I don't know, it might just be me but if you're going to write an article (a really long one) bemoaning how everything is ugly you need to provide more than one picture. I want picture proof, not long descriptions that leave me to imagine. Pictures paint a thousand words and all that!
The mid in fake midcentury modern
61–70 of 512 posts
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#62Ironically this page is completely unreadable on the sidebar of my iPad, making the text ugly.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#63World 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 (…
A lot of people responsible for 20th century architecture believed more or less that beauty is Literally Fascism, so that's another component. The ugliness isn't always accidental.
Fascism via "vokisch" movements and ideas attempted to more or less co-opt and own romanticism, classicism, and other forms of non-"modernist" aesthetics. As a result you had a counter-reaction that labeled these things fascist and embraced intentionally minimal, modernist, or decadent themes in rebellion against them.
The solution is probably to de-fascize(?) classical and romantic aesthetics. Not sure how you'd do it though since if you search Twitter for random people with greek and classical looking avatars they're inevitably raging racist totalitarians or nihilistic /pol troll types.
Maybe you could do it with shocking-to-fascists heresy like "woke" propaganda wrapped in neoclassical high culture aesthetics. No idea.
Of course it could also be useful to just point out that fascism is really a form of "high modernism." Fascism is a form of "we are smart people who know better and are going to centrally plan and re-make culture the way we think it should be," which is precisely what's wrong with the high modernist approach to the inhabited landscape.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#64If everything appears ugly to you, ask yourself: 1. Is it really? Or this is some weird sentiment towards things that passed? I prefer modern “ugly” architecture and “modern” medicine, then flamboyant, impractical and wasteful building accompanied by poor health; maybe we just recentred our attention? … alternatively 2. you are depressed; and I don't mean it in a snark way; futility, greyness and ever present gloom c…
Your binary only really allows for the author to like "modern" (which should really be called "modernism" to accentuate its aesthetic name), or be depressed. But they could a) think it's ugly and b) responsible for the sense of alienation or discontent. They might believe that the aesthetic makes life worse without their life being depressingly bad, for instance.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#65Earlier 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…
Two random comments: 1. When I was younger I though brutalist concrete buildings were ugly, now (even if they still are) i find they are usually the most interesting thing in a city core. 2. > Even their own houses typically look like architectural garbage. Agreed. I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. It seems to be a competition for who can have the most different rooflines, an…
If you like complicated rooflines, you'll love McMansion Hell:
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#66Reminds 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.
I'm not sure anyone thinks the Eiffel Tower is a masterpiece of beauty. More like a hyper-marketized symbol of Paris. And frankly the area would probably be nicer if it wasn't there at all.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#67Earlier 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…
Two random comments: 1. When I was younger I though brutalist concrete buildings were ugly, now (even if they still are) i find they are usually the most interesting thing in a city core. 2. > Even their own houses typically look like architectural garbage. Agreed. I can't believe how cheap and ugly so many of the "rich people" houses are. It seems to be a competition for who can have the most different rooflines, an…
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Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#68Nonsense. If you want to seek out beautiful things, simply go to where they are. Don't look for them in a hyper-urban corporate hellscape and then act surprised when you don't find them.
Go to a park on a breezy spring day. Take a look at people playing with their dogs, their kids. A mother running after toddlers, father and son launching a kite in a big open field, deer grazing nearby in the brush. Look at it all and tell me it isn't eye-wateringly beautiful.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people responsible for 20th century architecture believed more or less that beauty is Literally Fascism, so that's another component. The ugliness isn't always accidental.
The weird thing is: that aesthetic is also completely gone in fascist art. Look at New Rome, or Speer's plans. The human aspect is gone.
Some of Albert Speer's stuff is pretty cool. Certainly nowhere near the ugliness of anything Le Corbusier designed. Though it definitely does have a kind of austere bloodlessness that is also present in Italian Fascist architecture, sort of monumental yet dead.
Re: The mid in fake midcentury modern
#70Related: Whither Tartaria? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria Follow up: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-co...
Scott loves attributing increasing prices to Baumol's cost disease, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him do the work of establishing that it's actually what's happened. > If stonemasonry is a low-tech industry, and new high-tech industries are arising all around it, stonemason wages could get prohibitively high (compared to everything else) until nobody wants to hire them anymore. This would create pressure for archit…
Baumol's cost disease is about wages of irreplaceable labor in general. It applies to stonemasonry as much as, e.g. haircuts.