For years after the recession, this was the dominant means of performing refinement: hanging Edison bulbs, plain camel-colored sweaters, a cappuccino resting stoically on a reclaimed-wood table. It is also not a coincidence that it is occurring at the tail end of a decade defined by minimalism, a way of explicitly rejecting the spare white walls and perfectly placed wooden salad bowls of professional taste-havers on Instagram. The trend of surrounding ourselves with more things didn’t come out of nowhere “vintage maximalism,” along with “Kindercore,” “texture galore,” and “statement doorknobs,” was among Architectural Digest’s design predictions for 2020. And living in an apartment crammed full of potted dirt and leaves is now, for whatever reason, a status symbol. To look at a maximalist home is to get a sense of what the inside of a person’s brain might look like - the places they’ve visited, their heritage, the random objects they’ve amassed over a lifetime. “Goblincore” and “grandmillennial” design, aesthetics devoted to the collection and display of eclectic or handmade heirlooms, are going viral on Tumblr and Pinterest. Instagram accounts full of maximalist interiors by designers like Dabito, Justina Blakeney of the Jungalow, and Kelly Mindell of Studio DIY have hundreds of thousands of followers, while popular home publications like Apartment Therapy and Domino regularly spotlight busy, visually textured spaces. “Girls only want one thing and it’s a living room with hardwood floors a green velvet sofa and a colorful rug,” reads a viral tweet from August. Because lately, it seems, all everyone seems to want is more - and weirder - stuff. My wall of terrible art is, to me, part anxious quarantine hobby and part aesthetic journey toward maximalism, where rooms can be filled with color and kookiness and objects that don’t match, and that’s the point. It was leaning on a pile of black trash bags on the curb, covered in mysterious gray filth. Since March, I have added several works to it, including a stained print of the three little bears from Goodnight Moon that I found on the sidewalk, a cat painting I bought on Etsy for only $20 because the artist admitted he wasn’t very good, and a massive and tacky reproduction of a vintage French wine advertisement, the kind sold on the pigeon-infested tourist promenades outside the Louvre. There is an ugly, mismatched, and rapidly growing art collection on my living room wall. Part of The Home Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.
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