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THE PRESS OF THE NOVA SCOTIA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
As Long as It's Pink
The Sexual Politics of Taste
By Penny Sparke.
What is the legacy of the architectural and design movement of the mid-twentieth century? Did it deliver its promised vision of an egalitarian, democratic society supported by aesthetically simple, mass-produced goods whose forms fulfilled their utilitarian functions? In this provocative book, first published in 1995 to critical acclaim, design historian Penny Sparke embraces the awkward question of gender and aesthetic preference. Ranging across histories of domesticity and consumerism, as well as modern design and cultural theories, Sparke offers a new take on the history of modern material culture.
"Sometimes what seems the most trivial of tragedies are the most poignant. In Nicholas Baker’s Sign of the Time (1992), the television camera entered ordinary people’s living spaces and asked them to talk about their lives. One woman, married to an architect for whom white walls, minimal décor and Venetian blinds were de rigueur, explained how she sometimes went to the children’s bedroom—the only room in which curtains were permitted—and softly wept. A middle-class woman shedding tears for curtains in her domestic space may seem absurd in today’s society, in which tragedies of enormous global and personal significance are beamed into our living rooms. And yet it was a television moment that moved a considerable number of people, especially women. It hit a nerve… In his insistence on Venetian blinds rather than curtains, the architect in Sign of the Time was perpetuating a tradition of male domination, expressed through the puritanical control of the material environment that had begun over a century and half earlier. His wife did have something to cry about after all."
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FORMAT: Pbk, 6 x 9 in. / 224 pgs / 25 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $25.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $30 ISBN: 9780919616516 PUBLISHER: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design AVAILABLE: 11/30/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. By Penny Sparke.
What is the legacy of the architectural and design movement of the mid-twentieth century? Did it deliver its promised vision of an egalitarian, democratic society supported by aesthetically simple, mass-produced goods whose forms fulfilled their utilitarian functions? In this provocative book, first published in 1995 to critical acclaim, design historian Penny Sparke embraces the awkward question of gender and aesthetic preference. Ranging across histories of domesticity and consumerism, as well as modern design and cultural theories, Sparke offers a new take on the history of modern material culture.
