wall, body, space

[catmint11]

Cecile takes a contemporary approach in design jewellery that well-illustrates her inspirations in life experience through the fascinating and adventurous forms of jewellery. Her jewellery are redefined for the present-day world, with contemporary design concepts, any materials are used according to expression of ideas, with new technology applied in jewellery making, jewellery design are considered to go with body form, and body as means of expression. As she says, "painting is for wall, sculpture is for space, jewellery is for body." And "form follows
expression."


A friend of mine told me to put "the" infront of wall, and "the" infront of body.

the sentence should be "paining is for the wall, sculpture is for space, jewellery is for the body."

May I know is it correct to put "the" and if yes, why we should put "the" infront of these words, and why don't we use "the space" ?

Could anyone help?..Thanks!

 

[Old Novice]

I think this is a hard question because the original sentence might be intended to be specific, in which case several "the"s have been omitted, or abstract, in which case at least some of the "the"s are optional.

If you have a specific painting, sculpture, and piece of jewelry in mind, you need a "the" in front of both "painting/sculpture/jewelry" and "wall/space/body".

If you are speaking in the abstract, about the categories "painting/sculpture/jewelry", I think your (?) ["A of mine"?] is correct that you would normally put "the" in front of "wall" and "body", but not "space". "The wall" and "the body" can refer either to a specific wall and body or to walls and bodies in general. "The space" always refers to a specific space, and so would not go with the abstract meaning in this interpretation.

As a matter of style, you might also skip the "the"s in front of "wall" and "body", to emphasize that you are speaking very abstractly, but this would be unusual and probably should not be attempted until you are very fluent in English.