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Modern Art (2); Being a Contribution to a New System of Æsthetics
Modern Art Being a Contribution to a New System of sthetics - 2 Author:Julius Meier-Graefe Volume: 2 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: W. Heinemann Subjects: Art, Modern Aesthetics Art / General Art / History / General Art / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945) Philosophy / Aesthetics Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has ... more »no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: ORNAMENT Enough ornament has been designed in the last ten years to suffice this old world of ours for all the centuries it may yet survive. In addition to the NeoGothic, Neo-Japanese, Neo-Assyrian, and so forth, a new style has arisen at Brussels which has been christened the Belgian style. These groups fall into hundreds of subdivisions. Since the last epoch in the history of style there has indeed been a manifest and complete change in the part played by ornament in art. Formerly it was more of the nature of handwriting, in which no doubt the idiosyncrasy of individuals gave rise to unconscious peculiarities, but so far from being a field for the display of individuality, it was, on the contrary, the symbol of some sort of community. It was a concomitant of style as idiom is of human speech. It was one of the many means of artistic expression of the period, by no means the most important for the definition of style, merely one subordinate member among others. Morris was quite untroubled if people reproached him with archaism and want of independence because his motives were not entirely the product of his own wits, but were taken from the capital he had inherited from the past. It was enough for him if, when he had modified and transformed them, they answered his purposes, covered the surfaces before him as he thought best, and brought out the charm of the colour in the way he wished. His successors have tri...« less