Decoration of Spaces and Meaning

July 29, 2015 Charlene Wang de Chen

My friend recently posted a longread from Slate magazine about gay identity.

One thing that really jumped out at me in the article (in relation to this blog) is the intro which discusses decoration of interior spaces in relation to gay identity quoting some notable writers.

I've pasted below the interesting snippets about the function of decoration in spaces and their meaning.

“The apartment treated as a stage set—dramatically lit, designed to be taken in all at once and from the entrance,” Edmund White wrote in his road-trip survey of American gay life in the late 1970s, “remains a gay apartment, whether the décor is high camp or high tech, cluttered comfort or austere emptiness.” Less than a decade later, the writer and director Neil Bartlett observed of English gay spaces: “Our rooms are not decorated to announce our occupation or our family status; they are not really ‘domestic’ interiors. They need reflect nothing but the tastes of their owner, the pleasure he takes in his life, his ability to choose and arrange his possessions.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/05/can_you_be_homosexual_without_being_gay_the_future_of_cruising_drag_and.html