123Historically speaking, it was in the applied arts, the products of which were meant
for the court or the church, that there was a relation between the construction of an
object and its expressivity. Because of their lavish design these products—thrones,
altars, and pulpits—transcend their immediate usefulness: they emphasize the spir-
itual assumption behind building in which the earthly aspect is no more than symbolic
of another, heavenly world. This mode of perception has its relevance even in the
twentieth century: “Hence, this third aspect still exists between chair and statue,
perhaps even above the statue: ‘applied arts’ of a superior order; within it stretches
a genuine, transcending carpet of purely abstract form instead of the comfortable,
quasi-stale, purely luxurious carpet of daily use, assembled from resting-places.”^121
It is here that ornament has its place. The new ornament with its linear arabesque
design appears as a prelude, offering an alternative for the transcendent form of his-
torical ornamentation. The reference to a heavenly life is continued here in a secular
form, as the promise of a better future. For Bloch, ornamentation is always a token
of something else: the reference to another form of life is always imprinted in deco-
rative work—the utopian moment is indissolubly bound up with it, and it is here that
ornamentation gets its meaning.^122
In this text Bloch apparently is waging an implicit polemic with Adolf Loos. Al-
though Loos’s name is not mentioned, his criticisms are so clearly addressed to the
theses about ornament and the applied arts advocated by Loos that there is every
reason to assume that Loos was Bloch’s direct target here. While Loos states that
ornament in modern times is by definition false and even criminal, Bloch defends the
point of view that it is ornament above all that keeps the promise of a better future
alive. While Loos denounces the professors of the arts and crafts schools, whom he
accuses of being completely superfluous, Bloch is of the opinion that it is the applied
arts that make life tolerable, precisely because they offer a counterbalance for the
coldness that emanates from technical objects and appliances.
Bloch’s opinion of the new architecture has by no means been watered down
by 1935 when he publishes Erbschaft dieser Zeit. He is particularly critical of it be-
cause it offers an outward pretense of rationalism, while society itself continues to
develop according to the old models. The rationality of the New Objectivity is lacking
in any concrete revolutionary potential, and for this reason it fits in perfectly with the
capitalist mode of thought. The defenders of functionalism, who imagine that they
can see the form of a future society in every sliding window, are profoundly mis-
taken. They exaggerate the impact of the purity and functionality of the New Build-
ing and do not see that hygienic dwelling has more to do with the taste of a young
fashion-conscious bourgeois public, than with any desire to achieve a classless soci-
ety. Apparently they do not notice that the absence of ornament is itself a decorative
style; still less do they realize that the new estates that are built according to func-
tional design principles often condemn their residents to live like termites.
For all these reasons, Bloch felt that the New Objectivity had no potential
legacy to offer any future socialist society. It was in fact so much bound up with a
bourgeois capitalist lifestyle that it was quite unsuited to designing a new society:122