The decorative arts got a bum rap from the modernists. Adolf Loos equated ornament with crime. Le Corbusier blamed the Beaux Arts for the ruination of France. Not for Corbu or Loos, the hedonistic pleasures of Versailles.
In Australia we’ve our own troubled relationship with décor. As a young colonial nation, the modern era accounts for almost half our history. Loos delivered his damnation of the decorative to a rapt Viennese lecture theatre in 1910, just as we were ablush with the first flush of federation. But soon enough our flouncy Federation houses were declared so terribly déclassé. Give us Robin Boyd, Roy Grounds, even grumpy old Harry Seidler, the intelligentsia cried!
And yet, after a century in the wilderness, decoration is making a comeback. You could feel it in David Clark’s At Home show at Old Government House in Parramatta, in which the former Vogue Living editor cleverly aligned contemporary pieces by the likes of Adam Goodrum, Kate Rohde, Henry Wilson and Chen Lu with historical furnishings inside the Georgian summer residence of Governor and Mrs Macquarie. Sensed it, too, in the Common Ground exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, which seamlessly showcased pieces from the gallery’s permanent collections of art, design and the decorative arts. It’s also evident in the one-off furnishings devised by Adelaide designer Khai Liew for the award-winning sculptural abode of philanthropist Judith Neilson – a vaulted concrete folly devised by architect William Smart.
Originally handcrafted homewares for the upper class, the woodturning, glass-blowing and hand-carving learnt most notably at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the decorative arts were emblematic of the pre-industrial age. With the rise of industrialisation, they became associated with the petit bourgeoise. And so rose a wave of faux Louis XV and Queen Anne, even faux déco furniture. Long before The Block, suburban decorators were out to “get the look”.
National Gallery of Victoria's approach
The NGV’s Common Ground was “an attempt to show design, the decorative arts and art together”, says Ewan McEoin, the NGV’s senior curator of contemporary design and architecture. “We’re not interested in silos, they are just not relevant for now.” Established two years ago, the NGV’s design department is a logical corollary of its venerable department of decorative arts, which holds works from 1200 to 1980. “The decorative arts department was collecting chairs, functional objects, jewellery, ceramics, glass and so forth. We’re collecting the same things, with a similar remit, we’re just changing the language,” says McEoin. “What we’re trying to avoid is some simplistic, chronological approach to collecting. We’re looking at more critical issues in design.”
Recontextualising is key to evolving creatively but to do so, one first needs context. To my mind, that’s one of the problems of contemporary Australian design – the will to ahistoricise, to design as if now has always been now.
“Designers may look to museum collections for inspiration; in looking to the past we find outstanding examples of the creative process,” says Keinton Butler, who last year joined Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (aka the Powerhouse) as senior curator with a focus on architecture and design.
It was while walking through the museum’s Out Of Hand: Materialising the Digital show that I first got an inkling of the renewed power of the decorative to entice, excite. There, in full glory, was a spectacularly decorative waratah-shaped carafe and punchbowl, and a protea-shaped beaker – 3D printed by Sydney’s Vert Design from original drawings by French draftsman Lucien Henry, who washed up on our shores in 1879 following extradition from France for his part in the Paris Commune. “Henry contributed to the development of an Australian style by championing the use of native flora and fauna,” notes Butler. “However, it is easy to become fixated by the highly decorative nature of his work. It was the principles of his work that were most pioneering. He wasn’t afraid to reflect the Australian natural environment or our culture, which was unusual for the time.” You’d think we’d have gotten over our reticence by now.
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The AFR Magazine's annual Arts issue is out on Friday, February 24 inside The Australian Financial Review.
