No, I really don't care if you went to art school in New York

[textualdeviance]

Perhaps the only more group of douchebags more annoying than Mac evangelists are evangelists for modern and minimalist design.

Every last one of them is an insufferable prig who doesn't want to admit to the existence of their naked emperor, which is the fact that modern design is utterly useless for the messy and chaotic realities of day-to-day living, and is thus pointless in domestic architecture and housewares.

The only thing I can think is that the people who can have a life in these sterile, cold surroundings have no children and no pets and subsist on a diet of Pelligrino and smugness.

Fortunately, I live in the Northwest, where we generally point and laugh at people who insist on trying to educate us unsophisticated hippies about the supposed superiority of spending $3.5 million for a structure that looks more or less like the cardboard box that a real house is supposed to come in. Nothing wrong with having a nice, big house if you have the cash and want it, but if you're trying to impress people around here with your glass-and-steel "distillation of form," you're not going to get very far.

Seriously--I think the whole modernist movement is really just one colossal practical joke, set up by its progenitors to see how far they can pull the wool over the eyes of the desperately pretentious and wealthy clueless. It's like the design version of Scientology or something.


Also, someone's trying to convince me that Craftsman is going to go out of style here. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Yes, darling, that would be why you just NEVER see Spanish Colonial in the Southwest or Cape Cod in New England, or neo-Victorian in Northern California anymore... *koff*

Comments

[robotliliput.livejournal.com]

Hi, total lurker here.

The only thing I can think is that the people who can have a life in these sterile, cold surroundings have no children and no pets and subsist on a diet of Pelligrino and smugness.

This made me laugh, because I've often thought the same things. I do enjoy looking at Wallpaper (the magazine) and Taschen books of retro designs and mid-century modern houses and furniture... but I always come back to thinking how anti-liveable it all is. Do I have 100 square feet of perfectly manicured carpet to feature my flawless Eames chair? Do I have 100 square feet of perfectly manicured carpet, period? No. I have books spilling out of bookcases, sheet music scattered across the floor, desks strewn with CDs and movies and computer monitors covered in many-colored post-it notes. My life is a colorful jumble that fits into no design book, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thank you for reminding me of that.

And agreed about the Craftsman house not going out of style in the Northwest. Architectural trends among housing don't really change all that fast. I think the next trend we're going to see is the passive solar house, because it works really well in the Northwest, but I don't see people eschewing their lovely Craftsman homes any time soon.

[pieslut.livejournal.com]

Ummm, you know I agreed with you some posts back when you said minimalism wasn't for you, that you liked a more comfortable, plush style. That's cool.

But I do like minimalism, and it does work for me. And I don't really understand why it's bad for minimalists to criticize your style, but it's cool for you to mock ours.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I probably wouldn't be inclined to mock if it weren't that people keep insisting on being asshats about how their style is supposedly objectively superior.

The style itself just leaves me cold, but it's the artier-than-thou attitude that really rubs me the wrong way. It's the implication that anyone who actually likes comfortable furniture is hopelessly gauche trash.

[pieslut.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you just implied that anyone who does live in a minimalist home runs off of pellegrino and smugness. So you're doing exactly what you say you hate about the other group.
And again, I like minimalism. I hate clutter. I do not think this makes me smug.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Just because something isn't modern/minimalist doesn't mean it's cluttered. I don't like things that are overly fussy myself. I just also can't stand being in a room in which I'm afraid to sit on the furniture lest I spoil the line.

The problem I have with the minimalist aesthetic is that it eliminates me as a person. Not just my personal taste, but me as a human being. I don't fit into a room that's designed for stick figures. My body is curves and valleys and mountains and thunder. My voice is big, my humor unwieldy. It shatters the perfect stillness of a room decorated with a single, flawless stalk of bamboo.

I've been to the occasional party in a minimalist home, and I feel humiliated the moment I walk in the door, because all the tall, lean people with their perfectly pressed pants look like they're going to have an OCD fit because the short, fat chick with bad skin and ragged nails just ruined the whole feel of the place.

Modern design is like a big "fuck you" to all of us imperfect humans who have the temerity to eat and fart and have stretch marks. It is, in itself, an offense to the basics of human nature, and that's why I abhor it, and why I doubly abhor people who evangelize it.

[hawkdancer.livejournal.com]

*snerk* "Pelligrino and smugness." Yes! That's all they have in their lives because they have nothing worth looking at!