Pioneer architect Adolf Loos, in his essay of 1908, Ornament and Crime, first began the down grading of decorative art with his famous statement that “ornament is a crime”. Following the reforms of the Arts and Crafts Movement, ornament began to be incorporated into the actual structure of forms such as furniture, books and the crafts. The Art Nouveau Paris Exposition of 1900 was the last stand of decorative art in which ornament, in its rococo and, expressive elements, flourished as an important part of the decorative design statement. In the light of Loos’s condemnation, Art Nouveau was labeled by the avant-garde as decadent in favor of the new movements of cubism, expressionism and the abstract theories of Kandinsky and the constructivists in the early 20” century.

The designations, “decorative” and “ornamental” came to mean trivial art forms, embellishments without intrinsic meaning. The true nature and meaning of ornament, however, is integral to the expression of the values and meaning of any culture as seen in its visual forms. Painting as fine art can be theme oriented, subjective, historical, narrative, figurative, symbolic and specific to a time and place. Ornament, however, has been a communal and traditional experience intrinsic to the development of art, indeed of civilization itself from prehistoric times. All of the visual arts developed from nature and survival skills along with religion, ritual, writing, dance, music, crafts, technology as well as architecture. Ancient design motifs, arabesques and geometric figures originally had cultural and religious meanings. Art and craft were bound together with the developing culture. After millennia of repetition and gradual change, the original meanings were lost while the decorative patterns and forms remained.

What meaning these devices and patterns have for us now is purely visual and aesthetic, responding to our innate delight in color, rhythm, and our subconscious response to order and skill. Derived from the complexities of the evolving cultures, these formal decorative elements are incorporated into all of the arts as aesthetic values. We do not think of Egyptian, Greek or Islamic art, all of which are highly ornamental and reflect their civilization’s religious content, as being anything other than ART of the highest order. Decorative values are visual and aesthetic, ingrained in the human psyche and based on a highly refined feeling for design order.

Matisse was the first modern artist to give the decorative values of color, form and line meaning as visual truth in painting. He stated that: “Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter’s disposal for the expression of his feelings. *1
For Matisse, color itself determined the structure of the painting, which he conceived of as a new language of color relationships. In Matisse’s work it is impossible to separate out the design or composition, the decorative: element and the painterly qualities from the meaning of the painting.

Matisse’s belief in the decorative values of art derives from 19th century scientific discoveries, including color theory, and finds its theoretical source in Maurice Denis’ Theory of Equivalents of 1888. Denis, in declaring that art should be decorative, states that color, line and form have emotional and symbolic qualities in themselves which communicate a universal visual language not necessarily based on subject matter. *2

Paradoxically, this theory led to both the triumph of the decorative in the art of Matisse and Gauguin, as well as to 20th century abstract art which fused both symbolic and formal values.

Also based on Denis’s Theory of Equivalents, was Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art of 1912, which first articulated the theory of abstract art. It gave explicit emotional and symbolic meaning to formal “decorative” motif, which to him were visual expressions of inner feelings.

Thus, a pure abstract (Greenbergian) art evolved from an expressive, intuitive base in Kandinsky and from the decorative values celebrated in Matisse and Gauguin. The abstract and the decorative are intertwined, since in modern art theory they spring from the same root. Both are based on the innate visual meanings of color and form.

Since every work of art is a complex structure of relationships, both within itself and in relationship to its surroundings, it is also a compendium of design, painterly and decorative elements. Abstract art, which may be based on theory, can also be highly subjective and personal. What the artist intends as theory or symbolism can be perceived by the viewer as meaningless shapes and colors. The difficulty of incorporating a theory within any art movement or specific art form (without knowledge of the artist’s intention) is due to the fact that art is always subjected to the perceptions of the viewer.

It is almost impossible to appreciate a work of art without also referring to the many layers of meaning within the visual forms and the meanings intended by the artist. William Morris, the master of pattern design, said it best when he referred to the “beauty, order and imagination” of inspired designs which should also have meaning “beyond itself’.*3

This meaning is felt in the intuitive pleasure inherent in the ebb and flow of the colors and rhythms of the integrated layers of visual themes. Morris’ patterns were composed on a grid; the underlying order provided the structure upon which the arabesques and motifs could play. Central to Morris’s vision of all art is the “delight and skill” involved in its creation, which is its esthetic source. Artists of the modern movement beginning with Picasso, infused decorative elements into their art. Stuart Davis, whose art derived from cubism, used jagged shapes, vibrant colors and the rhythms of jazz, all formal decorative values, to convey the lift and excitement of modern city streets.

In the late 20th century, artists began to question the rejection of ornament and the modern movement’s emphasis on aesthetic purity and intellectual theory. Pattern painting developed in the 1970s as a movement within the fine arts, reviving women’s traditional quilt making, textiles and pottery. Our diverse culture is now reaffirming the visual and sensual values coming from non-Western traditional cultures which have always integrated decorative elements into the fabric of their arts.

The ambiguous nature of the decorative is that it can assert itself into any situation where aesthetic sensibilities come into play. Our response to decorative art is built into our psyches. The decorative can disguise itself in many forms. Hidden, it can surface as an enrichment, a single motif, a whole painting, or a wall of pattern. An impulse, or a pulsing image, a structure like the rhythms of dance and music, the decorative is a visual rhythm, an energy that ultimately needs no theory.

*1. Letters, ed. John Rewald, London (Cassirer), p. 234. Quoted in Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Painting. (New York and Washington: Praeger Books; 5th printing, 1966), p.38.

*2. Art Noveau Art and Design at the Turn of the Century, ed. Peter Selz and Mildred Constantine, (New York: Museum of modern Art, 1959, 1975), p.54.

*3. Ray Watkinson, William Morris as Designer. (New York: Reinhold Publishing Co., 1967), pp. 49-50.