The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present

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The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present

Drawing Papers 149

Contributions by

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The Drawing Center

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Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present

Contents

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Director’s Foreword Laura Hoptman 10

Curators’ Acknowledgments Emily King, Margaret-Anne Logan, Duncan Tomlin 30

The Clamor of Ornament: Exploring the Currency of Ornament and Ornament as Currency from the Late Fifteenth Century to the Present Emily King 62

The Ornamented Interior Margaret-Anne Logan and Duncan Tomlin 98

What Is It with Ornament and Crime?

Emily King

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Duro Olowu: An Interview Laura Hoptman 172

The Function of Ornament in the Ismaili Center Houston Farshid Moussavi 198

Reactions to Ornament Shola von Reinhold 230

Works in the Exhibition

Director’s Foreword Laura Hoptman

The Drawing Center’s mission is to produce exhibitions and scholarship on drawing of all kinds with the broader goal of promoting drawing as an essential medium in art history and in the contemporary moment. While the majority of shows in our forty-year history have focused on fine art, our brief also includes illustration, comics, vernacular commercial drawing, architecture, and design.

The Clamor of Ornament is our first design exhibition in quite some time and the most ambitious omnibus exhibition The Drawing Center has undertaken in decades. On display are more than 200 works from all over the world, dating from the fifteenth century to the present and including drawings, prints, books, textiles, and even photographs. It is a dazzling presentation that looks at ornament as a flexible, subversive, and viral tool of communication across decades and cultures.

This exhibition, first conceived of more than three years ago, has been a labor of love across the Atlantic Ocean. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Emily King, the London-based design historian and guest curator of The Clamor. Emily, along with her able co-curators Margaret-Anne Logan and Duncan Tomlin, whom I also thank with all my heart, took on the task of assembling a world-spanning show that encompasses all manner of design expression. Together, they selected a vast group of objects—most of them works on paper—to support a thesis that explores the manner in which ornament serves as a vehicle for communication through an exhibition that impresses the eyes as it feeds the mind. For their brilliance and also for their dedication to this project, The Drawing Center offers them our deepest gratitude.

The curators also contributed to the creation of a catalog filled with interesting perspectives by King, Logan and Tomlin working as a team, the fashion and textile designer Duro Olowu, the architect Farshid Moussavi, and the writer Shola von Reinhold. We thank these contributors for sharing their provocative ideas in a volume that is not only a permanent document of the exhibition but also a major contribution to the fraught discourse surrounding the meaning and the place of ornament in design.

The Drawing Center is a non-collecting institution, and without willing lenders, we would not have been able to create this historic exhibition. Those institutions and individuals who have loaned their objects to the show are listed elsewhere, but I would like to single out Max Hollein, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum; James Rondeau, President and Eloise W. Martin Director

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of the Art Institute of Chicago; Jason T. Busch, Director and CEO of the American Folk Art Museum; and Christophe Cherix, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art for their collegiality and generosity in loaning treasures from the collections of their peerless institutions.

The exhibition itself looks extraordinary because of our collaboration with Frith Kerr, Claire Koster, and Sarah Shattock of Studio Frith in London. Studio Frith created a bespoke identity for the exhibition—which also permeates this publication—that is a work of art unto itself. Their labors were ably assisted by Isabella Kapur, Curatorial Associate at TDC, who once again jumped into the breach to work closely with the curators to ensure that their vision was fulfilled. You are truly irreplaceable, Izzy. Rebecca DiGiovanna, Administrative Manager, also pitched in to supplement the work of the curatorial team, and she did it in the manner that she tackles all her responsibilities: with poise and perfection.

An exhibition of this kind could not have happened without the hard work and team effort of the staff of The Drawing Center, many of whom worked tirelessly to make this show possible. Our thanks go to Kate Robinson, Registrar, who managed the logistics of loans from more than forty individuals and institutions from all over the world. Kate, your competence and kindness while doing what you do is remarkable. Olga Valle Tetkowski, our Deputy Director, has prior experience working on design exhibitions, and her expertise has been an enormous boon to the show. Rebecca Brickman and Tiffany Shi in our Development Department were crucial players in finding funding to make this show a reality, and Allison Underwood, Kara Nandin, and Valerie Newton worked to create an online and in-shop presence for the exhibition. Aimee Good, Director of Education and Public Programs, made our patisserie series a reality and created intellectual programming around the exhibition that is both exciting and critically open-minded. Our publications team of Joanna Ahlberg, editor, and Peter Ahlberg, designer, were essential to the project, and in particular, this catalog. Their expertise and also their empathy and calm demeanors make them a joy to work with.

This project would not have been possible without the vision and crucial support of those funding the endeavor. Dita Amory, Curator in Charge of the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and art dealer, advisor, and collector Barbara Toll are both longtime members of the TDC board. They have been unstinting in their support for all of our projects, but their financial and intellectual gifts to The Clamor of Ornament were

swift and remarkable. They are not the only board members who have helped us make this show a reality: Amy Gold, our Co-Chair, and her husband, Brett Gorvy, and Isabel Stainow Wilcox have also generously supported the exhibition.

Director’s Circle members Michèle Gerber Klein and Sara Tayeb-Khalifa not only gave generously to the show but used both their expertise in design to help shape the exhibition and their deep connections with the international design community to help find objects to populate it. Michèle, a fashion historian, and Sara, whose design acuity has created two masterpiece homes, served as advisors as we worked on this exhibition. Another Director’s Circle member and friend, Hilary Hatch, made a unique contribution to The Clamor of Ornament, and it is because of her generosity that we are able to present programming around one of the most contemporary expressions of ornament: patisserie. Suzanne Slesin and Michael Steinberg as well as Madeline Weinrib and Sara Story of Sara Story Design are influential voices from the design community, and their contributions and interest in the exhibition are enormously meaningful to the project and its attendant publication.

In addition, board Co-Chair Andrea Crane and members Valentina Castellani, Stacey Goergen, and Linda Yablonsky shared their ideas and contacts freely; Phyllis Tuchman and jewelry designer Paul Morelli made crucial, early-stage donations that sponsored research and allowed us to widen our loan possibilities.

Plain English Design and Adelphi Wallpaper Hangings, LLC, provided unique in-kind donations to make our presentation as spectacular as the objects on display.

Major support for The Clamor of Ornament has also been provided by The Coby Foundation, Ltd., the Director’s Circle of The Drawing Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Further funding has been provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and Josh Smith, a wonderful artist and friend to TDC. Support for the exhibition catalog has been provided

by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

We are thrilled to present The Clamor of Ornament to art and design audiences as well as to a curious public. It is a show that tells a compelling and provocative story through drawings. As such, it exemplifies the mission of The Drawing Center, a small institution that through the power of drawing aims to contribute to the contemporary cultural discussion in big ways.

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Curators’ Acknowledgments Emily King Margaret-Anne Logan Duncan Tomlin

We would like to extend our gratitude to the many people who assisted us with this project. Their advice, insights, collegiality, and practical help have been crucial in bringing this exhibition and publication together.

Thanks to Michele Oka Doner, whose magnificent collection of books opened a window for us into the history and theory of design.

Our gratitude also goes to Michael Snodin, whose curatorial work and writing on the subject has been an inspiration and whose advice and enthusiasm at an early stage were invaluable. Thanks to Amin Jaffer for graciously sharing his profound expertise.

Thanks to all the individual lenders to this exhibition, who have not only allowed us to show works from their collections, but have also been generous in sharing their wisdom and enthusiasm.

Thanks to Duro Olowu for lending his voice to this volume and for sharing his extraordinary visual intelligence. Thanks to David Adjaye, Marissa Glauberman, and Alexandria Galooway of Adjaye Associates, and to Farshid Moussavi and colleagues at Farshid Moussavi Architecture for their time and participation. Thanks to Mathias Augustyniak, Michael Amzalag, and Jane Schwengbeck at M/M Paris; to Bethan Laura Wood and all at her studio; to Ed Fella; Nathalie du Pasquier; Tom Hovey; Morisawa Inc; and Matthew Slotover. Thanks to Jelani Day and the team of Dapper Dan of Harlem for their input and critical aid in representing Dan’s work. Thanks to Janette Beckman for sharing her vital connection to New York City’s cultural history and to Eric Firestone and Kara Winters of the Firestone Gallery for sharing their knowledge of subway graffiti and generously loaning works.

Thanks to Prahlad Bubbar, Marja Bloem, Great Neck Richman, and Mary Jo Arnoldi for sharing their profound knowledge of their respective fields and for lending both work and time to this project.

Thanks to Katina Huston for her critical assistance in contextualizing katagami and to David Libertson, Madison Folks, and the Ronin Gallery team for our wonderful discussions on Japanese art and for lending generously to the exhibition.

Thanks to Olivia Horsfall Turner at the Victoria and Albert Museum for sharing Owen Jones’s beautiful watercolors and to the staff at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ Cooper Hewitt Library, including John Davis, Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar, Matilda McQuaid, Yao-Fen You, Antonia Moser, Caitlin Condell, Susan Brown, Kimberly Randall, Kirsten van der Veen, Jennifer Bracchi, and Vanessa Smith for their humbling collegiality and gracious aid.

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Thanks go to the following individuals for thoughtful advice, assistance, and collegiality: Lucy Lead at the Wedgewood Collection; the staff of Sir John Soane’s Museum, including Helen Dorey, Joanna Tinworth, and the conservation team; the staff of the Chippendale Society and Leeds Museums and Galleries, including Adam Toole, Sarah Murray, and Adam Bowett; and the staff at the Dorman Museum, especially Louise Harrison. Special thanks to the staff of the Wolfsonian-FIU, including Silvia Barisione, Lisa Li Celorio, Richard Miltner, Casey Steadman, and Kim Bergen, for their gracious assistance.

Thanks to the many people whose support and connections helped us along the way, including Gina Buenfeld-Murley, Edward Saywell, Lydia Yee, Chikako Tatsuuma, and Martin Levy. And thanks for counsel and help to Victoria Rovine, Jonathan Gestetner, Charlotte Gere, Reinhold Martin, and Nahla Nassar, and the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art team. Thanks to @artsofhindostan for their indispensable assistance and inspiration in the field of Mughal and Indian artifacts.

Thanks to Frith Kerr and all at Studio Frith for their thorough engagement with this project and their brilliant identity design.

And lastly, thanks to the staff at The Drawing Center: Laura Hoptman for having faith and rousing support; Joanna Ahlberg and Peter Ahlberg for bringing this catalog together; Olga Valle Tetkowski, Rebecca DiGiovanna, Rebecca Brickman, and Allison Underwood for invaluable input; Kate Robinson for dealing gracefully with the complexities of this exhibition. And in particular thanks to Isabella Kapur for involvement and support on every level.

PL. 1 Hirase Yoichirō, Shell Motifs, 1913

PL. 2 Martin Schongauer, Querfüllung auf hellem Grund (Horizontal Ornament), c. 1470

PL. 3 Albrecht Dürer after Leonardo da Vinci, The First Knot, Interlaced Roundel with an Oblong Panel in its Center, before 1521

PL. 4 Albrecht Dürer after Leonardo da Vinci, The Second Knot, Interlaced Roundel with an Amazon Shield in its Center, before 1521

PL. 5 Attributed to Mirza Akbar, Drawing, 1840–70

PL. 6 John De Cesare, Study 102, Eleven Compositions for Ornamental Bands, General Foods Theme, 1953

PL. 7 Louis H. Sullivan, Fragment of a Wall Design, n.d.

PL. 8 Martin Sharp, Blowing in the Mind/Mister Tambourine Man, 1968

PL. 9 M/M (Paris), with campaign photography by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and with model Melia Marden, Invitation Balenciaga automne/hiver 2002/2003 (Balenciaga fall/winter 2002/2003 invitation), 2002–2003

PLS. 10–11 Unknown artist, Mali, “Ghana Boy” Style Tunic, c. 1960-79

PL. 12 Unknown artist, Nigeria, Embroidered Nigerian Robe, 20th century

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Clamor of Ornament: Exploring the Currency of Ornament and Ornament as Currency from the Late Fifteenth Century to the Present

Our title, The Clamor of Ornament, is, of course, a play on that of Owen Jones’s magnum opus The Grammar of Ornament. First published in 1856, the book has remained in print for the larger part of the intervening years [PLS. 13–14]. Jones’s ambition in The Grammar was to establish a set of universal rules, strictures that would apply to ornament in every instance, no matter its inspiration or application.

“No improvement can take place in the Art of the present generation until all classes, Artists, Manufacturers, and the Public, are better educated in Art, and the existence of general principles is more fully recognized,” he wrote.1 Motivated by what he saw as the excrescences of English midVictorian taste, Jones was one among several mid-nineteenth-century ornament authoritarians. The confluence of cheaper industriallyproduced goods and wealthier working- and middle-class consumers had created an entirely new audience for the decorative arts and, hence, a new breed of domestic ornament. The new accessibility of embellishment generated aesthetic outrage among the traditional guardians of cultural capital in Europe and North America. Henry Cole, the first director of the South Kensington Museum, later the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a close associate of Jones, wrote in 1849 of the “great errors in taste which are observable in the works of modern designers,”2 and in the United States the architect Louis Sullivan argued in 1892 that “it would be greatly for our aesthetic good if we should refrain entirely from the use of ornament for a period of years” [PLS. 7, 15, 16].3 This project, The Clamor, has no disciplinary agenda. Rather than promoting restraint and establishing rules, we are here to celebrate ornamental profusion and welcome ornament’s particular talent for pleasurable disruption. In swapping “Grammar” for “Clamor,” we are amplifying ornament’s propensity to communicate.

That said, we are not suggesting that particular forms are allied with fixed meanings. In our view, ornamental communication is utterly contextual and gloriously fluid. Our particular interest is in the way that ornament has moved within and between communities and cultures over approximately the last five hundred years and in doing 1 2

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Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (1856; rept., London: London Studio Editions, 1986).

Henry Cole, “The Two Roles of Design,” Journal of Design, 1849, excerpted in Paul Greenhalgh, Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 2.

Louis Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture,” The Engineering Magazine, 1892, excerpted in Greenhalgh, Quotations and Sources, 10.

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PLS. 13–14 Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, 1865

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PL. 15 Louis H. Sullivan, System of Architectural Ornament, Plate 4, Fluent Geometry, 1922 PL. 16 Louis H. Sullivan, System of Architectural Ornament, Plate 12, Values of Overlap and Overlay, 1922

so has acted as a form of currency, not only metaphoric, but, in some cases, literal.

The Clamor explores ornament in its two-dimensional manifestations: in print, in textile, in photography, in digital media, and above all, in drawing. Our subject is ornament independent of that which it ornaments; ornament as an end in itself; ornament with the potential to move and mutate. Jones likewise operated in two dimensions, creating and commissioning detailed drawings that were meticulously reproduced in The Grammar using the most advanced mid-nineteenth-century printing methods. However, while Jones abstracted ornament from architecture and objects as a means of establishing overarching principles, we have no such ambition.

As with Jones, drawing is the method that underlies our inquiry into ornament, but unlike him, we are content for our questions to remain open-ended.

Jones did not give an explicit definition of “ornament” in The Grammar and appears to have assumed his readers would understand what he meant by the word. Rather than establishing terms, he set out principles, among them that ornament arises from architecture, its purpose is beauty, it should be based on geometrical construction, and its roots are in nature. While we cannot presume our audience comprehends the concept of ornament exactly as we do, we face the problem that fixed definitions of the term are elusive and not particularly helpful.

Ornament bleeds into other categories such as decoration and pattern; establishing firm boundaries between these concepts does not enhance understanding. Western commentators often turn to the classical origins of the term in an attempt to establish absolutes. It is interesting that the etymological roots of the Latin word ornamentum are in the verb ordinare (to put in order), but that knowledge sheds little light on contemporary global usage.

Instead, our strategy is to offer a project-specific working definition of the English word “ornament.” In the context of this exhibition, ornament is embellishment, surface or structural, that can be lifted from its context, reworked, reproduced, and redeployed.

Given its chronological and geographic scope, this project is necessarily partial. Rather than charting a comprehensive map, we are plotting a line of interest, albeit one with branches and diversions. A large part of the motivation to ornament is the desire to provoke pleasure and, in making an exhibition and book about ornament, we share that motive. Necessarily, however, any inquiry into global communication and exchange requires the

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acknowledgment of power imbalances and exploitation. The story behind beauty encompasses violence and trauma.

The chronological span of The Clamor of Ornament runs from early European ornament prints, via the invention of photography and innovations in color printing, all the way through to Instagram.

I am not the first person to suggest that Instagram is the contemporary equivalent of the ornament print, but it strikes me that, more generally, the earliest focus of any new communications technology tends to be ornament. In moments of innovation in social networks, ornament often comes to the fore.

The role of print in spreading religious dissent in the sixteenth century is very well explored. Alongside that, it disseminated and promoted extraordinary, outlandish, sometimes sexualized motifs.

Wild styles such as the “globular,” a school of decoration known in the Netherlands as kwab that took inspiration from the fleshy fold, or the “grotesque,” fantastical forms and creatures with roots in Roman antiquity, only found purchase because of print [PL. 17].

Fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century ornament prints were both collected for their beauty, as objects in their own right, and also assembled into albums of inspiration for craftsmen working in wood, metal, ceramic, and textiles. The free movement of two-dimensional ornament encouraged a flurry in its threedimensional equivalent.

PL. 17 Wolfgang Hieronymus Von Bömmel, Lion and Hare Composed of Ornamental Leaf-Work from Neue-ersonnene Gold-Schmieds Grillen (New Designs for Ornaments in Gold), 1698

The European ornament print was largely displaced by photography in the mid-nineteenth century, but like their printmaking forebears, the earliest photographers often turned their focus to embellishment. Among them, the draftsman and photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, who traveled from his native France to document the architecture of Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey [PL. 18]. Prangey committed ornamental

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PL. 18 Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Mosque of Sultan al-Hakim, Cairo (117. Kaire. 1843 Gâma Soultan Ansoun détails [sic]), 1842–43

details to film and in doing so promoted both interest and imitation.

Working closer to home, fellow French photographer Léon Vidal photographed the densely ornamented exterior of the Coffret a Bijoux de la Reine Anne d’Autriche, a mid-sixteenth-century object

of masterly goldsmithing and mysterious origins held in the collection of the Musée du Louvre. Cropping the image so that the lid fills the frame, Vidal created an extraordinarily modern record of what had become an ornamental myth [PL. 19].

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PL. 19 Léon Vidal, Coffret à Bijoux de la Reine Anne d’Autriche (Jewelry Box of Queen Anne of Austria), 1878

Vidal’s image would work brilliantly as an Instagram post.

Ornament pictured flat becomes compelling on small hand-held screens, and embellishment has thrived since these screens became the format through which, collectively, we consume most of our information. When the fashion designer Alessandro Michele took over the luxury brand Gucci in 2015 he threw the ornamental book at it. Logos, symbols, patterns, and prints were all mixed into a gloriously eclectic stew that has had surprising reach and longevity.

Seen as a seminal moment, this was the point at which clothes were not only promoted through the phone screen but expressly designed for it. In rooting his entire output in the ornamental surface, Michele became contemporary fashion design’s point of reference. Recently, and increasingly since the pandemic, other brands have followed suit. In particular, logo dense fabrics—designs that owe their all to the 1980s work of Harlem-based designer Dapper Dan—have become the mainstay of early 2020s fashion [PL. 20].

Returning to the notion of ornament as currency, we are proposing that it is both a unit used in trade, and also an element or attribute that can demonstrate individual worth. There is a value

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PL. 20 Dapper Dan, photograph by Janette Beckman, Women Rappers, NYC, 1988

in using pattern and motif to express either your relationship to tradition or your ease with innovation. The correct deployment of ornament can render a person current. Meanwhile, in terms of being literal currency, ornament is, of course, bought and sold. More than that, however, the global desire for ornament rendered it a significant strand in international trade between 1500 and 1800. This was chiefly through the shipment of Indian printed cotton textiles, often known as chintzes, which were popular across Asia, in Africa, Europe, and the Americas to the extent that they have been described as constituting the first international style [PL. 21].4 Trade in ornamented textiles played a role in the enslavement of African people. According to the economist Kazuo Kobayashi, “In the case of Anglo-African trade, piece goods of Indian cottons were the most important trades in exchange for African slaves, making up thirty per cent of the total export value in the mid-eighteenth century.”5 Not all of those cottons were ornamented, but the global rage for chintz definitely fueled the transactions that deprived many millions of people of their liberty. The trade in Indian chintzes slowed only when European nations began making cheap industrial 4 5

See Amelia Peck, ed., The Interwoven Globe, The Worldwide Textile Trade 1500–1800 (London: Thames and Hudson, 2013), 105.

Kazuo Kobayashi, “Indian Cotton Textiles in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Economy,” Africa at LSE (London School of Economics blog), June 27, 2013, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/.

PL. 21 Unknown artist, India, Chintz Fragment, 18th century

imitations. Not only dominating the domestic textile market, these goods were sold back by the British to the colonized nations whose facility in producing ornament they had first exploited.

Fashions, such as that for chintz, are a product of the desire for cultural capital, a term introduced in the 1970s by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to refer to the symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences that can be strategically used as resources in social action.6 An individual’s position in society is built and bolstered through the acquisition of cultural currency. This thesis is brilliantly expressed by Dapper Dan in his 2019 memoir Made in Harlem.

“Fashion for me wasn’t about expression,” he wrote, “Fashion was about power. I would navigate the streets with a certain look until I could own the look. Being fly was a vehicle to getting around my situation in life.”7

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Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 2010), first published as La Distinction, Critique sociale du jugement (Les Editions de Minuit Paris, 1979).

Daniel R. Day, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2019), 31.

Crucially the value of this kind of capital, the state of “being fly,” is unstable. Writing in 1979 about the ornamented leather rocker jackets of the 1960s, the British cultural critic Dick Hebdige argued that their embellishments were best understood as “systems of communication, forms of expression and representation [that] conform to the structural anthropologists’ definition of culture as ‘coded exchanges of reciprocal messages.’”8 As such, he believed they should not be “judged by the immutable criteria of traditional aesthetics,” but viewed as “subversive transformations, as movement.” The art historian Ernst Gombrich made a related point, albeit from a very different perspective. Arguing that “the tendency of looking for permanent meanings in certain traditional designs” has played too great a role in art history, he suggested such an approach amounts “an obstacle to interpretation.”9 At the same time as Hebdige and Gombrich were arguing for slippiness in the meaning of ornament, some postmodern designers, particularly those in the field of architecture, appeared to be insisting on quite the opposite. The excitement of European and American architects in rediscovering ornament after decades of modernist minimalism often came with the implication that applying the likes of a classical façade to a building implied an allegiance with classical modes of thought. Looking back on this tendency in design, the British Iranian architect Farshid Moussavi has argued that it “fast became obsolete.” “In the absence of a common language or system of understanding, the kind of communication proposed

by Postmodernism could not reach the wider public,” she wrote.

“Inherited symbols remain dependent on a particular cultural moment or context and cannot survive changing conditions.”10 Moussavi’s argument reflects the everyday experience of ornament. The tattoos on the arm of the Spanish-born barista at an East London coffee shop might appear similar to images that, in certain contexts in nineteenth-century Japan, conveyed specific messages about values and allegiances. In twenty-first century Hackney they clearly have nothing to do with meanings of that kind, yet they still have currency of a sort. Some might view them as an unacceptable form of cultural appropriation, others as a legitimate

Dick Hebdige, Subculture, the Meaning of Style (1979; rept., London: Routledge, 1987), 129.

9 Ernst Gombrich, The Sense of Order (1979; rept., London: Phaidon, 1984), 244.

10 Farshid Moussavi, The Function of Ornament (Cambridge, MA: ACTAR/Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2006), 7.

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expression of enthusiasms and interests. Whatever the call, these tattoos will be legible to the wearer and her peers. Returning to Hebdige’s notion of movement, the tattoos are part of a perpetually mobile system of signification.

Owen Jones of course saw ornament as a more stable entity. In fact, his ambitions toward a universal system have a lot in common with the ideas of his fellow Victorian thinker Charles Darwin.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was first made available in an essay published in 1844, and chances are Jones was familiar with it even though The Origin of the Species was not published until 1859, three years after The Grammar. Jones believed “that whenever any style of ornament commands universal admiration, it will always be found in accordance with the laws which regulate the distribution of form in nature.”11 Moreover, echoing Darwin, he argued that “modifications and developments which have taken place from one style to another have been caused by a sudden throwing off of some fixed trammel, which set thought free for a time, till the new idea, like the old, became again fixed, to give birth in its turn to fresh inventions.” This idea of crises leading to rapid change followed by a period of relative calm is particularly close to the thrust of the 1844 iteration of evolutionary theory.

That said, Jones also believed that the desire for ornament was elemental to human nature, an argument that touches on a more Adam-and-Eve way of seeing things. In the introduction to the first chapter of The Grammar of Ornament, a section uncomfortably titled “Ornament of Savage Tribes” that addresses work from across Oceania, he wrote, “From the universal testimony of travelers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early a stage of civilization, with whom the desire for ornament is not a strong instinct.” Jones’s rated some “savage” designs highly, writing of Tongan bark cloth that “the arrangement of pattern shows the most refined taste and skill,” yet he also argued that facility with ornament “grows and increases with all in the ratio of their progress in civilization.”

The description of people as “savages” and the appointing of oneself the judge of how far other cultures have progressed in their civilization reflects an imperialist point of view. Jones never questioned his authority in making absolute judgments regarding other cultures and in creating hierarchies. For him, Islamic Art 11 This and all subsequent Owen Jones quotations from The Grammar of Ornament (see note 1).

PL. 22 Owen Jones, Design (1 of 51) for publication in “Examples of Chinese Ornament” (London, 1867) (Plate 10), 1866–67

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PLS. 23, 24 Owen Jones, Designs (2 of 51) for publication in “Examples of Chinese Ornament” (London, 1867) (Plate 40, Plate 56), 1866–67

occupied the pinnacle, and the design of the decoration of the Alhambra palace was the point on that pinnacle. “Every principle which we can derive from the study of the ornamental art of any other people is not only ever present here, but was by the Moors more universally and truly obeyed,” he wrote. Jones was, however, able to change his mind. Having initially written off the entirety of Chinese ornament as “totally unimaginative” and “wanting in the highest grace of art,” in 1867 he devoted an entire appendix volume to such embellishment. Beautifully copied from artifacts in the South Kensington Museum’s collection, Jones’s drawings of Chinese embellishment communicate joy in their execution [PLS. 22–24].

For all Jones considered himself the ultimate judge of ornament, he was also an absolute devotee. While his apparent ambition was curbing the misinformed ornamental excesses of his peers, perhaps his ultimate personal goal was to experience the pleasure in the perfect reproduction of the beautiful. In presenting The Clamor, we are with Jones in delighting in ornament and wanting to see it well served both in the gallery and in reproduction, but we diverge from him on most other counts. We are present ornamenting not as nature but culture. Rather than evolving, we argue that it circulates and, far from being hierarchical, we view it as fluid. Above all, although the act of curating necessarily involves a process of selection, we are not here to judge or censor.

Ornament moves around the world and across time via trade and other forms of exchange, both the equal and the exploitative.

It is facilitated by print, by photography, and more recently by social media, taking on and shedding meaning as it goes. It has significant cultural value and accordingly acts as currency. In swapping “Grammar” for “Clamor,” we acknowledge that there might be a parallel drawn between exclamations and units of embellishment.

To borrow an idea from the philosopher J. L. Austin, if ornament is compared with language, it is more akin to a “speech act” than a description of preexisting truth. Ornament is “performative,” even “operative.”12 Rather than reporting a state of affairs, it creates one.

Ornament is a glorious collective visual noise: a clamor in the most positive sense.

12 J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 6.

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PL. 25 M/M (Paris), Miroirs + Images = Mirages (Gold, Silver, Bronze), 2004

PL. 26 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Sketch for Mantelpiece with Tablet in Center of Lintel and Gaine on Jamb at Right, 18th century

PL. 27 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Design for Chimneypiece with Tablet and Rams’ Heads on Lintel and Alternate Scheme of Palmette Frieze, c. 1765–69

PL. 28 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Sketch for Mantelpiece with Candelabra on Jamb, 18th century

PL. 29 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Design for Chimney with Wreaths and Volutes, c. 1765–69

PL. 30 Attributed to Jean Bérain, Apollo on His Chariot Smiting the Python, 1700–1710

PL. 31 Gilles Paul Cauvet, Cupid Gardeners (Les amours jardiniers), c. 1771–74

PL. 32 Unknown artist, Songbook, Variations de Concert Pour Le Piano Forte Avec accomp. d’Orchestre Sur une Marche favorite de Guillaume Tell de Rossini, c. 1831

PL. 33 Unknown artist, Songbook, Les Trois Graces, n.d.

PL. 34 Unknown artist, Songbook, Opéra de Verdi, Macbeth Fantaisie Transcription Pour le Piano Par Eug. Ketterer, c. 1865

PL. 35 Ed Fella, AIGA, c. 2004

PL. 36 Ed Fella, Manifesto, c. 2004

PL. 37 John Maeda, Morisawa 10 Poster, 1996

PL. 38 John Maeda, Morisawa 10 Poster, 1996

The Ornamented Interior

The constructed interior occupies a unique position in ornamental discourse because it functions as a direct translation of a parallel interior—that of the human mind. Built spaces do not and cannot exist without the intellects and wills that bring them into being.

From the myth of the “primitive hut” as evoked by Laugier to the capital ventures of steel and glass that compose the Manhattan skyline, buildings can be understood as manifestations of the human will to establish a structure that fulfills a desired function.1 While the exterior of a building may project this will, the interior brings the function to fruition, structuring the performed activity within and reflecting a psychological and phenomenological link between constructed space and the people who occupy it.

To discuss interior structure is not merely to discuss the distribution of walls, doors, ceilings, and floors; architectural discourse concerning the interior has historically sought a more holistic formulation of the principles that govern habitable constructed space. Writing during a period of considerable advancements in architectural theory, French architect Germain Boffrand (1667–1754) established a principle of convenance, stating that each element of a room should be conducive to that room’s intended use, including the forms and objects that are not required for its physical composition.2 This idea stands in stark contrast to German architect Gottfried Semper’s (1803–1879) binary concept of the necessarium and the commodium. The former comprises the parts of a room or interior that provide stability and physical boundaries— the necessary. The commodium—the convenient—is the element that is extraneous to the existence of the physical form, and it is this non-essentiality that makes it an appropriate vehicle for ornament.3 According to these principles, decorated spaces are conjunctions of

1

2

3

In his 1753 Essay on Architecture, Marc-Antoine Laugier laid the foundation for architectural discourse with his evocation of the “primitive hut,” the theoretical first structure created by humans to provide shelter. With this foundational ideal, Laugier’s work suggests that the field of architecture is rooted in the relationship between human and nature. Marc-Antoine Laugier, Wolfgang Herrmann, and Anni Herrmann, An Essay on Architecture (1753; rept., Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1977), 12.

Germain Boffrand, Livre d’Architecture contenant les principes generaux de cet art, et les plans, elevations, et profils de quelques-uns des batimens faits en France & dans les pays etrangers (Paris: Chez Guillaume Cavelier, 1745), 41.

Gottfried Semper, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Michael Robinson (1860–62; rept., Los Angeles: Getty, 2004), Chapter 7. See also E. H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (London: Phaidon, 1984), 47.

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an essential structure and accompanying non-essential ornament.

Adolf Loos, author of the critical 1913 essay “Ornament and Crime,” famously described ornament as an “urge” to cover blank space with markings, implying an undisciplined, even perverse instinct inherent to the ornamental impulse and reinforcing a firm distinction between that which is necessary and that which is convenient—and, in his view, extraneous.4 While in Loos’s formulation the ornamented interior is a mere vessel in which decoration accumulates, ornament serves a role that is far more essential by transforming the interior into a reflection of abstract ideas, emotions, and places beyond view.

It can simultaneously reveal elements of an inhabitant’s identity and empower that individual through the use of visual motifs that code interaction and activity within a space. Ornament is the means by which humans define and develop meaningful relationships to the constructed interior environment. It does so in three ways: as an imprint embodying the bonded link between human and space; as a mode of expression facilitating a communicative flow of ideas from the human mind to an external audience; and as a mode of impression acting upon the solitary mind to induce an aspirational mood or activity.

I

Ornament as Imprint

Because a space or a room can exist without ornament, its presence should be read as a deliberate, inherently purposeful addition to its environment. Incorporated for human or divine consumption, ornament is for someone or something, and its very existence implies the presence of sentience to create and encounter it. In this way, ornament is an imprint; it is a mark of both physical and psychological contact. It provides a means of connection to the built environment and illuminates the human desire to embellish that which is encountered.

This connective relationship is on full display in the decorated interior of the Taj Mahal’s (completed 1653) central domed atrium, where floral motifs and tessellating geometries unspool across the walls, forming a network of pattern that extends horizontally across the undulating surfaces of niches within niches and bays within bays, weaving around screens, mounting vertically to the apex of the 4

Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime” (1913), in Ornament and Crime (United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2019).

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PLS. 39–41 Unknown artist, Agra, India, Three Large Company School Studies of the Pietra Dura Inlays at the Taj Mahal, c. 1820

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dome, and at times melding subtly into the textured marble surfaces [PLS. 39–41]. The ornamentation of the building merges the interior with the exterior, collapsing vaulted halls and sprawling gardens into a single unified program that extends far beyond the perception of most visitors and obviates the concept of mere spectacle. The ornament within this space surpasses the presumed function of decoration, a traditionally visual endeavor—as well as the simple pleasure Loos ascribed to ornament—and serves a higher purpose.

Here ornament traces the full arc of human aspiration; it is a mark imprinted upon unreachable heights, evoking both ascension and intimacy in the monumental space. Ornament thus serves as a record of human encounters with the intangible as well as an eminently human narrative of love and loss. The building’s monolithic marble vaults are vehicles for heavenly iconography of the delicate Mughal flower. The endless floral motifs suggest mythological interpretation as tokens of the undying love between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, who lies at rest in the central sepulcher, and also the flowering garden of paradise—a portal between this world and the next inscribed on the building’s walls.5 Every aspect of the building’s structure, and certainly its ornament, points to a function that literally and metaphorically outstrips faculties of vision and measurement while centering concepts of narrative and intimacy.

Evoking otherworldliness, the ornamentation on the interior of the Taj Mahal’s domes and niches extends the human “touch” beyond the physical to demarcate a space for the soul.

To ornament a strictly functional object is an act of imposing human presence upon it, rendering the impersonal personal. Artists employ ornamental practices to claim empty space and assert their presence. Consider the ebullient graffiti art that dominated the sides and interiors of New York City subway cars in the 1980s. Works such as Noc 167’s Style Wars (1981), which depicts elements of the subway system itself being swallowed by bright colors, curving forms, and dynamic graphic text, evoke the interplay between regulated public structures and exuberant individuality within the urban landscape [PLS. 42, 75–77]. From the perspective of a passenger in a station, each successive subway car is an indistinct, interchangeable fixture in a large and abstract machine. To mark a single car and send it imprinted with a personal signature careening across the city is

5

Ebba Koch, “The Taj Mahal: Architecture, Symbolism, and Urban Significance,” Muqarnas 22 (2005): 128–49, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482427.

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PL. 42 Noc 167, photograph by Henry Chalfant, Style Wars (overview and details), 1981

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to reduce the vast network to a single line in space and time. The artists who marked these communal interior spaces intervened in an impersonal infrastructure that codifies the urban experience. It is easy to feel small in a city, but by imposing themselves expressively on the mechanized behemoth of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and disrupting its uniformity with their touch, artists such as Noc 167 and Zephyr claimed a bigger stake in their environment.

Their art suggests that they were not passive denizens of a civic system acting upon them, but were engaged in a relationship of exchange with their surroundings. Subway graffiti is an imposition and an assertion of the individual, an ornamental act of defiance and intentionality that claims dignity and power.

Paralleling the intense personalization of form inherent in graffiti artists’ recognizable, localized handles and styles, the Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century, which also gave rise to Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament (1856) as a guide for tasteful and appropriate forms of adornment, reflected an urge among British artists and designers to reject the mass production of the Industrial Age in favor of a self-conscious, handcrafted mode of decoration [PLS. 13–14, 22–24]. These ideals are embodied in William Morris’s early wallpaper designs, which feature ornament that knows its own identity; rather than mimicking “the French style” of hyperrealistic, spatially-ambiguous wall coverings, Morris’s designs are intentionally flat, suggesting not only an awareness, but an honesty regarding the surface below [PLS. 43–49]. Beyond this, the flattened forms of Morris’s flowers were inspired by plants native to the United Kingdom, reflecting a patriotic Arts and Crafts sensibility for design to be rooted in locality. Most importantly, Morris insisted on handcrafted production techniques for all of the textiles and wallpapers created by his studio—a complete rejection of Industrial Age mass production. This emphasis reflects the idea that wellcrafted ornament denotes time, effort, and vision—ultimately an imprint of one’s own worth onto domestic surroundings.

II

Ornament as Expression

As an imprint, ornament claims the space it adorns to reveal the individual. The decorated space is frequently a powerful emblem of the individual with whom it is mostly closely associated. To invite visitors into one’s constructed space is to usher them into the physical manifestation of one’s sense of self or one’s aspirational

PL. 43 William Morris, Design for Chrysanthemum Wallpaper, 1877

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PL. 44 William Morris, Cray, c. 1884 PL. 45 William Morris, Tulip, c. 1875

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PLS. 46–49 Morris & Company, Wallpaper Sample Book, before 1917

sense of self—the self as the self would like to be seen. As a mode of expression, ornament promotes select messages or qualities— whether of taste, status, or values—by utilizing symbolic languages to communicate the intangible.

Grandeur, as an expression of glory, wealth, or worldly status, is often conveyed in ornament through material quality and abundance. Traditional Spanish leather wall hangings of North African and Umayyad origin, later translated into a specialty craft practiced in the European Low Countries during the seventeenth century, manifest grandeur by evoking the resources necessary to their creation, both in terms of access to goods and human labor.6 Elaborately painted and gilded at great expense, the material intensity of their ornament suggests quality and wealth. These panels bear such magnificent ornament that their motifs were among the most common subjects of imitation by designers of embossed

6

Eloy Koldeweij, “The Marketing of Gilt Leather in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” Print Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1996): 136–48, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/41825284.

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PL. 50 Paul Klee, In the Manner of a Leather Tapestry, 1925 PL. 51 Lucienne Day, Calyx, 1951

paper wallcoverings in Japan, manufactured for the European market during the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.7 The recognizable swelling and tapering outlines of these panels’ floral ornamental programs continued to reappear in twentiethcentury design completely divorced from their original medium of production. In 1925, Swiss artist Paul Klee produced an ink-andtempera recreation, In the Manner of a Leather Tapestry, capturing and abstracting fascinating and complex varieties of the familiar ornamental motifs [PL. 50]. This very work, among other surrealist interpretations of then “exotic” forms, subsequently inspired British textile designer Lucienne Day, as is evident in her 1951 Calyx design for wallpaper [PL. 51]. With its flattened and abstracted organic forms, Day’s design reflects the leather tapestries that inspired Klee, conveying not only the flow of decorative motifs between movements and geographies, but the manner in which material quality can be transmuted and evoked a priori, to the extent that the mere suggestion of inherited qualities stands in for the original material’s physicality. The ornamentation literalizes the visual metaphor of ornate design as material value.

WPA artist Perkins Harnly’s aesthetic fascination with the luxury and ornateness of ages past came to color his documentary drawings for the Federal Art Project’s Index of American Design.

Among his contributions to the Index was an interior scene perhaps inspired by the home of his idol, Lillian Russell, called Boudoir (c. 1931) [PL. 52].8 This illustration encapsulates the rich and lavish mode of ornamentation that Harnly found alluring: lush carpets; thick, velvety drapes bearing “exotic” patterns; and risqué lace stockings haphazardly-shed. A bombastic plumed hat hangs opposite ornate knickknacks, mementos of places never visited, and a portrait—likely depicting a young Sarah Bernhardt—that implies self-actualization on the part of the artist, who claimed to have won numerous drag

7

8

Wivine Wailliez, “Japanese leather paper or kinkarakawakami: an overview from the 17th century to the Japonist hangings by Rottmann & Co,” Wallpaper History Review, 2016.

A slightly earlier watercolor, titled Townhouse Parlor, 1869, was Harnly’s second of two initial submissions to the Index of American Design and solidified his commitment to the aesthetic of the Victorian interior celebrated in Boudoir.

Harnly claimed that Townhouse Parlor, like many subsequent WPA submissions, was based on a boarding house in which he had stayed and that he asserted had once been Lillian Russell’s home. “Oral History Interview with Perkins Harnly, 1981 Oct. 15,” transcript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-perkinsharnly-13338#transcript.

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PL. 52 Perkins Harnly, Boudoir, c. 1931

competitions as his alter ego based on a characterization of the actress. As Harnly explained, “I saw these things, I adored them.

I fell in love with them. They became part of my subconscious mind.”9 Precisely because Harnly’s work evokes his imagination and self-invention, this interior scene can be understood as a paradigmatic illustration of the ornamented interior as a projection of expressive vision. The scene relays to viewers a rich and complex narrative as each detail refers to a lifestyle of transcontinental luxury and adventure. The interior also materializes the artist’s dreamlike vision; flourishes of theatrical Victorian aesthetics encode Harnly’s queer perspective though a cipher of historically accurate furnishings legible to the WPA as faithfully-represented period pieces.10 The interior allowed the artist to communicate with audiences on a level inaccessible by language alone. Harnly imprints his own identity on the image, compositing layers of materiality that

“Oral History Interview with Perkins Harnly, 1981 Oct. 15,” transcript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

10 See Sarah Burns, The Emphatically Queer Career of Artist Perkins Harnly and His Bohemian Friends (Port Townsend, WA: Process, 2021).

9

never existed in Russell’s world; the furnishings are plucked from the pages of various Montgomery-Ward catalogs that offered Harnly an escape from farm life as a young boy. In a single drawing, Harnly harnessed the power of ornament to realize three transformations: literal representations of design become expressions of dreams, Lillian Russell’s living room becomes the domain of Harnly’s drag persona, and the WPA, in this fleeting moment, becomes an oasis of maximalism amidst the austerity of the Great Depression.

Working alongside material grandiosity, allegorical ornament expresses to a target audience stories that are important to the primary occupant of a space. These narratives can be true accounts of personal achievements or aspirational self-mythology, or they may reflect the values and ideas that one wishes to convey. Robert Adam’s Design for a Ceiling for the First Drawing Room at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire (1779–82) typifies the allegorical ornament found in European decorative arts throughout the early modern period [PL. 53]. Set within a restrained Neoclassical border marked by a spare architectural ornamental pattern, a central medallion depicts the Judgment of Paris. Bordering the design are four slightly varied relief representations of Venus and Cupid. The selection of mythological scenes is a deliberate communicative device that was understood as legible to educated people of the period.12 Designed by Robert Adam as the country seat of the 10th Earl of Cassilis, Culzean Castle was meant to demonstrate wealth and power and by association the education and taste of its owner. The primary audience in an eighteenth-century drawing room was the lady of the house and the guests she entertained there, and this anticipated demographic was reflected in the feminine subject matter that defines Adam’s design.

The Judgment of Paris is not only a story about women, but one in which beauty is most highly prized. Selecting this particular story to ornament a drawing room expressed to visitors the socially-expected traits of their hostess—she may be powerful and wise, but above all, she is beautiful and gracious.

Through a display of material abundance and allegory, ornament functions in the interior space via its own complex systems of outward-facing language. As a form of expression,

11 “Oral History Interview with Perkins Harnly, 1981 Oct. 15,” transcript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

12 John Archer, “The Beginnings of Association in British Architectural Esthetics,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 16, no. 3 (1983): 241–64, https://doi. org/10.2307/2738348.

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PL. 53 Robert Adam, Design for a Ceiling for the First Drawing Room at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, 1779–82

ornament flows in two directions: projecting the interior of the mind to the outer world and manifesting human consciousness in physical surroundings.

III Ornament as Impression Ornament functions as impression when it is primarily attuned to the individual within a space—when it is designed to flow inward and assume a role of agency in the mind rather than broadcasting to exterior witnesses. Employed to induce moods or activities, ornament can act upon the mind rather than manifesting the mind in physical space, especially in private spaces.

The domestic interior, where discrete spaces are specifically intended to serve different purposes, frequently gives rise to an interplay between ornament as expression and ornament as impression. Prophet Isaiah Roberston’s Second Coming House in Niagara Falls, New York, for instance, features an ornamental program that transcends mere allegory and evokes both external and internal manifestations of psychological structure through a complex mapping of ornament onto a domestic interior [PLS. 54–55].

Between 2006 and 2020, Robertson transformed his house into

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PLS. 54–55 Prophet Isaiah Robertson, photograph by Fred Scruton, House of Prophet Isaiah Robertson, Niagra Falls, NY, 2015 (top) / 2016 (bottom)

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an embodiment of the prophesied Second Coming of Jesus Christ, adorning every inch of the building’s interior and exterior with painted woodwork. Crucially, none of this work was intended as superfluous decoration. Each piece of painted wood relates to a specific symbol of the Second Coming, and the entire building as a composition reflects in relative scale the spatial arrangement of future events foretold to occur in the physical and spiritual realms that connect heaven and earth. Robertson cites the practical application for his symbols as vehicles of informational teaching and refuses to take credit for the design of his construction: “the Spirit” simply takes over and animates his carpenter’s hands.13 In this sense, Robertson’s work, though unrelated to the essential structure of the house as a residence, cannot be classified as anything but necessarium in the context of ornamental expression because it exists by no choice or volition of the builder; it simply must exist as a manifestation of the will of God. There is perhaps no more succinct representation of the function of ornament as impression than the Prophet Room within the Second Coming House, which remains locked and inaccessible even to Robertson himself, except when he is actively engaged in prayer and communication with God. The room is appropriately demarcated from the rest of the house, which is open to visitors, by an intricate pattern of beadwork and wood paneling that literally imbues the structure with meaning as a discrete cosmic space entirely separate from everyday life. It is not designed for an audience but for a specific individual as he engages in his own meditation. When designed for impression, ornament interrogates aspirational identity alongside actual temperament and values, and it seeks to bridge these two self-conceptions through judicious environmental inclusions. For Robertson, the ornamented interior creates the spatial conditions required for spiritual communication, his self-realizing work.

Architects and designers who optimize ornament to support specific moods or activities within space understand the power of ornament as a vehicle for transformation. Far beyond incidental decoration, intentional adornment is an active tool for metamorphosis. It implies a becoming and a vision for the future, whether immediate or long-term. While Robertson’s Prophet Room is intended for an individual’s religious transformation within 13 Fred Scruton, “Prophet Isaiah Robertson: Apocalypse at Niagara Falls,” Raw Vision, no. 80 (2013).

discrete space, this type of impressional ornament can also be employed to act on a larger scale, manifesting a collective future.

Architect Louis Sullivan is perhaps best known for his definitive role in shaping modern architecture as a key member of the Chicago School, setting the standard for skyscraper design in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century with his famous tenet, “Form follows function.”14 While twentieth-century architects co-opted his emphasis on function as justification for increasingly spare designs that emphasized the simplification of structure and space, Sullivan himself was a dedicated ornamentalist who advocated not for the exclusion of ornament but for its proper application in establishing a unified structural whole.15 His stated view of architecture and his vision for not only its future, but the future of mankind, were derived from the discipline’s earliest guiding theories, which asserted that architecture is inherently rooted in nature and should reflect harmonious natural proportions. Ornament, in Sullivan’s view, plays a distinct role in furthering a building’s ultimate purpose, which is to embody a connection between man and nature, and should therefore be inspired by the organic patterns of the natural world. This vision is reflected in Sullivan’s ornamental designs such as his 1876 Ceiling Design with Peacock Motif, which crystallizes many of the themes that reappear in his designs [PL. 56]. Flattened, stylized peacocks recur rhythmically, surrounded by abstracted biological forms that seem to fold and intertwine as though growing organically, even as they sustain a symmetrical and repeating framing pattern.

Sullivan’s work thus built upon organic geometries to create a “modern” aesthetic.

As Sullivan worked over the course of his career and took up an interest in the budding field of sociology, he came to define the true objective of this manner of ornamentation as a mode of communication to American society. Possessing a prescient awareness that he lived and worked on the cusp of a new definitive era of mankind, he sought with his design theory to point the American public toward a collective idealized modernity.

Ornamental work such as that in the peacock ceiling represents the evolution of complex form, challenging viewers to look towards

14 Louis H. Sullivan, “The tall office building artistically considered,” Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1896.

15 Louis H. Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture,” The Engineering Magazine, August 1892.

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PL. 56 Louis H. Sullivan, Ceiling Design with Peacock Motif (overview and detail), 1876

their own futures. In the context of the rapidly industrializing urban environment of Chicago, Sullivan’s ornament impressed a sense of active growth and evolution on bankers, capitalists, and office workers encountering his work, reaffirming the city’s dedication to unconstrained progress and promoting human spiritual growth within the built environment. Rooted in his architectural philosophy, his work captures elements of the natural order and imposes them onto buildings to reflect a vision of artistic and spiritual development.16 In this way, Sullivan’s ornament was intended to impress upon the public a sense of connection with the world around them, bringing modern construction back to its natural origins and broadcasting optimism for a spiritually enlightened future.

Ornament may achieve its communicative ends as imprint, expression, or impression; frequently, however, it functions in all of these ways simultaneously. While each aforementioned example has been chosen to highlight an application of ornament toward one of these purposes, many could equally be discussed in terms of other functional manifestations—expression rather than impression, or imprint rather than expression. These definitions of ornament’s purpose may be matters of perspective and may shift according to an individual’s background, position, and experience. This signifies a fluidity in the nature of reading and interacting with our surroundings and characterizes the relationship between ourselves and the built environment as one of constant exchange mediated by ornament. Part of the challenge in categorizing and defining ornament relates to the impossibility of categorizing and defining people. Specific relationships between various audiences and their environments are as critical to an understanding of ornament’s function as the physical substrates being ornamented. The interior provides a unique lens for examining the significant dialogue between human and environment because it is the only constructed space in which all three epistemological relationships—those of imprint, expression, and impression—may occur simultaneously.

In a single ornamental interior, it is possible to imprint one’s own personality onto structural systems; share ideas and values with a visiting audience; and invoke desired modes of thinking or activity.

In this way, ornament allows us to traverse the gap between structural form and psychological experience, mediating our collective relationship with the world.

16 Michael Mostoller, “Louis Sullivan’s Ornament,” Artforum, October 1977.

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PL. 57 David Adjaye, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Pattern Abstraction, 2011

PL. 58 David Adjaye, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Corona Panel types, 2011

PL. 59 Jacob Holzer, Design for Chancel of Christ Church, Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1899

PL. 60 Louis Comfort Tiffany, Design for Ark Doors, Temple Emanu-El, New York, 1910

PL. 61 Unknown artist, Mint India, Delhi, Interior of the Hammam at the Red Fort, Delhi, Furnished According to English Taste, c. 1830–40

PL. 62 David Adjaye, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lithograph, 2015

PL. 63 Nathalie Du Pasquier, Design for a Bed, 1982

PL. 64 Bethan Laura Wood, Sketchbook A, 2016

PL. 65 Bethan Laura Wood, Sketchbook B, 2014–15

PLS. 66–67 Bethan Laura Wood, Sketchbook C, 2015

PL. 68 Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director: Being a Large Collection of . . . Designs of Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste . . ., 1754

What Is It with Ornament and Crime?

The phrase “Ornament and Crime” has had extraordinary tenacity.

The title of a lecture given by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, and published as an essay in 1913, it seems to have a hold on the imagination that far surpasses critical engagement with the actual text. If you do read beyond the title, as early as the third paragraph, you will find Loos arguing that, “The first ornament that was born, the cross, was erotic in origin,” and elaborating, “A horizontal dash: the prone woman.

The vertical dash: the man penetrating her.” I hardly need the added information that Loos was a convicted pedophile or go on to read the classist and racist torrent that follows for this to turn my stomach.

Yet architectural critics still discuss whether ornament might be criminal, with reference to Loos, in earnest.1 Loos’s arrival at the notion of ornament being allied to crime came by way of a trip to the United States from 1893 to ’96, when he was in his mid-twenties. He was impressed by North American construction, in particular the work of Louis Sullivan, who was busy arguing that his contemporaries “should refrain entirely from the use of ornament for a period of years in order that our thought might concentrate acutely upon the production of buildings wellformed and comely in the nude.”2 On his return to Austria, Loos devoted himself to architecture, both theory and practice. He briefly associated with the Vienna Secession, an alliance of artists and designers including Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, and Josef Hoffmann, but soon broke away. According to the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina, his subsequent writing is most accurately read as a very personal and direct attack on his former colleagues, in particular Hoffmann [PLS. 69–70].3 In the Victorian era, critics of ornament contented themselves with attempting to establish rules and principles whereby it might be controlled. Chief among them was Owen Jones, the author of The Grammar or Ornament (1856). Far from advising designers and craftsmen against ornament, he believed that a society’s desire to ornament “grows and increases with all in the ratio of their progress in civilization.” This is a theoretical chasm away from Loos, who 1 2

3

For example, Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd published Ornament is Crime: Modernist Architecture in 2017 (London and New York: Phaidon).

Louis H. Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture,” The Engineering Magazine, 1892, excerpted in Paul Greenhalgh, Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 11.

Beatriz Colomina, “Sex, Lies and Decoration: Adolf Loos and Gustav Klimt,” Thresholds 37 (Spring 2010): 77.

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PLS. 69–70 Josef Hoffmann, Design Drawings, c. 1910

called ornament “the baby talk of painting” and insisted that “the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects.” Nineteenth-century moralizing was a response to the recent accessibility of ornament made possible by industrialization. That it hardened into twentieth-century criminalization is not only due to Loos’s personal beefs but also a reflection of the intolerance of some early European modernists.

Le Corbusier, for one, picked up Loos’s baton. Writing in The Decorative Art of Today in 1925, he argued, “Decoration: baubles, charming entertainment for a savage. (And I do not deny that it is an excellent thing to keep an element of the savage alive in us—a small one). But in the twentieth century our powers of judgment have developed greatly and we have raised our level of

consciousness.”4 Consciously echoing Loos, he continued, “It seems justified to affirm: the more cultivated a people becomes, the more decoration disappears.”5 Recent scholarly work has connected Le Corbusier with fascist and anti-Semitic views. In 2019, a group of French cultural figures wrote an open letter to the French Minister of Culture calling for the withdrawal of government funding for heritage relating to the architect. Citing Le Corbusier’s objectionable opinions, they also alleged that he had actively collaborated with European fascists.6 Meanwhile, Colomina argues that Loos, if not an explicit anti-Semite, employed recognizable cultural tropes in his criticism.

Likewise, she suggests that it was no coincidence that the major clients of the Secession and the Wiener Werkstatte [PL. 71], Loos’s most hated targets, were primarily young, progressive, and Jewish.

That said, two of Loos’s three wives were also Jewish. Overall his life was fraught with contradiction. Noting Loos’s delight in calling out sexual degeneracy in others while pursuing his own taste for young girls, Colomina posits, “Loos’s public moralism denouncing ornament as a savage perversion is perhaps a pathological symptom of what it attacks, a disguise, a displacement.”7 Attacks on ornament span the political spectrum, coming from both right and left. In the case of leftist swipes, ornament is often allied to the notion of “false consciousness,” the trick of the mind through which we subjugate ourselves to the forces of capitalism.

This view comes to the fore in the case against the primarily feminine field of fashion and, as such, reveals itself as thinly veiled misogyny. In her book Adorned in Dreams (1985), the cultural critic Elizabeth Wilson took on Roland Barthes’s Veblenesque critique of ornament through the lens of fashion.8 “[Barthes] analyses fashion from a hostile point of view that at heart believes fashion to be an unnecessary aberration,” Wilson wrote. “But to banish fashion from the realm of trust in this way is to imply that there exists a wholly other world, a world in which, contrary to [Barthes’s] own theory, meaning is not created and recreated culturally, but is transparent and immediately obvious. But not only would this be a world without

4 5 6 7 8

Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today (1925; repr., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 12.

Le Corbusier, Decorative Art, 13.

Le Monde, April 2, 2019.

Colomina, “Sex, Lies and Decoration,” 78.

See Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).

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PL. 71 Dagobert Peche, Feather Duster, 1922

fashion, it would be a world without discourses, a world, that is, without culture or communication.”9 Even now, in the twenty-first century, anxiety about ornament abounds in the wealthy world. No longer allied to any particular political or aesthetic philosophy, that unease is now part of the commercial mainstream. As if to counteract its visual cacophony of ornament-dense posts, Instagram also hosts reams of accounts devoted to drearily minimal interiors. Unoccupied real estate has become extremely marketable. Forget horror vacui—the fear of empty spaces—a term coined by the Italian art critic Mario Praz to decry the decorative density of the Victorian salon. There now seems to be a terror of embellishment in some quarters.

The various cases against ornament tend to have their roots in prejudice: imperialism, classism, misogyny, and so on. In Adolf Loos, the defenders of ornament have a solid target. However beautiful the interior of his American Bar and revolutionary his “Raumplan” arrangement of domestic interiors, both his life and his writing suggest that he is not someone whose moral judgment should hold 9

Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams (London: Bloomsbury, 1985), 57.

sway. Yet, in titling his essay “Ornament and Crime,” he invoked a powerful trope. Regardless of whether ornament itself is criminal, there are many moments over the last half millennium where ornament has had brushes with the law. Ornament is not crime, but crime does seem to have a soft spot for ornament.

In terms of the scope of our exhibition, the earliest instances of the criminalization of ornament were the protectionist bans on the import of Indian chintz imposed in France from 1686 to 1759 and in Britain from 1700 to 1774 [PL. 72]. Variations on these laws were also put in place in Spain, Venice, and Prussia. The purpose of this legislation was to prevent imported textiles from undermining domestic industry, but Indian fabrics proved too desirable to regulate. Despite the ban, smugglers continued to import chintzes, risking fines, imprisonment, or even death, and women of all classes, from workers to aristocrats, continued to wear them openly. The one-time mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour, was known as a flouter of chintz rules. In the well-known portrait by FrancoisHerbert Drouais from 1764, she wears an ample silk dress decorated with Indian floral designs and trimmed with tiers of lace. Seated within a domestic interior, working on a tapestry, her setting, her demeanor, and her garb are all notably informal. Imported Indian fabrics facilitated a breed of relaxed dress that could not be achieved with the domestically produced textiles of the time.10 It appears that eighteenth-century Europeans believed that achieving the attitude of ease was worth risking a criminal activity.

Around the same time as the onset of chintz bans in Europe, the Japanese government, the Edo shogunate, launched a series of sumptuary laws, many of which targeted ornament. In 1683 alone, seven such laws were introduced, among them a ban on elaborate embroidery on women’s clothes. The prompt for these strictures was the newfound wealth of the merchant classes vis-a-vis the traditional samurai, leading to what were viewed as ostentatious displays of wealth. Time and time again, when an established order gives way to a new one, the guardians of the old ways criticize the deportment of the incomers. Writing in 1688, the poet Ihara Saikaku, argued, “Women’s clothes in particular go to extremes. Because they forget their proper place, extravagant women should be in fear of divine punishment.” The poet insisted that people should be “grateful”

10 See Rosemary Crill, “Asia in Europe, Textiles for the West,” in Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer, eds., Encounters (London: V&A; New York: Abrams, 2004), 254.

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PL. 72 Unknown artist, Northern Coromandel coast, India, Tree-of-Life Palampore, c. 1730–50

for “the recent clothing laws,” yet evidence suggests they were not widely followed or enforced.11 Although sumptuary laws are different from import bans in spirit, the two share the ultimate aim of attempting to control consumption. Their joint failure suggests a common societal unwillingness to allow authorities to intervene in the enjoyment of ornament.

Much more effective than import bans for limiting the sale of Indian chintzes in Europe was the introduction of cheaper domestically produced alternatives. Gathering information on techniques from around the world and creating networks of knowledge, European cotton printers greatly improved their product in the mid-eighteenth century. The turning point, however, was the flurry of technological innovation in the textile industry in Britain between 1770 and 1830 and the feeding of that industry with raw cotton produced by slave labor in the West Indies and Southern United States. By 1820 printed cottons specifically made to suit Indian tastes were being produced in Manchester and Glasgow to be exported eastward.12 Although the Indian textile industry survived this assault, it is a stark example of the intricacies and long-term nature of the crime of colonization [PL. 73].

A roughly contemporaneous instance of ornament and crime occurred once more in Japan. Moving closer to the body, this time it concerned the embellishment of skin, not fabric. During the last decades of the Edo era in Japan, the generally outlawed practice of skin ornamentation through tattooing nevertheless became increasingly widespread. Encouraged by images of tattooed warriors in popular woodblock prints of the time, particularly those of the heroes of Suikoden, a Japanese adaptation of a popular fourteenthcentury Chinese novel, people sought out skilled tattooists to imitate these intricate designs. The artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s 1827 depiction of all 108 individual warriors in a set of prints explored the tattoos in exquisite detail and proved particularly influential [PL. 74].13 The shogunate’s negative view of tattoos reflected their use in gangs, often formed of samurai who found themselves

11 Ihara Saikaku, quoted in Donald H. Shively, “Sumptuary Regulation and Status in Early Tokugawa Japan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 25 (1964–65): 123–164, https://doi.org/10.2307/2718340.

12 See Sarah Fee, ed., Cloth that Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2020), 201.

13 See Sarah E. Thompson, Tattoos in Japanese Prints (Boston: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, 2017), 24.

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PL. 73 George Haité, Design for a Paisley Shawl, c. 1850 PL. 74 Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kaosho Rochishin from the series 108 Heroes of the Suikoden, c. 1827

unemployed when the Edo period brought widespread peace, as well as previously incarcerated men who often wore elaborately designed prison tattoos. As with most bans on ornament, the tattoo prohibition was far from successful. Not only did the practice continue to thrive in Japan, but there was a late-nineteenth, earlytwentieth-century craze for tattoos among upper class European and American travelers. Arriving in the port of Yokohama in 1882, the Duke of York (later King George V) is said to have made contact with the celebrated tattoo artist Hori Chiyo, and he and a number of his cohort acquired skin decorations. Supposedly Lady Randolph Churchill, the mother of Winston, also had a tattoo. Rumor has it that a touring Japanese tattooist had etched a snake on her wrist, which she kept scrupulously covered in her declining years. The Meiji government, in power from 1868 to 1912, hoped to encourage foreign tourism and trade. Thus they turned a blind eye to the activity of foreigners while continuing to condemn tattooing in the local population.14 Indulge me in jumping forward a century and traveling to New York City to find another ornamental craze that first found purchase among criminals and then spread more widely. After distilling the designer brand to its essence—the logo—and figuring out how to cover hip garments with a dense mesh of these emblems, the Harlem designer Dapper Dan became all the rage among the “hustlers” and “big bosses” of the city. “Because all my first customers were hustlers, upstanding members of the black community saw me as a blight on 125th street. For many folks in Harlem, my shop was part of the problem,” he wrote in his 2019 autobiography Made in Harlem.15 “It didn’t bother me one bit that my customers were hustlers and drug dealers. Just the opposite,” he continued, “Any success I had in the fashion game I owe to them. It made sense to cater to them, since they were the ones who had the cash and the desire to spend it. And they didn’t care what anyone thought of them. They were bold and decisive.”16 Yet Dapper Dan’s views are conflicted. Regarding the arrival of crack cocaine, he wrote, “I was bearing witness to a curse of another epidemic on our community, destroying lives all around me with violence, addiction, and incarceration. A whole generation 14 See Yori Moriaty, Japanese Tattoos: Meanings, Shapes, and Motifs (Barcelona: Promopress, 2018), 12.

15 Daniel R. Day, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem: A Memoir (New York: Random House, New York, 2019), 167.

16 Day, Dapper Dan, 167.

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PL. 75 Percel (Kies TNR) Shewatjon, Pages in Sketchbook Belonging to Kies TNR, c. 1984 108

in Harlem was traumatized by this period.…At the same time it was making a whole lot of my customers rich. Boy was there money.

In terms of supply and demand, I wouldn’t have picked a better time to open up. The drug money was there. And these dealers needed to spend it. My shop was quickly becoming a hub for powerful guys in the drug game.”17 While Dapper Dan’s designs remained the province of the underworld, he didn’t attract much attention from the mainstream.

Then a newly wealthy generation of musicians and sports stars like the female hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa and boxer Mike Tyson began to buy and be photographed in his clothes, and his troubles accelerated [PL. 20]. The brands whose logos he reimagined started raiding his shop and taking him to court, eventually forcing him to close the shop. Years later, there was redress. In 2017, under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele, the luxury brand Gucci began embellishing garments with their logo in exactly the style Dapper Dan had pioneered. The theft inspired a social media furor to which Gucci responded by creating a partnership with the designer and opening a shop for him in Harlem. Now, at the age of 77, he is on the verge of relaunching his own label.

Another significant outlet for ornament in 1980s New York was graffiti, specifically the vast and complex compositions that were executed on the city’s subway cars [PLS. 42, 75–77]. Writing about encountering graffiti in the city from the point of view of William Green, aka Son, the protagonist of her 1981 novel Tar Baby, Toni Morrison described the embellishment as “blazing jewels.”18 17 Day, Dapper Dan, 167.

18 Toni Morrison, Tar Baby (New York: Knopf, 1981), 194.

Framing the spray-painted ornament as an expression of New York’s unseen children, she wrote, “The subway cars burst from the tunnels to the platforms shining with the recognizable artifacts of childhood: fantasy, magic, ego, energy, humor and paint.”19 Indeed, the graffiti writers tended to be very young, often still in their teens and, as such, had little thought of their legacy. Writing about the documentation of “illegal art,” the comic artist Rachel Masilamani suggested that the best records of the work of these writers was often in the hands of law enforcement agents. Pursuing them for numerous infringements, including vandalism, trespassing, and shoplifting, the law enforcers became the graffiti writers’ most sophisticated aficionados, having a connoisseurly appreciation of their individual styles and tropes.20 The 1983 film Wild Style, directed by Charlie Ahearn, documents the moment that New York’s graffiti began to be picked up by the commercial mainstream, with gallery owners inviting the writers to bring their work into the legally sanctioned space of the gallery.

The film’s hero Raymond, aka Zoro, played by real-life graffiti writer Lee Quiñones, deplores this development. “Being a graffiti writer is taking the chances and shit, taking the risk, taking all the arguments with the transit, the police and your own mom, from your friends and shit, you’ve got to take all that bullshit,” he insists. “To be a graffiti writer, you’ve got to write, you’ve got to do the action man, you’ve got to go out there and rack up, you’ve got to go out and paint, and be called an outlaw at the same time.” The transgression is key to the art.

To follow a slightly tangential take on the connection between law enforcement and the decorative arts, the French design historian Jérémie Cerman discovered that some of best records of ordinary nineteenth-century wallpapers could be found in the backgrounds of crime scene photographs. The commonplace European or American decoration, the kind that alarmed Owen Jones and Henry Cole, has for the most part gone unarchived. Yet it was the background to every aspect of people’s lives, the law abiding and the criminal.

Of course crime is not always a question of law enforcement. To return to Loos, the sense of “crime” to which he alludes is more

19 Morrison, Tar Baby, 194.

20 Rachel Masilamani, “Documenting Illegal Art: Collaborative Software, Online Environments and New York City’s 1970s and 1980s Graffiti Art Movement,” Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 27, no. 2 (2008).

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PL. 76 Andrew (Zephyr) Witten, Heist (Page in Zephyr’s Piece Book), 1980

PL. 77 Andrew (Zephyr) Witten and the Soul Artists, Zephyr Soul Artists (Page in Zephyr’s Sketch Pad), 1980

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akin to the notion of “abomination” than “misconduct.” In her recent novel Lote (2020) the author Shola von Reinhold explores this expanded definition, but from a diametrically opposed point of view. The book’s twentysomething Black protagonist Mathilda has a “Transfixion” on the fictional Hermia Druitt, a Black Scottish poet who appears as a peripheral figure in accounts of the lives of the Bright Young Things in England in the 1920s. In the novel, Von Reinhold argues that, “Black people consuming and creating beauty of a certain kind is still one of the most transgressive things that can happen in the West, where virtually all consumption is orchestrated through universal atrocity.”21 Lote’s Mathilda enjoys extravagant dress, but, having read bell hooks, wrestles with the idea that she might be “assimilating beauty under Europatriarchy.”22 Plunged into depression, she speaks with her friend Malachi, who tells her “that between the ‘assimilation’ and the fantasy there was another space which was not about championing the thing that speaks against you—though that can be a literally fatal trap—but instead about showing your ability to embody the fantasy regardless, in spite of, to spite, and in doing so extrapolate the elegance, the fantasy, Romance, or whatever it was, abstract it and show it as a universal material, to be added to the toolbox. ‘Look! Look: it does not belong to them. Maybe we should not want it because they have weaponised it, but it was not theirs in the first place.’”23 As the novel unfolds, Mathilda realizes that Hermia had an older White admirer, Garreaux, who had imagined an architectural container for her. This is an explicit echo of the house that Adolf Loos designed, unbidden, for Josephine Baker. Through Mathilda, Von Reinhold mulls, “I had always found it suspect that a man who was, like many of his contemporaries vehemently against decorative excess (in a way that recalled historically gendered and colonial tracts on ornament), should become obsessed with housing a Black woman—one who so publicly engaged in the decorative—in a monochromatic, linear building of his own conception.”24 Rather than living in Loos’s house, the central feature of which was a swimming pool with voyeuristic windows on all sides, Josephine Baker opted instead to live in a traditional French chateau, all turrets and gargoyles.

21 22 23 24

Shola von Reinhold, Lote (London: Jacaranda Books, 2020), 142.

Von Reinhold, Lote.

Von Reinhold, Lote.

Von Reinhold, Lote.

The thrust of Lote is that while ornament might be produced, traded, and received in exploitative conditions, in itself it still has the potential to be radical. Ornament can be used to communicate power, yet it does so through the unruly mechanism of pleasure and, as such, lends itself to subversion. Marginalized communities are able to produce and enjoy ornament, even ornament of the sort that might emerge from contested histories, in a way that challenges conventional hierarchies.

In May 2021 there was an international incident concerning ornament that touched on all of these issues. The Mexican Minister for Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, accused a number of fashion brands, including Zara and Anthropologie, of cultural appropriation. In the case of Zara, the charge referred to an embroidered dress that drew on the ancestral symbols of traditional huipil dresses produced by the Mixtec people of San Juan Colorado.

Zara withdrew the item from its website, and Guerrero called not only for a “public explanation,” but also for “benefits” to be “given back to the creative communities” from which the embroidery techniques and design had emerged. Zara’s parent company, Inditex, denied that the design in question was “intentionally borrowed from or influenced by the artistry of the Mixtec people of Mexico.”

Discussing the case on BBC Radio 4, a textile expert pointed out that the patterns employed in indigenous Mexican embroidery were themselves first introduced by Spanish colonial forces in the sixteenth century [PL. 78]. This much is true, but it is a matter of historical record that the conquistadores were extremely impressed with the level of spinning, dying, weaving, and embroidery that they found on their arrival in Mexico. Because extremely few of these pre-Hispanic fabrics survive, it is difficult to make a detailed case as to who originated what. That said, the rights and wrongs of this case do not hinge on specific attribution. Over the past five hundred years the indigenous people of Mexico have adopted and adapted the embroidery styles that were brought over by the oppressive Spanish forces and turned them a source of delight and sustenance all their own. That these textiles are currently produced in a context of extremely unequal power relations is the legacy of colonialism and the long-term and systematic infringement on the rights of native peoples, not only in Mexico, but across the globe.

Of course ornament circulates within webs of drastic inequality.

The crime here is ongoing, structural exploitation. Unique to ornament, however, is the disjunction between its striving toward beauty and the horror of its means (it is from this that the Marxist

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PL. 78 Unknown artist, Mexico, Sampler, c. 1800s

notion of “false consciousness” in relation to embellishment derives its particular grip). Yet ornament is distinguished in its ability to slip its bounds and circulate freely. It can be a means of creating identity or provoking pleasure in a manner that transcends both its origins and its history. It can be transformed and transformative. Above all, it is not crime or a crime. Nor, for all my provocations in this text, is it inherently crime adjacent. There is something about Loos’s title that is hard to shake loose.

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PL. 79 John Ruskin, etching by Thomas Shotter Boys, mezzotint by Samuel William Reynolds, Plate 1: The Ducal Palace, Renaissance Capitals in the Loggia in Examples of the Architecture of Venice, Selected and Drawn to Measurements from the Edifices (extra illustrated), 1851–53

PL. 80 John Burley Waring, Stone Monuments, Tumuli and Ornament of Remote Ages: With Remarks on the Early Architecture of Ireland and Scotland, 1870

PLS. 81–82 John Gilbert Wilkins, Research: Design in Nature, 1926/1931

PL. 83 Unknown artist, Scrimshaw, 19th century

PL. 84 Wendy Red Star, Peelatchiwaaxpáash/Medicine Crow (Raven), 2014

PL. 85 Wendy Red Star, Peelatchiwaaxpáash/Medicine Crow (Raven), 2014

PL. 86 Unknown artist, Tattoo Pattern Book, 1873–1910

PL. 87 Horiyoshi III, Snake I, c. 2014

PL. 88 Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Feeling Pain: A Prostitute in the Kansei Era c. 1778 from the series Thirty-two Aspects of Women, 1888

PLS. 89–93 Toyohara Kunichika, Flowers of Edo: Five Young Men, 1864

An Interview

Laura Hoptman: Would you tell me how you began as a designer and what your first inspirations were?

Duro Olowu: Right from the beginning, I remember very vividly seeing clothes and hearing my family’s voices. My mother and my father loved clothes and showed me that they are an important way of saying who you are. It wasn’t about money or prestige, but about your perspective on life. You wanted to make people realize that you respect their company by the effort you put into the way you dressed.

I was born in Lagos to a Nigerian father and Jamaican mother.

I lived there until I was fifteen. It wasn’t that I simply started drawing clothes as a child. Instead, I was always looking around rooms, noticing the layers of ornamentation around me. My mother had the equivalent of tchotchkes everywhere, mixed in with fabric and other beautiful things. There was a high-low element, which is not to assign value, because the simplest things could be the most inspiring—a doily and a beautiful porcelain dish. The same applied to clothing.

Later in life, my family said, “Your eye was always following something even as a very young child, and you were always curious and very specific.” I think I became visually interested in culture and style as well the clothes that go with it when I was very young.

As teenagers it was all about being individual. Aside from traditional Yoruba clothing, you’d have your bell bottoms or your cheesecloth shirts, but you’d always sew things onto them, like patches, and do things to make them a little different, to show that you had a point of view.

I also had exposure to great music, and my parents loved films.

I watched a lot of matinees with them—films from the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Watching them now, I see how it was impossible not to be drawn into the clothing element of it.

I would have loved to have gone to fashion school. Instead I left for the UK when I finished junior high school in Nigeria and eventually studied law at university there. Being away allowed me to explore my creative and artistic interests—music, fashion, and art— in an independent way. I was able to submerge myself in it. I wasn’t averse to academia, but I knew it didn’t have to take over my life.

How was the move from Lagos to the UK? It wasn’t at all new to me. We visited Europe every summer throughout my childhood and my mother had family in the UK.

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Clockwise from top left: Duro Olowu Collection Spring/Summer 2022, 2017, 2015, 2021, photographs by Luis Monteiro

During those early visits, my Jamaican cousins were immersed in the Rastafarian “Buffalo Soldier“ and “Lovers Rock” culture of the late ’70s and early ’80s. By the time I arrived for school I already thought it was normal to go to museums and other art institutions. But I could see the harsh undercurrent of racism and Thatcherite division, even in such a multicultural society.

I was twelve or thirteen when I first saw Interview Magazine, and I thought, “If I had a magazine, this is what it would be.” I was

inspired by the creation of a whole vision around fashion and visual culture. I used to be mad for magazines. In the UK in the early ’80s, it was Blues and Soul, The Face, Black Music, Blitz, and other New Romantics fashion magazines. And of course Vogue, but I didn’t go out every month to buy it. It wasn’t the main source of fashion for me because clothes were everywhere from Kensington Market to the Kings Road, Worlds End to Portobello Market. I approached fashion as—I don’t want to say a consumer but as someone who was looking at it to dream about it or to learn more about the designers and creatives involved in it. How and why they did it. By the time I came to school in the UK, I could discuss the work of Yves Saint Laurent, Lagerfeld, or Issey Miyake. Or American designers like Claire McCardell and Willi Smith or Calvin Klein’s references to Georgia O’Keeffe. But the new revelations—and revolutions—for me in my late teens were Vivienne Westwood, Joe Casely-Hayford, John Flett, Bodymap... I didn’t feel that I was missing out so much by not being at art or fashion school. I knew that I was getting my training in real life. And that one day I would either end up going to fashion school or get into it on my own terms.

When did that happen?

I would always make things, somewhat secretly. I went back to Nigeria when I was twenty-one, and I worked as a lawyer for a while, but I was always doing other things on the side. I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work in Lagos. I loved the energy but was restless and stifled. Eventually, I ran a tiny gallery owned by a couple. We showed contemporary West African and Nigerian art from the ’60s to the late ’80s. I learned a lot but also found attitudes a bit too conservative, so I moved back to London and then to Paris for about a year and a half in the mid ’90s.

Back in London I met Elaine Golding, who was a shoe designer.

One day we saw a space around the corner from where we lived in Notting Hill and I said, “Let’s take this space and open a boutique.”

It was on a quiet, off-the-beaten-track street, Artesian Road, and despite having very little money at the time, we opened it in 1997.

A tiny, bare space with a large window—we painted the brick walls white ourselves and decorated it with a few bits scored from the local Portobello and Golborne Road Markets. Also art, but not by anybody famous. We opened one Saturday with six dresses in two styles designed by me and two styles of handmade shoes designed

by Elaine. People walking by stared in curiously from the outside.

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The few that did come in tried to buy everything including the objects. That’s when I realized the importance of creating a clear and original point of view around the things we made. We later got married and ran the shop together for a few years.

Was your aesthetic already established then?

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Yes. I think so. Looking back, two styles of dresses that I first made for Olowu Golding, our label at the time, were very much rooted in my design sensibility. One was an ankle length sleeveless dress made from remnant silk georgette fabric in a beautiful, large print of faded flowers. It had a small ruffle on the hem that continued on a side slit that stopped a few inches below the knee. It was quite sheer so I sold it with vintage lace-trimmed slips. The second one was based on something I remembered growing up with in Nigeria, where rather opulent traditional clothing for parties would be made from Swiss or Austrian lace, which was very popular in the 1960s and ’70s. As an ode to this I made a sleeveless floor-length dress that had a fitted bodice and an A-line skirt. A very structured, architectural piece cut from an open-weave Swiss cord lace that I lined with a contrasting double-faced silk satin lining. The lace was a deep burgundy red, and for each dress, I chose a different color of silk lining to back it. So when you looked at the rail, each dress seemed different.

Why do you think everyone came?

We were only open on weekends to start. But after a few weeks it got quite busy. Sometimes we would run out of stock because we made very few things. We didn’t do any press but word got out, usually when people would see our pieces on someone and hound them for the source. Then people started to stop by to see what all the fuss was about. It was still very much a secret.

Eventually, I cut back on work and started being in the shop more. People started coming often and became our loyal regulars.

When Elaine and I separated, I still wanted to make clothes. In the meantime, we had moved to another space nearby, which I decided to keep. I started another label under my name with one dress.

That dress, dubbed “The Duro,” was the beginning of my career as a designer. People were knocking down the door. It took off internationally in an overwhelming but amazing way and launched what is now—almost twenty years later—my career in fashion.

Duro Olowu boutique, Masons Yard, St. James’s, London, 2022

There must have been a reason. There must have been a thirst.

There was a thirst. But I think that dress was also simply the perfect coming together of my past, present, and future. Heritage, inspirations, aspirations. It channeled my ideas about beauty and women. I used to think it’s because I have this thing for mixing fabrics or because the cut of this dress is of the past, but also of the future. As time has gone by, I’ve discovered that I’m a designer interested in the culture of style. I’m not a fashion designer interested in fashion.

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How does that link with your voracious interest, knowledge, and capability with color and pattern? You’re known for the dress, but if you came in with a little black dress, people would be surprised.

Yes. But I’m not afraid of a black dress. Black is such a magnificent and alluring color in all textures. I use it rather frequently. It is a leveler for me. But then so are fuchsia and yellow. What can I do? In my work across design, I apply the idea of layering and contextualizing different aspects of color without fear. I think I get this from a lifetime of looking at art, because your eye is trained to never miss anything and to always discover something. A new shade, a new motif, a new texture. When I design my own fabric prints, I do it very instinctively, the same way I mix the prints. I think about harmonious confrontations and juxtapositions, not trends. I feel I’ve earned the right to create my own visual story as an independent creative and also as a Black designer. My vision is multifaceted and multicultural, but the basis of my practice clearly comes from my Nigerian-Jamaican heritage.

You have to learn how to personally engage so that your work constantly evolves in ways that challenge and surprise. You always have to put yourself in the position of the viewer. Always think, “Gosh, what would it be like to look at these things?” I used to make so many sketches and just throw them away. I would say, “I’m not making this so I don’t need to keep it.” [My wife] Thelma [Golden] said to me soon after we met, “You make and then you edit.”

I think what you’re saying is that your mixing of patterns and colors from different parts of the world is curatorial in nature. How does pattern and color express your point of view?

Duro Olowu boutique, Masons Yard, St. James’s, London, 2016

For me, pattern and color are almost like a language between people.

A dialogue needs to occur when you walk by another person. When it’s a plain fabric, if you cut one bit on the bias and the other bit not on the bias, one becomes less luminous than the other, one moves differently. It’s like a heartbeat. I’m constantly looking for that gesture, that conversation. All the better if it’s instinctive or even unintentional. That gives rise to a whole scenario, like a cacophony of conversations and thoughts and emotions that I can bring to life in a print or pattern. I am inspired by the emotive consideration that goes into everything creative, from the most basic to the most opulent. Artists like Barkley Hendricks, Matisse, Alice Neel, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—to name a few—understood the need to have that in there.

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You have said in a couple of interviews that you have an international point of view. How does one absorb international culture? How do we show ourselves and our own cultures? Do you feel circumscribed by the culture that you come from or is everything fair game?

I think that has become a difficult topic for very good reasons.

Blatant appropriation wasn’t acknowledged for many years. Even things that were being referenced were still “separated” in museums and placed in inferior positions. How many times have we heard that African sculpture is not art but that Breton and Picasso make art?

When it comes to heritage, I know who I am. I’m a NigerianJamaican designer—and British because I have a British passport— but I know I’m Nigerian. I know I’m a Black man. I know I’m a man of color. I also had incredible exposure to the West Indian part of my heritage. All these things come together both in my life and my work. I am not interested in replicating something traditional or contemporary that has already been done so beautifully in any of these places. My vision is a cosmopolitan vision. That’s the word that I might use instead of “international.” I’m driven by a hunger to understand why certain design elements or artistic practices have existed for so long, how they have traveled and evolved into modern contemporary life, art, and culture. And most importantly, how they affect the way we relate to each other. It’s not a fantasy or utopian view. I’m interested in the need to make work that records and reflects important and revolutionary political, social, and cultural moments in time.

How does one navigate the meanings that are in the patterns and in the colors? And who has a license to do that?

For example, when one looks at Japanese kimonos and Hausa, Yoruba, or Senegalese robes of the late-nineteenth to late-twentieth centuries you notice a similar use of some patterns and motifs on base fabrics from all parts of the world. Because of the trade, the exciting trade. Exchanges and influences from trade, travel, and religion in different parts of the world meant that some motifs and shapes crossed over, eventually overlapping in harmonious ways. There’s a big difference between that and appropriation and exploitation. Appropriation comes from a lack of understanding or respect for something—taking without learning or respecting the reasoning behind it.

It’s like when people tell me they’ve been to “Africa,” I always ask, “Where exactly were you in Africa?” Everything from the continent is “African” with no regard for individual countries and cultures. It’s also about commerce. People will turn an object, pattern, or embroidery that is unique and special, both visually and in the way it was made, into the most commercial object so they can sell it.

When I looked at Issey Miyake, who was a huge inspiration to me in the ’80s and ’90s, I thought, “Here’s this man whose work has such an international point of view, but his Japanese heritage is clear.

I see the fabrics and the textures, I see the indigo inspiration. At the same time, I see the technology, the pleats, inspired obviously by the pleats of the veiled women of Afghanistan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and also by Mariano Fortuny.” This is the way.

It’s not appropriation. It’s a respectful ode to creativity—the histories and the techniques.

Let’s talk about patterns. They have meanings. They can be read. I’m looking at the pattern you’re wearing now. So your job, when you’re mixing patterns, is a big one because you’re juxtaposing meanings.

It’s almost like in a dress or in an outfit, there’s a whole sentence or a paragraph that’s being written. Are there different vocabularies?

Is it important to know the sources?

It’s very important to acknowledge sources. And it’s very important to acknowledge who you’re doing it for. I always think of the women.

I don’t want women to look sexy in my clothing. I don’t want to

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create clothes that make them feel or look vulnerable. There’s enough of that kind of oppression in the world.

I never want to draw tension in an obvious or vulgar way when I’m mixing prints. I realized quite early in my career that when you know, you know. I can spot a good juxtaposition instinctively. There are certain things that I will always use, and they never let me down.

But when you see a pattern on the body, especially if it’s mixed and the person is moving, it’s incredible. It shows off different aspects of that person’s character.

I completely understand the notion of the power of clothes. Your clothes are powerful and make one feel powerful. How do you think that works?

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I think that my understanding of that came from being raised by my Jamaican mother and also from my Nigerian aunts and the other women that I was surrounded by while growing up. It’s power that doesn’t need to be aggressive or loud. The clothes give the wearer a certain confidence that is not about arrogance. When she leaves the room, you remember her for the right reasons. The power is the power of individuality.

You mentioned the politics of your clothes. Do you want to expand on this?

My politics are very straightforward. I’ve always seen the prejudice in the world, the homophobia, the racism, sexism, Islamophobia, the inequalities of wealth. So my clothes are statements of defiance of presuppositions and assumptions. That is my politics. It’s the politics of difference. Everybody comes from somewhere else. And as much as this word “diversity” can connote good things, I’m over the way it’s used now. It’s used to justify change that is not genuine or sincere. Short-lived actions to avoid criticism. And that’s the politics of my clothes as well. They’re not about constant change or trends.

They’re like the personalities of the world—the long-lasting and important aspects that you want to retain. I hope that in them you can be a chameleon without masquerading.

Why do you think some people, in some cultures, resist color and pattern or are even afraid of it?

I think it’s all dictated. People use pattern and color emotionally and politically. Oppressors and dictators are afraid of color because color is power. In combination with pattern it is mesmerizing. It becomes a language of independence and freedom. It’s not looked upon favorably by the corporations, labels, and conglomerates who claim that their products are about individuality while churning out hundreds of thousands of the same thing.

Color has a magical kind of potency. Color tells you something about a life lived. That’s why I’ve always been very interested in why people are so attracted to things when I mix them, because it’s almost giving them the freedom to say, “I don’t want to be tied to one particular thing.” I see it as a sort of job of mine to bring all these aspects of that potency to the table. However I do it, it’s up to the wearer or the viewer to put it in their own realm, their own world.

Ornamentation is only really ornamentation and important if it has that type of visual and emotional impact.

I’m excited to talk about the two other pursuits that you practice, both of which go beyond the design and fashion worlds. The curators of this exhibition have chosen to include your Instagram account in addition to some of your textile designs. The account is justifiably popular. Last I checked you had more than 125,000 followers. It is amazing and incredibly varied: photographs of people in the street captured all over the world, all different nationalities, ages, circumstances of life. The one thing that your subjects have in common is their amazing style.

Sometimes, you juxtapose artwork with people. You’ve described this practice as a cosmopolitan appreciation of life, love, and beautiful things, which gives people the power to feel confident. Is this part of a self-portrait that you’re creating?

More than a self-portrait, it’s a political statement because I don’t believe in the separation of the quality of aesthetics based on the origin of what one is looking at.

People say, “Oh, you really champion art by women.” I say, “No. I post beautiful work by artists who are women.” The same way I post beautiful work by artists of color, artists from the continent, artists from Europe, artists from America, etc. But usually it is work that has not had the chance that it should have had previously. Work that took an unjustifiably long time to be recognized as important.

I post a lot of art because good art is a reflection of life and an era.

It’s the same thing as posting a picture of someone on the street. It’s all a reflection.

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So is it a collection of pictures or an ongoing story you’re telling?

There is a running theme but it’s not necessarily curatorial. My main objective is to try to share or impart that spontaneous excitement and thrill of seeing something that is coming from the maker’s or the subject’s life. There’s no master plan. We see a lot every day.

Sometimes our curious minds manage to just eke out the things that we need in our memory and in our lives at that particular time. That is the thrill of every good show, every good film, and every good meal. It is the thrill of every new romance or first love. I appreciate people that create things like that for us to experience, whether they’re well-known or not.

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What about the screen of mechanical reproduction? Do you find it to be a different experience than experiencing actual things?

Absolutely. But it’s useful as a tool to encourage one to go see it and to seek out what else there is. The screen of technology cannot kill something that truly has integrity and importance and relevance.

If you don’t manipulate it. You don’t try to explain it. You don’t try to bring it into your life. You just say, “Look at this.” I’m not saying, “This is my taste and it’s the taste.”

You are celebrated, of course, as a designer, your Instagram is beloved, but you’re also a very important cultural voice in the visual arts community. And I’m saying this as a curator. I saw your magnificent show at the Camden Art Centre in London. And most recently, you curated an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. How does your curatorial practice intersect with your design work and also with your Instagram work?

A few years ago I curated two shows that were essentially mini versions of my boutique. The first one was called Material. I mixed contemporary art, textiles, clothing, and jewelry together at Salon 94’s downtown gallery in New York. It was a real mélange of mediums displayed in unconventional ways. But to my joy, people flocked to see both shows and some critics wrote glowing reviews.

Initially I thought, “It’s not an exhibition.” My wife, Thelma [Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem], insisted it was a “curated exhibition” even though at first I felt it was simply what I had always done in my London boutiques.

Is the way that you make meaning as a curator related to the way that you make meaning as a designer?

I think so, yes. In my design work, I’ve never wanted to follow. It’s a political act that is natural. So I was juxtaposing fabric and pattern and texture or shapes before other people were. And people would say, “But why are you doing it like that? It’s not on trend.” I thought, “Who wants a trend?” Curatorially, there’s a lot more responsibility.

I feel responsible to the artists whose work I am showing.

I always feel that my responsibility to the institution comes after my responsibility to the artist and to the public. I love artists in conversation with the world. In my shows, I aim for the artists’ works to be in conversation with each other, and the artists themselves, so that the public feels that they’re either listening to that conversation or part of it.

I was trying to put my finger on what is so admirable about your exhibitions. And of course, they’re beautiful to look at, but, as you said, there is a certain atmosphere created by you when you bring all these disparate objects together, and each of them retains their own dignity.

A lot of exhibitions that I’ve been to, even those that I’ve loved and appreciated, are about the curator. “This is what the curator likes.”

Especially when you have an exhibition by either a celebrity curator or somebody whose taste is revered because of who they work for.

You want your curatorial practice to go beyond that because each object retains its selfhood, its presence. I always walk through my exhibitions alone when we’re done hanging, and I think, “Who knew Claude Cahun could be in a room with Rodney McMillian, Lisa Brice, Malick Sidibé, and Dorothea Tanning in such a harmonious and inspiring way? They didn’t know each other!”

If there’s a curatorial line between an artist or a creator and a curator, which side are you on? If I was to designate you, I would place you on “Team Artist.”

Absolutely, I’m Team Artist. I get to be artistic, I get to curate, and I get to design clothes that aren’t art, but still embody this artistic spirit. My position is not typical; it was earned, and I never take it for granted.

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Do you choose artists who are close to your aesthetic for your exhibitions or do you have other reasons?

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I always have other reasons. For example, in Seeing Chicago [exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2020] the museum first asked if I would do a show of my work, and I thought, “No.” I mean, not yet. I love Chicago, because Chicago was very good to me at the beginning of my career. I don’t know much about that part of America, but I found that they don’t follow anyone else. I told the MCA I would love to do a show to give something back to the city that’s been good to me. I wanted to hold a mirror up to the city. Of course, initially, there was a lot of hesitation. But I said to Madeline [Grynsztejn, Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago], the collection is something I want to show because a lot of these works are in storage, and this is my opportunity to get them out and juxtapose them with other incredible public and private collections in Chicago—the owners of which all said, “You can have whatever you want.” A dream.

Fashion design is often thought of as a very exclusive preoccupation of people, as is visual art. How does what you do reach a larger world?

I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in the culture of style. Now, couture was always very separate because it was and is based on the handmade nature and finishing of the garment or accessory.

However, getting dressed properly has never been about high fashion.

The way designers have made money for the last eighty years is from having that ideal and then having the rundown version, which probably ends up reinterpreted as a lipstick or accessory that everybody can buy. With art, it’s a bit more difficult. People used to be commissioned to make art by patrons. Religious patronage was for many centuries the way artists and makers could survive.

But what also emerged was attention to the aesthetic and to the integrity of the things that people lived with every day. That was the beginning of design and ready-to-wear. And, quite frankly, contemporary art. Because with these things, patrons became less about, “You make this painting so that I can express more beautifully and more seductively a religion and way of living that is going to benefit my family, my pocket, and my status for hundreds of years.”

It evolved beyond kneeling at the altar of beauty, including art, to also living with it in your personal surroundings.

With design, it’s slightly different, because design is more physically transformative by nature. And I’m also speaking about this in relation to ordinary clothes and objects that aren’t necessarily expensive. They help to present your point of view as a person of the world. Everybody sees you. It’s democratic. That’s what I hope I express on Instagram.

Is there, in your opinion, a democratic and universal definition of beauty that we would all agree on?

I think there is. The problem is that our minds get warped at a very early age. Instead of accepting different forms of beauty, we start to challenge them and edit them. The universality of beauty is the fact that there isn’t one form of beauty, just as there isn’t one form of contemporary art. There isn’t one form of contemporary music. And if you try to take ownership or appropriate one aspect of something that you reject in other ways, it’s not beautiful at all. You can’t say, “The Afro is cool on the cover of Vogue, but a Black woman coming to work with natural hair is not cool.”

Last question, and personal one. Do you collect anything?

I never use the word collect, but yes, I do seek out and find may things. Or rather, they find me. I have contemporary art—I particularly love studies—and objects and vessels as well as antiques and furniture. I also have costumes, fabrics, and textiles, particularly West African textiles that date from the late-eighteenth century to the early-twenty-first century. Antique and vintage couture textiles from Europe by Abraham of Switzerland, Bianchini Ferier, etc. But I also love books, so I have an insane number of books on art, design, fashion, and first edition favorites. What I do collect are images in my head. When I go to sleep at night, it is filled with so many things at play. I love museums, but the one in my head is free and never closes. That’s why Thelma said to me a few years ago, “Can you please join Instagram?” And I said, “What’s that?”

This interview was recorded on January 21 and February 2, 2022. It has been transcribed and edited for length and clarity.

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PL. 94 Adachi Ginko, Ladies Sewing, 1887

PL. 95 Takizawa Kiyoshi (Editor), Karakusa moyō hinagata (Arabesque Pattern Template), 1881

PL. 96 Takizawa Kiyoshi (Editor), Karakusa moyō hinagata (Arabesque Pattern Template), 1884

PL. 97 Fugaku Co., Ltd., Custom Hand Towel Sample Collection Textile Wholesaler Book, n.d.

PL. 98 Tomioka Eisen, Textile Merchant, c. 1901

PL. 99 Unknown artist, Japan, Kimono Fragment, 1930–45

PLS. 100–103 Yamanaka Kichirobē, Moyō hinagata miyako no nishiki: Volume 1, 1886

PLS. 104–105 Yamada Naosaburo (Editor), introduction by Tomioka Tessai, Pattern Book of Kimono Design (Hana Fukusa), 1900

PLS. 106–107 Unknown artist, Japan, Old textile fragments; Sample book of Japanese Sarasa fragments, fragments 18th–early 19th century, assembled 1989

The Function of Ornament in the Ismaili Center Houston

The Ismaili Center Houston will serve as a place where members of the Ismaili community practice their faith and also gather with non-Ismailis to foster understanding between different communities and different cultures. How can the architect of such a building encourage this process? And what part can be played by the “Islamic design philosophy” to which the architect’s brief refers?

The word “culture” denotes a set of values and conventions that are established through practice and validated by consensus.

Muslims occupy a vast portion of the globe extending from the Middle East to Asia and also including much of North Africa and parts of South America. Whatever integration into a single community of faith was achieved in the Islamic Golden Age, there has always been great diversity as well. Some of the Ismailis living in the United States today were born there but others have come there from the Middle East, Africa, or South Asia. Confronting such a variety of origins and backgrounds are the economic, technological, and sociological forces of globalization, which are driving a new but secular convergence.

In designing the Ismaili Center Houston I was determined to avoid “ready-made” symbols, such as traditional Islamic geometric patterns, to avoid the postmodern inflation of such symbols into a hollow stylistic branding for the building. In a pluralistic and constantly mutating society, the role and meaning of symbols is ever changing and a common recognition of their significance cannot be assumed.

For culture to enact its ability to register change—to evolve as a theater of movement rather than a theater of representation— architecture must discard symbolism and representation. A built form may then emerge from the many aesthetic choices that exist regarding the ordering of space, structure, and program. As a result, such a form would embody affects* as a consequence of the way it is assembled. These affects enter into dialogue with individuals, like a language that exists before words, and result in different types of moods, feelings, and meanings. Affects are pre-personal and unmediated, and they embed a form with the ability to be perceived in multiple ways. In an important sense, then, form and ornament are combined and replace symbol and message.

The Ismaili Center Houston is tripartite in form with an opencolumned veranda on each side to allow for outdoor gatherings throughout the year in spite of the hot and humid climate. The soffits of these verandas are designed with blue perforated screens to cater to the acoustic and lighting needs of the covered outdoor spaces.

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PLS. 108–120 Farshid Moussavi Architecture, Design Drawings, Ismaili Center Houston, 2022

In addition, each veranda, together with the blue soffit, connects to an atrium for indoor gatherings. Thus there is not only a sense of continuity between inside and outside, but the whole building is devoted to the affect of openness.

Those who are familiar with Persian palaces may be reminded of the verandas of the hypostyle hall of Apadana or the eivans of Ali Qapu and Chehel Sotoun. Others may think of the vernacular architecture of Malawi or of traditional houses in Japan or the American South, all of which feature verandas. The atriums may also remind visitors of the Persian architecture of the Safavid dynasty, exemplified by palaces in Isfahan as well as Persian houses in Tabriz or Shiraz. But its affects of openness and stepping may echo the experiences some associate with office buildings or shopping malls, where atriums are also used to allow for large gatherings and to create visual communication between several floors. The color blue will call to mind the cladding of Iranian mosques or, more universally, the sea or the sky, with which, at certain times of day, the blue of the soffits will blend.

The four floors above the entry floor of the Ismaili Center are pierced by square openings, each rotated forty-five degrees relative to the one below it, to generate a stepped central atrium culminating in a skylight. This skylight together with the large glazed wall between the atrium and the north veranda will bring natural light into the central atrium, where recitals, markets, and other communal gatherings will take place. The stepped surfaces will be clad in perforated screens. The perforations of the vertical surfaces will allow visual communication between the upper floors and the atrium floor, while the horizontal surfaces, or soffits, will accommodate lighting, acoustic panels, and fire sprinklers.

These atriums with their stepped profiles may remind some visitors of the domes in the ancient architecture of Iran, which are characterized by the use of a squinch that makes it possible for a space that is orthogonal in plan to transition to a dome, which is created by the stacking of a variety of modules; others may recall the Christian buildings of the Byzantine empire. For those who are not familiar with such buildings, my hope is that the atriums will convey not only the idea of steeply rising steps but the affect of infinity that we find in the sky, the heavens, or a crystal, enhancing the event that is taking place in the central atrium.

The external walls of the building will be clad in small stone tiles in a variety of modules that are designed to minimize waste and to allow a seamless transition from areas with solid walls (protecting

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the interior from the elements) to those with screens (providing ventilation and a measure of privacy). The varied shapes will also facilitate the transition from sheer surfaces to those with relief, and similarly, changes in the pattern of the stone tessellation from one wall to another will be achieved by varied rotation of the stone modules. This type of assembly will result in affects of lightness and multiplicity. If the carved stone screens of Agra or the wooden ones in Cairo are evoked here, such references are not built into the fabric.

Architecture as ornament results in affects and resonances.

Responses cannot be predetermined. People will inevitably connect their experience in one location with impressions formed, associations gathered, and assumptions made in other contexts and not always consciously, which in turn influence the way they think and act. Not only will the Ismaili Center Houston inevitably elicit a variety of responses to the affects that it presents but such variety will be welcomed. It will act as a social platform notable for its openness as well as its shelter, its variety as well as its unity— a platform that brings people together and encourages mutual recognition and respect.

*

The term “affect” has been interpreted in many different ways, which are most commonly associated with emotions and feelings. Deleuze’s interpretation of affect (based on Spinoza’s affectus) as distinct from affection (Spinoza’s affectio), gives it a precise definition and helps us to understand how forms can perform as a multiplicity. According to Deleuze, an affection, such as a perception, relates to the state of a body that is due to the action of another body or form. Since this affection has to be enveloped by the human body, it is subject to personal, biographical, or social mediation. Affect, on the other hand, is an “intensity” transmitted directly by an individual or form, the specific qualities of which depend on the characteristics of that individual or form. Affections are the effect of a form on individuals and are subject to different types of mediation, whereas affects are pre-personal and unmediated and can generate different affections in different persons. The perception of an architectural form involves two stages. First, an affect is transmitted by a form. This affect is then processed by the senses to produce unique affections—thoughts, feelings, emotions, and moods. As an affect can unfold into different affections or interpretations in different beings, it embeds a form with the ability to be perceived in multiple ways. Through the agency of specific affects, in each instance an architectural form performs as a singular multiplicity—as a “function” that connects human beings to their environment as well as each other, albeit in different ways. In order to explore forms as multiplicities, designers need to focus on their affective functions. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Percepts, Concepts, Affects,” chap.

7 in What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 163–99.

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PL. 121 William De Morgan, Design For a Tile Panel with “Persian” Birds and Foliage, 1882–1907

PL. 122 Christopher Dresser, Design Drawing, c. 1883

PL. 123 Unknown artist, Pakistan, Design for Kashmir Shawl, c. 1880

PL. 124 Christopher Dresser, Textile Fragment, c. 1900

PL. 125 Unknown artist, India, Furnishing Fragment, Textile Fragment, c. 1770

PL. 126 Unknown artist, China, Fragment of Wallpaper, early 18th century

PL. 127 Thomas Wardle, William Morris, Snakeshead, 1876

PL. 128 May Morris, The Orchard (“A Fruit Garden”): Design for a Large Embroidered Panel, early 1890s

PL. 129 Unknown artist, India, Chintz Border Fragment, c. 1740

PL. 130 Unknown artist, Japan, Chrysanthemums on Stream, c. 19th century

PL. 131 Unknown artist, Japan, Butterfly Nimai Gata, c. late 19th–early 20th century

PL. 132 Unknown artist, Bijapur, Deccan, Arabesque Drawing, c. 1600–50

PL. 133 Unknown artist, Japan, Tokugawa-era Chrysanthemum Pattern, c. 18th–early 19th century

Reactions to Ornament

The following is a series of thoughts, notes, and reactions to “ornament” commissioned by The Drawing Center in advance of the exhibition The Clamor of Ornament.

— Increasingly, I’m wary of divulging my thoughts, my hopes, about ornament and its reception. Because I’ve spoken and written about (and lived through) a nexus of aesthetic concerns including artifice, pleasure, the decorative, self-fashioning, beauty, and so on; about their varying limitations and uses, and, of course, the significance of their uselessness; and about their historical negation as aesthetic categories, somehow, very quickly, it’s become evident, people are very keen to convert all this into: LUXURY WILL SAVE THE WORLD or CORNICING IS A RADICAL ACT! And as much as I savor a little bombast now and again or appreciate that such declarations employed tactically in the right context can invoke a rhetorical power—for example, against the stale impasses of a certain kind of tedious logician—these trite and tawdry statements are ultimately a betrayal of the ornamentality that occupies me and which I adore (and indeed, which does not discriminate against cornicing and, if not actual luxury, then luxuriousness, or a relation to luxury; that is, scamming it, stealing it, imitating it, redistributing it, to name a few).

This wholesale conversion hasn’t quite happened; I’ve been relatively lucky actually, but I can sometimes sense it on the horizon—you know, like if ornament becomes a too vogueish concept, finds itself on too many lips, it will be before we know it subjected to that awful sanitizing machinery. Then all those strange threads running off into obscure worlds, worlds of things consigned to “ornament” will become another degree separated, harder to access, and in some cases almost certainly irretrievable.

Today, as opposed to even say five years ago, “Baroque Studies” has expanded; the ornamental mode in literature, film, fine and decorative arts is being appreciated on a scale not previously observable (at least in my lifetime; at least in the UK); the works and lives of ornamentalists are being reassessed—words like “radical” and “transgressive” have been deemed applicable to the heretofore Frivolous (the latter was sometimes begrudgingly admitted, the former rarely). I don’t know if any of this—paid workshops on Froth Praxis, etc.—is entirely good (for ornament) but either way I’m getting ahead of myself in worrying because the

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PL. 134 François Boucher, printed by Claude Augustin Duflos, Rocaille (Rococo) Design in Nouveaux morceaux pour des paravents (New Concepts for Screens), 1730s

fact is, in the arts and criticism and life at large, almost everywhere in Euro-American terms, administered harmony, prescribed invisibility, discreetness, stylelessness, and so on continue to be set up in relation to an unwanted antipodal superfluity, and this setup still passes for not only good taste, but correct taste, moral taste, political taste, and ornamental strategies, not to mention ornament, continues to be misread or dismissed in practice (even where not in theory).

I say “still” because I’m thinking, as keeps happening when contemplating stylistic excrescence, of the fact that it was all the way back in the ’60s that Sontag wrote about, to an extent carved out a little critical space for, “Stylization.” That lumpy and heterogenous thing that arose and wouldn’t go away from her thinking about Style, about hermeneutics and poetics. She was fond of it, sometimes against her own better judgment. Either that or she was dramatizing for us a kind of measuredness towards it for the sake of her own intellectual standing. She sought to make an opening for stylized art, but arguably stabbed stylization in the back in these maneuvers—if Stylization (aka “the hyperdevelopment of style”) was inoperable when it came to the crude interpretative method that pervaded criticism and ways of encountering art more generally, it was deemed not on the same level, we are told, as abstract art let alone the more formally harmonic poetics she was really arguing for (though I sometimes wonder if it was only a kind of ritualistic take down, to make the opening in the first place). Here in this use of “ease and harmony” regarding form and content, Sontag was in line with the aesthetics of not just say Kantian harmony and Winckelmann’s calls for “noble simplicity and sedate grandeur” under which ornament must be regulated but also a relatively separate lineage of theory and poetics in which “effeteness,” race, or both, are invoked through depictions and descriptions of ornament to negate, say, the bourgeoise, like Adolf Loos did; and is similarly invoked today (you know the type) though perhaps not always so explicitly, leaving little room for actual froth. In the end this approach, rather boringly, always serves to critique gaucheness rather than any of the economic exploitations, atrocities, indignities bound to capital.

So yes, over half a century later and presiding modes of criticism and engaging art in Europe and America foist upon us a deeply anti-sensorial, anti-experiential relation to art and the world, or alternatively a continuation of principled harmonics, or finally, a poetics that is experiential but from which ornament is largely

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misread and excluded. It is too experiential, sensual, or deemed incapable of producing “real poetry.”

Given this utter mess, it is not surprising that it is in queer and feminist Black aesthetic theory that the baroque has most flourished, attending to something that Zora Neale Hurston identified when she claimed the ornamental space as a Black space, describing “the will to adorn” as a historical core of Black expression. There are many Black histories of ornament to be written; one of these perhaps would also take into account the history of what Saidiya Hartman terms the “aesthetical negro” in her luxurious, sensory history of Black wayward life. If, as Hartman writes, “the flapper was a pale imitation of the ghetto girl,” then surely the modernist dandy was an inelegant dive for the glamour of the “aesthetical negro,” as was the aesthete, the fop, and so on.

I’m aware, by the way, that this exhibition is centered on drawing. Much of my recent interest thinks of ornament as something in the air, a rhetorical mode, a way of moving through the world, but, of course, to hold these things as separate from pattern, motif, decoration on the page, print, and textile, would be a grievous disservice to ornament. In fact, the tendency to hold the two as removed traces fundamental aporia—underlines a paucity, a critical, conceptual, aesthetical, sensible deficit in Western relations to surface that ultimately has its consequences throughout the visual and non-visual, including music and literary criticism. We don’t know how to read ornament, to move with/against it, heed the feeling-knowledge in its many sensory registral planes, even (unobtusely) parse its symbolic orders—its rich codework containing quotes of quotes—maybe sometimes to the point of nonsense—of quotes trailing into, not to sound dramatic, time immemorial.

There was a video circulating of Sylvester, which has been taken down now. Sylvester singing on a stage in an intensely coruscating gown. The dazzle was so extreme I lost my breath: flares and scintillations looking like a chemical, alchemical reaction, and, of course, intimating light on water and caves, grottos both artificial and natural. The scintillations created a kind of atmospheric condition that extended beyond the screen in a manner particular to the spectacle of coruscation. It also, this oscillation between abstract ornament—in this case éclat and glimmer—and body, person, persona, represented form—recalled for me “grotesquerie” in its deeper sense: grotto-esque.

PL. 135 Braquenié et cie., Design for a Rug with Ornamental Frames and Garlands and Festoons of Leaves, Flowers, and Ribbons Over a Background of Arabesques, 1858–1900

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As with all such dazzle, I wanted to become immersed, literally be the scintillations, or at least the secondary visions of landscape they elicited. Living ornament.

I’ve been wondering what it means to want to be decorative in the wake of the commodification of so many people as ornament, but I think the setup of this wondering is a little fake and not in a good way. That the desire and the context given in the way that they are here is off. That in actuality, the kind of “being ornament” I crave has less of a stake in commodification. The desire to be ornament can’t help but register a certain way on the page, as self-dehumanization.

But this craving to be ornament is to want to slip into another dimension: a sideways zone where fabulous alterities have been preserved, where futures can be dislodged by tracing patterns (optically or otherwise) over and over, and where the tedious glances off—splayed, rayed, faceted, dazzled.

Grotesquerie, as you might have noticed, features in the exhibition, and like much grotesquework, its strange voluted confections, swoops, and curves call out for all those other sensory registers of the eye. The eye’s ear, the eye’s mouth, the eye’s touch, and so on. Then, because of the representational aspect—a vacillation or flickering starts to happen—between, for simplicity’s sake, form and content, until eventually the two concepts become absurd. It is the kind of collapsing of Style vs Substance that stylized works are simply not supposed to be able to produce, much recalling José Esteban Muñoz on the Fold (by way of Deleuze), who undoes that tedious literalism of surface and depth, since depth, the interior, is “merely the other side of the outside or surface.”

Just like the grotto, whether “artificial” folly or “natural” cave.

The grotto as a conceptual, mythical space is at the heart of ornamental history in Europe. If the Rococo entailed a loose conglomeration of aestheticisms and sensibilities that aligned with an emphasis previously unavailable—as famously registered

by Sontag in the ’60s when she casually points to the emergence of Rococoism as the birthplace of that particular High Camp genealogy including Wilde, Beardsley, Firbank, and, I would add, the aesthete Richard Bruce Nugent, then it is worth recalling that the very word “rococo” and our usage of it emerges from the grotto through “rocaille,” originally used to describe grotto adornment: the heterogeneous rock art, shell-whorled fountains, and jewel studding that reaches back to even the most ancient of caves.

PL. 136 Tiffany & Co., Design Drawing, 1875–76

PL. 137 Jacques Gabriel Huquier, after Jean-Antoine Watteau, La Danse Bachique, n.d.

An age-old queer strategy (aka faggotrie) Escaping into decorations on porcelain, dust, sand, jewelry, froth ... and, let’s face it, into ideas bent, made very crooked, twisted then pressed and pressed into a substance several thousand times to make a pattern that can be traced, or cause a general dazzle on taking in its totality, without ever having to sink into the original idea ... which was so tedious ... so deathly ... so sticky there was no way of actually surviving it.

Counterglamour I’m writing this in the UK where there persists a counterglamour that is so pervasive, meted out, intricately woven into society and law so that even a platitudinous embrace of ornament can feel triumphant, a vital re-enchantment worth practicing.

Black Éclat and the Black Grotto I’ve been interested for a while in “Black éclat.” “Éclat” here meaning glimmer, or dazzle of the self-fashioning, self-artificing, lustrous kind that issues onlookers into a state of paralysis, or ecstasy, or at least temporary confusion (time to escape, time to bypass). Dazzle in this sense is a state of ornamentality not unrelated to Bling (Krista Thompson) and Shine (Thompson/Amber Jamilla Musser) and the general aesthetic surplus and ornamentality Saidiya Hartman gets at, reupholsters, in her aforementioned Wayward Lives, Brilliant Experiments.

And also, that radiant pink Horizon glimmer which is Utopia (Muñoz).

Right now, I’m thinking above all of international jewel thief Doris Payne, a hero of mine, who I recall being referred to as “Pink Panther” (not to be confused with the better-known jewel heist ring). The moniker, in relation to ornamentality, has a double, personal resonance for me, which goes like this: Approximately 1000 years ago I was literally force-fed pages of 1000 Plateaus by approximately fifty of the bleakest, most gruesome boys conceivable. (I don’t know what sleek little enclaves you were all luxuriating in where this wasn’t happening, but this was where I was trapped at the time.) They wanted to make Continental foie gras of me. But I regurgitated every page as pap each time. The deep unromance of it all! Not what I was expecting. (I’d climbed here, hands and knees etc.) They wanted it to be like this though (tortuous it didn’t have to be I now realize, reading it again).

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Anyway, one day I was walking home when I bumped into Milo— cheerful and strident and gentle looking—the one who’d trapped me in all this in the first place.

“Hey,” he screamed at me, “breakfast!,” sticking five or so pages in my mouth. Something felt so much stranger than usual as I swallowed. Even after I’d regurgitated all the pulp later, I felt a flapping in the tube of my neck. In the mirror that night, something pale and papery, a pink fluttering pastel moth caught in my throat.

I extracted it after much reflexive gagging, delighted: something, finally, had stuck! It was of course that one line:

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The Pink Panther imitates nothing, it reproduces nothing, it paints the world its colour, pink on pink; this is its becoming-world, carried out in such a way that it becomes imperceptible itself, asignifying, makes its rupture, its own line of flight, follows its “aparallel evolution” through to the end.

Well. It was so perfect: that intimated vision of gleaming radiance— of glittering pinkness—jellied crystalline translucence. It was all so obviously about international jewel thief Doris Payne. Not Milo, nor one of those fifty or so wheyfaced boys could tell me anything about this line, which confirmed the fact.

Doris Payne, who, 91 at the time of writing this, is described in the media (and by herself) as operating through sleights of hand, glints, distractions, sideways maneuvers, tracing as it were, “apparel evolutions” at the jewelers, “asignifying” through more than thirty-two aliases, following her own line of flight (in her own words: “an international jewel thief has to get into the air, off the ground, out of the jurisdiction of where she stole. Get anywhere as long as it’s a flight out of the country where she took the damned thing”), making her rupture (escaping prison dressed as a nun, her stating that her practice is compacted by a personal revenge against the diamond trade and its atrocities), and is to me a consummate ornamentalist even without the associative coruscation of jewels attending her like a faerie retinue. It’s precisely the kind of ornamentality I’ve been thinking about more and more, alongside an ongoing interest in the decorative arts as well as “ornamental literature.” A practice, a relationality, a device, a sideways dimension (the Black Grottos—an inverse place of those mines—coal, diamond, gold—which Payne speaks about, the conception

PL. 138 Christoph Jamnitzer, Das Neuw Grottesken Buch (The New Book of Grotesques), 1573–1610

PL. 139 Loïs Mailou Jones, Chinese Embroidery (copied from Han-Chinese woman’s domestic skirt, embroidered with silk thread, in MFA collection), 1924

of which stole from her—and I—from the moment of birth).

Ornament figured as something “in the aether.” Another chief example of this ornamentality is the “extravagance, ornament and shine” of Black social existence, of “the utopian longings and the promise of a future world that resided in waywardness and the refusal to be governed,” as described by Hartman in Wayward Lives, a text that influences this one in that its attentiveness to the sensuousness and the surplus of ordinary Black life makes a glorious intervention into historical narrative and biography and because as a work itself it embodies the ornamental spirit.

Let us be bounded by this and by the glancing jewel lights emitted by each theft of Doris Payne, and the knowledge that the exquisite ruptures they produce glints of the crystal walls of the Black Grottos.

*

References: Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” first published in Nancy Cunard, ed., Negro: An Anthology (London: Wishart & Co., 1934); Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2021); José Esteban Muñoz, “Introduction: From Surface to Depth, Between Psychoanalysis and Affect,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 19, no. 2 (2009): 123–29; Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Continuum Impacts, 2004); Doris Payne with Zelda Lockhart, Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief (London: Headline Publishing Group, 2009).

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PL. 140 Vittorio Accornero de Testa for Gucci, Flora Scarf, c. 1973

PL. 141 Chester Faris, Painted Chest, Michoacan, 1935/1942

PL. 142 Margaret Concha, Applique and Embroidered Coverlet, 1935/1942

PL. 143 Unknown artist, initialed “GMR”, Tree of Life Cut-out Chintz Quilt, 1925–35

PL. 144 David Kulp, Presentation Fraktur of a Double Eagle, c. 1815

PL. 145 Heinrich Seiler, Labyrinth, c. 1820

PL. 146 Tom Hovey, Nadiya’s Chocolate Peacock, The Great British Bake-off Designs, 2010

PL. 147 Irene Schaefer, Patchwork and Applique Quilt, 1935/1942

PL. 148 Unknown artist, Papua New Guinea, Painted Tapa Panel, before 1970

PL. 149 Unknown artist, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mbuti people (Ituri forest), Painted Bark Cloth Panel, c. 20th century

PL. 150 Unknown artist, Oceania, Tapa Cloth Fragment, 1900–20

PL. 151 Louie Ewing, Plate 1 (Navajo Blankets), 1940–43

PL. 152 Unknown artist, A Second-phase Chief’s Blanket, c. 1860

PL. 153 Emma Pettway, Gee’s Bend Quilt, 2021

PL. 154 Ethel Dougan, Saddle Blanket, 1939

PL. 155 Unknown artist, A Unique Example of a Transitional-phase Navajo Weaving in the “Germantown” Tradition, with American Flag Panels and Eye-dazzlers, c. 1868–1910

Contributors

Laura Hoptman is the Executive Director of The Drawing Center.

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Farshid Moussavi, OBE, RA, is an internationally acclaimed architect and Professor in Practice of Architecture Emily King is a London-based design at the Harvard University Graduate historian who works as a writer, editor, School of Design, where she trained. and curator. Her PhD thesis explored Prior to founding FMA, her Londonthe typefaces to emerge from the early based practice, she was co-founder of years of desktop publishing technology Foreign Office Architects (FOA). She has in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and her published, in conjunction with Harvard longstanding focus has been twoUniversity, an influential series of dimensional design. She has produced books: The Function of Ornament (2006), books and curated exhibitions on leading The Function of Form (2009), and The figures in graphic design including Function of Style (2014). She was elected Robert Brownjohn, Richard Hollis, and to the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Peter Saville. She was recently the guest in 2015 and was appointed Professor of curator of the London Design Museum’s Architecture in the RA Schools in 2017. In 2020 “Designs of the Year” show. King the Queen’s Birthday Honors of 2018 she is a regular columnist for MacGuffin was appointed Officer of the Order of the Magazine.

British Empire (OBE) for her services to architecture.

Margaret-Anne Logan is an art historian and museum professional Duro Olowu is a designer based in New York City. She earned internationally renowned for his her MA in the History of Art from The womenswear label launched in 2004.

Courtauld Institute of Art in 2017 and In 2005, he won the prestigious New was recognized with the Director’s Designer of the Year Award at the Award for an Outstanding Dissertation.

British Fashion Awards. Olowu was Her specialization is eighteenth-century also awarded TopShop’s NEWGEN French art and material culture. She sponsorship, and in 2010, he was graduated magna cum laude from named Best International Designer at Trinity College with a BA in Art History the African Fashion Awards in South and minors in French, French Studies, Africa and was one of six finalists for the and Creative Writing.

Swiss Textiles Award in Zurich. Olowu has curated several recent criticallyacclaimed contemporary art exhibitions, including Material in 2012 and More Material in 2014 at Salon 94 Gallery in New York; Making and Unmaking at the Camden Arts Centre in London in 2016; and Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2020. He lives between London and New York.

Duncan Tomlin is a New York Citybased curatorial researcher and art historian. In 2017, Tomlin received his MA degree from The Courtauld Institute of Art, where he focused on Spanish medieval visual culture. More recently, he has worked as a research assistant on a variety of academic and curatorial projects. Tomlin co-curated The Drawing Center’s 2019–20 exhibition, The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists, and contributed to the exhibition catalog. He is currently pursuing his M.Arch and M.S. CCCP degrees at Columbia University’s GSAPP. Shola von Reinhold is a Scottish writer. After a disastrous audition at the Bolshoi Ballet, Shola lowered her sights and went on to write her debut novel LOTE, which is forthcoming from Duke University Press (June 2022). LOTE won the James Tait Black Prize and Republic of Consciousness Prize in the UK in 2021.

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Works in the Exhibition

PL. 1 Hirase Yoichirō Shell Motifs, 1913 Woodblock printed book; ink and color on paper 13 x 9 inches (33 x 22.8 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mary and James G. Wallach Foundation Gift, 2013 (2013.860) 230

PL. 2 Martin Schongauer Querfüllung auf hellem Grund (Horizontal Ornament), c. 1470 Engraving on white paper 2 5/16 x 2 15/16 inches (5.9 x 7.4 cm) Museum purchase in memory of George Campbell Cooper Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution PL. 3 Albrecht Dürer after Leonardo da Vinci The First Knot, Interlaced Roundel with an Oblong Panel in its Center, before 1521 Woodblock print 10 11/16 x 8 3/8 inches (27.1 x 21.2 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Khuner Collection, Bequest of Marianne Khuner, 1984 (1984.1201.31) PL. 4 Albrecht Dürer after Leonardo da Vinci The Second Knot, Interlaced Roundel with an Amazon Shield in its Center, before 1521 Woodblock print 10 3/4 x 8 3/8 inches (27.3 x 21.3 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Khuner Collection, Bequest of Marianne Khuner, 1984 (1984.1201.30)

PL. 5 Attributed to Mirza Akbar Drawing, 1840–70 Graphite and ink on squared paper 21 7/16 x 20 13/16 inches (54.5 cm x 52.9 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The drawing was acquired for the Museum in 1875 by Caspar Purdon Clarke, an architect who later became Director of the V&A. PL. 6 John De Cesare Study 102, Eleven Compositions for Ornamental Bands, General Foods Theme, 1953 Color pencil and graphite on cream wove paper 24 1/8 x 18 inches (61.3 x 45.7 cm) Gift of the Estate of John De Cesare, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution PL. 7 Louis H. Sullivan Fragment of a Wall Design, n.d.

Oil on canvas on Masonite 32 x 40 inches (81.3 x 101.6 cm) Courtesy of Beth Rudin Dewoody PL. 8 Martin Sharp Blowing in the Mind/Mister Tambourine Man, 1968 Lithograph on wove paper 29 7/16 x 19 7/8 inches (74.8 x 50.5 cm) Gift of Sara and Marc Benda, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution

PL. 9 M/M (Paris), with campaign photography

by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and with model Melia Marden Invitation Balenciaga automne/hiver 2002/2003 (Balenciaga fall/winter 2002/2003 invitation), 2002–2003 Card 5 7/8 x 8 1/4 inches (15 x 21 cm) Courtesy of M/M (Paris) PLS. 10–11 Unknown artist, Mali “Ghana Boy” Style Tunic, c. 1960–79 Cotton cloth with multicolor embroidery 43 x 33 inches (109.2 x 83.8 cm) Collection of Craig Subler and Mary Jo Arnoldi PL. 12 Unknown artist, Nigeria Embroidered Nigerian Robe, 20th century Tan and red striped handwoven cotton strip weave with cream color cotton embroidery 51 x 86 inches (129.4 x 218.4 cm) Collection of Craig Subler and Mary Jo Arnoldi PLS. 13–14 Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, 1865 Book with 100 chromolithograph plates 13 1/2 x 10 x 2 3/4 inches (34.3 x 25.4 x 7 cm) Courtesy of Michele Oka Doner PL. 15 Louis H. Sullivan System of Architectural Ornament, Plate 4, Fluent Geometry, 1922 Graphite on Strathmore paper 22 3/4 x 29 inches (57.7 x 73.5 cm) The Art Institute of Chicago, Commissioned by The Art Institute of Chicago, 1988.15.4

PL. 16 Louis H. Sullivan System of Architectural Ornament, Plate 12, Values of Overlap and Overlay, 1922 Graphite on Strathmore paper 22 3/4 x 29 inches (57.7 x 73.5 cm) The Art Institute of Chicago, Commissioned by The Art Institute of Chicago, 1988.15.12 PL. 17 Wolfgang Hieronymus Von Bömmel Lion and Hare Composed of Ornamental Leaf-Work from Neue-ersonnene Gold-Schmieds Grillen (New Designs for Ornaments in Gold), 1698 Engraving on off-white laid paper 5 x 7 7/8 inches (12.7 x 20 cm) Museum purchase through gift of the Estate of David Wolfe Bishop, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution PL. 18 Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Mosque of Sultan al-Hakim, Cairo (117. Kaire. 1843 Gâma Soultan Ansoun détails [sic]), 1842–43 Daguerreotype 9 7/16 x 3 11/16 inches (24 x 9.4 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Moran Gift, in memory of Louise Chisholm Moran, Joyce F. Menschel Gift, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 2016 Benefit Fund, and Gift of Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler, Theresa Sackler and Family, 2016 (2016.603) PL. 19 Léon Vidal Coffret à Bijoux de la Reine Anne d’Autriche (Jewelry Box of Queen Anne of Austria), 1878 Collotype 9 1/2 x 12 11/16 inches (24.2 x 32.3 cm) Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase

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PL. 20 Dapper Dan, photograph by Janette Beckman Women Rappers, NYC, 1988 Archival pigment print, Edition 2/50 19 7/8 x 24 inches (50.5 x 61 cm) Courtesy Fahey/Klein Gallery PL. 21 Unknown artist, India Chintz Fragment, 18th century Mordant dyed cotton 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-2829 232

PLS. 22–24 Owen Jones Designs (1 of 51) for publication in Examples of Chinese Ornament (London, 1867) (Plates 10, 40, 56), 1866–67 Paper, gouache, gold paint, drawing 13 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches (34.3 x 24.1 cm) each Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Purchased with the support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, V&A Members and The Belvedere Trust PL. 25 M/M (Paris) Miroirs + Images = Mirages (Gold, Silver, Bronze), 2004 Two silkscreened and three hot foiled colors printed in three versions (gold, silver, bronze) on paper From an edition of 24 plus 6 artist proofs 19 2/3 x 25 5/8 inches (50 x 65 cm) Courtesy of M/M (Paris) PL. 26 Giovanni Battista Piranesi Sketch for Mantelpiece with Tablet in Center of Lintel and Gaine on Jamb at Right, 18th century Pen and brown ink, over red chalk, on paper 2 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches (7 x 12.1 cm) The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Bequest of Junius S. Morgan and gift of Henry S. Morgan

PL. 27 Giovanni Battista Piranesi Design for Chimneypiece with Tablet and Rams’ Heads on Lintel and Alternate Scheme of Palmette Frieze, c. 1765–69 Pen and brown ink on paper 5 13/16 x 7 9/16 inches (14.7 x 19.2 cm) The Morgan Library & Museum, Bequest of Junius S. Morgan and gift of Henry S. Morgan PL. 28 Giovanni Battista Piranesi Sketch for Mantelpiece with Candelabra on Jamb, 18th century Pen and brown ink on paper 4 1/16 x 3 5/8 inches (10.3 x 9.2 cm) The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Bequest of Junius S. Morgan and gift of Henry S. Morgan PL. 29 Giovanni Battista Piranesi Design for Chimney with Wreaths and Volutes, c. 1765–69 Pen and brown ink, over red chalk, on paper 5 13/16 x 5 1/16 inches (14.8 x 12.9 cm) The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Bequest of Junius S. Morgan and gift of Henry S. Morgan PL. 30 Attributed to Jean Bérain Apollo on His Chariot Smiting the Python, 1700–1710 Pen and black ink and wash, over black chalk, on paper; the nymph at left center drawn on a separate sheet and laid down, the outlines incised 10 1/8 x 12 7/8 inches (26 x 33 cm) The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund 1978 PL. 31 Gilles Paul Cauvet Cupid Gardeners (Les amours jardiniers), c. 1771–74 Red chalk on paper 18 5/8 x 6 5/8 inches (47.7 x 17 cm) The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund 1978

PL. 32 Unknown artist Songbook, Variations de Concert Pour Le Piano Forte Avec accomp. d’Orchestre Sur une Marche favorite de Guillaume Tell de Rossini, c. 1831 Print on bound paper 10 1/2 x 13 inches (26.7 x 33 cm) Private collection PL. 33 Unknown artist Songbook, Les Trois Graces, n.d.

Print on bound paper 10 1/2 x 13 inches (26.7 x 33 cm) Private collection PL. 34 Unknown artist Songbook, Opéra de Verdi, Macbeth Fantaisie Transcription Pour le Piano Par Eug. Ketterer, c. 1865 Print on bound paper 10 1/2 x 13 inches (26.7 x 33 cm) Private collection PL. 35 Ed Fella AIGA, c. 2004 Offset printing on bond paper 11 x 17 inches (27.9 x 43.2 cm) Courtesy of Ed Fella PL. 36 Ed Fella Manifesto, c. 2004 Offset printing on bond paper Two sheets: 11 x 17 inches (27.9 x 43.2 cm) each Courtesy of Ed Fella PL. 37 John Maeda Morisawa 10 Poster, 1996 Offset lithograph 28 3/4 x 40 9/16 inches (73 x 103 cm) Courtesy of Morisawa Inc. PL. 38 John Maeda Morisawa 10 Poster, 1996 Offset lithograph 28 3/4 x 40 9/16 inches (73 x 103 cm) Courtesy of Morisawa Inc.

PLS. 39–41 Unknown artist, Agra, India Three Large Company School Studies of the Pietra Dura Inlays at the Taj Mahal, c. 1820 Pencil, ink, and watercolor on paper 35 x 27 9/16 inches (89 x 70 cm); 16 1/4 x 26 inches (41.5 x 66 cm); 40 9/16 x 28 inches (103 x 71 cm) Vertical studies: Private collection, Courtesy of Prahlad Bubbar, London Horizontal study: Courtesy of Prahlad Bubbar, London PL. 42 Noc 167, photograph by Henry Chalfant Style Wars, 1981 Kodak Professional Endura Metallic Paper 12 1/4 x 60 inches, (31.2 x 152.4 cm) Courtesy of Henry Chalfant and Eric Firestone Gallery PL. 43 William Morris Design for Chrysanthemum Wallpaper, 1877 Pencil and watercolor on paper 40 x 26 1/2 inches (101.6 x 67.3 cm) William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest PL. 44 William Morris Cray, c. 1884 Block printed cotton and linen 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches (27.3 x 21.6 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-0552 PL. 45 William Morris Tulip, c. 1875 Block printed cotton 9 x 11 inches (22.9 x 27.9 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-0555

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PLS. 46–49 Morris & Company Wallpaper Sample Book, before 1917 Printed paper 21 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches (54.6 x 36.8 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Mr. and Mrs. Carl L. Selden and Designated Purchase Fund, 71.151.1

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PL. 50 Paul Klee In the Manner of a Leather Tapestry, 1925 Ink and spattered tempera on paper, mounted on cardboard 12 5/8 x 9 5/8 inches (32.1 x 24.4 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Saidenberg, 1981 (1981.503) PL. 51 Lucienne Day Calyx, 1951 Watercolor, gouache, and collage 34 5/8 x 29 7/8 inches (88 x 76 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London PL. 52 Perkins Harnly Boudoir, c. 1931 Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper 22 5/8 x 17 13/16 inches (57.5 x 45.3 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Index of American Design, 1943 PL. 53 Robert Adam Design for a Ceiling for the First Drawing Room at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, 1779–82 Pen and ink, brush and green wash, and watercolor 13 9/16 x 17 inches (34.4 x 43.2 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934 (34.78.2(20)) PL. 54 Prophet Isaiah Robertson, photograph

by Fred Scruton House of Prophet Isaiah Robertson, Niagara Falls, NY, 2015 Photograph of environment/installation 20 x 24 inches (50.8 x 61 cm) Courtesy of Fred Scruton

PL. 55 Prophet Isaiah Robertson, photograph

by Fred Scruton House of Prophet Isaiah Robertson, Niagara Falls, NY, 2016 Photograph of environment/installation 20 x 24 inches (50.8 x 61 cm) Courtesy of Fred Scruton PL. 56 Louis H. Sullivan Ceiling Design with Peacock Motif, 1876 Ink on paper 15 3/4 x 28 3/4 inches (40 x 73 cm) The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of George Grant Elmslie, 1989.404 PL. 57 David Adjaye Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Pattern Abstraction, 2011 Digital print 15 x 20 inches (38.1 x 50.8 cm) Courtesy of Adjaye Associates PL. 58 David Adjaye Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Corona Panel types, 2011 Digital print 15 x 20 inches (38.1 x 50.8 cm) Courtesy of Adjaye Associates PL. 59 Jacob Holzer Design for Chancel of Christ Church, Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1899 Watercolor, gum arabic, gouache, and graphite on tissue or tracing paper mounted on board 27 x 18 3/4 inches (68.6 x 47.6 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Walter Hoving and Julia T. Weld Gifts and Dodge Fund, 1967 (67.654.8)

PL. 60 Louis Comfort Tiffany Design for Ark Doors, Temple Emanu-El, New York, 1910 Silver gelatin print with brown ink and graphite on wove paper mounted on board in original warm gray window mat 22 15/16 x 21 9/16 inches (58.3 x 54.8 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Walter Hoving and Julia T. Weld Gifts and Dodge Fund, 1967 (67.654.331) PL. 61 Unknown artist, Mint India, Delhi Interior of the Hammam at the Red Fort, Delhi, Furnished According to English Taste, c. 1830–40 Opaque watercolor on paper 9 1/8 x 12 1/8 inches (23.2 x 30.8 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Louis E. and Theresa S. Seley Purchase Fund for Islamic Art, 1994 (1994.71) PL. 62 David Adjaye Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lithograph, 2015 Lithograph 24 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches (62.2 x 41.9 cm) Courtesy of Adjaye Associates PL. 63 Nathalie Du Pasquier Design for a Bed, 1982 Pencil and color pencil on paper 21 3/8 x 15 5/8 inches (54.2 x 39.8 cm) Private collection PL. 64 Bethan Laura Wood Sketchbook A, 2016 Sketchbook 8 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches (21 x 13 cm) Courtesy of the artist PL. 65 Bethan Laura Wood Sketchbook B, 2014–15 Sketchbook 8 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches (21 x 13 cm) Courtesy of the artist

PLS. 66–67 Bethan Laura Wood Sketchbook C, 2015 Sketchbook 8 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches (21 x 13 cm) Courtesy of the artist PL. 68 Thomas Chippendale The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director: Being a Large Collection of . . .

Designs of Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste . . ., 1754 Printed book, engraved plates 17 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 2 inches (45 x 31 x 5 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Library Purchase (161.1 C44 Q) PL. 69 Josef Hoffmann Design Drawing, c. 1910 Pencil on grid paper 12 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches (31.8 x 50.2 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Lisa M. Price, 2005.82.9 PL. 70 Josef Hoffmann Design Drawing, c. 1910 Pencil on grid paper 12 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches (31.8 x 50.2 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Lisa M. Price, 2005.82.8 PL. 71 Dagobert Peche Feather Duster, 1922 Watercolor on paper 12 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches (32.4 x 27.3 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Joanne F. du Pont and John F. Pleasants, in memory of Enos Rogers Pleasants, III, 1984 (1984.537.17) PL. 72 Unknown artist, Northern Coromandel coast, India Tree-of-Life Palampore, c. 1730–50 Painted and resist dyed cotton 125 3/16 x 83 1/2 inches (318 x 212 cm) Courtesy of Prahlad Bubbar, London

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PL. 73 George Haité Design for a Paisley Shawl, c. 1850 Watercolor and gouache 9 7/8 x 8 1/8 inches (25 x 20.6 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Presented by George C. Haité, Esq., RBA PL. 74 Utagawa Kuniyoshi Kaosho Rochishin from the series 108 Heroes of the Suikoden, c. 1827 Woodblock print 15 x 10 1/4 inches (38.1 x 26 cm) Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York

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PL. 75 Percel (Kies TNR) Shewatjon Pages in Sketchbook Belonging to Kies TNR, c. 1984 Marker (pen), paper 9 x 24 inches (22.9 x 61 cm) Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Mr. Martin Wong, 1994 PL. 76 Andrew (Zephyr) Witten Heist (Page in Zephyr’s Piece Book), 1980 Marker (pen), paper 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 cm) Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Mr. Martin Wong, 1994 PL. 77 Andrew (Zephyr) Witten and the Soul Artists Zephyr Soul Artists (Page in Zephyr’s Sketch Pad), 1980 Marker (pen), paper 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 cm) Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Mr. Martin Wong, 1994 PL. 78 Unknown artist, Mexico Sampler, c. 1800s Cotton embroidered with silk in cross, stem, satin, long armed cross, threaded running, Roumanian, fern, and buttonhole embroidery stitches 15 3/16 x 14 3/8 inches (38.6 x 36.5 cm) Bequest of Gertrude M. Oppenheimer, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution

PL. 79 John Ruskin, etching by Thomas Shotter Boys, mezzotint by Samuel William Reynolds Plate 1: The Ducal Palace, Renaissance Capitals in the Loggia in Examples of the Architecture of Venice, Selected and Drawn to Measurements from the Edifices (extra illustrated), 1851–53 Mezzotint, etching, aquatint, engraving, and lithograph with tint stones, numbered plates on chine collé 25 1/8 x 18 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches (63.8 x 47 x 4.5 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1944 (44.84) PL. 80 John Burley Waring Stone Monuments, Tumuli and Ornament of Remote Ages: With Remarks on the Early Architecture of Ireland and Scotland, 1870 Book with 108 lithograph plates 15 x 11 1/4 x 2 inches (38.1 x 28.6 x 5.1 cm) Courtesy of Michele Oka Doner PLS. 81–82 John Gilbert Wilkins Research: Design in Nature, 1926/1931 Two-volume book 12 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches (31.8 x 24.1 x 3.8 cm) each Courtesy of Michele Oka Doner

PL. 83 Unknown artist Scrimshaw, 19th century Engraved bone 6 x 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (15.2 x 6.4 x 6.4 cm) The Whaling Museum & Education Center PL. 84 Wendy Red Star Peelatchiwaaxpáash / Medicine Crow (Raven), 2014 Inkjet print 25 x 17 inches (63.5 x 43.2 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2018.19.1a

PL. 85 Wendy Red Star Peelatchiwaaxpáash / Medicine Crow (Raven), 2014 Inkjet print 25 x 17 inches (63.5 x 43.2 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2018.19.1b PL. 86 Unknown artist Tattoo Pattern Book, 1873–1910 Ink on oiled cloth, with buckram binding 4 1/2 x 3 1/4 x 3/4 inches (11.4 x 8.3 x 1.9 cm) American Folk Art Museum, Anonymous gift, 1995.29.1 PL. 87 Horiyoshi III Snake I, c. 2014 Ink on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76.2 x 56.5 cm) Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York PL. 88 Tsukioka Yoshitoshi Feeling Pain: A Prostitute in the Kansei Era c. 1778 from the series Thirty-two Aspects of Women, 1888 Woodblock print 14 3/4 x 10 inches (37.5 x 25.4 cm) Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York PLS. 89–93 Toyohara Kunichika Flowers of Edo: Five Young Men, 1864 Woodblock print 13 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches (34.3 x 23.5 cm) each Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York PL. 94 Adachi Ginko Ladies Sewing, 1887 Woodblock print 14 1/4 x 30 inches (36.2 x 76.2 cm) Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York

PL. 95 Takizawa Kiyoshi (Editor) Karakusa moyō hinagata (Arabesque Pattern Template), 1881 Print on bound paper 2 7/8 x 6 3/8 x 1 1/8 inches (7.3 x 16.2 x 2.9 cm) Private collection

PL. 96 Takizawa Kiyoshi (Editor) Karakusa moyō hinagata (Arabesque Pattern Template), 1884 Print on bound paper 2 7/8 x 6 3/8 x 1 inches (7.3 x 16.2 x 2.5 cm) Private collection PL. 97 Fugaku Co., Ltd. Custom Hand Towel Sample Collection Textile Wholesaler Book, n.d.

Print on bound paper 7 1/8 x 10 1/8 x 1/4 inches (18.1 x 25.7 x 0.6 cm) Private collection PL. 98 Tomioka Eisen Textile Merchant, c. 1901 Woodblock print 15 x 10 1/4 inches (38.1 x 26 cm) Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York PL. 99 Unknown artist, Japan Kimono Fragment, 1930–45 Printed cotton 45 x 14 inches (114.3 x 35.6 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-2363 PLS. 100–103 Yamanaka Kichirobē Moyō hinagata miyako no nishiki: Volume 1, 1886 Illustrated book 10 x 7 3/8 x 3/8 inches (25 x 19 x 1 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watson Library copy: William Alexander Smith Fund (NK8884.A1 M6 1886)

237

PLS. 104–105 Yamada Naosaburo (Editor), introduction by Tomioka Tessai Pattern Book of Kimono Design (Hana Fukusa), 1900 Two volume set 12 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches (31.3 x 21.2 cm) Courtesy of Ronin Gallery, New York

238

PLS. 106–107 Unknown artist, Japan Old Textile Fragments; Sample Book of Japanese Sarasa Fragments, fragments 18th–early 19th century, assembled 1989 91 Sarasatic style swatches mounted in book form 11 7/8 x 8 1/4 x 1 inches (30.2 x 21 x 2.5 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seymour Fund, 1989 (1989.224.1) Aux1.1989.244.1 PLS. 108–120 Farshid Moussavi Architecture Design Drawings, Ismaili Center Houston, 2022 Digital prints 16 1/2 x 23 3/8 inches (42 x 59.4 cm) Courtesy of Farshid Moussavi Architecture PL. 121 William De Morgan Design For a Tile Panel with “Persian” Birds and Foliage, 1882–1907 Pencil and polychrome watercolor on paper 33 1/16 x 24 1/2 inches (84 x 62.2 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Given by Mrs William De Morgan PL. 122 Christopher Dresser Design Drawing, c. 1883 Graphite, ink, and gouache (bodycolor) 15 15/16 x 11 inches (40.5 x 27.9 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1992 (1992.1046.3)

PL. 123 Unknown artist, Pakistan Design for Kashmir Shawl, c. 1880 Watercolor on paper 31 x 22 7/8 x 1 1/8 inches (78.7 x 58.1 x 3 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Transferred from the India Museum in 1879 PL. 124 Christopher Dresser Textile Fragment, c. 1900 Printed cotton 12 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches (31.1 x 57.2 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-0558 PL. 125 Unknown artist, India Furnishing Fragment, Textile Fragment, c. 1770 Resist dyed painting on cotton 37 1/2 x 18 inches (95.3 x 45.7 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-2021

PL. 126 Unknown artist, China Fragment of Wallpaper, early 18th century Ink and color on paper 41 3/8 x 44 7/8 inches (105 x 114 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London PL. 127 Thomas Wardle, William Morris Snakeshead, 1876 Block printed cotton 33 1/2 x 10 1/4 inches (85.1 x 26 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-2760

PL. 128 May Morris The Orchard (“A Fruit Garden”): Design for a Large Embroidered Panel, early 1890s Pencil, ink, and watercolor on paper 19 5/8 x 13 3/4 inches (50 x 35 cm) William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest PL. 129 Unknown artist, India Chintz Border Fragment, c. 1740 Mordant dyed drawing on cotton 10 15/16 x 25 15/16 inches (27.9 x 66 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-2828a PL. 130 Unknown artist, Japan Chrysanthemums on Stream, c. 19th century Mulberry paper, silk thread 16 x 12 inches (40.6 x 30.5 cm) John Huston Collection, The Katagami Project PL. 131 Unknown artist, Japan Butterfly Nimai Gata, c. late 19th–early 20th century Mulberry paper, silk thread 12 x 16 inches (40.6 x 30.5 cm) John Huston Collection, The Katagami Project PL. 132 Unknown artist, Bijapur, Deccan Arabesque Drawing, c. 1600–50 Brush drawing on paper 9 3/8 x 5 1/4 inches (24 x 13.5 cm) Courtesy of Prahlad Bubbar, London PL. 133 Unknown artist, Japan Tokugawa-era Chrysanthemum pattern, c. 18th–early 19th century Mulberry paper 10 x 16 inches (25.4 x 40.6 cm) John Huston Collection, The Katagami Project

PL. 134 François Boucher, printed by Claude Augustin Duflos Rocaille (Rococo) Design in Nouveaux morceaux pour des paravents (New Concepts for Screens), 1730s Etching and engraving on white paper 19 7/16 x 9 3/4 inches (49.4 x 24.8 cm) Gift of Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution PL. 135 Braquenié et cie.

Design for a Rug with Ornamental Frames and Garlands and Festoons of Leaves, Flowers, and Ribbons Over a Background of Arabesques, 1858–1900 Gouache 14 13/16 x 8 7/8 inches (37.7 x 22.6 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1964 (64.677.19) PL. 136 Tiffany & Co. Design Drawing, 1875–76 Watercolor, ink, and graphite on gray wove paper 18 9/16 x 15 7/16 inches (47.1 x 39.2 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Tiffany & Co., 1985 (1985.1101.1) PL. 137 Jacques Gabriel Huquier, after Jean-Antoine Watteau La Danse Bachique, n.d.

Etching 11 1/2 x 8 inches (29.2 x 20.3 cm) Brooklyn Museum, 39.28.3 PL. 138 Christoph Jamnitzer Das Neuw Grottesken Buch (The New Book of Grotesques), 1573–1610 Etching 5 5/8 x 7 1/4 inches (14.3 x 18.3 cm) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

239

PL. 139 Loïs Mailou Jones Chinese Embroidery (copied from Han-Chinese woman’s domestic skirt, embroidered with silk thread, in MFA collection), 1924 Transparent and opaque watercolor with graphite underdrawing on paper 12 3/16 x 8 1/8 inches (31 x 20.7 cm) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust.

2005.341

240

PL. 140 Vittorio Accornero de Testa for Gucci Flora Scarf, c. 1973 Silk 33 x 33 inches (83.8 x 83.8 cm) Private collection PL. 141 Chester Faris Painted Chest, Michoacan, 1935/1942 Gouache, watercolor, color pencil, and graphite on paper 21 5/8 x 28 3/8 inches (55 x 72.1 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Index of American Design, 1943 PL. 142 Margaret Concha Applique and Embroidered Coverlet, 1935/1942 Watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on paper 23 7/16 x 19 13/16 inches (59.5 x 50.4 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Index of American Design, 1943 PL. 143 Unknown artist, initialed “GMR” Tree of Life Cut-out Chintz Quilt, 1925–35 Cotton 96 x 90 inches (228.6 x 243.8 cm) American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Cyril Irwin Nelson in honor of Elizabeth V. Warren and Sharon L. Eisenstat, 2001.33.2

PL. 144 David Kulp Presentation Fraktur of a Double Eagle, c. 1815 Watercolor and ink on paper 7 5/8 x 6 1/4 inches (19.4 x 15.9 cm) American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.40 PL. 145 Heinrich Seiler Labyrinth, c. 1820 Ink and watercolor on paper 14 3/4 x 12 1/8 inches (37.5 x 30.8 cm) American Folk Art Museum.

Gift of Ralph Esmerian, 1999.27.3 PL. 146 Tom Hovey The Great British Bake-off Designs, 2010 Digital prints on paper 65 drawings: 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inches (21 x 29.7 cm) each Courtesy of the artist PL. 147 Irene Schaefer Patchwork and Applique Quilt, 1935/1942 Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paperboard 11 7/16 x 9 inches (29.1 x 22.9 cm) Original IAD Object: 93 x 93 inches (236.2 x 236.2 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Index of American Design, 1943 PL. 148 Unknown artist, Papua New Guinea Painted Tapa Panel, before 1970 Tree bark soaked, beaten, and painted with red and black pigment on white ground 48 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches (123 x 62 cm) Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam PL. 149 Unknown artist, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mbuti people (Ituri forest) Painted Bark Cloth Panel, c. 20th century Tree bark (probably Ficus natalensis) beaten and painted with pigment 18 x 30 3/8 inches (46 x 77 cm) Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam

PL. 150 Unknown artist, Oceania Tapa Cloth Fragment, 1900–20 Bark cloth 9 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches (24.8 x 29.2 cm) The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, T-2922z PL. 151 Louie Ewing Plate 1 (Navajo Blankets), 1940–43 Screenprint 26 x 20 inches (66.1 x 50.7 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008 PL. 152 Unknown artist A Second-phase Chief’s Blanket, c. 1860 Woven Spanish Churro sheep wool 77 x 56 1/2 inches (195 x 144 cm) Private collection PL. 153 Emma Pettway Gee’s Bend Quilt, 2021 Cotton 18 x 18 3/4 inches (45.7 x 47.6 cm) Private collection PL. 154 Ethel Dougan Saddle Blanket, 1939 Watercolor, graphite, and color pencil on paperboard 16 x 20 inches (40.7 x 50.8 cm) Original IAD Object: 26 x 94 inches (66 x 238.8 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Index of American Design, 1943 PL. 155 Unknown artist A Unique Example of a Transitional-phase Navajo Weaving in the “Germantown” Tradition, with American Flag Panels and Eye-dazzlers, c. 1868–1910 Woven machine spun wool yarn weft with machine spun plied cotton warp 77 1/2 x 54 inches (197 x 137 cm) Private collection

NOT PICTURED Duro Olowu @duroolowu Instagram Feed Selections, 2014-present Digital media Courtesy of the artist Duro Olowu “Lartigue” Pattern Sketch for Spring/ Summer 2022 Collection, 2022 Color pencil on paper 16 7/8 x 11 5/8 inches (43 x 29.5 cm) Courtesy of the artist Duro Olowu Three Fabric Samples, “Lartigue” Pattern, Spring/Summer 2022 Collection, 2022 One sample printed silk satin, two samples printed rayon and silk 15 1/8 x 15 1/8 inches (38.5 x 38.5 cm) each Courtesy of the artist Bethan Laura Wood Sketchbook A Mini, 2010–11 Sketchbook 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (14 x 8.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist Bethan Laura Wood Sketchbook B mini, 2013 Sketchbook 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (14 x 8.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist Bethan Laura Wood Sketchbook, 2016–19 Sketchbook 11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (29.2 x 21 cm) Courtesy of the artist

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Photo Credits

PLS. 1, 50, 59, 60, 68, 71, 79, 136 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY PL. 2 © Copyright Agency. Licensed

by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2021 242

PLS. 5, 22–24, 73, 121, 123, 126, 138 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London PLS. 13–14, 80–82, 95–97, 140, 152–153, 155 Photograph by Daniel Terna @jpegs_and_tiffs PLS. 15–16, 56 The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY PL. 19 Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed

by SCALA / Art Resource, NY PL. 37–38 Image courtesy of John Maeda PLS. 39–41, 72, 132 Todd-White Art Photography, London PL. 42 © 2022 Henry Chalfant / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York PL. 51 © The Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation/ Victoria and Albert Museum, London PLS. 69–70 © Artist or Artist’s Estate PLS. 76–77 Image courtesy of Zephyr and Museum of the City of New York

PLS. 84–85 © Wendy Red Star PLS. 86, 143–145 American Folk Art Museum / Art Resource, NY PL. 139 Photograph © 2022 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Board of Directors

Staff

Co-Chairs Andrea Crane Amy Gold

Laura Hoptman Executive Director

Treasurer Stacey Goergen Secretary Dita Amory Frances Beatty Adler Valentina Castellani Brad Cloepfil Harry Tappan Heher Priscila Hudgins Rhiannon Kubicka Iris Z. Marden Adam Pendleton David M. Pohl Nancy Poses Eric Rudin Almine Ruiz-Picasso Jane Dresner Sadaka David Salle Curtis Talwst Santiago Joyce Siegel Amy Sillman Galia Meiri Stawski Rirkrit Tiravanija Barbara Toll Jean-Edouard van Praet d’Amerloo Waqas Wajahat Isabel Stainow Wilcox Linda Yablonsky Emeritus Eric Rudin

Olga Valle Tetkowski Deputy Director Rebecca Brickman Director of Development Aimee Good Director of Education and Community Programs Allison Underwood Director of Communications Claire Gilman Chief Curator Rosario Güiraldes Associate Curator Isabella Kapur Curatorial Associate Kate Robinson Registrar Aaron Zimmerman Operations Manager and Head Preparator Tiffany Shi Development Manager Kara Nandin Digital Content Coordinator Rebecca DiGiovanna Administrative Manager Anna Oliver Visitor Services Associate Lucia Zezza Bookstore Manager Mark Zubrovich Visitor Services Associate

Published on the occasion of the exhibition The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Organized by Dr. Emily King, Guest Curator, with Duncan Tomlin and Margaret-Anne Logan

This is number 149 of the Drawing Papers, a series of publications documenting The Drawing Center’s exhibitions and programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing.

Editor Joanna Ahlberg

The Drawing Center June 15–September 18, 2022

Design Dandelion

Major support for The Clamor of Ornament is provided by The Coby Foundation, Ltd., the Director’s Circle of The Drawing Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Generous funding is provided by Dita Amory, Michèle Gerber Klein, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Hilary and Peter Hatch, Sara Story Design, Josh Smith, and Barbara Toll.

Additional support is provided by Amy Gold and Brett Gorvy, Isabel Stainow Wilcox, Phyllis Tuchman, Paul Morelli, the Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Suzanne Slesin and Michael Steinberg, Adelphi Paper Hangings, LLC, Plain English Design, and Madeline Weinrib. Support for the exhibition catalog is provided

by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

Design (Cover & Chapter Openers) Studio Frith Printing & Binding Shapco Printing, Minneapolis About the Type This book is set in Publico Text (Roman, Italic, and Bold). It is part of the Publico Collection, designed

by Ross Milne, Christian Schwartz, Paul Barnes, Kai Bernau, and Greg Gazdowicz and released incrementally

by Commercial Type in 2009, 2013, and 2014. This book also uses Plain (Regular and Italic), which was designed by François Rappo and released by Optimo Type Foundry in 2014. The display typeface used throughout is Clamor, designed for the exhibition A Clamor of Ornament

by Studio Frith in 2022.

ISBN 978-0-942324-30-3 © 2022 The Drawing Center All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from The Drawing Center.

The Clamor of Ornament Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present This richly-illustrated volume explores ornament in architecture, art, and design with more than 150 images of objects that include eighteenth-century Indian textiles, contemporary patisserie designs, Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur drawings, graffiti art, Albrecht Dürer’s woodblock-print knots, and drawings by Louis Sullivan and David Adjaye. Featuring texts by a distinguished group of curators, a designer, an architect, and a writer, The Clamor of Ornament foregrounds ornament’s potential as a mode of communication, a form of currency, and a means of exchange across geographies and cultures.

Contributions by Laura Hoptman Emily King Margaret-Anne Logan Farshid Moussavi Duro Olowu Duncan Tomlin Shola von Reinhold

ISBN 978-0942324303

9

780942

324303