Things to put on your walls
that won't break the bank
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There’s a lot of very generic affordable art around, or at least generic-seeming to me, which doesn’t mean it isn’t great if you like it. I’m thinking of prints of, say, a glass, with NEGRONI written underneath, or of a forkful of spaghetti and PASTA in big letters. Recently I saw a huge poster that just said TIMES LIKE THESE, which made me properly hoot. What does it even mean? Times like what?
Or there’s the whole photographs of the Amalfi coast in the 1960s genre. Or prints of big shapes. I like big shapes, but why would you have a generic print of big shapes on your wall when you could have something that is meaningful to you? (Again, if the merest sniff of a big shape make your heart beat faster, then ignore me and go right ahead).
People buy indifferent art to put on their walls because so many people don’t trust their own taste. Meaningless phrases or big shapes, like walls painted all the colours of boredom (Ennui, Fatigue, Lassitude, Malaise) don’t semaphore great taste - but that’s okay because they don’t have to.
Their only job is to say ‘Look! This is absolutely fine! I do not have actively bad taste’. The very fact that someone decided that PASTA would make a great print - that someone curated, if you please, a selection of PASTA-like prints - makes people think that it must have at least some merit, and that it is therefore a safe buy.
But nobody wanders about thinking, ‘What this room really needs is a large print saying PASTA’. What happens is that they don’t trust themselves to put up something they truly love, in case - well, in case what?
In case other people. In case a visitor says they don’t like it. In case someone makes fun of it. In case someone says ‘ew, what’s that weird print?’. (I have been wanting to get that poster for my sister for at least three years because it makes both of us laugh like idiots whenever we look at it - it’s sometimes texted back and forth out of the blue, with no context - but I don’t think she’d put it up, even - or especially - in the loo).
Now, here is the thing to always remember. The only person who lives in your house is you, or you and your family, and you are the supreme rulers of your castle. Do you like something? In it goes. Do you feel indifferent about something? Leave it in the shop. More money is wasted on items where the person goes, ‘Oh God, I don’t know, I suppose this one will do’ than over the spontaneous buying of little things that make your heart sing.
What you have in your house is directly linked to the way you feel when you’re at home, and it follows that surrounding yourself with things you love is literally good for morale and even mental health. It is not your job to decorate hesitantly using someone else’s template, unless theirs is a template you die of love for (and that you feel confident would work in your own space, not necessarily a given). It is your job to surround yourself with things that make you feel happy.
And if someone does say something about the weird print, or the eccentric whatever, so what? You live there and they don’t. Also, if anyone is rude enough to remark negatively about something you have chosen to display, I would think twice about offering them cake.
The best places to buy art for your walls are junk shops and auctions, but I appreciate that not everyone has the time to waft around looking. Sometimes there’s a big gap on your wall that you just want to fill asap. Here are some of the places where I look. I don’t differentiate between paintings and prints because I like and buy both.