…or deep and meaningful?

“A work of art is either decorative or deep and meaningful.”
This prejudice creates a lot of tension and defensiveness in
the art world. But is there really a conflict between decorative
appeal and meaning in art? Does art need to avoid decorative qualities in order to be meaningful?

Which art is not decorative?

Non-decorative art is typically seen in museums, rather than in public places
or private homes. Often, such art does not seek to make harmonies visible, but
conflict, they demand attention by shock, persistent repetition and out-of-tune-ness,
which are used as symbols to comment on problematic issues: global warming,
racism, suffering and injustices.

What is decorative?

This is what the dictionaries say, including the prejudices:
Ornamental, pretty, attractive, adorning, embellishing, for show, non-functional,
serving an aesthetic rather than a useful purpose.

A work of art has to be beautiful, aesthetic, to be considered decorative. The fact
that decoration and beauty can be only skin-deep or painted-on, has given the term
‘decorative’ a bad name. Also, beauty is not objective, it’s in the eye of the beholder.
What we love is beautiful and everyone has different and very personal reasons for
finding a work of art beautiful. We like art when it expresses a personal experience
that we can share.

In contrast to art as expression, a decorative work has been made beautiful, and
the word ‘decorative’ implies that there must be another, a more objective concept
of beauty. Decorative art is not raw self-expression, but filtered experience, developed
and refined according to cultural aesthetic norms or even for a universal experience
of beauty - if there is such a thing.

To decorate might have been the oldest purpose of art. Objects, houses, important
places and people were adorned to be marked as special or sacred. The more artful
the decoration was, the higher the status of the adorned. The next step for art might
have been illustration, to show and promote the devotion to god(s) and narrate the
lives of the powerful. Art as self-expression is a relatively late development in any
culture, and it’s at this point that ‘decorative’ became an insulting critique in the
fine arts.

Decorative and Fine art

It seems contradictory that ‘decorative’ is considered to be aesthetic rather than
functional, when the term Decorative Arts refers to artistically decorated yet useful
objects like ceramics or textile art. As a result, the word ‘decorative’ is usually linked
to applied art, where the art is ‘only’ decoration, a part of the work.

In contrast, the term Fine Arts applies to works based on expression like paintings,
drawings and photography, which are primarily an intellectual and emotional exercise
with little practical function.

These two art forms are not disconnected. Decorative art is often very expressive
and fine art relies heavily on decorative elements.

Decorative, technically speaking

A decorative artwork typically consists of interesting patterns of line, forms and
colour in symmetrical or asymmetrical designs. The representation of subject matter
tends to be simplified (abstracted) in favor of the design. For example, artists like
Gauguin and Matisse used decorative elements to neutralize the personality of the
figures and to integrate them with the design, the background of the painting.

Design and abstraction, which both have decorative potential, are ways to compose
a painting, creating a pictorial stability that prevents the meaning of a work being
taken over by details, or by the identity of the subject matter. Because as soon as there
is a figure in a painting, some viewers will get stuck on detecting who the person in
the painting is, even though the figure might be there to represent an idea - or for the
sake of an interesting design.

Some art is not striking in its design and composition, and we think it’s beautiful
because it’s a portrait drawing of a person important to us. If our portrait is also
beautiful to someone who does not know the model, it’s most likely because
the portrait has a subtle but strong design, which could be called decorative.
It may not be decorative in an ornamental sense, but the confidence of the lines
may create an interesting structure that, because we don’t know the model and aren't’t
distracted by its identity, we perceive as beautiful.

Artificial

The dictionary says: Artificial = made by humans; produced rather than natural.
The motivation for art, if it’s functional or not, is not to imitate reality and nature,
but quite the opposite. With art, we separate our experience from reality as we
rearrange our physical and mental environment, sorting and ordering chaos, and
bring it into a harmony which suits our human interpretations. By decorating an object,
we take it out of the ordinary and give it meaning on our terms. Or by drawing and
painting, we edit and distill a real-life experience until it represents and expresses
our idea or impression.

Decorative by chance

Many artists will be so fully absorbed in the process to make their idea visible,
that they are quite unaware of the decorative components they are creating.
Although usually decorative work is contemplated to be made beautiful, decorative qualities can also be unintentional.

Every painting, no matter how realistic it may look, is composed of abstract elements:
the lines, strokes and spots of colour. Apart from the meaning of the whole artwork,
each of these abstract elements may be decorative and beautiful by themselves.
The term decorative is usually used for contemplated designs, but often, it’s
the spontaneous brushstrokes which are applied full of purpose to express an idea,
that are stunningly beautiful independently as well as giving shape to the idea.

Expressive and decorative is not a contradiction, and if contemplated or spontaneous,
the combination is very convincing and a powerful communicator, as beauty.

Practical beauty

Natural things are beautiful without being decorative: a person, an animal,
a landscape, etc. A flying bird is not decorative, and we would be poetic to call
a sunset decorative. Yet, when we take a photograph of a sunset or paint a flying
bird, it will be decorative if it’s beautiful.

For most people, the objective of art is to add beauty to our lives, and far from
being superficial, beauty is often a key to understanding. When we suddenly
understand something, we have a feeling that it is beautiful.

Art, including challenging and thought-provoking art, is an interpretation of reality,
a selection of facts and ideas assembled to form a design. Composition is like
music made from noise. We may not be able to explain how we appreciate art in
technical terms, but we experience harmony, rhythm - or the lack of it. Beauty is
not always immediately evident, as it comes at different levels of complexities, some
is simple and some is so intricate, that only experts can make out the harmonies.
Decorative elements often have the ability to make extremely difficult things look
very easy. In this way, ideas, relationships and perspectives that would be hidden
without art become visible and can be communicated.

Decorative art plays an important role in societies and in different cultures, as
generations of artists and artisans have developed vocabularies of decorative
attributes and styles to establish their identity. Equally effective are the individually
decorative elements in informal and spontaneous art. Not all art is equally
accessible and social, but the more decorative an artwork is, the better are
its chances to be appreciated or even understood.

– Judith Kunzlé, June 2008

Article 1:
The Success Story of Cook Islands Art

Article 2:
Culture and Individuality in Art

Article 3:
Art Critique

Article 4:
The Origin of Abstract Art

Article 5:
What's the Story

Article 1:
The Success Story of Cook Islands Art

Article 2:
Culture and Individuality in Art

Article 3:
Art Critique

Article 4:
The Origin of Abstract Art

Article 5:
What's the Story

Malcolm Jagamarra
Karnta-Dream
Australia ca. 1990

Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Germany, 1961