Simplicity

Definition

Simplicity is the permanent watchword of Elsie de Wolfe's decorating method — "Always I keep in mind the importance of simplicity" (p. 82) — and the interior's clarifying operation: the simple, unencumbered room achieved by a process of elimination rather than by adding purer things. "It is such a relief to return to the tranquil, simple forms of furniture, and to decorate our rooms by a process of elimination. How many rooms have I not cleared of junk – this heterogeneous mass of ornamental 'period' furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room 'look cozy'" (p. 85). The result is a paradoxical apotheosis of decoration: "Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the room comes back, the architectural spaces are freed and now stand in their proper relation to the furniture. In other words, the architecture of the room becomes its decoration" (p. 85) — decoration completed by its own removal, with architecture supplying the ornamental order. Its faculty is moral rather than technical: "we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is simple" (p. 83) — and its social pole is the honest commonplace against the sham: "We are too afraid of the restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world?" (pp. 83–84). The Intimus editors read the program forward into the century: de Wolfe's message was "what we would now recognise as modernism's aesthetic of the simple and unencumbered interior."

Key Thinkers

• Elsie de Wolfe — the concept's decorator-author: simplicity as conscience, elimination as decoration, and the room cleared of junk until "the architecture of the room becomes its decoration" (1913).
• William W. Braham — the convention-tracker of simplicity's career: Emily Post's ethic "emptiness is always an essential of classic beauty and dignity" is "virtually identical to de Wolfe's 'simplicity and reticence,' and the 'better none at all' of The International Style" (p. 60) — the decorator's watchword as the domestic prehistory of the modern palette.
• Billy Baldwin — the simplicity-as-dictum critic: the client who took de Wolfe's advice as "unalterable dictum" and her roses that "were just furniture" (p. 27) — the watchword petrified into sterility.
• David Batchelor — the chromophobic limit of the same ideal: the white interior "where clarity was confusion, simplicity was complication, and art was uniformly grey" (p. 31) — simplicity's architectural purification regime.
• Charles L. Eastlake — the reform direction's earliest statement (1868): the Intimus editors' headnote credits his influential handbook with having "sought a simpler cleaner style of furniture that could also be reflected in the decoration of the interior" — the "simpler cleaner style" whose direction runs through Dresser's repose-regulated decoration (1876) to de Wolfe's elimination (1913) and beyond; in the excerpt itself the simplicity-demand appears negatively, as the attack on the encumbered conventions ("red flock-paper staring us in the face," p. 101) and on the "flimsy and extravagant" upstairs furniture (p. 102).
• Norman Potter — simplicity's workshop exemplars (1990/2006): the four-ounce Meta-fuel kitchen whose "form is a model of clarity and intelligence"; Aalto's trolley — "so beautifully generalised (and so beautiful to look at) that it can be used for almost anything that fits. Such inspired simplicity bespeaks a natural survivor"; and the Penton kitchen's "necessary and rational clarity in the way the elements come together, without which the approach would seem arbitrary and over-structured" — simplicity as clarity of relation, tested by use (see kitchen).
• Edith Wharton & Ogden Codman Jr — simplicity's architectural warrant, fifteen years before de Wolfe (1898/2006): the Intimus headnote names the book "a champion of modern thinking and design values which privilege simplicity, appropriate proportion and sensible utilisation of ornamental style to define a new version of harmony for interior architecture" (p. 387) — simplicity paired with proportion as the modern values' first pair; and the historical argument by which simplicity is claimed for the great styles themselves: "the bed-rooms, sitting-rooms, libraries and other private apartments in the smaller dwelling-houses built in Europe between 1650 and 1800 were far simpler, less pretentious and more practical in treatment than those in the average modern house" (p. 390) — the reform's simplicity represented as the historical norm and modern practice as the pretentious deviation.

Related Concepts

• Suitability — the triad's first term: suitability decides what fits, simplicity conducts what remains.
• Modernism — the editors' proto-modernist reading: the "aesthetic of the simple and unencumbered interior" avant la lettre; the domestic prehistory of the purged room.
• The Decorative — the decorative's internal reform: decoration by elimination, in which "the architecture of the room becomes its decoration" — the purge the modernists later imposed from the facade's side, here performed from the room's side.
• Sterility of Perfection — simplicity's pathological afterlife: the watchword hardened into dictum; Baldwin's warning that advice taken as law deadens the room it cleans.
• Taste — simplicity as taste's moral register: "we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is simple."
• Whiteness — the architectural destination of the same ideal: Batchelor's white regime as simplicity's building-scale purification (see chromophobia).
• Natural Finishes — the palette-form of the convention: Braham's convergence of de Wolfe's "simplicity and reticence" with Post and the International Style's "better none at all."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The Historical Tradition (Wharton & Codman 1898/2006) — the headnote's proto-modernist framing ("a champion of modern thinking and design values which privilege simplicity, appropriate proportion and sensible utilisation of ornamental style to define a new version of harmony for interior architecture," p. 387) and the excerpt's historical argument for it: the private apartments of 1650–1800 — "bed-rooms, sitting-rooms, libraries" — "were far simpler, less pretentious and more practical in treatment than those in the average modern house" (p. 390), the great styles' domestic career claimed as simpler than the present's; the Louis XIV style defended through "one of the simple panelled rooms, with tall windows, a dignified fireplace, large tables and comfortable arm-chairs… to be found in the private houses of the same period" against the Versailles state-apartments misreading (pp. 389–390); and the liberation-claim that frames the simple as the freer option — "to follow a certain style is not to sacrifice either convenience or imagination, but to give more latitude to both" (p. 390). Where de Wolfe's simplicity is a subtraction within the furnished room (1913), Wharton & Codman's is a historical claim: the styles' own domestic practice was simple, and modernity's pretension is the deviation. See proportion, the-double-test.
• Ultrasuede (Wagner 2002/2006) — the editors' headnote frames Wagner's essay as unification 'via surface continuity, and therefore an elimination of eclectic clutter' — simplicity re-stated as the postwar interior's governing operation, but performed by architecture's orchestrating surfaces rather than by the decorator's eliminations (de Wolfe) or the reformer's programs (Eastlake). Wagner's cases execute simplicity at scale: the 'slum of legs' cleared by unified pedestal bases (p. 380–381), furniture 'erased' by the reprogrammed shell (p. 385), Newman's enemy 'object-matter' — 'it is clutter either way' (p. 385) — refused for 'the whole space.' The page's elimination lineage (de Wolfe's 'process of elimination,' the Beechers' economy) here acquires its modernist-total form: not simplifying within the furnished room but absorbing the furnishing into continuous surface. See stylistic-unity, homogenization.
• Suitability, Simplicity and Proportion (de Wolfe 1913/2006) — the primary source: "Always I keep in mind the importance of simplicity" (p. 82); conscience as its faculty (p. 83); the "restful commonplaces"/"comfortably commonplace" defense (pp. 83–84); decoration "by a process of elimination" and "the architecture of the room becomes its decoration" (p. 85); the editors' proto-modernist framing.
• A Wall of Books (Braham 1999/2006) — the convention-historical confirmation: Post's emptiness-ethic "virtually identical to de Wolfe's 'simplicity and reticence,' and the 'better none at all' of The International Style" (p. 60) — the watchword's route into the modern palette doctrine.
• The Sterility of Perfection + The Rule Breaker's Success (Baldwin 1972/2006) — the dictum-life of simplicity: de Wolfe's own advice fossilized (p. 27), the genre's self-deadening that the manifesto against perfection records.
• Chromophobia (Batchelor 2000/2006) — the architectural purification regime: "the inside-out interior of a colourless whiteness where clarity was confusion, simplicity was complication" (p. 31) — the same ideal at building scale, diagnosed as its own complication.
• On the Means by which Repose is Attainable in Decoration (Dresser 1876/2006) — the counter-position from within the same reform tradition: plainness itself can fail, because it can reveal lack — "A plain wall of dingy colour reveals a want; it does not then supply all that is necessary to the production of a sense of quiet and rest. A wall may be covered with the richest decoration, and yet be of such a character that the eye will rest upon it and be satisfied" (p. 87); grey, mud-colour and black are explicitly refused ("We need not paint the walls of our apartments grey, nor of mud-colour, neither need we make them black," pp. 86–87). Where de Wolfe's elimination frees "the architectural spaces" of junk, Dresser's criterion (repose as "the absence of any want") marks the floor beneath which elimination fails: the simple room that reads as impoverished stops giving rest. The tension between the two programs — decorative sufficiency versus decorative subtraction — runs through the whole advice-literature lineage (see repose, the-decorative).
• The Dining Room (Eastlake 1868/2006) — the lineage's starting point (1868, the earliest source in the wiki's decorating tradition): the editors' headnote frames the programme Eastlake founded — "a simpler cleaner style of furniture that could also be reflected in the decoration of the interior" — and the excerpt shows what that simplicity is against: the room-codes' encumbrances ("a red flock-paper staring us in the face," p. 101), the "flimsy and extravagant" upstairs furniture against the "solid, gloomy, and often cumbersome" downstairs kind (p. 102), and the multi-style mansion's "Gothic halls, Elizabethan chambers, Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms… all under one roof" (p. 102). Eastlake's simplicity is cleanliness of principle (one style, chosen and held) rather than de Wolfe's subtraction (elimination of objects) — the reform direction's first, still-furnished simplicity, forty-five years before the decorator's purge. See design-reform, stylistic-unity.
• 'Decorators May be Compared to Doctors' (Ferry 2003/2006) — the reform idiom's second professional voice (1876): the Garretts praise Eastlake's own manner as "a style of furniture which is simple and direct in its outline, and entirely free from those pretentious attempts at ornament with which even the simplest and cheapest furniture is now abundantly disfigured" (quoted p. 111) — simplicity and directness of outline against "pretentious" ornament, the reform aesthetic stated in exactly Eastlake's terms; and their 'Houses As They Might Be' programme — "simple, well-constructed furniture based on eighteenth century models," in houses of "the solid and unpretentious style" (quoted pp. 112, 114) — gives the simple the historical style that grounds it (see queen-anne-style). Between Eastlake's cleanliness-of-principle and de Wolfe's elimination stands the Garretts' third form: simplicity as historically-modelled construction.
• Streamlining: The Aesthetics of Waste (Lupton & Miller 1992/2006) — the same phrase, industrialized: Lupton & Miller's master concept is the "process of elimination" — "the overlapping patterns of biological digestion, economic consumption, and aesthetic simplification" (p. 204) — in which Victorian "plush fabrics, carved moldings and intricate decorations… were rejected as dangerous breeding grounds for germs and dust, giving way to non-porous materials, flush surfaces and rounded edges" (pp. 204–205). Where de Wolfe eliminates to free "the architectural spaces" for comfort and dignity, the sanitary elimination removes ornament as dirt-trap — the same subtraction with a different warrant (conscience vs. bacteriology) and a different economy (the room cleared once vs. the object replaced endlessly, see creative-waste). The convergence suggests the decorator's watchword and modernism's hygiene are one history: simplicity's "process of elimination" is the bathroom regime's aesthetic branch (see bathroom, process-of-elimination, whiteness).
• The Kitchen as a Place to Be (Potter 1990/2006) — simplicity's workshop criterion, the watchword shifted from subtraction to clarity-of-relation: the four-ounce exemplar — "Its weight is four ounces, its form is a model of clarity and intelligence, and no product designer has yet reached near enough to design the life out of it" (p. 264); the Aalto trolley — "so beautifully generalised (and so beautiful to look at) that it can be used for almost anything that fits. Such inspired simplicity bespeaks a natural survivor, as might be said of other Aalto pieces which seem, at first acquaintance, imperfectly realised in the organic impress of their use" (p. 265); and the Penton kitchen's defence of its own complexity — "'simple' is not perhaps the first word that comes to mind; though I believe there is a necessary and rational clarity in the way the elements come together, without which the approach would seem arbitrary and over-structured" (pp. 265–266). Where the advice-lineage simplifies by elimination (de Wolfe) and hygiene (Lupton & Miller), Potter's simplicity is generality under test — the Aalto surviving because "imperfectly realised in the organic impress of their use," the simple thing being the one that admits almost anything that fits (see kitchen, use-value).

Open Questions

• Is simplicity a subtraction with a floor? De Wolfe eliminates junk until "the architectural spaces are freed" — but Baldwin's critique suggests elimination, too, can be overdone (the room "so beautiful, yet so cold"). Where is simplicity's stopping point, and who decides?
• De Wolfe's simplicity is chintz, prints, comfortable plain furniture — a furnished simplicity. The International Style's is an emptiness ethic ("better none at all"). Are these the same concept, or did "simplicity and reticence" change meaning when it migrated from the decorator's comfortable commonplace to the architect's blank surface?
• "The architecture of the room becomes its decoration" — decoration abolished or decoration absolutized? If architecture can be decoration, does the ornament debate's premise (decoration as addition) collapse?
• The conscience-faculty makes simplicity a moral category — vulgarity, shams, insincerity. Does moralized simplicity (in de Wolfe as later in minimalism) always smuggle in a class judgment about who can afford to be simple?
• De Wolfe's "process of elimination" (1913) and Lupton & Miller's "process of elimination" (1992/2006) share a phrase but not a warrant: comfort's clearing versus hygiene's purge. Is the shared phrase evidence that the decorator's elimination and the sanitary elimination are one history — the conscience-faculty a sublimation of the germ — or only a coincidence of idiom that the wiki should resist over-systematizing? See process-of-elimination, bathroom.

(Note: the elimination passage is marked "(… p 26)" in the raw excerpt, indicating its position at pp. 25–6 of the original 1913 text (Ayer reprint, 1998).)