NEWS 3 – NEW YORK CITY. We’re opening a little show of extremely super photography at USM on Greene Street. 5 Feb, 6-8pm.RSVP here. Co-curated with HOLLY HAY, and showing the EXTENSIVE, MEANDERING EMOTIONAL RANGE of furniture and its arrangements via mega-talents Alec Soth, Larry Sultan, Takashi Homma, Joanna Piotrowska, Dorothea Sign Zhang & others, i.e. not “interiors photographers”!
As arbitrary as a “NEW YEAR” may seem, we (as in us all) must all find some reason to celebrate, and it may as well be this. The “TRANSITION” from one year to the next, by cultural construction, is TOTALLY CRUCIAL because it is a litmus test of our general mood. Do you seek DISRUPTION and A TON OF CHANGE, or to you seek THE SMOOTH and SEAMLESS?
Pay attention to it.
JANUS (of JAN-uary), Roman god: of transitions, et cetera. BY THE WAY also of doorways and frames! Very décor!
So, today, let us focus THE VARYING AESTHETIC OF “TRANSITIONS”.
BACK AND FORTH. FOREVER
JANUS, our guy!, embodies duality, liminality, and the passage of time – HA! Let’s talk again about “TIMELESSNESS”… which perhaps should not be defined as “something that suits any moment”, but something that has within it the DUALITY of past and future! Maybe?! (Timeless as sort of lost in time-ness is kind of décor-appealing, yes? Because… don’t u feel lost in time rn?)
AN IMPORTANT “FOR SCALE” PHILOSOPHY:
Anyway: so delightful to focus on the tension between what was and what will be! i.e., Janus sees both where you’ve come from and where you’re going at once.
We believe very much, very wholeheartedly, very politically that this is what also characterizes the best décor. (Mainly in the homesphere, but also elsewhere):
It suggests a décor that is always in transition – sort of a Schroedinger thing, where it’s both A MOMENT IN TIME, inevitably the now (because that’s when it is!); but also it’s A MOMENT YOU’RE PASSING THROUGH, it’s something that certainly will require you to change it
i.e.,
the only constant is "change,” baby! Décor should be the same. Total, exact stability is a lie – things degrade, for example; they gain “WEAR”. Total, exact repetition is impossible; expect minute differences (WONDERFUL!) no matter how meticulous you are
Let us review in brief some décorconcepts of TRANSITION (there are three:
1 – SMOOTH-GRACEFUL
Oof, this is the mood we’re in btw. The need for a sense of continuity, of sort of holding onto as many “KNOWN QUANTITIES” has possible. But, much like the décor aesthetic of “MINIMAL”, you’re sort of tricked into thinking this is EASY. “Maintaining”, gracefully so, is f*cking absolutely hard. In life as in décor. And, in fact, you may think that to Maintain is easier the more you control and the more you exclude (as with Minimal-ism) but that, we believe, is false.
Let us give one example:
A little M_R.A.A.D gem – this Arizona place by WENDELL BURNETTE ARCHITECTS:
One might think of “SMOOTH TRANSITION” between for example house & landscape as sort of needing to speak a material or color (or whatever else) in common. It’s a desert, so like, all “terra cotta” or whatever. NO!!!
LIFE LESSON INCOMING…
Here: cold, linear, severe-ish, modern-almost-alien, but totally spliced into the wonkiness of nature. The transitionary connective tissue is sort of in the gaps, the glass – those types of things. Meaning, the smoothness of a transition can exist by the sort of “mutual letting in” versus an attempt at “totality” or fusion. An important lesson – because SOME THINGS YOU CANNOT CONTROL. You cannot control a cactus, or whatever these Pheonix shrubs are. And smoothness isn’t always about control but rather very strategic space for chaos!
Smoothness has GREAT VARIETY. Might we also sort of ask you to appreciate other forms of “smoothness”:
Hi-NRG, and Lo-NRG… for example
Hi is David Hicks and Marni in Japan, which sort of let an idea totally VIBRATE through them. “Smooth” sort of slaps you! Lo is some very 90s-00s Italian houses, which instead lets the Smoothness wash over you –
(and yes, those are different Lo places! Just very similar vibe.)
We shan’t dwell on those, but just to say: TRANSITIONS in this case is about being unable to really TELL where something is like, a wall or a stair or up or down or outside or inside or carpet-sofa-wall-whatever.
And you should consider, if you are attempting “SMOOTH”, if you seek it, there are actually several paths you can take. Too many, we fear, default to Lo-NRG totality, when they could have chaotic Hi-NRG, or whatever!
A TRANSITION BETWEEN TRANSITION CATEGORIES
The next category is transitions of an “ABRUPT-CONVINCING” nature. But in the spirit of this News Letter, here is a transition between the Smooth and the Abrupt.
Might we direct u to “FOR SCALE” Top Tier Favorite gallery MARTA, of Los Angeles. A very special and soul-important series of freshly-carved décorpieces, which Marta has done with Man Of Great Woods Vince Skelly:
One year after the fires here in L.A., Marta and Vince S. propose a transition from sorta “total f*cking shock” (!ABRUPT TRANSITION! of the highest order) into something smoother – the long version of processing what the f*ck happened and also getting to be excited and optimistic about the future (how dare we, right?).
Hence: this stuff.
L.A. people carving wood. Trees being, like, REGENERATIVE!! (ugh, remember words like that?), and actually super resilient, and also having been part of the landscape in the Palisades and Altadena, of course.
Very spectacular things, then, which have come from this:
Great, great fans of little patches in wood!! EXCELLENT.
NOW, onward to the ABRUPT. Which, here we mean to have zero negative connotation in fact (NOT a parallel to fire shock!), but rather sort of a pleasant rupture that REFUSES A TOTALLY SMOOTH “READING” of the décor.
And this, as long-time readers will know, is something we get off on!
LEFT: an office by Halleroed (very good at blue; very good at like “A COLOR” that hits u). RIGHT: a “little room in London” by “FOR SCALE” super pal David NETTO.
This sh*t is not about AMBIENCE precisely, it’s not sort of floating-passive, but instead it’s sort of postmodern: collisions of reference and time and whatever.
Collisions, as you’ll know from like, nuclear power (or something?) = energy. Highly energized, even when it’s very sort of soft, tonally (as in the Halleroed example).
It’s why we bought a RED BATHMAT from Magniberg for the “FOR SCALE” Homequarters recently (that’s not an affiliate link btw) – not our color per se, but we were on the brink of Neutrality and needed a f*cking slap in the face. And now it’s a FAVORITE THING.
BUT THEN, there’s also abruptness that isn’t just STYLE but also TIME:
On the left, the drawing room at the Villa Menafoglio which we found again via M_R.A.A.D,very subtle, and our little chartreuse line doesn’t really cut it — but mod art, little chrome table, but ornate as f*ck historic ceiling. You can see it’s like “OH OKAY, it’s not 100% A THING.”
And on the right a VOGUE CASA 1991 situation that is Italian villa plus YaYaHo Ingo MAURER lights, Mario BOTTA table, COSTES chairs by Starck and Metro System shelving. (*The I.D. work on this sort of circulating the Intern*t; we’re not sure who did it first.)
And this is f*cking TIMELESSNESS. (God, we’re obsessed with that word, but not in the way a lot of other people are.)
This is TIMELESSNESS as in “F*CK TIME”, because YaYaHo is hardly “timeless” in the way people call Hans Wegner timeless (or used to? BECAUSE MIDCENTURY FEELS VERY “DATED” RN!). It’s TIMELESSNESS that is transition from one period to another, and sort of prob opens the door to all future TIMEs, too.
This helps an almost indescribable amount:
3 – INTERRUPTED-INCONVENIENT
We appreciate things are getting wordy here, so we will illustrated the final category briefly. It’s the last, and it’s the only negative one.
This is a sort of TRANSITION that is annoying. And here we’ll zoom into an action for the purposes of illustration, which is: taking a book off a shelf. Sounds easy, right? NO!!!!
With all do respect to Sean Leffers, he’s a serial offender. LEFT: 2025; RIGHT: 2020 – both his own homes.
And it is VERY BAD TRANSITIONING of book into hand by way of a major “FOR SCALE” pet hate, art blocking shelves. WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?! You f*cking bury books alive with this. Like, what poor pages are trapped behind these paintings? One must DEMOUNT this lady in oil before getting at whatever-it-is-you-have-to-remember-is-there?
No, thank you.
That’s all we have to say on that. Sean L.: move on from this!
Final note, unrelated:
can we stop hiding trash cans? If you’re over at someone’s place, you shouldn’t have to open every f*cking cupboard to find it. Get ‘em out there!
Thank you! That’s all.
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This is so brillaint. The Janus thing about timelessness being 'lost in time' rather than 'suits any moment' totally reframes how I think about mixing periods. I've been scared to put my 80s lamp next to modern stuff but this made me realize tension is actualy the point. The part about smooth transitions needing strategic chaos instead of control is something I dunno if enough designers get.
FOR SCALE is baaaaack! Happy new year!
This is so brillaint. The Janus thing about timelessness being 'lost in time' rather than 'suits any moment' totally reframes how I think about mixing periods. I've been scared to put my 80s lamp next to modern stuff but this made me realize tension is actualy the point. The part about smooth transitions needing strategic chaos instead of control is something I dunno if enough designers get.