Art of Domesticity

Definition

The art of domesticity is Kevin Melchionne's concept for the aesthetic-artistic significance of domestic practice, stated in two connected theses. First, the two arts: "The art of domesticity means not just that the house is art, but that the very way of living in it is also an art, made and remade on a daily basis. As we shall see, these two arts, making and living, are connected" (p. 230). The first art is the designed composition (the house as artwork — the Glass House's "conception of order embodied in the arrangement of objects"); the second art is the daily performance of dwelling that respects and reflects the composition. Second, the continuity of the extreme and the ordinary: the Glass House "is only an extremely refined version of what any sensitive homemaker creates" (p. 230) — the hyperorganized masterpiece and the ordinary home differ in refinement, not in kind. Third, homemaking completed: "Along with the important care-work that often characterizes domestic responsibilities, this is what I take to be the genuine meaning of the term homemaking" (p. 230) — homemaking names the care-work plus the art of living, both implicated with "tidying" and labour (editors' headnote, p. 228). The concept's warrant is the revealing-failure method: "to genuinely understand what it takes to live in the Glass House will bring us a long way in understanding how it is that the ordinary process of inhabiting our homes is an artistic practice, a kind of environmental art" (p. 229).

Key Thinkers

• Kevin Melchionne — the concept's author (1998/2006): the definition, the limit-case method (the Glass House), and the everyday-aesthetics grounding (art as what "refine[s] and intensif[ies] experiences already available to us in everyday life," p. 230).
• Philip Johnson — the refined pole's author (not yet paged — see log): the designer whose house makes the first art (the composition) at the cost of the second (livability) — "did not design the house for anyone but himself" (p. 230).
• The "sensitive homemaker" — the concept's unnamed practitioner (p. 230): the ordinary occupant whose daily practice already is environmental art; the figure whose labour connects the concept to the housekeeping tradition (Madigan & Munro, Gordon).
• Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston — the editors whose headnote frames the concept: "domesticity becomes both an act of making and an art of living, implying that domestic practice is aesthetically and artistically significant… it implicates 'tidying' and labour in the art of domesticity" (p. 228).

Related Concepts

• glass-house — the concept's limit case: the house that is art but "never recedes into the background, never becomes an environment for the practices of everyday life" (p. 229).
• radical-aesthete — the concept's limit-case practitioner: the person whose daily living does everything a home requires "in a way that respects and reflects the artistic integrity of the space" (p. 231).
• tidying — the concept's labour: the returning of everything to its spot that maintains the composition; "maintain, that is, clean up" (pp. 231–232).
• everyday-life — the concept's material: an art "made and remade on a daily basis" whose function is to "refine and intensify experiences already available to us in everyday life" (p. 230).
• environmental-aesthetics — the concept's frame: domestic practice as "a kind of environmental art" (p. 229), via Sparshott's environmental aesthetics.
• domestic-interior — the concept's site: the interior as a field of cultural production where practice is aesthetically significant.
• habit — the concept's medium: the "repertoire of habits" as the daily remaking's instrument; "design leads and habit follows" (p. 231).
• care — the concept's labour-content: "the important care-work that often characterizes domestic responsibilities" as part of "the genuine meaning of the term homemaking" (p. 230).
• homeliness — the concept's popular register: the "dowdy familiarity" the Glass House lacks is part of livability's aesthetic (p. 229).
• occupant-as-designer — the concept's kin thesis: both make the occupant's activity design; Melchionne's version adds the aesthetic-philosophical warrant (inhabitation as art) to Spankie's authorial one (arrangement as "a personal interior architecture").

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Living in Glass Houses (Melchionne 1998/2006) — the concept's founding and sole source: the definition (p. 230); the two arts and their connection (p. 230); the homemaking formula (care-work + art of living, p. 230); the extreme/ordinary continuity ("only an extremely refined version of what any sensitive homemaker creates," p. 230); the double achievement of the habit-repertoire (p. 231); the editors' headnote framing (p. 228).

Open Questions

• Who performs the art? The chapter names "care-work" and the wealthy who "can pay to have someone else maintain, that is, clean up, the rarefied design" (pp. 230, 232) but never assigns the labour: is the art of domesticity one art performed by two people (the aesthete and the cleaner), or two arts that the class division splits apart? See tidying, gender-and-the-interior.
• Refinement's direction: the Glass House is the homemaker's art "extremely refined" — but refinement cut comfort, casualness and dowdy familiarity (p. 229). Is refinement therefore not a single scale: what the Glass House refines (formal order) is exactly not what the homemaker's art consists in (livability)? Or does the homemaker's art have a formal pole the Glass House isolates?
• Is the daily remaking compatible with the fixed composition? In the Glass House the composition is protected ("To move… a piece of the composition is to destroy the work of art," p. 231) while the art of living is "made and remade on a daily basis" (p. 230) — remaking appears only as identical repetition (everything returned to its spot). Is an art of domesticity possible whose composition also changes — and would that be Baldwin's rule-breaking room or the end of composition altogether? See rule-breaking, habit.
• Recognition: the concept claims domestic practice "is aesthetically and artistically significant" (headnote, p. 228) — but claims are not institutions. What would it take for the art of domesticity to be recognized as art (galleries? criticism? a name for the artist other than 'homemaker')? Cf. Drobnick's line that "Marginalized, private, or everyday experiences, such as those typically associated with women's domestic labour, can be given distinction and value."