LIVING WITH KITSCH

Kirkwall

The experience was highlighted only after we had left our home rental in the Orkney Islands. We had chosen not to stay in or near the towns of Kirkwall or Stromness: rather we opted for what television programmes might call ‘a country retreat.’ The accommodation was an old farm house that seemed to have been vacated in favour of a newer, smaller residence nearby. Maybe the family had grown up and moved on? The location was on the east of Orkney, overlooking the waters between the nearby islands and Kirkwall.

Kirkwall

It was a beautiful location only minutes from the water, with splendid views over working farm fields to the water with its ferry traffic, and the reflections of distant Kirkwall that, at night, shone as a strip of pretty gleaming lights mirrored brightly on the water's edge.

Stromness

The choice of this place involved a stab in the dark, but it proved to be everything one might have hoped for. The eastern conservatory supervised the 180 degree vistas, and opened up into a generous living room, a large kitchen/ dining room, a bedroom with an ensuite, two other bedrooms, a toilet/shower area, and a laundry. It seemed as though the complex had been a small traditional home that had been extended with a structure of similar size and form at 90 degrees to one side of the original building, an addition that had also included a small adjoining bed-sit flat.

Stromness

Eastern Orkney

Eastern Orkney

The situation was very comfortable. Most of our time was spent, when not sleeping or bathing, in the kitchen/dining room and the conservatory. This glazed enclosure appeared to have been a later addition too. The vista from the house was splendid, showing Orkney at its best; but there was something unsettling about the place, something uneasily edgy; emotionally incoherent; awkwardly challenging: thought-provoking. One’s first observation in trying to explain this phenomenon was that the finishes and the interior decoration were all bits-and-pieces, varied with no particular concept or theme. It presented as an ad hoc collection of an unusual selection of genres; whatever, wherever.

The bathroom had wallpaper printed with what looked like cherry blossom tree forms and various insects, in pink and gray. The bathroom floor was a splotchy dark gray vinyl glued over ceramic tiles - the profile of the tile pattern could be seen as an impression in the new top layer. The service piping of the WC and basin had been boxed in crudely along the wall, suggesting that the bathroom had been an addition too, an infilled space. The basin and WC had been selected as an exotic, posh, matching pair, shaped with a clam-shell theme that absurdly reminded one of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. The bath/shower was lined with fake stained glass that had a souvenir Morocco tile mounted on it. A flat-pack, free-standing, empty, white plastic-veneered chipboard cupboard stood against the adjacent wall for general storage. Everything was a strange mix, a random recycled hybrid, that gave one the idea that this place was the last refuge of things not needed elsewhere, and of things economical, but still homely.

The kitchen, with its large, new, generous cupboard/bench installation, had high-grade fittings and equipment that suggested something different; that there was no skimping here: but the motel art on the wall, and the plaster parrots that were arranged vertically in sets of three either side of the supersized, sunny daisy image, caused one some enigmatic aesthetic concern - why? It was a situation aggravated by the presence of a larger pink tulip canvas print on the adjacent wall near a window. Other sundry items stood around on window sill and cupboard ledges to continue the multiplicity of the theme – whatever, wherever. One could admire the effort.

In the conservatory, the low perimeter sill shelf had become the place for a collection of sundry, decorative items too. Three googly-eyed birds stood as a lost group staring out into interior space, next to a tiered set of small, chromed plastic, perforated trays. A string of Christmas lanterns was strung across the window heads: might these be permanent decorations to celebrate, Scrooge-like, Christmases past and those yet to come? It was the middle of the year. The furniture was an ad hoc collection of variations. Cane tables with glass tops stood near the two different, plush, white leather sofas standing on the patterned tiled ceramic floor. A veneered chipboard table centrepiece made the nearby, clear-finished, empty pine cupboard with glass doors look presentable.

The lounge room had a gray carpet, and large, grossly over-sized, puffy black lounge chairs with decorative, ruby velvet cushions. The fireplace panel was finished with a William Morris ‘Strawberry Thief’ wallpaper panel. The fire recess was filled with a cheap, cast-iron box stove that had controls that became red hot when the fire was warming the room; the hearth was polished black stone. On it stood a traditional set of black fire tools, a pair of tongs, and a plastic shopping bag full of kindling. A black plaster Buddha was the commanding centrepiece of the mantelpiece; a glass bowl stood to one side. A large, three-panelled artwork illustrating a mythical seaside location was the motel art on the wall beside the fireplace. A black, plastic laminated chipboard unit was under it. A tired, black beanbag flopped on the floor on the opposite side of the hearth. All the lighting was controlled by clever, challenging, digital button-dimming switches that made one think differently about on and off, and illumination generally.

The bedrooms were similar in their decorative intent. Touch lamps of various styles stood on glass tables with woven black plastic storage boxes below. Glass bottles, clear, pink, and other shades, stood on the various window sills. Different carpets fitted out the various, individual spaces. One bedroom had modern steel bunks; the other beds were equally challenging in their period-style, flexing flat-pack design and construction.

The house was very comfortable and spaciously generous, but it was discovered that the fragmented, chaotic and puzzling decorative detail was more than thought-provoking; it invaded the spirit with an enigmatic persistence; a quiet nagging. There was always something ready to grasp one’s attention unnecessarily. One had to adjust the arrangement of the conservatory birds to get some relief from their stare. They were turned into each other to create what one might call ‘The Conference of the Birds’ piece. Little could be done with other items that survived just because they were there with no options other than removal, which was, it seemed, out of the question. It appeared that things had to be used if they could be, even if this be as some random decorative infill, anywhere.

When in Kirkwall, looking for a pen in Poundland, we inadvertently discovered the source of some of these ornamental pieces. The conservatory birds and the kitchen parrots were seen there - one pound each. There must have been other pieces from this store too, but the research was not undertaken. It seemed that this home had been vacated and fitted out for rental after being redecorated with the cheapest items possible, and whatever happened to be left over from anywhere else. Anything would do, just so long as it was cheap and available, even as a remnant. Coherence was something that seemed to hold no meaning here. One might call it the ‘Ad Hoc’ style of interior decoration: ‘Kitsch’ seems to have become too kitsch a term for this shambles. It seemed too determined in its approach and attitude to categorise this ill-considered muddle. Kitsch has a sense of a knowing, ironic style about it, even if this is an contrived emotional ambiguity.

It was not until we were home that this conveniently random, cheap chaos could be recognised as a jumble of sundry kitsch; an accumulated, complex set of different, unrelated ‘kitsches.’ Now this is not necessarily a negative comment, but, by contrast, in a home where things are considered and gathered with an aesthetic and meaningful, considered intent – perhaps some might see it as a mess - and where thought is given to finishes and fittings no matter how basic these might be, the multiple world of kitsch can be seen as an aggravating disturbance in spite of the architectural spin promoted by Jencks et al., that seemed to want to make kitsch fashionably smart to admire, clever in its desperateness, like ripped jeans: detail does matter. Little, incidental things can have an impact on life and living in a manner that grinds and grates; disturbs, just as some can enrich. These Orkney parts and pieces fill no need, other than just being something cheap to fit a perceived ‘decorative’ gap. The void would have been more satisfying, as the human mind does seek out some inner structure and coherence, some meaning in perception.

Sadly the world is full of this stuff. Our hotels, motels, offices and shops have all of these items, as do rental properties. These things are seen as ‘rental, ‘motel,’ or ‘corporate’ decoration, representing the amorphous world which is nothingness, aimless, careless, with things made with no intention beyond being temporarily eye-catching, different, available, and economical. They offer no substance or support for the human spirit: even the Buddhas become cliché plaster reproductions for decoration only, a provenance that is remarkably transparent in its commercial blandness. These things merely fill gaps with jokey, general trash, literally anything, just as words do in tourism: they are visual void-fillers in the same terrible sense of ‘stocking fillers’ at Christmas time: unnecessary guff purchased to bulk things up, for appearances only, as if volume had value to impress even when it turns out to be just rubbish, to be trashed.

Here one can get close to Adolf Loos's concern with decoration, his demand for voids: and with Louis Sullivan's inspirational ‘form follows function,’ and his call for an enriching decorative embellishment. When loose, compounded kitsch takes over, it distracts from any meaningful search or revelation in ordinary living, constantly prodding sensitivities with a hollow, aggravating awkwardness. Stuff stuffs every void in space and place, and in mind and feeling, with a disturbing sense of cluttered Victorian excess; it distracts with its voided ‘entertaining’ identity that assumes something is always better than nothing. Rather than having substance to enrich, meaningless matter mangles simple, pure joy with aggravating shrouds of pretense, of things trying not very hard to be something that they are not and never will be. Matter shaped by void-filling, cheap, ‘one pound’ visions has little chance of enriching. Modern man's desire for everything cheap - “We'll get it made in China” - highlights a real concern with the lack of commitment with integral substance and meaning; with how making is an important part of anything- its innate provenance.

Sadly, this world of inherent quality has been perverted. One can no longer have faith in anything that claims substance and value through price alone; kitsch can no longer be evaluated as just being cheap or quaintly quirky. Consider the $3,000 HERMES flip-flops, and the other branded ordinary things that are given enormous prices: likewise in the art world. This is the other extreme of cheap kitsch, where the name, the brand, and context establishes a value in millions of dollars beyond any intrinsic value: and we are bullied into silence. Little wonder that this world is mocked by the cheap copies and other trash.

Aesthetic issues have become elitist, expensive, specialist, alternative, and bespoke. We need to try to understand how things can be everyday and valuable without being kitsch or void fillers – not monetarily valuable, but emotionally valuable, enriching, supportive of remembrance; of qualities rich and subtle, rather than things for the rich and their egocentrically, domineering, crass displays of ME. Architects have a role in this transformation if they so choose to think and feel about it seriously. The matter is complex; but the impacts of things randomly cheap strangely reverberate even when one is on the other side of the world. The question is: how do we engage value and meaning; the meaning of value, so that our lives can be enriched rather than be mockingly entertained 
with the emotional void of random kitsch?

What is our ‘applique architecture’ doing to us?