Ornament: A Modern Perspective (Samuel and Althea Stroum Book)
"Trilling carries the reader through a series of extraordinarily wide-ranging examples from antiquity to contemporary Europe and including examples from China, the Middle East, and America. The result is a sense of the manner in which ornament is perceived and historically manipulated. And who else could have brought together so effortlessly Ruskin, Marx, and the Neogothic? This book will delight the student of culture as well as the college simply trying to understand what ornament is all about." Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Institute of Art History, University of Vienna "Ornament: A Modern Perspective is a lucid account of the development, dynamics, and interpretation of ornament together with a compelling critique of the modernist indictment of ornament and its profound practical, conceptual, and perceptual consequences for 20th-century visual culture in the West. More than a primer of ornament, Trilling's book constantly provokes re-looking and re-thinking of assumptions about the visual world." Maggie Bickford, Brown University " ... [a] wide-ranging, original and thoughtful essay by a scholar who proudly parades his independence and seeks to dispel the distrust and fear of ornament... Sophisticated yet lucid, James Trilling's considerations of ornament provide a cogent defence of a widespread human preoccupation while also contextualizing debates about that very activity in leading art centres during the past two 'modern' centuries."--The Art Book, Vol 11, Issue 2 March 2004