Gaetano Pesce: The Complete Incoherence is the long-overdue career summation of one of design's most deliberately unclassifiable figures — a book built around Pesce's own voice, recounting a practice that has spent decades defying every movement it touched.
About This Book
Gaetano Pesce occupies a singular position in postmodern design: present at its formation, resistant to its orthodoxies, and now — as interest in that era intensifies — more collectible and critically scrutinised than ever. This volume, co-published with Salon 94, centres on a wide-ranging interview conducted by Glenn Adamson, in which Pesce recounts his life and practice in his own words. Adamson's introduction does the essential contextualising work, placing Pesce within contemporary art and design history without flattening the contradictions that define him. The result is a rare primary document — part monograph, part extended conversation — for anyone serious about design history, postmodernism, and the limits of good taste.
Key Features
- 304 pages of career-spanning interview content, contextualising essays, and visual documentation of Pesce's practice
- Interview conducted and introduction written by Glenn Adamson, acclaimed curator and writer
- Co-published with Salon 94
- Published by Monacelli Press
What You'll Discover
- How Pesce navigated — and deliberately resisted — the key art and design movements of the last half century without belonging to any of them
- The stories and insights Pesce himself draws on to explain a practice built around provocation, anti-convention, and the rejection of utility as a design virtue
- Adamson's critical framework for understanding Pesce's place in contemporary design history, particularly as postmodern design commands renewed exhibition and market attention
- An account of a career that is wildly inventive on its own terms — examined through the rare device of an extended, probing interview rather than a conventional monograph format
About the Author
Glenn Adamson is an acclaimed curator and writer whose work engages deeply with the histories of craft, design, and material culture. He conducted the extended interview with Pesce on which this book is based and provides the introduction that situates Pesce's practice within the broader context of contemporary art and design.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 304
- Dimensions: 329 × 235 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781580935999
- Publisher: Monacelli Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Design historians, collectors of postmodern design, architects and designers interested in practice that operates outside disciplinary convention, and readers drawn to the interview as a form of critical inquiry.