Alois Riegl: Ornament and History – The Edgar Wind Journal

David Castriota
Department of Art History, Sarah Lawrence College
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3701-8253

Volume 10, April 2026

Abstract Among the many groundbreaking theoretical and methodological innovations that Alois Riegl contributed to the modern discipline of Art History, one of the more original and perhaps unexpected was his effort to foreground the role of ornamental or decorative arts within the larger context of artistic production. Riegl understood ornament or decorative art to be an integral component or facet of all artistic production, one that shared the same aesthetic principles, the same underlying qualities of formal structure, organization, and taste discernible in painting, sculpture or architecture, despite any differences in medium, technique, scale or content. Although his scholarly trajectory came to encompass various areas, Riegl’s initial publications were on textiles and carpets produced in the Near East and Egypt, and they appear to constitute the earliest discussions of such works as historical objects. Riegl’s Altorientalische Teppiche boldly attempted to trace the origins of Islamic carpet weaving and its ornamental design repertory back into the art of the ancient Near East. Riegl would then apply this notion of historical continuity more broadly to ancient and medieval decorative arts across the Mediterranean and western Asia in his study Stilfragen, where again he demonstrated such continuity across various media. Later, in Die spätrömische Kunst-Industrie he would develop the concept of Kunstwollen to show how late Roman decorative or ornamental arts manifested the same new visual properties discernible in various other media, to explain the artistic transformations of late antiquity as a positive development. While not restricting himself to the study of ornament, Riegl nonetheless returned constantly to this theme, which surely held a special place in his intellectual outlook, and quite probably in his own personal taste. But above all he strove constantly to situate the appreciation of ornament within a larger historical continuum.

Keywords Alois Riegl, Ornament, History

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