It was 3 pm when I met Gaetano Pesce at his New York office in January, but the moon was already rising, courtesy of the Notturno a New York sofa which he designed and where he sat. As a designer and architect, Pesce’s long career is distinguished by his creative use of modern materials to fabricate utilitarian objects that communicate socially and politically conscious messages. His most famous design is probably UP5 and UP6, a chair and ottoman combination designed in 1969 and widely known as “The Mamma” or “La Donna”. These pieces were originally sold in flat, vacuum sealed packages. Once the package was opened, the compressed polyurethane foam expanded into a fully formed chair.  But this playful design is also meant to convey a darker message about the condition of women as victims of prejudice and oppression, where the ottoman forms a prisoner’s ball and chain attached to a shape that recalls a prehistoric fertility figure. As the Project Conservator for the contemporary Design Arts gallery installation, I wanted to speak with Pesce about his works, to learn more about how they are produced, and to have a conversation about their long-term care.

In preparation for opening one of the largest–and first–comprehensive surveys of the history of contemporary design in an American museum, the Objects and Variable Art Conservation lab is busy with a variety of activities related to preparing the recently-acquired collection to go on display for the first time.rocking chairs for sale nashville I was thrilled to discover that in addition to getting to speak with a contemporary master, for the first time, I would actually get to sit in one of his designs! wooden folding chairs hire sydneyThough I handle, clean and repair Pesce’s works as part of my job, I do not get to experience them as functional pieces. lift chair rental maryland

Furniture in the museum’s collections is no longer expected to support a person’s weight, and may not be capable of doing so. Using the object could also easily damage its surface and change its appearance in a number of undesirable ways.chair cover hire bolton The IMA’s contemporary Design Arts collection includes many examples of Pesce’s work, including UP5 and UP6, a Greene Street armchair, and an I Feltri chair, among others. table and chair rentals westchesterHowever, I was most interested in learning more about his Sansone I tables, designed in 1980 and produced by Cassina, the renowned Italian design firm.buy bugaboo pushchair Each of these tables was made to order as a unique object. table and chair rentals aurora il

At Cassina, factory employees hand-poured different mixtures of colored industrial polyester resins into a fixed mold for the legs and each table top was custom-formed into a different irregular shape. In the coming months, the IMA’s Sansone I table will undergo a thorough examination and conservation treatment that will prepare it for the spotlight on one of the risers in the new galleries.  folding chair hire manchesterInterviewing Pesce helped me to learn more about the production process and the designer’s intentions for the work—in other words, much of the information needed to determine how to move forward with the treatment.panasonic massage chair sale Equally valuable, though, was the opportunity to closely inspect another Sansone I table in his office, where it has been used for years as a work space.

Seeing another example from the same series brought to life the true range of the design in a way that wasn’t possible from photos or conversations. The biblical name of the table deliberately casts the unconventional, angled legs as a reference to the Philistine pillars that Samson toppled. While every published example I had come across used white, green and red resins like the IMA’s table, this piece uses blue and orange! The resin was clearly poured in distinct stripes, not amorphous blocks of color. Despite knowing that each table is unique, nothing I had seen previously indicated that the design could allow the top of one leg to stick out from the side of the piece, completely uncovered by the underside of the table top. Even in the age of photography with reference information available anywhere at your fingertips, there’s still no substitute for seeing and experiencing the actual art, directly and in person. As a final side note, I found his proposal for the memorial at the World Trade Center site–now there’s a design I would have loved to experience!

Filed under: Art, Conservation, Design This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 19th, 2013 at 11:10 am and is filed under Art, Conservation, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Gaetano Pesce Embraces Clutter He's one of the most celebrated Italian designers in modern history, and, as ever, social issues are his inspiration. You designed a chair made of rags in 1970. Do you have one of these in your home? How sad for you. It’s definitely one I’d want. For which room in my apartment would you suggest I place it? The rag chair is a piece of reality. It’s good in any place, like the lobby of a hotel, for instance. The one I did is in a living room. No, because they are treated in a way that they are fireproof. So you’re aware of such hazards when you’re designing? That falls under the category of “functionality,” no? If a piece is beautiful to look at, but at the same time one spark away from becoming an instrument of death, one of your boxes as a designer isn’t being checked, right?

More or less everything I do, I take care of the practical side first. If you do something that’s not practical, it’s not a service to people. Functionality is very important. What other things do you take care of in your work? I generally try to give meaning to an object—what I think politically guides me, things I was reading in the paper in the morning. Treating the object in this way, it becomes art. This is a wonderfully cluttered studio you have here. Did you design it? I did very little things. It was empty at first, but after 30 years we have no space to move around. The “Donna,” or Up 5 and 6, chair and ottoman from the late ’60s are among your most famous creations. They were designed as a statement about the endemic mistreatment of women. Are you an activist?As a citizen of a country, you participate in the political debate. You take a position in front of certain problems. We don’t need to pay close attention to see that women are mistreated in many countries—not only 50 years ago but today.

We’re talking about half the population of the world. Even in the U.S., a very evolved country, women are paid less than men. That’s when identity becomes like a prison. I was trying to give the “Donna” chair the body shape of a woman. It’s the image of a prisoner. With the ottoman, it looks like a ball and chain. Have things improved since then? I don’t think so. I thought maybe the situation was changing. How often are you motivated by society’s ills? It’s my job to witness what’s going on in everyday life. Also, sometimes with my work I touch philosophical points of view, such as: People must be free of coherence. It’s a state of mind that asks you to always be the same. When I was 20 years old I was talking about the necessity of being incoherent. Are we living in incoherent times? We’re living in a time that’s very liquid. Values go up and down. It’s like the waves of the sea. In reality, we have very weak values today. They appear in reality and then they disappear.

In a certain way, this is good. It shows that our time has a lot of vitality. I assume you’re following the current U.S. presidential race. I hear a lot of people being contradictory toward Donald Trump because he’s vulgar. The moment we accept democracy—when someone is elected by the people—we can’t discuss it. If we talk about vulgarity, a lot of politicians are very vulgar. The political class is at the end of an era because in the old days being a politician meant serving a country. Now it’s the contrary. Now the people have to serve the politician. You’ve been living in the U.S. for decades. Are you a citizen yet? If you could vote here, who would your candidate be? Personally, I hope a woman will be the president. She will represent half the population of the world. That can give hope to women globally who suffer in their reality, knowing that a woman occupies the most important political position in the world. The job of a man is an old job.

The personality closer to the nature of our time is the female one. What does that last part mean? I don’t want to talk about revolution. But an evolution in society can take place when women take power. Is Hillary that woman? Symbolically speaking, I think yes. What about Sarah Palin? Between a man’s Right Wing and Sarah Palin’s, I take Sarah because she’s a woman. A show of your work recently opened at the Palazzo Morando in Milan (through July 31). What can we expect? My work is multidisciplinary. I’m a jewelry-maker sometimes. When I see a movie, I’m someone who’s watching a movie. We are not static in one thing. In Milan, it will be architectural drawings; sculpture made of ice; resin jewelry, Up 5 and 6. And I stress multi-disciplinary because in America there’s an emphasis on specialty. Michelangelo was a poet, a painter, and a sculptor. You mean he was a “Renaissance Man”? [Points to this interviewer, waving his finger, and nods his head in agreement.]

What’s next for you? Soon it will have been 50 years since I created Up 5 and 6. We’re making a special edition [with B&B Italia] that will correspond with times of days and seasons. At night, it will be wrapped in pajamas, for example. Objects in a certain way are like people. They both have the right to be different. The best that we can say is that we’re unique. In 1975, for Cassina, I made the first chair where each one coming out of production was similar, but not the same. It was a very important moment. That chair is now at MoMA. You mentioned architectural drawings. Where have you built buildings? That’s an important subject, buildings. Big projects in New York, for example—that’s not architecture. They’re not pretending to be architecture, but we call them that anyway, and I don’t know why. Architecture is very rare. The radical side of it is not there. In New York, we have maybe two examples of architecture: The Louis Sullivan building on Bleecker Street and the Guggenheim building by Frank Lloyd Wright.

So architecture doesn’t exist in this country? I think it’s rare in America that people know what architecture is. Frank Gehry did something important with the Guggenheim in Bilbao, but then he started to repeat himself a little bit. When I was in university, [Finnish architect] Alvar Aalto came to give a lecture. He came in and said, “Architecture is very difficult.” That’s all he said?How many Gandhis in the world? As a New Yorker since 1980, do you feel the city’s skyline is changing for the better? We’re not pursuing equality, but we are pursuing diversity. The buildings going up in New York reflect that. Mies van der Rohe brought us the paradigm of the monolithic, vitreous tower with the Seagram Building of 1958? Are you a fan of his? Mies van der Rohe as a designer was a disaster, making chairs that are super heavy and uncomfortable, but he was fantastic with the Barcelona pavilion. Philip Johnson destroyed Mies van der Rohe by bringing him here.