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Toward a Throw-Away Culture. Consumerism, 'Style Obsolescence' and Cultural Theory in the 1950S and 1960S Author(S): Nigel Whiteley Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol

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Toward a Throw-Away Culture. Consumerism, 'Style Obsolescence' and Cultural Theory in the 1950S and 1960S Author(S): Nigel Whiteley Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol Toward a Throw-Away Culture. Consumerism, 'Style Obsolescence' and Cultural Theory in the 1950s and 1960s Author(s): Nigel Whiteley Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2, The 60s (1987), pp. 3-27 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360444 Accessed: 01-09-2016 14:55 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Oxford Art Journal This content downloaded from 146.111.150.79 on Thu, 01 Sep 2016 14:55:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Toward a Throw-Away Culture. Consumerism, 'Style Obsolescence' and Cultural Theory in the 1950s and 1960s NIGEL WHITELEY The 1960s are often thought of as the decade of guns and - a cause celbre - a pencil sharpener. In disposability. Expendability was indeed a central each case streamlining was, according to Sheldon aspect of much of the culture of the 1960s: it was and Martha Cheney in their 1936 book on Art and the both a physical fact of many products, and a symbol Machine, used as a language, 'as a sign and a symbol of belief in the modem age. Obsolescence was not of efficient precision'.2 The advantage to manu- only accepted by the fashion-conscious young, often facturers was pinpointed by an astute businessman: it was positively celebrated. An awareness of the role, 'streamlining a product and its method of merchan- meaning and significance of expendability is, there- dising is bound to propel it quicker and more profit- fore, crucial to a full understanding of 1960s' culture. ably through the channels of sales resistance'.3 But 'style obsolescence' was not a 1960s' invention: it Books, articles and statements by the first genera- can be traced directly back to the 'high mass- tion of American industrial designers such as consumption' stage of post-Second World War Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, Walter consumerist America, and has its origins even earlier Dorwin Teague and Raymond Loewy may often in the century. This paper describes the develop- have sought to justify their activities in terms of ment and workings of the American socio-economic creating a better world by making products more system of 'style obsolescence'; examines how the efficient, easier to operate and (in today's language) system was analysed by some critics and theorists more 'user friendly'. Ultimately, however, styling and raised to the level of a prescriptive cultural was about sales. When asked for his thoughts about theory; and discusses how the cultural theory and aesthetics in product design, Loewy outlined his the system of obsolescence continued or changed in simple but unambiguous view which 'consists of a the 1960s. beautiful sales curve shooting upwards'.4 By giving a product a fashionable appearance, the designer was virtually guaranteeing it would look old fashioned in two or three years time, and so was The idea that one disposes of artefacts or products building-in style obsolescence. In their influential before one actually needs to in order to buy a more book of 1932, Consumer Engineering: A New Technique up-to-date or desirable version is at least as old as for Prosperity, Roy Sheldon and Egmont Arens consumerism and capitalist society, but it is only in presented the case for a positive acceptance of style the twentieth century that products themselves have obsolescence by manufacturers. Rather than fearing been designed and manufactured with some form of it as the 'creeping death to his business', the conscious style obsolescence. manufacturer was beginning In America in the later 1920s and during the Depression, manufacturers found that a designer or, to understand that [obsolescence] has also a positive more commonly, a stylist could give a product what value; that it opens up as many fields as ever it closed; is now called 'added value', but what was then that for every superseded article there must be a new one termed 'eye appeal" - in other words the stylist which is eagerly accepted. He sees all of us throwing could make a product more appealing, more desir- razors away every day instead of using the same one for able, and so more likely to be purchased than its years. He turns in his motor car for a new one when there competition. To achieve this the American designer is no mechanical reason for so doing. He realizes that took as a starting point symbols that were under- many things become decrepit in appearance before the stood - and enjoyed - by the consumer. In the works wear out.5 1930s those symbols were derived from transport and fast travel: hence the vogue for streamlining with The manufacturer had to come to terms with the its connotations of speed, dynamism, efficiency and way consumers behave in order to plan and promote modernity. The craze stimulated a wealth of stream- obsolescence or, as the authors somewhat euphemis- lined products for which the style was functionally tically described it, 'progressive waste' or 'creative '6 unnecessary or even wildly inappropriate: radios, waste'. electric heaters, vacuum cleaners, irons, toasters, In his scholarly work on industrial design in jugs, pans, light fittings, cash registers, even stapler America in the inter-war years, Jeffrey Meikle THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 10:2 1987 3 This content downloaded from 146.111.150.79 on Thu, 01 Sep 2016 14:55:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms acknowledged that artificial obsolescence was philosophy of living. But on this side of the Atlantic the 'always a major undercurrent in the thirties'.7 whole set-up is different. Not only are our resources Occasionally it surfaced fully-fledged. In 1932, for greater; they are unsounded, unmeasured, many of them example, the manufacturing company Sears almost untouched . In America today we believe that Roebuck commissioned Raymond Loewy to design our progress and our chances of better living are in positive earning rather than in negative saving.9 a replacement for its old fashioned and boxy 'Coldspot' refrigerator. The new streamlined or cleanlined 'Coldspot' (Fig. 1(a)), introduced in 1935, They admitted that the justification for their pre- made Sears Roebuck a sales leader in the industry. ferred system was not absolute but temporal: 'In Restyled models appeared in 1936, 1937 and 1938 time we may approach the European point of view, (Fig.1(b)-1(d)). Each new model may have exhibited but that time is not yet ... We still have tree-covered only superficial modifications over the last, but these slopes to deforest and subterranean lakes of oil to tap changes were the 'visual trappings of progress with our gushers.' They further admitted 'We are desired by consumers'8 and they kept the company's perhaps unwise and enormously wasteful, as our sales high. conservation experts tell us', but concluded, in a The American economic system was becoming rationalised way which actually avoided the eco- increasingly dependent on high consumption as the logical issue, 'we are concerned with our psycho- means of creating wealth. Sheldon and Arens logical attitude as an actuality'.'0 employed not only economic but also cultural In the 1930s most products, whether refrigerators defences for this system which they defined as 'The or cars, were still far from 'saturation' level and American Way': many middle-income families were saving for their first one. But in the post-war period America Europe, without our enormous natural resources, whose moved into what has been called the 'high mass- land has been tilled for centuries and whose forests are consumption stage':11 the era of the advanced hand-planted state parks, is naturally conservative in its consumer - or consumerist - society when W-]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1~~~~- I Fig. 7(a). Raymond Loewy. Sears Coldspot re- Fig. l(b). Coldspot. 1936 restyle. frigerator, first design, 1935. 4 THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 10:2 1987 This content downloaded from 146.111.150.79 on Thu, 01 Sep 2016 14:55:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms a............. - Fig. 7(c). Coldspot, 1937re-s.yle. Fig. 1 (c). Coldspot, 1937 Fig. restyle. 1(d). Coldspot, 1938 restyle. saturation levels for many goods within middle- from $8.4 billion to almost $45 billion. And in 1950 income markets were achieved. Average family the credit card was introduced. income doubled in real terms between 1939 and In less than a quarter of a century the American 1945 and rose steadily thereafter. More significant economic system had shifted from one based on still was income distribution. Economic historians scarcity and need, to one based on abundance and agree that about half the population - not the desire. The keynote of the system was high con- poorest and not the wealthiest - enjoyed a substan- sumption and so the major problem, in the words of tial rise in their share of real income during and J. Gordon Lippincott in his forthright book Design shortly after the Second World War, and that their for Business, published in 1947, was of continually share remained generally stable from then on. This 'stimulating the urge to buy'12 once the market was redistribution to the burgeoning middle class saturated. Lippincott justified high consumption in meant an expanded market for homes, cars, a way which became standard in the 1950s: 'Any appliances and services - a high consumption method that can motivate the flow of merchandise to economy.
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