The Nazis were big on stripping stucco off buildings.
Ornament seen as “dishonest”, above the plain spokenness of simplicity – the reason I hate it as an aesthetic view today is because this shit is not ascetic. It is not cheap. The global elite (at every slice, including the one that catches most Americans) shouldn’t get to pretend we’re being simple or plain when we participate in the consumption economy. Decorate your home with acanthus and cheap gilt, at least you’re engaging in an aesthetic that implicitly values the labor in the creation of applied art. Buy a Herend Rothschild plate, trapping of supreme 1800s inequality, and an artisan in a worker-owned coop gets paid a good wage to paint the little bird on. But the cult of Design often makes its minimalist wares with Walmart-exploitative processes, as bad as any mercury gilding, and that it gets to act superior about its aesthetic is repulsive to me. When Dolce & Gabbana sends crowns down a runway, at least that’s being honest about what it is, where it comes from, who it’s for.
I probably need to write something up properly about this because I have a lot of poorly-articulated feelings about it.
Side note: if literally anyone knows literally any other worker-owned artisan stuff like Herend, let me know! I find it easily as interesting as independent artists making stuff because having skilled-art Day Jobs exist in a society is so valuable, and cooperatives with distinct styles and such are the closest thing to that At Scale that can probably exist? Hmm.