A RESPONSE TO "THE WORLD OF INTERIORS"

“One day we will be able to get rid of furniture.”

“Where aesthetes wander, writers, thinkers and polemicists soon follow. Yet only interior design languishes in a critical desert.” - DAVID L. in THE WORLD of INTERIORS (JUNE ISSUE)

AND IT DOES.

Frankly, it is a frustration that spawned “FOR SCALE”, including observations about the WORLD OF INT. itself: very good images, often generic-as-f*ck text.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE DÉCOR WRITER? A BRIEF “FOR SCALE” SUMMARY:

• In our personal experience, SUCCESSFULLY PITCHING to the Design Press involves: (a) whatever is Brand New, of value because it is new; (b) whatever homescape is that of a celebrity, for obvious reasons; (c) whatever is celebrating an anniversary, with some bananas assumption this makes it freshly relevant; (d) anything that can be wrenched into a “TREND” – i.e. u see some new sh*t you like, and an Editor will request you find four others like it, so that the public can be alerted that this isn’t just one good thing (as if the best things aren’t the One Good Things?)

• Bonus points in above categories if the subject is an advertiser

• Bonus points in above categories if they will send u on a press trip, because there are no travel expenses (but, there is No Such Think As A Free Lunch)

Critical opinions are not accepted, generally. To criticize closes a door, it is presumed. A celebrity would not subject themselves to an Architectural D*gest tour if they weren’t assured of the outcome.

And, there is FAUX FILTER, because the “Media” is nothing if not spin: “We only write about what we like.” i.e. we don’t need to CRITIC because we’ve filtered anything with a flaw out. Which is boring, and also which:

(a) is impossible to believe, if you look at something like Serena William’s flooring and art collection. You’re telling us that’s good?

(b) denies a HUMAN NATURE, i.e. that not everything is perfect. Yet décormedia, for the reason above, only presents décor as such. And in part this is because the mainstream Design Press, when covering a Homescape, seem to believe they employ any critical tools, i.e. they can’t compare and contrast. Nor can they simply take One Lesson from it and reject the rest. They must love it in its totality. BUT WE, THE READERS, DO NOT YEARN FOR PERFECTION – a film review is nothing if it doesn’t lend some subjectivity, some candor, some sense that any and all movies must SEARCH for perfection, but that perfection is impossible. The beauty is often actually in how and where they reveal themselves to be imperfect

(c) denies the fact that, as ISAMU NOGUCHI imagined, we must imagine that (TO PARAPHRASE) “ONE DAY WE WILL BE ABLE TO GET RID OF FURNITURE”

By that Isamu N. meant a ‘TOTAL BLUR PHENOMENON’: sculpture-”Design”-environment, et cetera. But, perhaps we mean it more as: WE MUST ASK (as we do of OTHER CATEGORIES OF CULTURE - art-film-food) “WHAT THE F*CK DOES THIS ALL MEAN?” Art is allowed to be abstract, where meaning is 100% subjective; Film is allowed to be ironic, comical, s*xual; Food is allowed to be social, entertainment, !!!bad!!!

And décor? Décor must be only Aspirational. And, to sell magazines, the version of “aspirational” generally adopted is “LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR”, and generally must be THE DOMAIN OF THE RICH. Rich people can afford the things that make a major magazines perk up. And that’s LAZY AS F*CK.

ASIDE: SOME ALTERNATIVE REFERENCES

• May we return you to a book we ADORE and have described and dissected previously in “FOR SCALE”: AMY ARBUS’s “NO PLACE LIKE HOME”, which is full of bougie and très NOT bougie homespheres

• May we ask that you watch THIS VIDEO by “FOR SCALE” pals at FRAMA, who says:

• May we quote V. VALE that it is our duty to “BE/THINK AGAINST THE STATUS QUO” - this, for him, is one of many GOALS OF LIFE. Whatever was radical about décor in the past (EAMES! AALTO! etc.) has been frozen in f*cking time. We have lost respect for the radical; if something is “radical” today, it must be “f*cking weird looking”

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A RUDE COMMENT ABOUT “COLLECTIBLE DESIGN”

With a desire for décor objects (such as furniture) to be seen as just as VALUABLE as “art” (market-wise), it has decided to mimic it. Décor as everything-is-sculpture. (And so it should be allowed to!!!!, it can be an Isamu N. blurring! but…) The homes of the wealthy now often CONVULSE under the psychedelic weight of VISIBLY COLLECTIBLE FURNITURE: entire homescapes of Insurables, where the Humble only survives if it is put on a plinth as if Artifact. Anything Simple must be acquired, in these homes, at gatekept vintage markets in foreign countries or at auction.

We appreciate the rarified, the one-off - SURE!!!!!! OF COURSE!!!! But, they carry with them the semiotics of exclusivity. And, that can quickly overpower a domestic scene; we are very sorry to report, it rarely reads as “GOOD TASTE”, it rarely even reads, generously, as “eccentricity”. A home can only be eccentric if you yourself are eccentric; but very rare is it that a home of collectible-only Furniture is occupied by a true eccentric. The eccentric tends to find magic in the many sorts of things, not just expensive ones.

(Long may décor-as-art live; we just simply warn against over-doing it in your own home, for those of you reading “FOR SCALE” for whom that is an option.)

THE POINT OF THIS BEING:

The average writing on interior design seems completely seduced by such interiors. Gives them facts to repeat in an article (names of artists; “provenance”; etc.), without having to actually CONSIDER the interior. They seem “rich in story,” but they are often just “rich”, or rich in “fact”. A domestic story is rarely, if ever, in An Object, it is the ARRANGEMENT of them. A domestic story should be read like ABSTRACT ART: the inhabitant wasn’t always working towards a “meaning”, may not be aware of any “meaning”, but one can nonetheless be found in it.

If “Design criticism” considers the Object, interior criticism must consider how they are put into Context, and so must focus on the picking that context apart. David L. is right that interior criticism practically does not exist, but that is because interior writing rarely tries to PSYCHOANALYZE. We ask what was in the mind of an artist; we don’t ask “What was in the mind of décorator”. Because most décorators also sort of can only describe their work like “we wanted to mix Art Deco with Japanese elements. The clients love traveling to Japan.” or whatever the f*ck. WHO CARES.

Interiors have an INCREDIBLE DEPTH OF MEANING… and décor writing always flattens it. It’s totally infuriating.

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SUBSTACK is a great hope - or is it?

But it is also, as we have read, “being crushed under its own weight”. Subscriptions to each individual writer you want to read? Tough. (You can read many in a MAGAZINE SUCH AS THIS.)

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You can also support FOR FREE. By a LIKE by a COMMENT by a SHARE.

Those are, sadly, CRUCIAL and useful to us.

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. We know that it is f*cking precious.

XO