Treacherous Objects

How we are depending on objects to convey the 'right' message to those who see them as belonging to us! I remember a birthday party of a friend in his new, self-remade flat in Stuttgart. As an architect and 'Bildungsbürger', he paid utmost attention to all details, from the lavish art tomes on the bookshelves to the miniature reproductions of antique statues. There was, however, on the central shelf of a glass cabinet, a small Egyptian obelisk complete with hieroglyphs in rather too colourful shades. It stood out like a sore thumb among all the rest and I was drawn to it almost magically. I felt a peculiar thrill at immediately finding the object that by not belonging there exposed some of the pretence and at the same time was shocked by being such an interior Nazi. As the evening progressed and everybody got blissfully drunk, I asked the host about this 'éclipse du goût' and he confessed that the obelisk was one of the few concessions he had to make for his much younger boyfriend whose possessions and 'youthful taste' were apparently underrepresented. When I later met the boyfriend himself, I couldn't help but feel that he shared the obelisk's lot in this artsy, 30-something crowd.