9.1 Pattern as Pathology
Despite geometry’s ubiquity, Islamic art historians have rarely considered
it as productive of meaning. They have conceived of mimesis solely in
terms of representational images and iconography. In 1949 Ernst Kühnel
(1882–1964) underscored the“obviously decorative intention”of isometric
geometries, in which“the eye of the viewer is not arrested by the pleasant
detail, but...by the kaleidoscopic passing of an ever-changing and dis-
appearing harmony of unreal forms...decisive is a decorative intent which
is devoid of a meaningful purpose.”^9 As late as 1979, Ettinghausen
deployed the termhorror vacuito describe surface pattern.
Our task will be to trace the principal methods by which the artisans handled the
extensive combinations of patterns so as to avoid bare areas which, it seems, were
aesthetically unsatisfactory. In this manner they managed to overcome in a plea-
sant fashion thehorror vacuiand yet did not create the impression of being
overcrowded when many designs were used...There remains onefinal question
to be asked: Why were Islamic artists obsessed by thehorror vacui? Historical or
literary sources from the Muslim world can hardly be expected to give an answer,
as this civilization never developed a critical system of artistic evaluation and there
are only occasional references to or descriptions of buildings and objects.^10
Attributed to Aristotelian philosophy and appearing in the Middle Ages,
the termhorror vacuiasserts that‘nature abhors a void.’It entered art-
historical terminology in the nineteenth century, pathologizing pattern as
inimical to the austerity preferred through the secularization of negative
Protestant appraisals of Catholicism.^11 Critiques of superfluity became
central to modernist aesthetics, informing Adolph Loos’1908 influential
essay“Ornament and Crime.”Loos associated ornament with femininity
and with the supposed excess of beards (such as those of Jews, expected to
demonstrate their modernity by shaving).^12 Religious critique became
secularized by incorporating an aesthetic critique of ethnicity. Although
writing much later, Ettinghausen’s designation of Islamic artists as
“obsessed”withfilling space similarly attributes an entire visual culture
with an irrational, potentially pathological cause.
His reluctance to impute meaning to geometry was shared by his student
Oleg Grabar. HisMediation of Ornamentbegins with a discussion of a
carving that may or not represent a bird and a formal comparison between
afifteenth-century calligraphic panel from Iran and Piet Mondrian’s(^9) Necipoğlu, 1995 : 75. (^10) Ettinghausen, 1979 : 15. (^11) Berryman, 1997.
(^12) Cernuschi, 2006.
270 Mimetic Geometries