Yeah, the IKEA model makes sense for a lot of reasons. But I think the broader aesthetic landscape draws that into question too - I can understand bland archite

Yeah, the IKEA model makes sense for a lot of reasons. But I think the broader aesthetic landscape draws that into question too - I can understand bland architecture or interior design, I have trouble understanding the relative simplicity of music, fine art, or fiction from the past 20 years along those lines. I think it’s clearly related to the demise of postmodern aesthetics - the intentional gaudiness/kitsch of the 60’s-90’s has kind of fallen away to a reinvention of MCM aesthetics: vaguely space-age, sleek and refined, high class, rather than the scattershot pastiche of postmodernism.