The Pleasure and Pain of Modernism Speech to Innotown, Ålesund, May 24th, 2000 I admit we have a problem. There´s this novel with the untranslatable title about the guy with the unpronouncable name, and it does involve unspeakable acts as well. But mainly, this is a novel about ideas. And ideas are more universal. What I´ve tried to do with this book, is to write the first ever psychological thriller about interior design. It starts off being a sort of comedy of manners, a social satire. It slides into tedious passages of explicit consumer pornography and develops gradually into some sort of Edgar Allan Poe nightmare. It´s supposed to, because what I´m trying to depict is a disintegrating personality. The main character in my novel is an interior decorator. I think the story would probably have worked just as well with a mailman or a stamp collector, any sort of person who works alone and displays signs of antisocial behaviour, but this is what I chose. And I´ll try to explain why. Along with the main three fictional characters there is a fourth, who is very non-fictional; the German architect and designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was born in 1886 and died in 1969. This educated crowd probably know what you should about this man, but in case you forgot: Mies is the man who coined the most repeated aestethic slogan of the twentieth century, the man who said: «Less is more». Mies was the most uncompromising of the German modernists of the 1920s and 30s, and could safely be described as the father of modern minimalism. The main character in my novel is a Mies worshipper, or as Tom Wolfe described them in the early eighties: a Miesling. Now, the problem is that most people don´t realize that less is more. Most people think less is bleak, uncomfortable and even downright scary. The battle between less and more has been a main arena in the field of aestethics in the second half of the 20th century. Less was more all through the fifties and sixties. In the seventies Robert Venturi, the main ideologist of the so-called post-modernist architectural movement, proclaimed that «Less is a bore» and started creating buildings with a kind of geometrical wedding-cake decorations on them. This sort of buildings can be seen all over the world, in fact even in Morocco (I was just there). Then, in the nineties, less got the upper hand again. Today, trend analysts proclaim that minimalism is finished and we´re ready for more. Until less strikes back, of course. Transfer this drama to the living room. Of course, most people never even had the idea of inviting less into their intimate surroundings. They´re perfectly content to see their homes become some sort of mail-order version of Elvis Presley´s Graceland; pink plush and fake rococco white chair and table legs. Especially rich people. In Norway, where hardly nobody has has been rich for more than one generation, the stinking rich have the worst taste of all. They usually employ interior decorators who basically take the money and run; who make sure that the shade of pink in the plush sofa does not clash with the pink of the velvet curtains, and then get the hell out of there. All this is slowly changing. This development enticed me to invent a sort of evil interior decorator — a person who decides the photo of your grandmother is too ugly to be displayed anywhere, and who charges a crazy amount of money to force rich people to practically sit on the floor. These people exist. Of course they´re not evil — they´ve just glimpsed the beauty of less, and they are totally intoxicated by it. They´re idealists. Most designers are idealists, in some way or another, with the possible exception of the person who designed every shopping mall from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. Now, there is evil. But we have this character who is totally devoted to less, and gets into all sorts of trouble trying to defend his ideals. He loses big commissions, starts abusing clients and even cheats on clients to get what he wants. To get it right. Why bother? What is the real psychology behind less? Why is it important? Popular theory claims that the straight-lined, modernist aesthetics of the early twentieth century was mainly inspired by two things; by new building technology and by exposure to oriental aestethics, mainly Japanese, through the important World Fairs of the late nineteenth century. I think we have to look closer and further. The clue should be that the most radical ideas were German or Dutch. Why German and Dutch? I think what we really see is the ghost of Protestantism. Just consider the Shakers — a weird Protestant cult who produced furniture to be hung on the walls, to make their homes as uninviting as possible. In the eighties and nineties, the Shakers were incredibly hip, as you probably know. In northern Norway, there is this extreme Protestant cult who among other things outlaw contraception, television, smoking and drinking (of course) and modern translations of the Bible. One of their most fascinating taboos is the ban on curtains. Nothing should happen in a home that the whole congregation should not be able to watch and approve. People who want curtains use them to hide immoral acts. I find the parallel with a lot of modern architecture and design quite irresistible. The ideal of transparency. There is, I believe, some degree of self-punishment in modernist and especially minimalist thinking, and this self-punishment is deeply rooted in the northern European psyche. Some inner part of us view ornament, colour, soft fabrics and deep cushions as sinful. As catholic. We´re not ready to kill the catholics anymore, as we were for a couple of hundred years back there, but we still have a deep fear of becoming like them. They enjoy life and detest work — everybody knows that. This is, in my opinion, why modernism in our part of the world is associated with morality. To view a modernist object — take for instance one of my favourites, Mies van der Rohes Barcelona Chair, designed in 1929 — as purely pretty, is getting it all wrong. It has to have some sort of inherent morality, like for instance complete honesty. No decadent frills. Decent Protestant values. When someone sits in it, it looks all wrong, so you shouldn´t. It should just stand there, as if it just as well could hang on a wall, like the Shakers do. I perceive an even darker side to the most extreme of Modernist ideals, to the strictness of Minimalism. This is what I call the anorectic eye. New theories about eating disorders claim that these have nothing to do with fashions or beauty ideals at all, but are mainly an instrument of control. I can control my body; this is the triumph of the young girl who finally stopped eating. In the same sense, the dedicated minimalist has achieved total control of his environment. All signs of human activity has become invisible. There is no clutter, no soft or inviting shapes. The body has ceased to ingest or produce. There are no visual fat, no calories. This is what I meant when I said: «Less is scary». And why, of course, I have found something resembling a novel in this material. You might ask, in fact everybody asks: How do you yourself live? Interesting question. I live in a house exactly one hundred years old. It´s an art nouveau building, and I´ve tried to find some decadent furniture resembling the ideals of that period. I know this is a terribly fashionable thing to say, but to me that period, and the more tasteful aspects of art nouveau, represents the perfect balance between less and more. Which is why you should be happy to be in this city, of course.