L’ornement aujourd’hui

Abstract

This introduction to Inactualité de l'ornement forms an attempt to understand, along a wide temporal range and in an European context, how ornament has been understood according to a moral scale and how, since approximately the second half of the nineteenth century, it has been subject to unprecedented critiques. In the first place, this paper roots an ethical formation of decor inside the philosophical and christian ornament theory. Then it focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth century passage to a moralistic trend that removes ornament from the art field. Finally, from the postmodernist viewpoint, it questions its positive functions in our contemporary world.

Keywords

• ornament
• architecture
• decoration
• aesthetics
• modernism
• postmodernism