Thursday, 4 August 2011

DSDN 171 Assignment 4

Figure 1 Arad, Ron (2008) Voido, retreived from http://furniture.architecture.sk/

I believe that Adolf Loos argument that "the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use" is untrue.  His belief is that the more cultured and civilized a race was the less ornament they should use, as ornament was the product of criminals and degenerates.  He says this as he believes that ornament adds work to the making of an object and that by doing this a man earns less money making the same object and that this is criminal to the person who makes the object.  But in removing the ornament from the object it can also make it less desirable, and to counter this the form of an object has become more important than the ornamentation when it comes to aesthetics.  So people spend more money on materials that get a nicer finish, such as shinier metals, and more time working on them to get this finish, and when the object is finished it is in itself an ornament.  An example above shows this as while it is a chair and works well as one, it looks like a piece of art as well.  While it is true the ornament has been removed off the object, the object itself is presented so that it takes the place of the ornament and still does its function, which is why I believe Loos' argument to be false.

References
Loos, Adolf (c. 1910) Ornament and Crime
London: Arts Council of Great Britain (1985), 100-103

No comments:

Post a Comment