The unlikely trajectory of the Modernist furniture designed for Le Corbusier’s utopian Indian city of Chandigarh.
A film work of cinematic scale, Provenance traces in reverse the global trade in furniture from the Indian city of Chandigarh. Conceived in the 1950s by architects Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Chandigarh’s controversial modernist architecture includes original pieces of furniture—tables, chairs, settees, desks—created specifically for the building’s interiors. Recently these pieces have appeared at auction houses around the world, commanding record prices. Starting with the Chandigarh furniture in the present, the film begins in New York apartments, London townhouses, Belgian villas and Paris salons of avid collectors. From there, it moves backwards to the furniture’s sale at auction, preview exhibitions, and photography for auction catalogues, to restoration, cargo shipping containers, and Indian ports — ending finally in Chandigarh, a city in a state of entropy.
Juxtaposing contemplative tracking shots, precise framing, and recurrent tableaux the film enacts a subtly discursive cinematic space, peeling back time to make visible the furniture’s movement around the globe. This accumulative montage exposes the circuits of ownership and history that influence the furniture's fluctuating value.
" ....Two years ago, the artist Amie Siegel was looking through an online auction catalog when she happened upon an image of elegant midcentury chairs and tables, and recognized them as the same ones she’d recently seen in a friend’s vacation snapshots from Chandigarh. Only in those photographs, the furniture had been stacked in piles outdoors, left to decay.
Siegel did some swift associative Googling and discovered that the junked Indian furniture was a hot auction commodity, coveted by connoisseurs like Larry Gagosian and John Pawson.
Thus began the detective work that resulted in “Provenance,” an art film (one of the five editions will be sold at Christie’s in London on Oct. 19) that traces the furniture’s trade route in reverse — from the grand homes of European and American collectors to down-at-the-heels offices and classrooms throughout Chandigarh..... "1
On October 19, 2013, Provenance will be auctioned in the Post-War & Contemporary art sale at Christie’s London. A second video work documenting this sale will become part of the project.
Provenance
2013, HD video
40 minutes, color/sound
Proof (Christie's 19 October, 2013)
2013, Ink jet print, lucite
25.5 x 18.5 in. / 65.8 x 47 cm.
- 1. source: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/on-view-a-curious-path-to-auction-for-indias-modernist-furniture/
