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 understand the elements and principles of design, particularly those used in applied and commercial art works, to use their terminology when making and analysing art, and to understand visual arts conventions. 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 demonstrate an understanding of the elements and principles of design, particularly those used in applied and commercial art works, and use terminology related to these elements and principles when creating and analysing art works […]
- C2.2 demonstrate an understanding of various visual arts conventions […] as they relate to the production of applied and commercial art work
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 says it reached the Christian countries of Europe from Islamic Spain in the late fifteenth century, where it was known as moresque and became fashionable in the first half of the sixteenth century. The article names Hans Holbein among the artists who brought it to Germany, and says that other artists imitated it, mainly in pattern-books for jewellers and armourers, such as the Livre de moresques printed in Paris in 1546. 2
How do we know?
The names of the artists who introduced the arabesque to Italy and France cannot be read reliably in the copy of the article the museum used, so the record leaves them out. 2 What the record can name is Holbein in Germany and one printed example, the Livre de moresques of 1546. 2 A full list of the artists would have to be checked in the article itself.
Think about it
Pattern-books let a design leave the building where it began and be copied by jewellers and armourers. Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: is a pattern copied into a pattern-book the same design as the one on the building?
Into the museum
- Arabesque: its journey from Islamic Spain to Europe, and what came before.
- Al-Andalus: Islamic Spain, from which the article says the arabesque reached Christian Europe.
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