BOOKS + MUSIC
Modernists tend to be ardent audio- and bibliophiles. Years of schooling and music festivals have instilled in you an uncommon attachment to books, music, and magazines. Unfortunately, these texts and tomes have no real value as decorative elements in a modern home. The books that changed your life, the books that colored your experiences on the path from prepubescent dreamer to self-aware adult, don’t work as decorative elements. What Color Is Your Parachute? or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance don’t send the right message about your refined intellectual acumen. The Ani DiFranco CDs that got you through that horrific college break-up really shouldn’t see the light of today. Instead, approach the curating of your in-home media library as a way to help others understand how you perceive the world around you and how the world should perceive you.
In this section you’ll learn where to source and how to properly display music collections, books, and periodicals for maximum impact, and the contemporary gems worth a subscription (if only to splay artistically on the coffee table). This is the required reading and listening list for creating the illusion of a truly cultured mind.
Subscribers Only
The ephemeral quality of a printed magazine is what gives periodicals their charm. Each lasts just a short while before the next edition is on newsstands. With the impending death of print, it seems that all the great magazines have given in to advertorials (paid content meant to look like original editorial) or, worse yet, have dumbed down what few pages are left to appeal to wider audiences. Either way, these publications usually alienate the few loyal readers that are still willing to whip out an arcane checkbook to mail in their subscription. That’s why we suggest cultivating a collection of vintage magazines.
SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF DESIGN HISTORY is the only design publication that has a place on the coffee table, where the most current issue and a dog-eared back issue should be casually displayed. This annual publication began in 1991. A thick collection of essays and critiques by authors and historians, it’s featured such luminous works as “Constructivism and Children’s Books in Soviet Avant-garde Propaganda Art,” written by Tatiana Saarinen. The journal is produced by Danish publisher Rhodos. For maximum effect, purchase all of the back issues and stack them within easy view of visitors.
SPLAY LIKE A PRO
How to artistically splay? You start with a stack of no more than five magazines and then use the heel of your hand to gently push the top magazines away from the spine of the base magazine.
The bright yellow spine of a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine is always at home on the shelves of a modern abode. Finding older editions can be difficult, especially if you want to aim for authenticity and display only the issues that featured heavy typography on the covers, before they began running photo covers in the early 1960s. Your best bet is to troll eBay, estate sales, and flea markets to reach a full set.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN magazine (later known as the initialed I.D. magazine) was founded in 1954 as a way to chronicle happenings within the industry. The late, great graphic designer Alvin Lustig served as art director, with Jane Thompson (wife of Ben Thompson and an accomplished architect in her own right) and Deborah Allen as coeditors. Andy Warhol drew illustrations. John Gregory Dunne was an editor. It switched to I.D. in the 1980s to reflect a broader depth of coverage, making the Reagan years your cutoff for collecting. The magazine shuttered for good in 2009.
SWINDLE was started by graffiti legend Shepard Fairey and his cohorts. Before the bimonthly arts and culture magazine stopped publishing in 2009, it featured work by everyone from Henry Rollins to Damien Hirst, along with interviews with Billy Idol and Grandmaster Flash. You can purchase back issues online at the Swindle website, Swindlemagazine.com.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION
If you can’t live without a television and DVD player, make sure to prominently position one box of the six-volume set of films by Charles and Ray Eames, which were made between 1950 and 1982. Topics range from the Mexican traditional holiday the Day of the Dead to DNA molecules. Invite a date over to watch, or set up a viewing party with friends, to showcase your breadth of knowledge and depth of interests.
Required Reading
There are two kinds of books in a modern home: private and public. Certain books you keep on the coffee table or open shelving and certain books you conspicuously stack in threes on your bedside table. To say that the bedroom books are private only means that they are the books that give insight to your innermost values, not that they are kept secret. Instead, they offer a way for visitors to sneakily glimpse your true self when they poke around your bedroom while ducking into the bathroom. Meanwhile, the books on your coffee table should stimulate conversation, while the select tomes on the shelves should hint at a deeper understanding of art and science.
CASE STUDY #11
“He’d spent years cultivating a perfectly messy study. So to find that someone had stuffed a red volume on the umber-only bookshelves? Well, the proverbial shit hit the fan.”
Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he loves the house and hates art.
ADOLF LOOS (1870–1933)
This Austrian-born architect became a major critic of the art noveau style of the period, instead praising minimalist modern architecture and decoration that was devoid of ornament. Unfortunately, he contracted syphilis at twenty-one from a brothel and had a series of unhappy marriages before he had to have part of his stomach removed due to a cancerous tumor. After that, he could only eat ham and cream. Deaf at fifty, a pedophilia scandal destroyed his reputation before he died, broke and alone, in Vienna at sixty-two.
Notable Works: Steiner House, Germany. Goldman & Salatsch Building, Austria.
Static Pulse
Appreciating music is a skill that isn’t easily learned. It takes time and dedication to understand the dulcet tones of gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. And it takes even more time to harvest a superior collection of vintage vinyl and bone up on the catalogs of underground independent musicians that support your design ethos. You may encounter an occasional hiccup (everyone has a Moby CD stashed somewhere), but soon, after some trial and error, you’ll develop controls (no electronica) that will guide you in the process.
More important than the playlist, though, is what it’s played on. We offer solutions for sound systems that will both complement your decor and enhance your listening experience. There are only two options when it comes to audio enjoyment: throwback vinyl magnified with extremely rare wood-cased, fabric-covered speakers or delightfully ironic high-tech send-ups.
DAVONE RAY
These bentwood speakers are set on top of a curvaceous steel stand. Together, they are a passive pair, requiring an external amp to power the sound. Made in Denmark, each stands about thirty inches high with the walnut-veneer speaker case measuring a good twenty-three inches wide. They also cost ten times as much as their boxy counterparts. Don’t be fooled by these lightweight speakers—they may be only twelve pounds apiece but they are monsters of sound with 150 watts of power.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION
True modernists will seek out the Eames Quadraflex. This boxy speaker was first designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957 for the now defunct Stephens Tru-Sonic brand. It’s about thirty inches high, sitting on four legs and wrapped in the same bentwood as an Eames lounger. The speakers are wildly difficult to find and can fetch up to $2,000 each, whether they are in working condition or not.
