File:History of art (1921) (14781031394).jpg

Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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Cairo. Detail of the façade of the Kalaoum Mosque (1284). times to fall on the cupolas and the graded minaretswhere the interlacings and the arabesques becamemore and more complicated. The whole thing becamelike a hanging fairyland, like cobwebs in the greatgarden of space, dust, and sunlight. The arabesque had had its hour of concrete life.Geometric ornament, into which it was to evolve, isnever born spontaneously; it realizes, in the brain of
Text Appearing After Image:
Granada (xiii Century). Hall of the Abencerrages in the Alhambra. 242 MEDIAEVAL ART the artists, the final styHzation of a motif from nature,just as the mathematical formula is, for the scientist,the form of expression which a truth derived fromexperience must take, and thereby grow inert. The arabesque was born of the twiningtogether of flowers and leaves, as wefirst find it around the arcades ofthe old mosque of Ibn-Touloun atCairo, when, after the end of theconquest, the imagination of theArabs was less tense and had theleisure to become complicated andthe desire to become subtler. It tookon a far rarer quality when the four-teenth century had fixed its law ofdecoration. And this progressivepassage from the living line to theî^ïkfir/v^1 fcl.1 ideographic line, from the ideographicP^^/^^iEl ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ geometric line, sharply^* defines the spiritual direction of this art. When the regular polygon madeits appearance in the répertoire ofornament, the Arab geometrists triedto deduce

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