finished rosson’s essay for her Paris cataloge FINALLYfinally on the train back this morning. pour tous le monde: the opening paragraph. is it ridiculous? rosson is it ridiculous??? i cant even tell anymore
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Maybe theres something uniquely American about seeing behind the facade of historicized reality to the two-by-fours and sandbags propping it up. Baudrillard said, in the unbelievably still-on-American-shelves AMERICA, the exact opposite: that we are the unwitting dupes in one of the most historically scripted theme parks of power, and this maybe forces us to see all the trappings of the past five-hundred years of Western Civilization as elaborate set decor. For Ms. Crow, growing up in suburban Dallas, frequenting old historical residences as well as casinos, experiencing trendy design hotels as well as The Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel, and even, you could conceivably add, studying at the fantastically faux-gothic bastion of American higher education,Yale, her insight must at the very least be a combination of these two positions. That is, if she treats such styles as the Vienna Workshops patterns and Napoleons apartment at Fontainebleau as, at best, a patina of powerful suggestibility, it is because she has seen such styles slathered upon everything from a hotel lobby to a low-end chain restaurant; and has seen behind them.
