26 Karolina Jaklewicz
things seriously. One can be serious about frivolous, friv-
olous about the serious [1, p. 26].
Hundertwasser spoke about things seriously – about
ecology and about the need for a harmonious relationship
between man and nature. The artist introduced an inno-
vative solution when he planted a forest on the roof of
the Hundertwasserhause in the early 1980s. Today, it is
a common practice but at that time it was an extravagant
gesture. It was not a real forest, of course, it was a conven-
tional forest. And here, too, it is not dicult to notice his
coincidence with camp because Camp sees everything in
quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a “lamp”; not a wo -
man, but a “woman” [1, p. 9]. There is a lot of texture
and sensual decoration in camp art [1, p.6] – just like in
Hundertwasser’s projects whose rich decorativeness is
a surplus in relation to the functional design needs. Camp
is art that proposes itself seriously but cannot be taken
altogether seriously because it is “too much” [1, p. 17]. Is
not that the case with Hundertwasser? His works include
exaggeration which makes it impossible to take them seri-
ously, however, depriving his art of this surplus would not
make it serious; without decorations it would become dull
and it would lose its character. The crowning of the terrace
balustrade at the corner of Kegelgasse and Lowengasse in
Vienna do not constitute a necessary element – a golden
gure resembling bowling, gures of lions, a sphere – af-
ter all, without them the terrace would still be a terrace,
but not the same terrace as before. Decorative elements
(also the columns mentioned in the previous chapter) give
the buildings a camp style. They are unnecessary and nec-
essary at the same time, they express unbridled sensitivity
and passion which are always exaggerated. Camp must
exceed the limits of normality, Camp cannot be dispas-
sionate [1, p. 18]. Hundertwasser’s architectural objects
are certainly not dispassionate, on the contrary, they ex-
ude creative passion and kind of honesty. His projects are
lled with innocent naivety and naivety is another version
of camp – Pure Camp is always naive [1, p. 13]. There
is therefore something in Hundertwasser’s objects which
does not allow them to be denied, which inspires the kind
of acceptance that appears when we deal with naiv prod-
ucts. A viewer appreciates willingness and making eorts.
An extraordinary eect is often appreciated. Camp – as
Sontag further notices – is an attempt at doing something
unusual, special or stunning, such as “a curved line or an
extravagant gesture” [1, p. 18]. Avoiding straight lines
was a designer’s challenge as he tried to replicate the u-
idity of shapes found in the natural environment. Colour-
ful stains emphasize an irregular character of the building.
For Hundertwasser, art was a bridge between man and na-
ture [12, p. 12], so he designed objects as close to nature
as possible. Nevertheless, he designed for the city and the
city is the natural environment of camp [1, p. 8]. In the
city, nature is “out of place” and in general, the city is
a space of paradoxes, it is a space which is admired and
hated at the same time because it is a space of “surplus”,
a city within a city is “too much”. In this exaggerated
scenery camp is created and in this scenography we see
projects with dierent sensitivity, projects with a surplus,
with a tower, with a forest on the roof, with colourful col-
umns, mosaics, and trinkets. When visiting Hundertwasser
House and Village, we can paraphrase The Troggs song
Love is all around and say one thing – Camp is all around.
No Camper, no Camp
Camp theory, however, is not only about Sontag. Mod-
ern thinking about camp refers to all that Sontag has
overlooked or ignored. While the aesthetic aspect aptly
dened in Notes on “Camp” remains a fundamental point
of reference, subsequent researchers point to a lack of
understanding of the non-aesthetic determinants of camp
(including Mauriès, Booth, Meyer, Czapliński). The very
etymology of the term camp diers among researchers,
but most often it is assumed that camp derives from the
French language in which it meant excessively stressed
actions and gestures. Additionally, as Moe Meyer empha-
sizes, it is not about the word, but about the behaviour.
Meyer wrote that not the word camp itself comes from
French, but specic behaviours were imported from
France [13, p. 214]. Mark Booth shares a similar opinion
as he locates the genesis of camp in the history of France
and in particular in the customs of the French court in
Versailles. Both authors see camp primarily in behaviour
– Booth noticed, that to be camp is to present yourself
from the side of your own involvement in marginal issues
[14, p. 196]. Camp seen as behaviour, special behaviour,
because dissimilar behaviour is in opposition to Sontag’s
objective thinking. Meyer writes that the function of camp
is to produce a dierent social visibility, therefore a re-
lationship between camp and the mist’s identity can be
established. So Meyer denes camp as a complete set of
performative practices and strategies used to act out the
identity of a mist, where he understand acting as the
production of social visibility [15, p. 531]. Camp other-
ness was traditionally identied with gender, in particu-
lar with the homosexual culture, whose representatives
are marginal in each community. Marginality, along with
otherness, is another post-Sontag determinant of camp,
i.e. So he [Booth] recognized that camp was a sociolog-
ical and not purely artistic phenomenon and formulated
a denition which associated camp with all margins. The
notion of “marginality” seizes in Booth everything which
is rejected, condemned, or condescended by the majority
of society. On such vast margins all the worse lands, i.e.
worse gender, worse sexuality, and worse varieties of aes-
thetics […] [10, pp. 20, 21]. We might add – a worse pro-
fession: an artist. And just when we look at artists through
the prism of otherness, we can also look at their actions
through the prism of camp which was dened by Booth
as self-presentation [14, p. 196]. The artist and his/her art
are unity at the time of creation, so what a provocative,
ironic or funny costume is for a campaigning representa-
tive of a sexual minority, as well as the act of wearing this
costume, this is what art is and acts of presenting it (ex-
hibitions, projects, books, shows, etc.) for an artist. With
this assumption, Hundertwasser’s artistic acts of self-pre-
sentation gain camp sensitivity. In the previous chapters
we showed that Hundertwasser architectural objects meet
the criteria of camp aesthetics and if Sontag had had an
