Final Exam.

The concepts of space and place deal with an individual’s niche in society as related to personal preferences; the Home is the culmination of this compromise.  The ideal home is one where all our needs are met and communal desires are magically in tune with those of the individual. This home caters to the human quest for perfection and appeals to universal aesthetic and moral values regardless of the argument that these are relative. An artist that attempts to cater to the ideal home as a universal standard is the late Thomas Kinkade.  As shown on the painting below, his paintings rely on an over the top source of light to be reminiscent of a higher power.

In this painting, titled “Along the Lighted Path” the sparkling sunshine and presence of nature between individual homes and the church are tranquilizing.  Most of Kinkade’s paintings represent a single home in a beautiful natural setting, yet even the homes in this painting are separated. Kinkade consciously seeks to extend his idea of perfection into every aspect of life. He is able to commercialize it because he caters to the basic puritan value of the home as “a microcosm of God’s exacting structure for the universe.”(Wright, 3) When it comes to the ideals of space, Kinkade’s paintings represent “the desire to give tangible expression to values, in part to celebrate self-confidence and pride, in part from fear to not being able to live up to one’s ideals.” (Wright, 4) His homes emphasize a sort of loneliness. This dark, underlying theme has brought Kinkade criticism, resulting on parodies like the one below:

In Kinkade’s paintings perfection is present, but home exteriors never tell the whole story. If Cthulhu lurks in the ocean depths, then this vision of perfection is nothing but a trap. Why? Because ideals are relative. His homes are reminiscent of an idea and not a true model home as was the case in “The Idea house,” where only Brauer’s design survived since it was a tangible blueprint of a home rather than an idea of perfection. (Winton,19) This theme of a fruitless search for perfection and isolation is also present in Andrea Zittel’s work. Both Kinkade and Zittel’s quests for the ideal home has resulted in art where perfection creates isolation. Nowhere is this better seen than in Zitel’s pocket property.

The Pocket property appeals to the American view that a home belongs to the individual alone. It is also a vehicle and, like Kinkade’s work, it can be mass produced. The difference is that while Kinkade’s ideal is merely visual, Zittel’s ideal is utilitarian.  Like Hayden, Zittel is aware that “the personal happiness of many Americans has been undermined by poorly designed housing.” (Hayden, 57) To her, this is wasteful and inefficient. Zittel’s other works, for example the Living Unit, show a constant quest for utilitarian comfort.

The unit fits anywhere and gives Zittel the commodities of a dream home without engaging in the wild consumption associated with it. Ideal homes are isolated by choice and “because of their isolation from community facilities and from each other, [they] also require numerous purchases of appliances” these appliances increase the use of energy and often are sold as “reinforcement to corporate interests.” (Hayden,65) Through the living units, Zittel sought to solve these problems. In the video below, Zittel tells the story of how she went from living in her parent’s ideal and normal suburban home to creating living units to move towards her utilitarian ideal. “I literally believed that when I made that piece and when I had it completely perfected, that it would solve all my problems.”Once the piece was finished, however, she instead felt “despondent” and “depressed” these feelings gave her the epiphany that “no one really wants perfection” but rather we are obsessed with the idea of perfection and that “what we really want is the hope of some sort of new and improved or better tomorrow.”

Even the way Zittel organizes her home shows a different type of ideal. The levels of organization, meticulousness and need for control and autonomy displays an ideal home that although different from Kinkade’s, creates the same result: isolation. What one can infer from this is that the ideal home, be it alone a lighted path or a pocket property is a direct manifestation of each person’s relative perception of what makes up space and provides a sense of place and personal being. Kinkade’s ideas of beauty inevitably lead to a single home environment, Zittel’s to a complete state of autonomy where others are not needed or wanted but in the end they both take us to the same place.


WORKS CITED

Griffith Winton, A. "'A Man's House Is His Art': The Walker Art Center's Idea House Project andthe   Marketing of Domestic Design 1941-1947." Journal of Design History 17.4 (2004): 377-96. Print

Hayden, Dolores. Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984. Print.

Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1983. Print.

Images Cited

“A Lighted Path.” By Thomas Kinkade http://www.myfreewallpapers.net/artistic/pages/thomas-kinkade-along-the-lighted-path.shtml

“Chtulhu and Thomas Kinkade Lightouse.”  By anonymous.
http://sciencenotes.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/another-kinkade-cthulhu-mashup/

“Pocket Property” By Andrea Zittel
http://www.zittel.org/works_horizontal.php?a_id=95

“1994 Living Unit” By Andrea Zittel
http://zittel.org/works_horizontal.php?a_id=38

Video Cited;

Dowling, Susan., Inc Art 21, PBS Video, and NC Live digital media collection. Art 21: Art     in the Twenty-first Century : Season One; Andrea Zittel speaks. [Alexandria, Va.], 2007.