Image courtesy of Rizzoli ©Mark Woods
Image courtesy of Rizzoli Slatback Chair, 2000, ebonized oak, 36 x 19 x 22 inches, 14 x 7 x 9 cm. Collection of Alan Berro, Beverly Hills ©Mark Woods
Image courtesy of Rizzoli Wingback Chair, 2002, enamel paint on eastern maple and upholstery, 43 x 36 x 39 inches, 109 x 91 x 99 cm. Jones Collection, San Antonio ©Mark Woods
Image courtesy of Rizzoli Rhodes Residence, 1997, Seattle (no longer extant) ©Mark Woods
Image courtesy of Rizzoli close-up from A Chest of Drawers Based Upon a Chest of Drawers From My Side Porch, 2008, enamel paint on poplar, 33 x 39 1/2 x 22 1/4 inches, 84 x 100 x 57 cm, Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery
Image courtesy of Rizzoli Untitled, 2008, 12 x 9 inches, graphite on paper ©Mark Woods
An artist whose meticulous creations blur the line between sculpture, architecture, and fine art, Roy McMakin's original vision — inspired, he says, but all things cleanly American — has earned him a place in numerous private collectors, as well as in institutions ranging from LA's Museum of Contemporary Art to Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park. On the occasion of his new book, "When is a Chair Not a Chair?" (Skira/Rizzoli, $65), exploring all of his varied facets, The Curated Object's JoAnn Greco spoke with McMakin about his work. A dance between intellect and affect, his stunning 208-page monograph (with captivating contributions by is a Los Angeles-based artist, John Baldessari, Michael Darling, curator at the Seattle Art Museum, Lisa Eisner, photographer and cofounder of Greybull Press Michael, and Los Angeles–based writer and curator Ned Holte) captures Makin's attentiveness to the tempestuous nature of the human spirit-- in it's many forms.
How did the idea for this book come about?
I think it was Matthew (Marks) realizing that it was time for a comprehensive book. Matthew was very very involved in it, I just kind of got on for the ride.
At first glance it looks like an interior design book. Then it looks like something that's collecting and showcasing master furniture-making. What is it, exactly?
The book is a sampling of all that I do in my career, so it was kind of a challenge because I do so many different things. But the fact that it looks beautiful and cohesive is what we were striving for. We did talk about doing one for architecture, one for furniture, one for sculpture, but that's not really how I view my work. I like the idea of jumbling everything together. There is intentionally and necessarily an effort to have no barriers, except that it's organized chronologically.
When we see tableaus at various residences, they're portrayed more as installations than anything else. What makes them more so than simply furniture tableaus- — can you point out some specific differences, or is it more a matter of simple intent?
I come completely out of the world of fine art and conceptual art, I have no architecture or design training. Many of my clients tend to be art enthusiasts and are familiar with what the art is about and the ideas contained within it. No one would ever come to me to be a traditional interior designer. I don't do complete interiors in terms of accessorizing, I might have dabbled in it early on, but I soon found that I wasn't really interested in it.
I'm interested in domestic situations and the meaning of domestic things. Over time, it has gotten a little clearer, and so with some of my later residential projects, I've become very certain, and said: "I want to do this piece of furniture, and that piece, but not all of them and I'm not even interested in helping you find the rest of the furniture or figuring out where the rest of the art will go." I see myself as creating certain interesting walls and certain circumstances where other art and furniture might end up, even if it's not mine. I'm intrigued by the question: is my art creating the circumstance for collecting?
So, is that sort of the intent behind the work?
Ever since I was young, domestic objects — whether furniture or other ones were of great fascination for me, probably because they were all around as my mind was developing. I found objects a safe territory for me in a complicated family dynamic. I really attached to objects, they became pretty profound to me as a kid. Chests of drawers, tables. I would go into the family basement and bring up some discarded things into my room. Then when I started selling my paintings as very young age, generating hundreds of dollars, I turned that income into buying more furniture! Pretty soon, we had an attic full of extra furniture.
That's pretty ironic! Speaking of irony, there's a great love of word play, and of visual puns in your work. Can you talk a little more about that?
I think that's tied into my interest in the functionality of objects and I think furniture is something that I became really interested in with my very early sculpture pieces. You make a table or chair and say you can use it, but the moment when you say something can be used, there's a magic transformation of the object and if you say it's art, it becomes something else again. So in the way that a table can go back and forth between being a thing and a tool, just as words can slip invisibly from one meaning to another. So, in both cases, I start pulling them — words, or tables — out and stare at them and think about opening up new possibilities.
Your titles can be intriguing.
There's a difference for me between titles for furniture and titles for art work. In the latter, I do get careful in, say, a photographic series, to give a lot of information. Sometimes the titles are meant to just help say something. I think all the titles are meant to be on first glance as a flat footed description, but the elevation of that description into the world of titles put it into this art category.
What about something like "Guest Room," where the outside wall and the door leading to, presumably, a guest room, are painted differently but unified. It seems to suggest the ambiguity of welcoming guests into our homes, and of being guests in others' homes.
Well, the owners really did want a guest room... so there's meaning for anybody to see but all I do is kind of frame it in the teeniest way and the viewer brings all the rest. I think over the years there has been some people who don't get want I do because it can be really simple and subtle. I had a chair show at the Furniture Society meeting, and it was just fascinating how controversial it was because my chairs were so plain and simple and vernacular that I think there was shock: "What is this doing in the world of studio furniture and how are we, who are trying to reinvent and express different furniture, supposed to react to it?" i felt like i was a painting in the 19th century and there were late night fights over the travesty of my chairs.
So even in the art world, you can't win, eh?
Yeah. Laymen, on the other hand, would see the simplicity and ordinariness and say: "Where is the art?"
You like to expose the innards and underpinnings of traditional furniture. Why is that?
I don't really know, but I always have. Not in a technical way, but more of an emotional way. I sometimes think I must've bonded with a table, cabinet and chair at an early stage in my youth, like a duck or whatever, and I keep trying to rediscover them. And each time I get all excited and feel there is something right going on.
What are some of your favorite materials, and why?
Wood, particularly soft woods like douglas fir and pine; really thick, rich paint, simple fabrics, and lots of other things.
If the world of domestic interiors informs you work, how does that change when you are commissioned to produce designs for public spaces?
I bring that in — and I love the tension that it creates.
Lastly, the book points out that your influences are as diverse and wide-ranging as your work, and are drawn from a variety of fields such as literature. How does something like a favorite book inform your work?
Actually, all I really want to do is make a piece of furniture or house or sculpture that is as poignant as certain EmmyLou Harris songs. Very American and simple and vernacular, but completely transcendent.
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