A weekend Wall Street Journal story examines the interior design trend of maximalism, roughly defined as, if it has the properties of matter, screw it (and hang it up):
If all that doesn’t have you seeing stars, surely the pictures will. One photo accompanying the story shows “a richly rowdy family game room,” with what appears to be a supernova hanging from the ceiling. This light, too explosive even for most solar systems, illumes a sea-green couch with throw pillows of the same color and stripes of black and gold, a rug from some skinned equid, another rug of apparently Persian origin, another sofa (this one grayish), two chairs modeled on Bear Bryant’s fedora, and groovy wall panels depicting three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional space. Not even the backgammon board escaped this funhouse. It’s part-turquoise. It might as well be made of turquoise.
There are other ways to go big and at home. “If you want your living room to be a flamenco club, then do it—fearlessly,” IKEA advises. As if transforming a common area into Cordoba’s nightlife could be the product of circumspection.
All this stylistic rebellion “suits our era,” the author concludes. But she implies it’s because of the environment it creates: “somewhere soft and protective” to shelter people from uncertainty about “the economy, the climate, [and] the future.” It might be suitable more for what it says about the national mood. The volume is cranked to 11 at the moment: on Twitter, on television, in the streets, and now in the domicile. Everywhere is a cry for attention, including that room where the “floral prints and fringed lampshades” go.
