Ceci N’est Pas une Chaise (This Is Not a Chair)
The taps
It’s all in the details, or so they say. And we thought this would be a good time to focus in on some of the detail work that makes Maude’s, well… Maude’s. We hope the shots here inspire you to examine everyday objects and spaces more closely. It’s surprising how beautiful the banal can be.
The stairwell wall
18th century books
Maude's scales of justice
Deepened examination was also one of the goals of Surrealism, an artistic and literary movement born in the wake of the first World-War in Paris. The key thought behind Surrealism was “the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic.”1 Translation: perception and understanding are based on context and if we take an item out of it’s ordinary place, the meaning of the object is altered.
Exposed lighting upstairs
Beaded chandelier
Embellishments
A stretch of wall
The famous Surrealist painting, Magritte’s La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images) which displays a pipe with the words written beneath it: This is not a pipe, is a classic example of surrealist thought. The idea behind the painting and the movement was in part to put into question not only perfunctory objects, but everyday values as well. Another Surrealist example: the blue chairs suspended from the wall at Maude’s. Think about it…
Surrealist René Magritte's The Treachery of Images
Ceci n'est pas une chaise (This is not a chair)
Maude's reflected
The long sweep
For more on the Surrealist movement check out the book Surrealism by Mary Ann Caws. It’s available on Amazon for $15.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism
