De Stijl Evaluation

De Stijl Evaluation

After looking at the art movement ‘De Stijl’ and finding out about the Artist Gerrit Rietveld and his red and blue chair. We then were asked to make a copy of his chair. We had to decide we wanted to do a 1:3 or 1:4 chair. A 1:3 is one third of the actual size and 1:4 is a scale model. We had to be aware of the size/measurements otherwise the chair would look weird. I used a pencil and a ruler to measure out the different parts of the chair I had to be aware the legs and the arms to the chair has to be the same size. I did find this tricky because it did involve a lot of thinking and maths since it was a geometric chair. I’d say for the first lesson doing this I was finding it hard especially since we all had to do it independently. After I had drawn out my pieces I had to cut them out using a cutting knife I had to be aware of where I was cutting and how I was using the knife. I used a ruler to help me cut out the different pieces. I’d say measuring the seat and the top/back of the chair was easy because the top/back has to be a lot thinner than the seat cause the seat had to be thicker.

When it came to assembling the chair this was also another aspect I found tricky because this involved the hot glue gun. When I was gluing each part I was looking at the person sitting next me and how they were putting their chair together.  This then helped me put my chair together, the fiddly bits were putting the legs/arms together considering there was more than one of them and they all looked identical. Having said this it did cause a problem when I was gluing one of the legs to the chair I accidently spread the glue and it came onto my fingers now since the hot glue gone was really hot it did hurt my finger this made me a little paranoid. I then had the urge to just get it done.

When painting the chair I found this part the easiest/ in some way tricky because referring back to the artist Gerrit Rietveld he only used four colours (red, blue, black and yellow). I used two brushes to paint my chair a thick brush for the top/back and for the seat and a small brush for the legs. It was quite hard because the chair had so many parts to it so I had to be careful of where and what part of the chair I put the chair on. I did manage to paint my chair successfully however I didn’t put the yellow parts which were at the ends of the arms to the chair and the parts which made up the legs. I know myself if I took time/ more care when making this chair I could have made a better replica of the chair which had straight edges.