Gino Sarfatti was in awe of light, but obsessed with the light bulb. Through the designer’s long line of innovations, from the slender aluminum floor lamps of 1956 to the bowl-shaped wall sconces of 1970, this obsession holds sway. Even in his most whimsical designs, like the 1953 Lollipop Chandelier that has a palette worthy of a Calder mobile, each feature defers to the light source. “The most important element is the shape of the bulb itself,” Sarfatti told Jean-François Grunfeld in 1984, in the last interview he gave before his death.
No. 556, 1956, Table Lamp, height 48 cm
John James Audubon
Damien Hirst may have made millions on sheep in formaldehyde, but he was hardly the first to exploit animals for art. In fact, he’s part of a storied lineage. Eadweard Muybridge, the nineteenth century photographer known for innocuous studies of galloping horses, once set a tiger from the Philadelphia zoo loose on a buffalo because he wanted to record killing in motion. But it is John James Audubon — pioneering conservationist and naturalist, whose tender portraits of birds canonized him the eyes of every binoculared weekend ornithologist — who has the most blood on his hands.
Grizzly Bears, John James Audubon (1785-1851)
READ MORE…