Good taste is the most obvious resource of the insecure.
People of good taste eagerly buy the Emperor's old clothes.
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative.
It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.
Good taste is the anaesthetic of the public.
HARLEY PARKER
The cancerous growth of the creative individual expressing himself egocentrically at the expense of spectator and/or consumer has spread
from the arts, overrun most of the crafts, and finally reached even into design. No longer does the artist, craftsman, or in some cases the
designer, operate with the good of the consumer in mind; rather, many creative statements have become highly individualistic, autotherapeutic
little comments by the artist to himself. As early as the mid-twenties there appeared on the market chairs, tables, and stools
designed in Holland by Wijdveldt, as a result of the De Stijl movement in painting. These square abstractions painted in shrill primaries were
almost impossible to sit in; they were extremely uncomfortable. Sharp corners ripped clothing, and the entire zany construction bore no
relation to the human body. Today we can allow ourselves to sneer at these attempts to transfer the two-dimensional paintings of Piet
Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg into 'home furnishing'. The chairs lasted as sophisticated status symbols for only a few years, but the trend,
the attempt to translate fashionable daubs into three-dimensional objects for daily use, still continues. Salvador Dali's sofa constructed in the
shape of Mae West's lips may have been a 'disengaged' surrealist act, much like Meret Oppenheim's fur-lined cup and saucer, but the oppypoppy
pillows of today sell by the thousands. While it is not a bad idea to have a pillow that sells for $1.50, a pillow that can be folded and
stored in one's watch pocket and blown up for use, these small plastic horrors perform none of their functions. They yield but slightly and,
being made of transparent plastic with silk- screened polka dots, don't 'breathe' - hence the user sweats profusely. In pictures in shelter
magazines (such as House Beautiful and House and Garden), these pillows are usually shown in clusters, but when several are placed together
they have an un- fortunate tendency to squeak against one another like suckling pigs put to the knife. A clutch of these pillows, tastefully 'unarranged'
on a day bed, looks pleasant. Their use indicates that, as in so many other areas, we have sacrificed all our other needs for a purely
visual statement. As the pillows are also bought in a purely visual setting, dissatisfaction does not set in until one attempts to use them. And
imagine the dismay of having some romantic interlude punctured by a sudden pillow blow-out.
With new processes and an endless list of new materials at his disposal, the artist, craftsman, and designer now suffers from the tyranny of
absolute choice. When everything becomes possible, when all the limitations are gone, design and art can easily become a never-ending
search for novelty, until newness-for-the- sake-of-newness becomes the only measure. It is at this point that many different versions of
novelty begin to create many different esoteric consumer cliques, and the designer with his wares may become more and more alienated from
his society and from the functional complex.
In his novel Magister Ludi, Hermann Hesse writes about a community of intellectual elites who have perfected a mystical, symbolic
language, called the 'Bead Game', that has reduced all knowledge to a sort of unified field theory. The world outside the community is
convulsed by riots, wars, and revolutions, but the players of the Bead Game have lost all contact. They are engaged in exchanging their
esoterica with one another in the game. There is a disturbing parallel between Hesse's game and the aspirations of the contemporary artist
when he speaks of his goals in the exercise of his private visions. He discourses on space, the transcendence of space, the multiplication of
space, the division and negation of space. It is a space devoid of man, as though mankind did not exist. It is, in fact, a version of the Bead
Game.
Concerning the artist Ad Reinhardt, Time says:
Among the new acquisitions currently on display at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art is a large square canvas called 'Abstract Painting’
that seems at first glance to be entirely black. Closer inspection shows that it is subtly divided into seven lesser areas. In a helpful gallery note
at one side, Abstractionist Ad Reinhardt explains his painting. It is: * A square (neutral, shapeless) canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as
high as a man, as wide as a man's outstretched arms (not large, not small, sizeless), trisected (no composition), one horizontal form negating
one vertical [sic] form (formless, no top, no bottom, directionless), three (more or less) dark (lightless), non-contrasting, (colourless) colours,
brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a mat, flat free