ON EMBELLISHMENT
Whether in the case of architecture or other visual and constructive arts, the chief materials are undecorative in themselves. Even when the better material abounds, the economy of the object requires humble material for the main structure and support. This is the system in general use in modern creative practice, and is entirely reasonable and artistically sound, in spite of the modernist objections against it, because the construction is not identical with the decoration but intelligently concealed by it. The analogy of the skin of human beings and animals affords a justification from nature, of the ancient and modern systems, in its decorative concealment of the internal organism and construction, revealing only the general masses of the unified being. But even in the end, nature does not easily separate functional needs from aesthetic ones.

propositions

i. Painting and illustrating, along with the decorative aspiration is the universal disposition of civilizations everywhere, lettered or unlettered.
ii. The earliest known ornament belongs to civilizations already well advanced. The primitive origins of these have yet to be discovered and identified. It is not an linear evolution from simple to complex, but from greater or lesser degrees of fullness and emptyness. But the universal application of ornament amongst all societies and peoples point to the importance of this practice among humans.
iii. The ornament of every historical style is chiefly derived from that of some older or foreign civilization, until we arrive at the ancient civilizations. Each culture has imposed upon the decorative art thus inherited or borrowed a development and forms of it’s own invention, or by developmental modifications of detail and emphasis, or by both together.
iv. In these modifications of the imported or inherited ornament forms, their original use-significance are in time often lost or ignored, Magical forms become mere symbols, symbolic forms mere ornament; and then structural forms are applied where the construction does not demand them, so that they become in time motivated by decoration of the lowest type. Ornament in great paintings, or other art objects, or in print, motivated from just causes and derived by balanced design, are at once symbolic, iconic, meaningful, decorative, and where not pure invention, historically inspired and informed.
v. The inventions of unique ornamental forms usually derive from two classes: the geometric and the organic. The former are mathematical and structural abstractions such as the circle, square and triangle. The latter are common plants and animals taken from the surrounding nature. In both cases the isolated forms are common things. The act of placing them in ornament, (often with precious materials) raises these forms and the objects upon which they are placed to the level of the uncommon.
vi. Historically, the style of a work of decoration is frequently a more reliable index of it’s date and ethnic/geographical origin than written documents, the character and relation of the of the type of ornament in question forming a continuity of it’s geneology
vii. In the course of the act of building a work, the instinct to decorate some portion thereof follows naturally from the completion of the main idea. In the case of the two dimensional image this follows naturally from purely cultural-aesthetic and symbolic motives-- not from photographic ones. The effort now is to set apart material creatively transformed; as a means of distinguishing the final object, both from the real world, the photographic world, and the digital world. Therefore a truly new art for the western world will have a strong resemblance to ancient art, in terms of its simplicity, beauty, and sincerity. The archaizing modern styles of the early twentieth century were indications of this vibration, though the embers were buried during the Second World War and remain buried until our time.
viii. While art making may be a social and spiritual act itself, the embellishment thereof makes this a virtual certainty. Therefore, the decorative element, reclaimed for the future of painting is a further reclaiming of the natural humanness of art making.
ix. As the clothed model is ornamented by dress which is both functional, social and aesthetic; the nude model is similarily ornamented in respect to age, gender, ethnic and racial physiognomy. For embellishment is a kind of identification.
x. My decorative attitude in painting is a natural development from this as it extends between the figures represented and the unity of the picture plane itself.
xi. The camera, and the computer, are machines which are indifferent towards painting in respect to ornament. Both these machines have been aides or hindrances to painting/illustrating. Both can be used to great effect in manipulation of the picture plane. While the computer may be used to store and apply ornament by its ability with repetitive imagery, the drive to decorate does not follow from intimate familiarity with the flat, digital world, as it does from familiarity with the historical practices of art and the common experience of civilization. Photography has no memory, specific in time and place, it is trapped by the very things which make it appear “real”-- the more it inclines to an art, the more it imitates not a moment but an ideal, a dream image, it does this with poor conviction. Besides we we all know is the domain of drawing and painting. Now, It is a task for the creative participant to act without a crippling reliance on the digital and photographic realms, to ‘see outside the boxes’, by remembering what it is like to have memory.
xii. Creatives then should feel no shame for wanting to decorate anything so long as they do not blindly apply it. The greatest examples of embellishment through all time have come about through a familiarity with the elements involved and a great restraint in applying them.