Having my mind blown visiting the Alhambra palace. It’s sensory overload. How come so much of the art is geometric? Was it a fashion spawned by discovery or invention or what?
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When you’re religiously barred from any sort of shape that might suggest a human being, you apparently start to get really into geometric patterns.
I can’t speak for whatever religious factors may have come into play, but it’s worth remembering that during the Golden Age of Islam, a lot of our modern concepts of mathematics were first explored by Islamic mathematicians. To this day we still call algebra “algebra” for example, an ultimately Arabic word. It’s also why we refer to them as “Arab numerals”. These guys really loved them some math, and this no doubt managed to carry on into their creative expression.
tl:dr Muslims are some of the OG’s of math after the Greeks and stuff
Some older Islamic art had a religious rule against depicting sentient beings, which stemmed from trying to avoid worshipping idols. As a result, their art features lots of geometric patterns like you’ve seen instead.
Many Muslims follow a form of their faith that says any art that looks like a living thing is idolatry and forbidden.
If you aren’t making anything like people, animals, or plants, you don’t have too many options calligraphy (art with words) and art with geometric patterns are both good ways to avoid those prohibitions.
To add to what people have said there will usually be a purposively created mistake some where in any design because to be perfect is to imitate god.
A great book about this is: Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe
One of the founding ideals of Islam was being against idol worship. This means not placing any depictions (paintings or sculptures) of things in places of reverence. (Things being something that could be an object of worship)
So Muslims expressed themselves through abstract art.
Source: I’m a Muslim
Structured art and architecture almost always follows geometric rules.
What you are calling an obsession could just as easily be described as a respect for the laws of nature and mankind’s ability to observe the natural and build off of it.
All arts are spawned by discovery and invention, so I think you are on the right track of understanding.
Because they couldn’t use the human form they doubled down on beautiful patterns and symmetry. Some of the original Iznik tiles and pottery are stunning when you consider they were hand painted.
Older muslims believed that art depicting real sentient things was encouraging idolatry. It was also just taboo to mimic God’s work in general.
So what beauty did humans create themselves?
Geometry. The art of shapes. Abstract objects unfounded in nature that we’ve given utility.
Also: Writing. Another inherently human invention, that’s proven itself to be quite the beautiful thing.
Kufic calligraphy, and geometric tiling was an easy way to create beauty from human order; it was as close to novel as we could get.
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