Magazines part 12  

Noticed that too...
I'm unhappy with the magazine contents too. Two years ago there were really nice homes with good furniture, now things seem to be shifting. Even the USA TV home shows(What you get for the money, ect.) seem to be going under. I'd heard that when you start seeing a style on TV commercials(Almost every one I see has modern furniture), it's at it's end. Dwell magazine has, in my opinion, really dropped in quality content. I have been buying the UK/Australia edition magazines at my local bookstore, they seem to still have some good content. I picked up a magazine called Blueprint for the first time yesterday, I'm going to look through it tomorrow to see if it's eye worthy.

James
I hate to say it but you might be right about seeing modern furniture
all the time it might be near end . A
good friend summited his home through there interior Designer to one of the better know magazines here in America it is a multimillion dollar home and has not only modern treasures has art work, and a real mix of furniture. The comment that came back to the owner is we are looking for something different than just modern furniture that you can buy at DWR. I was just floored if this home on the Water in Florida gets rejected in favor of some "couple " with junk furniture (wire Bertoia Diamond chairs in the living room ) that they rescued from a local thrift shop and a ugly 50's ranch house,
Now i know i can be critical and a lot of People don't appreciate it but these Editors are out of there tree . If these magazines are about modernism ,Clean lines, and classy looking furniture It needs to include all mixes of nice furniture from Mid-century modern, my favorite to vintage antiques thrown in and new modern furniture designers. The other comment that came back was we forecast 18 months out and we don't think that will be the look in the next 18 months.
These people spent millions on there interiors and had one of the finest designers here in the USA and there collection of art ,furniture, and antiques, will all have to be gone cause it will be out in 18 months ....tooo funnny,

Metropolis
I got my new Metropolis and I love that magazine but for some reason I find it very difficult to read. Is this me or any one else ? I find it difficult how they do there layout very mumble jumble (my term). I do t think they do cool things but just confusing .
I have read El Decor and I am renaming it EL DRAGO I went to sleep twice while reading it . Interior Design this month look good. after re reading Modernism cover to Cover I am down grading it to "It Sucks " Maybe I will get me a subscription to Oprah Home at least they have receipts for good looking food. Tell me how you feel about your modern mags.

Until the Neo Modernist movement...Pt 1
articulates a neo modernist philosophy coherent enough to allow an indicative, distinguishable form language to evolve from modernism that is recognizable as neo modernism, we are stuck with what is effectively a modernist revival. Revivals are notoriously shallow, even if broad and pervasive, phenomena. To wit post modernism, which was in large part a revival of classical ornamentation plastered on an underlying modernist form language. Once you articulated the basic modernist philosophy, as Venturi did in his seminal "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture," there wasn't much more to do or say, except to try and build it and see if the public liked it. It wasn't out to change society, or even fundamentally alter modernism. It was an attempt to humanize modernism through a superficial adaptation of it. Hence, there wasn't that much to write about it, except to call attention to the on-going event of it.
There is, frankly, even less to say about the contemporary modern revival that is going on than there was to say about the revival of classical ornamentation on modernist form language called post modernism. Post modernism at least had Venturi's philosophy as a spring board, and Robert Stern and some others took a stab at rationalizing post modernism into the dynamics of the society.
Modern revivalism is really, so far anyway, just a bunch of people who think post modern stinks and like mid century modern and, so, are recalling it. And as I have noted previously, they are basically recalling in a post modern way, i.e., with a focus on surfaces, rather than on the spaces created by the surfaces. Put another way, they de-ornamenting post modernist form language and producing an acutely heavy, often leaden modernist design of surfaces.
While what I am increasingly leaning toward calling "heavy modern," is not necessarily bad in and of itself (though I personally much prefer the gravity-defying, spacep-crafting of mid century modern aka "light modern"), it lacks any philosophical declaration of what it is and why it is and what it can be and what it can do for society?
So: in the end, there is not that much to write about it, an magazines, which require not only pictures of things, but vitality of ideas, to be living, breathing publications that engage us, are quickly finding that there just isn't that much to say about modern revivalism.

Until the Neo Modernist movement...Pt 2
I only take Dwell, so it is the only one that I can comment intelligently. Dwell clearly began running out of anything fresh to say about modernism and the modernist revival in less than a year from its inception in my opinion. Dwell has had to resort to a number of fixes to avoid becoming moribund. It has ceased to focus entirely on modernist philosophy. It has taken to promoting ad hoc market phenomena like manufactured housing that expresses the modern revival look and green housing when it emulates a modern revival look. And it has increasingly catered to the nostalgia of the modern revival by calling attention in "Archive" lesser known mid century modern architect's work, while devoting very little to the philosophies that produced the work of these mid century moderns.
The last issue of Dwell even went so far afield as to publish a long, and I thought, exceptionally boring story by Richard Neutra's child or grandchild, I forget which, that recounted some crazy government research project about genius and creativity that used famous modern architects among others as subjects. In the study, the government learned nothing conclusive about what produces great architects and didn't give one tinkers damn about the great works these architects created. Reading this story in a design magazine depressed me. It was like reading about a hopelssely nonparametric study of Michelangelo's, da Vinci's and Boticelli's behavioral quirks regressed on their incomes rather than focusing on their great art works. It was a sign to me that Dwell is ranging far and wide looking for anything curiously interesting about mid century moderns, because there just is literally nothing intellectually stimulating to discuss about all the new "heavy modern" work that is being done without a philosophical underpinning.
My guess is that there is philosphy that will emerge about heavy modern. My guess is that heavy modern is an intermediary stage, as was post modernism. My guess is that a lot of bottom up experimentation is occurring in heavy modern without much intellectual framework that will eventualy amass into a new sensibility, or an antithetical sensibility, that will permit rational articulation in some philosophical form.
At that point, magazines will have a lot to write about again.

dc wilson
Thank you DC you say things so nicely and eloquent.
You and Koen express your selfs so well, I wish i could write like you two. your statement there just isn't that much to say about modern revivalism. basically sums things up for these magazines,
I guess I have been to critical of fluff magazines like El Decor and Modernism, Metropolitan Home, Metropolis, Dwell, Architectural Digest, atomic Ranch, Interior Design, I.D. cause i spend good money on them and they really are a waste of good money. I try to learn something everyday and most of the time I do. by being on this forum, spending great sums of money buying books on architecture or Modernism from Amazon. com, but lately these magazines have begun to piss me off with nothing new to contribute and nothing new to even look at .( like when you were 19 and you told your friends you bought playboy to read the Articles) yea right , Well I was buying these magazines to look at the furniture and the homes but it has gotten so boring in all of them that it is getting hard to do. When the Editor of Modernism magazine thinks that a Home in Sao Paulo looks good cause of its Brutalism architecture time to go read House and Garden free at Barnes and Nobel, Thanks DC Wilson you summed up real nice.

Magazine Whore
I confess. I'm a magazine whore. METROPOLIS is the only design related magazine I subscribe to. In the past I have subscribed to Archtitecture (R.I.P.) which I was very very fond of, and for a time I had a professional courtesy subscription to I.D.
Once or twice a month, I spend an hour or two in one of the big international magazine shops, and bring home one or two. (imho) Most design magazines are not consistently good enough to purchase a subscription, but most have at least one issue worth buying every year (or so).
I have several cases of magazines in our storage unit (not all design), but the nicest of the design magazines are in plexi-cases on the top shelf:

LRF, you are very kind...
For what its worth, whether you feel eloquent, or not, you triggered me to think and write what I did. This is the beauty of DA. Its a digital petrie dish for insight about what is going on at any given time in design, at least from a contemporary modern perspective, and that includes contemporary modernist work itself.
So: it is me who should be thanking you for giving me food for thought.
Thanks.

I love reading your threa...
I love reading your threads I think that you express your self great and always have something interesting to say , Why I think we have another KOEN Junior, here

modernism near end?
I don't think modernism is near end because of magazine saturation. In some parts of the country, modern designs are just now being considered worthy of inclusion in furniture stores. Modern design is gaining momentum in Knoxville, thank goodness, but the general view of what's modern to the masses who don't read Dwell and its ilk probably includes leather sofas with hobnails that belong in Hoss's parlour on the Ponderosa. That's what I see in the stores. Actually, real modern stuff you could find in the thrift stores here can still be had for cheap--that too is changing thanks to the magazines and ebay. I think Dwell once did a piece on the top modern design books one should read and forthwith dispensed wasting any space on design philosophy. I'll have to dig that issue up. On the topic of "heavy modern" I have to tell an amusing story. Several years ago my husband and I were renovating a 100 year old farmhouse we had bought at auction. The elderly lady who had owned the place had collected a lifetime of furniture that had been stored to the ceiling in every room of the place. All of the furniture had been supposedly sold at the auction and removed from the premises when we took possession. Upstairs, all alone was a long low slung danish looking sofa with attached side tables that had been left behind. I thought it ugly but interesting (this was before the modernism bug had bitten me.) It must have been made of teak because it was too heavy to move. We couldn't budge it. A few weeks later we went back to find it, sticking out of a large divot in the back yard. The carpenter we hired had shoved it out the window to get it out of his way. It was damaged, and so went to the landfill. I'll never know who made it. Now that's heavy modern!