Ikea "discovers postmodernism"

[imomus]

My Moment blog today goes into a subject that interests and amuses me: the way Ikea established itself globally -- and it's become a sort of de facto global home furnishings monoculture -- by taking a puritan-Modernist (and stereotypically Swedish) stand against clutter and chintz, but how decoration -- that Modernist taboo -- has recently been spotted creeping back into Ikea designs. I plot this development to two decisive moments in design history: the 1908 moment when Viennese architect and theorist Adolf Loos declared ornament "a crime", and the 1984 moment when mainstream post-modernism broke the Loos taboo. We also look at the strangely sarcastic world of early 1990s Ikea ads attacking the English and their neurotic attachment to decorative furniture, and wonder whether furniture stores (like Pottery Barn) which skipped the Modernist aesthetic altogether were somehow avant garde as a result. (The answer is, I suspect, that the whole idea of the avant garde died with Modernism: in the pomo period distinctions like avant / mainstream, high / low, and now / then collapse into a great mulch of endlessly-circular, gormlessly-ironic cultural references.)



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So the story here probably isn't so much "Ikea belatedly discovers Postmodernism, betrays Modernist principles" as "Ikea's apparently Modernist gestures were Postmodern all along". But I suppose they could have been both at the same time -- the advertising could have made a post-modernist joke of Ikea boss Ingvar Kamprad's relatively sincere Modernist principles. The irony is that Ikea is abandoning the clarity of the Modernist aesthetic just as the art world is rediscovering it, and embracing post-modernism just when some of us are getting thoroughly sick of it.

Comments

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

If you are using architecture as a scale against which to positions IKEA's designs, they are pretty much right on target. (No relationship to Target and Michael Graves intended!) You use 1984 as a date for the triumph of Postmodernism in architecture -- perhaps true on the commercial side, though "less is a bore" comes from Venturi's 1966 Complexity and Contradiction. I say this not to give a pedantic lecture on dates, but as a means to bring up the fact that after the decline of architectural postmodernism, there was a resurgence of what you are suggesting could be termed postmodern modernism -- particularly a lot of Spanish architects who fetishized the minimal aesthetic of Modernism -- for example, Abalos and Herreros -- in the late 90s/early 00s that trickled down to the safe modernist aesthetics of things like Dwell.

Anyway, I think that architects are pretty bored with that now and much more interested in things like FAT (http://www.fashionarchitecturetaste.com/2006/11/sint_lucas.html)-- and if that is not a third wave of postmodernism (after the Venturi spearheaded first wave, and the modernist second wave), I don't know what is! Anyway, IKEA is pretty much riding that trend, no? Put another way, Modernism was a historical moment that really can't exist anymore, no matter what things look like.

Of course there is also an agrument that architecture has been postmodern all the way since the Baroque, so....

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you picked up the Venturi reference -- yes, I cited 1984 really as the moment Postmodernism went mainstream (it was also the time Charles Jencks was popularising the term). I personally date the very beginnings of Postmodernism to one very specific time and place: 1956, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the This is Tomorrow exhibition. 1956 was also the year the first Elvis Presley album came out. It's pomo's Big Bang year.

I agree that Ikea is riding microtrends within the macrotrends, it's just amusing how they've invested so much, image-wise, in Modernist, puritan, Swedish, functionalist, minimalist, non-decorative stuff, and that now their need to be trendy -- as they see it; the art world is riding a different set of microtrends -- makes them eat their words like... well, like a plate of meatballs (http://www.slashfood.com/2005/10/17/ikea-meatballs-why-are-they-so-addictive/)!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Lots of microtrends in the art world to choose from. Not all of them are minimalist or modernist in form. Some of them are outright ornamentalist and Baroque. (http://lord-whimsy.livejournal.com/351069.html)

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

so they're keeping to schedule

[(Anonymous)]

Postmodernism doesn't betray modernism. It uses modernist convention and applies them to Baroque elements (which essentially you are talking about) and creates an interesting juxtapose because each element fits together to create a conceptual contradiction - that is why postmodernism is funny.

IKEA use modernist principals and creates mass produced items from these principals. The only reason most 'design consumers' don't like them is because they are cheap and affordable, instead of pretending to be mass produced which most high modernism nods to.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Postmodernism may indeed be funny, but I can assure you that Adolf Loos, in his grave, is spinning rather than laughing. The pomo joke, he feels, is at his expense. The contradiction is a contradiction of his principles.

We could sum it up thus: in Postmodernism, anything goes (including pastiches of Modernism). Modernism, however, was about radical mandarin purity, reduction, exclusion. Anything very much did not go for the Modernists. And this is one reason we admire them, and why the art world is currently interested in them.

[(Anonymous)]

True.

It's a very broad movement though. IKEA apply modernism in the same way LEGO or Miffy Dick Bruna applies it - good business sense with nice bright colours - or even Lullatone.

I hadn't really thought about postmodernism in any great depth but in many ways I see it as an extension of modernism - opening up those taboos that have formed. Afterall form doesn't always follow function in Modernist structure - even Corbusier couldn't keep it up and veered off into the folksy (itself sharing elements of the Baroque).

Jeff Koons I would call postmodern but you can see the extension of the modernist elements - machine made / pop / plastic / mass produced etc.

I always think that postmodernism is the design solution to a world that no longer has 'use value' in high status objects - for instance who NEEDS an iPhone - it's use value here is compromised.

[wringham.livejournal.com]

Chuck out your chimps today.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Looks a bit like some sort of "curvy modernism".

But I guess that Ikea will, for quite a long while, live with the curse to kill a room if you fill it with Ikea products entirely.

[(Anonymous)]

I desire to see a sweeping and somewhat lasting trend towards Edwardian Art Nouveau design!

[drywbach.livejournal.com]

Even setting aside the doziness of a nationwide advertisement which counselled everyone to stop being English, I felt the chintz campaign misjudged its customers.

Wasn't it out at around the time when Sony was launching its cute VAIO laptops? Certainly it was at the time when there was a sense of relief and excitement that someone had finally twigged that white goods didn't actually have to be white and boxy. Colour and aesthetic considerations were beginning to get a look-in -- and there was Ikea telling us how stuffy and retro we were with all that chintz (that most of us didn't actually have anyway) and that its (by then rather dull-looking) furniture was going to save us from ourselves.

Reading your article, my first thought was that Ikea was finally making the furniture I'd like to have seen it produce around that time. Then I wondered about the business wisdom of the new designs. The downturn in the housing market is likely to make furniture a tougher sell, although afaik Ikea has historically done reasonably in a depressed economy--no doubt because of their prices, but also perhaps because ideas of modernism and frugality tend to be conflated.

For people who can or must buy new furniture, are the marginally more elaborate designs going to repel them, I wonder? Or will that slightly-ornate valance feel like a thrilling act of defiance?

Then again, just another thought, perhaps Ikea doesn't see its new designs as a belated grab at postmodernism; I wonder whether it's a timely response to the tastes of its customers in emerging markets who could be swayed by different economic and aesthetic trends at present.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the "stop being so English" campaign was very carefully judged, and played to a very specific and real English self-deprecation or sense of self-mockery. It clearly wouldn't work in America, or Japan, or countless other nations relatively comfortable with their own values.

The caricatural Swedish psychotherapist in that campaign, by the way, could have been based on Swedish cultural theorist Goran Therborn (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=163320&sectioncode=5):

"Modernity, for Therborn, is defined culturally, as "an epoch turned to the future, conceived as likely to be different from and possibly better than the present and the past". On this analysis modernity ends, and postmodernity creeps in, "when words like progress, advance, development, emancipation, enlightenment, embetterment [sic], avant-garde, lose their attraction and their function as guides to social action" - which is precisely what Therborn believes may be going on at this historical moment."

The historical moment in question, by the way, being 1996, though Therborn's "future-facing" values are anchored in 1968.

There's so much more to say about the Ikea baroque stuff. It was in the Design section -- which, like McDonalds' special menus, exists to present a contrast to the rest of the range. In the Design section big signed pictures of the designers hang everywhere and each item is marked with its designer's name. (In the rest of Ikea, designers aren't named.) The price tags are bigger; impact is more important here than thrift. It's worth noting that a lot of the stuff I looked at is designed by very young designers. They're all Swedish, and many of them are women.

I exaggerated to say that these new designs represent an abandonment of Ikea's commitment to Modernist simplicity. Most of the range continues to have a spare, sparse, understated character. It's also not fair to say that these new designs are approaching the clunky tat available at Pottery Barn or Target. Ikea's sense of playfulness and irony shines out of them, whereas Pottery Barn and Target just have no clue about what design is about: for them, everything in design history either didn't happen or happened "timelessly" at once, and a certain suburban sloth is all they're able to express. Ikea is a thousand miles ahead, if the idea of "ahead" still means anything.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

Hah! I can only imagine the crazy uproar that would ensue if Ikea came out with a commercial exhorting us to "Stop being so American!"

[drywbach.livejournal.com]

I expressed myself badly in that first paragraph, sorry. Also, I could be wrong in thinking the campaign was used in Scotland and N Ireland (I'm pretty sure it was used in Wales). I didn't find it offensive as there was nothing mean-spirited about it, but it seemed like a missed opportunity not to use British rather than solely English stereotypes, and thereby to involve all the potential customers they would reach.

As the campaign was, I felt, about Ikea's power of challenging dreariness itself, it wouldn't matter if they didn't stick to specifically English modes of dreariness. Britain as a whole is pretty comfortable with self-mockery, so I don't think it would have ruined the campaign.

There can't have been that much wrong with the ads or the furniture, though, because I did buy some Ikea at the time. But I believe the purchase was less a reaction against chintz and more against MDF ^_^

Anyway, I like the new Ikea designs. As you say, they're playful. I had this feeling that customers might reject them as looking too ephemeral for a time when we're generally feeling less affluent, but that was because I hadn't picked up on it being a showcase range.

Thank you for the link on Goran Therborn btw. His ideas may date from 68 but it sounds as though there will be much that's new to me.

[(Anonymous)]

Will it be possible for anyone in the future to make such a naive statement as "ornament is a crime" and not be laughed at or ignored? Absolute statements look quaint to us, and probably always will. Which means nothing can follow post-modernism.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

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man

[(Anonymous)]

your dead smart...like real, real smart...book smart

Re: man

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

I'll bet you say that to all the stooges.

hold on a minute

[(Anonymous)]

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Re: hold on a minute

[imomus.livejournal.com]

KOVACS! How've you been, man? Still in Tokyo?

Re: hold on a minute

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, you are!

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Re: hold on a minute

[(Anonymous)]

Japan nation-wide Network of SOFTBANK BB Corp.
country: JP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE

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Re: hold on a minute

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Luke Vibert? You Wire-reading ponce! Your sub-Trainspotting prole pose is blown forever.

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[(Anonymous)]

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[imomus.livejournal.com]

To add another angle, one I hadn't thought of: Rudiger Schlomer just suggested to me, at a party, that this new Ikea range might have a lot to do with the new cheapness of computer-controlled lathe cutting and 3D rendering technologies. Complicated curvy forms which could formerly only be achieved by craftspeople can now be mass-produced for the same price as straight-line vector cut pieces.

unboring

[(Anonymous)]

I love this Ikea commercial by Spike Jonze. I like how it plays with notions of relentless vapid consumerism.



On another note, whilst they may be embracing design embellishments, they are also going back to modernist roots with the Stockholm collection (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/collections/11989/). There are some beautiful pieces that have a surprisingly anti Ikea feel to it with (relative) quality constructions and materials. The website doesn't do these products justice and you should have a peak in person.

[(Anonymous)]

Simply put, it seems to me that Ikea's just shifting from, 'We will pretend we are not useless bigots full of shit.' to, 'Okay, maybe we are. Could you please give us more of your money anyway?'

Art and Advertising

[(Anonymous)]

It's interesting how there is a movement to combine "art" and advertising. Watch the link below, it's another good example of it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqmDwMTj7zY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqmDwMTj7zY)