by Marco Lazzarato
“Truly, Caesar, I have always thought that, of all the words in the latin language, none has so wide a signification as this word that you have just used. Of course the man whom we call ‘tactless ‘ seems to me to bear a title derived from his want of tact, and this is most amply illus trated in our ordinary conversation, inasmuch aswhosoever fails to realize the demands of the occasion, or talks too much, or advertises himself, or ignores the prestige or convenience of those with whom he has to deal, or, in short, is in any way awkward or tedious, is described as tactless.”
(Cicero, De Oratore, II, 17)
According to Cicero, decorum is synonymous with propriety and moderation, and defines what is appropriate in any given circumstance. Although common sense identifies decorum (and the corresponding adjective, decorous) with beauty and beautiful, this is a misunderstanding because beauty is an inherent quality of an object, while decorum indicates the relationship between an object and its context. The respective opposites are also different. The opposite of beautiful is ugly and describes what is graceless or disproportionate. In contrast, the opposite of decorous is indecorous, which describes what is inappropriate or inadequate in a given situation. Something can be beautiful in itself but indecorous in that particular context.
The appropriateness addressed by Cicero in De Oratore concerns language used in public. The Latin term ars oratoria (or ars dicendi) refers to speeches delivered during political and judicial debates, as well as celebratory orations. This paper, however, focuses on artifacts in the broadest sense: from architecture to everyday objects to clothing. A specific art has always been concerned with bringing decorum to these artifacts, borrowing its name from decorum itself: Decoration. Decoration performs the same eminently public function in the figurative realm as the ars oratoria does in the rhetorical realm. The notion of decorum is the pillar on which both are based. Therefore, we can correctly define Decoration as “the art that deals with the decorum of artifacts”.
The arts of Painting and Sculpture operate under the statute of poetics and enjoy the freedom to create new and unexpected forms. Decoration, on the other hand, operates under the statute of ethics, and its purpose is civic virtue. In other words, it employs new forms generated by other art forms or traditional forms from its own repertoire to render objects and spaces suitable for civil life. Virtue, in turn, is the right balance between excess and deficiency, which are considered vices. Civil virtues encourage proper conduct within the civitas by educating citizens to maintain virtuous relationships between private and public life.
Decorum is the foundation of community life and the catalyst bringing a community together. Convenience, moderation, opportunity, and appropriateness are not based on calculation or individual interest but on a common need. This need is founded on mutual respect for functions, roles, and people. Decorum lies at the intersection of law and morality without belonging to either. The state establishes what constitutes a crime, and religion establishes what constitutes a sin. Contravening decorum does not risk imprisonment in earthly life or punishment in the afterlife; however, this does not mean that the consequences are negligible.
Returning to artifacts, it’s true that you can furnish your home however you like. For example, you could use fruit crates as chairs. However, when entertaining guests, the issue of decorum arises with all its urgency. A castaway on a desert island or a farmer in his tool shed can sit on a fruit crate because no one else will ever sit on it. However, citizens who are part of civil society (that is, who live in a social context where they must interact with their fellow human beings) are subject to constraints of opportunity and appropriateness, or decorum, even in their private lives, on pain of marginalization. Nothing happens at that moment if guests are seated on fruit crates, but it’s clear that the “charity case,” as it’s now called, is unlikely to obtain public office, work contracts, or positions of responsibility. Social life or death, with all that it entails, is primarily played out on decorum.
When it comes to the decorum of artifacts and the art that should deal with il, it’s important to remember that we are all heirs to rationalist culture, even today. During the 20th century, this culture subjected every productive sector to the motto “form follows function,” reducing anything that did not conform to this rigid cause-and-effect relationship to mere tinsel. This theory seemed convincing until the prophets of the new functionalist religion found themselves having to deal with the scandal of car bodies. They had just celebrated the industrial casing as a metal shell designed to cover mechanical parts and therefore completely devoid of embellishment. Cars, the symbol par excellence of triumphant progress, have always been characterized by diverse and even opposing shapes for the same function: sometimes resembling drops of water, rockets with rear fins, smooth bars of soap, or angular boxes.
Setting aside ideological dogmas, what function determines an object’s final form? Let’s try to find out. Every artifact arises from a specific need, and a general function defines its typical form. For instance, pounding requires a hard, heavy body. Attaching it to a handle makes the operation safer and more comfortable. Once the general function of an object, such as a hammer, has been established, its specific function is defined. That is, different heads and handles are made depending on the type of pounding required. This results in hammers for bricklayers, carpenters, and goldsmiths.
According to rationalist-modernist doctrine, the shape of the hammer is defined by its head. In fact, until fifty years ago, hammer heads were sold wrapped in wax paper, and customers provided their own handles. However, today’s experience tells us otherwise. If you need to hammer nails, for example, any retailer will offer a wide selection of hammers with the same type of head but with handles that are decorated in different colors, materials, and shapes. The simple, wax-paper-wrapped hammer head no longer exists. These diversifications are not justified by the general function of pounding or the specific function of what and how to pound, but rather by the civil function of the plurality of versions and designs of the same product available on the market. Therefore, the civil function – the function that determines the final form of an artifact – is responsible for solving the problem of decorum.
Today, selling a hammer head wrapped in wax paper would be inappropriate. In the eyes of the customer, a craftsman who shows up for a home repair with a hammer whose handle is made of recycled wood would be seen as unprofessional, which would have negative consequences in terms of credibility and remuneration. Beauty is an intrinsic quality of an object, whereas decorum is a quality that an object assumes in relation to a specific social circumstance in which it must play a role. Coincidentally, there are hammers that are “seen” only by those who use them. For example, mosaic hammers are still sold today wrapped in wax paper and without handles.
Twentieth-century culture denied the civil function, or rather failed to recognize it as distinct from the function of the artifact itself. In this context, the civil function of an artifact was identified with its functionality, i.e., its cost-effectiveness and convenience for the manufacturer, as well as its practicality for the user. The industry produced that commodity in ever-increasing quantities, allowing consumers to purchase it at ever-lower prices. Any intervention inspired by the idea of decorum was dismissed as tinsel – useless, expensive, and bourgeois. However, the cost of modern functional objects soon became so high that only the wealthy bourgeoisie, who wanted to celebrate themselves through them (effectively relegating them to pure decoration), could afford them.
When transferred from the private to the public sphere and from small objects to buildings, this purely ideological ethical reversal fueled the belief that modern, rational architecture should provide exclusively quantitative, performance-based solutions. If a barn was intended to house a certain number of quadrupeds and an apartment building a certain number of bipeds, the question became simply one of designing suitable spaces for each. In the 1980s, Postmodernism recognized the critical factors inherent in this model but failed to provide a solution. Meanwhile, the limitations of Functionalism, which had become Minimalism, were evident. However, once the initial enthusiasm faded, the postmodernist “free-for-all” proved to be an unworkable hypothesis in the medium and long term, as demonstrated by the current crisis in Contemporary Art. Excess is a vice, and modernist rigor was undoubtedly one, but the opposite excess – the postmodernist “everyone does as they please” (now sadly become “everyone does as they can”) – is just as much so. Virtue stands in the middle and lies in doing what is right. But what is right when it comes to artifacts, and for whom is it right ?
Therefore, decorum is not an inherent quality of an object, but rather a quality it assumes in relation to a specific social interaction. We experience this every day when we choose appropriate clothing for different situations, such as work, ceremonies, or leisure. The need for decorum always arises from a specific social obligation. For example, anyone will happily wear an old, indecorous tracksuit in their own home, considering it more comfortable and functional. However, while we can decide what to wear or how to behave on a case-by-case basis, when it comes to an artifact, whatever it may be, the choice must be made in advance, and once made, it will be almost impossible to change it.
This observation highlights an initial difficulty: in the arts and manufacturing sector, the idea of decoration derives from an a priori assessment, which determines the final form and intrinsic quality of the product to be manufactured. This predictive work is usually associated with issues of taste and its fluctuations, but it is actually something quite different. Consider clothing: if the occasion calls for a jacket, then a jacket it must be. Color, fabric, cut, etc., will then be chosen based on taste and its variables. In other words: decorum (or, in the case of clothing, the basic rules of etiquette) sets the boundaries within which one can freely apply one’s own criteria of taste, translating them into specific choices; any transgression would render those criteria and choices invalid.
Hence the problem of virtue, and of fairness and moderation, which are its salient features. Excessive prudence leads to conformism; on the contrary, excessive recklessness leads to annoying petulance. Doing what is right means respecting boundaries, or at most stepping outside them and back in again with discretion. If, by winking at the two extremes, we risk stumbling now into the banal, now into the annoying and unnecessarily strange, then the virtuous object (decorous in substance because it respects the boundary line; innovative in form because it is capable of intelligent and well-measured infringements) lies halfway between the two. But what boundaries does decorum actually set, and to whom does it apply?
The idea of decorum does not adhere to a universal, abstract criterion; rather, it responds to specific circumstances and practices. We experience these circumstances and practices firsthand every day when we get dressed, but we are only really aware of them in sporadic cases, such as when we have to attend ceremonies or interact in different social contexts. Since it is not possible to change clothes in the case of artifacts, establishing which idea of decorum to refer to becomes fundamental before any design idea is considered. We then find that the boundaries drawn by decorum often align with administrative and cultural boundaries, dividing the world into geopolitical areas.
The idea of decorum in arab countries differs from that of the former soviet republics and is opposed to that of anglo-saxon countries. The division is not only horizontal but also vertical: within the same country, for example, the need for decorum among the urban middle class differs from that of the economic or political oligarchy. These are well-known dynamics that are difficult to account for because they are heavily influenced by evolving tastes, which, like a river in flood, are constantly shifting their course. But while fashions and trends can be appreciated and understood through magazines, trade fairs, and travels, decorum is something different because, although it is not indifferent to fashions, it actually deals with excess and defect, with weights and measures that, in relation to fashions themselves, define what is convenient and appropriate.
Decorum implies responsibilities that are always direct and cannot be delegated. While one can passively submit to fashion out of necessity or conformism, the manner and degree to which one does so result from strictly individual assessments that cannot be delegated. As we have seen, conformism can degenerate into banality, and nonconformity into annoying petulance. The poetics of the individual artist serve as a compass to find the right balance between these extremes and are the only guide to lawful transgression. Convenience and moderation are ethical limits that artists consciously set for themselves. They take the civil function that the work must fulfill as a reference, not their own personal creative horizon tinged with more or less narcissism. Decorum is an opportunity for dialogue among citizens interested in the common good, and not a diktat worthy of a servile condition, as a certain pseudo-revolutionary narrative, typically of the 20th century, would have us believe. Opportunity and appropriateness are the real, ultimate parameters for judging works conceived not as private, personal expressions but as common, public heritage.
Homepage: Marco Lazzarato, Il fiume (The River), decorative frieze on reinforced concrete wall, 2025, silicate water-based paint, total length 1 x 30 m, Toscanella di Dozza, Bologna (photo credits Enrico Maria Davoli).
Below: a moment during the realization of "Il fiume" (photo credits Fondazione Dozza Città d'Arte).
