Why Bowie's new house won't be by Bow Wow

[imomus]

The picture below shows, fanned open, all the jpg images I had on my desktop at about 10 o'clock last night. They're basically the result of two data-mining enquiry lines, a Bowie line and a Bow Wow line. Atelier Bow Wow, that is. So, my favourite celebrity and my favourite architecture studio. (Click the picture to see it huge.)



Having opened these images all up together, I began to make connections between them. At the centre you can see Bowie playing a vicious capitalist refusing a young dot commer a line of finance in Austin Chick's forthcoming film "August". The film is set in 2001, but the room inhabited by Bowie's character is in the pseudo-Victorian style we could call "international rich chintz" or "hotel baroque".

That got me wondering whether the man I associate most fondly with the avant pop experiments of the "Lodger" album has built his new house in Shokan, near Woodstock, yet, and if so, what style it's in? The idyllic woods-and-lake photo below right in my spread is the site, Little Tonshi Mountain.

Google Earth left me none the wiser -- it wouldn't zoom far enough into this remote rural area to show construction, let alone the style of the building taking shape on Bowie and Iman's 64-acre plot in the Catskills. What we do know is that when Bowie commissioned a house on Mustique it was in a sort of Jet Set PoMo style -- a sprawling Balinese fantasy by Swedish architect Arne Hasselqvist, who also made Mustique villas for Mick Jagger and Princess Margaret. (Hasselqvist and his son died tragically in a fire in Nassau in 2001; they initially escaped, but were overcome by smoke when they returned to try to save some documents, possibly architectural plans.)

Bowie's PoMo "world architecture" house was featured in Architectural Digest magazine in September 1992. I remember running out and buying a copy on Tottenham Court Road, near where I was living at the time, and being a bit disappointed. The cover made it look very alluring and Asian, but inside there was a disappointing lack of personality. Everything was cream cushions and rattan chairs. It looked like a rental villa. Now, Bowie bought the Mustique place in the 80s, when he was particularly close with Mick Jagger, who had his own villa in exactly the same style pretty much next door. So there was probably some enormously-wealthy-rock-star peer pressure going on. But it's a bit disappointing how the rich fail to spend their money on really great architecture, and just go for chintz and "hotel baroque". And of course it's also disappointing -- and this is not unrelated -- when their records cease to be avant and just settle into "timeless" styles too. "Luxury hotel baroque" in your living arrangements seems to lead to "luxury hotel rock" in your music arrangements.

If I had Bowie's money, there's no doubt at all what I'd do. I'd commission Atelier Bow Wow to design my house. But, you know, it occurs to me that there's a reason rock stars, in general, have less-than-cutting-edge taste. If they were unremittingly avant, they'd never have got rich in the first place, because the large publics required to generate large fortunes are essentially conservative. In other words, a rock star rich enough to commission an avant-styled house is unlikely to have remained unaffected enough by his public and his rich peers to want something avant garde in the first place. It's impossible to be that popular without being, in your heart of hearts, somewhat populist in your tastes. And populist, when it comes to architecture, mostly means chintz.

To put that another way, if David Bowie had only made avant pop albums like "Lodger", he probably wouldn't have enough money now to commission the Atelier Bow Wow house he might well -- in that parallel world -- be inclined to crave.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was brought up in a house with that same high-backed wooden chair, the one you have by the fireplace! And it was even broken in the same way (suggesting the diverging rails leading from the seat to the neck rest are a bit of a design problem).

I do find this a "trad" environment rather than an "avant" one, though, whatever recursive circles you think are going on, and it does occur to me that you've been able to realize your dreams so thoroughly because those dreams were not, to begin with, anything that would terrify Hollywood. If your book had endorsed a less populist style (and I can hear you spluttering with indignation at the word, but still, to me this is populist), would the film rights have been sold?

We reach another interesting paradox of conservative populism here: conservative populists tend to portray the stuff they don't like -- the kind of stuff championed on this blog (http://www.egodesign.ca/en/) -- as an established professional mainstream they're rebelling against. (This, for instance, is the argument of the Stuckists against the Serotans.) But, while it's true that the avant style has become the status quo within a narrow cadre of the urban elite, the greater mass of the general public clings to conservative values. For this "trad mass", avant is still avant: it is still ahead of them. They're waiting for its revolutions to become sufficiently anaemic and familiar before they embrace them. Which they will, the way they eventually embraced Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and so on: a century or so late.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But actually, the best critique of my stance in today's piece is:

"Nick, why do you allow a Balinese pastiche to be PoMo, but not a Victorian pastiche? After all, Post-Modernism flattens time just as it flattens space. Bowie can live in baronial Euro-splendour in Switzerland and orientalist World Architecture in the Caribbean and be of his time in both properties. Modernism separated the hip from the square, but Post-Modernism squares all circles."

And I'd have to say "Damn it, Me, you have a point there!"

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Seems to me it's all 'trad', whatever that means anymore. The example you describe as 'new' is in an architectural style that is now well over a half-century old. I also think you're making a big assumption about modernist architecture being 'ahead" or 'avant': I used to walk through such surroundings as a child, and it evokes a sense of nostalgia, as it does for many people who have tired of it. It's all too convenient to paint those who find the style unappealing as backwards or, in my case, populist. That's like a chef saying that those who turn up their nose at his bland protein wedges are hopelessly unenlightened.

As for my own home surroundings, it's inaccurate to see it as a reactionary aesthetic: it's pop, not neo-victorian. It's a playful send-up of the set designs of gay art directors who worked on musicals like "Gigi" and the like. There's a bit of mid-century modern in there, but also plays with the idea of a live-in wunderkammern (perhaps the photos don't show this aspect, but it's there).

And wow--first you ply the old prudish "well at least I'm more avant" rationale on Bowie, now you go one step further by comparing what I do to the Stuckists and ascribe my success to being a tame, bourgeois hack? Whatever gets you through the night, Nick.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

This is what I love about the art croud: we have two heterosexual men falling out over tastes in furniture.

Can we not just agree to disagree?

Momus: Your "chintz = unsophisticated populist" stance is bull. one word: IKEA. Your minimalist, stark, bauhausy taste in architecture and furnishing isnt that avant. Every Joe Bloggs out there shops at Ikea.

Whimsy: You're chintz with a palette change. Eccentric chintz is still chintz. You're not avant either.

I think truly avant architecture and interiors need to be fiercely bizarre to the point of being anti-utilitarian. Thats my opinion, everything between that has been done.

To each man his own, and such...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Gay man doing good job of refereeing two straight men spilling quills bantam-fighting over sofa styles!

It's true that I do sometimes look at the place (and it's usually a Japanese place, like the housing Muji offers in Japan (http://www.muji.net/ie/se/)) where spare, modest Modernist design meets the mass market and feel the warm glow of aesthetic belonging. It's a glow I only tend to feel, as I say, in Japan, where I can identify with semi-mass market magazines like Ku:nel. Nothing in the West can really do that for me these days. Well, there's Kidswear magazine, but that's hardly mainstream.

I do notice an "error" I've been making all my life. As soon as I see "the new thing" I say "That's it, everything else must now cease. This is our new baseline." For instance, when I heard Kraftwerk for the first time, aged 15, all rock music except lab rock, post-rock, was basically dead in the water, invalid. Of course it wasn't, and that isn't the nature of Post-Modernism, where Kraftwerk's retro-futurism sits alongside Iron Maiden's retro-metal as "equally valid". I was acting as if it really were 1930 and Kraftwerk were Modernists who had just invented Cubism or Serialism or something, "made it new" in the Ezra Pound sense, and made everything else old. And this was probably a basic misunderstanding, on my part, of the way culture works now. Nothing is ever "over" now, nothing is ever forgotten. We've forgotten how to forget, and we've terminated termination. This removal of the possibility of a meaningful avant garde (which must be able to declare things "over" from time to time) is one of the things I hate most about PoMo. It's very disincentivizing for aesthetic progressives. In fact, it doesn't even allow that there can be such a thing.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

That was quite a big change of tune! (One I agree with though)

I think you and whimsy both slipped up on this: You were right to point out that Whimsy's own unique take of chintz is still superficially chintz, and no contradictions in the form of recursive circles have arisen.

That said, your own tastes are unashamedly modernist, ikea modernist even. You're hardly rocking the boat either. Bauhaus has been done and dusted.

and Since youre a fan of structuralism:

Traditionally, the Japanese see the mountains and seas, '山海', as being opposed to one another. In terms of taste, Whimsy is a man of the moutains -- The trendy and new doesn't concern him. His tastes are steadfast and rock-solidly defined. He knows who he is, and what he wants. You're a man of the seas - Your tastes change with the tides, you're mutable and fluid. Your inquisitive nature yearns for change.

As I've said before, both these qualities have their pros and cons. You and whimsy have a "sankai friendship", a mountain & sea friendship. Try to strike a balance.

[vonbruckhousen.livejournal.com]

and yet even waters at bottoms of oceans fall on top mountains and bottoms of mountains touch floors of seas

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I have furniture from both Ikea and Target as well, but I also like antique items, natural specimens and living things. I like an eclectic mix, and try to put my rooms into a lively harmony. I want my house to say "Come in and explore," not "I'm better than you". I want to charm, not impress; I lack the money for that. I want a place that's poised but modest.

I know what's current, and much of it I like--there are some light, poised minimal or sleek interiors that I love. I love greenhouses for similar reasons. But I'm not apt to exclude everything else simply because it's been around a while. For me it's about texture, not time--and I will likely change the furnishings again in the future. It's an ongoing process.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Never said I was trying to be avant, just was making the point that "out" is more interesting than "forward", in that it allows for variety, however "incorrect" the forms may start out being.

[madeofmeat.livejournal.com]

"out" is more interesting than "forward", in that it allows for variety

Oh, that is gold. That concept can go so far beyond furniture. I have added that expression to my quotes file.

[19091977.livejournal.com]

Look, it isn't a war of words, does it match up to this?

[(Anonymous)]

O narcissistic sneer, O ugly mug, O King of Rock n Roll