Decorative arts making a comeback in design world

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!

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