Interior Design: Mixture as monstrosity: avoiding kitsch, achieving

impact.

Interior design trends, decoration excesses towards new sensibility.

Categorizing seems to be one of the natural human necessities in its eagerness to

establish order, order that can be based on natural or artificial phenomenon (literature,
thought schools, etc.). There are several denominations in literature that are useful to
frame, class or categorize works and writers such as Classicism, Romanticism, Neo-
Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, Surrealism, etc, etc. Yet, there are
works that are very difficult to categorize, difficulty that undoubtedly contributes to
their richness and to their resistance to be domesticated. The concept of domestication is
a way of denominating those works that resist to be read with only one interpretation,
works where illegibility is a characteristic that was sought and in which the lack of an
unequivocal meaning or exegesis disturbs many readers, seduces others and, inevitably,
frustrates plenty. An example of these “rebel” works is Trilce of César Vallejo. The asset
of these works lays in the fact that they can be always read in different ways, that they
resist a single interpretation –or they resist any interpretation at all- and for that, beside
having a high degree of illegibility that are highly indomitable.

Is there any piece of furniture that is unique and bizarre, almost impossible to
categorize? (We say almost because in the human necessity to classify, it can be
classified as unclassifiable). When talking about furniture what really matters are the
possibilities of inclusion in a room as well as the possibilities of combination with other
furniture. These are pieces of furniture that, without a doubt, capture the eye and self-
establish as the central piece of any room. Furniture which’s protagonism forces the
room and its design to adapt to the furniture and not the other way around.

The Traforata chair has been described as the king’s chair; the associations are obvious
and they are clear to the sight: the detailed wood carvings on the chair point out to
antique furniture and to the baroque art, which can be noticed in the lion’s head on the
armrest and also the animal paws in the front legs. But is the upholstery that is going to
make all the difference in this case: if the classic red fabric with golden tacks is to be
chosen, or the black and golden wood with red fabric, the accomplished style has
already been seen and processed, it has been, basically, done.

If instead the upholstery is neither conventional –to the chair- nor typical of antique
furniture the result is a chair that can be described as a hybrid. In other words, a unique
chair that is opposed to kitsh (by kitsh we understand that that does not produce a new
feeling, that it has turn itself into a model that the reader, spectator or the audience
already posses the means to interpret and that does not imply a work of decoding nor
imagination. Kitsch is what does not move or touch).

Many works of art intend to produce an impact, this chair, without a doubt is impressive
and even monstrous. An average reader will interpret monstrosity as something
negative, but we must remember that something can be called monstrous because of its
size or because of its grotesque combinations which lead to a disturbing result.
Monstrous is such because it is impossible to classify, is that which cannot be
assimilated and that, if it finally is absorbed, ceases to be monstrous. César Aira –a
brilliant literary critic- has defined the Argentine writer’s, Roberto Arlt, prose as
monstrous due to the lack of distance between narrator and reader. The monstrosity of
El Juguete Rabioso (The Rabid Toy), Los Siete Locos (The Seven Madmen) and Los
Lanzallamas (The Flame-Throwers), amongst other works, not only lies in the narrator’s
complexity but also in the non-literature-conventional vocabulary (related to what
Beatriz Sarlo has defined as “poor man’s knowledge”) and the characters (were the
double figure can be drawn between Erdosain and Barsut). More importantly, Arlt´s
work monstrosity resides, in the first place, in its hybridism (the mixing between
German Expressionism, North American Existentialism and Italian Futurism without
the predominance of any), as well as in its complete lack of adscription to any ideology.
The secret society in which the main character gets involved, mixes fascist and
communist discourse, spiritual and technological discourse and religious and atheist
discourse.

The amalgamation of contradictory discourses and of supposing opposite ideologies is

what leads to the absolute unbelief towards any ideology and towards the notion of
ideology as a lie (there is a constant mention to the metaphysic lie). Arlt’s writing
monstrosity led many contemporary critics to disdain the author pleading that, simply,
Roberto Arlt did not know how to write. What happened is that the violence of a
deformed and aggressive way of writing towards correct writing bristled up many critics
(it is necessary to mention that The Seven Madmen, written in 1929, foretells the 1930
military coup, showing Arlt’s lucidity and his ability to understand the Argentine society
as well as decoding all the discourses circulating at that moment in time). For these
reasons, and some others (as the possibility of interpreting Arlt’s works always in a
different way according to the context of the interpretation, and for its untamable and
inaccessible characteristics) Argentine critics were driven to acknowledge Arlt’s literary
value over the famous Jorge Luis Borges (of course, two very different styles, and also
the fact that Borges works with the notion of shore while Arlt works with the idea of
totality –of the anguish, imprisonment, madness, etc.)

It is clear that introducing furniture of such characteristics represents a massive

challenge. The Traforata chair in its black wood with black and white upholstery version
demands advanced knowledge in interior design to provide with an adequate context in
which the hybridity of this chair can be placed in the foreground and be complemented
with other furniture. Without a question, this is a piece of furniture for those that,
disdaining kitsch, seek after a new sensibility, for those who aim to accomplish an
interior design that is impressive in the most powerful, irate and even violent meaning
of the word.