Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to use the right terms for the elements and principles of design when you make and analyse art works, and to understand several conventions used in visual art works. The museum offers one Islamic case: the arabesque, described by an art historian in terms of surface and shape. The design terms themselves and your own analysis are for your class. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- C1.1 use appropriate terminology related to elements and principles of design when creating and analysing art works […]
- C2.2 demonstrate an understanding of several conventions used in visual art works […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
Which term from class describes what the record says?
Take one sentence of the record and replace its description with a design term from your class. Ask what the term keeps and what it loses.
What is the convention, and what would break it?
State in one line the habit a maker follows in the case. Then sketch a piece that breaks it, and say what a viewer would notice.
Go deeper
The Encyclopaedia of Islam article on the arabesque follows a definition by the art historian Alois Riegl: the arabesque is a particular and exclusively Islamic form of denaturalised vegetal ornament, made of shoots of split or bifurcated leaves on inorganic tendrils. The leaves may be flat or curved, pointed, round or rolled, smooth or rough, feathered or pierced, but they are never isolated and always remain joined to the stalk, as an addition or a terminal. The stalk itself may be undulating, spiral or interlaced, passing through the leaf or issuing again from it. 2
Often misunderstood
The word arabesque is sometimes used more widely. The article says that for a long time art literature used the term for several kinds of typical Islamic ornament, vegetal, calligraphic and even figural, and that the first edition of the encyclopaedia, in an entry by Herzfeld, still took this wider view. The present article gives the word a narrow meaning: a stylised, non-naturalistic vegetal design built from leaves that grow out of stalks. 2
How do we know?
The definition above is Riegl's, and the article adds a judgement of its own. It holds that the name is justified, because the invention of this ornament was certainly the outcome of a particular Arab attitude, with parallel developments in Arabic poetry and music. The museum's record notes that this is the article's own judgement. 3 The article adds that the Arabic term tawrik implies a description restricted to foliage and survives in the Spanish word ataurique, which Spanish authors commonly use for the genuine arabesque in Riegl's sense. 3 Which part is a definition, which a judgement and which the history of a word is for the reader to sort out.
Think about it
Which use of "arabesque" would you teach in a design class: the narrow one, in which leaves always stay joined to the stalk, or the older and wider one, and what is the strongest argument against your choice?
Into the museum
- Arabesque: the definition, the principles and the origins.
- Samarran stucco styles: where Yeomans sees the genesis of the arabesque.
- The Mosque of Ibn Tulun: where that stucco survives in place on the soffits of the arches.
Try this
Read Arabesque. Describe one pattern in five lines, using the design words from your class.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Arabesque have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
The arabesque and the surface. Yeomans traces the Islamic arabesque to Samarra style B, where leaves and palmettes lose their stems and are organised into the surface geometry of polygons and polylobes. In his view the vegetal arabesque is stylised and two-dimensional, respecting the surface, unlike closed, naturalistic Graeco-Roman ornament. Which words from your own list for line, shape and pattern would you use to describe the difference?
I can now