That's not really true. Gold is used in decoration because it's expensive. i.e., it's use as a status symbol derives from its costliness primarily, not the other way around.
Aluminium had a similar status, at one point it was used for decorating the most fancy things, it was a show of wealth and power and more expensive than gold or silver. If you had aluminium cutlery, you were the bomb. Then they were able to produce aluminium cheaply, instead of mine the small amounts that naturally exist. It became dirt cheap, and thereby lost its status.
Was it any less decorative? No. The cutlery still looked the same. It became uninteresting to use aluminium not because it became ugly, but because it became cheap.
Same with gold. Yes we sorta-kinda like shiny things, but we don't like the gold apple watch the best because we like the tacky golden color so much, we like it because we all know it's expensive. There are lots of pretty metals, pretty colours etc, it's not what gives gold its value.
Of course gold isn't useless, it has industrial applications and indeed artistic applications as you mention. But what is clear as day, is that it trades at a value that far exceeds this use, at a value that can't be explained by its functional utility alone.