The Theory of Decorative Art: An Anthology of European and American Writings, 1750-1940 (Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design & Culture) - Tapa dura

The selections include well-known texts and less familiar writings, many translated into English for the first time, that reveal how architects, designers, and critics as well as sociologists and historians have thought and written about decorative art. Through the writings of such thinkers as Diderot, Riegl, Wolfflin, Goethe, Ruskin, Elias, Wright, and Loos, the anthology traces the shifting nature of the boundaries between decorative and fine art over two centuries. These writers, faced with new art forms that challenged accepted notions of art, elaborated aesthetic theories capable of encompassing both decorative and fine art. By recovering theoretical debates about decorative art, this book helps to dispel the confusion surrounding this artistic category. It also offers suggestive contributions to contemporary debates, focusing on the same question of the nature of art that animated earlier writers.