Quotes About Nonutilitarian

Dress designates civility and quotidian order, as Watt insightfully observes, but ornament designates a category of dress that is marginal, excessive, and nonutilitarian (that is, unlike dress that is required by civil society).

In the past an artist produced things that were necessary socially; they were instruments, albeit of a special kind, that helped the dead reach eternity, spells to be cast, prayers to be liturgically fleshed. . . . The aesthetic component of those instruments enhanced their function but was never central, never an independent, nonutilitarian thing.