The shock of the new: Difference between revisions

Clean lines and flat panels don’t age well. They don’t take ''dirt''. It is easy to make them look tired & decrepit. Classical structures — as in “traditional”, but also in the strict sense of classical —''do'' age well. Ornament and figure instead of functional cleanliness is punctuation; it anticipates decay. Ergo, ornament ''has'' a function: exactly that: to anticipate decay.  Dirt and grime colours it in;  highlights lines, ''enhances'' it: gives it an air of ''permanence''. This is may be a variety of [[Anti-fragile|anti-fragility]]. If your sense of modern is so clean and functional that it is rendered vulnerable by atrophy, rather than simply stoic, and dignified, steer clear of it. Modernism suffers from decay that obscures and debilitates its form — here decay is noise: classicism benefits from decay that ''accentuates'' its form — here decay is signal. ===Innovation and plausibility===