In the movie “Please Give” a well-heeled New York City couple buys vintage mid-century furniture from dead people’s relatives and resells it to stylish, ignorant young urbanites, making a handsome living in the process. Parts of the film look like they were shot on location at the White on White showroom, which is stuffed with valuable pieces. Some, the chairs especially, are so ubiquitous that they’ve lost their allure. Some, like the clocks and tableware, seem hopelessly whimsical. And some, like the smaller tables, have been approximated so closely (and so cheaply) by IKEA that to seek out and purchase the originals would be absurd.
Why do we fetishize mid-century modern design? The furniture (and the clothing too) has a clean, graphic look but it’s uncomfortable. And the style hearkens back to a time when American culture was oppressively rigid, both politically and emotionally. The mid-century pieces that continue to intrigue me are the ones that are rather ungainly, like the Rae and Charles Eames ESU’s (Eames Storage Units). They’re funny and Frankenstein-like, assembled from bits of mismatched materials. They don’t have the stylish chill of so many other mid-century designs.
