Ornamentalism

Ornamentalism (pronounced awr-nuh-men-tl-iz-uhm)

(1) The desire or tendency to feature (usually what’s judged an excess of) ornamentation in design or execution (buildings, interiors, furnishings, cars, artwork etc).

(2) Any artistic or architectural style characterised by ornamentation.

(3) In the pre-revolutionary Russian literary tradition, an intricate, mannered and ostentatious prose style most prevalent in the early twentieth century.

(4) In politics, something implemented to lend the appearance of being something substantive while in reality changing little (synonymous usually with “window dressing”).

1860s: The construct was ornament + -al + -ism.  Ornament (an element of decoration; that which embellishes or adorns) was from the Old French ornement, from the Latin ornamentum (equipment, apparatus, furniture, trappings, adornment, embellishment), from ornāre, the present active infinitive of ornō (I equip, adorn). The verb was derived from the noun.  The -al suffix was from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjectival suffix -ālis, ((the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) or the French, Middle French and Old French –el & -al.  It was use to denote the sense "of or pertaining to", an adjectival suffix appended (most often to nouns) originally most frequently to words of Latin origin, but since used variously and also was used to form nouns, especially of verbal action.  The alternative form in English remains -ual (-all being obsolete).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Ornamentalism & ornamentalist are nouns; the noun plural is ornamentalisms.

Lindsay Lohan mug-shot Christmas tree ornament.  Even the blurb: “…handmade photo-fresco Ornament made with a hybrid Gypsum based polymer that has the crystaline structure of ceramics…” has about it the whiff of ornamentalism.  In some places, this ornament may be thought blasphemous.

The sense of the noun & adjective ornamental (the comparative “more ornamental”, the superlative “most ornamental”) differ from those of ornamentalism in that the former is almost always either positive or neutral.  In the narrow technical sense something ornamental has “no purpose beyond the decorative” although many “ornamental devices” often either can or do fulfill some function, thus the nuanced phrase “merely ornamental” to distinguish the pure forms.  As a noun, “ornamentals” are plants, fish and such bred or maintained for no purpose other than their aesthetic value (although obviously they also often a commercial product).

The same positive or neutral senses tend to be enjoyed by the noun & verb “ornament” which means usually “a decorative element or embellishment” (such as a ceramic piece displayed but never used for its nominal purpose).  In music it means specifically “a musical flourish not needed by the melodic or harmonic line, but which serves to decorate that line” while in the rituals of Christianity, ornaments (in this context always in the plural) are objects (crosses, altar candles, incense and such) used in church services.  So in musical and liturgical use, ornaments enjoy a duality in that they are both decorative and fulfill some function.  That is reflected in biology when the word is used to describe a characteristic that has a decorative function (typically in order to attract a mate) such as the peacock’s marvelously extravagant tail feathers.

Ornamentalisn is best known in architecture and design and can been seen in styles ranging from the rococo ((Würzburg Residenz, Würzburg Bavaria, Germany; left), to the McMansion (Wildwood New Jersey, USA; right))

In literary theory, ornamentalism is used to describe a style of writing in the pre-revolutionary Russian literary tradition in which prose was constructed in an intricate, mannered and ostentatious way.  It’s most associated with the early twentieth century and the great exponents of the art were the now sadly neglected Andrei Bely (1880-1934), the symbolist Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927) and the monumentally bizarre Alexei Remizov (1877-1957); it was one of the many stylistic trends briefly to flourish within the Russian avant-garde early in the twentieth century.  It came to be of some interest to later deconstructionists and post-modernists (the latter debatably among the greatest (or worst, depending on one’s view) ornamentalists) because the writers focused not on the capacity of the text to convey narrative or ideological content but the aesthetic and formal qualities of language itself; they treated language as an autonomous artistic medium, focusing on its rhythm, sound, texture and visual patterns.  Even at the time, there was criticism that the style was one of self-indulgence and intended for an audience of fellow writers and those who followed developments in the avant-garde; what comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) would later condemn as “formalism”.

What the ornamentalists did was elevate the elements of language (words, sentences, paragraphs etc) to be artistic objects to be assembled and arranged, their interplay as important (some critics suggested more so) than any implied or discernible meaning, thus the fragmented, non-linear prose which was a complete rejection of traditional realism: the ornamentalists called their work “associative structures”, suggesting they really were the proto postmodernists.  In that sense, it wasn’t the textual devices (repetition, alliteration, assonance) or the unusual syntactic structures which was most striking but the often chaotic mixture of prose and poetry and the interpolation of visual and performative elements into the text.  Needless to say, there was much symbolism, presumably thought an adequate substitute for coherence.  Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was a noted critic of some of the more wilfully obscure ornamentalists but in his early Russian works and later English novels, their influence is detectable in his sensitivity to language's aesthetic possibilities.  While ornamentalism never really became a formal “school” of literature, it did exert a pull on Russian modernism and the possibility of elements like language operating as autonomous artistic objects.

In the US car industry peak ornamentalism happened between 1957-1962: 1960 Chrysler 300F (left), 1958 Buick Limited (centre) and 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz (right).

An earlier Russian literary tradition which was later sometimes a part of ornamentalism was skaz (from the sleazat (to tell)), a genre of folk tales consisting usually of an eye-witness account of an episode in peasant or provincial life, distinguished by the narrative being related by a fictitious narrator rather than the author directly.  What that method did was afford an author some latitude in the use of speech forms such as dialect, slang, mispronunciations and, not infrequently, neologisms, all of which lent the texts a naturalistic vigour and colourfulness which usually wouldn’t appear in a naturalistic piece, told in the first person.

A Spanish literary tradition in the same vein as ornamentalism was plateresco (from platero (silversmith), most associated with sixteenth century romances (with most of what that implies).  The English version of the terms was “plateresque” (silversmith-like) and literary criticism borrowed the idea from architecture & design where it describes the ornate styles popular in Spain during the sixteenth century, the word applied in the same way as rococo (which can be thought of as “high ornamentalism”).  The more familiar Spanish term was Gongorism which described the style of writing typified by that of the poet Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627), famous for his baroque and affected ways with the language which featured a Latinistic vocabulary & syntax, intricate use of metaphors, much hyperbole, mythological allusions and a general weirdness of diction.  In fairness, Góngora did not always write in this manner but so distinctive were his narratives when he did that a minor industry of imitators followed including Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) and the English polymath Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) who had great fun while Gongorising.  Gongorism as practiced was a deliberate exaggeration of technique, unlike the earlier aureate (from the Latin aureatus (adorned or decorated with gold), the construct being aure(us) (golden, gilded) +‎ -ate (the adjective-forming suffix).  Arueate language (characterized by the use of (excessively) ornamental or grandiose terms) was most generously described as a sort of poetic diction and it was much in vogue for English and Scottish and poets of the fifteenth century, the works of whom are characterized by the used of ornate & ornamental language, often studded with vernacular coinages from Latin words.