Decoration is a meaningful form. It is not only an aesthetic form, but also has a deeper meaning. It contains specific social feelings and cultural awareness. It is not only "decorative", but also "cultural", which brings people aesthetic pleasure from the aspects of order, line, shape and color, and meets people's deeper needs from the aspects of culture, ideal, symbol and history. In Abstract and Empathy, Wollinger said: The essential feature of decorative art is that a nation's artistic will is expressed in the purest way. ..... Decorative art must form the starting point and foundation of all artistic aesthetics research ... ⑴ Decoration is also of great research significance for modern design. From the perspective of decoration, we can clearly see the development of modern design.
Gombrich wrote such a sentence in the preface of the second edition of his book "Sense of Order": "Boldly speaking, my purpose is to explain. The psychological study of decorative art announced in the subtitle of this book is to establish and test the theory declared in the main title: sense of order, which is manifested in all design styles, and I believe its root lies in human biological inheritance. ⑵
Modern design is the product of industrialized civilization. Modern design is an artistic activity to provide services for modern people, and it is also a way of life in modern economic society. In the process of modernism design movement, there are some important design movements, which are always related to the sublation of decoration. Either use decoration or abandon decoration, to a great extent, is the new development of modern design around decoration.
First, the early application of decoration in modern design
(1) "Novice Arts and Crafts Movement" and Decoration
From the industrial revolution in18th century to the end of19th century, industrial technology changed people's way of life, and product design developed in this kind of change and chaos. People have a strong nostalgia for the form and style of old products in their living habits and psychology, which is reflected in the decorative characteristics in design and the emphasis on traditional decorative interest. The contradiction between decoration and mechanized production is inevitable. Many designers are unwilling to participate in the design of industrial products. Most industrial products unilaterally pursue standardization and mass production, ignoring the factors of decorative beauty and formal beauty, with rough and ugly shapes and low aesthetic taste and style.
185 1 year, some contradictions were exposed at the World Industrial Fair held in Hyde Park, London, England. Most of the exhibits are industrial products with rough appearance. Many products are decorated with some nondescript patterns, trying to make up for their formal ugliness with decoration. But it turns out that the result is even worse. Therefore, a group of people of insight, led by john ruskin and william morris, launched a design style reform movement called "Novice Arts and Crafts Movement", advocating that artists should enter life, combine art with technology, and create works that are understood and accepted by the public. It opposes Victorian pretensions, advocates simple decoration in the Middle Ages, absorbs Japanese decoration, draws materials from nature and creates new design styles, which is a valuable exploration. Its influence spread all over many European countries, making the "Art Nouveau Movement" flourish in Europe. In this sense, the "Novice Arts and Crafts Movement" opposes new decoration, advocates exquisite and reasonable design and preserves handicrafts, which has an important influence on the formation of modern design ideas.
(2) Art Nouveau movement and decoration
Inspired by the British "Novice Arts and Crafts Movement", a large-scale and far-reaching "Art Nouveau Movement" emerged and developed in Europe and America at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, which was embodied in architecture, furniture, industrial products, clothing, jewelry, book illustrations and so on. Even in the pure art fields such as sculpture and painting, new design styles and artistic features have emerged. It involves more than a dozen countries and regions such as France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United States, and it was not until around 19 10 that it was gradually replaced by the Art Deco Movement and the Modernist Movement. This movement opposes artificial style and advocates returning to nature, which greatly develops the application of plant and animal patterns in pattern design and creates aestheticism decorative style.
Samur Bing, a French furniture designer, opened a studio and design room named "Art Nouveau" in 1895, advocating designers to create new styles. 1900, they exhibited the furniture works of "Art Nouveau", which was a great success, and the name of "Art Nouveau" spread from now on. The works on display have a strong naturalistic tendency, imitating the shape and structure of plants. This is consistent with samur Bing's slogan "Return to Nature". Art Nouveau created a very special decorative style. "From Henry Vanderfeld's interior design to Kemad's Paris subway entrance design, from Antoni Gaudi's architecture to Kamm's big poster, there is an unprecedented non-historical new decorative style exploration power." ⑶ This design movement combines arts and crafts with product design by using decoration and naturalism, creating a typical design style at the turn of the 20th century and19th century, and becoming a prelude to the coming modernism era.
(3) "Art Deco" movement and decoration
The Art Deco movement was a design movement launched in France, Britain, the United States and other countries in the 1920s and 1930s. It happened almost at the same time as the European modernist movement, and they had a certain influence on each other.
With the modernization and industrialization gradually changing people's lifestyle, artists are also trying to find a new way of decoration to make the product form conform to the characteristics of modern life. 1925, a large-scale exhibition "Decorative Art Exhibition" was held in Paris. This exhibition shows people the architectural and decorative styles after the Art Nouveau movement, which is a hypocritical reaction to the Art Nouveau movement in thought and form. It opposes classicism, naturalism and pure handicraft form, and advocates the beauty of machinery. Judging from the development of modern design, it has positive significance of the times. The "Art Deco" movement is not a simple style movement, but also a traditional design movement to a great extent. That is, replacing the old decoration with new decoration, its main contribution is to express modern content in shape and color, and to show the characteristics of the times.
No matter the movement of "Novice in Arts and Crafts", "Art Nouveau" or "Art Deco", they all started from decoration and developed new, reasonable and perfect design styles, thus expanding the artistic value of "decoration". Among them, the affirmation and development of decoration directly constitute the driving force of modern design reform.
Secondly, modernist design negates decoration.
As we all know, modernist design style is developed under the influence of modern art movement and "new architecture" movement. It has a certain social democratic color, emphasizing mechanical beauty and functional beauty, advocating rational design, advocating simplicity and practicality, denying decorative function and opposing the relationship between form and function, thus developing a different design style.
As early as 1892, Sullivan, an architect of the Chicago School in the United States, put forward: "If we can completely give up decoration for a period of time, so that our thoughts can be keenly focused on perfect architecture and beautiful nudity, it will certainly be of great benefit to our aesthetic taste." ⑷ His view that "form obeys function" has become the declaration and core idea of functionalism.
Vander Wilde, one of the core figures of the "Art Nouveau" movement, put forward in the article "Clear the Obstacle for Art" in 1894 that "the first condition of beauty is functional works made according to rational laws and reasonable structures." 5] These thoughts became pioneers of mechanical aesthetics.
Austrian architect Adolf Luce advocated the importance of function. He hates decoration very much. 1898, he wrote in an article: "Seeking formal beauty without decoration is the goal that all mankind hopes to achieve". [6] He also said that "the progress of civilization is equivalent to removing the decorations from useful things". On one occasion, he classified the decoration as "backward", "pornography" and "waste". "Decoration is a waste of energy, so it wastes our health, which has always been the case. But today it also means a waste of materials, and the combination of the two means a waste of assets. " ⑻ 1908, Luce published Decoration and Sin, which can be summarized by the slogan "Decoration is crime". To some extent, these theories have served as the guiding ideology of the modernist movement, and also pushed modernist design to the direction of functional design.
Bauhaus is the cradle of modern design movement, and it also indicates the arrival of the climax of modernist design. Bauhaus was founded by Gropes in Weimar, Germany in 19 19. In the short course of14 (1919-1933), a complete design teaching system has been formed. Advocating the combination of art and technology has formed a modernist design style. It marks that the original decorative design has been replaced by modernist rational design.
After Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, its main teaching backbone and students were scattered to Europe and the United States, making rational design ideas spread all over the world. The "international style" in the forties and fifties was the result of the popularization of Bauhaus's design style. The "internationalist style" completely rejects decoration and takes the rational spirit of function as the criterion. Le corbusier, a master of modernist design and a representative of mechanical aesthetics, put forward that "a house is a living machine". This is a classic mechanized and functional design concept.
From 65438 to 0958, the West gleim Building in new york designed by Mies Vanderro and philip johnson is a landmark building with internationalist style, and it is also the product of Mies Vanderro's "less is more" design thought. This simple design, which overemphasizes rationality and function, is increasingly lacking in personality and human touch, which makes people more and more bored.
The rejection of decoration by modernist design does not mean the disappearance of decoration. On the contrary, decoration appears in new forms. Peter Collins, a British scholar, wrote in the book Evolution of Modern Architectural Design Thoughts: "Is it true that the excessive use of decoration in the19th century led to the abandonment of decoration, or is it just a change of dress?" He believes that "decoration will die out in the future, it just unconsciously integrates into the structure." Levies Modernist design absorbed decoration and structure, and created "unadorned decoration".
Thirdly, the revival of decoration by postmodern design.
With people's weariness of internationalism, in 1960s, designers introduced "Pop Design" to satisfy the public's aesthetic taste. Pursue the purpose of appealing to both refined and popular tastes. So colors and decorations are reused. And in the 1970s, various "post-modernism" styles appeared, which opposed the monotonous form of internationalist design.
"Postmodernism" design refers to "the design style of eclectic decoration with a lot of historical decoration motives in modernist and internationalist design". ⑽ It had a definite time period, which lasted from 1970s to early 1990s, and then began to decline.
Post-modernism design is a challenge to modernism design and a decorative development of modernism and internationalism design. It opposes internationalism and minimalism in design, advocates visual aesthetic pleasure through decoration, and pays attention to the satisfaction of consumers' psychology. A large number of historical decorative symbols are used in the design, but they are not simply retro. They adopted a compromise way, combining traditional cultural background with modern design, and created a new stage of decorative art.
In essence, postmodern design does not overthrow and deny modernist design, but endows it with personalized and emotional decorative effect on the basis of affirming its practical functional factors. The authority of postmodern design theory, American critic, architect and writer Charles Jencks himself said: Postmodernism is modernism plus something else.
Historical styles, such as Gothic and Baroque, are widely used in post-modern design. From classicism to Renaissance, decorative symbols were used indiscriminately, joking, teasing, exaggerating and describing symbols, and decorative effects were achieved through the fusion and splicing of various historical styles. Many works embody this feature. For example, the Italian Plaza in New Orleans designed by Charles Moore. AT & amp； philip johnson; T building and so on.
The revival of decoration in post-modernism design is to get rid of the depression brought by serious, indifferent and monotonous modernism and internationalism design style to a great extent.
Robert venturi, an American architect who first put forward a clear idea of architectural postmodernism, thinks that modernism and internationalism are ugly and mediocre. He harmoniously changed the dogma that "less is more" into "less is boring". 1969, Venturi used historical architectural symbols to design the Venturi House in Hutao Mountain, Pennsylvania in a playful way. It is the earliest building with complete post-modernism characteristics.
With the development of post-modernism design, the position of decoration in design has returned. Peter Hoffman said in the article "American Architecture in the 1980s": "Decoration is no longer regarded as a sin. Almost all of these buildings fully demonstrate a new interest in' decoration' and show an interest in architecture. " ⑾
In the field of product design, the "Memphis" design team composed of Italian Sotesas and others has become a representative. The design works are unique in shape, rich in color, decorative, popular and entertaining.
The notable features of postmodern design are historicism, decoration, eclecticism and entertainment. The application of these technologies has adapted to people's needs in all aspects, and gradually swept away the sense of rationality and indifference caused by modernism and internationalism in industrial products.
Throughout the development of modernist design, we can see the significance of decoration. Then, as an artistic symbol, "decoration" will not disappear in the future design. It is a symbol of art and culture. And the decoration meets people's psychological needs. As Herbert Read thought in History and Arts and Crafts: "The necessity of decorations is psychological. There is also an emotion called fear in people-unbearable lonely space. " He also said, "The only comment on the decoration is that it should highlight the form to some extent. I avoid using the common word' add' because nothing can be added if it is in the right form. " He emphasized that reasonable decoration will make the work more beautiful.
Sousas, a designer of Memphis Group in Italy, said that design should be lifestyle design. Indeed, the design of the future is essentially the design of lifestyle, and proper decoration is an important means to design a beautiful lifestyle. It is to achieve the purpose of "pleasing people" with "proper decoration", which will lead people to an artistic and poetic life.