FREE evening Snake Auction Observer 067: Why aren't there any young Pesces? Tom Wolfe's critique of the Barcelona chair/brutalism; my thoughts on bouclé
Plus: pomo lamps, a perfect deco table, an expensive auction, a cheap auction and Knoll for IBM
Snake is a reader-supported design intelligence newsletter. Today, a full free Auction Observer: longer thoughts on a couple of post-modern pieces of furniture, as well as deco, my thoughts on Tom Wolfe’s amazing design book, bouclé, and a healthy amount of regional deals in Quick Hits. No housekeeping, just action. If you dig this sort of writing, consider signing up for full auction intelligence every week. A sub includes essays, Q&As, designer profiles and more:
Auctions Observed:
Gecchelin for Arteluce Ring A 400 lamps, Ct., in-house shipping, ends Tues: A pair of described as postmodern lamps, but postmodern in the Michael Graves way in which they resemble an older traditional or even 1930s design. (When viewed from the top, the first pic in the auction, they have traditional shapes and look almost doctrinaine.) Bruno Gecchelin is a younger (born in 1939; basically a toddler) designer, work is mostly lamps, with his big one the Mezzaluna. This one here is a standard deviation or so better. Probably because Arteluce is as dependable a name in lighting as Levi’s is/was in jeans. Priced low; the same one’s kept getting relisted—was $300 a couple years ago, around the $500 mark now. ($100 in 2015.) The auction has a few modern pieces sprinkled in among all the fireplace stuff. $150
Willy Rizzo Love lamps, signed, Ct., IHS, ends Wed.: Different Connecticut auction ending at the exact same time—think about this fact if you ever want to complain that there is no furniture out there—with a much higher-range selection of items, all exorbitantly priced, than the above auction. Well, if not exorbitantly priced then at least closer to retail… and so this auction is worth looking at/combing over in an academic sense. That’s a form of participation… In any event these Rizzo lamps stood out to me first from the auction and they seem to be to be more like sconces (shape; the couple columns is an outside staple) and, what’s more, have an industrial edge… which French designers (like Boyer) would hint at now and then. Somehow Rizzo was Italian (insane name for an Italian not born in the tri-state area), he took photos and did a bunch of chrome pieces—this bar, for example, this coffee table, a number of others—over a long career. What’s fascinating about Rizzo’s work is it’s certainly less postmodern than the Arteluce fake Graves lamps above, but they are just as retro-facing and traditional… and from the same era. Makes me think that academic sequestered definitions of design is mostly used to explain what a piece is so it can slot into someone’s brain and sell. To be sure, definitions are helpful, and are always there: someone just saying a piece is ‘good’ is really just framing their taste. But they get hazy at the margins. Perverse price as this runs about $2-3,000; less than one large before the pandemic. More of something to think about; more items from this house below. $9,500
Leleu deco table in abalone, Ct., IHS, ends Wed.: There’s a really good Tom Wolfe book where he (tries to) excoriate minimalism in furniture design; it’s called From Bauhaus to Our House and was published in 1981, the most important year in the history of civilization. It’s a short book and its first act is a historical to-do about where brutal minimalism came from, and in the second act he lays into the proletarian-aesthetic bourgeois Ivy architects who made their big cases against ornamentation, and got everyone to get with the program. Which is how a spate of brutalist buildings turned up in many cities and on campuses in the 1940s through ‘60s… it’s a good book. I don’t disagree or agree with it; the underlying motif seems to me was Wolfe getting it done in a couple of weekends (because he’s just that talented) and to mark his aesthetic tastes, which edged towards more traditional antiques, some southern, and to save them—from being eradicated… or losing value. Which, at the time, was on the table. One memorable part in the book was when Wolfe sketched out a character study from nothing (as he does) and took a shit on an imaginary young professional couple which skimped on going out to eat and cars and vacations so they could save up and get a pair of Barcelona chairs in their living room. I don’t like those chairs (does anybody? did anybody?) and certainly don’t have a disaffinity towards the type of furniture and design that Wolfe excoriates here. (In fact, buying Key Food brand cereal so you can upgrade your furniture is not only good aesthetics but good morals.) But what he’s saying, though, is correct. Especially when set against a beautiful piece of gilded furniture such as this. This one, for example, by Jules Leleu (born in 1800s), who designed items on ocean liners and for the League of Nations office… is quieter than some of Leleu’s other works from that era (this) but is just much more loud and regal than a Barcelona. They are barely in the same category. How can you go from this to that? How? Ironic too since it skates both simplicity and detail—extras almost on every surface: curved edges, fancy legs, flower curlicues on the tabletop—which is the very thing Wolfe didn’t want to be done away with. He’s right. He is right. Even though he’s wrong about brutalist buildings being ugly, he’s right. Getting rid of furniture like this for the Barcelona? Is this really the world we’re born into? Another topic that can’t fit in this auction description is that the emolument-creating philosophy behind the Barcelona is one of the greatest hustles in the history of this beautiful country. May we all chase a dream that’s high-concept and just creates work. One of these sold for $1,000 a decade ago; this was listed for 9 large a bit ago and didn’t sell, I would pay $2,200 for this if I was feeling generous; it is $8,000
Pesce 10 feet lamp, LA, ends Thurs.: I do love Gaetano Pesce but wonder sometimes if the theoreticals he built and revolutionized during his career were just too advanced for the furniture industry then and even now. If his point was lost. What I mean is Pesce of course famously studied architecture and rebelled after, choosing to work with acrylic/plastic and not cement/steel… since to him (he says) these were materials for the future and he was more or less a futurist—or at least creative. But, though there are exceptions I am sure, few designers followed his lead or did exciting things with that material, or, more important, other futuristic/non-traditional materials. Some did; few at his level, and we must remember that Pesce was completely niche and not known to anyone outside a very very tiny circle of furniture sickos six, seven years ago. And so now many designers and artists are more aesthetically indebted to Pesce than they are theoretically. He’s the bridge between furniture and art, sure. But one wonders when the movement behind him will start?
To be sure, the answer is probably economic: how many young designers/artists have the space and cash to make work that gets sat on or which includes lightbulbs and their ability to procure these materials and experiment them. And as with any generational artist there certainly is never any guarantee of a movement being created behind them. But I’ve noticed another thing… Pesce’s acrylic work more or less followed, much later, his poppier futurist Italian pieces (like the chair shaped like a chick from 1969)… like the Broadway chair, from ‘82. The word is he got into acrylics after college. But it appears much of his biggest work came after years of experimentation—or work in other materials. This feels like the difference. It’s the push-pull we’re in now, with design, that in the past half decade his reputation has grown and exploded, but that he’s treated more of as an institution or trailblazer than a …. creative person with a massive body of work that is still more or less about as good very recently. To that point, this lamp, from 1999, gives off as much of a charge as any of his more remarked-upon pieces. It does things with space and color that no one else can come close to. Looks like a child’s train track… but eternal and strong… certainly this is what he was going for, something outright new, but not new per se, just done different. It’s not created in opposition to anything. It’s just new. Does anyone else does this? Is anyone else this free? Sure, probably, definitely. Others may be coming up the pike; it took GP a while to get here. I haven’t seen anything, though. Not in a minute. Part of a really, really great Wright auction full of modern sleepers; any Pesce lamp under $1,500 to me is fair game. The great artist will be pleased to know he is also Snake’s Lock of the Week at $450
Lazzarini Pickering Architetti Silla chair, LA, ends Thurs.: I get hit up about once a month for my thoughts on bouclé and whether and how much and to what extent I think it’s no good—how bad it sucks. Bouclé, if you’re not up on it, is the sort of white fluffy/furry furniture that is in, I’m not sure, famous people’s houses? And in pages of AD and so on? Literary magazines like to have field days about it; writers remark about how ugly all the homes with identical hairy white furniture is. I don’t have an opinion on the furniture, really, besides that much of it is the Royère Polar Bear sofa but more downmarket (that thing’s $1,000,000, or was; Kim Kardashian I am p. sure had one in her house with Kanye West), which more or less deflates the whole argument. And while in no universe would I ever get a piece like this into my house (furniture is subjective; I like what I like and I never have liked stuff as pretty as this)… the real answer, I’d say, is that the trend has a very real base and serves people.
Like most, if not all, design trends, bouclé is rooted in something: a real aesthetic, one that, we have to keep in mind, rises above the standard particle-board, even-worse-than bouclé furniture that makes up most homes and apartments. There is a sampling bias here: this furniture, if maybe not good enough for someone who pays attention to these things critically for a living, is way better (even though it is not very good) than what’s out there to begin with. If I can quote an old fanzine… compared to an Anfibio, it’s shit. Compared to shit, it’s not bad. I mention all this because this chair—new, from 2017; a bit before the trend—is nearly striking and has its own logic, and gives off some of the nice bonuses from the aesthetic (clean, pretty, warm, simple). Does this get old after a look or two? Hard to say. But the chair, to its credit, has a Baughman-like shape and is ignorant of the trend adjacent to it that was coming. Whose fault is that? All you need is a grain of attraction for something unfortunate to happen. Hasn’t sold before and is $950
Quick Hits
Gio Ponti (attr.) bar tools, Ct, IHS, 80 ending Tues… (almost steampunk but good if you entertain at home)
Florence Knoll square end table for IBM (maybe), Ct., IHS, 50 (pictured) (even if not FK this is a good price and shipping will be nothing)
Baughman-style chaise, nasty green, IHS, Ct., $1,800 ending Wed…. (a strange shape, and hideous, but can do in a pinch)
Claudio La Viola mint green plate set for Ginori, 700, Atl ending Thurs… (Tiffany green, a full set; insane price. Decent auction)
Piet Hein Eeek Waste Tile Cube, LA, $2,000 (not very good. But I love cubes)
Johannes Hock butcher-type table, 2018, LA, $3,000 (one of the best kinds of tables)
Willmotte Todo Modo chairs for Tecno, pair, LA, $1,200 (the perfect blend of French and Italian design; should be a staple)
Sottsass Callimaco floor lamp, LA, $900 (one of his seven best pieces. Very good price)
Guillaume Bardet Mirroir de terre, 2010, LA, $50 (straight up perfect)
Panton living tower, LA, $3,800 (Roberto Matta’s Malitte but not as good; was in a Steve Lacy video not long ago)
Knoll dining table & Cesca chairs, S.C., ship through LiveAuctioneers, $850 (unreal deal)
Thanks for reading.
Snake
You have summarized my personal thoughts on Gaetano Pesce who is (imho) severely underrated. I think part of the problem is because of his sculptural process and materials, he is straddling the line between art and design so much so that he cannot properly get recognized in either industry and his past work had been overshadowed by other "superstar" designers and specific design "moments". He doesn't fit into any particular genre, so it's hard to classify him. Neither industry wants him and nobody really gave him proper recognition, and thus his work is still undervalued (not just financially).