Collection 1950s–1970s

28 / 38

Gunnar Aagaard Andersen. Armchair. 1964 487

Poured polyurethane, 29 1/2 x 44 1/4 x 35 1/4" (74.9 x 112.4 x 89.5 cm). Gift of the designer

Paul Galloway: My name is Paul Galloway. I work in MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design as the Collection Specialist and I’m here with some strange 13-year-old.

August Galloway: Hello, my name is August Galloway and I'm Paul Galloway's son.

Paul: He's my favorite son. He happens to also be my only son, but that doesn't make him any less my favorite.

August, what was your first reaction when you saw this chair?

August: It reminded me of a giant puddle of mud or poop.

Paul: So it doesn’t look solid?

August: Yeah. I think it was some kind of foam or plastic that he melted down and poured.

Paul: Right. The chair is made from something called poured polyurethane, a kind of plastic material. It was invented in the 1930s and grew in popularity during World War II because it could replace rubber, which at the time was expensive and hard to obtain.

Andersen was interested in exploring the possibility of making functional furniture without any molds. To make this armchair, he worked in layers. He hand poured the polyurethane foam, allowing parts of it to expand, and then repeated the process over and over again until he reached the final form of an armchair.

August: If this was put into heat, would it start melting again?

Paul: No, because the plastic has set, but now, actually, it's starting to degrade just because of light and air.

If you're in the gallery, you'll see on the right hand side on one of the arms, there's a few holes in the polyurethane. The foam that was used grows more and more brittle with time and eventually starts becoming kind of powdery and just falling apart. So this chair is actually one of the most fragile objects in the entire MoMA collection. You so much as look at it and it starts falling apart.

August: I think not looking at it will be very easy for many people.

[Laughter]