The Wall Street Journal last week ran a piece on an interior design trend not for the faint of heart—maximalism: “The Lush New Décor Look That’s Vanquishing Minimalism.”
The Journal offers some visual examples. One photo shows “a richly rowdy family game room,” with a supernova sort of chandelier hanging over an azure velour couch full-up with fat, fringed throw pillows. There’s the obligatory zebra pelt on top of a busy Persian rug, another sofa (this one gray-green velvet), two chairs modeled on Bear Bryant’s fedora, and, all the way around, a vertiginous peacock, black, and gold wallpaper that could have been designed by Escher. The riot of peripheral gewgaws includes a steam-punk cocktail cart crowded with pitcher, shaker, and gold-rimmed glasses.
Maximalism has, of course, been around for decades in art, music, and literature. But it is a rebellion that “suits our era,” the Journal concludes, suggesting that’s because of the environment it creates: “somewhere soft and protective” to shelter people from uncertainty about “the economy, the climate, the future.” Perhaps—if one’s idea of a soft and protective environment is a room decorated by a color-blind Victorian on acid.
No, there’s something else going on, something indeed expressive of the times. Mr. Cool has left the Oval Office. His calm, unrufflable demeanor was captured in the serenity of the Farnsworth House. But he couldn’t be president forever (much to the Democrats’ dismay), which means this is no time for Miesian austerity.
So how about instead an embrace of the new president’s design sensibility (which can be described as something between that of Louis XIV and a Camorra don)? Never! The stylish set would no more be caught celebrating Donald Trump than they would be seen wearing the Full Cleveland. Unless, that is, either were being done as haute kitsch—and about the only thing that could make the new maximalist style kitschier would be the addition of a black-lighted velvet Elvis.
There are other reasons to see maximalism as a perfect expression of the times: It goes to 11. Whether it’s Twitter, television, or the National Mall, we’re in a dizzying fun-house. Everywhere is a cry for attention, the outraged competing with the enraged competing with the deranged (and that’s just the editorial board of the New York Times).
Come to think of it, the new whirligig style of decorating may be, if not “soft,” at least “protective” after all—a fashion loud enough to drown out our noisy and noisome politics.
