Would you consider this a crime? or just an outdated man’s creation?
Response to “Crime and Ornament, The Arts and Popular
Culture in the Shadow of Adolf Loos.”
This response is almost like a “follow-up” on the last text
on the international style in Tomwolfe’s “From Bauhaus to Our House” yet it is
much more direct and persuasive. Loos was a good writer, there is a presence of
his voices throughout the text and he was able to support his argument with
strong, straight forward yet vivid and easily related to, which make us
understand his point directly.
As to the content, some parts were agreeable but some that I’m going to provide arguments to his theory on “ornamental is a crime”. As much as I would prefer a simple, neutral color-working desk over a wooden carved with ornaments one, ornamentation is still, simply, ornaments. To say that, nowadays ornaments have no particular value was being narrow-minded. I’m saying this because this is not true in my culture, as a Thai person, our nation values the smallest details of crafts and overtime, this has become our identity to the rest of the world; it would be impossible to picture Thailand without our gold dusted intricate crown and our temple’s polychromatic mosaics of colored glass gleaming in the sun. His argument that these ornamentation is waste of money and time and thus preventing, “degenerate” the society can not be applied world-wide. For these ornaments, Thailand attracts tourists and provides incomes for a range of occupations. Yes, they are time consuming and laborious but we also value them for their crafts, not to mention the risen price and the pride they received.
Nevertheless, when this topic is looked at the “personal” scale, (leaving the drama about the degenerated society behinds), it is true that nowadays; household ornamented items are outdated and short-lived, aesthetically. The fixture of style of the ornaments in furniture destroyed its “flexibility” to survive in the new ever-changing twenty-first century. The world became smaller, the styles were being exchanged to the point that there’s no point in chasing a particular style, thus, simplicity was the way to go, since Corbu’s work survives (aesthetically) for decades, the style proved to be long lasted, “ever modern” to the eyes of the common man world wide, hence the name, “international style”. With simple furnishings, the objects have the flexibility that enables them to morph and blend into any other ever-changing styles of the twenty-first century world. Thus, Loos theory is right when he mentioned that an object should “lasts as long in aesthetic terms as they did physically”(p.34) and on a personal term I agree.
It was not to blame Loos for his unfitted arguments based on the context of Thailand; he lived in another time, in another world, therefore it would be impossible for him to fully understand us. His theory would applied to the “classical” and “renaissance” ornaments in Thailand, where there’s no relation to us as a nation nor that they represent any value for the country, hence the almost comical compositions appeared in some area of Bangkok. Ornaments are only worthless when they are placed in a wrong context or when they are being forcibly mass-produced. Ornaments to me, are worthy of value when they’re containing a history, or a cultural identity. To erase, to destroy them in the name of keeping a society from “degenerating” and helping it to develop further into the future is no different from forgetting how we, as a nation, as human kind, developed here at the first place. Styles, at the end, are personal choices; some might be more “intellectual” of course, as with people. We value our freedom in society so why are we oppressing the diversity that comes along with it.
As to the content, some parts were agreeable but some that I’m going to provide arguments to his theory on “ornamental is a crime”. As much as I would prefer a simple, neutral color-working desk over a wooden carved with ornaments one, ornamentation is still, simply, ornaments. To say that, nowadays ornaments have no particular value was being narrow-minded. I’m saying this because this is not true in my culture, as a Thai person, our nation values the smallest details of crafts and overtime, this has become our identity to the rest of the world; it would be impossible to picture Thailand without our gold dusted intricate crown and our temple’s polychromatic mosaics of colored glass gleaming in the sun. His argument that these ornamentation is waste of money and time and thus preventing, “degenerate” the society can not be applied world-wide. For these ornaments, Thailand attracts tourists and provides incomes for a range of occupations. Yes, they are time consuming and laborious but we also value them for their crafts, not to mention the risen price and the pride they received.
Nevertheless, when this topic is looked at the “personal” scale, (leaving the drama about the degenerated society behinds), it is true that nowadays; household ornamented items are outdated and short-lived, aesthetically. The fixture of style of the ornaments in furniture destroyed its “flexibility” to survive in the new ever-changing twenty-first century. The world became smaller, the styles were being exchanged to the point that there’s no point in chasing a particular style, thus, simplicity was the way to go, since Corbu’s work survives (aesthetically) for decades, the style proved to be long lasted, “ever modern” to the eyes of the common man world wide, hence the name, “international style”. With simple furnishings, the objects have the flexibility that enables them to morph and blend into any other ever-changing styles of the twenty-first century world. Thus, Loos theory is right when he mentioned that an object should “lasts as long in aesthetic terms as they did physically”(p.34) and on a personal term I agree.
It was not to blame Loos for his unfitted arguments based on the context of Thailand; he lived in another time, in another world, therefore it would be impossible for him to fully understand us. His theory would applied to the “classical” and “renaissance” ornaments in Thailand, where there’s no relation to us as a nation nor that they represent any value for the country, hence the almost comical compositions appeared in some area of Bangkok. Ornaments are only worthless when they are placed in a wrong context or when they are being forcibly mass-produced. Ornaments to me, are worthy of value when they’re containing a history, or a cultural identity. To erase, to destroy them in the name of keeping a society from “degenerating” and helping it to develop further into the future is no different from forgetting how we, as a nation, as human kind, developed here at the first place. Styles, at the end, are personal choices; some might be more “intellectual” of course, as with people. We value our freedom in society so why are we oppressing the diversity that comes along with it.
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