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Politics

New York Times: Those Silly Arabs! They Don't Even Know What Colors to Use!

Matt Welch | 5.16.2011 2:09 PM

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This is the most obnoxious opening section of a news story I've read in a long time:

BAGHDAD — In downtown Baghdad, a police headquarters has been painted two shades of purple: lilac and grape. The central bank, a staid building in many countries, is coated in bright red candy cane stripes.

Multicolored fluorescent lights cover one of the city's bridges, creating a Hawaiian luau effect. Blast walls and security checkpoints stick out because they are often painted in hot pink.

Baghdad has weathered invasion, occupation, sectarian warfare and suicide bombers. But now it faces a new scourge: tastelessness.

Iraqi artists and architecture critics who shudder at each new pastel building blame a range of factors for Baghdad's slide into tackiness: including corruption and government ineptitude, as well as everyday Iraqis who are trying to banish their grim past and are unaccustomed to having the freedom to choose any color they want.

"It's happening because Iraqis want to get rid of the recent past," said Caecilia Pieri, the author of "Baghdad Arts Deco: Architectural Brickwork 1920-1950." "They see the colors as a way of expressing something new, but they don't know which colors to use. The Arab mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It's anarchy of taste."

Maybe I'm having a case of the Mondays, but it seems to me every last thing about this article is contemptible.

Link via the Twitter feed of Daniel Hernandez, who derides the piece as "Latent 'taste' racism."

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Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

PoliticsMediaWorldCultureCivil LibertiesIraqAnarchismArchitectureRacismArt
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  1. Michael   14 years ago

    The article is vile, indeed, but "anarchy of taste" is now my new favorite concept nevertheless.

    1. Spiny Norman   14 years ago

      And it would be a damn good name for a band.

      1. PM770   14 years ago

        I'm wondering who is going to start using "The Taste Anarchist" as a handle here in the comments?

        1. The Taste Anarchist   14 years ago

          Done and done.

    2. CrackertyAssCracker   14 years ago

      I like the phrase mostly because of what it reveals about the shitbag who coined it. He wants all his tastes imposed on the rest of us by law. Taste totalitarianism. Eff that guy.

  2. Warty   14 years ago

    But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It's anarchy of taste.

    Good taste is impossible without coercion. All good flows from government.

    By the way, everyone knows that the ancient Greeks were incredibly garish, right?

    1. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

      One of those amazing gotcha moments in life for me was when (sometime during college) I first learned that all of those statues were painted.

      1. Joshua   14 years ago

        Same here. I am amused by art snobs who fawn over marble statuary, not realizing that the form's inception was incredibly different from what we see today. I sometimes wonder what an ancient greek would say in criticism of our sometimes slavish imitation of their art that leaves out such an important component.

        1. prolefeed   14 years ago

          Makes you wonder if those white marble pillars at the Acropolis were also brightly colored.

  3. Amakudari   14 years ago

    "They see the colors as a way of expressing something new, but they don't know which colors to use. The Arab mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It's anarchy of taste."

    Mein. Gott.

    We'll truly never be able to let them govern themselves.

  4. Tulpa   14 years ago

    It's like they've never taken a look at a painting from Renaissance Europe. People who've been surrounded by earth tones for centuries like bright colors.

    1. Been in the   14 years ago

      White House?

    2. CatoTheElder   14 years ago

      That goes double for people who live in sand.

  5. affenkopf   14 years ago

    The Arab mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome.

    Doing what you want with your building! No government regulations! Savages!

    1. Barely Suppressed Rage   14 years ago

      Am I reading the article wrong, or isn't it about government buildings?

      1. colson   14 years ago

        It's about more than government buildings. Take a look at how "horrible" it is in the accompanying pics.

        1. Mensan   14 years ago

          Looks fine to me. Of course, I am color blind.

  6. Episiarch   14 years ago

    The Arab mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it.

    How gauche, thinking they own their own property. It's just like Somalia!

    1. Brett L   14 years ago

      Fuck, they're freer than I am. The HOA would sue my ass into repainting if I painted my house two shades of purple.

      1. wylie   14 years ago

        Somalia. Check. HOAs. Check.

        At least I bothered to read before posting the same exact thoughts...

        ("Iraq, the new Libertarian Somali Paradise!")

    2. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

      Somalia is awash in unregulated color schemes. Visual terrorism at its worst.

      1. Aresen   14 years ago

        Obviously needs a regime of Licensed Home Decorators.

  7. Dagny T.   14 years ago

    The Arab sane/moral/reasonable/correct mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it.

    FTFY. And, I know, I know, what about the PROPURRTY VALOOZ??11!!

    Seriously, haters to the left. I like the bright colors, and the guy at the end of the article praying for sandstorms can go to hell.

    1. Been in the   14 years ago

      haters to the left? HOA are political party neutral. What they have in common is wealth.

    2. WarrenT   14 years ago

      That was Mowaffaq "Ellsworth" Taey.

  8. Corporate Drone   14 years ago

    Fucking freedom, how does it work?!

    1. JD   14 years ago

      Pretty poorly, according to the NYT.

  9. Tman   14 years ago

    Friedman said that if Iraq were more like China blahblahblah.....

    1. wylie   14 years ago

      ...that they'd stick with the Red/Green/Gold style of gaudiness?

  10. Michael   14 years ago

    Holy shit. Read the caption of the accompanying photo.

    1. Warty   14 years ago

      When Iraqis started rebuilding, there was no central arbiter of taste. Bright colors started appearing, and places like the Trade Ministry were done up in pink and orange stripes

      The writer of this garbage told us way more about himself than he meant to.

      1. marlok   14 years ago

        Some people lie in bed at night, restless, and praying for a "central arbiter."

  11. Spoonman.   14 years ago

    The central bank, a staid building in many countries

    Not in Houston, unfortunately:

    eyesore

    1. T   14 years ago

      That building perfectly expresses the Fed.

  12. Hobie Hanson   14 years ago

    I hear they let you paint your building pink, orange, and lavendar, in Somalia too. Maybe you guys should move to Baghdad or Mogadishu.

    1. Warty   14 years ago

      That was no random sequence of words, Tyler was an antenna. It was code. Part one of the code that was being picked up by Tyler and transmitted to somebody else. Me? Perhaps.

    2. Episiarch   14 years ago

      I already got to the Somalia joke way before you, Dan. You're slipping.

      1. Sudden   14 years ago

        The quintessential Libertarian shirt

        1. Dagny T.   14 years ago

          People are dumb enough to interpret that not as making fun of the meme, but as genuinely Hobie-in' it.

          1. Sudden   14 years ago

            There's a shirt for that too

            1. wylie   14 years ago

              Rule 34 covers t-shirts in addition to the innertubes by now, doesn't it?

              1. Dagny T.   14 years ago

                It's not a t-shirt but it does further the drinking game: ROOOOOOAAADDDS!

              2. sloopyinca   14 years ago

                I wish more people wore this shirt.

      2. Hobie Hanson   14 years ago

        Great minds think alike. Well, one of them at least.

  13. R C Dean   14 years ago

    Funny, I didn't think Iraqis were necessarily Arabs. Yet here the NYT is, conflating ethnic groups under an all-purpose (and arguably denigrating) moniker.

    1. wylie   14 years ago

      At least they didn't refer to them as Eskimos.

    2. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

      The Kurdlahoma separatists applaud your comment.

    3. Zeb   14 years ago

      Except for the Kurds, they are pretty much Arabs. I think that pretty much if you speak Arabic as your mother tongue, you are an Arab.

      1. sloopyinca   14 years ago

        So, we're English again? Fuck!

        1. SugarFree   14 years ago

          We are HonkieMcpalecasians.

          1. Morbo The Annihilator   14 years ago

            palecasian has a ring to it...

            1. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

              Viking hordes?

      2. GILMORE   14 years ago

        Blah blah blah.

        I've seen news organizations (and plenty of dipshit citizens) refer to Afghans as "Arabs", following your sorta-arbitrary logic: "if they's muslims, they're arabs!" They wear turbans!

        I'm sure many Arabs would agree with you in semantically erasing the existence of Kurds offhand.

        Circassian dog!

  14. Sudden   14 years ago

    I'll be the first one to go there, but this newfound interest in hot pink and purple palattes has me wondering if some of those Abu Ghraib images were really the result of coercion...

    1. Sudden   14 years ago

      NTTAWWT

  15. Ken Shultz   14 years ago

    "Iraqi artists and architecture critics who shudder at each new pastel building blame a range of factors for Baghdad's slide into tackiness: including corruption and government ineptitude, as well as everyday Iraqis who are trying to banish their grim past and are unaccustomed to having the freedom to choose any color they want."

    What is this: Queer Eye for the Iraqi Guy?

  16. Shocked   14 years ago

    There may be some licensed interior designers in Florida who will soon have more time on their hands. Maybe they can go to Iraq to help out.

  17. melman   14 years ago

    this means that the war is over, and we have won, if the worst the NY Times can do is complain about color choices

  18. Barely Suppressed Rage   14 years ago

    it seems to me every last thing about this article is contemptible.

    It's the fucking NYT; what did you expect? All the news that's printed to fit.

    1. JD the elder   14 years ago

      If it makes you feel any better, the NY Times has a long history of being wrong about nearly every damn thing that mattered. Google "New York Times Robert Goddard" for a good laugh.

  19. P Brooks   14 years ago

    Iraqi artists and architecture critics who shudder at each new pastel building blame a range of factors for Baghdad's slide into tackiness: including corruption and government ineptitude

    !!!!

    The Arab mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome.

    SEE?

    Those poor unenlightened dirt savages; this proves we need to "assist" them in developing a modern government.

    I say. make the First Lady Ambassador to Iraq, so she may show them the (Luminous) Path.

  20. Fist of Etiquette   14 years ago

    I wonder if Arabs see the same color red as I do. Whoa.

    1. wylie   14 years ago

      little know fact, Arabs are actually part honeybee and can see pretty deep into the UV part of the spectrum.

  21. Joe M   14 years ago

    Good god, that is ridiculous:

    Baghdad has weathered invasion, occupation, sectarian warfare and suicide bombers. But now it faces a new scourge: tastelessness.

    Indeed, if the article is referring to itself.

  22. NoVAHockey   14 years ago

    "For decades, Saddam Hussein's government ruled over aesthetics in Iraq's capital with the same grip it exercised over its people."

    But at least the buildings were uniform?

    1. Joe M   14 years ago

      Sure, people died under his rule, but at least the colors matched!

    2. CatoTheElder   14 years ago

      That's because the dear leader's picture was best displayed with a neutral background.

  23. Paul   14 years ago

    And what about those Afghanis and their trucks?

    1. Sudden   14 years ago

      I kept looking for the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus sign on that truck.

    2. JD   14 years ago

      I'll bet they don't even require emission testing.

    3. Scruffy Nerf Herder   14 years ago

      That's awesome

      1. Paul   14 years ago

        It's awesome on wheels.

  24. Fluffy   14 years ago

    I don't even think it's "latent" racism.

    It's funny to me that a bastion of supposed multiculturalism would print an article that criticizes a non-European culture for not subscribing to European-American bourgeois architectural conventions.

    "Damn you, Angkor Wat! You have no ionic columns ANYWHERE!"

    But to me the REALLY funny thing is that our own capital city was originally built in the neoclassical style, and the entire neoclassical style is built on a fundamental misconception: the idea that Roman buildings were white. Roman ruins are white because the medieval Romans were too poor and too few to keep the city up. The Roman forum in its heyday was painted in a garish profusion of colors. So our "tasteful" white government buildings got that way because we were too stupid to realize that we were copying Roman buildings wrong. FAIL.

    1. PIRS   14 years ago

      Great comment!

      +999999999999999

    2. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

      Someone should secretly paint the neoclassical style buildings on the Mall.

    3. NYT   14 years ago

      We liked Stalin's architecture better!

    4. OO   14 years ago

      u mean they were too stupid to realize they were incorrectly copying roman COLORS. but "they" seem to have gotten the actual neo-classical architexture correct.

      1. CrackertyAssCracker   14 years ago

        It figures you wouldn't get it.

    5. Paul   14 years ago

      The Roman forum in its heyday was painted in a garish profusion of colors.

      This with highly polished knobs on.

      Here's a website reproducing what statues and other things Greek and Roman looked in the day.

    6. CrackertyAssCracker   14 years ago

      I did not know that.

      And it's a pretty damn awesome tribute to human stupidity and pride when you think about it for around a half a second.

    7. Chinny Chin Chin   14 years ago

      So Classical Greece and Rome were a giant Tusseaud's Wax Museum?

      (Except, more realistic looking, I imagine.)

    8. Hobie Hanson   14 years ago

      Ah, but a large part of the reason why we copied the Greeks and Romans was that they were admired as cool-headed, dispassionate, stoic practitioners of rational liberty...largely because of what their ruins looked like. That lined up with our own Puritan origins as a country as well.

      If the architects of the time had known what the Forum and Acropolis really looked like in ancient times, they may not have emulated them at all.

  25. rather   14 years ago

    Who cares about the color bitching. It isn't like they suggested they paint everything in pig's blood

  26. Xmas   14 years ago

    I've said it somewhere else in response to this article...Qasim Sabti is a douchebag.

  27. joshua corning   14 years ago

    All the buildings in ancient Rome and Greece were painted as well as those marble white statues. (I wonder if they gave Venus a runway or left it bare?)

    American style neo-classic is an accident of history and the fact that by the time the Renaissance rolled around and all the architecture of the ancient world was rediscovered all the paint had been bleached off by a 1000 years of weather.

    Our buildings are ugly because Brunelleschi studied weather stripped ruins.

    1. Aresen   14 years ago

      I would love to see the Parthenon as it was originally completed.

      1. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

        Here's a guesstimate of the colored pediments.

        1. Pro Libertate   14 years ago

          Whoops. Here's one. And another.

      2. Scruffy Nerf Herder   14 years ago

        It probably looked like this.

        http://www.google.com/imgres?i.....80&bih=872

  28. Abdul   14 years ago

    Who is the NYT to criticize architecture? Didn't' they basically drape their new headquarters in climbable ceramic pipes that has become flypaper for weirdos/french thrillseekers?

    http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes......-building/

  29. P Brooks   14 years ago

    This reminds me of the stories back in the '80s about "tasteless" Middle Eastern oil sheikhs in Beverly Hills who scandalized polite tasteful Angelenos by painting their garden statuary in garish colors.

  30. Irresponsible Hater   14 years ago

    Savages: http://tinyurl.com/3n8ppoq

  31. Fluffy   14 years ago

    Is there any chance that this article is intended ironically?

    Because the slide show frankly makes me think, "If the whole city of Baghdad goes crazy like this I may have to go check it out."

  32. K S   14 years ago

    Obviously, the writer of this article has never been to the Middle East, or if he has, has never had to stay there over long periods of time. Everything is the color beige. The sky is beige, the buildings are beige, the ground is beige, their clothing is black or white, and since they get their cars from overseas, they are all boring colors. So of course they want buildings that are bright and cheerful. It dulls your senses to not have some color in your landscape.

  33. Irresponsible Hater   14 years ago

    http://www.essentialhumanities.....2_1_01.jpg

    http://tinyurl.com/3u84rhd

    1. Irresponsible Hater   14 years ago

      http://tinyurl.com/3fahv5l

      http://latinadanza.com/copenha.....e-1001.jpg

    2. Irresponsible Hater   14 years ago

      http://www.flickr.com/photos/birispaul/4853617756/

      http://www.arts-wallpapers.com.....mage86.htm

      Maybe the folks at NYT are just a bunch of provincial hicks that don't have passports or go out and see much of the world.

      1. Irresponsible Hater   14 years ago

        Damn, you'd think they'd at least be familiar with Red Square:

        http://tinyurl.com/3j4qve5

  34. akagaga   14 years ago

    "For decades, Saddam Hussein's government ruled over aesthetics in Iraq's capital"

    Obviously, someone needs to resurrect Hussein and return order.

  35. Irresponsible Hater   14 years ago

    NYT's 2003 take on St. Petersburg:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04.....aint+basil's&st=cse&pagewanted=all

    "BUILT on rivers and canals, St. Petersburg's sorbet-colored palaces and golden cupolas shimmer in reflection as if it were two cities, one of stone, one of water. In fact, ever since its founding three centuries ago by Peter the Great the city has always had a certain doubleness about it - a city that was to be progressive, European, "a window on the West," was also a city built by edict and forced labor, a "city built on bones." And that city has had two distinct incarnations: grandiose capital of the immense Russian empire and, after the Revolution, second city of the Soviet Union, neglected, forlorn ..."

  36. jtuf   14 years ago

    The Arab mentality is that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It's anarchy of taste.

    Thanks for this good news. It brightened my day.

    1. Coeus   14 years ago

      No shit. Nice to know they still believe that somewhere.

  37. Hazel Meade   14 years ago

    If those pics came from Guatemala or Bolivia, the NYT would be praising them as examples of the indigenous people's playful enjoyment of color, free of Western-imposed taste standards.

  38. Daniel   14 years ago

    I must be tasteless too, because those buildings were lovely.

  39. Cytotoxic   14 years ago

    But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It's anarchy of taste.

    Is she suggesting what I think she's suggesting?

  40. Richard   14 years ago

    Because when you think of Saddam Hussein, you think of restrained good taste.

    Get ready for similar NYT stories lamenting the tackiness of Havana once the McDonalds, Coke billboards, and Walmarts go in.

  41. Kapostrophe   14 years ago

    And then there's Leadville, Colorado.

    http://bit.ly/jQz16P

    Note that one of the captions mentions that houses are painted brightly to contrast with the snow. Perhaps the Iraqis are enjoying the freedom to contrast their buildings with the sand.

  42. alex_sy   11 years ago

    Nice sitys photos http://www.artsfon.com/city/

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