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Product Description
Product Description
Taschen's "Book of Tiki" provided the blueprint for the re-appreciation and revival of Tiki style. Almost completely wiped from the consciousness of Americans until recently, Sven Kirsten's tome put Tiki on the map as a unique pop culture phenomenon. Never before had Tiki culture's visual power and pervasiveness been revealed with such detail and insight. Not only did the book inspire the erecting of many new Tiki bars from New York to London to Berlin to Prague to Waikiki, but also motivated a myriad of Tiki artisans to pick up the chisel and carry on the forgotten tradition, while spurring many others to create their own home hideaways, making "Tiki" a household name again. This new follow-up book, which brings together the two recent retro trends of mid-century modernism and Tiki style, is bound to lift the Tiki craze to a new level. With his usual mixture of ironic detachment and genuine enthusiasm for the subject, Kirsten shows us how primitivism and modernism were two sides of the same coin in the 1950s and 60s. Decor deities and ersatz ancestors outrageously merged in the modern brutalist furniture from the house of Witco, a company that outfitted Elvis Presley's Jungle Room and Hugh Hefner's Chicago Playboy pool. This was design porn at its best.
About the Author
Sven Kirsten was conceived on a freighter of his grandfather's Hamburg-Chicago Line. Following the call of the big world, he moved to California at the age of 25. Kirsten studied at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles and began shooting music videos in the late 1980s for The Cramps, Tom Waits, Sergio Mendes and others. After years of hunting down pieces of the puzzle of Polynesian Pop, Kirsten has developed a singular insight into the Cult of Tiki and has become the country's most eminent Tiki archaeologist.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Tiki modern embodies dreams and fantasies, not the reality of Oceanic Art. It is essentially fake Oceania based on wistfulness. This book charts in words and colour plates its rise and descent
Rediscovery of Tiki arose through the cultural archeology of Throbbing Gristle and Boyd Rice. The first reintroduced Martin Denny and the second recreated the Tiki Bar aesthetic. Sven mentions both in dispatches.
Tiki culture originally brought exotica to bland suburban America. Tracing the rise and descent of the 50's/60's cult, it provided escape from christianity and apollonian order. The outre arrived in the basements of the rumpus room. Tiki modern embossed in furniture, pottery, prints, soft furnishings brought the pagan to middle Amerika. Known as primitive, it related to the lower ages of the shrinking non western world; the land of exotica delight, sexual bliss, soothing pleasing non caucasian women, fruit cocktails and south sea islands. The photography in the book is exemplary, illuminating architecture, cars, pottery, furnitue to the beautiful women who graced these suburban fantasies.
High culture, Picasso, the surrealists, Breton, Man Ray, Modigliani were backdrops to Tiki's popularisation. Witco, the first mass producer, wielding a chainsaw, influenced the dreams of Elvis. The South Seas, coupled with Hawaii's ascent to the 50th state of the union in 1959 brought ripples of purrs from the other 49. Key influences were the artefacts from the non Western World, African masks, statues, fetish figures shaping the zeitgeist of 20th C western art. Infusing modernity with the hearbeat of the preDisneyfied world.
Tiki's descent into cultural obliteration is controversial. Sven notes a generational change in the 60's. Flower power children rebelling against their parental mores.
Upholding the erotic vision whilst dropping napalm, agent orange and undertaking search and destroy ethnic cleansing missions on the same fantasy worlds is difficult to sustain. Reality intruded on the manifest destiny. These "exotic" women became the enemy, the objectified and villified, staring with hard hatred. No longer south sea beauties of fantasy but flesh and blood saints and sinners for 19 year old conscripts. Tiki quickly lost its allure when reality intruded. The women were racially castigated as inferior.
Vietnam is now a distant memory allowing fantasy to be resurrected as part of a 50's aesthetic revival. A time remembered when America exploded into technicolour after years of economic and psychological depression. Then tiki then was mainstream, businessmen the customers. Now it is outre, tiki is a secret code, a cypher for a land beyond the present.
This book paints the aesthetics of possibility beyond the Barrat Home, a signpost to a land of exotic bliss, except this time we are not naive, we know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Rediscovery of Tiki arose through the cultural archeology of Throbbing Gristle and Boyd Rice. The first reintroduced Martin Denny and the second recreated the Tiki Bar aesthetic. Sven mentions both in dispatches.
Tiki culture originally brought exotica to bland suburban America. Tracing the rise and descent of the 50's/60's cult, it provided escape from christianity and apollonian order. The outre arrived in the basements of the rumpus room. Tiki modern embossed in furniture, pottery, prints, soft furnishings brought the pagan to middle Amerika. Known as primitive, it related to the lower ages of the shrinking non western world; the land of exotica delight, sexual bliss, soothing pleasing non caucasian women, fruit cocktails and south sea islands. The photography in the book is exemplary, illuminating architecture, cars, pottery, furnitue to the beautiful women who graced these suburban fantasies.
High culture, Picasso, the surrealists, Breton, Man Ray, Modigliani were backdrops to Tiki's popularisation. Witco, the first mass producer, wielding a chainsaw, influenced the dreams of Elvis. The South Seas, coupled with Hawaii's ascent to the 50th state of the union in 1959 brought ripples of purrs from the other 49. Key influences were the artefacts from the non Western World, African masks, statues, fetish figures shaping the zeitgeist of 20th C western art. Infusing modernity with the hearbeat of the preDisneyfied world.
Tiki's descent into cultural obliteration is controversial. Sven notes a generational change in the 60's. Flower power children rebelling against their parental mores.
Upholding the erotic vision whilst dropping napalm, agent orange and undertaking search and destroy ethnic cleansing missions on the same fantasy worlds is difficult to sustain. Reality intruded on the manifest destiny. These "exotic" women became the enemy, the objectified and villified, staring with hard hatred. No longer south sea beauties of fantasy but flesh and blood saints and sinners for 19 year old conscripts. Tiki quickly lost its allure when reality intruded. The women were racially castigated as inferior.
Vietnam is now a distant memory allowing fantasy to be resurrected as part of a 50's aesthetic revival. A time remembered when America exploded into technicolour after years of economic and psychological depression. Then tiki then was mainstream, businessmen the customers. Now it is outre, tiki is a secret code, a cypher for a land beyond the present.
This book paints the aesthetics of possibility beyond the Barrat Home, a signpost to a land of exotic bliss, except this time we are not naive, we know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
20 reviews
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Wonderful, intoxicating sensory overload
2 Oct 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've read many, many art books. Seldom have I had one that gave me such a delirious buzz as Tiki Modern. It's like walking into some cool but forgotten museum until your mind feels like it's going to explode from too much input. I just got it, today, and I can only look at it for short bits. It's so powerful.
Although I'm not a baby boomer and I do have more than my share of irony, I genuinely love this stuff. The tiki art craze was exciting and gutsy. It was totally unafraid to take a concept and run naked through the streets with it. The fact that it still offends the delicate artistic palates and political sensibilities of others only proves its validity. Besides that, tiki was damn fun.
I never thought anyone could pull off a book that was better than the original "Book of Tiki", but Sven has done it. It's a tiki feast for the eyes and the soul.
Although I'm not a baby boomer and I do have more than my share of irony, I genuinely love this stuff. The tiki art craze was exciting and gutsy. It was totally unafraid to take a concept and run naked through the streets with it. The fact that it still offends the delicate artistic palates and political sensibilities of others only proves its validity. Besides that, tiki was damn fun.
I never thought anyone could pull off a book that was better than the original "Book of Tiki", but Sven has done it. It's a tiki feast for the eyes and the soul.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Tiki Bible #2
18 Dec 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is large, this book is loaded, and this book is awesome! It is a steal at this price and it is loaded with TONS of cool retro color tiki pics. Also, did I mention there is some nude (topless) vintage tiki PIN-UP babes in this book too? It is perfect for lonely Friday nights in your tiki bar bachelor pad. Oops, did I just say that? Anyways, what more could you possibly want from a tiki book! I can't say enough good things about this book other than it must have been a true labor of love by the author and I wish there were more books out there like this one! Anyone that would criticize or knock a book like this is either not into tiki, has their nose out of joint because they too are "another-modern-tiki-artist-come-lately" with an over inflated sense of importance and ego, and were not mentioned in this book, or they have had one too many Mai-Tai's with their crack cocaine and have fried their brain. This book is a freakin' tiki bible man, pure and simple.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Tiki Modern
10 Mar 2008
Format:Hardcover
I haven't seen a more engaging and easy to read book on Tiki than 'Tiki Modern'. It is full of vintage photographs that help readers integate the worlds of modern and primitive art. This book leaves you wanting more on the subject of Tiki while wondering "Where can I get a piece of Tiki to add to my home or personal art collection?"
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