Interior design is the practice of creatively and technically achieving/augmenting an interior environment.
Conceptual art is art that is constituted by the concepts or ideas involved in the art as opposed to its material form.
Conceptual interior design is the practice of achieving/augmenting an interior environment through concepts and ideas as opposed to its material form.
An example
For example, above the toilet in my apartment a piece of conceptual art in the form of a piece of paper.
The paper reads:
DECORATION FOR THE BATHROOM (TOILET): AN IDEA
Staring up out of the toilet bowl is the skull of Marcel Duchamp.
Somebody (Duchamp?) has drawn a moustache on it.
Two facts immediately present themselves:
- This is a big improvement to the interior environment of the bathroom! Though a touch grim and perhaps bizarre, Duchamp’s skull adds prestige and unique flair to an otherwise mundane Brooklyn commode.
- Unlike normal interior design, conceptual interior design is not constrained by actuality. Rather, it is bounded by conceivability alone.
I believe that conceptual design has wonderful and largely untapped potential. On this website, I intend to illustrate its use and advocate for its widespread adoption.
Some history
I was exposed to Fluxus art at an early age by a middle school art teacher and have had conceptual art as an aesthetic baseline ever since. I have struggled, however, with bringing my living surroundings into line with this aesthetic preference.
The best I was able to do for a long time was to hang these printed event scores from a museum exhibit on my walls.
As much as I love those event scores, they do nothing for the space.
When I first moved to New York in 2007, I experimented with using somewhat more visual pieces as decoration. But while the Cheap Art Manifesto is a nicely self-referential wall hanging, it imposes nothing on the environment besides its economic logic.
In July 2008 I moved to Brooklyn with Hal Parker. He and I had met in high school many years earlier. He was taking a gap year between completing his undergraduate work and applying for doctoral programs in Philosophy.
Hal Parker
We quickly arrived that the problem of how to decorate the apartment. I was thrilled to discover that Hal shared my appreciation for modern art. Shortly after moving in, he introducedl this reinterpreted poster of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase.
Wondering if I could get away with it, I responded with the decoration for the bathroom shown above.
Hal was ambivalent. He told me that he thought the apartment was “Duchamped out.” I continued to design the apartment conceptually with no more explicit references to Duchamp.
He eventually commented, “I disagree with the idea in theory. But I like it in practice.”
I still don’t know what he meant.
Chores
Life is demanding. There are so many chores, and our material environment breaks down with use and sometimes requires repair.
Conceptual interior design is a way to work around some of these problems.
For example, for a long time we didn’t have any hand soap in our bathroom. We had run out, and neither Hal or I had gotten around to getting any new soap. This bothered us. The problem, of course, was that we were wanting soap, but didn’t have any.
DECORATION FOR THE BATHROOM SINK AREA: AN IDEA
Crowding the entire surface of the sink fixture save the basin itself is a grotesque superabundance of hand soap.
Normal bars of bath soap, scented colorful lozenge-shaped soaps, soap sculpted into the shape of a mermaid, melting with use.
Antibacterial dishwashing soap that is easy on your hands, industrial strength soap designed for men who work in oil fields, bottles of soap that contain more moisturizing lotion than soap, acne cleansing soap.
There is a bubble solution which one could possibly use as soap, and soap made from some kind of animal fat. There is soap an apothecary swears will cure back aches and migraines.
It must have been the work of a sick mind, this assemblage of soaps. It puts you off the idea of washing your hands altogether.
This decoration bought us some time. We didn’t have to get new soap for a good while after putting it up.
Conceptual art as simulation of much better art, or as an augmentation of other actual art
Hopefully by now you are asking, How can I use conceptual interior design to improve the environment of my home or workplace?
It’s easy! Just use your imagination!
One way to get started is to use conceptual art to acquire other art that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and put it into your apartment. For example:
DECORATION FOR THE HALLWAY, EAST WALL (AN IDEA)
In what must have been a spectacular heist, Seb and Hal have stolen the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and hung it here.
When asked why they did it, Hal replies that as an Italian patriot, he thought it a disgrace that the Mona Lisa should not be on display in an Italian museum.
For some reason, Seb and Hal have no fear of a police investigation.
(Hal’s girlfriend is Italian.)
Another thing you can do with conceptual interior design is make an existing piece of art better by giving it properties it does not have.
This poster refers to a fictional planet from space western TV series Firefly. I thought it would be an improvement if we had actually gotten the poster from another planet.
One of the pages to the poster’s right reads:
DECORATION FOR THE HALLWAY, EAST WALL, SIHNON POSTER: AN IDEA
This poster is of a real place.
Hal has been there. He is quite fond of it.
When asked about it though, the answers he gives are unsatisfying.
Perhaps he is hiding something.
The other decoration for the Sihnon poster insisted that it was a visually identical piece of abstract art, but one without any meaning or symbolism whatsoever.
This is a good example of two pieces of conceptual interior design that logically contradict each other. That means that the two decorations evoke different conceptual spaces.
That doesn’t have to be the case. Later we will see an example of distinct decorations that participate in the same conceptual space.
Contradictions are not bad for your interior design. One of benefits of defining additional conceptual spaces through logical contradiction is that it is a lot like increasing the size of your apartment!
Repairs
We lived in an old building, and much of our apartment was in need of repair.
We tried a number of conceptual repairs, but these sometimes created more problems than they solved.
For example, for a time we were having trouble with the stove.
DECORATIVE MODIFICATION OF THE OVEN: AN IDEA
When you turn on the front burner of this oven, the flame does not start even though the dial is turned to LITE.
INSTEAD, the dial’s turning fades in music. it is a haunting collage of musical samples accompanied by an urgent drum track. It is modern, yet speaks to the most primitive part of you. It obliterates thought; you absorb yourself to it; the subtle voices of your waking life are silenced.
There is a click, then another.
The burner sparks.
The kitchen explodes.
We tried to fix up some of the molding, but in so doing discovered that we had a mouse problem.
DECORATION FOR THE EAST-BY-NORTHEAST KITCHEN CORNER: FLOOR LEVEL
The moulding is attached to the wall still. It is entirely unremarkable.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see that you are being watched. A mouse is crouched at the base of the oven.
Unfathomably, it charges you. The careless fellow runs over your toe, then scurries away into the living room.
“My books!” cries Hal.
(I think Hal’s cry was unrelated to the mouse problem. Hal had great big bookshelves full of books in the living room. Something was always happening to them.)
We tried to repaint the living room at one point, but that was a disaster.
DECORATION FOR THE APARTMENT: AN IDEA
“Be careful. There is wet paint. So sorry — what terrible timing!”
That’s what Seb or possibly Hal says from another room. Hard to say which one.
Sure enough, the walls are slick and glistening. Looking down, you see that your shoes have left tracks through the paint on the floor like through wet cement.
Paint of the floor?
Looking more closely at the wall, you see its features are sliding slowly down it. The poster? You touch it. Paint.
The furniture — warping slightly, then dripping, its pigments leaking on to the floor’s pigments, muddying them. Paint.
Your feet. You suddenly realize that you have sunk. You are ankle-deep in wood-toned paint. And you are sinking still.
Eventually, we became more philosophical about the shortcomings of our apartment, learning to live with the disrepair rather than fight the futile upkeep battle.
DECORATION FOR THE NORTH LIVING ROOM WALL: AN IDEA
There is a hole made through the wall here.
It is a shapeless hole, but not a large one. It is partially obstructed by the plumbing internal to the wall.
The hole goes right through to the other side — to the shower — which is sometimes a source of embarrassment, but mostly Hal and Seb are used to it. They adjust their behavior around it. They stand to one side when they take showers.
Newcomers are warned ahead of time.
“Why don’t you get they hole fixed?” one will ask.
“Oh, we keep forgetting,” Seb will reply. “I meant to call the landlord about it today.”
The biggest problem, though, the one that should be the cause of urgency, is the water damage.
N.B. This essay isn’t finished yet!
