Saturday, September 30, 2017

Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh: Deep Surface "Ornament and Pattern"




Pattern is described as essential to life and fundamental towards its relationship with ornament. With pattern recognition, we recognize relationships which helps us interpret what we see and adds layers of meaning to that encounter. As designers and artists use ornament to translate their perception or concept that ornament becomes an extension of their vision. Ornament mirrors the intertwined nature of life, ornament communicates in an aesthetic language of complex exchanges. In addition, contemporary designers use ornament as their medium of exchange and tell us tales and stories about objects. The tales of ornament are woven by their own experiences by outside influences.

Ornament and Pattern were meant to engage the mind through the eye. Ornament and Pattern work as form- based languages by visually depicting ideas. Contemporary ornaments communicate customs, lore, histories and the appreciation of craft. Despite ornament’s pejorative associations with eastern decadence and feminine weakness known as “feminine arts of decoration” ornament survived. With technology advancing, mass production handcrafted decoration declined because of the expense. Machines were inexpensive than highly trained artisans.  Later, machine produced ornament would be known as “inferior ornament”. Quickly, ornament started losing its cache of exclusivity and social refinement.

With the future approaching, ornament would arrive in the form (and forms) of Modernism. The values of design were changing to structural elements including abstract and geometric ornament. In brief, technology helped develop potentials to rethink and remake ornament that would be renovated based on the changing elements of design within ornament and pattern.

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