J's Online Drawing Lessons

Decorative Repetition

I have found myself also unable to treat of the very wide subject of decorative design. However, a little reflection allows us to see that although very little explicit mention has been made of design, still the general observations are applicable to that special branch of art. Indeed, the painting of pictures has grown slowly from a savage desire for rhythmic design, from the waving line which surrounds the great neolithic vase standing at this moment in the entrance passage of this house. Little by little minor articles of the now great code have been added. Little by little the lumps of red ochre, which I found in the cave from which came the vase, have been replaced by a range of natural and artificial tints of very considerable extent. In a picture we generally try to avoid repetition ; often, in decorative work, we utilize approximate repetition intentionally. I say ' approximate 5 repetition, for I am inclined to think that all absolute repetition, all stendl work, is a low form of art. The Greek and Egyptian ' keys ' and palmate frieze patterns were always executed free-hand, hence with the inevitable variations. A modern bourgeois love of tidiness is responsible for the fatiguing monotony of much modern decoration. (Machine production of course is also responsible.) Some degree of repetition, of symmetry is perhaps necessary in decorative design, which is generally destined to assume a secondary place as a background or addition of some kind to the main interest, whether that main interest be the furniture and people in a room, the title of a book, or the name of some article advertised by a poster. Repetition adroitly managed utilizes similitude of impression to amuse the eye, without tempting it to undue attention. The changes that decorative arts have undergone have naturally always exhibited a strict relationship with the changes in figure and other artistic work, at least since the more elaborated arts have existed. But to deal with decorative design and such special applications of the