I HAVE THIS THEORY that full-on mid century modern style never really takes hold and endures — because it’s just too spare for most people. It’s minimalist. And we humanoids are not. We like our ornamentation. We pouf our hair and bedazzle our ring fingers. We put bones through our noses, we draw on cave walls, we put feathers and arrowheads into cigar boxes, and we spend hours hunting down rare kitschy creatures for our collections of postwar Made in Japan salt and paper shakers but “animals under $5 a pair only”. It’s a magical, mystical, mesmerizing, magnetic pull — to accumulate. Above: The Wilson House is stunning, but still too… tidy… for me.
I really don’t like to encourage ‘being a meanie’ [a key commenting rule here on the blog is: No one is to be made to feel bad for their choices], but for purposes of today’s Open Thread, I point to this website, Unhappy Hipsters, which lampoons the poses of not-too-happy-looking people in their bare, artful, modern houses. Should we get these folks some tchotchkes, stat?
I spoke to none other than mid century modern design legend Vladimir Kagan recently, and we chatted about this very issue — the struggle to achieve the most noble philosophical aspirations of minimalism.
Mr Kagan:
My designs were influenced by the Bauhaus philosophy, “less is more” – I was raised on this. If you have a bigger piece of furniture, you need less seating elsewhere. The serpentine sofa seats eight people.
Pam: Do you live “less is more” in your own home? (I knew the answer because I had seen the photos of Kagan and Wilson’s New York City apartment on The Selby.)
Mr. Kagan laughs:
Less is more. Except in my own home. Do as I say, not as I do.
Pam: So why did you end up with more is more?
Mr. Kagan:
I wish I could be less is more. I have a yearning to move and start over. You end up with more is more because you like things. Erica and I traveled a lot, and we collected…. We have always acquired never eliminated. To create a clean space is a wonderful thing. I admire it and help create it for my clients. Unfortunately, emotionally I can not down-scale!
that it’s so hard to be minimalists?
Is there something very deep instinctual need to have our stuff?
(Let’s set aside the extremes, please, for this discussion.)
Should we give ourselves a break for being
creatures of domestic comfort?
Or, is there, and *should* we, strive for some sort of more “evolved” “balance”?
Please be *compassionate* in this discussion, okay?
Kate says
I tend to prefer minimalism in a sense — I don’t like overly cluttered spaces where there are so many items packed into a space that you cannot focus on any one item at a time — being such a visual person, these sorts of cluttered spaces are like nails on a chalkboard to me. However, I also can’t live in a white box with only the necessary furnishings and nothing on the walls. I do like to collect, but there comes a point when suddenly opening a closet or a cupboard will cause an avalanche of stuff to fall down on me and that is when I need to purge and organize.
There are definitely areas of the house that I purge more often — the kitchen being number one. If cooking a meal requires moving piles of dishes or pans to get to the stuff I really need to get the job done, then the cabinets are purged. It is the parts of the house that seem to collect all the stuff (office, living room, bedroom, den, garage) that don’t get cleaned as often. Whenever I buy something, I try to think of where it will “live” in the house before I pull the trigger. If it is just too cool to pass up, then I think of something else less cool that I can donate, sell or give to a friend.
I find when the house is relatively clean and uncluttered, that I am more creative — it is almost as if there is “space” for my ideas to develop.
Strict minimalist I am not, but I do tend to be more that way. Now if only I can convince my husband to unload some stuff…grhrhrhrhrrr….
Melissa L. says
I have found that I am accumulating more things as I age. I have collected things that I really like from travel, gifts from friends, and one-of-a-kinds that I ran across. It can be really hard to get rid of them because of sentimental value. At the same time, I hate clutter and while not a minimalist, I like to keep things simple. My solution has been to have a shelf installed a foot or so from the ceiling of the guest bedroom where I put all the stuff I can’t bear to part with, but don’t really want cluttering up the rest of the place. That way, I’ve concentrated the clutter in one room that I don’t use very often.
brad says
i live a very minimalist existence. my house is really quite bare, with almost nothing on the walls, which causes some visitors to comment.
i go through drawers in the garage, looking for junk to throw out.
i go through my file cabinet, throwing out old papers.
if i buy anything, i usually try to get rid of something.
too much of anything makes me claustrophobic.
i dont know why some cannot get rid of their junk. we are ay too attached to material objects. i value what i have, but i would not weep if i lost most of it tomorrow.
BlueJay says
Personally, we follow an item in/item out rule and that has worked fairly well. I am really enjoying the Unhappy Hipster site. It’s hilarious. 😀
Karen says
Heh! We had to impose a volume-in/volume-out rule when my daughter (a collector from birth) was growing up. The item in/out rule was too literally interpreted. Of course now that she is grown and we have an “extra” room, the rule no long applies and we are the collectors!
beth says
It is difficult because by nature we all like “stuff”!!
ChrisH says
Part of the problem is unrealistic expectations. The Wilson house is a good example. Clean and stylish, and dead. I’d love to live there -except no one really “lives” there. (I doubt it looked like that when the Wilsons lived there) I don’t want to sit in that chair and look at the diamond shapes on the wall; not for 30 years. I actually want to do things. Look again at the picture, no one has read the morning paper. No one has had coffee. There’s an ashtray (I think it’s an ashtray) but no pack of smokes, no lighter. No magazines or books -perhaps the family are illiterate? There’s not even a TV. No one has kicked off their shoes in that room. No sweater discarded, no watch taken off and left on the end table. Obviously there are no kids living within those walls. That’s the problem with architectural pictures; they look as if a neutron bomb went off and left the building while disintegrating all life forms. If we expect our homes to look like this, we set ourselves up for disappointment.
Mary Elizabeth says
I really resonated with Vladimir Kagan’s differentiating between his design aesthetic and his actual living space. I think the drive toward collecting and the drive toward decluttering are personality issues as well as basic human instincts. As humans, we have a drive to store up for the lean times as well as organize our stores so they don’t get in our way. It’s not an either-or thing but a continuum thing–a few people are on the hoarder end and a few people are on the “I want to live in a yurt with nothing but rugs and cushions and a stew pot” end.
Since I was a child, the minimalist/OCD part of my personality and the collector/ADD part of my personality have been at war. I collect, then I clean out, then I collect again. My brother–who looks so much like me that people often ask me if we are twins– is the same way. He has a beautiful apartment in an art deco building in the city which is furnished with mission/Arts and Crafts style furniture and accessories, some antique and some reproductions. He goes through a period when he collects, and then he goes into a period of decluttering when he sells off part of his collection. That’s how he keeps a balance.
As for me and my husband, having to move from a modern condo to a “granny ranch” meant we had to “stage” our condo for sale. Our real estate agent helped us do that by showing us how we could extract certain objects from our cluttered shelves and display them to their advantage and the advantage of their surroundings. We got rid of about 1/3 of our stuff. stored about 1/3 of our stuff, and left the rest in our condo. We liked living that way, so when we started to decorate our new place, we got rid of even more stuff. But when we were all moved in and sent pictures out to our friends of our newly decorated rooms, they all said, “You just bought that place, are you trying to sell it? It looks staged.” (Nobody ever sees my study in those photos, however, as it isn’t decorated so much as just thrown together.)
Now that we’ve lived here for a year and a half, it’s starting to get more “lived in.” But I am trying to keep the same kind of balance my brother does in his place. When I’m tempted to buy a new 1950s-1960s knick-knack, I ask myself what it is going to replace and how it will fit in with my overall decor. (But I still have this very strong urge to get two or three of something instead of the one I need. LIke right now I want to buy a green Catherineholm Lotus fondue pot in addition to my red one.)
Bill says
For me two things, I am a sense person; it is about the smell of a room, the touch of a pillow, sound of the ticking clock and the glow of candles. Things make me content—almost the feathering of the nest. So I have piles of books, extra chairs for friends, walls covered in pictures. Second, like Mr. Kagan, I have traveled a lot (military) and I tend to collect things…hand-blown blue glass vases from Crete bought in the 80’s, watercolors from the Azores, and rugs from the desert and so forth. For me to give these up would take away a visual reminder of where I have been.
Heather says
When I was in architecture school, we had discussions in my theory and history classes on this very topic. In the early 20th century there were many trends and counter-trends around this very issue: to ornament or not to ornament. Architects could not agree (and still do not!) on whether ornament is unnecessary and irrelevant or it is an intrinsic part of the intangible “coziness” factor we humans long for.
Anyway, in my opinion we collect stuff because it makes us happy, or it makes us feel secure, or it creates a status for us, or a combination of these ideas. I think the biggest challenge with modern design is that it strips all things personal from the canvas. It is aesthetically appealing as a photograph but can be cold and impersonal in real life. It is possible to combine the principles of modernism in a warmer material palette or to infuse personal elements into a modern design. However, this takes restraint and those of us who love all things mid-century modern tend to lack restraint when it comes to collecting our treasures 🙂
Jenny A. says
I’ve thought about this before. I think I could quite happily live a minimalist existence but I have three other humans and three felines sharing my space. Mah man is not a minimalist, in fact quite the opposite. I have to purge things from the house while he’s at work or else he goes digging through donation boxes, retrieving items that he thinks we might need at some point. I have managed to pare down an awful lot of “stuff” over the years but we still have a lot. I have, however, made a concerted effort since we bought our house not to buy things unless they serve a useful purpose, with the exception of art for my walls and bedding (which seems to be my weaknesses). That is not to say that I haven’t purchased the occasional glittery orange owl or cubist sculpture, because I have. I just don’t think I need anymore stuff. I’m sure there is some base human foraging switch in all of us that drives us to collect, save, etc. although I’m sure that our different set of life experiences is what ultimately decides whether we become hoarders or minimalists, or like most of us, somewhere in between.