Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/71

* DECORATIVE ART. 53 DECORATIVE ART. ture. Beautiful as are many of the French four- teenth-century statues of saints, martyrs, ami apostles, and the ranges of seated angel choirs in the catlicdral porches, considered as pure sculp- ture, they are perfect only when seen in the archi- tectural setting for which they were designed, whose lines they empliasize and whose beauty they enhance. The French and Italians may be said to vie with each other for the supremacy in sculpture during the Renaissance; but while the French produced no one to equal Jlichelangelo in pure sculpture, the Italians never equaled Jean Goujon in the perfect mastery of decorative effect in figure sculpture applied to architecture. The French of to-day are perhaps less the superiors of the rest of the world in decorative sculpture than in painting. This form of art is also young in the United States, but has produced a few wortliy works, and, like that of mural painting, is beginning to receive the recognition which it deserves as an adjunct to architecture. Obxamext. When the decorative artist seeks to produce his effect not by recourse to the repre- sentative arts of painting and sculpture, but by the harmony, rhythm, balance, and contrast of lines, lights and shades, and colors, dissociated from pictorial purpose, his work falls into the category of ornament Ornament may be defined as the "combination of lines, colors, or forms ac- cording to a predetermined system, for decorative effect. VMien certain elementary forms recur again and again in a regular sequence or system, they are called motives, and the larger system or combination of motives is called a pattern. Orna- ment is said to be naturalistic when it employs forms directly derived or imitated from nature, as in rugs, wall-papers, or carpets adorned with flowers and foliage in their natural colors. It is called conrentionol when the designer makes use of purely arbitrars' forms, coined in the mint of his own imagination or derived from tradition; such are the familiar Greek fret or meander, the ftuiUoche or interlaced bands, and the geometric intricacies of llohammedan ornament. But the largest proportion of ornament consists of a third and intermediate class of forms, derived from nature but subjected to modifications de- signed to adapt them to their purely decorative function by the suppression, exaggeration, and regularization of the natural details, and their re- sult is called conventionalization ; so that we may say that the largest part of all ornament consists of conventionalized natural forms. Such are all grotesques, wreaths and festoons, rosettes, acanthus-leaves, anthemions. and foliated scrolls. It is out of the question to attempt even the brief- est sketch of the historic development of orna- ment. We can only observe that it has in almost all ages been dominated by the master-art of architecture, so that its successive styles have been parallel to those of architecture. The highest field for the application of orna- ment is that of architecture; and such of its forms and developments as belong to the adorn- ment of buildings are called architectural orna- ment. Decoration applied to movable objects is called industrial ornament. When the ornament is an essential part of the building or object to which it belongs — inwrought into its f.ibric. as it were — it is called structural ornament: when executed upon the surface of the completed object it is called applied ornament. These characteri- zations are also, in a measure, applicable to deco- rative painting and decorative sculpture similarly employed. The Decobatite Abt.s. What has preceded applies to decorative art in general. But the various means and processes by which men adorn their buildings, furniture, utensils, and fabrics have given rise to a variety of distinct branches of the art, collectively known as the decorative arts. Chief of these are decorative or mural painting and decorative sculpture. .Mosaic and stained glass may be considered as subdivisions of decorative painting when they deal with c- torial compositions, or of ornament when confined to conventional and conventionalized natural forms. Closely related to these are the arts of inlay and of tile decoration. All of these are chiefly subservient to architecture, and have fur- nished important elements of beauty in the churches of the Byzantine style (mosaic), the medi;p'al cathedrals (stained glass in western turope, inlay in Italy ), in Moorish buildings, and on the exteriors of Persian mosques and medresseli (tile- work). Closely related to sculp- ture are relief-carving, illustrated in the carved details of many styles — capitals, finials, crockets, carved moldings, friezes, and pila.sters — and stucco-work, in which the wet plaster is modeled into patterns, as in Roman wall-decoration, Moorish 'quarry' ornament and wall fret-work, and Italian Renaissance plaster-work. The industrial decorative arts are those which relate to the adornment of movable furniture, utensils, and fabrics. The four main divisions are based on the materials used. Metal-work in- cludes not only decorative work in iron and bronze, but the work of the goldsmith and silver- smith. ^Vood■work as a decorative art includes the designing of artistic furniture, wood-carving, and wood-inlay, or intarsia. Ceramic art com- prises all the decorative work of the potter, in- cluding terra-cntta. decorative tiles, and the modeling and painting of all kinds of artistic earthenware and porcelain. Glass-work is closely related to it. Textile decoration comprises all decoration effected by weaving, embroidery, and needlework ; all carpets, rugs, tapestries and hangings, lacework. figured stuffs, and the like. Book-binding, leather-decoration, and typograph- ic ornament stand more or less apart from the above main divisions. This mere enumeration suggests the extent of the field of decorative art and the impossibility of treating the divisions separately in a brief article of this character. In modern times the palm of superiority in the decorative arts belongs with the Eastern rather than the Western world. For the perfect development of decoration as dis- tinguished from the arts of painting, sculpture, and arcliitecture which appeal to the higher in- tellectual emotions, it would seem as though the most favorable conditions were found where tra- dition is most dominant, as among the Moham- medan nations, the people of India, and the empires of China and .lapan. The more progres- sive Western nations, however superior in edu- cation and intellectual culture, fail to equal the decorative design of these Orientals, and produce their own best work chiefly when they follow in their footsteps. The movement in Europe known as the 'Art Xouveau' or 'Art iloderne' illustrates the West- ern impatience of tradition. It is a studied effort to ignore all the so-called historic styles, and to