Abstract

In early twentieth-century Shanghai, numerous journals articulated how to beautify homes to be modern, and the eponymous monograph Modern Home Decoration published in 1933. These publications regarded the ‘Western-style’ house as a model to shape and disseminate the ideal imagination of the ‘modern home’. This article uses the case of the press literature to chart the specific principles of modern home decoration. It compares the ideal model to lived experience, pinpointing the chasm between ideal imagination and everyday life. It then explains the causes of difference, arguing that it showed the specific responses of Chinese intellectuals to the political failure. The ideal model was the endeavour they made to construct a new cultural identity. However, they ignored the cultural inertia and complexity of citizens’ everyday life that doomed the ideal to unfulfillment, which underscored the importance of understanding the specific cultural base rationale of custom for bridging the gap.

Keywords

modern home, interior decoration, everyday life, cultural identity

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Oct 9th, 9:00 AM

Ideal model and everyday life: interior decoration of the modern home in early twentieth-century Shanghai

In early twentieth-century Shanghai, numerous journals articulated how to beautify homes to be modern, and the eponymous monograph Modern Home Decoration published in 1933. These publications regarded the ‘Western-style’ house as a model to shape and disseminate the ideal imagination of the ‘modern home’. This article uses the case of the press literature to chart the specific principles of modern home decoration. It compares the ideal model to lived experience, pinpointing the chasm between ideal imagination and everyday life. It then explains the causes of difference, arguing that it showed the specific responses of Chinese intellectuals to the political failure. The ideal model was the endeavour they made to construct a new cultural identity. However, they ignored the cultural inertia and complexity of citizens’ everyday life that doomed the ideal to unfulfillment, which underscored the importance of understanding the specific cultural base rationale of custom for bridging the gap.

 

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