The mid in fake midcentury modern

Post by UncleOxidant » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

trgn wrote: post #108

trilbyglens wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Obviously wrong. America has an enormous amount of beautiful "old" architecture. Most streetcar suburbs are shockingly beautiful, from the utilitarian carriage houses all the way up to the mansions and large public buildings. It all predates WW1. The reason truly is psychological. At the elite level (public institutions, taste makers), it was a…

Post by pizzalife » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #336

pizzalife wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a hard time taking this article seriously after seeing the first picture with the caption "new ugliness". The picture depicts art by KAWS, arguably a very successful modern artist - someone must think what he is doing is worthwhile. I personally don't like his art, but saying it's "ugly" is rather subjective..

You're saying it as somehow "subjective" is bad. Of course it's subjective, and the whole point it a lot of modern art is subjectively perceived by most people as ugly, while being praised and promoted by "experts".

Post by amrocha » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

catiopatio wrote: post #307

idiotsecant wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems more likely that brutalist architecture is uniquely terrible Interesting, it seems to me that brutalist architecture is actually pretty appealing aesthetically. I might go so far as to say that objective beauty and taste simply does not exist and anyone claiming that it does hasn't thought about it very hard yet.

You could go so far to claim that, but it’s exactly that point of view that produced so much objectively ugly, human-unfriendly architecture. Relativists replace the moral imperative of “good for everyone” with “interesting to people like me”, and think they’ve stumbled onto a more sophisticated or accurate view of the world, instead of just vapid sophistry.

Post by ogogmad » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

trs8080 wrote: post #266

logicalmonster wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fascism via "vokisch" movements and ideas attempted to more or less co-opt and own romanticism, classicism, and other forms of non-"modernist" aesthetics. In my opinion, it's not so much that "fascism" (sort of a useless label in today's world) has co-opted traditional aesthetics, it's that the left has run away from the actual concept of beauty. As an example: look at the body positivity movement. Everybody, no ma…

"Body positivity" is not about labeling everything as beautiful but rather not labeling people who may not match traditional standards of beauty as "ugly."

Post by acabal » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

selectodude wrote: post #79

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 (…

>It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human, and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function . This is the law. Emphasis mine. Louis Sullivan is quoted as saying this in 1896, prior to any world wars. I think you…