Ornamentation Art Quotes & Sayings

Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art. — John Ruskin

Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. — Ayn Rand

We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . . But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of art of every kind - from cradlesong, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance. — Leo Tolstoy

And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time — George Orwell

Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36) — Markus Zusak

I wonder, only in passing, whether the indelible ornamentation that man inscribes upon his own epidermis does not respond to a nostalgia for the universal internally generated coloring of corrollas, furs, shells, carapaces and wings. For man it has been necessary to create both works and tools outside of himself. But it may be that he retains an obscure nostalgia to create them on his own body, to make them a part of it rather than projecting them outwards onto an independent surface, where he is free to retouch them as he sees fit, which is precisely what painting and art are. — Roger Caillois

I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation. — Ezra Pound

My boy, this is the second time today that wisdom has spoken through your mouth ... ! — Umberto Eco

My Dad taught me that good health is all about living in gratitude. — Mariska Hargitay

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library. — Frank Zappa

Until tomorrow, Fair Isolde. — Rachel Hawkins

In my previous murals, I had tried to achieve a harmony in my painting with the architecture of the building. But to attempt such a harmony in the garden of the Institute would have defeated my purposes. For the walls here were of an intricate Italian baroque style, with little windows, heads of satyrs, doorways, and sculpturesque mouldings. It was within such a frame that I was to represent the life of an age which had nothing to do with baroque refinements
a new life which was characterized by masses, machines, and naked mechanical power. So I set to work consciously to over-power the ornamentation of the room. — Diego Rivera

Some elements appear in this picture which would be decisive in Klimt's subsequent work: for instance, the use of gold and the transformation of anatomy into ornamentation, of ornamentation into anatomy. — Gilles Neret

Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm.
"Hang on. What about traps?"
He frowned. "Traps?"
"Didn't Egyptian tombs have traps?"
"Well ... sometimes. But this isn't a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse - "
"Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better. — Rick Riordan