Abstract
Most serious designers believe that their work is determined by a rational, sometimes intuitive approach to function, materials, process, etc. and not by recourse to a shallow sense of style. This characteristic modernist approach assumes an authentic relationship to current cultural conditions. Current conditions, however, are constantly in flux. And to seek the essence of each moment is the goal, however, of fashion. Thus an obsession with authenticity as a corrective against the reification of design under the onslaught of a spectacular consumer culture may inadvertently feed the very process it seeks to resist. The cult of simulations, what Marx called commodity fetishism, is presumed to obscure an authentic sense of the self with a seductive false consciousness. Modernism has sought to cure us of this presumed disease of the modern condition. Yet designed objects have meanings for individuals, authentic or not, and modernism does not have the power to censor them. The advent of an industrial, market-based economy in the later 18th century broke the bond between designed objects and a shared cultural condition. Individuals could choose functional objects whose design had been altered by pre-existing cultural practices, sometimes with ancient origins, for better or worse. This is the essence of the modern condition, the result of freeing the individual from the domination of a shared cultural condition. We suggest the resultant confrontation of the lure of the timeless with the ephemeral conditions of the present requires greater study and understanding, and not suppression as a nonserious topic.
Presenters
Michael YtterbergAdjunct Professor, Department of Architecture, Drexel University, Pennsylvania, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Eclecticism, Modernity and Modernism, Ephemeral vs. Timeless, Commodity Fetish, Consumerism
