Ornament and European Modernism

These in-depth, historical and critical essays study the meaning of ornament, the role it played in the formation of modernism, and its theoretical importance between the mid-nineteenth century and the late twentieth century in England and Germany.

Loretta Vandi (Ph.D., Université de Lausanne, 1998) is Professor of Art History at the Scuola del Libro in Urbino. She has held four Samuel H. Kress fellowships. Her publications include La trasformazione del motivo dell'acanto dall'antichità al XV secolo (2002), Il Manoscritto Oliveriano 1 (2004), and Four Essays (2007).

Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Contributors's Biographies Introduction Chapter One Owen Jones's Theory of Ornament Isabelle J. Frank Chapter Two Function, Fiction, Flux and Silence: Ornamental Theory, Science, and the Modern Search for Aesthetic Volition Debra K. Schafter Chapter Three August Schmarsow's Theory of Ornament Christiane Hertel Chapter Four The Veil of Truth? Van de Velde, Muthesius, and the Battle over Ornament in Modern Architecture Ole W. Fischer Chapter Five Ornament, Image, and Tension in Ernst Gombrich's Theory of PerceptionLoretta Vandi & Pavlos Jerenis Bibliography