If one compares ornament with the language, its basic movements are grammar, and motives - vocabulary. The grammar of Ornament as grammar of the language is more versatile, while the vocabulary is colored with local cultural identity; it can be learned.
Ornament is present in the ancient aesthetics and religious manifestations of animalistic cults, such as tribal tattoos and totem sculpture. Each civilization gave the shape to it and made a sign of culture. The fact that ornament in the 20th century was rejected by modernism, confirms its importance. Ornament is subject to certain laws and principles. As historians of the 19th century have shown (the heyday of the ornament), the ornament is a form that develops as a living organism.
The book of the famous English historian and art theorist, writer, poet, painter, literary and art critic John Ruskin "Seven lamps of architecture" was released in 1849 and immediately gained great popularity among his contemporaries. It discusses the seven principles that should guide the architects: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience.
The rejection of ornament, accepted as a matter of course, as a consequence of mechanization, just in the 19th century was associated paradoxically with the advantages of machine production. Because the machine is able to replicate in large quantities ornamental motifs with such perfection, which is not available to handcraft, John Ruskin thought that ornament should be used with the intellectual intention.
However, in the ornament, which covers plastic architectural surfaces, Ruskin saw not only a warm physicality but also honesty and generosity of the creator. He believed that only in the ornament, you can express the pleasure of working, which in conventional building constructions cannot be expressed. The truth violation is possible in the architecture when disrespect to nature of the material or the labor quantity exists. Ruskin did not tolerate the use of machine-made ornaments, cast iron, printed ornaments and stylization of one material to look like another (wood as stone).
Ruskin developed the idea of the relationship of aesthetic and ethical principles in art. The constant attention to the moral content of any field of artistic activity is typical for him. Ruskin was confident: the art can exist and develop only under condition of an adequate level of morality. The division of labor in capitalist production Ruskin regarded as something hostile to art and creativity. Overcoming the adverse effects of this evil he imagined utopistically - as a revival of handicrafts and creative manual labor artisans of the Middle Ages. Turning to the art of the past, he wanted bring into a modern cultural life the ideas of beauty, lost by bourgeois civilization. “Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is useless in itself; but, at all events, the little use it has may well be spared if it is not worth putting our hands and our strength to”.
Adolf Loos, the Viennese architect of strict facades, was a great critic of aesthetic hybrids of Art Nouveau. In the field of architecture, he was the same as Schoenberg was in the music, Wittgenstein - in philosophy, as Karl Kraus - in journalism: he violently expelled from his discipline all unclean and superficial. In this regard, in the essay Loos compares the design of art nouveau with children's botched work on the walls and "Papuan" tattoos.
Loos considered ornamental design of Art Nouveau to be erotic and degenerative - the opposite of the proper development of civilization, which should move towards further sublimation, a clearer delineation of the boundaries and even greater purity. Hence his famous formula: with the development of the culture ornament fades on household items. "Ornament and Crime" written in 1908 is the clearest example of a fierce polemical retort. “The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use”. This anti decorative imperative is an exemplary example of the modernist mantra. Encased in its puritanical modesty has become the reason why the post-modernists, in turn, began to denounce the modernists like Loos.
There should be no decorations on the phones, typewriters, and even cigarette cases and wallpapers. Homes must also be free of external ornament because exteriors are part of a public space, and thus part of socialization.
In "Building Materials" he noted that each material is valuable and it is wrong to imitate materials. He saw a problem of crafts degeneration in this trend. For example: “hardwood is more expensive, the softwood must be painted to look like it. Iron must be painted to look like bronze or copper”. The usage of such technics was caused by demand. Regarding this, his views are similar to John Ruskin.
Ornamentation wastes labor and time and still it is costly. Adolph Loos stated: “The form of the object should be bearable for as long as the object lasts”. But ornamental trends are changing frequently and this forces people to buy new furniture while existing one is not broken and is still functional.
Sullivan was not only a brilliant practitioner; he developed the theoretical basis of rationalist architecture of the 20th century. He believed that architecture should reflect the properties of the environment, from which grows. Each building at the same time must express its particular function, without departing from the truth in terms of not only the destination, but also the design. The culmination of the natural development of the form should be the ornament. These positions are supported in his work "The conversation in the kindergarten" (1901).
Sullivan applied ornament in his buildings widely and variously, as he considered it not as a decoration for construction, but as a whole, the development of the poetic symbolism of forms and continuation of its rhythm. Sullivan architecture differs from the structures of other representatives of the Chicago school as a work of the poet from the works of novelists and essayists.
Activities of Sullivan, practical, theoretical, and publicistic, are an expression of the progressive ideas of the 19-20 centuries. The influence of the Chicago school weakened with the coming wave of eclecticism in American architecture. By 1900, only Sullivan remained true to its rationalistic principles and continued their theoretical development. Unlike its other representatives, he preferred to go broke, but remained true to his convictions.
In all the works, authors are against the abuse of ornament, but they do not reject its natural origin. Ruskin could not tolerate mass production, Loos believed that the ornament has become obsolete, and only reduces the functionality of objects. Sullivan created wonderful ornaments, but invoked to its reasonable and concise use. Initially, the most important is function, and then form. The form should never interfere with the function.
Thus, because of the specific conceptual ideas aimed at achieving a successful outcome and benefits, ornament issue had an impact on architecture, its formation, national identity, methods, creative research, and the development of the profession of architect.
Bibliography
Loos, Adolf. "Building Materials." The Craft Reader, edited by Glenn Adamson (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2010), 115.
Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime, 1908,” in The Architecture of Adolf Loos. An Arts Council Exhibition (1985), 100, 102.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849; reprint New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981), 39, 79, 174.
Sullivan, Louis. “On Ornament,” Kindergarten Chats (1947; reprint New York: Dover, 1979), 188.
