#HaFfA1882

[citeifoucault]

[When the Decorative Arts are parted from those greater (so called)], it is ill for the Arts altogether: the lesser ones become trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of resisting the changes pressed upon them by fashion or dishonesty; while the greater, however they may be practised for a while by men of great minds and wonder-working hands, unhelped by the lesser, unhelped by each other, are sure to lose their dignity of popular arts, and become nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenious toys for a few rich and idle men.

Morris, 1919, l. 56.

[citeifoucault]

I must ask you therefore from the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or whatever I may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the future [...]

Morris, 1919, l. 48, grifo nosso.

[citeifoucault]

[Even when we are so used to it that we scarcely notice it] there is the decoration, or some pretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning. For, and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent [...]

Morris, 1919, l. 67.

[citeifoucault]

To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.

Morris, 1919, l. 75, grifo nosso.

[citeifoucault]

[N]o, I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one’s hands before one doing nothing—to live like a gentleman, as fools call it.

Morris, 1919, l. 86, grifo nosso.

Sick burn.

[citeifoucault]

[You must not] forget that when men say popes, kings, and emperors built such and such buildings, it is a mere way of speaking.  [...]  Did they? or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who have left no names behind them, nothing but their work?

Morris, 1919, l. 100.

[citeifoucault]

[T]here are peoples not a few, of whom we know scarce anything, save that they thought such and such forms beautiful.

Morris, 1919, l. 104.

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Those who have diligently followed the delightful study of [the Decorative Arts] are able as if through windows to look upon the life of the past:—the very first beginnings of thought among nations whom we cannot even name [...]—with all these events and their meaning is the history of popular art interwoven; with all this, I say, the careful student of decoration as an historical industry must be familiar.

Morris, 1919, l. 111, grifo nosso.

[citeifoucault]

[The Decorative Arts] are part of a great system invented for the expression of a man’s delight in beauty: all peoples and times have used them; they have been the joy of free nations, and the solace of oppressed nations; religion has used and elevated them, has abused and degraded them; they are connected with all history, and are clear teachers of it; and, best of all, they are the sweeteners of human labour, both to the handicraftsman, whose life is spent in working in them, and to people in general who are influenced by the sight of them at every turn of the day’s work: they make our toil happy, our rest fruitful.

Morris, 1919, l. 120, grifo nosso.

Função estética.

[citeifoucault]

This was the growth of art: like all growth, it was good and fruitful for awhile; like all fruitful growth, it grew into decay; like all decay of what was once fruitful, it will grow into something new.

Morris, 1919, l. 135.

[citeifoucault]

[A]s the arts sundered into the greater and the lesser, contempt on one side, carelessness on the other arose, both begotten of ignorance of that philosophy of the Decorative Arts, a hint of which I have tried just now to put before you.  The artist came out from the handicraftsmen, and left them without hope of elevation, while he himself was left without the help of intelligent, industrious sympathy. 

Morris, 1919, l. 137, grifo nosso.

[citeifoucault]

[L]ike all growth, it was good and fruitful for awhile; like all fruitful growth, it grew into decay; like all decay of what was once fruitful, it will grow into something new.

Morris, 1919, l. 135.

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[T]he death of one art means the death of all; the only difference in their fate will be that the luckiest will be eaten the last [...]

Morris, 1919, l. 158.

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I hold that men would wake up after a while, and look round and find the dulness unbearable, and begin once more inventing, imitating, and imagining, as in earlier days.

Morris, 1919, l. 169.

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[E]ven if those who really care for the arts are so weak and few that they can do nothing else, it may be their business to keep alive some tradition, some memory of the past, so that the new life when it comes may not waste itself more than enough in fashioning wholly new forms for its new spirit.

Morris, 1919, l. 175.

[citeifoucault]

I do not mean to say that our own eyes will look upon it: it may be so far off, as indeed it seems to some, that many would scarcely think it worth while thinking of: but there are some of us who cannot turn our faces to the wall, or sit deedless because our hope seems somewhat dim; and, indeed, I think that while the signs of the last decay of the old art with all the evils that must follow in its train are only too obvious about us, so on the other hand there are not wanting signs of the new dawn beyond that possible night of the arts, of which I have before spoken; this sign chiefly, that there are some few at least who are heartily discontented with things as they are, and crave for something better, or at least some promise of it��this best of signs: for I suppose that if some half-dozen men at any time earnestly set their hearts on something coming about which is not discordant with nature, it will come to pass one day or other; because it is not by accident that an idea comes into the heads of a few; rather they are pushed on, and forced to speak or act by something stirring in the heart of the world which would otherwise be left without expression.

Morris, 1919, l. 185, grifo nosso.

Arte total.