Arabesques strike a peculiar balance: the art form seems to try everything not to be art, and instead sources the sublime hiding in-between architectural constraints and abstract forms of decoration — all while abiding to Islamic doctrine that forbids depictions of the living. In this contradiction, they transcend their own condition to express something bigger glimmering on the other side of endless repeating patterns. The artists of arabesques knew their task was to reach far past the ornamental — and their work was considered accordingly. Looking closer at arabesques’ uniqueness as liminal expression, they have plenty of hope and much to say about modern design where ambition to transcend the corporate transaction is acutely absent.
To the extent arabesques are bound by pre-Islamic or Ottoman religious restrictions, the artform respectfully turns patterns into a divine loophole for the artist. Arguing that the arabesque is art and not solely decoration is kicking in open doors (Focillon, Grabar, Reigl etc.) The craft is subtler perhaps than today’s modern abstract art — the violence and need to be seen loudly in paintings of, say, CY Twombly or Yves Klein — and instead show kinship with the rare whispering lightness that emerges from the patterns of Agnes Martin.
The arabesque however, is no less a series of infinite artistic choices refusing the stencil: the tailored morphing of shapes to a particular wall — guiding the eye towards a statement to what the environment should stand for, its potential meaning and place in the universe. The organically flowing juxtapositions of patterns, color and density, underscores how neither religious constraints nor repetition can tame the artistic beast in arabesques. Perhaps true for any task when we seek to express something larger than ourselves.
The restrained abstraction as language offers the artist a rather tight and precise pallett to speak of the unknowable. What then is the duality or friction to work with in the arabesque language? The form itself: anytime the artist’s spirit veers towards the trivial, it is immediately absorbed by its architectural host as decoration. And in that sense, the religious anxiety around images becoming festish or idolatry, works in the arabesque’s favor. If one wanted to express the divine light of God, what better way than to forbid exactly that and instead get straight to the heart of the matter: celebrating the infinite unknowable.
