Adolf Loos
Ornament and Crime
The human embryo goes through
all the phases of animal life while still inside the womb. When man is born,
his instincts are those of a newborn dog. His childhood runs through all the
changes corresponding to the history of mankind. At the age of two he looks
like a Papuan, at four like one of an ancient Germanic tribe, at six like
Socrates, at eight like Voltaire. When he is eight years old, he becomes
conscious of violet, the colour discovered by the eighteenth century, for until
then violets were blue and purple-fish were red. The physicist today points out
colours in the spectrum of the sun that have already been named, but whose
comprehension has been reserved for future generations.
The child is amoral. So is
the Papuan, to us. The Papuan kills his enemies and eats them. He is no
criminal but if a modern man kills someone and eats him, he is a criminal or a
degenerate.
The Papuan tattoos his skin,
his boat, his rudder, his oars; in short, everything he can get his hands on.
He is no criminal. The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a
degenerate. There are prisons in which eighty per cent of the prisoners are
tattooed. Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or
degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he
does so a few years before he would have committed murder.
The urge to decorate one's
face and everything in reach is the origin of the graphic arts. It is the
babbling of painting. All art is erotic.
The first ornament invented,
the cross, was of erotic origin. The first work of art, the first artistic act,
which the first artist scrawled on the wall to give his exuberance vent. A
horizontal line: the woman. A vertical line: the man penetrating her. The man
who created this felt the same creative urge as Beethoven, he was in the same
state of exultation in which Beethoven created the Ninth.
But the man of our own times
who covers the walls with erotic images from an inner compulsion is a criminal
or a degenerate. Of course, this urge affects people with such symptoms of
degeneracy most strongly in the lavatory. It is possible to estimate a
country's culture by the amount of scrawling on lavatory walls. In children
this is a natural phenomenon: their first artistic expression is scribbling
erotic symbols on walls. But what is natural for, a Papuan and a child, is
degenerate for modern man. I have discovered the following truth and present it
to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to tbe removal of Ornament
from articles in daily use. I thought I was giving the world a new source
of pleasure with this; it did not thank me for it. People were sad and
despondent. What oppressed them was the realization that no new ornament could
be created. What every Negro can do, what all nations and ages have been able
to do, why should that be denied to us, men of the nineteenth century? What
humanity had achieved in earlier millennia without decoration has been carelessly
tossed aside and consigned to destruction. We no longer possess carpenters'
benches from the Carolingian period, but any trash that exhibited the merest
trace of decoration was collected and cleaned up, and splendid palaces built to
house it. People walked sadly around the showcases, ashamed of their own
impotence. Shall every age have a style of its own and our age alone be denied
one? By style they meant decoration. But I said: Don't weep! Don't you see that
the greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of
decoration? We have conquered ornament, we have won through to lack of
ornamentation. Look, the time is nigh, fulfilment awaits us. Soon the streets
of the town will glisten like white walls. Like Zion, the holy city, the metropolis
of heaven. Then we shall have fulfillment
But there are some pessimists
who will not permit this. Humanity must be kept down in the slavery of
decoration. People progressed far enough for ornament to give them pleasure no
longer, indeed so far that a tattooed face no longer heightened their aesthetic
sensibility, as it did with the Papuans, but diminished it. They were
sophisticated enough to feel pleasure at the sight of a smooth cigarette case
while they passed over a decorated one, even at the same price. They were happy
with their clothes and glad that they did not have to walk about in red velvet
pants with gold' braid like monkeys at a fair. And I said: look, Goethe's death
chamber is more magnificent than all the Renaissance grandeur and a smooth
piece of furniture more beautiful than all the inlaid and carved museum pieces.
Goethe's language is finer than all the florid similes of the Pegnitz Shepherds1.
The pessimist heard this with
displeasure and the State, whose task it is to retard the cultural progress of
the people, took up the fight for the development and revival of ornament. Woe
to the State whose revolutions are made by Privy Councillors! A sideboard was
soon on show in the Vienna Museum of Arts and Crafts called 'The Rich Haul of
Fish', soon there were cupboards called 'The Enchanted Princess' or something
similar, relating to the ornament that covered these unfortunate pieces. The
Austrian government takes its task so seriously that it makes sure that puttees
do not disappear from the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It forces
every civilized twenty-year-old man to wear puttees instead of knitted hose for
three years. For every government still labours under the supposition that a
nation on a low standard is easier to govern.
All right, then, the plague
of ornament is recognized by the State and subsidized by State finds. But I
look on this as retrogression. I do not allow the objection that ornament
heightens a cultivated man's joy in life; I do not allow the objection: 'but
what if the ornament is beautiful...' As far as I am concerned, and this goes
for all cultivated people, ornament does not give zest to life. If I want to
eat some gingerbread, I choose a piece that is quite plain, and not in the
shape of a heart or a baby or a horseman, and gilded all over. The man from the
fifteenth century will not understand me. But all modem people will. The
advocate of ornament believes that my urge for simplicity is equivalent to a
mortification of the flesh. No, my dear art school professor, I'm not
mortifying myself. I prefer it that way. The spectacular menus of past
centuries, which all include decorations to make peacocks, pheasants and
lobsters appear even tastier, produce the opposite effect on me. I walk though
a culinary display with revulsion at the thought that I am supposed to eat
these stuffed animal corpses. I eat roast beef.
The immense damage and
devastation wrought on aesthetic development by the revival of decoration could
easily be overcome, for no one, not even governments, can arrest the evolution
of mankind. It can only be retarded We can wait. But it is a crime against the
national economy that human labour, money and material should thereby be
ruined. This kind of damage cannot be put right by time.
The tempo of cultural
progress suffers through stragglers. I may be living in 1908, yet my neighbour
still lives in 1900 and that one over there in 1880. It is a misfortune for a
country if the cultural development of its people is spread over such a long
period. The peasant from Kals lives in the twelfth century. And in the jubilee
procession there were contingents from national groups which would have been
thought backward even in the period of the migrations of the tribes. Happy the
country that has no such stragglers and marauders! Happy America! In our
country there are old-fashioned people even in the cities, stragglers from the
eighteenth century, who are shocked by a picture with violet shadows because
they can't yet see violet. They prefer the pheasant on which the chef has had
to work for days, and cigarette cases with Renaissance decoration please them
better than smooth ones. And how is it in the country? clothes and furniture
belong entirely to earlier centuries. The farmer is not a Christian, he is still
a heathen.
Stragglers slow down the
cultural progress of nations and humanity; for ornament is not only produced by
criminals; it itself commits a crime, by damaging men's health, the national
economy and cultural development. where two people live side by side with the
same needs, the same demands on life and the same income, and yet belong to
different cultures, the following process may be observed from the economic
point of view: the man from the twentieth century becomes ever richer, the one
from the eighteenth ever poorer. I am supposing that each lives according to
his inclinations. The twentieth century man can pay for his needs with much
less capital and can therefore save. The vegetables he likes are simply boiled
in water and then served with a little melted butter. The other man doesn't
enjoy them until honey and nuts have been added and someone has been busy
cooking them for hours. Decorated plates are very dear, while the plain white
china that the modem man likes is cheap. One man accumulates savings, the other
one debts. So it is with whole nations. Woe to the country that lags behind in
cultural development! The English become richer and we poorer...
Even greater is the damage
ornament inflicts on the workers. As ornament is no longer a natural product of
our civilization, it accordingly represents backwardness or degeneration, and
the labour of the man who makes it is not adequately remunerated.
Conditions in the woodcarving
and turning trades, the criminally low prices paid to embroiderers and
lacemakers, are well known. The producers of ornament must work twenty hours to
earn the wages a modern worker gets in eight. Decoration adds to the price of
an object as a rule, and yet it can happen that a decorated object, with the
same outlay in materials and demonstrably three times as much work, is offered
for sale at half the price of a plain object. The lack of ornament means
shorter working hours and consequently higher wages. Chinese carvers work
sixteen hours, American workers eight. If I pay as much for a smooth box as for
a decorated one, the difference in labour time belongs to the worker. And if
there were no ornament at all - a circumstance that will perhaps come true in a
few millennia - a man would have to work only four hours instead of eight, for
half the work done at present is still for ornamentation.
Ornament is wasted labour and
hence wasted health. That's how it has always been. Today, however, it is also
wasted material, and both together add up to wasted capital.
As ornament is no longer
organically linked with our culture, it is also no longer an expression of our
culture. Ornament as created today has no connection with us, has no human connections
at all, no connection with the world as it is constituted. It cannot be developed.
What has happened to the decorations of Otto Eckmann and those of Van de Velde?
The artist always used to stand at the forefront of humanity, full of health
and vigour. But the modem ornamentalist is a straggler, or a pathological case.
He rejects even his own products within three years. To cultivated people they
are unbearable immediately, others are aware of their unbearableness only after
some years. Where are the works of Otto Eckmann today? Where will Olbrich's
work be in ten years' time? Modern ornament has no forbears and no descendants,
no past and no future. It is joyfully welcomed by uncultivated people, to whom
the true greatness of our time is a closed book, and after a short period is
rejected.
Mankind today is healthier
than ever, only a few people are sick. But these few tyrannize over the worker
who is so healthy that he cannot invent ornament. They force him to make the
ornaments they have invented in the greatest variety of materials.
Changes in decoration account
for the quick devaluation of the product of labour. The worker's time and the
material used are capital items that are being wasted. I have coined an
aphorism: The form of an object should last (i.e., should be bearable) as long
as the object lasts physically. I shall try to clarify this: A suit will change
in fashion more often than a valuable fur. A ball gown for a lady, only
meant for one night, will change its form more speedily than a desk But woe to
the desk that has to be changed as quickly as a ball gown because its shape has
become unbearable, for than the money spent on the desk will have been wasted.
This is well-known to the
ornamentalists, and Austrian ornamentalists try to make the most of it. They
say: 'A consumer who has his furniture for ten years and then can't stand it
any more and has to re-furnish from scratch every ten years, is more popular
with us than someone who only buys an item when the old one is worn out.
Industry thrives on this. Millions are employed due to rapid changes.' This
seems to be the secret of the Austrian national economy; how often when a fire
breaks out one hears the words: 'Thank God, now there will be something for
people to do again.' I know a good remedy: burn down a town, burn down the
country and everything will be swimming in wealth and well-being. Make
furniture that you can use as firewood after three years and metal fittings
that must be melted down after four years because even in the auction room you
can't realize a tenth of the outlay in work and materials, and we shall become
richer and richer.
The loss does not hit only
the consumer, it hits the manufacturer above all. Today, ornament on items that
need no ornament means wasted labour and spoilt materials. If all objects were
aesthetically enduring for as long as they lasted physically, the consumer
could afford to pay a price that would enable the worker to earn more money and
work shorter hours. I don’t mind spending four times as much for an article
which I am certain I can make use of and use up completely as I would for one
inferior in shape and material. I don't mind spending forty kronen for my boots
although I could get boots for ten kronen in another shop. But in trades
suffering under the tyranny of the ornamentalists, good or bad workmanship
does not count. The work suffers because nobody wants to pay its true value.
And that is a good thing,
because these decorated objects are only bearable in the cheapest form. I can
get over a fire's havoc more easily if I hear that only worthless rubbish has
been destroyed. I can enjoy the tripe in the Künstlerhaus because I know that
it has been put up in a few days and will be torn down in a day. But throwing
gold coins around instead of pebbles, lighting cigarettes with a banknote and
pulverizing a pearl and than drinking it is unaesthetic. The most unaesthetic
decorated objects are those made of the best materials with the greatest care,
those that have demanded hours of work. I cannot deny having asked for high
quality work above all-but not this kind.
Modern men who revere ornament
as a sign of the artistic expression of earlier generations, will immediately
recognize the painfully laboured and sickly ornament of today. No-one can
create ornament now who lives on our level of culture.
It is different for people
and nations who have not yet attained this level.
I am preaching to the
aristocrats; I mean, to the people in the forefront of humanity who still fully
appreciate the needs and strivings of those beneath: them. They understand the
native weaving ornaments into textiles to a certain rhythm, which can be seen
only when torn apart, the Persian knotting his carpet, the Slovak peasant woman
embroidering her lace, the old lady crocheting wonderful objects in beads and
silk. The aristocrat lets them be, for he knows they work in moments of
revelation. The revolutionary would go there and say 'This is all nonsense.'
Just as he would pull the old woman away from the roadside shrine with the
words: 'There is no God.' But among the aristocrats the atheist raises his hat
on passing a church.
My shoes are covered over and
over with decoration, the kind made up of pinking and perforations. Work done
by the shoemaker but not paid for. I go to the shoemaker and say: 'You want
thirty kronen for a pair of shoes. I'll pay you forty.' In this way I have
raised the man to a level of happiness which he will repay me for by work and
material of a quality absolutely out of proportion to the extra cost. He is
happy. Good fortune rarely comes his way. Here is a man who understands him and
appreciates his work and does not doubt his honesty. In his imagination he can
already see the finished shoes before him. He knows where the best leather is
to be had at present, he knows which of his workers he can entrust the shoes
to. And the shoes will boast perforations and scallops, as many as can possibly
be fitted on an elegant shoe. And than I add: ‘but there's one condition. The
shoe must be quite plain' With that I've toppled him from the heights of contentment
into Tartarus. He has less work, but I have robbed him of all his pleasure
I am preaching to the
aristocrats. I tolerate ornaments on my own body if they afford my fellow-men
pleasure. Then they are a pleasure to me, too. I put up with the ornaments of
the natives, the Persians, the Slovak peasant woman and my shoemaker's
ornaments, for these workers have no other means of reaching the heights of
their existence. We have art, which has replaced ornament. We go to Beethoven
or Tristan after the cares of the day. My shoemaker can't. I must not
take away his joy as I have nothing to replace it with. But whoever goes to the
Ninth Symphony and than sits down to design a wallpaper pattern is either a
rogue or a degenerate.
Lack of ornament has pushed
the other arts to unimagined heights. Beethoven's symphonies would never have
been written by a man who was obliged. to go about in silk, velvet and lace.
Those who run around in velvet nowadays are not artists but buffoons or house
painters. We have become more refined, more subtle. The herd must distinguish
themselves by the use of various colors, modern man uses his clothes like a
mask. His individuality is so strong that he does not need to express it any
longer by his clothing. Lack of ornament is a sign of spiritual strength.
Modern man uses the ornaments of earlier and foreign cultures as he thinks fit.
He concentrates his own powers of invention on other things.
1908
1 A society founded in 1644 by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer
and Johann Clajus, devoted to ennobling the German language.