Gingerbread

When it comes to the definitive attack on ornamentation, it is one figure that comes out in the turn of the century, in the midst of the Belle Epoch and prevailing ideals on total work of art -that is Gesamkuntswerk as Wagner baptized- that denounces all  and criticizes the modern men for their lack of visions is no other person than Adolf Loos in Vienna. 

Loos starts depicting his contradictory ideas to ornamentation, by implying how modern human being precedes over previous generations, as of now, he has the capability of seeing violet, and having the sensory impressions of Voltaire at the age of 6.  As he moves on to criticize ornamentation further, he manifests the discovery ‘the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects’  to the mankind and from that moment on, it is the official step of the evolution of civilization, now it is stated in blood and flesh.  

Modern human being, confronting every ornamental object from the past in exhibition, questions its generations’ ability to produce style, and thus reaches the conclusion that it is impotence of the latter age. But Loos, dreams of white walls -the iconic element of modernism to follow- as a future and underlines that it is greatness, rather than impotence that they can not produce ornamentation styles, it is the process of civilization that has overcome the ages of ornament. And the modern man, should choose, gingerbread that is simple.  

To whom the simple gingerbread doesn’t appeal, there exists Gesamkuntswerk. In the all designed environment and notion of completeness,  ‘a poor rich man’ lives as a ornament itself, as the final element of the design and the practitioner of the rituals it brings. But he doesn’t live, as he can not  evolve in an environment that is claimed to fulfill all there can be. 

Loos chooses liberation, as to set an example to the modern man of his age. He assigns morality and firm grounds of thought to his approaches in a tone of the century progressive mood. 

As Ruskin, Loos correlates ornamentation with the methods that they are produced and labour. Ornamentation, is the waste of human labour, money and material for Loos, and a means of degeneration.  It could have been accepted in the conditions that the craftsmen enjoy their work, and if it is actually their ‘high point of existence’, also indicating a desire to place himself and those that his words actually is aimed at above the 12th Century peasant.  

We have art, we dont need ornamentation for the sake of joy, is the conclusion. And art, liberated from ornamentation, reaches to the limits it has never been before. as it is the case of twentieth century art and architecture.