Ornament (art)
In
A wide variety of decorative styles and
In a 1941 essay,[1] the architectural historian Sir John Summerson called it "surface modulation". The earliest decoration and ornament often survives from prehistoric cultures in simple markings on pottery, where decoration in other materials (including tattoos) has been lost. Where the potter's wheel was used, the technology made some kinds of decoration very easy; weaving is another technology which also lends itself very easily to decoration or pattern, and to some extent dictates its form. Ornament has been evident in civilizations since the beginning of recorded history, ranging from Ancient Egyptian architecture to the assertive lack of ornament of 20th century Modernist architecture. Ornaments also depict a certain philosophy of the people for the world around. For example, in Central Asia among nomadic Kazakhs, the circular lines of the ornaments signalled the sequential perception of time in the wide steppes and the breadth and freedom of space.
Ornament implies that the ornamented object has a function that an unornamented equivalent might also fulfill. Where the object has no such function, but exists only to be a
History
The history of art in many cultures shows a series of wave-like trends where the level of ornament used increases over a period, before a sharp reaction returns to plainer forms, after which ornamentation gradually increases again. The pattern is especially clear in post-Roman European art, where the highly ornamented
The detailed study of Eurasian ornamental forms was begun by
Styles of ornamentation can be studied in reference to the specific culture which developed unique forms of decoration, or modified ornament from other cultures. The Ancient Egyptian culture is arguably the first civilization to add pure decoration to their buildings. Their ornament takes the forms of the natural world in that climate, decorating the capitals of columns and walls with images of papyrus and palm trees. Assyrian culture produced ornament which shows influence from Egyptian sources and a number of original themes, including figures of plants and animals of the region.
The
Roman ornament
Ornament in the Roman empire utilized a diverse array of styles and materials, including marble, glass, obsidian, and gold. Roman ornament, specifically in the context of Pompeii, has been studied and written about by scholar Jessica Powers in her book chapter "Beyond Painting in Pompeii's Houses: Wall Ornaments and Their Patrons." Instead of studying ornamental objects in isolation, Powers argues that, if the information is provided, objects must be approached in their original context. This information might include the location where the work was found, other objects located or found nearby, or who the patron was who might have commissioned the work.[6] Jessica Powers' chapter primarily discusses the Casa Degli Amorini Dorati in Pompeii, where 18 wall ornaments were found, the most of any Pompeiian home. Interior wall ornament in a Pompeian home would typically divide the wall into three or more sections under which there would be a dado taking up roughly one-sixth of the height of the wall.[7] The wall sections would be divided by broad pilasters connected by a frieze which bands across the top of the wall. The ornament found at the Casa Degli Amorini Dorati in Pompeii reflected this standard style and included objects that had clearly been reused, and rare and imported objects. Several of the panels on the walls of the Casa Degli Amorini Dorati were removed during archeological work in the 1970s, revealing that the panels had been stuck on different walls before the one on which they were found. Jessica Powers argues that these panels illustrate the home owner and correlating patrons' willingness to utilize damaged or secondhand materials in their own home. Moreover, the materials used in the decorative wall panels were identified as being from the Greek East or Egypt, not from Pompeii. This points to the elaborate trade routes that flourished across the Roman Empire, and that home owners were interested in using materials from outside of Pompeii to embellish their homes.
In addition to homes, public buildings and temples are locations where Roman ornament styles were on display. In the Roman temple, the extravagant use of ornament served as a means of self-glorification, as scholar Owen Jones notes in his book chapter, Roman Ornament. Roman ornament techniques include surface-modeling, where ornamental styles are applied onto a surface. This was a common ornamental style with marble surfaces.[8] One common ornamental style was the use of acanthus leaf, a motif adopted from the Greeks. The use of acanthus leaf and other naturalist motifs can be seen in Corinthian capitals, in temples, and in other public sites.
Ornament prints and pattern books
A few medieval notebooks survive, most famously that of
As printing became cheaper, the single ornament print turned into sets, and then finally books. From the 16th to the 19th century,
During the 19th century, the acceptable use of ornament, and its precise definition became the source of aesthetic controversy in academic Western architecture, as architects and their critics searched for a suitable style. "The great question is,"
Both internally and externally there is a good deal of tasteless and unprofitable ornament... If each simple material had been allowed to tell its own tale, and the lines of the construction so arranged as to conduce to a sentiment of grandeur, the qualities of "power" and "truth," which its enormous extent must have necessarily ensured, could have scarcely fail to excite admiration, and that at a very considerable saving of expense.
Contacts with other cultures through colonialism and the new discoveries of archaeology expanded the repertory of ornament available to revivalists. After about 1880, photography made details of ornament even more widely available than prints had done.
Modern ornament
Modern
A more radical route abandoned the use of ornament altogether, as in some designs for objects by Christopher Dresser. At the time, such unornamented objects could have been found in many unpretending workaday items of industrial design, ceramics produced at the Arabia manufactory in Finland, for instance, or the glass insulators of electric lines.
This latter approach was described by architect Adolf Loos in his 1908 manifesto, translated into English in 1913 and polemically titled Ornament and Crime, in which he declared that lack of decoration is the sign of an advanced society. His argument was that ornament is economically inefficient and "morally degenerate", and that reducing ornament was a sign of progress.[13] Modernists were eager to point to American architect Louis Sullivan as their godfather in the cause of aesthetic simplification, dismissing the knots of intricately patterned ornament that articulated the skin of his structures.
With the work of
At the same time, the unwritten laws against ornament began to come into serious question. "Architecture has, with some difficulty, liberated itself from ornament, but it has not liberated itself from the fear of ornament," John Summerson observed in 1941.[14]
The very difference between ornament and structure is subtle and perhaps arbitrary. The pointed arches and flying buttresses of Gothic architecture are ornamental but structurally necessary; the colorful rhythmic bands of a Pietro Belluschi International Style skyscraper are integral, not applied, but certainly have ornamental effect. Furthermore, architectural ornament can serve the practical purpose of establishing scale, signaling entries, and aiding wayfinding, and these useful design tactics had been outlawed. And by the mid-1950s, modernist figureheads Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer had been breaking their own rules by producing highly expressive, sculptural concrete work.
The argument against ornament peaked in 1959 over discussions of the
See also
- Applied arts
- Work of art
- Bronze and brass ornamental work
- Brocade
- Typographic ornaments: Dingbats
Notes
- ^ Summerson, John (1941) printed in Heavenly Mansions 1963, p. 217
- ^ Tabbaa, 74-75
- ^ Rawson, 24-25; see also "“Style”—or whatever", J. Duncan Berry, A review of Problems of Style by Alois Riegl, The New Criterion, April 1993
- ^ Rawson, the subject of her book, see Preface, and Chapter 5 on Chinese influences on Persian art.
- ^ Rawson, throughout, but for quick reference: 23, 27, 32, 39–57, 75–77
- JSTOR j.ctt1cfr84m.
- ISBN 978-1-4008-8271-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4008-8271-7.
- ^ The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc., "Palladio and his Books." Archived 2018-07-05 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ quoted by Summerson
- ^ Second Republic Exposition Archived 2006-02-12 at the Wayback Machine
- JSTOR 3051319. Archived from the originalon November 7, 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-13.
- ISBN 0-500-20343-1.
- ^ "Slogans and Battlecries | Paul Shepheard | Architect | Writer". www.paulshepheard.com. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
19th-century compendiums of ornament
- Dolmetsch, Heinrich (1898). The Treasury of Ornament. (s:de:Heinrich Dolmetsch)
- The Grammar of Ornament.
- Meyer, Franz Sales, (1898), A Handbook of Ornament
- Speltz, Alexander (1915). The Coloured Ornament of All Historical Styles.
References
- ISBN 0-394-50931-5.
- ISBN 0-7141-1431-6
- Tabbaa, Yasser, The transformation of Islamic art during the Sunni revival, I.B.Tauris, 2002,
- James Trilling The Language of Ornament
- Peterson, Sara, Ornament and Pattern in Western Art: Renaissance and Mannerist; Baroque; Rococo; Neoclassical; Historicist and Traditional Historicism; 19th century Reform Movement; 20th century, Grove's Dictionary of Art, edited Jane Turner, 1996