CONSPICUOUS CREATION

n.

The making of art, gifts, crafts, and household items in a showy, non-subtle manner.

She'll sell you lots of stuff, but basically Martha [Stewart] does not believe in store-bought. She urges us to reject mass manufacturing and mass taste and to embrace the personal and the handcrafted. What she embodies is the opposite of conspicous consumption. It is something much more demanding and appealing: conspicuous creation.

—Margaret Wente, "Martha Comes to Town," The Globe and Mail, November 1, 1997

Bierk's sources may be impeccable, but there is a sense that the show represents yet another reshuffling of the deck.The new combinations pique our curiosity, but in the end Bierk's paintings are more convincing as acts of homage than of conspicuous creation.

—Christopher Hume, "Splashy debut will turn heads," The Toronto Star, April 15, 1988

conspicuous austerity

conspicuous conservation

inconspicuous consumption

recreativity

Culture (General)