Yet during the twentieth century, ornament was scorned (Adolf Loos famously called it "crime") and its study all but eliminated from art and architecture curricula. What happened - and must we live with the result? Is ornament dead?".

A celebration of renowned sculptor and educator Kent Bloomer's work, examining the role of ornament in contemporary architecture and society Best known for New York's Central Park luminaires (1982), the ornamentation at Rice University's Baker Hall in Houston (1997), and his work on Yale University's Bass Library entrance pavilion and Sterling Memorial Library stairwell entrance (2007), the sculptor Kent Bloomer (b. 1935) has not only influenced the discussion around ornament in contemporary architectural practice, but has inspired developments in a range of disciplines that include history, music, art, philosophy, and biology. With a retrospective look at Bloomer's work as a point of departure, scholars from a variety of different fields explore his contributions to the history of ornament as both a social and an artistic phenomenon. Through the lens of Bloomer's groundbreaking oeuvre, this volume reorients the discourse of ornament from a contentious vestige of modernity toward its active relationship to architecture, landscape, urbanism, and a sense of place. Distributed for the Yale School of Architecture

How ornamentation enables a direct and immediate encounter between viewers and art objects Based on universal motifs, ornamentation occurs in many artistic traditions, though it reaches its most expressive, tangible, and unique form in the art of the Islamic world. The Mediation of Ornament shares a veteran art historian’s love for the sheer sensuality of Islamic ornamentation, but also uses this art to show how ornament serves as a consistent intermediary between viewers and artistic works from all cultures and periods. Oleg Grabar analyzes early and medieval Islamic objects, ranging from frontispieces in Yemen to tilework in the Alhambra, and compares them to Western examples, treating all pieces as testimony of the work, life, thought, and emotion experienced in one society. The Mediation of Ornament is essential reading for admirers of Islamic art and anyone interested in the ways of perceiving and understanding the arts more broadly.