2023-10-14 21:04:46
No matter where you look, the impression that the zeitgeist is moving backwards is becoming more and more solid. “The conservatism that lies over Europe,” exulted the journalist and publisher Wolf Jobst Siedler some time ago, “signals a new understanding of the world, the cipher of which is historical memory.” The re-creation of Berlin’s Hohenzollern Palace is just one – albeit highlighted – Example; The controversy over a reconstruction of Schinkel’s building academy, the garrison church in Potsdam or the half-timbered dispute over Frankfurt’s old town would be others.
We live in an environment whose production conditions are changing. And to the same extent, any production no longer seems to be possible without a collage of historical images that evoke Pavlovian reflexes in the customers. Stately living ambiences and stylish manners are happily celebrating their origins everywhere, as are the classic three-piece suit for men, the retro wristwatch or the Art Deco toaster.
One cannot help but get the impression that our society today seems to rely on “classics” in many cases. Objects that are durable not only because of their material, but because they are supposedly above all fashions. Manufactum virtually embodies this attitude: The mail order company with a network of stores, which has existed since 1988, only sells such “classic” objects. “We have decided to collect things that are ‘good’ in a comprehensive sense,” is the Enlightenment credo. “Namely, labor-intensively manufactured according to traditional standards and therefore solid and functional, designed with the material in mind for their function and therefore beautiful, made from classic materials, durable and repairable and therefore environmentally friendly.” Needless to say, this strategy is completely successful, there are 17 Manufactum nationwide -branches of it.
Which is probably why there is more and more an expectation towards our state system that goes something like this: Not only things, but also existence itself, should be, if you please, ‘good’ in the classic, comprehensive sense.
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Cornelius Gustav Gurlitt was a German architect and art historian.imago images
The reasons for the discomfort with modernity
The reasons for this at least partial discomfort with the mode of modernity lie in the visual and sensory impoverishment of an environment trimmed for rationality, which – smooth, cool – does not allow any identification. Which in turn may be due to the fact that the focus in architecture was too one-sided on technological progress (and corresponding iconography). The question is whether every technological advance and every change in our living conditions must be reflected in a new design.
Generalizing one’s own culture is a virulent claim of every community. In a certain way, aesthetic conservatism, or the new traditionalism, has internalized just that. It represents one variety (of several) of the affirmative culture that was once diagnosed in relation to German society at the turn of the last century. Except now it has been transformed into a new, universal state.
The furniture company Ikea, for example, has understood like no other that mass culture represents a supply economy – and of course benefits from it accordingly. Its design is seemingly ideologically neutral: it looks as if it is nothing but practical in a homely way. The sobriety of the inexpensive is tempered by Scandinavian living folklore, which is based on the careful use of colors and light. This in turn has shaped the expectations and taste of an entire generation: a classic in the art of understatement. But already a classic. Of course, one has to admit that the Ikea range has now been strategically enriched with trashy items, but this too has been carefully dimmed.
In the partly vague, partly clearly defined historical aspect, aesthetics and style find a new symbiosis, so to speak. “Modern,” says Cornelius Gurlitt, “is individualism. If you simply declare yourself to be modern and others are either old-fashioned or misguided, you will not achieve the desired folk art. Antiquities are also something that have never existed before, or at least only rarely; The one we pursue, the scientifically all-encompassing one, is unique to our time. Imitating the old is certainly a very modern activity.” Not without irony, the critic and journalist Gurlitt defended the imitation of the “old” a hundred years ago and described it – if not as innovative, then at least as modern. Perhaps it is appropriate to examine this thesis for its current relevance.
SLÄTTIKA – News from IKEA in winter 2023Inter IKEA Systems BV
It is also reasonable to assume that the way we (want to) live is not subject to the same dynamism as other everyday contexts. On the contrary: to the same extent that globalization provokes a greater leveling of living conditions, the need for one’s own culture and tradition seems to grow.
Various trends in the USA show how regional, local and/or historical influences in planning, building and living already determine the marketing strategies of industrial manufacturers today. They are warmly welcomed by broad sections of the population who, in the absence of other and more authentic offerings, satisfy their desires for security and community, individuality and distinctiveness in the “new” house and settlement forms, however historically costumed.
The range of hardware stores on offer in this country – whether Obi, Praktiker or Bauhaus – only does the rest.
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