Ornament and Modernism
The antagonism of modernism towards the excessive ornamentation that characterized historicism, and the modernist belief in the “evolution of culture” through the “removal of ornament from utilitarian objects” (Adolf Loos) set the seal on the separation of ornament and form in the theory of modern aesthetics. From this time on, functions that had previously been fulfilled by ornament were assigned to form. In 1918/1923, Ernst Bloch wrote in his essay “Hintergründe des Kunstwollens” (“Reasons Behind the Desire for Art”) that he could see “construction on the rise as a tertium comparationis between functional form and style, as form generally”. In the catalogue for the famous Werkbund exhibition of 1924, entitled “Form Without Ornament”, Walter Riezler wrote euphorically: “Today, ‘form’ has become for us the deepest expression of inner powers, an inescapable necessity and the best touchstone of the vibrancy and vitality of an era.” However, the impetus for the exclusion of everything ornamental from the modernist project could only be sustained as long as belief in the society-transforming effect of abstractionism prevailed. At least circuitously, by way of decoration, ornament very soon found its way back into modernism, for only by means of design could abstractionism succeed in influencing the everyday world. This “ornamentalization of modernism” was an externally-oriented process which began in many reform movements of the avant-garde soon after they came into being. Representative examples were the Dutch De-Stijl group or the Bauhaus at the beginning of the modernist period, which, as avant-garde movements, took the approach that ornaments had their uses, and proceeded to disengage form and content. In doing so, they and other avant-garde movements were motivated by a desire for creative design in all things, for harmony in the visual environment, which had already characterized early reform movements such as the Wiener Werkstätte. As early as 1905, Josef Hoffmann had written in the work program of the Wiener Werkstätte that “the work of an artisan should be assessed according to the same criteria as that of a painter or a sculptor”. In reference to ornamentation, Hoffmann emphasized: “Where it is appropriate, we will seek to embellish.” Ill. 13
 |
Ill.13.: Josef Hoffmann
Fabric design
|
With the establishment of modernism as a “style” in the applied arts, the way was clear for the “ornamentalization of modernism”. Within the history of modernism, starting from the time when all the possibilities of form in abstract painting had been described and defined at the end of the 1950s, the antinomy of ornament was rediscovered as an inherent paradox of abstractionism which offered potential for renewal. Even before that, in his “Principle of Hope” (written 1938–1947), Ernst Bloch had criticized: “For over a generation, therefore, these steel-furniture/cement-cube/flat-roof creatures have stood there, without a history, ultramodern and insipid, seemingly bold and truly trivial, full of hate towards the cliché of supposedly any kind of ornament, and yet more rigidly trapped in a convention than any period copy in the notorious 19th century.” Since the postmodernist period in the 1960s, and at least since the publication of Robert Venturi’s books “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” (1966) and “Learning from Las Vegas. The Forgotten Symbolism of Architecture” (with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, 1972), ornaments have gained new significance as rediscovered symbol bearers. Venturi, for instance, wrote: “Recent modern architecture has achieved formalism while rejecting form, promoted expressionism while ignoring ornament and defined space while rejecting symbols.” Postmodernism reintroduced ornament as a legitimate creative element in the fields of design and architecture. Reflection on whether the long-condemned ornament has a rightful place in design discourse has continued to be part of the ongoing discussion in the arts until the present day.
Bernd Evers, Rainald Franz
 up  print |