Sometimes I can’t get around my critical eye. As a poet, I am so accustomed to creating stories through creative exploration of an individual, but when something becomes official- when it becomes a scientific statement… whether of a soft or hard science, I have trouble buying into the certainties with which some authors make assertions about a time or culture. Such is the case with Harris’ article about the 1950’s white post-war era aesthetic.
Harris writes with conviction and uses an incredible wealth of resources (namely architectural magazines) to describe how architects of the era created a “white” aesthetic, but, although I can see the correlation, I cannot see the causality that she does.
More than her point, I saw an echo of the 1950’s in today’s Green movement- how the Sustainable aesthetic has been adopted into a clean and modern one, how the two are married to a predominantly “white” perspective, and I wonder if that comes from the nostalgia wrapped in the 1950’s that the “modern” look brings with it. Her comment that “The houses and gardens are portrayed as clutter-free environments, when in actuality they were jammed full of new consumer goods,” threw me back to my interviews with current interior designers. How appropriate.
Finally, because I am currently studying the Boomer population in terms of the home and sustainability, I was fascinated to read about the homes that Boomers grew up in- ones that had a heavy emphasis on the privacy, the closed-off back yard, the pride in ownership, that Boomers have undoubtedly carried with them as they’ve aged. It makes sense to see a culture who wants to leave the apartments of a pre-war era, but could the Boomers’ disgust with apartments only come from a nostalgia? Hmph. Reasearch.
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