"In the Democracy of Design, Even Bad Taste Is O.K."
Jdr
http://www.nytimes.com/
In the Democracy of Design, Even Bad Taste Is O.K.
[...]
"The show may also be a perfect reflection of the phenomenon that Virginia
Postrel celebrates in her new book, "The Substance of Style" (HarperCollins,
$24.95). Ms. Postrel, the former editor of Reason magazine, who writes an
economics column for The New York Times, argues that for too long emphasis
on surface attractions and style has been attacked as manipulative, vulgar
and inauthentic.
Now, Ms. Postrel proposes, it is time to recognize style's importance and
celebrate the "aesthetic abundance" that can be found in the design of
ordinary objects. Even museums, she points out, have recently honored
sneakers (in San Francisco), guitars (in Boston) and motorcycles (in New
York). Everywhere in American culture, from motel rooms to bathrooms, design
reigns triumphant.
Until recently, she suggests, this was not the case. Design was less a badge
of honor than a sign of phoniness. Style was sneered at as mere surface, a
cosmetic mask disguising matters of substance. This was, she argues, the
heritage of intellectual modernism, with its severity and absolutist
prescriptions. The scorn of popular design was also enshrined by the
Marxists of the Frankfurt School like Theodor Adorno, who saw a "circle of
manipulation and retroactive need" in every commercial success; these
postwar high-brows, like their anti-globalization contemporaries, proclaimed
that such attractions were a false front, satanically seducing the unwary.
All true enough. But Ms. Postrel is so eager to celebrate design that she
exaggerates its denigration. After all, there were also strong strands of
modernism that focused on ordinary design. The Museum of Modern Art honored
commercial style long before the Guggenheim lured biker fans to its ramps.
The love of style is not really new; it is just that now it seems to have a
different character. The question is, what?
Of course, something profound has indeed changed, as Ms. Postrel
demonstrates. In 1975 Holiday Inn could advertise itself by promising a
negative: "The best surprise is no surprise." Now hotel chains, coffee bars
and office-copy businesses have teams of designers and decorators who work
with marketing consultants to promise something else. In the last five
years, Ms. Postrel points out, the number of employed industrial designers
in the United States has gone up 32 percent. Membership in the American
Institute of Graphic Arts, a professional organization, has doubled to
15,000 since 1995. Internationally since 1995 more than 40 design and
architecture magazines have begun publication. Design schools have opened in
places where they were once unknown, including Japan, Singapore and South
Korea.
Ms. Postrel argues that it took centuries for basic human needs to be
addressed; now aesthetics can come into its own. Style has become so
important it is considered a social value. Ms. Postrel discusses Styleworks,
a New York-based nonprofit company that uses volunteer hairstylists, makeup
artists and image consultants to create a "fresh new look for a fresh new
start" for women coming off welfare and looking for a job."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/25/books/25STYL.html
--
Jdr
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