About The Author;
Adolf Loos was an Austrian architect and pioneer of modern architecture and contributed a body of theory and criticism of modernism in architecture and design. I think he came to the forefront with his writer identity instead of his architect identity with being impressed by his friends, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus. In contrast his deletion of ornament idea, he was interested in the decorative arts, fashion, men’s clothing, haberdashery, collecting sterling silver and high quality leather goods, which he noted for their plain yet luxurious appeal.
While I was researching, I came across his grave stone’s photo. His grave is also representing his architectural view very well. It is a cubical-formed stone which was made with golden ratio. There is no ornament or anything, just its functionality.
About The Text;
In his essays, Loos used provocative catchphrases and is noted for the essay/manifesto entitled Ornament and Crime, given in a lecture in 1910 and first published in 1913. He explored the idea that the progress of culture is associated with the deletion of ornament from everyday objects, and that it was therefore a crime to force craftsmen or builders to waste their time on ornamentation that served to hasten the time when an object would become obsolete (design theory).
“The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects”, Loos proclaimed, linking the optimistic sense of the linear and upward progress of cultures with the contemporary vogue for applying evolution to cultural contexts.
In Loos’s essay, “passion for smooth and precious surfaces” he explains his philosophy, describing how ornamentation can have the effect of causing objects to go out of style and thus become obsolete. It struck him that it was a crime to waste the effort needed to add ornamentation, when the ornamentation would cause the object to soon go out of style. Loos introduced a sense of the “immorality” of ornament, describing it as “degenerate”, its suppression as necessary for regulating modern society. He took as one of his examples the tattooing of the “Papuan” and the intense surface decorations of the objects about him—Loos says that, in the eyes of western culture, the Papuan has not evolved to the moral and civilized circumstances of modern man, who, should he tattoo himself, would either be considered a criminal or a degenerate.
Loos concluded that “No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who lives on our cultural level … Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength”
Review of The Text;
” The stragglers slow down the cultural evolution of the nations and of mankind; not only is ornament produced by criminals but also a crime is committed through the fact that ornament inflicts serious injury on people’s health, on the national budget and hence on cultural evolution.”
If ornamented and smooth things’ costs are the same, the difference in the working time doesn’t interest the client. That’s why ornament is wasted labour power and wasted health.
To gain the same income, the ornamentor has to work one half of the day whereas the modern worker one third of the day. So ornament is a time waste and Loos regards as the people who are obsessed with the ornament as sick. Those people also try to transform the other part of the community to exhibit the ornaments in the widest range of materials.
“The form of an object lasts, that is to say remains tolerable, as long as the object lasts physically.”
Another concern that he tells is the changes of ornament. Ornamented products aren’t as tolerable as the raw products because they are more likely to change their form for a time. There are many alternatives -because of this changing- for a definite object and ornamented ones are, like popular culture items, changing day after day; a new one is incorporated into this ‘ornament collection’, it becomes old and a new one comes. So this deadlock wastes the worker’s time and the material and causes to waste the capital assets and harm the national economy.
“Modern ornament has no parents and no progeny, no past and no future.”
Also he mentions that ornament is not a thing which is able to develop. Because neither it has connection with human or the world order, nor it comes to his culture from nature. Ornamentors’ works are doomed to be disappeared and people will realize that they shouldn’t depend on this ornament idea and move away from it and there will be no ornament at all in days to come.
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Austrian ornamentalists make furnitures that will not allow to use after a while so they force consumers to buy a new furniture continuously in a period. So consumers should become richer and richer to keep pace with this industrial demand.
And it comes to my mind that when you eat something in a restaurant, they prepare a meal with ornaments and you don’t eat those ornaments. But you pay money for them too. For instance, think of Burger King, they bring you only your meal without any addings like parsley or tomatoes or something else. So you pay money for what you eat, not for what they labour or what they ornament. So ornament increases the cost of the meal and it influences the consumer.
The loss does not damage the consumer but also the producer. Ornament is a wasted labour and ruined material.
“But it is a crime against the national economy that it should result in a waste of human labour, money and material. Time cannot make good this damage.”
“If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I choose one that is quite smooth and not a piece representing a heart or a baby or a rider, which is covered all over with ornaments.” This sentence reminded me the speeches in Arch101 course. It shouldn’t look like something or it shouldn’t represent something so it shouldn’t be figurative. Because it exists with its own existence, without any necessity another thing’s help.
Consequently, modern people should concentrate their own inventiveness on other things. Instead of wasting time and ruining the material with ornamenting, they should use their energy, time, material, talent and ability on other things.
Is ornament a crime for me? I think all those things that are mentioned in the text such as architecture, art of cooking, embroidery, shoe-making exists for people, and if ornament appeals to the eye; it is not a crime. However, if you do ornament and if it hasn’t any meaning or if it doesn’t change anything, it is unnecessary and it should be removed. Just because an ornament doesn’t do anything physically (like a column does or a beam does in architecture) , it shouldn’t be called as a crime I think. Also it depends on how you look at it; using different textures, materials, shapes, forms or arranging elements also can be an ornament.
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