Proust armchair

An emblematic object and precursor of post-modern design, the
design of this chair was inspired by a literary phenomenon. Based on sensations aroused by
reading Proust, Mendini wanted to imagine what the great writer's armchair
might have looked like and took as a model a neo-baroque armchair. Interested in focusing his
project on the revaluation of chromatic values, in designing the fabric he was
inspired by a painting – of which he enlarged a detail - by Paul Signac, a
Pointillist artist close to Proust's circle. Designed as a one-off, it was
shown in 1978 in the exhibition "Close Encounters of Architecture"
curated by Andrea Branzi and Ettore Sottsass in the Sala del Secolo at Palazzo
dei Diamanti in Ferrara and then presented at the Venice Biennale. Only later was it produced in
different versions; it is currently in the catalogue of the Cappellini company. With this armchair Mendini
founded redesign, that is, the
reinterpretation of already existing designs and the use of irony and
provocation as a design key, to retrieve a playful dimension that translates
into "conscious kitsch".  This armchair, an answer to
the trend towards functionalism, proposed a dimension of
sensory pleasure, free from any industrial constraint, both in architecture and
in everyday objects of design.

Between the 1970s and 1980s a new phase of design called
"post-modern” began. This movement was a polemic break with the past that claimed the
maximum freedom of expression for designers. The need arose to react against
excessively standardised mass production, deemed too lacking in inventiveness
and originality.
There was renewed interest in producing exclusive pieces
where the relationship between art and design acquired greater centrality.
Extremely lively colours and freer decorative forms were used. Furniture
abandoned the traditional canons and became eccentric, lively and original. There was a return to an
artisan approach, to self-production, where the artist-designer once more had a
central role.