MOgreland

Help! I have an Art & Architecture Problem!

I love several different forms of 20th Century architecture, and the main reason that I love each different style is because of what they meant emotionally to the social architecture of average, ordinary, working-class and middle class Americans at the time that they became popular.

I love early 20th Century Victorian because, in its romanticized, nostalgified form it represented (and still represents) an almost fantasy-like ideal of scientifically-derived, upwardly-mobile Western Civilization for the growing Middle Classes at the dawn of a new age in human history.

http://www.nbptpreservationtrust.org/Resources/Pictures/ArchitectureVictorianGraphic.jpg
This website, by the Newburyport Preservation Trust of Newburyport, Mass., has excellent brief descriptions of prominent American Architectural styles. Very well done, NPT!

You know, all that "The world is a better place because of the advancement of industrialized technology and improving social consciousness" Utopianism that was a neo-socialist dream in the early part of the century, before what Winston S. Churchill described as a modern thirty-years' war quashed it all. But the style remains, and its eclecticism in form and detail is as close to an adult-sized version of a children's fairy tale playroom dollhouse as we'll ever see. What I love most about it is its naive optimism and belief that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything. We need more optimism and belief in ourselves, if without the naivete.

I love the entire pre-packaged kit home idea as seen in classic Sears Homes of the early 20th Century, because it represented a part of the American Dream that said that if you worked hard and saved your money, even you could buy a brand-new home and build it anywhere you like, right down to the furnishings and details. You could have and own your own part of the American Dream, no matter who you were or where you lived. It might be a modest home, but it would be pretty, it would be all-new, and it would be yours. Outstanding! Today's cookie-cutter, generic, over-sized, under-styled McMansions that you can neither afford nor want to look at from the outside have a lot to learn from good old-fashioned Sears Homes when it comes to emotional appeal.

http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_homes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_house

I am a huge fan of the Art Deco style, but primarily in its decorative motifs and general approach to doing things. I cannot say that I can even think of an Art Deco building offhand (I wrote this before I found that picture of the Union Terminal Building, below), but how I feel about it is more that so many buildings of the pre-World War II period so effectively used the style to give form and shape and color to the world they inhabited. I regard Art Deco the same way that I regard the older European styles of, say, Baroque or Rococo: they represent a period of optimism, no matter how well-placed in any other sorts of terms, reflected in Art Deco's adding of charming details and optimistic whimsy wherever it was applied.

http://www.artdecowa.org.au/artdeco.htm


http://www.geraldbrimacombe.com/Midwest/Ohio%20-%20Cincinnati%20Union%20Terminal%20Exterior%20Hz.jpg
No, it's not the Hall of Justice! It's the Union Terminal Building, in Cincinnati, Ohio, which inspired it.

I am a huge, enormous, incredibly excited-about fan of the classic post-World War II Googie style, which began in coffee shops on the West Coast and exploded to become a general Mid-Twentieth Century Style. Developed initially in commercial architecture in a whimsical, rocketships and tailfins, "Look At Me!" motif, it grew to represent more specifically another form of optimism and hopefulness about the future, if generated by a generation that was trying to find a way to build a fantasy world in which to hide, if only momentarily, from the apocalyptic nightmares of the past Great Depression, Great Wars, and current (at the time) Cold War.


http://betterarchitecture.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/googie-architecture-3.jpg

One thing that the Art Deco and Googie styles had in common was that the public loved them and critics hated them. Critics, of course, suck, so what do they know?


http://www.retroplanet.com/blog/retro-design/retro-decorating-ideas/googie-architecture/

Of course, home architecture and commercial architecture alike in the 1950s and 1960s were just all over the place in exploring new and different styles, and interior decorating made things even crazier because the mixing and matching of not only contrasting but completely unrelated styles was commonplace - and that led to such crazy suburban homes as those built on split levels, segregating the families daytime lives from their nighttime bedrooms, and putting space-age kitchens next door to rustic log cabin family rooms. Weird, wacky, and a lot of fun!

In this historic period comes my dilemma! I am not really a big fan of either the 1950s-style Ranch home or the split-level home, such as that seen in the classic TV show The Brady Bunch, shown below. Compared to boring modern homes, they have character and a certain sense of style, and a well-kept neighborhood full of them dating from the late 1950s to the 1970s has a certain, seen-that-in-TV-reruns charm about it, but I don't want to live in one if possible. I don't find them all that attractive.

It is actually very hard to find a good picture of the Brady Bunch House! One web site pointed out that just looking at the picture, you can tell that the interior seen on the show, which only ever existed on a studio soundstage, could never match this house due to layout conflicts! BTW this house still exists, and the new owners have been forced to fence it off to keep total strangers from peeking in the front windows! LOL!

The eclecticism and crazy mix-and-match-ness of their interiors and interior decorations hold much more charm for me. But there is another style of interior design that I much prefer. I love Minimalism in many forms, especially in classic 1950s and early-1960s animation, in both its entertainment and commercial applications, but even more so in interior decoration. The style was more of a 1960s thing than a 1950s style, sort of like how for automobiles many car manufacturers gave up on all the pastel colors and tail fins by about 1965 and went to clean, almost very square-by-design looks just to make a striking contrast with what came before.  

My problem is that the minimalist style I love to see in interior decorating does not fit any of the styles of homes I like, and the exterior design of the sorts of modernist architecture that such minimalist interiors comes in is either too sterile and odd-looking to me, or it is kind of too weird looking, especially for a home. It works great for a commercial building, an office building, even a government building, it is perfect for certain types of modern art museums, but not for a residence.

So how do I reconcile a liking for minimalism in interior decorating with hating the buildings that such interiors come in?

The reason I bring all this up is because the BBC has a wonderful photo story up now that features pretty pictures of lovely minimalist interiors and the hideous buildings you find them in. All my opinions, obviously. I'm torn. What to do? How do I enjoy the interiors while dry-heaving over the exteriors?

I highly recommend viewing the BBC story still, 'tho. I just don't know what to do about how I feel about the pictures ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-26611333