Interview

In 2007, when the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) announced plans to start private space tourism by the year 2012, it was no surprise that they tapped Australian industrial designer Marc Newson to create the interior of the spaceship. After all, the 45-year-old Newson had already designed everything on earth. His career arc has yet to actually arc—it’s pretty much a straight shot up. His early pieces, like the now-iconic Lockheed Lounge (1986) and Embryo Chair (1988), are examples of works that didn’t just revolutionize furniture design, but crept over into the realm of high art. With his solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2007, Newson broke the barrier between art and design—ultimately certifying design’s place in contemporary collections. But Newson isn’t only an artist—he’s, at heart, a problem solver. In the past, he’s designed watches, recording studios, doorstops, concept cars, plane seats, benches, and restaurants. In the new economy, the dream of million-dollar space travel may be floundering for the time being, but Newson, who now lives and works in London, isn’t giving up on the future. Friend and collector Peter M. Brant talked to the visionary designer about what it’s like to create the objects of the 21st century.

PETER M. BRANT: I’ve been following your work since the early ’90s. The first work that I noticed was the Embryo Chair, which you did in 1988. You did that for a museum, correct?

MARC NEWSON: That’s correct. A lot of the early pieces were made in small numbers—the Embryo Chair, the Wood Chair, the Orgone Lounge. There were a handful I manufactured by myself. Not only did I make the prototypes, but I put the chairs into limited production. I probably made anywhere up to 50 pieces of each one. I was in Australia, and I had no access to this sort of industry or manufacturer, so the only thing I could do was to do it myself. The Embryo Chair came about for a museum in Sydney called thePowerhouse. It was essentially a decorative arts museum, and they were the ones who put up the money. They were putting on an exhibition ofinterior décor and gave me a little bit of money to design something. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had the resources to do it by myself.

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BRANT: Were you just a few years out of school at this time?

NEWSON: I graduated in 1984 and this didn’t start until about 1987, so I only had two or three years in the real world, so to speak.

BRANT: At first, you studied to be a jeweler, right?

NEWSON: Well, I went to art school, and I didn’t study design. You had the option of specializing in painting, sculpture, printmaking,ceramics, or jewelry. I ended up concentrating in the jewelry department and graduating in jewelry design. Not because I had any interest in making jewelry—it was simply the only department in the art school that actually taught you how to do something. All of the other departments, like sculpture or painting, really weren’t at all interested in teaching specific skills. It was very esoteric. In the jewelry department, there were tools, workshops, people to teach you how to build things. That’s really all I wanted to know—how to make stuff.

BRANT: So much great design has come from jewelry.

NEWSON: If I had to do it all over again, I think I’d probably still study jewelry. It gives you an incredible technical background. If you can work on very, very small things, then, I think, typically you find it easier to go bigger rather than the other way around. I think a lot of architects have struggled with small things. Whereas if you start small, it’s easier to get bigger. It was fantastic training and, in my eye, the art school was notorious in the ’80s—notoriously lax. It wasn’t academic in any way, shape, or form. They sort of just let me go and do my thing. I ended up making furniture in the jewelry department of my art school. I justified it to my tutors by saying it was furniture in the tradition of jewelry—it has the same relationship to the human body. It doesn’t work without the human body.

BRANT: Was the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery exhibit the first you ever had?

NEWSON: Yes, absolutely. It was in 1986. I’d been more than a year out of college—out of art school, I should say. I’d gotten a grant from the Australian Council for the Arts. It was a significant amount of money, actually—about $10,000 Australian, which I guess even now is about $7,000 U.S. But back in the ’80s, it was an enormous sum of money for me. It was enough to put together an exhibition. The challenge was that I didn’t have a gallery. There were a few good galleries, and this Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery was far and away the best known in Australia. But I
really didn’t think I had much of a chance at having an exhibit with her. I was a fresh face. I was barely in my early twenties. But much to my surprise, she agreed to give me an exhibition, which was an incredible thing, really. I’m not quite sure how it happened or why it happened. It would be like going to Larry [Gagosian] in New York as a 22-year-old. Obviously, New York is a lot different from Sydney, but that’s what it felt like to me at the time.

BRANT: Sure.

NEWSON: I set about making a handful of furniture pieces, which were really verging on sculpture. That’s when I made the Lockheed Lounge.