Actually good stuff continues to be good

Yesterday I wrote about a trend towards plainness and dullness as exemplary of the foibles of Modernism. Yes, the diversity of colour in art is decreasing. Yes, Mark Rothko's colour fields are getting more and more expensive. Yes, the places that we live and work are increasingly converging on dull beige boxes.But:Changsha Meixihu International Culture and Arts Centre by Zaha HadidHabitat 67 by Moshe SafdieThese are both a ton of fun! The bottom one is nearly 60 years old. What they lack in colour they more than make up for in sheer panache.I think that at least some of the explanation for the observation that things from the past are more aesthetically pleasing comes down to plain old survivorship bias. Neither of these hold a candle to Nôtre-Dame de Paris, but I'll bet they knock the socks off 99% of NDdP's contemporaries.