Epistemic Status: Not a cohesive theory of community art perception/criticism, just speculation that two or more things are related
For those who haven't seen it, Scott posted his latest piece on architecture, last night, a review of Tom Wolfe's "From Bauhaus To Our House.". The comments are pretty similar to past comments. I'm less interested in the question of why people do or don't like modern architecture (there's a lot of variation in quality, and tastes vary - of course it's polarizing) than the variation in discernment over McMansions, a type of architecture defined by qualities that are a) bad and b) to me, fall in to the category of "once you see it, you can't unsee it."
For our purposes, I'll use the guide from McMansion Hell (https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149284377161/mansionvsmcmansion, https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149563260641/mcmansions-101-mansion-vs-mcmansion-part-2), which includes simple heuristics like Relationship to the Landscape: Often, a New Traditional mansion carefully considers its environment and is built to accentuate, rather than dominate it. A McMansion is out of scale with its landscape or lot, often too big for a tiny lot. and Architectural and Stylistic Integrity: The best New Traditional houses are those who are virtually indistinguishable from the styles they represent. McMansions tend to be either a chaotic mix of individual styles, or a poorly done imitation of a previous style. This house in Texas invokes four separate styles: the Gothic (the steep angle of the gables), Craftsman (the overhanging eaves with braces), French (the use of stone and arched 2nd story windows), and Tudor Revival (the EIFS half-timbering above the garage), each poorly rendered in a busy combination of EIFS coupled with stone and brick veneers. (Follow the links for annotated photos.)
These criteria are really heuristics - part two includes a house that could go either way, with arguments on each side - but they aren't "rocket surgery" to apply, it's just a matter of discernment; why can't everyone learn to apply the criteria, whether or not they share the opinion that McMansions are bad architecture? The criteria of mixing styles can require more consideration than the others - it takes some scrutiny to determine if stylistic elements were mixed in a thoughtful manner - and whether or not the styles are complementary is a matter of taste, but most of it is pretty simple.
[Edit 1: I was thinking of this at the time, but too lazy to go back to the ACX post to incorporate it - this is similar to how an artist friend of Scott's discribed how she identified an AI-generated image as AI art and why she disliked it. Once you see it, can you unsee it? Does it change how much you enjoy the image?]
This reminded me of a video jazz musician and YouTuber Adam Neely made on the question of whether Laufey's music is within the jazz genre. TL;DW, no, he puts her alongside 1950s pop that borrowed from the same set of musical styles as jazz of the period, but applied those stylistic elements to pop songs, rather than a musical form defined more by improvisation (especially group improvisation) than aesthetic. One clip used in the video is someone asking why it matters if jazz musicians don't recognize Laufey's music as jazz - good point; why are we asking the question, in the first place? My speculation is that Laufey's fans want her music to be considered jazz, not pop that has stylistic elements in common with jazz, because jazz has cultural cachet and drawing a distinction between jazz and superficially similar pop music would be perceived as gatekeeping or snobbery. In light of the precedent of 1950s pop, this is rather silly - jazz musicians aren't turning their noses up at Sinatra and Bennett - but, in addition to being denied the cachet associated with jazz appreciation, I can imagine that being told you lack the discernment to tell jazz from non-jazz feels like being told you lack taste.
Discernment and taste are distinct phenomena; if Scott tells me that he agrees with the criteria for distinguishing McMansions from other architecture, we establish inter-rater reliability for this, but he disagrees that they're bad design, I'll accept that he is capable of discerning the style, while declaring our tastes to be different. But Scott writes that architecture buffs tell him about superior modern architecture he might like and he can't discern the difference. To what extent is the discussion of architecture unproductive because people are conflating discernment and taste?
If you can't discern the difference between two things and someone else says that they have strong opinions over their respective quality, do you question your discernment or their taste? In the absence of a prior that you need to cultivate your abilities of discernment, I would speculate that you are more likely to question the other person's taste and are liable to come to the conclusion that their discernment is arbitrary, from which it follows that they're engaging in snobbery. Counter-Snobbery would be to reject the "arbitrary" distinction or, if conceding that there is a distinction, embrace the supposed "lesser" of the two things.
If you can't discern the difference between two things and someone else says that they have strong opinions over their respective quality... what do YOU do?
[Edit 2: While this was in the mod queue, Scott published a new post on theories of taste. Some of the commenters are commenting along the lines of a causal relationship between developing abilities of discernment with changes in taste, without using those terms. Interestingly, neither Scott nor a commenter went back to that section of the AI art post, even though the new post begins "Recently we’ve gotten into discussions about artistic taste (see comments to AI Art Turing Test..."]
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Notes -
I have a ton of thoughts on this. First, I want to revive an ancient Reddit comment I once made in MaleFashionAdvice in answer to the question "What is Tacky?” To define good taste, we must first define poor taste:
"Tacky" find its closest synonym in "uppity" with all the racist and classist implications thereof. Tackiness is when an actor attempts to signify higher status or class through a social act (whether a verbal statement, wearing clothing, throwing a party), but fails to signify higher status and instead reveals their lower status by 'cheaping out' on some aspect of the presentation. It is in the eye of the beholder, and depends on the simultaneous judgments that the act was intended to signal high status and that it failed to do so.
You invite me to come out to a local bar to have a few drinks after work to celebrate your 30th birthday. I pay for my own drinks. Not tacky.
Vs
You rent out a local hotel ballroom to throw a black tie only blowout 30th birthday bash and invite me. I arrive at the event, suitably suited, and find a cash bar. Tacky.
The difference that makes paying for my drinks at your birthday party tacky is that in the first case you've simply invited me to a bar, which isn't perceived as a signal of wealth or status. In the second, you've attempted to signal wealth and status by holding a large event, but cheaped out on the standards expected at such an event.
Jamie Dimon repeatedly mentions at dinner his 2nd cousin, who is a postman in Queens. Weird, perhaps, but not tacky.
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A postman in Queens repeatedly mentions his 2nd cousin, Jamie Dimon, in conversation about the economy at dinner. Tacky.
Bringing up your second cousin isn't tacky in itself, but the positions of speakers alters the nature of the act. The postman seems like he is attempting to imbue himself with higher status by virtue of his association with a bank president, but fails because it is meaningless and desperate.
Interestingly, a shift in context can make Jamie the tacky one. Say the conversation is about the middle class and its economic struggles, and Jamie repeatedly brings up his cousin as proof he understands and cares about the middle class. That would be tacky of him.
In car enthusiast culture putting custom paint, wheels, and aesthetic enhancements on your Mustang GT V8. Not inherently tacky if done well.
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Putting aesthetic enhancements on your V6 or 4 cylinder Mustang, particularly those that make it look like a factory GT. Always tacky, no matter how tastefully done.
The two cars are aesthetically identical after theoretical customization, but the bigger engine makes one less tacky than the other. Because the customization attempts to signal high status (hey! Look at me! My car is awesome!), but what one car has under the hood is superior to the other, the v8 is what we think of when we think Mustang. Customizing a v6 mustang is at some level promising a level of performance your car doesn't deliver.
The tacky isn't merely, or even necessarily, ugly or in poor taste. It's an attempt to flex, to show off, which fails in its execution by its transparency.
The salesman's garish knockoff Rolex is tacky, because of its attempt at association with wealth. The real LV belt buckle worn with Kmart jeans is tacky, because the wearer clearly overspent their means on the piece. The designer created knockoff of a vintage event or resort t shirt is tacky, because of the effort to use money to stand in for cool experiences or cultural signifiers. Overdressing and citing Barney Stinson is tacky, so is underdressing and citing Zuckerberg. The common element is the failed attempt to signal high status.
McMansions
Let's apply this to architecture, and McMansions in particular. What makes a Mansion Mc is its tackiness. It is the effort to signal wealth, while cheating out on some details which render the whole display tacky. I walk my dog through a McMansion neighborhood this time of year when it snows and there’s no cars on the road, I love the lights they put up. It’s a pleasant enough neighborhood, full of fine people, many friends of mine grew up there, I knew the family of the builder, but I find the houses aesthetically disgusting. They’re all around 4,500 square feet, with a 2.5 car garage, on half an acre. A fine house. But they all have this stucco exterior, with a fifteen foot high narrow archway over the door. And it drives me nuts to look at, because every single house has it, exactly the same, just in different colors of stucco. It looks so trashy, because at the end of the day, you have this big house that looks like it ought to signal wealth, and it looks just like all the other big houses. It’s tacky.
And what offends me about it isn’t ultimately the style, it’s the expense for that style. When my wife and I were shopping for a house, I told her that in our market I basically needed to love the house if it was over $500k. Under $500k, I might be persuaded to settle for liking the house, for a house with good future resale value, for a house that made sense to get us out of my parents’ basement. But above that, I wanted to love it, because it’s generally a tougher proposition to move on from a half million dollar house in our area, both in terms of selling it and in terms of upgrading from it. It’s a reach, so the people who own a house like that, they clearly like that house. They bought it to show it off. But, ultimately, they didn’t have the real money to build a real house, only to buy cookie cutter luxury. Which is tacky.
I live in a 1962 ranch, which I love. It’s worth maybe half as much as one of the stucco McMansions. In 1962, it was more or less what Pete Seeger was singing about, other than that it wasn’t in a tract neighborhood, when it was build most of the land around it was farm or forest. For a variety of reasons my house is tasteful rather than tacky to me. The size makes it unostentatious, it’s carefully decorated with appropriately chosen furniture. But mostly, it is old. Age imparts class. It is lived in. Practical.
Public Architecture
Consider a particular form of public architecture: the stadium. I grew up going to Veteran’s Stadium in Philly for baseball and football games. In 2003 it was replaced by two new stadiums purpose built for football and baseball respectively: Citizen’s Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field. At the time of the change, there was widespread outcry and displeasure. While the Vet was no architectural marvel, it was imbued with meaning for fans. Players in Sports Illustrated surveys said it was a heap, and executives on TV would say that it was getting so expensive to maintain it wasn’t worth it, but for fans that lived in feeling was part of the charm. As a young teen, I remember the Vet as having a lot of hallways and warrens, a lot of places one could wander around in. Looking back, it’s funny how as a kid I couldn’t sit still for a whole game, it felt like forever, I always needed to take a walk around the stadium, get something to eat, etc. Now as an adult I get one quart of beer, and the game is over before I know it. All the season ticket holders, the guys who used to form the “Wolf Pack” for Phillies’ “Ace” Randy Wolf in the bleachers, bitched and moaned. The new stadiums were soulless, the fact that they were named after corporations (that most people had never heard of) only made it worse. They were sterile. By design there were no more blind corners on the staircases leading to balconies reeking of marijuana on game day. We were all sure that no one would ever love the new stadiums.
Within a few years, fans simply bonded with the new corporate soulless sterile capitalist monstrosity. When Phillies fans travel to Nationals Park in DC, they wave homemade signs calling it “Citizen’s Bank South” because there are more Phillies fans in the stands than there are DC fans. ((Oddly, Citizens Bank of the South is a different bank entirely))
What counts isn’t the space, it’s what goes on there. Going to a ballgame is inherently a meaning making experience, naming the stadium for a bank doesn’t change anything. Kids who are now the age I was when the Vet was demolished were born ten years after the Phillies moved to Citizen’s Bank Park.
Im with you on the fashion and car examples. But a big house really is better in several objective ways. If I had a half acre plot I would strongly prefer a 4500 sqft house even if it didn't comfortably fit the plot. Ideally I would have a multi-story box that was 20K sqft.
I'm with @FiveHourMarathon on this. Trust me, a big house isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you don't have kids. From 2017 to 2023 I lived in a rather large house and used it thus:
The entryway led into a large combination living and dining area. The dining side had a sliding glass door that led out onto a patio. The living side was 12 feet from the wall to the back of the couch. While this is actually a little closer than at my current house, I don't think anything is gained by more distance. Actually, a bit is lost because now I have to keep my stereo speakers wider to maintain proper imaging in the sweet spot. The dining side was probably a tad smaller than a standalone dining room would have been, but it was still big enough to fit a sideboard and had the added advantage of making it easy to eat in front of the TV without feeling like a piece of shit.
There was a reasonably sized eat-in kitchen that the dining area made redundant. I seldom ate in there, and the kitchen table became a pile of junk mail and grocery bags. Having multiple dining areas is redundant; in houses that have both a formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen, the kitchen isn't really a place you can have a dinner party, but I've noticed a trend toward just making a larger kitchen where the dining area can be as formal as it needs to be for most people. I'm not going to complain about having both, but if you have both, one or the other is rarely used for its intended purpose.
There was another, smaller living area with a small fireplace. I put my bookshelves in here along with a smaller stereo and used it for reading. I entertained people in here on exactly one occasion (excepting larger parties where people can go anywhere) when I invited some friends over for drinks after going out to dinner and I wanted to have a fire.
The master bedroom wasn't particularly large but since I only used it for sleeping it didn't matter. A king-size bed would have been cramped once you included dressers, BUT it had a walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom. The idea clearly was that all the clothing storage/laundry/dressing would be relegated to the closet, and that's how I used it. With a queen and a couple nightstands the bedroom was quite roomy. Now, some of these larger houses have master bedrooms that are big enough to have their own separate sitting areas with couches and televisions, but I don't really see the point in this. To cosplay living in a studio apartment?
Bedroom 2 was used as a home office. This was necessary since I was working almost exclusively from home for most of the time I had the house, but if I weren't then I would have preferred to have the computer in the small living room.
Bedroom 3 was used as a guest bedroom for the once or twice a year I had overnight guests.
Bedroom 4 was a junk collector.
There was a powder room off the entryway that was used frequently and a full bath upstairs apart from the master that was used rarely. I once thought about asking my girlfriend to move all of her hair stuff, etc. into the other bathroom but decided against bringing it up because a) she didn't live there so it's not like there was a ton of it and b) the master had a jack and jill so it would seem a bit ridiculous.
It had a finished basement that contained a couch that the prior owner left there and a bike trainer. I had a small stereo to listen to while on the bike and a 40" TV for Zwift, but that's about it. I only used the bike trainer in the winter. No one ever sat on the couch. The room was primarily used as a way to get from the garage to the upstairs. The basement also had a separate laundry/utility area. I couldn't feasibly use this as a junk collector because if I entertained guests had to go through here to get to the kegerator.
I had a two car garage that I used for storing my car. I used the other side to work on bikes, except I let my girlfriend park here when she stayed over in the winter.
At the time I was living there, the house seemed entirely too large. Cleaning it was a pain in the ass. Heating it was a pain in the ass. Cooling it was fine, but I only turn my AC on if it's going to be above 85 for more than a few days, which in Pittsburgh is only a couple times a year. If I lived in a hotter area or was more sensitive it would have been a pain in the ass. I was able to find use for all the space, but I'd be lying if I said I used it all that much. I bought the house because the price was well below what one would expect due to certain topographic complications involving the lot. For one person, it felt huge.
How big was it? About 2,000 square feet. For someone with kids, it would have been fine. I could understand going a little bigger. My uncle's house is 2600 square feet and it seemed more than big enough for three kids. But 4,000? Larger living rooms just put you farther away from the TV. Larger bedrooms add nothing. A larger kitchen does nothing once you have sufficient counter space. There are only so many rooms you can hang out in. The house I'm in now is about 1400 square feet and I don't see any appreciable decrease in my standard of living.
I'd add that overly large houses are a classic example of upper middle class tacky, in that they would be nicer or make more sense if one were richer and had servants and leisure class hobbies.
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I don't dislike big houses, though I don't think you've totally thought through the implications of that kind of square footage (absent servants).
My problem is big ugly houses. Because I think the big ugly house indicates that one is trying to convey status (spending on a house) without having enough status to afford a big nice house.
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The issue is that if you want real traditional classical architecture in the American tradition, you’re looking at least $3m for a modest house after land and every other cost. A handful of architects design it. A handful of skilled artisans still exist for the masonry and other details. Many materials will need to be imported, many fixtures designed abroad. Most importantly, the construction method will be radically different than the standard for a modern American home, may be made out of brick etc. I follow some New Classical Architecture instagram pages and there are excellent new proportionate classical homes being built in the US today, but they’re unaffordable for all but the wealthy.
The McMansion represents a desperate attempt to live in an aesthetically pleasing home that doesn’t quite land. Women are obsessed with bags in part because of status, of course, but also because the most popular classic bags (Kelly, Birkin, Chanel Flap) are some of the few beautiful objects unruined (at least in their usual form) by modernity. They are symmetrical, polished, beautiful, aligned, have OK (yes, even today) stitching. Men feel the same way about watches, some about expensive suits or dress shoes.
In the McMansion neighborhoods of Utah and Arizona, there is no legitimate classical architecture possible at even an affluent upper-middle class budget (new or old), so where does that leave the homebuyer? She can accept the discordant, soulless, anarchic emptiness of (post)modern architecture, which almost all normal people agree is usually ugly especially in a domestic context, or she can have the McMansion which at least features a big great room with a fireplace, a kitchen that feels something like an American kitchen, wood and decoration and a sloping roof and some the architectural elements that most people think should be part of a house.
Sure, if they could live in a McMansion that looked like a Gilded Age Newport villa, they would. But they can’t, and architecture is unable to offer them a remotely aesthetic substitute.
I don't buy that. Americans are building five-over-one apartment buildings out of 2x4s, there's no reason why a colonial revival mansion cannot be built out of the same materials.
As I've written in another comment, you can build a stylistically congruent McMansion out of the best traditional materials and it will still be a McMansion, so I think it's the floor plan that is to blame.
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That (and the whole of your reply) is a very thought-provoking take. Thank you.
I've been thinking about McMansions last night. One thing they have about them is that they are big, larger than many older styles. If your house is small enough, let's say under 150sqm/1500sqft for one floor and under 250sqm/2500sqmft for two floors, you can build a literal box and it will look good if you don't mess with it.
Beyond that size, a box-shaped house starts to look like a cow shed. You have to break up the silhouette, so the house sprouts wings, the roof becomes complex, the monotony of the facade is broken up with bay windows and balconettes, etc. But if your house is slightly bigger than the upper limit, it is still small enough to be comprehended as a whole.
And this is where McMansion proves its surprising link with modernism. In it form still follows function. Think of it this way: if I want a neo-Georgian house, I will build a symmetrical main building with two regular rows of windows and a front door smack in the center. All the rooms in the main building will be subordinate to this form. All unusual rooms will be moved to the wings or the outbuildings, which, if they are unsightly, will be hidden behind the main building or some strategically placed trees.
But if I want a McMansion, I will design it from the inside out. I want a living room with panoramic windows? I draw a living room with panoramic windows. I want a three-car garage? I draw a three-car garage. I want another bedroom? I draw another bedroom. Then I draw the building envelope around the resulting shape. If I plaster this house with white stucco and use flat roofs, I will get a typical functionalist villa that is "honest about its function", because it always forces the form to conform to the function and never vice versa. If I decorate this form, I will get a McMansion even if I use the best traditional materials and don't mix existing styles, simply because the complexity of the form is already overwhelming.
Honestly, I wonder if McMansions aren't just the way they are because of a lack of people who are capable of and willing to competently design a beautiful New Traditional building while still meeting a client's requirements - after all, we sure seemed capable of doing that just a relatively short time ago. As Scott's post notes, even if we wanted to go back to the previous architectural styles, we can't. Modernism and the rise of the International Style basically killed the careers of many architects and artisans who made livings out of this stuff, and they've become increasingly hard to find as a result; the people who would've known how to do these things properly are just not around anymore, and trying to find them would add too much cost and inefficiency to the project.
Architects who know how to design anything but modernist/postmodernist structures are increasingly rare, and there are fewer and fewer people who know how to integrate certain types of design features into a building in an aesthetically pleasing way while still mostly preserving the client's requirements. I actually read the book Scott is referencing in his post, and one of the quotes that stuck out to me is that "deans of architecture went about instructing the janitors to throw out all plaster casts of classical details, pedagogical props that had been accumulated over a half century or more". Learning how to reasonably achieve a client's specific requirements while still making a building look beautiful and stately in the Beaux-Arts or Art Deco style is just less and less relevant to your average architect now, and much less of their education will be focused around that. Sure, a lot of McMansion design styles scream "cost-cutting", but part of the reason why it seems so difficult and costly to build anything traditional and beautiful nowadays is due to there being a lack of people actually well-versed in designing in the old ways, and the lack of artisans capable of actually implementing these designs. We can no longer competently mass-produce traditional architecture.
Another aspect of the problem is also that because of the rise of modern architecture, very few people who seek to make a name for themselves in architecture care to tackle old architectural styles anymore - it's mostly the people who want to make a quick buck who go into doing that kind of thing now, since there is no more cultural cachet in designing beautiful old-style townhouses and so on. Everyone knows the new thing is making terrible dystopian structures that look like they were commissioned by The Empire, so why would any competent architect try to attempt anything even remotely traditional? The masses want traditional vernacular architecture, but the institutional incentives aren't there for any self-respecting architect to meet their sets of preferences, and so rows and rows of unsightly McMansions proliferate across the suburbs like cancer, designed by architects with no reputation to lose and who lack incentive to tell the client (or their company) "no, you can either have X or Y".
Of course, then the proponents of modernist architecture point at these and sneer about how kitschy they are, as if that's not a consequence of them percolating their disgustingly ugly style into the mainstream and cancelling architects who dared to add any ornamentation as "bourgeois". Personally, I consider it a great loss for humanity - with our technology today we could have democratised the beauty that was once the sole domain of the upper class, we could've had public spaces as beautiful as the Alhambra Palace or the gardens of Suzhou. But instead we get endless wastelands of concrete blocks, and "traditional" architecture that's a poor echo of what came before.
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Oddly, my experience of how most owners live in these houses is the opposite. They realistically don't need or use all the space, and the rooms either repeat or are imagined into uses that are rather pointless. Either you have three different rooms devoted to watching TV. Or you have a gift-wrapping room and a home gym even though you don't really do either activity.
They started with wanting a BIG BIG house, and then moved in and realized they couldn't figure out what to do with the space.
Why are they so weirdly shaped, then? Someone had to design them that way.
Maybe the client said "I want a big house", and the architect failed to explain to the client that a big house was not needed. (Bigger house → more billable hours?)
From what I know, most houses in the US aren't custom built. An in-house architect for a construction company designs them and the customers just pick one. Which makes is much more baffling.
In-house architects in Russia are known for designing terrible houses (ugly and impractical), but that's because the whole industry is ten years old there. The US has been building tract housing since WWII, how come everyone has forgotten how to design a house that doesn't look like ass?
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You can be right about how they were designed at the same time that people don't really know how to live in them.
Is it one of these "no one knows how we got there, but everyone's unhappy" situations, like American healthcare?
I went looking for large houses in Kansas on Zillow, and you can find a nice-looking one still. Here's one, but it's a 1998 custom build. If I restrict myself to 2020+ houses, then almost every damn house over 3500sqft is a McMansion:
They're all ugly in my opinion, but I don't think these >3500sqft mansions really prove the case that they're ugly because of their size: perhaps in part they are, but mostly I think they're ugly because they're not actually traditional designs. They're a weird mix of styles that end up coming out absolutely disgusting because they're combining the boxy, undecorated modernist aesthetic with various other architectural conventions all mixed together in the worst way possible. No. 2 in your list doesn't even possess any huge windows or gigantic rooms far in excess of what you would find in traditional architecture, the features of the house aren't inherently that demanding and could probably fit into a typical Georgian mansion, but they've been put together in an ugly and nonsensical way.
They look like they were put together cheaply and without skill, designed by architects who either don't know how to design anything remotely traditional or don't care to do so. It almost seems like they were made just by checking off an incoherent list of design things they think houses should have without considering how best to put them together.
That's exactly my point. They are modernist houses in disguise.
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You forgot to add the URL.
Thanks, fixed
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IMO tacky can also just mean art that is bad, or art that's attempting to imitate good art while missing the point. I think there are objective (at least with respect to human perception and nature as it actually exists) qualities that this has that this doesn't, without reference to status. If I saw someone express fondness for the latter painting I would think less of their taste and them a small amount, but as a practical assessment of their judgement. That something is often misused doesn't mean the original concept isn't there. The same goes for McMansions - in a well architected house the different pieces fit together nicely, and in a McMansion the individual pieces are exaggerated and they don't fit together at all, and it just doesn't work, in a way that is IMO fairly universal in the way humans perceive architecture.
To a large extent yes, in the same way that any pejorative can be used as a pure negative. Marxist means bad left wing and Racist means bad right wing in typical use, but that doesn't prevent those words from having actual meanings. Just as when my father says something is Nigger Rigged he doesn't mean it was done by actual black people.
Tacky is often used just to mean bad, but it has a more precise meaning and implication. Not everything that is bad is tacky. A trailer home can be bad without being tacky, it can simply be ugly. It's when the owner starts trying to put lipstick on the pig that it becomes tacky.
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I think this is good, and I would add "unless you're popular" to it. Because my observation is that all the fashion "rules" are capricious in that nobody gives a shit what you do if you're popular. In fact, someone popular who breaks the "rules" is likely to be looked on as someone who should be imitated.
What you are seeing as an exception is the exact dynamic I'm outlining, which is essentially an outgrowth of the old barber pole theory of fashion in action.
Popularity, or hotness, is essentially a synonym for high status. Tackiness is a false signal of high status. If one is high status and signals high status, it is congruent and not tacky. If one is high status and intentionally does something that would normally be read as tacky and indicating low status, it's a demonstration that they are so high status that they can indicate low status and it won't impact them.
Think of the Boston Cracked Shoe look in trad ivy style at mid-century. A poor person who wears old shoes with holes in them looks poor, so a middle class person makes sure his shoes don't have holes in them so as not to look poor. A real rich person, a Harvard educated Boston Brahmin like Adlai Stevenson, ostentatiously wore a destroyed pair of shoes, the kind that even a street sweeper would have felt the need to throw away, precisely to signal that he isn't middle class because he isn't worried about anyone looking at his shoes and thinking he is broke.
With tackiness, a poor guy wears a garish cheap brassy gold chain to signal his high status, but because it's such obvious amazon junk it shows you that he's poor. A middle class guy knows not to wear a cheap brassy Amazon gold chain, because it will make him look poor. A really rich guy, say Elon Musk, can wear it anyway, because nothing can make you think Elon Musk is poor.
But if, in turn, Elon Musk's broke-ass hustle-culture ball washers on Twitter start wearing cheap garish gold chains to ape his style, it becomes tacky again, because it shows their low status.
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The line between status and popularity is blurry, though. Some may even say it really is the same at its core.
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I think that's a good contribution to the conversation.
When looping back to the conversation about modern architecture, we have to consider that much of it was incidentally or purposefully uncomfortable to use.
Much of it was. And much of that was then forced on poor people who lacked options, which both made it lower status, and caused it to become associated with negative or poor memories and associations.
But, for example, at 11 years old I cried when they built walls and closed up my old open-concept elementary school. They wrote articles about how the open concept was hippy-dippy 1970s crap, and that they wanted to build walls to replace the makeshift bookshelves that teachers had put up, and that this was going to be better and correct the failures of modernist design. And for me, that was all nonsense, I grew up in that elementary school and I loved it the way it was. That was where we played yugioh and passed cards between the bookshelves.
Where you have a piece of modern architecture that people come to like and have positive memories of, the modernism doesn't stop it.
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Yes I believe this is the essence of McMansions. It is a house that is too large and too grandiose for their budget and setting. Construction and materials are cheap, lot is too small, interior often features empty rooms or areas too sparsely furnished, has features like a grand staircase in the entryway that is too large for the house. The key is that for the same budget they could have had a smaller house, well constructed with quality and attention to detail, but they chose to opt for superficial grandiosity above all else. It is this surface level artifice and superficiality that reveals the tasteless mindset one focused on appearances rather than more important qualities. A tasteful person is supposed to recognize that a what qualities are more important, but furthermore they are supposed to recognize that others will perceive this in them.
For me, a home lot should be either <1/3 Acre or >10 Acres. Anything in between isn't really that private or that useful, while causing you to spend too much time or money on your lawn.
The budgetary compromise most common to the McMansion in my neighborhood is the standardization. I could accept Levittown style tract housing, I can't accept it in status housing.
I don't think house to lot size is all that important in itself, it depends on the character of the area. There are dense suburbs that look very nice (although when this is in some isolated exurb then then it is kind of ridiculous).
If all houses have 1/3 and you have 2/3 then that's going to look ridiculous but if the area is designed to be 2/3 and you have 1/3 then that is equally strange.
Yeah it depends on the construction of the house. If you put a grand window on the side of your house, but it's so close to your neighbor's house that you can high five through the windows, it looks and is stupid.
For me lot size is just a function of the fact that I don't really go in for mowing lawns, landscaping, gardening on the weekend, so I want either the minimum practical amount of lawn, or I want enough forest to have complete privacy while I can ignore it.
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