Reading Response: Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh: Ornament and Pattern.

Patterns affect us humans; neurological, philosophical, and cultural.  Neuropsychologist Oliver Sacks speculates that optical migraine hallucinations—frequently patterned like oriental carpets—offer a window on the dynamics of our nerve cells. As a kid and even to this day, I would stare at any random or even symmetrical pattern and I would see different shapes and forms that were not intended. This would remind me of the Rorschach tests. I believe it to be neurological because its as if my brain wants to make something of it. We are complex beings, we like to find meaning in things. And when artists and designers use ornament to translate their perceptions into artifacts or places, that ornament becomes an extension of their worlds; as the philosopher Gianni Vattimo suggests, an extension into other possible worlds. Pattern even relate to culture and language because they tell stories. They need to be read/ studied, whether carved on the walls of the Alhambra in Spain or stitched into the pattern of an American quilt, traditional ornament was meant to engage the mind through the eye. 

Patterns and ornaments of design change over the years just like other types of art. Handcrafted decorations were too expensive so using machines in mass production was able to reduce to cost. The  issue of the machines is that the  ornaments they are making were now being recognized as poor taste or lower class. With ornament losing the caché of exclusivity and social refinement, new signs of prestige were needed to announce ‘good’ taste and wealth. They would arrive in the form (and forms) of modernism. The term "Postmodern" begins to make sense if you understand what "Modernism" refers to. In this case, "Modernism" usually refers to Neo-Classical, Enlightenment assumptions concerning the role reason, or rationality, or scientific reasoning. Postmodernism basically challenges those basic assumptions. So modernism is that new should replace the traditional.I believe we are in a modernism art age. I believe this because there are a lot of people that are taking the arts to a technological level, instead of the traditional paper and pencil.