An important 'Moloch' Floor Lamp

Details

GAETANO PESCE (B. 1939)
An important 'Moloch' Floor Lamp
executed by Bracciodiferro, anodised aluminium, painted steel, plastic, glass
base with applied plaque 'MOLOCH, RIDISEGNO DI GAETANO PESCE, PRODUZIONE-BRACCIODIFERRO, PRIMO CENTINAIO, ESAMPLERE N.014'
approximately 92 in. (233.7 cm.) high

Designed in 1971, this work is number fourteen from an edition of twenty, executed prior to 1975.

An example of the Moloch, a gift of the manufacturer, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Other examples of this design shown Gaetano Pesce, the Future is Perhaps Past, 8 January - 9 March 1975, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; and Pop Art Design, 22 October 2012 - 9 February 2013, Barbican Art Gallery, London.

Provenance

Galerie Mourmans, Maastricht.
Anon. sale, Christie's New York, 16 May 2000, lot 19.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

Literature

This work illustrated:
C. Fiell, P. Fiell (eds.), 1000 Lights, 1960-Present, vol. 2, Cologne 2005, p. 225.

Other examples of this model illustrated:
Domus, no. 525, September 1972, p. 38.
E. Ambasz (ed.), Italy: The New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and Problems of Italian Design, exh. cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1972, p. 97.
G. Gramigna, Repertorio 1950-1980: immagini e contributi per una storia dell'arredo italiano, Milan 1985, p. 357.
F. Vanlaethem, Gaetano Pesce: Architecture, Design, Art, New York 1989, p. 28.

Exhibited

Other examples of this design shown Gaetano Pesce, the Future is Perhaps Past, 8 January - 9 March 1975, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; and Pop Art Design, 22 October 2012 - 9 February 2013, London, Barbican Art Gallery.

Special Notice

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Jeremy Morrison

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Lot Essay

By 1970, the Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce had already established himself as a creator whose iconoclastic attitudes
towards design chimed with the Pop Art sensibilities of the counterculture. For the Moloch, Pesce distorts the Duchampian concept of
the ready-made by radically enlarging a generic 1930s desk lamp, invoking the leviathan scale of Claes Oldenburg’s soft sculptures,
that also referenced equally generic consumer products. Thus, a mundane, elemental and mass-produced utensil is now celebrated as
an iconic, totemic metaphor for commercialisation and consumerism. Appropriately, and in synergy with these ethics, Pesce anointed his creation as Moloch – the ancient Ammonite god to whom certain Levantine tribes offered their children as sacrifice by fire, underlining flawed Utopianism, sacrifice and consumerism. Conceived at the close of the 1960s, Pesce’s Moloch fluently dissolves the boundaries that were perceived to exist between the fine and the industrial arts, to deliver a lasting icon of Pop Art design.

The Moloch was produced from 1970 by Bracciodiferro, Italy. Originally conceived to be an edition of one hundred, it is estimated that less than twenty were ultimately produced before production was halted in 1975.

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