click for: Classy Living Drawings
Don’t hate me: I don’t like furniture. Yes, I find it infinitely useful, and have, on occasion, admired it. But don’t talk to me about it, and don’t show me your newest acquisition. Ditto for architecture. Yeah, I’ve heard it before: functional art, the aesthetics of living—please, I wish I could relate; I could make more friends.
The ghost of Minnie Riperton coos through the sound system of the Ikea in eastside Heaven:
Designing to love you, Modern man!
Your angles are so right; they’re wrong!
Ooo-oo, Gropius my open Bauhaus, baby,
And take a tour on your Neutra-grain bar.
Eames me up and down all night long;
Fifty shades of concrete and going on strong!
People often use the word, “classy,” to describe something. What does that mean? To the nouveau riche from China, it means European luxury brands and gilt curlicues up the wazzoo. My aunt living in Coney Island? Plastic flowers and glittery forest critters sewn onto her lace curtains. People who know real austerity desire decoration to sweeten their pot.
What is considered classy according to the cultured, professional class in LA? First of all, they would never use the word “classy.” (Those with the real stuff don’t call attention to it.) Many salivate over the clean, sleek lines of mid-century design. But how about the wonders of 1950’s food? Mmm, molded gelatin casseroles and Cheez Whiz, anyone? The Modernist aesthetic is hopelessly aspirational: it offers a fantasy of a clean, rational, weightless life. Life is poopy and farty. (Especially so with Cheez Whiz.)
The post-WWII era that led to the popularity of the Modernist style also led to supersized consumer habits and ever more efficient cycles of obsolescence, nostalgia, and fetishism for goods. These are not outdated issues. These ideas are reflected in the paintings: isolated structures based on stylistic tropes, scribbles, giant greasy food, and out-of-date color schemes.
The food and graffiti also function as a correction: a humanization of the architecture’s hard-edged geometry. In the process of creating these works, in indulging in a juvenile desire to deface these rectangles, I come to a realization: the place where the messy and the machined meet conjures the pathos of a very human desire for order, control, universality (and a reaction against it). The sweaty flailing about, and inevitable failure, to live up to the Modernist ideal is its most attractive quality. (It’s not you; it’s me.) I can appreciate that.
Julius Shulman’s ghost can’t decide between the orange throw pillow or the cubed planter. He puts both in his cart. He has a couple of thousand years on returns, if he keeps his receipt.
Your glass walls shatter my heart;
But I Ain sayin’ we’re through;
My form follows your function, baby;
And I keep coming back to you!
