[FdbkHb]

Brutalism is about the expression of form follows function. A brutalist building is grey not because people love grey but because that's the color of naked concrete and painting over would be considered adding needless form.

Now, a color must be picked when you make a website, and it doesn't have to look grey, as pixels do not have an inherent color, unlike real world materials, such as concrete, wood or metals. But if you add useless animations (that glitchy thing at the top is obnoxious) that exist solely for the purpose of looking cool and not aid with understanding the UI, you are doing the absolute opposite of brutalism: form over function. This HN 'app' is several times worse to actually use over plain HN. It's not more legible, it's distracting, it breaks the back button etc.

I wouldn't call this "appropriation of brutalism" but "misunderstanding of brutalism".

It is definitely not ""antiquated"" to care about usability and removing distractions.

[nkrisc]

You needn’t pick a color: the browser has default styles. I personally find the idea of a “brutalist website” having any CSS - other than perhaps some simple rules for layout - absurd.

Browser defaults are the inherent form of a website. Picking a color yourself is adding ornamentation.

[keepamovin]

Well they say learn the rules before you abandon them, right? Before you improvise? :)

But you cannot distinguish between an artist appropriating and misunderstanding unless you know their level of understanding, that's your limit of understanding.

So I think you need to be generous and say, "Well it could cut either way, but they're probably reappropriating it"

There's also the idea that an individual artist could be unconscious of the historic perspective -- which is okay -- but part of a movement that is conscious of that, and are, together, reappropriating that historic perspectives.

I think all of these things are happening here, but with this artist I think they're aware of this stuff - not that i care, because I'm not judging their ability to participate in art/creation or the history of brutalism based on my grading of their knowledge of art history - haha! :)

But whatever you want to lock that definition of brutalism into -- and I appreciate your perspective -- it seems that a 'brutalist' definition of brutalism would be very pared back, rather than decorative with elaborately overly specific and burdensome definitions - ha! :) not that I'm saying yours is that -- what I'm saying is brutalism's brutalist definition would be practical and incorporate the realities of how artists' work and incorporate and reinterpret historical experience over time. Would it not? Wouldn't that be in the spirit of brutalism? Or do you hope brutalism dies in a particular invocation in the past, and is always stuck there, locked to its historical forms?

I think the best way to honor it is to let it grow with the times. And I think that's what's going on here. In fact the tension created by this work, speaks I think to how much it does reference the historical territory of brutalism, and the experience invoked by that -- because were it not operating within that territory, it's unlikely so many would-be brutalists on this thread, would feel so threatened by it as to become territorial. In other words, if all it was doing was throwing the word on there lightly, with no substance, there'd be barely a whimper. It would have no impact. The fact that it's resonated indicates it's doing much more than that. Would you not say so?

It has to have, for it to have caused this lively debate about the nature of brutalism itself. This is a good thing! Hahaha! :)