Should you understand the inspiration? A look at Gaetano Pesce

The first Collective Design Fair in New York closed last week after a reported successful debut. Another fair - is it necessary? Some of the galleries involved are seen on so many other circuits that it does seem a bit repetitive, however many were new and exciting and the cohesiveness and concentration on design was exciting! We found the exhibition/retrospective on Gaetano Pesce to be particularly significant. 

Pesce’s work is provocative, full of possibilities and very much worth understanding. 

This is one of his first chairs (1969). The form - inspired by the suffering of women in the world - suggests that she has a ball and chain attached to her.  This is unmistakeable in the original version - the first photo here.  In the subsequent photos the ‘chain’ seems nothing more than a practical element preventing the ottoman from rolling away and the stripes are fun and light-hearted. 

Would it be important to you to understand the inspiration of this chair before you purchased it for your living room or your child’s room? Should it be? It’s worth noting that this is a very commercially successful chair!

Here is a wonderful video done by the NYTimes on Pesce’s work.

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/by-design-the-legendary-gaetano-pesce-on-work-and-life/

Richard Artschwager's Chair/Chair

Richard Artschwager’s “Chair/Chair sold very well yesterday at Sotheby’s 20th Century Design Including Works by Tiffany Studios from the Geyer Family CollectionSale in New York.

Estimate: 10,000 - 15,000 USD

LOT SOLD. 37,500 USD (Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium))

The designer, who passed away last month, spent three years on the design of this chair, which was inspired by a folding chair his family owned. In Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Design is Not Art catalogue, Artschwager is stated as saying, his goal was to “make art that has no boundaries”. He believed it was up to each viewer to interpret his or her relationship to the work”. “If you sit on it, it’s a chair; if you walk around it and look at it, it’s a sculpture…’. I worked on this exhibition and as I recall his wife mentioned that it was their cat that sat on this chair in their house. Hmmm… art or design? Does it matter beyond how each viewer interprets it for themselves?