One yellow door, on one house. It was a reasonable wake up accent for an otherwise understated facade.
But when yellow showed up just a few houses down, the understated gave way to garish.
Gerald Horne, architect and friend, has long advocated for “architecture insurance”–a way to protect us from really bad decisions made by our neighbors and/or well funded, aesthetically challenged organizations (like my neighborhood’s most notorious offender, Boston University.) Maybe we need a vigilante citizens’ version of W magazine’s notorious FP, the Fashion Police, who scoured the streets of New York for evidence of fashion gone awry (FV, or “fashion victims”) and then published their findings each week for all to gape and gasp.
It’s easier to tolerate muffin topped jeans than a house color screaming so loud nobody can escape it.
I agree, Deborah…. and Fashion Tickets should also be handed out with appropriate sliding scale based on severity of Taste lapse. This would require legislation and a sector of government to administer aesthetic rules of law – Ministry of Aesthetics. Each political party would have a Taste platform with which to win in order to democratically rule. Of Course, Left, Right and Middle leaning parties would have to determine their own aesthetic standards. This means that we would only have to tolerate muffin-top pants for only four years, or not at all, depending on which party wins. The same goes for the use of garish colours as architectural embellishment. Oh… wouldn’t it be nice….?
Very funny! I really like the concept of a sliding scale for lapses in taste.
Can you imagine participating the meeting to determine the Democratic Party’s Taste Platform? It would result in a Platform that simply reads:
e) all of the above
Which of course is still infinitely better than the Republicans who would make all their aesthetic decisions based on maximizing profits for big oil and big business.
Ouch! Here in Canada we would have major problems.
We have the Liberals (Democrat), Conservatives (Republicans) Bloc Quebecois (Cajun Separatists?)New Democratic Party (Commie Pinkos?) and the struggling Green Party. The ruling Conservative party’s aesthetic sense can be summed up like this – Thomas Kincade! This is a truly terrifying thing to even contemplate!
Truly truly terrifying…The painter of light, politicized!