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The mid in fake midcentury modern

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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#51

Post by twic »

scythe wrote: post #36

When I look at pretty old buildings, what sticks out are hand-molded wrought iron, hand-laid brick quoins, hand-carved window siding, hand-assembled decorative fences — surely, you can see the common factor? So it's cost disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease Modern buildings are made principally of prefabricated components designed to be packaged and shipped efficiently and assembled quickly. Wh…

You can't just observe that labour-intensive elements are less common and declare that it's Baumol's cost disease! You have to provide evidence that it's that, rather than any other cause.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#52

Post by Ygg2 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #17
jmartrican wrote: post #6

It could be the case that in 30 years, we look back at the aesthetics of our current times with fondness and nostalgia.

I know I am in the minority here, but I actually like brutalist architecture between 1965 and 1985. Not the cookie-cutter ghettos, I mean artful architecture, like Habitat 67 or the Robarts Library, or the Wellcome headquarters.

I too like brutalist architecture for its sincerity. Big Cities are inherently ugly. Brutalist architecture just don't pretend they are pretty.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#53

Post by samsquire »

actionfromafar wrote: post #34
fullmoon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this an Ayn Rand quote out of her novels? It sounds that way but I can’t find it.

Also, where does the ugly truth come in.

I know what you mean but I reject the idea of an ugly truth.

I would reject an ugly truth being true but a false thing people accept as being true which is not necessarily true. If you truly reject anything not true good right it becomes easier to avoid degrading words or falling into despair.

Said another way, the truth cannot be ugly. So there is no such thing as an ugly truth. Do you agree the truth is beautiful?

I think this because true and truth is beautiful. And it cannot be assailed or degraded by ugly or it wouldn't be true.

In the same way water wets things, the word ugly doesn't become true by juxtaposition to the word true.

There must be a precedence to meaning and you must take your stand. Otherwise everything becomes mud and there is no purity.

In other words, if you bring up an ugly truth I would say it was false and reject it as being not true.

Light extinguishes darkness.

Said another way, if something is an ugly truth then it is the ugliness that is ugly, not the truth. But I would reject it because I reject ugliness.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#54

Post by jmartrican »

DocTomoe wrote: post #17
jmartrican wrote: post #6

It could be the case that in 30 years, we look back at the aesthetics of our current times with fondness and nostalgia.

I know I am in the minority here, but I actually like brutalist architecture between 1965 and 1985. Not the cookie-cutter ghettos, I mean artful architecture, like Habitat 67 or the Robarts Library, or the Wellcome headquarters.

I like it too. I especially like it for big government agencies, like FBI and post-office. Gives the impression of "we are not here to f*k around".

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#55

Post by jona-f »

xyzelement wrote: post #35

The article is down for me so I am guessing at it based solely on the comments, which is dangerous. Something that has become apparent to me is the connection between aesthetic expression and religious expression, which I think used to reign but now is missing from the process. To use an obvious examples, consider something "small detail" like the ornate doors of an old European cathedral, they were crafted beautiful…

https://web.archive.org/web/20221207142932/https://www.nplus...

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#56

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

sph wrote: post #10

There are two schools of thought: those that think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those that think, like Steve Jobs famously quipped, that some people just have no good taste. After fighting with this concept for years, I decided to embrace the superiority and smugness that comes with the latter: the vast majority of people have no understanding of beauty and aesthetic. The only thing that stops the w…

Keep going though.

It’s not just about “taste”.

We have always needed opinionated people to be able to push their ideas. That’s what Linus is, Jobbs was, like him last year or hate him this year Musk, Eminem, Pulitzer, Jefferson, Tesla or Edison, Stuart Mill, the Wrights, and so on to any major or minor scale…

The best things come from opinionated people who were told they couldn’t go against the grain like that.

We’ve have rejected that idea. Everything is run by MBAs who avoid opinionated in favor of a boring mass appeal.

Look at big tech in the last decade… who was actually opinionated? What is actually worth a damn in 10-15 years? Zuck and Dorsey are clowns. Bezos seemed to have some great ideas on how a company should communicate internally but to an effect that is insanely boring (but reliable which is good for something else). Uber and Etsy and Apple after jobs, none of them show opinion, not in a “dangerous” sense.

We’ve conditioned ourselves into conformity because being opinionated is to be “an asshole”. We told assholes they aren’t welcome with CoCs and that every opinion is equally valid, with virtue signaling and post modernism of “my truth”, and that you can forgo everything else if it people buy it.

We’ve silenced anyone who could make something beautiful because it also might be offensive.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#58

Post by sbaiddn »

sph wrote: post #10

There are two schools of thought: those that think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those that think, like Steve Jobs famously quipped, that some people just have no good taste. After fighting with this concept for years, I decided to embrace the superiority and smugness that comes with the latter: the vast majority of people have no understanding of beauty and aesthetic. The only thing that stops the w…

I never bought into the "eye of the beholder" on aesthetics.

I might not understand a particular aesthetic. It might be impossible to formulate logical rules to decide what is beautiful. But beauty is objective, nonetheless.

Be it an exquisite Japanese drawing of a bird with ink and rice paper, or Caravaggio, anyone with a soul can see that talent, effort, and a sense of "wholeness" went into creating both.

I, personally, cannot appreciate Chinese calligraphy art; but I don't doubt for a second it is beautiful and I could appreciate its beauty if I cared to learn Chinese calligraphy.

On the other hand, 1950s brutalist buildings, by their own architect's admission, are ugly. An attempt by nihilist "artists" to force their rejection of aesthetics on others. A sea of grey cement m, jagged lines, and boxes resembling prison cells reflect the architects' sense that we are oppressed... and then shove that claustrophobic feeling on all of us too dumb or too happy to be suffer from ennui.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#59

Post by sbaiddn »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

World Wars 1 & 2 happened, shattering the remaining sense of aesthetic unity we had that was followed by modernism which purity spiraled into the ubiquitous glass box, which was then followed by a post-modernist surface-level, purely negative rejection of modernism the post-modernists were unable to return to any pre-modern sense of aesthetics due to their ideological commitment to the ur modernist impulse of pride (…

World war 1 was the suicide of Europe.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#60

Post by [deleted] »

Victerius wrote: post #11
aliqot wrote: post #9

We're asking for it though aren't we? Anything non-conventional to beauty is being embraced right now. For generations we only saw the most visually presentable, and in that saccharine world of nothing-better the only thing that stands out are things that are unique from that aesthetic.

It's come to the point where I find some conventionally attractive individuals not particularly interesting. For example, men who look like this: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8c7xV... There are so many men who look like this now, on Instagram and TikTok. It's boring. They all look the same. When everything is beautiful, nothing is.

[deleted]
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