Bogle, M and Landman, P, Modern Australian Furniture, Craftsman House, Roseville NSW, 1889, pp. 24-27
Helmut Lueckenhausen is a puzzling artist. He makes furniture, but it has all the attributes of sculpture. He seems a quiet, thoughtful design instructor from Swinburne Institute of Technology, yet out of his fertile imagination flutters hundreds of zoomorphic fantasies. He's been startling Melbourne with this work since he began exhibiting in 1979. Uncomfortable with his imagery, he says, the prim Melbourne Sun once refused to show photos of his work.
Trained at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in the Bauhaus tradition of rational, refined forms, Lueckenhausen has left that far behind. In its place, he has created a style that seems a cross between French baroque and furniture for a 'high mass on Mars'. He has found his market amongst the most adventurous clientele and his work has been acquired by four state galleries and the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
One expects some kinkiness from a designer who works in this way; no one could carve and finish wood like this without some mysticism. But no, Lueckenhausen says, 'I'm not really comfortable with the religious approach to timber expressed by some of the woodies. I choose to direct the forms and the material must follow.'
This kind of talk is heresy amongst Moderate woodworkers. Putting thoughts into action, he has produced a major sculptural furniture project for a corporate client using Craftwood and Laminex. Craftwood is a brand name for fibreboard and for committed timber-furniture makers, fibreboard is to wood what fishcakes are to fish.
While Lueckenhausen refuses to be confined by Australian timbers, he is an obvious admirer of the soft, sensual curves that only carved wood can give. Confronted with his work, people often sense sexual allusions and Lueckenhausen's labial drawer-pulls and long satyr-like legs are to blame. In
response to this accusation, he said in a recent interview, 'I differentiate between sensual, which any work appealing to the senses ought to be; and sexual, which was never part of my thinking.'
Those pouting lips that enlivened his earlier work are now giving way to winged forms. And if anyone still thinks of his work as carnal, its winged sexual potential is even more alarming. His furniture always provokes powerful associations but Lueckenhausen never leaves enough clues to name the un-nameable. He knows that mystery is part of his theatre.
The more recent winged work now carries names like ‘Teraph 4' and 'Crouching Teraph'. Teraphs are ancient Hebrew household gods but teraph is only a dictionary entry away from teratism: worship of the monstrous. The mood, however, is humour rather than terror.
To encourage his imagination, Lueckenhausen has developed a programme of design exercises based on seeds and seedpods. These exercises are especially useful for his teaching and the sprouting seeds provide the genesis of much of his work. With the sprouted seed in mind, one can imagine the evolution of the eccentric shapes of his tables and cabinets. The seed is a condensed record of the plant it will become; Lueckenhausen's furniture also suggests this growth. To understand structure, he says, 'the point is, to tap this information at its source and develop it in new ways'.
For all the fantasy and sculptural values of his furniture, it actually works. While he considers himself a designer, there is a great deal of craft in his pieces. The surfaces are as smooth as peau de soie and drawers and doors open and shut with exactness. These are functional objects.
It is a bit of an enigma why a talented designer like Helmut Lueckenhausen has withdrawn from the lucrative commercial arena to make such challenging furniture. He explains: ‘ I stopped freelance furniture designing because I wanted freedom to design and make what I wished. I wanted to be associated with the finished product, to be able to stand back and say, "This is mine".'
