It falls apart before you get done putting it together. It’s so crappy that some moving companies refuse to touch it. And according to Ed Norton in that movie I hate, a house full of it is a sure sign that you’ve sold your soul to corporate Satan. But we’ve all got our IKEA furniture; we’re attracted to its clean modern lines the way little kids with Cheeto fingers are attracted to your new white shirt. I go to that joint and I buy the HELL out of that crap. Every time I do, though, I think about how the popularization of mass produced, inexpensive Modern design via IKEA involves phenomena that extend beyond any discussion of quality or taste.
Early 20th century Modern design, like its late 20th century IKEA revival, begins as a European export. And like a ship full of plague rats or a pile of blankets festering with smallpox, it arrives on distant shores with something nasty crawling unseen just below its smooth faux-teak surface.
Sometimes accidentally and sometimes intentionally, revolution in architecture and design has traditionally grown out of philosophical revolution (mass production and marketing has somewhat changed the game lately, but that’s another story). Scientific revolution during the Renaissance led to philosophical and theological revolution, Humanism, which led to a conscious and deliberate turning point in art, architecture, music, literature, style, and design. Similarly, Industrial revolution in the nineteenth century led to social, political, and economic upheaval, and new manifestos were written that outlined the ways that the New visual art, drama, music, literature, architecture, and design—Modernism—would deliberately reflect and advance the philosophical revolution.
Modernist literature, for example, uses fragmented timelines and multiple narrative points of view to express the alienation and spiritual ambiguity of the post-Industrial individual in an increasingly fragmented society. Cubism also employs multiple perspectives, presenting the presumably stationary viewer with all surfaces and angles of an object at once in a two-dimensional space; but unlike Modernist literature, the intent of this multiplication of perspective and apparent fragmentation of narrative continuity is not to dislocate but to unify the clear identity of the object: Ernst Gombritch described cubism as a "radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture."
The apparent contradiction is not problematic to the principles of the movement. Modernism embraced and celebrated dynamic opposition. If the visual and literary arts used multiplication of surface and voice to address the decentralization and alienation of the subject from within a rapidly disintegrating, increasingly urban and industrial society, Modern architecture attempted to unite post-Darwinian/post-Marxian theory with the post-industrial urban landscape and concurrent revolutions in building and engineering technique to reintegrate individual identity into a new, socially progressive machine-age society. In 1901, Frank Lloyd Wright in his celebratory Art and Craft of the Machine dismissed the viewpoint that industrialization and urbanization oppressed the human spirit; rather, simplicity of design and functionality in architecture enabled by advances in engineering represented "a glimmer in a darkened field--the first sane word that has been said in Art for the Machine." Wright believed that advances in methods of production enable design that perfectly balances form and utility (which, after all, according to one view of aesthetics, is the essence of Beauty). The machine's noble potential was to emancipate humankind from back-breaking labor and soul-crushing drudgery.
Le Corbusier took this a step further in the mid-early twentieth century, uniting innovative new industrial building methods and materials with classical principles such as Da Vinci's Vitruvian proportions and Fibonacci numbers to produce structures in harmony with the mechanical and the organic. His vision was, like Wright's, not only aesthetic but social as well. His ventures into urban planning reflected a belief that Modern industrial building methods could be employed to solve housing problems in urban centers and improve the quality of life of the lower classes. His ideological legacy has left us with, among other things, the urban freeway system, which, as Chicago knows well, led to decades of stark race- and class-based geographical divisions; and the late-twentieth century socio-economic sinkhole known as the urban housing project. Thanks, Le Corbusier.
Does anyone else hear the scuttle of tiny roach feet dispersing, running to hide under our Ikea chaise longues and faux-built-in lacquered splinterboard bookcases? Le Corbusier isn't the first whose proposed methods for an ideal, socially just future turned out to be horrifically misguided, and you can bet he won't be the last. His failed attempts to elevate the poor of Paris are notable to us here because his Modern methodology is firmly rooted in an ideology of Eurocentrism and cultural elitism. The design of the housing project reflects the assumption that Group A has the capability as well as the right to decide what's best for Group B and Group B's children and grandchildren, usually without the consent or involvement of Group B at all. It's the kind of cross-class noblesse oblige I sometimes hear echoing when I switch on NPR, but Le Corbusier didn't stop there. The man who proposed the bulldozing of central Paris in favor of a Radiant City of skyscrapers that would eradicate all class stratification also proposed an urban overhaul of Algiers. The reason? He believed the differences in living standards between Europeans and Africans were too great. "The 'civilised' live like rats in holes," he said, "yet the 'barbarians' live in solitude, in well being." This from the man who famously stated that "chairs are architecture; sofas are bourgeois." The fountain of social justice is, apparently, White Only.
In fact, according to one of the most infamous early tracts of 20th century aesthetics, so is Modern design. In Adolf Loos's 1908 essay Ornament and Crime, absence of superfluous ornamentation is synonymous with cultural evolution. Loos cites two main reasons, one of which is that "ornament is wasted manpower and therefore wasted health." Reduction of an object's superfluous ornamentation translates into reduction in labor and time necessary to produce it, therefore increasing the laborer's wage value in proportion to his output. The same goes for the craftsman; paying the cobbler the same for an unadorned pair of boots as for a pair ornately notched in the style of the day liberates him from indentured servitude to ornamentation. But careful, now—remember that the painstaking execution of elaborate ornamentation is this poor wretch's only joy. To deprive him of this is to "rob him of all pleasures," so we must "suffer" him his "sacred hours" of labor and tolerate a degree of ornamentation because, after all, "after a day's trouble and pain, we go to hear Beethoven and Wagner. [The] cobbler cannot do that."
And why not? This brings us to Loos's other beef with ornamentation: "the lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power," of which the common shoemaker evidently has little, and the members of non-European civilizations have none. The continued perpetration of something "any Negro can do" in nineteenth century Europe is, for Loos, embarrassing. "The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use," and therefore the continued embellishment of these objects is a characteristic of heathens, cannibals, children, and latent criminals: "If a tattooed person dies at liberty, it is only that he died a few years before he committed a murder." A Papuan man who "tattoos" everything from his skin to his boat, by Loos's hierarchy of cultural IQ, is comparable in mental development to a European two-year-old, and his urge to scribble “erotic symbols” on walls is hereby understandable. Nineteenth century Europe has outgrown ornament, "incapable," in fact, "of producing new ornament," and should celebrate its liberation from meaningless labor that now much better befits barbarians of other centuries and skin tones.
Hence, an elegant visual simplicity: the clean lines, uncluttered planes, and open spaces of Modern design.
So what are we left with? Modernism embraced dynamic opposition on principle as a driving force behind progress, but its theorists were unaware of some of the oppositions created within their own work; namely, the opposition between professed idealistic desire to eradicate socio-economic class disparities and the perpetuation of imperialist, patrician attitudes towards members of other races, cultures, and classes. Modern methods and principles were used in these manifestos to invoke a socially progressive, de-classed future, but in practice, they did little to advance this ideal. At their worst, they became festering cesspits of death (see: Cabrini Green); at their best, they became objects of breathtaking beauty and innovation that, nonetheless, perpetuated the status quo, as many of the items and structures produced in expression of these principles were only commissioned or afforded by the affluent.
Do we grant the theorists of Modern design a degree of forgiveness for being products of their time, and far more visionary products than most of the lot at that? Are Loos's racist, imperialist attitudes less horrifying when we consider them embedded in the context of a racist, imperialist society? Good question. What IS apparent is that while the advent of the machine has undoubtedly improved the lives of post-industrial laborers and patricians alike by leaps and bounds, Modern design's theorists can accept very little responsibility for the change. They may have predicted it, but they weren't the only people who saw it coming, and, as far as I know, none of them played any kind of grass-roots activist role in the quest for social progress. They really believed their principles would "create a better everyday life for the many people," but were, I'm assuming, too busy designing beautiful things for rich people to be able to take real-life responsibility for social justice. And they can't really be held accountable for the affluence of their client base, can they? After all, it's an unfortunate truism that in the field of architecture and design, "far too many of the fine designs and new ideas are reserved for a small circle of the affluent."
Oh, sorry, I almost forgot to tell you who I'm quoting--Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, in his 1976 corporate manifesto The Testament of a Furniture Dealer. This is a fascinating little piece of literature and can be found at http://www.emu.dk/erhverv/merkantil_caseeksamen/doc/ikea/english_testament_2007.pdf . It contains strikingly poetic, elegant statements that sound like they could have been written by Lao Tzu, such as "most things still remain to be done," right next to typical TGIFriday's Employee Handbook rhetoric like "ten minutes are NOT just a sixth of your hourly pay."
One of Kamprad's main directives is that IKEA's basic range be perceived worldwide as "typically Swedish," and we know how much those Scandinavians love their Modern decorative arts. The physiology of Modern design in the decorative arts, besides being beloved by Swedes, also has the advantage of being ideal to the advancement of IKEA’s business model and mission statement. Clean lines, uncluttered surfaces, and absence of superfluous ornamentation lead to cheaper and faster production, as well as more efficient shipping and distribution.
Kamprad, like the early Modernist thinkers, also addresses the dehumanization of a mechanized post-industrial world, in which "the individual has gradually been lost in the grey conformity of collective bargaining and the numbered files of the personnel department." Kamprad's mission statement for IKEA is "to create a better everyday life for the many people"; rather than bulldozing slums to make room for a glittering, classless City of Tomorrow, Kamprad proposes to do this "by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them."
Our earlier theorists claimed that Modern design and production techniques could be used to close class gaps, improving working conditions and quality of life for laborers and lower-class people. It seems that Kamprad has reversed the tide, allowing the market demands of the less affluent to shape Modern design and production techniques. "The many people usually have limited financial resources," says Kamprad, and "it is the many people whom we aim to serve." To this end, functionality, technical quality, and range are constantly adapted to maximize value to the consumer in all stages of product development, production, and distribution. Of course, we don't need to be business majors to know that in any capitalist venture the general idea is that when "as many people as possible" buy your stuff, you make lots of money, so pledging to serve "the many people" actually serves both ends. This puts an interesting twist on the theory of Modern design: in this theory, the "common man" and his needs as perceived by the patrician theorist is replaced by the common consumer and his needs and demands, upon which the theorist's existence as a corporate entity depends.
So, new oppositions emerge, in which corporate profit is the force that enacts the principles of Modern design in real life, using the medium both to create "a better everyday life for the many people" and to make Kamprad the fifth richest person in the world. We also see some of the old problems of Eurocentrism preserved in this new working model. Outside of Europe and its sphere of major cultural influence (Australia, the United States, and Canada), IKEA stores are only found in a small handful of locations, all of which are highly industrialized, affluent, and/or extremely influential players in the global market (such as Japan, Hong Kong, China, and Saudi Arabia), with none in Africa and one tiny blip on all of Central and South America in what looks like it might be Suriname or French Guiana (check out Wikipedia's map of IKEA locations around the world, circa 2007). It appears, then, that Kamprad's mission "to create a better everyday life for the many people" still only applies selectively; where this leaves most of the population of the Southern Hemisphere is unclear.
Also unclear, then, is how much of a problem we're supposed to have with this. As with our earlier theorists, issues of accountability arise when socially progressive rhetoric is used to promote the further advancement of Euro-centric ideals. Specifically, how accountable the IKEA consumer is for the advancement of these ideals? What, if anything (besides furniture that often expires before canned food does), do we accept when we bring these items into our homes? When we buy something at IKEA, do we buy Loos's racism--the same racism that drove centuries of Eurocentric conquest, the ripple-effects of which continue to decimate non-white people everywhere, including most of Africa and the block I live on?
I don't know. Kamprad may or may not be an evil corporate emperor, but calling it one way or the other doesn't seem to sufficiently answer the questions raised. And anyway, I bought his faux mahogany sideboard with my sweet tax return. So the question of whether or not my TV and record player now sit atop a big box of genocide remains, for me, unanswered. I don't know whether the transgressions of its commissioners and designers become my own at point of purchase. Is a sense of ethical relativism is a necessary response to the realization that you can't escape the socio-political implications of anything you do, or is it just an excuse, a mistake?
As Ingvar Kamprad points out, "only while sleeping one makes no mistakes." If by becoming IKEA shoppers we have committed ethical and rhetorical transgressions, we can forgive ourselves a little simply on account of our being human. And whatever we may think of Kamprad in other respects, we can at least listen to him on this one. He knows alot about rhetoric AND mistakes.
He was a Nazi recruiter in the Forties.
-Written in 2008. I don't live on that block anymore.
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