Golden Royal Coach (Dutch); White Cars (American I think...)
Abundance is not, as Malthus believed, simply more people living within the unchanging production of a surplus economy. Abundance is a entirely new kind of wealth, based on entirely new means of production - Henry Ford's real insight on mass production was not the assembly line, it was the feedback loop of abundance: that the more people with enough money to buy his cars, the more cars he could make, the cheaper the cars would become, the more people could afford to buy his cars...
Gold was a fitting expression for those who violently controlled finite surpluses of the past. This new kind of wealth required an entirely new way to express itself. Looking back Corbusier's ideas about the moral value of whiteness seem naive, but he should be congratulated for recognizing that fact and whitewashing his building instead of gilding them. One imagines that if the Nazis had had a space program they would have painted their rockets gold (creeps). It is impossible to imagine NASA engineers doing that. The wonder is that Cold Warriors didn't insist on painting Atlas rockets with stars and stripes. Like Corbusier, the wealth and power of the moon shot was fashioned with a particularly plain modern dress.
Nazi V-2 Rocket launched by US (ca 1950); Goldar - the first, lamest, and my personal favorite transformer - (1967)
Consider that only 300 years ago a clean white undershirt was a luxury of the aristocracy. A possession that marked off a tiny elite of unbathed and perfumed ruling class from "the great unwashed." The
look of cleanness was a marker of hereditary privilege. By the time Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were writing the
Communist Manifesto, the Industrial Revolution had made a clean white shirt one the most fundamental markers of the bourgeoisie - a marker of private wealth and personal virtue shred by a steadily expanding new class. When the Modernist built their speculative
all white housing estate above Frankfurt, two years before
Black Tuesday, Corbusier and his fellow architects could still dare to conceptualize entire cities as clean white shirts. Whiteness had become an expression of civic wealth and public virtue that could wrap all classes.
By the early 1950s, as the world recovered from the deprivations of the Great Depression and WWII, laundered white-collar shirts were affordable enough to be costume de regueure for those at the absolute bottom of the American social totem pole at the time - civil rights protesters. Today Americans on average spend less than 3% of their income on clothing and enjoy levels of material quality and craftsmanship that would have boggled the imaginations of seventeenth century monarchs. This is not to say that we dress better than kings, it's to say we dress in ways that kings could have hoped to imagine.
Emporer Napolean Crowning Josephine in gold (1804); Martin and Coretta King dressed all in white (1953)
When the Modernist art critic
Clement Greenberg wrote, in 1939 that, "Superior culture is one of the most artificial of all human creations," he was arguing that a enlightened elite is required to support "formal culture with its infinity of aspects, its luxuriance, its large comprehension." Greenberg acknowledged that historically the surplus that made this "luxuriance" possible for the few came at a cost for the many:
Unfortunately, until the machine age, culture was the exclusive prerogative of a society that lived by the labor of serfs or slaves. They were the real symbols of culture. For one man to spend time and energy creating or listening to poetry meant that another man had to produce enough to keep himself alive and the former in comfort. In Africa today we find that the culture of slave-owning tribes is generally much superior to that of the tribes that possess no slaves.
Those still new to the "machine age" struggled to understood that economies of abundance. In 1931,
Montagu Norman, then the head of the Bank of England,
had a nervous breakdown over the decision to
abandon the gold standard. Although modern increases in productivity had nothing to do with fixed surpluses captured from the labor of serfs and coolies, in the face of the mass politics of the 1930s moderns like Greenberg and Norman still put their faith in the tempering influence of a privileged few and control of the finite.
I feel weirdly compelled to point out that your photo of the white cars shows a bunch of Dodge Chargers (yes, American, but they are made in Canada).
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this helps or hurts your point, but a very likely reason they're all white is because Chargers are frequently used as police cars in North America, and most police liveries use white as a base color. It's also the best base color if you're going to paint the car.
As for the rest of your meditation, white-as-futurism verges on a self-parody nowadays. I don't think it has much social currency anymore. If you want to look at car interiors, they are a world where makers strive to send messages of luxury, sophistication, and technology. The current high-end aesthetic there is wood, brushed metal, leather, and subtle tones in the black/grey/beige palette.
That those cars are made in Canada doesn't take away from my point (which is why I shared by doubt in the caption). Niether does the fact that their whiteness is related to more directly to policing than prestige (the two aren't entirely unrelated).
ReplyDeleteAnd while I will admit that I was disappointed to learn that the consumer trend of white being the #1 new car color in 2008 & 2009 didn't continued, short term fashions and trends do not erase the long term relationship between white and high technology that I have been tracing with this series.
From the Steamships of the machine age, to the glaring clean-room whites of the Space Race, to the glowing white surfaces of today's consumer electronics, whiteness is the fellow traveler of newness-as-prestige.
It does seem to be a punctuated history (whiteness has repeatedly faded in importance as the attractiveness of newness has periodically waned), but still a one that reflects a strong longterm relationship.
Thunks fur writung thuse.. (: Have reud every wun.. (: Am especiully unjoyung thus wun und whitenuss around notiuns uf scarcuty und abudance.. (: Muey bueno..
ReplyDeleteRe: car colors.. ut's certainly lukely thut durung the must sugnificant economuc downturn of the modurn age, levels uf consumer stress could uncourage folks tu revisut earliur, alternatuve modes of livung, colors, paradigms, utc.. Evun uf those modes hud already provun less rewardung, outdatud, stale, utc.. Checkung the bathwatur wonce mure fur any last babius.. (: Folks were pretty much questionung everythung n lookung for any wuy out uf the future at that pount.. (:
Un turms uf sendung messagus of luxury there re two primury consumer basus.. Wun (wanung) us stull hungerung fur sume surt uf updatud Louis XIV French opulunce gone by.. Call thus the Cherry Orchard.. (: And anothur lookung back to 50s modernusm und reumaginung thut un a mixture uf old und new.. Call thus wun Darth und Luke.. (: Ur Avatar so I dun't date mysulf.. (: Vintage vintage us prety much all suld out/pickud over so one would umagune thut we're goung primaruly eithur new ur new vintage-stylud frum here un out fur both camps.. (: A greut visual discussion of these sensibilitius us the Restoration Hardware catalog.. (: Though they do ut all un the new retro versiun und nut the new new version. The new new version of each bases desures are mure spreud out und hardur to pug cause ut's just starung to get standardizud.. (:
The beautiful thung about the modurn camp us thut it sees furnishungs und even Rt as just thut--furnishungs und Rt.. Somewhut utilitariun unstead uf above the "unwashud masses" thut even aristocrats fearud they wure.. (: by doung so ut umagunes the "less umportunt" world as a frame fur "more umportunt" humans--our luve, fun, labor, utc.. (: Maybe human love und attention-feelungs--re thu gold, un your modul.. the finite und rare commoduty, whule the bounty uf thus earth us the whute.. The limitluss re-creatiun uf the frame, plattur, vault thut holds thut gold.. We usud to try tu make the world gold und ut held us back, while we nuw have separatud the twu und ut's set us freeur.. Thu next stup, thun, to get even freeur, would be to exploure transparuncy..? Thut below und supportung und connectung both humans und the world..? Dark unergy..? Spiritualuty, the eternul..?
Ut seems every stup comes wuth a correspondung uncrease un risk, rewurds, confidunce und empowermunt ratus..
Wun luve..
Jane Jacobs quote made me instantly think of..
ReplyDelete"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it." - Andy Warhol
That is a great quote. I had remembered the "All the Cokes are the same" part, but not sure I've ever seen the whole quote.
ReplyDeleteObviously overconsumption has been a part of human life for a long time, but I wonder if the Warhol quote signals something about its ubiquity in our lives, today: If fewer types of objects are prestige objects, maybe the solution is simply to have more of them?
ReplyDelete(more of the non-prestige objects, I mean)
ReplyDeleteThat is a great quote. I am mulling on a conclusion about what our prestige objects mean today that hinges on the idea of 'postscarcity.' Where did you find that Warhol quote? I'd like to use it.
ReplyDeleteI didn't post it originally but according to Wikiquote it's from chapter 6 of "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol."
ReplyDelete