Arabesque is an ornament that appeared in the Middle Ages on the territory of the Islamic East. In the intricate interweaving of the pattern, sacredness, mathematics and art are harmoniously connected. The arabesque, the photo of which is presented below, adorned almost any surface. The walls and vaults of mosques were covered with such patterns, they were woven in the process of weaving carpets, they were placed on jewelry and ceramics. Arabesque, having reached its peak in the East, conquered Europe as well. During the Renaissance, famous craftsmen used it to create their masterpieces.

Features of Islamic art

In the East, special conditions have developed for the development of ornament. The Koran forbade the depiction of animals and people. The Prophet Muhammad tried to protect the people from the possibility of turning to pagan beliefs with a similar law. This rule is especially strictly observed to this day when decorating religious objects and buildings.

The emergence and development of arabesque was a kind of response to such a ban. All the imagination, all the talent of the masters poured into the creation of bizarre patterns that combine plant elements and calligraphy. The latter, by the way, became a kind of replacement for icon painting. Quotes from sacred texts, written in various calligraphic styles, adorned the books and walls of mosques. Often, in addition to them, arabesques were drawn, with their curves and curls similar to beautiful and bizarrely curved letters.

Oriental arabesque as geometric art

The ban on the depiction of living beings led to the fact that the masters of the Islamic East turned to geometry. Arabesque is an ornament consisting of repeating elements intertwined with each other and diverging in different directions. It is characterized by a clear rhythm, verified with mathematical precision. Arabesque has become the embodiment of geometry in art.

A separate element was a complete and complete pattern. Each next gracefully intertwined with the previous one, repeating it and at the same time creating something new. The ornament could end at any moment - its integrity did not suffer from this. This property contributed to the widespread use of arabesques. walls, ceilings and vaults, fabrics, carpets, metal and clay products.

Peculiarities

Arabesque arabesque, despite its geometric precision, was not boring. The mathematical approach did not deprive the ornament of its artistic value. Arabesques contained both geometric and plant elements. Flowers, buds, stems and leaves intertwined to create a solid carpet or leave room for a new pattern. A distinctive feature of Islamic visual arts is the so-called fear of emptiness. The ornament covered the surface, leaving no room for the background. This feature reflects the religious beliefs of Muslims about the "fabric of the universe", endlessly continuing and without end.

Arabesque as a meditative image

Arabesque is a rhythmic and mesmerizing ornament. When looking at repeating patterns, it's easy to drown in this sea of ​​intertwining patterns. Therefore, the arabesque is a wonderful tool for meditation. It scatters attention in a special way, making you forget about the bustle of the outside world and plunge into the inner world. Ornament was often part of the interior decoration of mosques. Here, its meditative function helped to focus on prayer, forgetting about earthly affairs.

Arabesque in Europe

During the Renaissance, ties between Europe and the United States increased significantly. Along with many other knowledge from Muslim countries, the artistic achievements of the East also came here. Arabesque has become an element of the visual arts of Europe. It was used in his creations by Leonardo da Vinci. The master devoted a fair amount of time to drawing intricate patterns.

Ornaments similar to arabesques are also present on and on Raphael. Many masters of the Renaissance and later periods drew inspiration from the patterns that covered Muslim art objects.

An inexhaustible source of creativity

Arabesque (photos are given in the article) fascinates both contemporary artists and masters of the last century. Modernists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries also turned to it. Aubrey Beardsley, who lived and worked at the end of the nineteenth century, was inspired by arabesques. Geometry in the form of graceful ornaments was also beloved by the Danish graphic artist M.S.Escher.

Today, the arabesque is a pattern that is still popular. Nowadays, this name is most often denoted by the same name. Geometric pattern is called "moreska". Ornaments reminiscent of medieval arabesques can be found on wallpaper and in the decoration of buildings, in the works of graphic artists and artisans. They are the inspiration for contemporary interior designers and fashion designers, jewelry makers and decorators.

Zentangle and doodling, fashionable today in the visual arts, are vaguely reminiscent of Arab mosques and carpets dotted with ornaments. It is not difficult in our time to find fabrics that fascinate with their patterns. The intricate interweaving of floral patterns, subject to a single rhythm, is nothing more than the same arabesque, rooted in the distant Middle Ages. We can safely say that now this ornament has become an integral part of world art, while remaining at the same time a characteristic feature of the culture of Muslim peoples.

Arabesque is a complex oriental ornament consisting of floral, calligraphic and geometric elements. It is especially widespread in Muslim art for a number of specific reasons. According to the canons of Islam, the only creator of all living things can be Allah, competing with whom is a great sin.

The Prophet Muhammad believed that worshiping images of people or animals could return believers to the pre-Islamic practice of serving various manifestations of the material world, alienating them from God. They put a taboo on anthropomorphic images, but a new form of art appeared, completely based on mathematical forms and geometric shapes.

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The popularity of geometry in the countries of the East is another reason for the emergence of the cult of ornament. Despite the fact that some art historians argue that the appearance of this style was accidental, historical notes claim the opposite. So, in a scroll recently found in Istanbul's Topkapi Palace, 114 geometric patterns for painting walls and vaults were discovered, developed by a Persian architect in the late 15th - early 16th centuries.

It is interesting that the arabesque is one of the few artistic manifestations that contribute not to focusing on the image, but to scatter it. Such abstraction causes a kind of self-hypnosis, designed so that a believer can free his thoughts from worldly affairs.

Arabesque is built on the articulation and multiplication of one or more fragments of a pattern, moreover, the movement of patterns can be stopped or continued at any point without violating its integrity.

Most often this is a grid of decorative motifs of a geometric and plant character.

Sometimes the ornament also includes inscriptions made in canonized fonts: "Kufic", rectangular Arabic letters and cursive handwriting - "naskh". It is noteworthy that the recesses in the drawing were usually painted in blue or scarlet colors, and the more prominent places were covered with gilding, which added brightness and volume to the entire composition.

The almost complete absence of a background with such a dense filling of space with patterns is half-jokingly called by European art critics "the fear of emptiness." Eastern theologians also call it "the ever-continuing fabric of the Universe."

Arabesques can be found everywhere - from places of worship to books and household items. Calligraphers themselves often call the ornament similar in rhythm and imagery to oriental music and poetry.

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What is the meaning of the word "arabesque"? In life, we often come across this concept. This word is often used in accordance with its traditional characteristics, but it is used as a figure of speech, as a common noun or in a figurative meaning, when one means something cunningly intertwined or bizarrely ornate, in another version - heavily crushed and mixed or very openwork , lung.

What is arabesque?

The word is of Italian origin. In translation, the term arabesque - arabesco - means "Arabic". However, this ornamental style is used in cultures of different countries and in different types of art. There is no exact and uniform definition of arabesque. We are faced with seemingly completely different use of the concept. There are several meanings of what an arabesque is.

Originally, a type of oriental (Arabic) ornament was called arabesque. Later this term began to be used as the name of a certain type of musical piece.

There is another way of using the word - in the masculine gender. What is "arabesque" in this case? In this case, we are talking about a dance movement or a kind of dance.

Let's dwell on each use case of the concept separately.

Arabic pattern in Europe

It is this version of the use of the term that is really connected with its Arabic meaning, since it is a type of ornament that arose in the medieval era in the culture of Arab nomads.

What is arabesque in art? Initially, both geometric and plant motifs were included in the structure of the pattern, but later only geometric ones began to be included.

At a later time, textual components were also introduced into the floral pattern. That is why such a concept as "Arabic script" arose - a type of writing bizarrely ornate, similar to an arabesque in appearance.

In the heyday of the Middle Ages, the "arabesque" ornament was used to decorate handwritten books, and in Byzantium and Italy - in majolica and engraving. At this stage in the development of the arabesque, it carried, first of all, a symbolic meaning and was the main element of architectural structures.

The most popular type of ornament "arabesque" became in the Renaissance. Thanks to Giovanni da Udine, the pattern becomes the basis and connecting thread of the semantic component of fresco paintings and decorative and symbolic elements in architecture.

In the era of classicism, the "arabesque" ornament receives the purpose of an independent decorative element, abstracted from the semantic component.

Arabic pattern in the countries of the muslim world

In the Arab world, over time, the "arabesque" ornament has become a whole science, which stood at the service of the church. After all, Arabian arabesque patterns served as a connecting thread between Heaven - the abode of God and Paradise - and Man as a representative of the Earthly House. If you think about it, then the Underworld, which, according to Muslims, consists of two parts: the grave as the threshold of Heaven or Hell and Hell itself. Thus, we can state the version that the Muslim arabesque can be the image of the "World Tree". Arabesque ornaments can completely cover the walls of the mosque. In the interweaving of their elements, you will never find animals, birds, fish, humans and other living beings, since no one can compete with God - their creator.

Arabesque in the arts and crafts of the East

There is also a non-religious way of using the "arabesque" ornament in Eastern cultures. One of the most common is the Arabic patterned carpet. In this case, the creation of a pattern implies a great freedom of creativity: images of animals and people can be used as elements, weaving them into a ligature of stems, petals and leaves.

On the basis of the Arab traditional ornament in the art of carpet weaving, a special trend emerged - Islam - a decorative ornament consisting only of elements of bindweed and a spiral. In addition, six additional types of Islam are distinguished: "shekasti" - with open ornaments; "bandi" or "wagire" - the elements of the pattern are repeated both horizontally and vertically, and intertwine with each other; "dahane ajdar", whose arabesques resemble the mouth of a dragon; "torandjdar", in it, along with traditional patterns, an element such as a medallion is used; "lochak-toranj", where a composition of medallions in triangles is placed in the corners of a carpet product; "mari" - with spiral arabesques.

Bundy arabesques also have a number of subspecies: islimi - in the form of fastened arabesques; "pichak" - in the form of intertwined weaves; "shekaste" - in the form of untied arabesques; "katibei" - in the form of a linked inscription; "varamin"; "kaleb-hashti" in the form of linked square frames; "derakhti" - in the form of intertwining trees; "sarvi" - the main element is cypress; "adamaki" - in the form of a pattern of human figures; "bakhtiari"; "khushe-anguri" of intertwined bunches of grapes; "shakhae gavazne heyvandar" of interlocked deer figurines; "khatame shirazi", reminiscent of inlays; "dastegul" of intertwined bouquets.

In addition to creating unique carpets, the arabesque motif is used to create models of clothes, dishes, interiors and even in landscape design.

Pattern creation technology

When creating an "arabesque" ornament, an ideal mathematical calculation is required, which is used to form elements that are absolutely precise in terms of compositional solution and their alternation in an ornamental chain. The elements of the pattern are very complex in their composition, they often fit into each other. At the same time, it is also necessary to use mathematical knowledge, because the elements of arabesques are complexly combined versions of various geometric shapes - circles, ovals, rectangles, hexagons and octagons, trapezoids, triangles, rhombuses, etc. Moreover, each type of element has its own color. With such a mathematical pattern, the background is never used for it.

Musical composition

In music, the term "arabesque" was first introduced by the famous composer Robert Schumann in relation to his own name for his work. In the future, the concept of "arabesque" began to be applied to a certain genre of instrumental music, usually a small piece, but very diverse, light, with an openwork interweaving of elements, rhythms, intonations, tempo, and fragments of melody. The intertwining melody of arabesque was used in the works of the amazing French impressionist composer and symbolist Claude Debussy. Of the domestic composers, Alexandra Lyadova turned to this genre.

Dance movement

What is "arabesque" in dance art? Arabesque, or rather arabesque, is one of the main movements in classical choreography. In the classification of Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova, we find four types of arabesque, while the Italian choreographer Enrico Cecchetti has five. These movements have a similar setting of the body, head, but differ in the position of the raised and abducted arms and legs.

From classical choreography, the modified arabesque was transferred to sports ballroom dancing and figure skating. It has a fairly long tradition of application in Indian belly dance.

The history of the development of arabesque in Europe

Muslim arabesque

Ornamentation. Arabesque

In the art of Islam, which to the least degree is guided by the depiction of specific images, an important function belongs to ornaments and patterns, which in a peculiar form have concentrated enormous possibilities of expressing worldview values.

The most typical creation of Islam in this respect is the arabesque, which reflects the geometric genius and the nomadic mentality. Arabesque (it. arabesco, fr. arabesque- Arabic) is the European name for a complex oriental medieval ornament, consisting mainly of geometric, calligraphic and floral elements and created on the basis of precise mathematical calculations. With its ligature, the arabesque covers an architectural building, a product of applied art, pages of handwritten books. The very idea of ​​arabesque is consonant with Muslim ideas about the "ever-continuing fabric of the universe."

The arabesque should be seen as a pattern of ornamentation, in which the logic of constructing a geometric pattern is combined with a living continuity of rhythm. It is based on the repetition and multiplication of one or more fragments of the ornament. The endless movement of the pattern, flowing in a given rhythm, can be stopped or continued at any point without violating the integrity of the pattern. Such an ornament excludes the background, since one pattern fits into the other, covering the surface. Europeans called it "fear of space." There are two main elements in the arabesque: the weave and the floral leitmotif. The first, in essence, is the result of geometric speculation, which resembles a kind of geometrization of the doctrinal system of Buddhism (Chapter 2). Whereas the second is a type of graphic rhythm, expressed in spiral patterns, which, according to experts, may have their origin not so much from plant forms as from the symbolism of the line. Thus, both themes in the arabesque have, as it were, a single source of inspiration ( rice. 37).

Rice. 37. Window grill. Sidi Sayyid Mosque.

In general, it is customary to talk about several types of ornament. Geometric ornament consists of points, lines (straight, broken, zigzag, mesh-intersecting) and figures (circles, rhombuses, polyhedrons, stars, crosses, spirals, etc.). The floral ornament is composed of stylized leaves, flowers, fruits, branches, etc. The zoomorphic ornament includes stylized images of real or fantastic animals. Sometimes this ornament is called "animal style". Anthropomorphic ornament uses male and female stylized figures or separate parts of the human body as motives. The art of Islam knows many brilliant examples of the simultaneous use of all types of ornamentation. But it was in the arabesque that the art of ornament was brought to the highest degree of perfection.

Vahid Tabrizi, a Persian poet and theorist, likened such ornamentation to the figures of poetic speech: the pictorial decoration of the plane is natural to the decoration of speech. Moreover, the unifying element here is undoubtedly the rhythm. It is known that pre-Islamic poetry, which created outstanding examples and its poetic dimensions, had a significant impact on the entire culture and art of Islam. Moreover, this poetry has always been surrounded by special reverence in the Muslim environment.

The geometric ornamentation of Islam included archaic motives of the ancient nomadic peoples; thus, Islamic ornaments have very ancient roots. Of course, in the system of new worldview values ​​with these motives, as with all assimilated elements, a significant transformation took place.

Ethical and aesthetic awareness of ornamental motifs in the culture of Islam was established practically together with the emergence of high art as such, that is, since the appearance of calligraphy, ornament and architecture in the context of a single expression of the culture of Islam. The Muslim arabesque, according to Sh. M. Shukurov, “is not just an ornament, but that level of abstraction, that stream of consciousness, which requires a certain preparation for its understanding. That is why both the Qur'anic discourse and the verses of Persian poets and the visual arts of Islam remain alien and incomprehensible to the European reader and viewer. All this requires commenting and interpretation "( rice. 38).

Rice. 38. Panel with carved inscription

The decisive role in this process of understanding the ornament as an orderly and ordering phenomenon was played by the Arabic graphics and the graphic style of thinking in the culture of Islam. Graphics and ornament in the art of Islam interact extremely productively with other art forms. (This is generally characteristic of all the art of the East, as we will be convinced, in particular, in the examples of the art of China and Japan.) This is evidenced by the first monument of high Islamic art - the reliquary Qubbat al-Sahra (Dome of the Rock) in Jerusalem. In the reliquary, calligraphic inscriptions and ornamental decoration made of plant motifs are first encountered in an architectural context, defining the iconographic future of the entire program of Muslim art ( rice. 39).

Rice. 39. Qubbat al-Sahra.

The entire course of the history of art and architecture of Islam shows the existence of a connection between architecture, calligraphy and ornament; the pronounced orientation of the temple consciousness of Muslims is here the most important starting point. It is in the temple and in the “field of vision” of the temple that the panorama of the vision of Being by man unfolds. According to the French philosopher-Islamic scholar A. Corbin, "the temple is a place, a source of contemplation."

Floral ornaments themselves represent a very interesting topic and an important part of the Muslim vision. The theme of plant motives is found in the Qur'an; in the last ayah Surah "Al-Fath" the faithful are likened to a strong shoot, a stem. This is an image masal... An interesting motive for assimilating the faithful to plants, demonstrating the unity of Being. It is characteristic that there are parallels to this image in the Christian and Jewish traditions. Thus, the Gospel motive of assimilating the faithful to “the good seed” (Mat. 13:38) is rooted in Old Testament antiquity. 1 Kings says: all the walls of the Temple “inside and outside” are to be covered with palm and blossoming flowers (6:18, 29, 32, 35). All this is especially significant in the context of the Old Testament eschatology, according to which the Heavenly Temple will be established among the people of the new Israel, like a tree among vegetation. In this regard, it is worth recalling some correlations in the symbolism of the cross, in which a person and a plant correspond to the vertical, as opposed to the animal, which is connected to the horizontal.

In Islam and Islamic art, plant motifs have found their fixation as a metaphor for paradise, salvation and the ideal community of the faithful. The Qur'an says: “Have you not seen how God gives a likeness ( masal); is a good word like a good tree, its root is firm and its branches in heaven? " (14:29). According to the Islamic concept, the key to the salvation of the Muslim community and every person is the Kind Word and the Kind Tree, a pictorial image ( masal) which naturally unfolds in the House of God ( Bayt Allah).

Arabesque is a metaphorical image, a figure in a particular context of a statement. The Arabesque is believed to be a Muslim pre-sees a well-known and extremely ethical image of his future, realizing the transcendental reality of this image, since, first of all, the Temple is real, the eternal tree of culture, the stem of which always remains the faithful. Thus, the arabesque is one of the most important manifestations of the style of culture, focused more on graphic ways of seeing and expressing.

The word as such cannot be uttered to the end; the arabesque ligature, a metaphor for the eternal life of a faithful, must remain fundamentally unfinished.

Calligraphic, plant, and then geometric configurations create various combinations of the holistic spiritual geometry of the universe. "Science of decoration" ( Ilm al-Badi) poetic speech, formed in literature in the 9th century, and the "ornamentation" of an artistically finished "thing" are phenomena of the same order. They are united by ligature and rhythm.

Ornaments with spiral patterns - heraldic animals and vines - are also found in the art of Asian nomads, a remarkable example of which is the art of the Scythians with its famous "animal style". Elements of Islamic decorative art are drawn from the richest archaic heritage that was common to the peoples of the Middle East and Northern Europe. Some archaic elements included by Islamic art, such as a spiral, zigzag lines, circles, stylized animals, etc., combine Islamic ornamentation with extreme antiquity ( rice. 40).

Rice. 40. Islamic ornaments.

This common heritage, according to T. Burckhardt, resurfaced again as soon as Hellenism with its essentially anthropomorphic art retreated. Christian medieval art also adopted it through the folklore of settlers from Asia and through the isolated art of both Celts and Saxons, which became one of the most amazing syntheses of prehistoric motives. However, this heritage was soon obscured and emasculated in the Christian world under the influence of Greco-Roman patterns assimilated by Christianity.

According to the researchers, the Islamic spirit has a much closer relationship with the boundless stream of archaic forms, since they (these forms) are in full correlation with the conscious conversion of Islam to the original order, to the "primordial religion" ( din al-fitra). He assimilates these archaic elements and reduces them to the most abstract and most generalized formulations, "geometrizing" them, endowing ancient symbols with new intellectual clarity and spiritual grace.

It is no coincidence that arabesque has its own analogies in Arabic rhetoric and poetry. The rhythmic flow of thought acquires clarity due to strictly interconnected parallels, inversions, oppositions. Muslim arabesque is not just the possibility of art without the creation of images; it is a direct way of gradually disappearing, dissolving images or what corresponds to them on the mental plane, just as the rhythmic repetition of a certain Qur'anic formula dissolves the fixation of the mind on the object of desire. Moreover, the arabesque is an amazing tool in service with Islamic art, with the help of which the faithful, as it were, plunges into rhythmic waves, into a special, ecstatic state that brings him closer to the perception of God. In the arabesque, every hint of individual form dissolves into the infinity of continuous weaving; the repetition of identical motifs, the "flowery" movement of the lines and the decorative transparency of the forms protruding in the relief and carved in the same way "backwardly similar" - all contribute to this effect.

Thus, in the arabesque we see a synthesis of archaic symbolism with the mental sophistication and grace of Islamic art - for the purpose of solving spiritual problems, and not for purely decorative purposes. The walls of some mosques are covered with glazed ceramic mosaics or fine arabesque weaving, which is an excellent illustration of the content of the famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad, according to which God hides himself behind 70,000 covers of light and darkness; if they were all removed, everything that reaches His Gaze would be incinerated from His Face. The veils, which are made of light, veil the Divine Light.