This paper was presented at the LIAM:III Conference,
June 2001 at the University of Brighton.
Anxious Homes...
Cursory-Cleaning
for the imminent arrival of visitors,
or How to Give the
impression of a Clean House in under 20 minutes.
A Limited Edition Artist's Book.
Introduction
I work for the Illustration BA at the University of Portsmouth and for
the MA in Sequence here at the University of Brighton, mainly teaching
new media, interactive design plus internet design. I also work as a designer,
illustrator and maker of Artist's Books.
The exhibition in... Running a Secret Society No.20, is an example of one of my handmade books.
The book I am going to talk about is:
Anxious Homes; Cursory-Cleaning for the imminent arrival of visitors, or How to Give the impression of a Clean House in under 20 minutes.
It was produced by hand in a limited edition
of 10, although I am now producing the 3rd edition.
Inspiration
Anxious Homes was inspired by a childhood experience. As a 10 year
old, I remember being amazed at how my mother used to frantically tidy
the house before visitors arrived. When I asked her what was wrong with
letting our relatives see us how we usually lived, she was horrified at
the idea. When I started living in my own home I noticed I had inherited
'pretending to be tidy' from my mother. When my parents (or especially
parents-in-law) visit
I rush round picking piles of papers off the floor and making sure the
bathroom taps are shiny. Cleaning-up thoroughly is a long job and despite
my collection of Good Housekeeping Manuals there's just not enough
time to be a proper housewife, when you have two jobs and a freelance
career. So I created Anxious Homes for the busy woman.
It is a step-by-step guide book explaining
how to look like you're doing everything properly. It contains
explanations in detail of how to get away with it. It is one guide in
a possible series, for people with better things to worry about than housework.
There are sections on anxiety and the home, cleaning floors, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, washing clothes, dealing with emergency visitors, and a chart of serenity and anxiety. Anxious Homes seeks to take away the homemaker's feeling of inadequacy by promoting shortcuts as if they are perfectly normal.
Some references and sections from Anxious Homes;
Anxious Homes, is the antidote to
all the 'Life Instructions' that surround us. Far from being outraged
at the patronizing tone of many 'How to do it' books, I have always found
these instructions for living funny. Each manual has to make assumptions
about what the reader does or doesn't know. The tone of voice of Anxious
Homes is based on Good Housekeeping Manuals and instructional
advertisements from the 'fifties, often with a matriarchal voice that
instructs chastises and encourages new wives to achieve perfection and
contentment in the home. It was this bossy, matter-of-fact tone that I
sought to parody along with the assumption that the reader is incompetent
at being incompetent.
The book begins with an introduction stating,
The aim of this book is not for you to actually clean the house but to give the impression of having cleaned the house... Appearing to run a happy and successful home is more than ever now, for a woman, the greatest possible test of character and intelligence, good humour and good faith.
Section one: What people are saying
behind your back, Not
necessarily overheard but true all the same.
This illustration was inspired by the genre
of body odor advertisements that show someone offending those around them
and being ridiculed behind their backs. The instruction to never invite
people to your home to avoid unwelcome comments is suggested.
Section two: Cleaning Floors
New vacuum cleaner models often stress ease-of-use combined with power, but this is an explanation of how to vacuum so it is obvious you have just done so, as well as how to vacuum and watch TV at the same time. The diagrams show how to vacuum badly but quickly.
I can't believe someone has gone to the
trouble of planning layouts, hiring models, arranging Photo shoots and
printing books just to show me how to iron properly.
This image is a detail from the How to Iron section in a manual
produced by Good Housekeeping in collaboration with the Gas
Council, UK c.1949 called, 'The Happy Home - An indispensable
guide for all housewives and home lovers who are best served by choosing
GAS for domestic purposes.' It has pages of instructions and methods
for making your own soap, creating make-up charts, entertaining children
and how to achieve constant hot water (using gas of course).
Only wear crease-look clothes and never iron items that don't show. Anxious Homes.
I find visual instructions fascinating,
the variety of ways to explain sequences of events is something I have
been exploring. The choice between photography and illustration can change
the tone of instruction entirely.
|
'Googly grip' Eagle Book of Sport,
|
'The Shell Game' The Bunco Book,
|
'Checkpoints' Guide to Natural Bowling,
|
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The photographic images from the Eagle
Book of Sport are presented as being realistic, as an actual record
of what happens during bowling, but the limitations of print technology
makes the images appear cluttered and confusing. The time based nature
of the movement is also lost in the static images. The layout resembles
a flick book reproduced on one page.
The illustration from The Bunco Book uses simplified line drawings
to remove extraneous information involved in complicated hand gestures.
Manny Haller's illustrations in the Guide to Natural Bowling remain
clear and simple but use humour.
Section three: Cleaning the Bathroom
I have to admit that cleaning the bathroom
was my chore as a child, but it became much quicker when I hit upon the
Anxious Homes solution...This was perhaps my earliest foray into
not doing things properly.
The bathroom might appear daunting at
first glance, so many areas to polish, clean and disinfect! The truth
of the matter however, is that only bathrooms with clean taps actually
appear to be clean. Therefore ONLY clean the taps
The passing of time can make us see
clearer. When looking back at the attitudes and assumed aspirations of
the intended viewer we have a sense of where we have come from. It is
also easier to see the pressures that are loaded upon the individual,
Is your home tidy? Can you cook? Can you fix a broken fence? Can you eat
an orange without making a mess of yourself? The implication is that the
reader is quite useless and unable to cope.
Etiquette books are designed to correct this uselessness, listing exactly
how to cope appropriately in all situations. This cigarette advertisement
from 1954 has a wonderful bossy tone of voice with Mrs. Vanderbilt 'etiquette
expert' explaining firmly how to smoke politely.
After
this most people would probably be afraid to smoke at all.
 |
"I do not like ash droppers. I dislike cigarettes butts on my hearth, in my potted plants and ground out on my best china. I do not like to see people smoking throughout their meals...I like to know my husband is thoughtful enough to carry my brand of cigarette, which, not so incidentally, is Lucky Strike."
Lucky Strike advertisement, |
Section six: In an Emergency
When people arrive unexpectedly
and the thought of showing someone into your messy house is just too appalling,
the hallway vigil explains how to avoid confrontation.
This is an emergency tactic for when
your house has become such a disgrace that only a full weekend of cleaning
will have any impact. When guests are imminent or if you are fortunate
enough to see a visitor pass by the window of your house you can employ
the emergency, Hall Way Vigil. Wait for the visitor to get to the front
door whilst hurriedly putting your coat on. Just as the visitor is about
to knock on the door, throw it open and surprise them into saying, 'Oh,
I'm sorry. Is this a bad time?' To which you reply, 'yes, I'm afraid you've
just caught me on my way out.' Close the door behind you and walk the
visitor away from your house.
So what standards should we really aspire
to in the home?
This cover of Practical Home Money Maker,
October 1957, shows what we should be like. Everyone in the family is
doing something useful, dad is making toys, mum appears to making leather
bags and purses and little Tommy is churning out basket after basket.
I have never known a family as productive as this, no one is watching
TV or is fast asleep on the sofa. This is an example of the kind of contrived
absurdity that I find so humorous. The magazine is about making money
by producing handicrafts so on the cover of course, everyone is producing
handicrafts but this is such an unlikely event it has become comical.
The accidental humour quickly
deflates the pomposity of the original intention.
I start with laying out the book in sketchbooks to plan ideas for each section/page. I then use computers for nearly every other stage. I have a digital camera which I use to take all the reference images.
Working Methods - pleases bookmark this page before moving to this section
I use a digital camera to set-up reference photographs for the diagrams, then use Adobe Photoshop and a drawing tablet to create the majority of the images. I use QuarkXpress to layout the pages, the front to backing of the print sequence and then print out on appropriate paper. Anxious Homes is on heavy acid-free cartridge. I then fold, sew, cut and make the hardback cover all on the floor at home.
I'm very interested in items produced in limited multiples and I also have a collection of examples that explore various techniques. I often add extra pieces to my books such as free stickers, coupons towards other books, envelopes with extra information or in the case of the secret society book, a packaged match to burn the book when you've finished reading it. A computer can impose too much consistency of appearance across the edition. These are hand made books each one is signed and numbered.
Let
us celebrate our incompetence
This everyday pressure
to be competent at trivial things can distract from more pressing
considerations. As part of my research into cigarette advertising I have
been looking at America during the Cold War - a classic period of anxiety.
Many advertisements asked whether teeth were white enough or whether lawn
mowers induced backache.
This is something we still see everyday on the TV or in our papers and magazines. Advertisements between the news deflects anxiety onto more readily solvable problems such as buying a new car or eliminating frizz from hair. Using humour can be an effective tool in ridding us of some of these manufactured feelings of inadequacy. Instead of feeling that we should apologize for not being entirely competent with housework or plumbing, Anxious Homes teaches it and celebrates it.
THE END - Return to main screen