The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan Kokand state pedagogical

The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan Kokand state pedagogical

Institute named after Mukimi Faculty of Foreign Department of English

Language and Literature
Coursework

Topic: An overview of ornamentation of language.

Submitted by:

3^rd year student of 303-group

Yigitaliyeva Dilnavozxon
Scientific advisor Z. Isaqova .

Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………3
Chapter I. Ornamentation applied embellishment in various styles.

1. 
   Ornament begins as luxury…………………
   

2. 
   Ornamentation – the art of decorative pattern…………………………………………….
   

Chapter II. Ornament is the language through which architecture communicates with a broader public.

2.1 The language of ornament explores the history of ornament in the Western design…………………………

2.2 Ornamental language is still concerned with the way of expression……………………………………………………………….

Introduction
Ornamentation, in architecture, applied embellishment in various styles that is a distinguishing characteristic of buildings, furniture, and household items. Ornamentation often occurs on entablatures, columns, and the tops of buildings and around entryways and windows, especially in the form of moldings. Throughout antiquity and into the Renaissance, and later for religious buildings, applied ornament was very important, often having symbolic meaning. The anthemion petal motif was especially popular on the moldings of ancient Greek cornices. Other motifs from antiquity include the Egyptian cartouche (oval), fretwork (banding) of capitals, fluting and of columns, bas-relief egg-and-dart moldings (with alternating oval and pointed forms), and scrollwork such as that found on Ionic capitals and in the running-dog pattern (or wave scroll). British refers to the continuous embellishment around the top of a wall, common in the Gothic period. The diaper motif, an allover pattern of small repeated shapes, was also often used in this period. The use of strap work (interlaced scrollwork), which originated with Islamic metalwork, is characteristic of Mannerist architecture and furniture.

The Language of Ornament explores the history of ornament in the Western design tradition. It examines a series of motifs, charting their appearance and reappearance in design from Classical Antiquity through to the twenty-first century. A wide range of works of art drawn from the NGV Collection illustrate how motifs have been translated from one medium to another and have been borrowed and reinterpreted over the centuries.

In debates about art and modernity taking place in the cultural ferment of Europe in the nineteenth century, the nature and meaning of ornament occupied a significant position. For German architect Gottfried Semper, architecture was the first and most significant of all arts. The forms and decoration of architecture were, Semper argued, materialist in origin, reflecting individual materials and their working techniques; thus, the visual structure of a brick wall derived its form from cultural memory of the woven rush or grass textiles that were among the first human-built shelters.

The English theorist of ornament Owen Jones knew Semper and embraced his demand that ornament befit the materials for which it was intended. Jones looked to the natural world as a key to understanding ornament. The precisely ordered structures revealed by the science of plant morphology were, in the years prior to the advent of Darwinism, taken to be proof of a divine architecture in nature and impressed many as a potential basis for a science of ornament.2 In 1856 Jones published his Grammar of Ornament, richly illustrated with plates providing examples of flat ornamental patterns from diverse cultures from across the globe. The name of his book was pointed; Jones did not intend it as a source of pattern to be copied by designers (although that was frequently how it was used), but instead as a textbook. Just as the natural world possessed a divine ordering principle which determined its outward forms, Jones in his preface to the Grammar invites the reader to study the patterns presented and discern their ordering principles – the ‘grammar’ underlying them – thus equipping the student to generate patterns of their own.

By contrast, Viennese textile curator and art historian rejected the materialist theories of Semper and his followers. He argued that ornament was a fundamental human impulse that expressed humanity’s ideal vision of the world – that through ornament people transformed the appearance of objects, including their own bodies, and made the world look the way they needed it to look, regardless of the materials involved. He proposed the abstract concept, or ‘will to art’, to define this historically contingent human impulse to shape the world around us. For to understand the development of ornament employed by a given culture in any given place or time was to gain profound insight into that culture’s worldview because it was that worldview, not concern for function or nature of materials, which shaped ornamental forms. His remains of enormous interest, as he places the concept of ornament at the very of how humans interact with their world. He too posits a ‘grammar’ of ornament – an ordering principle of visual form unique to a given culture. Many motifs that form the basis of ornament across time and space are widely shared, drawn as they are, ultimately, from the natural world around us. We can certainly speak of a ‘vocabulary’ of ornament in the Western tradition. Scrolls, vegetal motifs, animals, shells, strap work – these motifs and many others manifest themselves time and again adorning artefacts, from buildings to sculpture, tools to textiles, found across Europe and the Near East, from the Stone Age onwards. As cultures interact, ornamental imagery travels from one place to another, changing subtly in both form and meaning. With both a grammar and a vocabulary in place, the basis of a language of ornament is established.

Chapter I. Ornamentation applied embellishment in various styles.

Many of the ornamental motifs in this exhibition have a lineage stretching back to Classical Antiquity; for example, the putto, the scroll, the shell, drapery and festoons and the mask. The revival of Classical motifs and architectural principles formed the basis for ornament in the Renaissance Period; in the Baroque Period of the seventeenth century; Neoclassicism in the late eighteenth century; the Empire and Regency Periods of the early nineteenth century; and at various points throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What is remarkable, however, is that it is difficult to confuse the Renaissance use of an ornamental motif, such as the mask, with that found on an ancient Roman vase or a nineteenth-century Neoclassical silver object. The motif, the item of ornamental vocabulary, may remain the same but the way it is employed, or its grammar of use, has changed, subtly altering a reading of the image to reflect the ideas and concerns of the age which produced it.

Self-conscious attempts to emulate precisely the ornamental language of the past rarely succeed; individual artists and designers often employ motifs with considerable freedom, combining elements from a range of sources and imposing their own interpretation on a design. This phenomenon became more frequent from the sixteenth century onwards as the invention of the printing press allowed a large range of design sources to circulate widely. Pattern books, architectural renderings and ornamental prints were produced in large numbers in major urban and disseminated across Europe, giving artists access to models from a wide range of places and periods. Prior to this invention of graphic reproduction techniques, and the proliferation of prints, patterned woven fabric was the principal means of disseminating ornamental motifs on a significant scale. The absence of a division between the fine and decorative arts the period prior to the Industrial Revolution meant that artists were also ornament and, as such, were commissioned to produce models – a drawing or a print – for diverse media: embroideries, fabrics, tapestries, ornamental paintings and sculpture, stucco, furniture, woodwork, bronze fittings, wrought iron, metalwork, clothing, ceramics, glassware, book bindings and stained-glass windows. The same print source might have been adapted for a range of artworks, artists delighting in adapting the original print to new and novel contexts and materials.

Although European interest in non-Western art was longstanding, it was only with the opening up of sea trade routes to Asia from the sixteenth-century onwards that works from Far Eastern cultures became increasingly available. By the seventeenth century a flourishing trade between China and Japan, via the various European India Companies, brought porcelain, textiles, lacquer and furniture to Europe in great quantities. European attempts to imitate such exotic luxury goods saw the rise of a decorative phenomenon known as inspiration was taken from Asian art, which provided a new ornamental vocabulary, but this vocabulary was deployed according to Western design principles, producing a European fantasy of Asia. The nineteenth-century European colonial presence in North Africa and the Near East saw Islamic ornamental motifs become a significant influence on Western decorative arts. For centuries, Persian decorative arts have been a rich source of exotic motifs for many European designers who have not only drawn on Persian floral and vegetal ornament but also on their complex geometric design work and sophisticated use of script as a decorative device. The late nineteenth-century Italian designer Carlo Bugatti was particularly inspired by Islamic architecture and design when creating decoration for his furniture, which nevertheless remained idiosyncratically European in conception.

At times we observe a turn against ornament, a conscious rejection of decorative embellishment such as that pursued by the more stringent strands of twentieth-century modernism. Adolf Loos’s 1913 essay ‘Ornament’ (‘Ornament and Crime’) attributes a sense of immorality to inappropriate ornament. But Loos’s rhetorical attack on ornament is a tacit acknowledgment of the overwhelming authority of the ornamental tradition in Western art and design. Any attempt to deny ornament has tended to be short-lived, as may be seen in the reassertion of ornament by the Memphis designers of the 1980s – the revenge of ornament on modernism. Today the ornamental style of every period is available in reproduction, and the ornament of the past is given new currency through the work of contemporary artists and designers who draw upon it for inspiration.

1.1 Ornament begins as luxury.
Ornament, the art of decorative patterning, includes some of the most spectacular creations of human imagination and skill. Although the fashion for unadorned form pushed ornament to the margins of Western taste in the twentieth century, an ornamental revival is now under way. This book introduces the global panorama of ornament and will be of value to crafts people, collectors, and students of art history. Trilling's approach is both visual and historical. With over 200 illustrations, he presents the dazzling variety of ornament so that the reader can appreciate both its inherent form and the role it has played in everything from the monumental architecture of Mycenaean Greece to the inlaid vessels of Zhou Dynasty China, from the bronze mirrors of Early Celtic Britain to the carved and woven ornament of the Indians of Alaska and British Columbia. The characteristics of individual styles are balanced against their evolution and interaction from the Paleolithic Age to the present day. Special attention is paid to patterns that migrate across large stretches of space and time, showing how ornament becomes a record of cultural interaction through trade, conquest, and the spread of religions. Finally, Trilling explores the fate of ornament since the beginning of modernism in the early twentieth century. Modernism actually nurtured a vibrant and original ornamental style of its own, one so different from traditional ornament that its true nature went virtually unrecognized. Ornament in the postmodern era is open to any number of possible innovations, combining the modernist legacy with forms and principles from the world of traditional ornament. 50 color and 175 b/w illustrations.

From Library Journal

Considered one of the four major categories of art along with architecture, sculpture, and painting, ornament is broadly defined as a complicated decorative patterning device that may exude intense emotion, give pleasure, and enhance beauty. Trilling, who was curator of Old World Textiles at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, and who taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, provides historical context for ornamentation and traces its use, development, and meaning from Paleolithic times to the present. His beautifully integrated text is accompanied by descriptive illustrations and dazzling examples. Broad chapters highlight the appreciation of ornament, sketches in art history, ornament as conventional system, and ornament in the age of modernism. A welcome addition to all libraries with a focus on design and design techniques. Stephen Allan Patrick, East Tennessee State Univ. Libs., Johnson City Art Instruction By Daniel Lombardo, formerly with Jones Lib., Amherst, MA

Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, may luxury, but it could be time ourselves with our decorative roots.

2. 
   Ornamentation – the art of decorative pattern.
   

Ornament begins as luxury. The more ornamented a building, a piece of clothing or an item of the more labor has gone into its production and the more expensive it is. The Industrial Revolution and machine production changed everything. Suddenly decoration became cheap. Which coincided with the economic need for growth - the manufacture of more and more (decorated) stuff. This, in essence, is the argument of Marx, Morris, Loos and Veblen. Decoration as a mechanism for capital to produce and sell more useless crap to the masses.

Of course, as soon as ornament becomes cheap, elite taste moves on. If decoration is suddenly cheap, then the plainer an object, the more valuable it suddenly becomes. This is, effectively, the birth of Modernism as described by Pevsner and others, the stripped aesthetic of the Bauhaus or the Arts and Crafts where the effort now goes not into ornamentation but into making the building or the product so that it appears simple. But with the added dimension of morality. The stripping-off of ornament suddenly becomes an ethical duty, which leads to the (rather than necessarily moral) arguments of the Modern.

Use of the convex and the concave on Roger Anger’s monochromatic southern India, subtly combines simplicity and decoration

The curious thing is this conflation between Minimalism, modernity and morality. Ruskin, the originator of the moral argument, equated the work of the craftsman - which is necessarily some kind of ornamentation - as a moral prerogative. Adolf Loos, despite his ‘Ornament and Crime’ (the laughably silly text without which any discussion of the subject is impossible), agrees. For Loos, the shoemaker decorating his brogues is exactly the craftsman at the heart of good design. You only need to look at Loos’s interiors to understand that his position on ornament has been radically over-simplified. His text was aimed at the excesses of the Viennese Secession, a particular moment, it is dripping with sarcasm.

‘Ornament is the language through which architecture communicates with a broader public - each remove puts another degree of separation between the profession and the public’

But that century-and-a-half of the critique of ornament, that resistance to decoration in design, has become so embedded in our culture that we are now able only to approach the subject through irony or deliberate distance. Whether we think of the appliqué classicism of Postmodernism or the thin veneer of decorative facades engendered by digital production, ornament today is almost inevitably seen at a remove. That alienation is at the heart of the problem - and it is a problem because ornament is the language through which architecture communicates with a broader public and each remove puts another degree of separation between the profession and the public. His decorative manifest in the undulating curves and mosaic facades of his creations, such as the chimneys at Casa in Barcelona, is unparalleled

The world’s most popular architect - by the most measurable means, entry tickets - is Antoni . Twice as many people visit the each year (3.2 million plus) as live in Barcelona (1.6 million) itself. It is not an accident that is also the most obsessively decorative architect of modernity. His work gives us a depth of decoration and interest that the Barcelona Pavilion - despite its sublimity and cult status for us architects - cannot ever match. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright, they may have indulged in outrageous kitsch but they become ever bigger cults not through their composition or their handling of a plan or the way they manipulate light in space but because of their use of ornament and its transferability into other media - tea towels, coasters, scarves, posters and so on.

We might think that with the sublimation of Postmodernism (look at the pleas to list No 1 Poultry, he is now historic and acceptable), pluralism and the anything-goes attitude embodied in a contemporary art scene that finds room for Grayson Perry, Chris Elvin , Peter and Pablo Bronstein, we have come to terms with ornament. But we have not. Not even a tiny bit. Some parts of design culture have addressed the discrepancy between the (middle-class) taste for Minimalism and the (working-class) enthusiasm for kitsch through an effort to introduce a Minimalist interface between the two. This is fascinating because whereas once ornament and decoration were the mechanism through which architects communicated, now that mechanism is the high design interface - the iPhone or the iPad which is the Minimalist device through which we mask our kitsch tastes for cute kittens, celebrity bikini disasters or selfies taken on a stick against a background of George.

The detailed plan of the central staircase at London’s refurbished Tate Britain demonstrates that ornament came high on Caruso St John’s agenda

Contemporary architects are, however, increasingly engaging with ornamentation. The zenith was Grayson Perry and Charles Holland of FAT’s fairytale House for Essex (p64), but it does not serve as an indicator because the involvement of an artist has allowed an enhanced engagement with ornament until it surpasses mere decoration and becomes embodied in the architecture in a way that architects do not allow themselves to do. Think of FAT’s old work: the ornament is all contained within a surface - a facade - which allowed them to separate out the (Modernist) architecture from the (kitsch) superficiality of the elevation. Like Vent before them, their ornament allowed them to have their ornamentally iced cake - and eat the Minimal Modernist sponge underneath.

Herzog & de Meu latched onto decoration before everyone else but retained a self-conscious superficiality - and it tends to be the involvement of an artist (for example Thomas Ruff at the Eberswalde Library) which legitimates the act - as if it somehow eludes responsibility. Caruso St John found a copy of Semper and hasn’t stopped since - look at the practice’s Tate Britain refurb. They are still sweetly delighted that they have discovered decoration. Merci loves ornament. The result is Birmingham Central Library, a knock-off high-fashion concept facade more suited to Louis Vuitton in Taiwan than a civic amenity. There is also a stream of facades with portraits etched into them - Back House of Memory (AR August 2015) and Haworth Tompkins’ Stir Prize-winning Everyman Theatre stand out. Here ornament is used to attempt to re-embed a still-unfamiliar Modernism into a living community through the two-dimensional portrayal of real people. Which is about as alienated an intent as you could imagine - it screamingly underscores architecture’s failure to find mechanisms to connect.

The innovative facade of Amin Take Architects’ redevelopment project on a Second World War bomb site in north London features cornices and pediments

This discourse, as ever, omits the neo-classicists - for whom decoration never went away. There are architects who will still spend countless hours sketching column capitals. There are also others - perhaps Dixon Jones or Peter Mark - who seem more comfortable with ornament while even corporate Modernist fan AHMM have jumped aboard with their extremely fine Stir-Prize nominated Burn School which revives a tradition of 1960s decoration, from the first period of minimal ennui.

Ornament is not essential to architecture but people continue to like it. Perhaps architects need to begin thinking why, after their best efforts to educate them otherwise, they still do. Perhaps the people are right and it is indispensable. The problem is that most architects seem to have lost the knack. Ornament is not on the curriculum. Perhaps it should be .We're well on the way to having architects as hairdressers," warns architect and writer Neil Spiller. He's talking about style. Exactly a century after Adolf Loos' seminal text Ornament and Crime, architects are using digital technology to generate elaborate decoration. But what are they trying to say with all their filigreed and tessellated patterns? Now that anything is possible, how do you choose what to do? And how do you know what's radical anymore when radicals are "going baroque"?

"Aesthetic discourse is the hot button issue for the next few years," says Greg Lynn, one of the most prominent digital architects of the last decade. You don't have to look very hard to see what he means. Take Foreign Office Architects' John Lewis department store in Leicester, a glass box covered in floral swirls that wouldn't be out of place in a William Morris pattern book, or Francis Sue's Ministry of Culture in Paris, based on Hector George's art nouveau Metro stations. Caruso St John is building a contemporary art museum in Nottingham with lace patterns embossed into its concrete surface, making reference to extinct local industry. Perforated facades, a feature fast becoming ubiquitous on new buildings, are sometimes fact and abstract and sometimes figurative. BIG's Mountain housing in Copenhagen has a facade laser-cut to depict a mountain.

Chapter II. Ornamentation is the language through which architecture communicates with a broader public.

This decorative tendency is even more apparent at London's architecture degree shows. There are patterns everywhere, classical orders, hyper-baroque and, most strangely, caryatids, human bodies and organic structures. Oliver Dome teaches a design studio at the Architectural Association which looks back, of all things, to rococo, that most ornate and some might say vulgar of styles. For him, "abstraction is a retreat"; we have to reintroduce the notions of beauty and figuration to architecture in order to give it meaning again. Dome wants architecture that is "voluptuous and eloquent", and he regularly uses words such as "beautiful" or "sensual" to describe it.

Over at the Bartlett school of architecture, Neil Spiller's students have been turning to theories of the baroque for inspiration. Spiller has been a strong promoter of digital architecture for nearly 20 years, and for him looking to the baroque is useful because "it deals with repressed psychosexuality, which is something architecture really doesn't deal with very well". "We're well on the way to having architects as hairdressers," warns architect and writer Neil Spiller. He's talking about style. Exactly a century after Adolf Loos' seminal text Ornament and Crime, architects are using digital technology to generate elaborate decoration. But what are they trying to say with all their filigreed and tessellated patterns? Now that anything is possible, how do you choose what to do? And how do you know what's radical anymore when radicals are "going baroque"?