89 Ornament
Ornament or the Understated
Andrew Brinkman
‘At the place where the Carriage stopped, there stood an ancient Temple, esteemed to be the largest in the whole Kingdom, which having been polluted some Years before by an unnatural Murder (24), was, according to the Zeal (25), of those People, looked upon as Profane, and therefore had been applied to common Uses, and all the Ornaments and Furniture carried away. In this Edifice it was determined I should Lodge.’1
Imagine a world where all castles, palaces, churches, and cathedrals are put into practical use. There are no sacred spaces, or positive ornament representing esoteric pomp and circumstance. All opulence is defeated and the world revolves around ordinary use, ordinary space, and ordinary living. There are no hierarchies, power is devolved, and we live on the exchange of goods, as opposed to the market wars of money. This world does not deplete, but instead regales in its simplicity to pleasure all. We are now earth bound to the designs of the minimalists. We are free of subordination, and truly equal.
It is the profane, non-sacred and domestic in 21stCentury life that becomes the sacred, for its very ordinariness. The everyday holds our habitual right to freedom, to justice, to what is ours. We own this negative space, like many do, so should we let it sing with our ornament? Or our embossed stamp for which we like to leave it bare? This is death of the interior. No longer stamped by design, yet designed not to be stamped out. The minimalist’s reprieve is to seldom say anything of its courtesan past, and enter a deluge of neutrality. There we are, our neutrally found realm, holds the key to no authorship, just quintessential negative space.
The murder with reference to note (24) excerpt 1 is of Charles I on January 30th1649: 'Charles I was reserved. . . He spent a lot on the arts. . . Charles was deeply religious. He favoured the Anglican form of worship'2. But Charles I was also 'a tyrant, traitor and murderer; and a public and implacable enemy to the Commonwealth of England'3. His opulence served him in his daily life, as much as it did with his vast art collection, for which the public were not too pleased. He was the epitome of ornament within the human psyche, and paid hard for his tyranny. Oliver Cromwell his successor later looted the cathedrals and churches, from which he built his empire, and famously destroyed the west end facades stained glass window at Winchester Cathedral, where his battery was based.
In a temple or house murdered of embellishment, and without furniture. An empty space is a real vessel, a property encompassing nothing, forcing us to reflect on ourselves, and reduce life to its real essence. We find ourselves again. We are at one with our human identity, at the height of design; murdered of all insolence. We see in Rachel Whiteread's work just as art overlaps and intertwines with the design world, if not pre-dates it; the negativity of mute space in her workings of everyday space and objects. Transparency and mute tones pervade her work, and there is a forced assertion in the repetition of domesticity.
For example Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) 1995 4, 100 units of negative cast chairs forming an undulating topography of coloured resin viscous form, creates a pick and choose neutrality re-defining the narrative of social and time relationships. This is inherently based on the existing and real, just as our profane space is that of a temple or castle. What we have will suffice, but its exuberance, its quality and nourishment, is in its re-interpretation; and therefore this is not just a phenomenon of the West, although it was born here, this is a new world order, of the interpretation of time and social metaphor in terms of space through art.
This domestic level is reminiscent of the human body and its cycles. We are in everyday processes that define the shape of our hot water bottle, to our toothbrush, to our chair, and knife and fork. Therefore does form follow function, or is function starting to follow form? We are bound to our devices, and technology, but this is not an answer to the design ethic in itself. These devices are designed to be pseudo-ergonomic, but in reality, it is the visceral spaces, and found objects, that hold the answer to our form following. We begin to return to the earth, and the only real ornament left is the vase of flowers in the living room. We are still instilled in our urban, man-made, make believe realms, but it is the earth that sacrifices itself for these whims, and so we shall have to embody that stolen energy into a new vision of cradle to cradle, ecological, new-neutrality. Before it is too late, to save the ordinary spaces, that are so sacred to us.
1Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels(London: Penguin Classics, 2010), 29.
2“Charles I,” accessed March 28th2016, www.royal.gov.uk/historyofthemonarchy/kingsandqueensoftheunitedkingdom/thestuarts/charlesi.aspx
3“Charles I,” accessed March 28th2016 www.historylearningsite.co.uk/stuart-england/the-trial-and-execution-of-charles-i/
4Chris Townsend, The Art of Rachel Whiteread, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 16.
Bibliography
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.London: Penguin Classics, 2010.
Townsend, Chris. The Art of Rachel Whiteread. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004.
