Its been a loooong week, dear readers, as Mrs. RSR and myself have been nose to the grindstone getting a big project out the door. (And invoiced. Yay!) So I started poking round the 'ol Interwebz this afternoon for the first time in days, and at Maggie's Farm came across this book review about the major movers of the Bauhaus - the German school that popularized Internationalist Modernism. If you are interested in Modernism in art and design, it's worth a read.
While I love tradition and history, I have always been intrigued with modernist design as an aesthetic. Clean. Pure. Honest. Essence. What turned me off was the obsession with ignoring history and cultural tradition, and the elitist, Leftist / Socialist political baggage that came along with it. Plus, the "form follows function" mantra became an excuse for bad design, especially in America. That, along with the politics and arrogance of its proponents, finally brought Modernism crashing down (quite literally) of it's own weight in the 1970's - as Tom Wolfe so wonderfully chronicled. But Modernism is making a return, and thankfully most of the political baggage is missing. (Yes, the eco-zealots have tried to glom onto the resurgence, but with only limited success.) So I am finally able to explore the modernist aesthetic for what it is, without all of the Euro-commie political claptrap that used to go along with it.
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