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The mid in fake midcentury modern

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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#151

Post by cryptonector »

keiferski wrote: post #97
pixl97 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but now you've delved off into opinions. I'd have to say the article itself is just a gigantic opinion piece. Ugly is the wrong word. Conformity is. If you consider conformity ugly, you will see it as ugly, if you do not, it will not be ugly. It's all subjective.

No, I don’t think it’s just “all subjective” or “that’s just your opinion, man”, but actually discussing aesthetic topics to a deeper level requires more expertise and has less immediate implications (than say, civil engineering) that people are just content to be intellectually lazy about it.

"Leave opinion on aesthetics to the experts"?

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#152

Post by incomingpain »

Not everything is ugly.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a41137685/2024-pagani-utop...

Hyper cars like Pagani or Bugatti aren't cars. They are art. They are beautiful. Compare this to the 40 different car brands of white midsize suvs which all look exactly the same. Clear artistic difference.

how many video games have absolutely breath taking art? Recently was watching jacksepticeye's god of war playthrough and omg it's beautiful.

It's not that there is no aesthetics anymore. There's more art today than ever.

For some reason the author has found some spots like his local architecture as ugly but seemingly also cant see the beauty. The article says more about the author than actual art.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#153

Post by pixl97 »

samsquire wrote: post #53
actionfromafar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can reject there is no ugly truth on a theoretical basis (though not a practical basis)

Lets say you become omniscient and now you know that 7 days from now the universe is going to end in a flash. I mean, that's not great in itself. You think to yourself, I should let everyone know so they can say their goodbyes, but when you do there is a vast amount of human suffering and violence. If you say nothing the world goes on as it does now until its demise.

Is the truth beautiful in this theoretical case? I don't believe so, it doesn't give us anything really truly more actionable than we have now (you could die at any time for a multitude of reasons as it is). Of course this is a logical extreme and you can say that most of life is much more in the mud.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#154

Post by cdrini »

pavlov wrote: post #12

Reminds me of the Parisian art critic who was appalled when they built a modernist colossus that destroyed the beautiful harmony of his home city. The rest of his life he would scrupulously choose walking routes to avoid seeing the monstrosity. The building in question was the Eiffel Tower.

Wow, I'm blown away people here are confidently saying things like "most people don't think the Eiffel Tower is beautiful." Huh? Are you guys joking? Are these comments generated by GPT? It's beautiful because of its geometry. It's beautiful in the way it compliments the city. It's beautiful when it's lit up at night. What more do you want exactly?

Who would have the gall to say something like "most people" don't think it's beautiful? People on hacker news really are opinionated about everything, aren't they.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#155

Post by ericmay »

david927 wrote: post #146
cjohnson318 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. If don't have the money to build, then you bid over whatever is on the market; whatever some developer and architect duo thought would differentiate themselves ten or twenty years ago. People prioritize commute, distance to family, distacne to the grocery, school zones, number of bedrooms and space, kitchen/bath vintage, and price way, way…

That's a fine, valid rationalization. But I would disagree with one aspect: part of it is that they like it . We don't have fine taste anymore and we don't have a desire to impress in a classical way. It used to be you would recite a Latin phrase at dinner and everyone would be impressed. Those days are gone. When money is king, everything else is demoted.

Yea I think people just don't understand "what they like" here. It's like if you grew up on fast food like I did. It's also mind-boggling to me when people travel to Europe or Macinac Island and they come back home and gush about it, but can't get over some sort of mental blocker they have that you could actually live like that here too in the US if we stopped building for cars and started building for people.

Although I do think it's an influential factor, I don't think money is the primary issue. If anything having more money and making more money gives you access to "finer" things and more experience. It's much more complicated than that. It reminds me of the anecdote about Tik Tok (which should be banned IMO) that shows funny videos and 'dumb' content to Americans and shows chess championships and educational materials to the Chinese. That's what we're dealing with here at a societal level.

Great post, David. :)

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#156

Post by debacle »

Because art has never been more separate from the people.

There are small local art galleries in my city. They are vibrant, and full of the kind of art I want to look at. Meanwhile, the local big name art gallery (which just rebranded to an acronym because apparently that's what you do now) is cold, and in many ways hideous.

The financial networks that drive nearly everything, but especially art, have been overly centralized. This has only been beneficial for a small minority.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#157

Post by _xnmw »

thundergolfer wrote: post #111
_xnmw wrote: post #99

After spending some time living in Europe, I simply cannot go back to North America (except for the few areas built with Old World charm). There's something so comforting about the beauty of European and other traditional architectural styles. (Modern/Postmodern?) glass boxes feel jarringly cold, hostile, and alienating.

Those glass boxes aren’t Postmordernist. They’re mostly aligned with Modernist architecture. Postmordernist architecture is a response and rejection of Modernism, and exhibits eclectic and playful design features. Check out the Postmodernist architecture article on Wikipedia. You may be conflating the general antipathy towards a Postmodernist boogeyman with any sort of modernist, neoliberal design system.

You're right, thanks for the correction. Without a formal training in the arts I don't know my terminology, I just have an amateur feel for what I hate and know some vaguely related terms. In that case I'm against both modernist and postmodern styles and prefer the Baroque? Darn I don't know, I just feel much more at home walking down the street in Warsaw than in NYC or Chicago.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#158

Post by trgn »

hooverd wrote: post #147
jiveturkey42 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...

If ever there was an example of "people who disagree with me are mentally ill"... What's the solution here, maintain a registry of anyone who could have an ASD and forbid/revoke them from practicing architecture. I do wonder if we could apply this to make more human software too?

That's misreading the article.

The solution is help patrons nurture their sense of civic responsibility and internal confidence so they do not commission misanthropes like Le Corbusier.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#159

Post by criddell »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #144

So, what is this person's idea of beauty? Ancient Greek/Roman architecture? French Second Empire style? Art Nouveau? People appreciate modern design because it's clean and simple, not gaudy or fussy.

Stewart Brand's book How Buildings Learn helped me see the beauty in ugly structures.

Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern

#160

Post by oneoff786 »

trilbyglens wrote: post #92
ericmay wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To latch on to this great post there are a couple of other worthwhile discussion points: We're still in a nuclear war mental model. We can't build beautiful things if we think they'll be destroyed in a war. We still have a societal level PTSD from World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and other things. World War I veterans came back with horrific problems. That's why architects like Frank Lloyd…

How is it that America can still be traumatised from the world wars architecturally but europe is not? I don't really buy the argument that america builds badly because of fear of destruction. It's more that we are an utterly utilitarian culture. We have nothing old, and cannot imagine that anything might become old. Our goals are to maximize profits while minimizing cost, so we end up building $10m houses out of shi…

> We have nothing old, and cannot imagine that anything might become old.

> Our goals are to maximize profits while minimizing cost

It’s really just the second. No need for anything else

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