T
Joined: Oct 17, 2004
Posts: 336
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T
Unfortunately this seems to hold true for almost all of today’s “pop” culture, think about architecture, music, design, when was the last time you thought to yourself that ordinary thing is extraordinary? There was a time when marketing had to appeal to a vibrant middle class, some things from that era we can even appreciate today (many years later) because they were really great! Since a majority of people today are either poor or want to been viewed as rich why would a company bother wasting it’s time? I agree with Bongo Bungalow a lot of this has to do with the ease that a non designer can come up with some slick crap on a computer. Tom I know you have great taste and I appreciate your playing “Devils advocate” but look at that thing, take the “tikis” off and put parrots on it or sea life or anything and you would have essentially the same thing and equally as effective.
I don’t want to come off like I am picking apart the bike or this person’s work, because that is not my intention (it’s just what got me started) and sorry if it sounds like I am now going off on a weird rant. But we should be able to have a serious discussion which deals with what defines the concept of Tiki/Polynesian pop or degrees of its quality. The idea that someone can know nothing about a (any) style or (any) artistic movement, create something that misses the mark and proudly say they’ve nailed it on the head is bizarre, it’s what happens in elementary school. Way back when, I took my first batch of Tiki carvings to Los Angeles, Sven was nice enough to give me a critique of my work. It certainly wasn’t all positive but I was forever grateful for his incite and honesty, I took his comments and applied it to my future work and have benefited from it ever since. Yes as leleliz points out it’s “just a bike” but if we can’t agree on why a thing is not understanding this particular art form, we quickly end up where we are today. You could do a whole thread about things that say “Tiki” and aren’t, now days places get built with NO Tikis and they happily say it’s carrying on the tradition, how cool and right on for a new generation? And this whole idea that we shouldn’t say anything about something mediocre, at least they did “something” or it could have been “worse”, really? Would you accept this excuse with anything else in your life, the dry cleaner left spots on your clothes, the chef burned the food, oh well better than nothing? That a small group of people are making (a lot of) money dumbing down our culture is nothing to be happy about. Trust me it is just as easy to create a thing with depth and beauty as it is to make it mediocre, the difference between the two is someone has to want to do one, the other just happens.
Again this is not about the bike (it looks OK) or even Tiki necessarily, it is about how little value our culture places on things that affect us on the most ordinary level, we are now at a place where almost anything is seen as good and quite often great.
Bosko
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