Arabs love Rococco  

I must have been out to lunch
Arabs love Rococco ':::::::::: what does this have to do with weddings Vivianne ??????

LRF...
Somehow i dont think you will understand...

i guess your right ...
i guess your right viviann, i do not understand some of the stuff you utter..

Years ago I would have had a...
Years ago I would have had a similar reaction to a statement like "arabs love Rococco" but I read and read and found an essay called "no law in the arena" by Camille Paglia. It is the anti-libertarian impulse in PC that is more dangerous and ignorant than any generalisation could ever be.

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So ingrained is PC, among "certain types" they are ignorant of the fact that by objecting so strongly to: ARABS LOVE ROCOCCO...they are in lockstep with classic PC thought...

I too can't see why asking...
I too can't see why asking the question 'why do arabs love roccoco' should be found so objectionable. If the same question had been phrased as 'why is roccoco so popular in the Middle East?' I doubt it would have met any comment at all. The part of the Edgware Road in London that meets Marble Arch has a large Arab community with many Arabic cafes etc. There are also a good number of furniture shops in this area specialising in ornate gilt furniture. The proprietors will tell you that this style is indeed popular with many Arabs. I really cannot see what the problem is with finding this noteworthy and can only conclude that the people who immediately cry 'fascist' (or words to that effect) when someone comments on this have a desperate compulsion to occupy (and be seen to occupy) what the perceive as the moral high ground. These people - so willing to stamp on any form of expression that doesn't fit with their own presuppositions - are the real anti - liberals.

Hello Paulanna..
Good point.Im sure though that you can see the difference between"why do Arabs love Rococco" and "Why is gilt furniture so popular in the middle east". I know that some people take politcal correctness to extremes these days but surely we are more educated and enlightened these days to give such sweeping statements?. I suppose the middle eastern people who like such furniture do so because they do, just like we all have our own favourites.

It appears people misunderstood my tongue-in-cheek response above...
I'm anti-generalizations about ethnic groups. Perhaps I too erred in my rebuttal.

Paulanna,
have you observed any other ethnic furniture stores in London,there is a large Indian population in London...

I had a friend over for tea...
I had a friend over for tea yesterday afternoon and he was singing the praises of Le Corbusiers chaise longue to me. I don't like this design, never have, its over-designed and over engineered, the same functions could have been achieved with far greater clarity in the hands of more reasonable designers. I can't help thinking that Corbu and his friends were gazing intently at their navels with most of their furniture work and couldn't escape from a tradition of excess, so many welds! so much grinding!
Which of course gets me thinking about Rococco 🙂 and the middle East, there is a 2 dimensional tradition of what I'd call excess in islamic tile work and carpets, its seems a bit simple to say that the sparsness of Middle Eastern geography influenced Islamic art, perhaps a prohibition against figurative decpictions in the Koran prompted this? Maybe too a lack of material resources prior to the oil boom?
Looking at the exuberance it makes me realise what a puritanical streak exists in western art and thought which perhaps were unconscious of. I read a funny essay once that claimed we are so puritanical becuase the rain washed all the paint off the Parthenon and neo-classisists just made everything white!
Or perahps were too busy to do all that dusting?

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That piece of corbus is complex and near impossible to lie or sit on...HP,Thanks for this thread,granted its NOT as interesting as, do they make red ice skates to match my Eames chair... but hey!Many have read it but few will touch it...

The Corbu chaise,
like the steel and glass table and like Reitveld's red-blue chair, may be seen as structural and formal tours de force as much as or more than as fully rational, economic or ergonomic works of design. In other words, they are art objects in the form of furniture.
If others were better at making their art objects comfortable and functional, so be it. For me, the arrticulation of "support and supported" in the Corbu chaise, incorporating a visually satisfying and elemental means of adjusting the angle of repose, is what the piece is "about." It is furnitecture -- furniture as architecture.

Thanks A C
I kind of agre...
Thanks A C
I kind of agree but more and more I think its important for some ways of working to be abandoned. I admit its a personal preference (a dinner party on a glass topped dining table is pretty unpleasant) but these manifestations of theory leave me cold. I can appreciaite them in limited runs but as a use of resources I think its irresponsible.