THE ANTI-PRECISE LAMP is it
PLUS a top-tier, very hidden source for SMALL DÉCOR SH*T, and f*ck the PROUVÉ gas station: he was better at "HOUSE"
PLUS
- REMEMBER THAT JEAN PROUVÉ GAS STATION? PLS INSTEAD CONSIDER → WITNESS A JEAN P. HOUSE FOR A BETTER PRICE
and
- OUR FAVORITE SMALL-DÉCOR SOURCE IS A TAB ON SOME GUY’S PORTFOLIO WEBSITE
But first:
Dear Snoops,
In our romping of MILANESE LAMPery this month, we felt something was (largely) missing – something that is hyper-present in LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (it’s very MARTA GALLERY, very TIWA, very MAX RADFORD GALLERY, as you’ll see) and also “ELSEWHERE”, CALIFORNIA; a sort of loose-coastal, papery-imperfectness that, we find, VERY CALMING.
It’s not solely popular or relevant “in California”, but to use actually seems ultra “AT HOME” here – very, very “here”, where the AMORPHOUS is highly respected (mainly when it comes to PERSONAE / PERSONAL PROFILE, where nobody is every eager to pin themselves down, unless they are in TECH, in which case they’ll give u their employee #).
In Milan we saw it a couple times — care of UPPERCUT (ANTWERP), care of CASA CABANA (MILAN) plus DEBORAH NEEDLEMAN, et al.
AND YET, the predisposition was, as ever, to the highly-machined, the industrial; the precise.
F*CK THE PRECISE!
(*!!! SOME OF THE TIME)
The lampness profiled in this issue of “FOR SCALE” all sing the praise of IRREGULARITY, THE SOMATIC (THE BODY! vs the mind), and - we’d argue - FALLIBILITY.
These are, for now, human ambitions. For, in machinery in computery, we seek predictability, flawlessness. Even the “quirks” of art*f*c*al *ntell*gence are seen as temporary features of the technology - to be “ironed out”, i.e. to be FLATTENED; to be FLAT.
Who f*cking wants a world of f*cking FLAT? Not we.
THE VISUALS of the ANTI-PRCISE, in BRIEF:
We shall, swiftly, expand on these EXCELLENT CURRENT LAMP’xamples.
THE ANTI-PRECISE LAMP GENE POOL
Perhaps you can contribute to our understand of their genetic composition, but in Our Humble Knowledgebank, we see them sort of picking up on various PREVIOUS DÉCOR TENDENCIES.
A limited timeline of the LATTER 20TH CENT.:
1950s GEORGE NAKASHIMA and some rough-a.f. woods; ISAMU NOGUCHI and the paper “SCULPTURE” (esp. a wobbly version, i.e. 1N); 1960s the CASTIGLIONI BOYS and LINUS BOPP (BEST NAME IN DÉCOR after LINA BO BARDI) and their kind of skin-like TRANSPARENT RESIN stuff that sort of makes some people uncomfortable, honestly; 1970s and we’ll add “FOR SCALE” guru GAE AULENTI also because there’s something of a love of the “BULBOUS” in her, and maybe it’s sort of “PRECISE” and symmetrical, but in it there’s something of the “ORGANISM”. ! WHATEVER WE ARE LEAVING HER IN !
NOW, A BRIEF SUMMARY OF TODAY’S “FOR SCALE” PROCLIVITIES in the category of “ANTI-PRECISE”
WHAT GLORIOUS HEAVEN IS THIS, RIGHT?!
We all see DEPTH AND RICHNESS in décor. And, this can be absolutely accomplished via any AESTHETIC, of course. And yet the appeal of the anti-precise lampery – which you can see has been present for many decades, even in our sh*tty-short “history” – is sort of it its ability to ESTABLISH or REFLECT a sort of ZYGMUNT BAUMAN-ian “LIQUIDITY”, i.e. that our appreciate of stuff, that our “IDENTITIES” etc. are about a sort of constant state of become-ing, sort of a sisyphean chrysalis kind of thing.
IN OTHER WORDS: aren’t these lamps just very MIMETIC of, let’s say, a current desire to hold onto a more NATURE-HUMAN version of “self-realization” (as act; not as ‘destination’)? Versus the techno-futuristic version of Machine Will Save Us.