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INTERIOR DECORATION 
WHAT IS MODERN DECORATION? 
The Why and Wherefore of Vivid Colors and Original 
Furniture and The Decorators Who Are Using Them 
M odern decoration represents the re¬ 
turn of a sense of humor into art. 
It is the same spirit which inspired the 
Gothic carvers in their execution of fan¬ 
tastic shapes on their most reverenced cathe¬ 
drals. And indeed, reverence and humor 
generally go hand in hand, so that the 
indications of the present age represent a 
Renaissance of reverence: a new birth of 
thought, care, taste, study and individuality. 
We are in the period of the 
earlyseekers; we aretheGiot- 
tos,the Cimabues,of this cen¬ 
tury, or rather the unknown 
strugglers of the pre-natal pe¬ 
riod ; those who render the Gi¬ 
ottos and Cimabues possible. 
Parallel Paradoxes 
The art of literature il’us- 
trates today the same tend¬ 
ency as the art of decoration. 
A man is no longer either a 
humorist or an author. Mark- 
Twain could now secure a 
serious reading, a thing 
which he found himself for¬ 
ever denied because his large 
and loving public insisted on 
regarding him as a funny 
man. We have come to real¬ 
ize at last that laughter and 
tears may be only a hair’s 
breadth apart. 
In the theatre it is possible 
to produce “Another Way 
Out” and “Bushido” side by 
side, and Bernard Shaw is 
recognized as the most seri¬ 
ous of all existent drama¬ 
tists, despite his unmatched 
wealth of epigram. It is the 
age of immoral moralists, of 
amusing thinkers, of gay 
churchmen, and of artists 
who dare to be inartistic— 
according to their elders. 
I said, in an earlier num¬ 
ber of this magazine, that 
good taste has become the 
cheapest and most mediocre 
thing in the world; that 
chorus girls dress in it, 
married nonentities live sur¬ 
rounded by it, and brainless 
B. RUSSELL HERTS 
decorators still continue to preach it—often 
as a special discovery of their own. 
We moderns are in rebellion against this 
negative philosophy, this eternal affirmation 
of what must not be done. In art, as in 
morals, the determination of this century 
seems to be that “Thou shalt not” must be 
demoted from its place of honor. We are 
tired of the eternal preachment of neutral 
backgrounds, of taupe walls, taupe rugs, 
cream ceilings, enamel in the bedroom and 
walnut in the sitting-room and oak in the 
dining-room. We despise the “charming,” 
“interesting,” “delightful” combinations, in 
such constant use among the twenty dollar 
salesmen at department stores. We wel¬ 
come the bizarre, the ridiculous, the vivid 
exhibitions that would have been reveled in 
by the very masters of the 
15th Century, whom we are 
told to copy, if these men 
were living today. 
For the greatest ,ages of 
decoration have invariably 
been vivid, in the colors of 
art and of life. The walls of 
Greek houses, we now know, 
were resplendent in strong 
color, the Gothic reeked with 
vivid painted and inlaid sur¬ 
faces, the Renaissance em¬ 
ployed hues of which we 
have today only the disinte¬ 
grating remains. What we 
copy in our art schools, is not 
the color of old Italian 
fabrics, but the discolor of 
four hundred years of wear 
and tear. The worship of 
the antique is a glorification 
of dullness and drabness that 
would have been reviled by 
the very men who designed 
and executed the originals. 
Let our over-cultivated in¬ 
structors do their best to 
make us believe in the in¬ 
fallibility of their convention 
of the disgrace of newness, 
of the horror of fresh paint. 
In the Affirjmative 
So much for our denial of 
the negative anti-Victorian- 
ism of 1900. But something 
remains to be said on the 
afiirmative side of our ac¬ 
complishment. Mrs. Hazel 
H. Adler has written a three 
hundred page book in ex¬ 
planation of this, but in some 
ways her very worth while 
accomplishment seems to me 
Herts Brothers Co., Decorators 
The 'furniture in this houdoir was inspired hy the dachshund—witness the 
legs. It is enameled blue with darker raised moulding and panels in rose, 
green and yellow. Upholstery and hangings in gold and yellow 
