Don agreed and invited me to come to his new place in Switzerland to visit him and pick it up…"

Further emails with Lucien revealed that when Judd received the Sikkens Prize in 1993 (the year of his death), he posed for the official portrait on one of these benches. [image 1] It also turned out that on the night of the dinner, in Lucien's words again, "Don told us he had been to a specialist about his health that day, and had gotten bad news."

It also happens that the very first Sikkens Prize was awarded to Gerrit Rietveld, in 1959.

In amongst these emails, Lucien sent me accompanying images of some of his Judd pieces, both in his studio in Holland, and in his house in Finland. [images 2-3] It was interesting to see these works - which you would usually only see in pristine white galleries - in other types of spaces, and much busier ones. One photograph showed a long wall piece standing up on end, in a cardboard box, next to a sofa and amongst the clutter of an artist between two homes. This living room was also lined with what looked like iridescent turquoise silk wallpaper, with eastern-looking tree motifs repeated across it.

This prompted the next rally of emails, as by now I was intrigued by Lucien's house in Finland too. Again, I think the story is best in his own words:

"…The wallpaper...I say it’s Japanese only because I think that’s what it is; I have various books on Japanese design, gardens and art. So that’s what I base my guess on. Maybe it would be worth looking into it, when I make some time. I’ll keep you informed. After we get the house fixed up, I’d like to improve the appearance of this wallpapered room. The old way of doing the walls here is by nailing thin cardboard (from rolls) over the squared logs, and then applying the wallpaper, so that all the differences in the thickness of the log construction show through. Hanging a painting on the wall can result in it tilting – facing the floor or the ceiling. So I’d want to get that all flush. But that means taking the wallpaper off. And that’s for experts, who are expensive. 

The house was built in three phases. The tupa, an 8.5 meter square room, came first. It was originally built in Karelia (now captured by the Russians), which used to be part of the Russian empire before 1917, when Lenin granted Finland its independence. It was probably built there in the eighteenth century. A date – 1785 – is carved on one of the original long tupa benches. In 1800 it was dismantled, moved, and re-built here. [image 4]

A tupa was a complete dwelling – one room with all the functions of a house. During the winter it was also used as a workshop for repairing farm equipment, mending shoes, etc. Today there are still holes in the walls where these tools would have been attached. It was heated like a teepee, with a draft in the ceiling. During cold periods smoke would hang above your head, and the original windows were below that level. The common belief was that smoke contains heat. That’s why it is originally called a ‘savutupa’, which means ‘smoke tupa’. I think it is also called a blackhouse. 

In 1895 they built an extension, with bedrooms and a second story, which is just one little room built on a sandy floor. The ceilings were made of large planks of wood taken from the outer part of a tree trunk, with the rounded side facing upwards, laid on log joists. These were covered with a layer of moss from the forest (in the centre of which the house was built), which prevented the 5 to 10cm layer of sand (also gathered from around the house) from falling through the cracks. When we close the large heavy doors today with a bang, it still rains sand. This sand was a form of fire prevention they say. On top of the sand, half-logs were laid out, onto which the floorboards were finally nailed. So it’s like the upper room is actually resting on the ground! Rebuilding new rooms up there is like working in a tree house; because the new technique is to make a second layer of joists, onto which the floor is built. Re-building a house like this is 90% improvisation. 

Then, in 1906, the long house was changed into an ‘L’ shape by adding the salon. Expensive wallpaper, a white glazed tile ‘kaakeliuuni’ (oven/heater/fireplace) with decorations was ordered from St. Petersburg; and a grand piano (which is now gone) completed this room…"

Reading this, I wanted to see what the rest of the house looked like. Googling ‘tupa’ only suggested that Tupã is a municipality in the state of São Paulo; the name of the supreme god in the Gurani creation myth, or Rajah Tupas, the last King of Cebu in the Pre-Hispanic Philippines. Lucien helped by sending me some information about Tupas, including the Finnish word for them, which is ‘pirtti’. Put ‘pirtti’ in Google images and you get a good idea of what these buildings are like. [image 5] Essentially, they are similar to an early log cabin kind of structure that was once common to many of the populations of the more northerly hemispheres. They tend to come with their own furniture typologies, also based around wooden planks, and this became the reference point for the furniture pieces in this show. So there is some Russian in the furniture (it is also constructed from laminated Siberian Larch), but inevitably with this kind of approach, there are also echoes of Rietveld and Judd.

(2013)