Even In The Excessive Eighties

Even in the excessive Eighties, Marc Newson described himself as a minimalist. He pares down every design to stretch the line to the limit. Then he adds a few fulsome curves that are more Henry Moore than anthropomorphic, sometimes, as in the Orgone chair, corseting its aluminium-tubing torso form to the thigh-line like an Azzedine Alaia dress - more Honky Tonk Woman than supermodel skeletal.
Newson has always enjoyed experimenting with challenging materials - he once wove a cat's- cradle in wood for a chair. His fibreglass Cappellini shells are moulded like surfboards, while his Embryo chair is made from shiny wetsuit material with giant zippers running up and down the back.
No one can reinvent the chair - the human anatomy doesn't allow it - but the forms Marc Newson gives his chairs are entirely functional and, at the same time, organic. Take, for example, the extra-outsize, circular green banquettes in the Coast bar in Piccadilly, London, where he did the interiors with lots of white space, dappled with generous dollops of lime upholstery and blond-wood chairs that had dark brown upholstery.
One of the star exhibits at Glasgow is the Bucky Bail, which is created from 60 Bucky chairs stretching to a diameter of 6.5m. Newson named the series of Bucky chairs as a tribute to Buckminster Fuller, the architects' architect of the geodesic dome. His work on them began in 1995 when he was commissioned to create a temporary sculpture for the centre of the glass-walled Fondation Cartier building in Paris, which was designed by the architect, Jean Nouvel.
The completed structure had to fill the space, but it could be disassembled to form seating. Instead of taking the modular route, Marc Newson took the molecular one. A brightly coloured, felt-covered polyurethane structure was built to a three-quarter sphere to ensure maximum impact in a very bold space.
Several years later, working with industrial manufacturing technologies, Marc improved Bucky. By using stronger plastic pieces he moved Bucky from a sculptural one-off into mass production, now retailed throughout Europe. Attempting to push this design to the limit to link up 60 Bucky Bails into a sphere installation in Glasgow last weekend, he discovered that the adjoining pieces which he didn't design wouldn't allow the configuration.
So he ended up with a hemisphere. Undone, he turns his attention now to the jointing which will result in Bucky 3, and will realise his ambition to make a complete sphere. When the exhibition closes on 19 June, the CCA will sell off the 60 Bucky chairs.
Marc Newson at CCA, McKellan Galleries, 270 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow until 19 June, Mon-Sat 10-6, Thurs 10-8, Sun 11-6 (0141 332 7521). For other Marc Newson products, contact 0171-287 9388
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