Price 3



the pink flamingo lawn ornament was invented in 1957

garden designs had become less formal in the late 18th century,

• the gardens of the rich had fewer formal patterns and more natural-looking meadows, with live or earth-toned statues of animals
• garden designers and their patrons saw nature as free from human artifice, and they created it by artifice
• this was a reaction against urbanization and industrialization
•  nature is the part of the natural world that humans do not use--thus possible only for the rich
  
• a separate source of truth and a way to claim authority
• the power of nature was a source of American identity
• what about the middle class?  trees, grass and a few flowers
  

Good taste became defined as not showy

• American virtue of restraint
• lawn statues were not in good taste in a middle class lawn

But working class Americans were moving to the suburbs after WWII and rebelled against this idea of good taste

• the development of plastic as an industrial material made much cheaper lawn ornaments available
• flamingos were associated with Miami and vacations
• they became a symbol of bad taste and artificiality
• those arguing against them saw them as examples of un-reality

The youth rebellion of the 1960s argued for reality and naturalness

• wanted yards to be more natural than what had been defined as good taste
• plastic became an insult
• pink flamingos became the symbol of anti-nature, a way of saying that lawn in good taste was still artificial
  

Artists and gay men began to embrace artifice rather than trying to reject it

• the pink flamingo became associated with social rebel style
• and with camp
  

In the 1990s flamingos became a way of mixing up issues of class and taste

• and of preserving the boundary between nature and artifice, reminding us that what seems natural is not