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Perhaps you haven't noticed, in your considerations, the astonishing semblance between the metal safety rails near our windows or roads, and the text-decorations prettifying our books and documents across the years.

-Railing spotted in Carcassonne, France. 

-PD Vector Graphic of an 1870's Printers Ornament 

What fascinates me is the intricate surface detailing of objects apparently designed for the simple purposes of delineation, separation; whether that be between pedestrian and pimpmobile or between chapter and heading. Either way, in noticing it, we accept that content is altered by its surroundings... 

We are subject to the same merry-go-round of freedom in these our decorated words, our so-called free press, as we are on pavements: warned away, even physically restrained from our inalienable rights to jaywalk, play chicken, or attempt vehicular-abuse.

And how is this foul satanism enacted? Through the single fatuous assertion that there exists an aesthetics of function, somehow buried beneath eiderdowns of fluff- the besneered realms of "decoration for the sake of decoration"... And that in flaying these fleeting skins of Style, of Fashion, we are left with a primal aesthetic of distilled purpose! Pure energy!

Bullshit. Still nobody knows the full story- Freedom? $140 per Barrel! Why not- 'We' Might not 'have' Much 'left'.

So what have we got instead? I suppose we can rejoice in the incredible cheapness of our new railings- anybody who loves the look and texture of money but also feels the need to secure themselves against the dangers of roads or defenestration might now have an appreciably better life... Though I do love the taste of money, I am no great fan of its visual aspect, and so I must find other beneficial results of the great disornamental project.

-Modern Railing (impact) from my private collection. 

And so I did, one day, in conversation, and then alone, fall under the spell of the Brutalist. I am deeply troubled (haunted) by terms like Objectivist and Functionalist, but "Brutalist" somehow seems appropriate. I ignore the dictionary definition and use my own: To take the vernacular of cheaply impressive architecture and design- those 20th Century reactions to the coy and sentimental- art that didn't know its name- and revel in exactly the aspects it disavowed: Oh my! What exquisitely quaint urbanity we might find in those so-optimistic tower-blocks, as they are gentrified, covered in "prestige-cladding", or given peculiar sink-arrangements. Nothing quite like stabbing the Knife, eh?

And so in a way I venerate our modern railings, for they are merely the canvas of our humbly tethered imaginations, even as I loathe our promiscuous use of the fleuron in modern design for its affectations of an exoticism coloured primarily in the same pigments as its origination, and subsequent fall from favour: that is- a world where we might scream at decoration for obscuring meaning, only to find, upon removal, that it is the obscure that we love; and, denied it on the page or on the street, we reproduce it in our minds, where it is far more dangerous.

Afterthought: I felt it appropriate to show you some clipart: for me clipart is the only honest page ornamentation for our times, though that's another story.  

-"Graduation" Clipart. I look forward to such unsavoury activities when I finally pay my library fine.

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Bertie Russ () 17 Jun 2008 // 12:37:05 WTF???!! this is WHACK yo, BADASS Reply | Quote 2   0

saikotiq () 19 Jun 2008 // 05:50:32 Clip Art is the graffiti of the feeble. Woe are we that we have abandoned the organic petticoats of our proto-fascist foremothers for good! Our back has now turned upon those Nipponese winds of change that once bellowed over the crafty embers of Morris, forging such wondrous textual and typographical excrescences as became manifest in New Art - all those years ago. Onwards to the Soil and the Blood! Onwards towards the Serried Ranks and Rails of the Bland! Reply | Quote 1   0

Carrier Jos () 23 Jun 2008 // 16:51:06 That railing was really heavy. Wherever there's an aesthete writing nonsense there's somebody carrying his railings and not getting any credit. Reply | Quote 1   0

Joshua () 24 Jun 2008 // 08:03:04 Wherever there's a beefy inarticulate aesthete there's a waifish intellectual slave waiting ferry his railings. And that needn't have been you. You should be thankful. Reply | Quote 1   1

saikotiq () 28 Jun 2008 // 17:20:36 Whoever and whether is irrelevant - surely we should be concentrating upon the upthwart tubular word. Or am I shedding countless pointillstas? Reply | Quote 0   0

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.