"Civilization has gone about as far as it can go, chair-wise"

By severing the link between chairs and sitting down, design art provides a glimpse into humanity's future, writes Julie Lasky.

Not long ago, I found myself in a museum in the French Alps, staring at a chair. The seat was a round slice of larch wood pierced by three oaken legs. The narrow backrest looked a bit like a cheeseboard.

This chair had been built by hand in the 19th century for a shepherd's house in the Haute Savoie. I had to do some reading to understand that the tripod base gave it stability on uneven dirt floors in mountain huts, and that the cute heart-shaped cutout in the backrest worked as a grip, making it easier to move the seat around with the flocks.

Since the turn of the millennium, we have seen the rise and rise of so-called design art

The shepherd's chair had character and charm, but did not look at all comfortable. Had it turned up at, say, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, in New York City, last May, where there were no sheep for miles, I'm sure it would have been a great success. In its clumsy, hand-hewed way, it looked like a work of art.

Since the turn of the millennium, we have seen the rise and rise of so-called design art – sculpture that cosplays as furniture. These unique or limited-edition creations have the appearance of things we sit on, but unlike the shepherd's chair, their functionality is usually beside the point. The point is aesthetic, just as it is with more straightforward artworks.

And so we have chairs that imitate the slabby look of Irish tombs. And chairs studded with neat rows of wooden spikes. And pseudo-chairs displayed in Italian museums where they run the danger of being crushed by feckless tourists (pictured top). And chairs – or at least a stool – that resemble a heart torn from the chest of an animal.

"It's an accent chair, not one that's meant for relaxing," said Alyssa Kapito, an interior designer quoted in The New York Times about a recent acquisition: a three-legged, flat-topped hunk of bronze with a plantlike stem rising from the edge that terminates in a protuberance on which one can rest an arm.

Kapito paid $10,000 for the object, which was among the first furniture pieces by a New York artist named Diego Villarreal. She said she could insert three fingers into holes drilled into the armrest, "so you can literally wear the chair".

If there is irony in chairs that are not really meant to be resting places, haven't we gotten the point by now? What is the conceptual appeal of a seat no backside would want to touch for long? Has the chair become so decadent that it has reached a stage of post-sitting?

Yes, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

A seated posture is a statement of power, whether you're a monarch barking orders to courtiers or a girlboss managing staff

Chairs have always been objects where form meets expression. Tree stumps and boulders make perfectly adequate seats; floors are excellent support systems (just ask the Japanese). But for the past 58 centuries, chairs have elevated us in ways that go beyond mere rest.

A seated posture is a statement of power, whether you're a monarch barking orders to courtiers or a girlboss managing staff. Even if you're not the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros perched on the Iron Throne, the look of your chair reflects your identity as a gamer, a barfly, a student, a cafe habitué, a sun worshipper, a business class passenger, a gossip perched on a barrel, a knitter rocking on a porch.

It says you're a lucky person who has been spared the sweaty work of hunting and gathering. Even miserable factory jobs that require sitting at machines are considered a step up from the ambulatory, backbreaking work of farming.

"A chair is the first thing you need when you don't really need anything and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization," wrote the late design critic Ralph Caplan. Which is to say, chairs sit at the border between essential and superfluous, the very place where cultural influences rush in, adding flavor to bland foodstuffs, embroidering plain garments and zhuzhing basic shelter.

Before you know it, broad cultural expressions such as Alpine vernacular have splintered into millions of personal desires. We no longer have just chairs representing regions like the Haute Savoie or occupations like sheep farming; we have chairs suited to every mood and activity, including not sitting.

On the supply side of these objects of questionable use are product designers who have a primal itch to design a chair – any chair. Not just a few practitioners feel this way, pretty much all of them do.

Less obvious to me is why there is a steady market for these items

Yet after 58 centuries, the category doesn't leave much room for improvement. Civilization has gone about as far as it can go, chair-wise. If you want to make a mark as a chair designer, the easiest way is to go crazy.

Less obvious to me is why there is a steady market for these items. Have we gotten too comfortable? Whereas the leather wing chair once connoted a privileged life spent largely in a men's club drinking port, huge swaths of the world's population now sit for hours on end, doing things like writing computer code or flying to Sydney.

There is less luxury in the privilege of being sedentary. Sitting has become a yawn. As health experts tell us, it is even dangerous in long stretches.

It may be that people who invest heavily in conventional fine art want to dignify it with furnishings that are every bit as extraordinary. Many of these chairs are sold by galleries that exhibit alongside major art fairs like Art Basel. Compared to the cost of, say, a Roy Lichenstein painting, a limited-edition seat is bound to be a bargain.

It also may be that people who have vast opportunities to indulge in leisure and assert power like to be reminded of it. Unlike a Louise Bourgeois spider or an Alberto Giacometti stick figure, a sculpted object resembling a chair calls attention to itself as a folly adorning the pastoral landscape of one's home. It is of dubious use and therefore indulgent – the decor equivalent of bound feet.

In his book Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History, Witold Rybczynski quotes the Danish designer Hans Wegner: "A chair is only finished when someone sits on it."

All chairs embody unfulfilled potential, but some do so more optimistically than others

Wegner was arguing for the chair's essential function, but implicit is the idea that its form cannot exist in a vacuum; a chair is realized only when seat and sitter merge into a single, dynamic entity. In this interval, before muscles start to ache or it's time to log off the computer, the chair isn't art or design, it's alive. Before and after those moments, there is just a dream of repose.

This means that all chairs embody unfulfilled potential, but some do so more optimistically than others. Design-art chairs are like Mars: hostile to humans, admirable from a distance.

They offer a glimpse into the next 58 centuries, when we may be nothing more substantial than winged bundles of ectoplasm and will no longer accept ancient functionalist principles of the ideal chair sitting down. It's a future worth contemplating.

Julie Lasky is a journalist and critic specialising in design, architecture and urbanism based in New York. She was previously deputy editor of The New York Times' weekly Home and Garden section, the editor of Change Observer, editor-in-chief of I.D. magazine and editor of Interiors magazine. She is also a part-time assistant professor at Parsons School of Design.

The photo is by Palazzo Maffei.

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