Blog assignment 4

Tattooing has been a tribal custom of the coastal people of Papua New Guinea for a long time.   When girls turned a certain age they would get certain tattoos, on different parts of their body, according to how old they were.  Many of the tattoo motifs were passed down through the generations and the above image shows a tattoo being created from the hand-tapping technique.  Unfortunately, information on most tattoo motifs was lost by the time World War 2 commenced.  Modernism and the removal of ornament was largely to blame.

In Adolf Loos essay "Ornament and Crime" he argued that "The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use." He used the example of the Papuan, saying they hadn't evolved to the moral and civilized circumstances of modern man and that because they tattoo themselves that they're considered criminals or degenerates.
I disagree with him.  He may have been right that "the lack of ornament results in reduced working hours and an increased wage" which may have benefited some people.  But it also resulted in the loss of the tribal custom of the Papuan people and "robs [cobblers] of his pleasures as [Loos] had nothing else to replace them with".  I'm sure that there were several other examples of loss of tradition, designs and pleasures that were the result of this too.  Therefore I don't believe that ornamentation should have been removed from objects of daily use and that it is synonymous with the evolution of culture. Although I do believe that Loos and those who agreed with him, were entitled to their own opinions. But ornamentation should have been designed along side with form, letting the people chose, resulting in the happiness of everyone and the loss of nothing.