 Good evening everyone. Boy, there's not a free house in the seat Susanna, I'm getting a time a stop alerts. No problem at all Thank you very much Good Good evening again I'm Caroline Bowman director of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum And I am so pleased to welcome everyone to the Enid and Lester Morris historic design lecture series I want to give a very deep and sincere thanks to trustee Dini Morse and her husband Lester Who who are dear friends of Cooper Hewitt and dear friends of many of us in the room? The Morse lecture series which invites scholars from around the world to share the latest research on design history Is just one example of their tremendous generosity to Cooper Hewitt over the years Dini and Lester are also making possible the support superb performances by Juilliard students and alumni During our Thursday evenings cocktails at Cooper Hewitt in the Arthur Ross terrace and garden This Thursday, we will enjoy the sounds of the award-winning DJ kitty cash and our next Juilliard Night will be July 14th with the Juilliard jazz ensemble Do be sure to join us. We are deeply grateful for Dini and Lester's support of such dynamic programming from music to design education I hope you all had a chance to explore our newest exhibition fragile beasts Congratulations to Caitlin Condell for curating this wonderful presentation of ornamental design. Where's Caitlin? There she is The nearly 70 works on view are part of Cooper Hewitt's collection of over 13,000 ornament prints which includes the outstanding de Clue collection Acquired by the museum's founders Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt Highlighting the pursuit of the grotesque fragile beasts presents a menagerie of other worldly beings invented by European designers in the 16th and 17th centuries The exhibition is the inspiration for the fragile beasts coloring book Which features 40 grotesque designs from the exhibition Redrawn to allow designers young and old to unleash their creativity It's the perfect gift. So go get it in the Cooper Hewitt shop Lastly, I did want to include a shout out to one of our terrific creatives at Cooper Hewitt and Sun Wu Who designed the exhibition sensational graphics? next slide Cheryl Ford it Back there she is I saw this on Instagram last night, and I thought it was a great poster showing what it means to work at Cooper Hewitt So that is Anne celebrating her wonderful design for the exhibition And now I am truly delighted to introduce a preeminent expert of the ornament print Sarah Grant Curator in the word and image department of the Victorian Albert Museum I was stunned to learn tonight that there are over a hundred and thirty people in the word and image department at the V&A Sarah is responsible for the V&A's 18th and 19th century prints and the British national collection of engraved ornament She most recently organized the V&A's exhibition of the neoclassical ornament of Enmon Alexandra Petito as well as led efforts to catalog the V&A's 28,000 ornament prints The author of numerous books essays and articles on the print in fashion architecture and ornamental design Sarah's recent publications include style and satire fashion in print 1777 to 1927 and the forthcoming Eclectic the Julie and Robert Breckman collections at the V&A For her lecture this evening Sarah will help take us deep into the history and interpretation of the grotesque motif in Western ornamental design from its origins in ancient Rome to its fanciful variations in 18th century France Please join me in welcoming Sarah Grant Thank you so much Caroline for that charming introduction, which I'm sure I don't deserve and I'd like to thank Mr. Mrs. Morse as well Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity to be here and to come to the Cooper here it and of course Caitlyn in the back as well. Thank you so much for the invitation to speak here this evening Can everybody hear me? So I've been told I have quite a quiet voice Yes, great. Okay, and so actually I was talking over the drinks about how Timely this this is my visit here because I think the Cooper here it is one of a handful of museums that has really an exceptional collection of ornament prints and drawings like the V&A and the Cooper here and the V&A are in some ways transatlantic cousins with both museums being founded and very similar spirits with comparable goals even if 40 years apart and That's really to promote an appreciation and understanding of art and design and thereby enriched people's lives with inspiring beautiful collections Which I think you'll agree if you've seen Caitlyn's amazing exhibition to which I'd like to add my congratulations as well It's so beautiful such a beautiful setting forward as well I loved the auricular ornament on the stairwells I was kind of coming down from it as well And you have amazing digital and tools there to help you enjoy them even more because I think Prince and drawings are notorious for being quite difficult to display because they're so detailed You really need to get in close and you've got magnifying glass there You've got everything you can to sort of help you enjoy it and it's wonderful I have to excuse myself for drinking a lot of water tonight because I'm live in London and I'm not used to warm weather like It's very warm here, which I'm enjoying So I'm going to be talking about ornament I'm going to use the word ornament and ornament print throughout this talk So I just wanted to be clear from the very beginning and that when I say ornament I mean the Western repertoire of patterns designs and motif for all designed objects from architectural facades and painted interiors to embroidered silks and silver teapots so there are hundreds of different passions motifs in the repertoire of ornament but Well-known examples might lead the cartouche or the Greek key pattern or trophies and This is basically a decoration or Adornment that doesn't increase an object's usefulness. It's superfluous But it's nonetheless added to make an object more beautiful and more interesting symbolic or simply arresting to get our attention for whatever reason and An ornament print or drawing is a printed or drawn design So the reason we study ornament prints and drawings is that they provide not just a history of design Informing and greatly enhancing our knowledge of the decorative arts, but the fine arts to and indeed the history of our civilization So Rafe Wernem who is keeper of the National Gallery in London in the mid 19th century and Russian important treaties on ornament Said that style and ornament was analogous to a person's handwriting. It was that individual He said that every age or nation has been distinguished in its ornamental expression By a certain individuality of taste either original or borrowed I'm going to be talking about the great task obviously This is a type of ornament or passion composed of interconnected motifs combining parts of foliage scrolls Strapwork plants animals real and imagined and human figures or masks all usually arranged in symmetrical composition so great tests were probably If you've read some of the exhibition text were popular chiefly between 1500 and 1800 in both Secular and ecclesiastical spaces, but really continue in use after and demise of the ornament print and drawing well into the 19th century and is still used by designers today So they can be said to have influenced centuries of design and throughout this entire period scholars have sought to define Understand and explain the great task So the title of my talk and I promise I will get to the content scene is Cowl cumbers and cornucopia, and I hope you'll indulge me But I've brought a little gift from London for the first person who can tell us what a cowl cumber is What's a cowl cumber? Mrs. Morse. No, I thought you were okay, right, okay Gosh does no no one has any suggestion or I handle you enough No, no, but you've got half of it actually. It's a cucumber, but I'll give you the prize anyway He was actually a much better answer my niece who's six years old. She thought it was a type of flower so done very well and so a cowl cumber is a cucumber and And of course from now on when you're having afternoon tea you have to ask someone to pass you the cowl cumber sandwiches But this phrase cowl cumbers and cornucopia comes from an important description of grotesque by the 17th century English writer Henry Peachham and he described the characteristic Components the grotesque as comprising goats eagles dolphins apes cornucopia's cowl cumbers and cherries And he noted that the greater variety you show in your invention the more you please and that you cannot be too fantastical So the cucumber I thought was an interesting component to the grotesque I puzzled over why should it be so prominent and Indeed when one looks at grotesque prints and drawings one does often find cucumbers hanging from scrolling vines So I thought why you know why was this it must be a combination of factors the plants bizarre Appearance and if you think of our combo those allegorical portraits of the seasons made up of fruit plants and vegetables The figure of summer has a small cucumber for a nose But there's also something vaguely sinister about the cucumber and that's brought home by some of the different names For cucumbers like the creeping cucumber the leaping cucumber and so it was while exploring this I discovered that cats are terrified of cucumbers and I'm not the only person who's worked this out The internet has discovered this as well So if you scan YouTube on the Sunday afternoon you'll find countless videos of cat owners Terrifying their poor pets by surprising them with the salad vegetable So you think having discovered this you wouldn't subject your poor cat to that But I was hoping that perhaps this was a dog audience Maybe you wouldn't mind wouldn't mind so much, but let's get back to the origins of the grotesque So I'd like you to picture the following scene Imagine that tomorrow in a corner of Central Park while constructors are working on say the Belvedere castle Excavating part of the site they uncover a subterranean series of rooms painted with elaborate and elegant patterns and Forms of decoration that we've never seen before in the middle of New York City This is essentially what happened in the late 15th century when the Domus Aurea or the Golden House Was discovered under the foundations of Hadrian's Baths next to the Colosseum in Rome This was an expansive pleasure palace probably around the size of Versailles With a network of other buildings and gardens with fountains and sculpture built for Emperor Nero There are actually some fantastic digital reconstructions of the palace online if you want to Look into it a bit more, but construction on the palace began in 64 AD However, it was never comprehensively completed and it was then destroyed 40 years later by Accident of fire with just one wing remaining So where the Colosseum is today if you've been to Rome and that was once a picturesque Man made lake laid out before the palace and it was drained to build the Colosseum and the surviving rooms That were under this were filled with earth to enable new buildings to be erected on top of the ruins So the underground site was actually wasn't identified as the Domus Aurea until the 19th century And at the time it was thought to be part of the Baths of Trajan that were built on top But the palace had been famous and it's time for its sumptuously painted and gilded interiors as you'd imagine with Nero Inset with precious stones and other costly materials and marble floors And what people found when they went underground in the story was that somebody actually fell into the hole And that was how they rediscovered them was an underground network of cavernous rooms with vaulted ceilings Painted with extraordinary grotesques. And so I'm showing you the slide which shows the octagonal vault in the Domus Aurea Which gives you a real sense of the subterranean feel and the different passages that lead off to different vaults and The people of Rome Communities of artists and foreign visitors came in great numbers to be lowered down into the spaces Which were cleared to explore the sequence of rooms and examine the paintings It became very much the fashion or activity people would even picnic there And at the point of discovery the paintings were much more vibrant than they are now and these slides that we see today And they were protected by their entombment and so now unfortunately, they're seeding their color and their fading But it's important to remember that when these were discovered Antique remains at this time during the 16th century were mostly fragmentary with few surviving examples of classical painting from this period and The contemporary understanding of the arts of antiquity was derived principally through extant sculpture So it's from the Domus Aurea that we actually derived the word grotesque the painted frescoes or murals on these walls We're given this name because of the enclosed rooms in which they were found Karote or what we would call Grotto meaning a cave or cavern a place of pleasant retreat The paintings themselves show these very elaborate painted compartments and tableau with architectural details You can see here in closing scenes from mythology Foliate scrolls and swags half human half animal figures grotesque masks all painted in this wonderful Polychrome palette of gold red black green and blue And it's very much this use of architectural panels or divisions and the interlacing of vines Or stem ornament that served to connect the whole composition Which is one of the most distinguishing features the grotesque and it's this and individual parts like masks grotesque masks and Beasts that artists over the centuries would extract and reprise independently over the following centuries So there were I should add that many painted interiors like this in patrician dwellings across ancient Rome But these ones from the Neuronian period in the Domus Aurea in particular were considered the height of production being the most extensive and fantastical So you can see here again this clear compartment Mentalization of the pattern different architectural structures within the composition Certain male and female figures and the vertical panels of scrolling foliage This is one that's actually in better condition and you can see the grotesque masks you can see from this vaulted ceiling the floating vignette and Then the one next to it is this Reconstruction that was produced in the 16th century and illuminated manuscript as Artists start to try and fill in the gaps and try and understand the parts that were missing in the designs try and recreate them So the importance of this discovery for the history of art and design Cannot be overstated because these grotesques would provide artists with a rich sea of inspiration to mine over the coming centuries And the grotesque really went on to become the foundation for most flat ornamental passion in the decorative arts right up until the present day With high points being the Renaissance or the Renaissance if you're American and the 18th century As we shall see artists generally put together their own variations So they took different parts from the grotesque and made them their own But it was really the fantastical and often humorous character of the grotesque that appealed to artists It was this slightly irreverent at times nonsensical mishmash of different figures and the distorted Gurning faces grotesque masks the sheer oddity of invented and sometimes terrifying looking beasts that appealed to them It was almost like a painted highly theatrical alternate world and in some ways it's been considered Anticlassical because it was subversive and mischievous but also immensely imaginative and so Irresistibly intriguing artists were struck by the way the grotesque could be used to decoratively fill and animate a space So from now on the grotesque was incorporated into lots of new designs and schemes and its origins and antiquity gave at this real Cache and an appealing pedigree but also the versatility of adding drama atmosphere and interest in the interior and The most famous arguably the most famous grotesque in the world to be inspired by the Domus Audea and Probably the pinnacle of all production Raphael's lodger in the Vatican Palace which are executed in 1517 to 19 to Raphael's designs and Painted by a group of artists and it was commissioned by Pope Leo the Tenth. So it includes some biblical scenes the lodger if you haven't been are a series of large covered arcaded galleries and They illustrate very much how the grotesque can be turned to this both secular religious applications So as you can see Raphael has employed the features of the Domus Audea grotesque But with a much denser arrangement and he used things like the candelabra motif together with trophies the Vitruvian Vitruvian scroll and interlaced not work But what was so wonderful about the lodgers that originally they overlooked a garden with a sweeping view towards Rome And they were open to the elements if you go now there's glass and that was put in the 19th century and Outside you have the paved St. Peter's Square as well, but you can imagine originally this Incredible experience of strolling through these galleries with fresh air and sunshine coming through as your surroundings Suggested this amazing indoor garden with a myriad of plants and little beasts This is also in the Vatican. This was Raphael's scheme for the logitre of Cardinal Bivegna And here I think probably more clearly you see the link to the grotesques of the Domus Audea These airy neuronian grotesques painted on a white ground with these colorful lower panels and the trompe l'oeil architectural details So these false niches here. Oh, I'm sorry everyone there we go and these false niches here which are Trompe l'oeil and painted statues representing the four seasons But Raphael's grotesques were particularly admired for this exceptional and naturalistic detail So this detail of the scrolling ransom from the plasters here Which I'd like you to remember because we'll see it again and shows a campus leaves small snakes rats and snails And you could say that Raphael went further than Domus Audea by perfecting grotesques He brought them to a greater state of refinement Incorporating a range of antique and medieval sources So medals baskets of flowers fruits still life strings of pearls etc And his use of cupolas as well which he took from the Domus Audea and then introduced domestic interiors in Rome So we should understand this kind of painted menagerie and The grotesque mass within the context of a growing contemporary interest in and understanding of the natural sciences So after Raphael's project throughout Italy in the 16th century there were many elaborate grotesque schemes modeled on his in Mantua Florence Padua Vicenza, etc But Raphael's lodger were absolutely pivotal in cementing the grotesque in the Renaissance ornamental repertoire So I'm showing you another example of wonderful grotesques the ceiling of the Palazzo Vecchio in Rome from 1555 to 1562 Which is painted with these amazing grotesque masks birds and foliage So these painted interiors were of course enormously impressive But of course very little used to you if you couldn't travel to see and absorb them And so knowledge of the grotesque was spread primarily through the very ornament prints and drawings that are lining the exhibition walls upstairs Here at the Cooper Hewitt as well as written or printed descriptions So ornament prints which reproduced drawn designs played a central role and from the mid 15th to 19th century They were the principal conduit through which artistic styles in Europe were born nurtured and disseminated As they were capable of being produced in such numbers Skilled printing for example from the copper plate yields potentially around 2000 prints 2000 impressions. They were also comparatively inexpensive not always but comparatively inexpensive light and portable And so they were capable therefore of being widely distributed or exchanged They enabled patterns designs and motifs to cross geographical and cultural borders faithfully documenting every detail of a style or fashion as it unfolded and Because more of them were produced more of them survive, which makes being a print curator wonderful And in my department, we have a million prints drawings and watercolours and other objects And so it can be quite difficult when you're a curator of that many prints But because they were widely copied as well by printmakers in different countries We can see what was popular where in Europe and at what time and how designs were spread. So They were printed and sold in single sheets or sets Which could then be bound together as a passion book and they were often loosely stitched together with threads So we have some at the V&A that still have their original stitching and sets very often came with a title page Which was like a puff. It was an advertisement for the set and it always stressed the novelty of the designs All the titles always say this is the new something something says the new the latest new Etc and advertise their intended application. So the wider the better and audience as well The wider the better so whether for amateurs or professionals Which types of craftsmen painters would carvers goldsmiths stone cutters carpenters armorers cutlers and brooders cabinet makers get the idea and Directions I have found could be astonishingly blunt So this was a time before savvy marketing techniques and one of the first pattern books to actually give an instruction as to how it was supposed to be used Was Heinrich Vogt the elder who's Kunstbücheln which was published in Strasbourg in 1537 He proclaimed he was trying to prevent artists from giving up and tiring and in his forward He said I Heinrich Vogt her have assembled an anthology of exotic and difficult details That should guide the artist who are burdened with wife and children and those who have not traveled and he went on to single out Stupid heads or idiots as the people who might particularly benefit from these Artists and designers use these prints Sometimes to directly transfer the patterns and we have some in the V&A that show the little holes from the pricking when you Go to and transfer it and the pricking and pouncing But the likelihood is that they are intended as a general source of imagination rather than a direct template and artists Adopted details and reconfigured them Many artists and ornamentalists built up large collections of these as a working collection So often one finds in probate inventories from artists or their workshops long lists of different ornament prints from all periods Not just designers who are working with decorative arts But painters and sculptors to so we've got at the V&A for instance ornament prints with prominent artists collectors marks like Joshua Reynolds He had ornament prints the an artist ignores Unterberger who was a V&A's neoclassical artist work in the 18th century Had ornament prints that were over a hundred years old in his collection that he was keeping and working from sorry everyone and So Nicolette O'Donmodern is great S Prince thought to be around the earliest ever produced and they were informed by his visit to the Dalmas area in around 1507 where he inscribed his name on one of the walls and Just to you know explain this many artists did this and the earliest inscription there dates from 1493 So he wasn't a vandal and you can see within this rectangular panel a very dense compact candelabra Arrangement of grotesque ornament Different elements from the set of four grotesque prints that Nicolette O produced have been identified as the source for decoration on Variously an architectural facade a design for a sword sheath a church epitaph and a myolica dish So this just shows you how flexible the grotesque was it could really be used on almost anything So this is an Italian myolica dish from about 1515 and it's covered with Grotesque decoration on a blue ground that very much resembles that produced by Nicolette O the central medallion depicts leader in the swan Yeah, and I had to remind myself about this I remembered the seduction of leader with Eda who's the wife of the king of sparta I remembered she was seduced by Zeus when he was transformed into the swan But what I had forgotten was that afterwards she laid two eggs from which one hatched among other children Helen of Troy pipe extraordinary So other early grotesque by Veneziano and van Leiden Influence the design of textiles ceramics and metalwork and we used on furniture and in interior schemes and their prints were often copied or appropriated by other printmakers in the 18th century interestingly and This is a portrait of the 16th century Nuremberg printmaker and publisher Virgil solace who produced grotesque and the reason it's so Interesting is that it Establishes him very much as a practitioner of these prints so you can see the initials for the artist you curate it and you Created Freudian slip. Sorry. You created the portrait here Baltas are yet again who worked for solace and actually assumed control of the business after his death But this portrait really shows us not just as a prosperous and successful businessman So he's well dressed and he wears a ring as well But also he's depicted as an engraver with his tools He has a burin in his right hand a sharpening stone and a double-ended etching needle before him on the table And in his other hand, he's offering a coffer Coffee plate that he has engraved and signed with his initials and you can see it's a design for a heraldic device We're in a scotch and with a knight's helmet, but if you look closely These sort of grotesque beasts French designer Jack Android you sir so produced a suite of 50 prints which are entitled little grotesque And they've become also known as little arabesque produced in 1550. You can see these are very faithful to those earlier Neuronian grotesque we saw with the spindly light area composition But increasingly in the second half of the 16th century grotesque became much more fantastical and bizarre Sometimes menacing, scatological and lewd and these are by Leonhard Thierry They're from a set of 12 male and female grotesque masks after the French artist Thierry Which are enormously popular as you can see the isolation of a single component of the grotesque here It's just the grotesque mask these very Slightly scary hollow mask like faces with headdresses formed of flowers and strap work But Franz Heiss goes further with his grotesque masks of 1555 to the distinctly comical He based his prints on original designs by Flores. He was Credited with inventing a Flemish version of the grotesque star in about 1541 A tiens de l'un. This is a design. This is a drawing rather than a print here Design for a breastplate from 1556 to 1559 and you can see the elegant grotesque that very clearly Influenced the decoration of this hilt on this early 17th century sword So Flores who I just mentioned was a Dutch sculptor and architect Credited with having invented an old and type of grotesque and he produced I think some of the most distinctive grotesque and Excused by professional engravers. They have this low country's feel. He incorporated strapped work But also dramatic chiaroscuro and these very ambiguous figures which creates quite an unsettling mood And I think appear almost early forerunners to the imagery of many modern science fiction films In Antwerp Hans Collight produced extraordinary designs for jeweled pendants Conceived to showcase new gems and bizarre shapes so-called baroque pearls So you'd think these would be impossible to realize so extraordinary are they but They were so it's pendants with the pearl and emerald salamander and this little figure riding a fish But some of the most unusual grotesques were created by Kosta Fjannetser who was born into a family of Nuremberg at Goldsmiths and He published his new grotesque and new grotesque book which contained 60 etched plates of grotesque and 1610 His amazing dedication compared his invention of these grotesque Columbus's discovery of America That's how proud he was of them the inscription on one of the title pages described this set is useful For everybody and for those who like art, but it won't be without result and those who don't like it may lump it The and this Plate here shows this bug market essentially where figures are buying these little grotesques They're buying little sort of foliate scrolls from this market here And you can see some of the other wonderful details here It's really kind of amazing sense of humor and here they're kind of digging through some of them being attacked by grotesque as well Yeah Grotesque the dangerous side of grotesques These are just some of the other really fanciful plates from it as well Some of my favorites and I see that Caitlyn chose to use some of the details of these by Wendell Dieterlin He was a German architectural painter these would just pure fantasy and not especially practical at all Designed to amuse really rather than necessarily to serve as a direct inspiration for a design They're just wonderful. I think Stefano de la bello see a very famous Italian painter and etcher I love these tumbling putty who are playing with and embracing a campus dogs and a campus scrolls And you can see this was much easier for craftsmen to adopt. They've used them as a Border in the 17th century English silver guilt salva so the grotesque was particularly popular for use in metalwork because Engraving for printmaking was developed from the practice of metalwork engraving and this portrait of Yuke Brieville There's this wonderful grotesque patterns around and in the distance charmingly just Maybe I'll see it a detail of the wrought iron gates that he'd designed He took clear inspiration from the grotesque of earlier ornamentalists like Venetianu and This sorry these are designs for locks and escutcheons So this is Brieville here and that's Venetianu so you can see the very direct influence there This is a portrait of the Goldsmith Louis Rupert which shows him with his tools and this wonderful vase of a campus leaves And he has a sheet that's bearing a campus ornament Demonstrating very much the centrality of the campus leaf to ornament the campus leaf being you know Obviously a central component to the grotesque and then we're coming to my favorites So if you're sleeping through is please wake up because I don't want you to miss this This is full of gangronomists from Burma I think for me these are probably my most favorite most favorite grotesque most favorite ornament prints in fact And he was a 17th century goldsmith again from Nuremberg who as far as we know We don't know very much about him at all. He created two suites of ornament prints That's to say that they are all that survive and have been identified and in the plates He composes these wonderful figures and animals entirely from one aspect of the grotesque the scrolls of the campus leaves and flowers So you have this wonderful rearing horse or cantering dueling figures a man sitting smoking a pipe or racing hair a Hound bouncing after a stag or this friendly lion And I noticed that the Cooper Hewitt chose their impression as an object of the day a few weeks ago And I fully support that I thought that was a wonderful choice So he expressly designed these for use by goldsmiths, and you can very easily imagine these little figures running around a dish or a cup But while the 16th century saw the rise of the ornament print during the 17th century the popularity and scale of Ornament prints and drawings grew radically as the grotesque evolved and permutated also became much more refined and lost some of its Pecan see so the Baroque style for instance which these grotesques are in began in Italy and spread throughout Europe It appears to have tamed very much the more provocative side of the grotesque that we've seen and rendered it much more formal and innocuous Grandsha was substituted for humor and irreverence of earlier grotesque. These are berin and Berin is hugely famous for his Work with Charles le Brun and the court of Louis the 14th and he's really synonymous with the French Baroque style And he was so prolific. He designed everything from sort of costumes and stage sets to tapestries, etc, etc furniture This is we think possibly a relative of the Jack Andreuil du Cerceau is so earlier This is Paul Andreuil du Cerceau He was an ornamentalist in Goldsmith who published over 20 suites of prints and many of them a grotesque in nature He used over and over again this scrolling foliage these wisps for foliate scrolls and this is a Green-figured silk in the V&A that I think is very close to some of his prints This is the papal apartment at Fontainebleau And I think it's a wonderful example of grotesque because you have these late 17th century grotesque tapestries Paired with this extraordinary renaissance painted grotesque ceiling for the time of Henri Dau We're moving into the 18th century now and I just wanted to show you this example of a trade card from a print seller in London because we have down the bottom here an Example of an ornament print that they were selling just to show you how Central again, this was to the commerce or the market at the time so in the 18th century, of course, you're all familiar with the different characteristics the Rococo and Grotto grotesque inspired in some ways because of the icicles the Sinuous sort of S curves all those sorts of things were in some ways very much indebted to the grotesque and this is a 16th century grotesque and This is an 18th century grotesque. So you have clearly here and This snail you're which is then Adopted and this snail vase and this Rococo one. I said I I said von Bermel my favorites But I do love these as well. This is Saint-Aubin and He was the designer of embroidering laced to the wardrobe of Louis the 15th He was an expert draftsman who also produced caricatures Characters actually informed by his experiences at court and he published a very famous book of embroidery designs called out of the embroiderer in 1770 he created two series of humorous ornament prints showing butterflies engaged in human activities and in this plate which is ex-user just after 1756 which is called the draft board low dem you he shows two insects who are very intent on their game of drafts the Anthropomorphism of animals for humorous ends is a trend that appears elsewhere in Rococo art But his choice of the butterfly was particularly adroit It was a satirical statement because with their beautifully patterned wings and their regular flight pattern the butterfly suggests the ostentatious splendor and Constancy of contemporary Parisian society with which the artist was so familiar Jean Piment was absolutely central to chinoiserie and again Chinoiserie as part of the Rococo is something again that's indebted to the grotesque Piment was born in Lyon This is one of his chinoiserie designs on the left and you may be familiar with Twelter jury and printed twelves that Incorporated much, you know as really this example is actually from a not textile Manufactory it's called panneurage on the island of lanterns and you can see again the how they correspond Cuvillier on the François de Cuvillier Created really the Bavarian Rococo style and he and produced these ornament prints for molded stucco ceilings by the By Cuvillier the execution of the designs can be seen In an 18th century hunting lodge built in the grounds of the Nymphenberg Palace the summer residents of the electors of Bavaria the most staggering new beautiful Confection in a wonderful series of rooms So this is the Hall of Mirrors cabinet and isn't it always the case that when you're trying to take a photo somebody steps Right into the frame. I couldn't believe it. I was the only person there and then this chat turns up and spoils my photo and So this is the Hall of Mirrors which was used for balls concerts and hunting banquets And it's covered from floor to ceiling with carved and welded silver arabesques on a blue ground a veritable explosion of ornament comprising putty different musical trophies but you call it trophies There's absolutely no sense of where the walls end you it's just like being engulfed or swallowed by ornament the neighbouring yellow room Just another example. It's it's really a phenomenal The neighbouring yellow room which was designed as a resting room if you can believe it is no less ornate In its carved Rococo silver panelling and that's the ceiling This is the Belvedere Hall of Grittes the Belvedere in Vienna Just another example of how even into the 18th century painted grittesque schemes continued And This is Chantilly as well This is the petite Saint-Gray the little monkey room which was decorated in the 1730s by Christophe Urette who was a famous animal painter And you can see Again here the same components the grittesque but in the 18th century arabesque with monkeys This is the Salon Chinois at the Chateau de Champs-Irmairne outside Paris It's an 18th century country house that was briefly the home of Madame de Pompadour And it has painted chinoiserie arabesque designed by Christophe Urette that overflowed onto the ceiling And the scenes show Chinese figures hunting fishing and gardening The room overlooks the chateau's expanse of formal gardens in the French style and once again You have these charming scenes of monkeys like this one with the monkey bird catcher with his net And this little cabinet is actually in the V&A now It comes from an 18th century Paris mansion that was designed in 1778 and it's thought it's a boudoir It's thought that the room was probably accessed through the garden. It was designed by Rousseau de la Retière Who did also the boudoir turque at Fontainebleau from Marie-Antoinette and a number of other boudoir turques these wonderful Grittes and I've included this boudoir from the hotel Crayon which is now at the mat designed by Pierre Adrien Paris in 1777 and 1780 And it reveals the very clear influence of Raphael So you remember I asked you to remember the ones the little the rats exactly. Thank you This you see here. They've been substituted for something slightly nice. So we've got mice here instead of rats But really exquisite And What continued to kind of propel the grittesque as well in the 18th century was the publication of Raphael's lodger So for the first time with hand coloring so you can imagine if you'd only ever seen it in black and white before To see this with this amazing grot hand coloring was just really extraordinary And then also publications of the Domus aria grittesque as well Which continued the popularity of them and I included because I must admit I'm rather partial to Unterberger these wonderful grittes at the very end of the 18th century and He produced the painted grittesque on the left and also the ornament print for it on the right And you can see the female figure comes directly from there and Moving into neoclassicism of course become much more refined This is a design for a ceiling by the English architect George Richardson who was renowned for his beautiful neoclassical ceilings There are several exquisite example of these in English stately homes today So Kettleston and andrey whose hall as well and he worked early on in his career for Robert Adam You can see that he's developed very similar aesthetic and palette Adam and his followers of course use the grittesque in their interiors and Adam had of course spent quite a bit of time in Rome and he reproduced some of his grittesques in the works of Architecture that he published he'd visited excavations for himself and artists continued to visit Raphael's lodger as well So Turner made a really beautiful study of the view from the lodger when he visited Rome in 1819 This is the continuation of grittesque in the Etruscan style And this is Adam's Etruscan room at Osterlie which was produced in 1770s And obviously is directly inspired by Pompey and wall paintings and that's a Truscan palette of black and red figure vases So in the 19th century with the demise of the ornament print, and I should explain that the print is really take with The sort of introduction of lithography and mass printing and photomechanical reproduction You see really the demise of the ornament print and it's supplanted by trade catalogs and those sorts of things So the ornament prints really come to an end But the grittesque continues and I thought I had to show Queen Victoria at some stage And this talk so here is this mint and encode dish with the silhouetted bust of Queen Victoria surrounded by grittesque But what's wonderful is that she's shown in renaissance dress with this renaissance crown to sort of make her happy in this kind of context in her home and She descended the throne in 1838 this was displayed in 1855 at the Paris exhibition So she was probably about 36 here and then Sorry, you've been subjected to all my favorites tonight for which I apologize This is this amazing nursery rhymes wallpaper that was designed by Walter Crane for Jeffrey which dates from 1876 He's adapted very clearly here the grittesque candelabra motif for a children's wallpaper and the figures you can all identify From different nursery rhymes. So we've got Humpty Dumpty. We've got Little Miss Muffet with a spider Little Jack Horner the cow and the dog from hey diddle diddle I was when I was thinking about some of these and not all of them are that familiar with to me So the frog from frog went to caution People okay, great and and then the mouse very like Raphael's rats again from the lodger little putty and then Queen Anne Down here handing out letters from the alphabet for Hasha by baby And I worked out this must have been because of the Queen Anne revival in the arts and crafts movement So that was probably the connection And so finally this is a mid 19th century block printed wallpaper which was supplied by Sanderson and Sons Again with those Raphael's grittesque rinceau. This amazingly would have boarded another wallpaper So this was the bourger and then you had something much more busy in the middle And it was a way of an economical way of imitating painted grittesque or frescoes or panelling in your rooms in your domestic home And I think it was probably these sorts of Victorian wallpapers that led Oscar Wilde to quip my wallpaper And I are fighting a duel to the death One or other of us has to go So After the Victorian age the flushes the grittesque can be discerned in the drama of art Nouveau and they were taken up also by surrealist artists But the study of ornament which was so central to Victorians They were so keenly cognizant of all its merits tends to have been given less emphasis by art historians today and Ornate rince became somewhat marginalized from the very subject. They were absolutely central to you. So when I You know started researching the 19th century study of ornament and then it's further Developments, I've decided that the blame must be squarely apportioned to the influence of Adolf loose I don't know if anybody's familiar with this Viennese architect and theorist. Yes, okay So he published in 1913 you will know ornament and crime which was yes Which famously described ornament as an epidemic He complained the urge to decorate one one's face and anything else within reach is the origin of the fine arts and His argument was that a highly evolved civilization no longer needs complex design That all the time and trouble taken by designers and craftsmen over such projects was really a waste of human labor Money and materials he believed the world should move beyond ornament and he said For me and with me all people of culture Ornament is not a source of increased pleasure in life When I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I choose a piece that is plain Not a sheet of peace shaped like a heart or a baby covered over and over with decoration I find the gingerbread tastes better like that So even loose had to concede in the end that he had thought by telling people they no longer needed ornament He would bring and I quote joy to the world But he found that the world and I quote has not thanked me for it People were sad and downcast So I think to end tonight. I have to say where would we be without pattern ornament or indeed without design I think this would be very disappointed to learn that contemporary design is still turned to the grotesque and vestiges of this ancient motif can be found in modern design today I have no doubt it will continue to be rediscovered and Re-invigorated for centuries to come. Thank you very much So I think we have a few moments for questions if anybody had any questions they wanted to pose Was Archimboldo inspired by grotesque prints or did he provide any inspiration for them? That's a really good question. And actually I've got some There's an artist or printmaker called Heinrich Goedig who produced ornament prints that are very similar to Archimboldo's grotesque sort of allegorical Portraits, so I think that's something that needs to be explored more But certainly he was working in that tradition of the bizarre the slightly fantastical. So it's great great question. Thank you Any of the political movements over time adopt any of the grotesque motifs Political movements from any political parties because they're so grotesque and any dictators Do you have anybody in mind in particular? Sure Mussolini Hitler well well the grotesque is a light to the caricature and The character obviously is used constantly into political ends. So I think you're absolutely right in that sense The grotesque is used constantly. Yeah. Thank you Hi, I wanted to ask in Florence Italy, there's a lot of grotesque motif. Did you explore anything about the Boba Lee Gardens? I love the Boba Lee Gardens and actually there's that wonderful dwarf on the tortoise I don't know if you saw did you see that sculpture in the in the gardens? You did. Yes, you did. Yeah, that's I mean I have to confess. I'm an 18th century person so Florence for me is a wonderful destination, but it's not necessarily my focus and but I Do you have something to add about things you've seen there in particular that you'd like to ask about or? Yes, yeah Florence they also have a Palazzo Vecchio as well That was the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Okay, so that was the original one. Yes. Yes That was well spotted and I mean actually there are any number of interiors I could have shown you from Florence other palazzo is across Italy to kind of show you paint a grotesque like But I had to kind of cut it down But but that's a very good point. Thank you I think we have time for one more question Just a quick question because I don't know very much about the grotesque, but you do not know Now I more or less do however, was there a purpose to the grotesque Periods, etc. And what was going on at that time? That's that is a great question actually and it's I'm afraid I I'm not going to be able to answer it very well because it's so complex and actually this is something that people write PhDs about What did the great And was there a sort of political purpose to it? Was it supposed to be subversive and I think What's certainly true is that over time it lost whatever bite it might have had and And if you look at some of the places that it's shown some of the interiors where great SCUs They were often places you wouldn't expect something provocative I mean the Vatican Palace is not somewhere you'd expect provocative statement to be made in the interiors So it's a really it's a really good question. That's very complicated to answer and I mean I think one could say that there's a general spirit of irreverence of It's it's liberating in a way. It was liberating for artists And it's certainly an undercurrent that's present in all design across all periods and if you think about and Gothic gargoyles for instance or Miseric wards, you know, that's exactly the same the same spirit and but Miseric wards are in churches Exactly, yes, absolutely and you know all those all those sorts of things you might mind. It's a fantastic example actually and So I'm afraid I can't answer your question satisfactorily, but I think it's a great question. So, yeah