red oak, melamine laminate, cowhide, painted steel
39³⁄₄ x 41³⁄₈ x 50 in. (101 x 105 x 127 cm)
signed Richard Artschwager, dated 1990 and numbered 37/100

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2005

P. Devlin, New York: Behind Closed Doors, Layton, 2017, p. 179 (present lot illustrated in-situ)
W. Goodman, "Art Collector Barbara Jakobson's Vertical Life," New York Magazine, 24 May 2021, digital (present lot illustrated in-situ)
Design ≠ Art: Functional objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread, exh. cat., Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, 2004, p. 84

This model can be found in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (inv.no. 95.206) and of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (inv. no. 2001.398).

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Lot Essay

Richard Artschwager’s Chair/Chair embodies the artist’s sustained exploration of the boundary between sculpture and everyday object. Presenting a chair in dialogue with its doubled counterpart, the work destabilizes assumptions about function, authorship, and perception. By juxtaposing the utilitarian form with its representational echo, Artschwager foregrounds the tension between object and image, a central concern of his practice since the 1960s. The piece reflects his characteristic use of familiar forms to question how meaning is constructed when ordinary things are displaced from use into the realm of art.