In the first major exhibit of a design form dating back to at least 1,000 A.D., Williamstown’s Clark Art Institute unveils a history of what began as an illustrative wallflower that blossomed into a dominant art form. The show, continuing through March 22, was organized by Anne Leonard, the Clark’s curator of prints and photographs and the author of the companion catalog, Arabesque (CAI, 64 pages, $15).
Leonard writes that the intricate designs of Arabesque create “a line with no beginning and no end.” As she said during a press preview, the art form is “a curvilinear decorative design motif” that’s both harmonious and pleasing. It’s a rebellion against the rigid use of straight lines and is no further away than the floral borders of a well-designed book, the intricate patterns of a carpet or the complex swirls of drapery.
The origins appear to be based upon sacred Islamic writings. Because that religion forbids the use of representational forms in its places of worship, mosques are decorated with colorfully complex abstract designs.
“It tends to have a wandering path as a feature of ornament,” Leonard explained.
The exhibit, taking up half of the institute’s subterranean galleries, traces an eruption in the use of Arabesque found in the art of such late 19th century figures as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley and Henri Matisse. The form is also found in ballet and in the atmospheric, wandering music of such composers as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
Leonard spent several years researching the show and cast a wide net. Artworks have arrived from New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Harvard’s Fogg Museum and Washington’s National Gallery among other venues.
Among the gallery’s surprises are the early, obsessively detailed 19th century European engravings wherein the Arabesque form is found not only in floral borders but also in the central images. If you’re looking for straight lines, squares or rectangles, you won’t find them here.
Leonard began the walkabout by pausing at four 1807 large-scale engravings by Philipp Otto Runge titled “The Times of Day.” The suite of images is lush with at times a merry-go-round of cherubs, flowers, sunshine and owls. The German artist, who rebelled against the period’s prevailing academic form of art, had an individual style and this series of prints was commercially successful.
“Everything is integrated,” the curator said, noting that many of the early works have “a connection with nature and a profusion of ornamentation.”
There is such symmetry to this and other works that, if they were vertically sliced in half and held to a mirror, the image would be intact.
Runge presented copies of the quartet to the writer Johann von Goethe, who exclaimed: “Just look at it: It’s enough to drive you crazy, beautiful and mad at the same time.”
Straitjackets aside, as beautiful and as madly wild are the large engravings depicting the myths of “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Ballad of Lenore.”
The 700-year-old tale of the princess, doomed to a century of sleepy dormancy until a kiss from ‘Mr. Right’ is depicted by another German artist, Eugen Neureuther.
Wreathed in spiraling vines, the story is finely illustrated. Every figure in the castle has nodded off, except for a few animals and the wretchedly evil sorceress, who has created the entire problem.
The curator described the illustration as “a spectacular tour-de-force of etching” with a lower text that “could only be read with a microscope.”
Nearby is the artist’s equally complex illustration of “The Ballad,” the story of a young woman seeking to be reunited with her soldier lover. He has not returned from war and Lenore quarrels with God over his disappearance. The story of her lover’s return is said to have spurred the ‘vampire legends’ and provided grist even for modern-day horror writers.
During the early 19th century, there was a great deal of cross-pollination between Muslim and European artists. A key player was the British architect and designer Owen Jones. As he completed a Grand Tour of Europe, he visited Spain’s Alhambra, a sprawling 14th-century castle. Built in the last throes of Muslim rule, it’s a complex of fountains, pools, courtyards and intricate Arabesque designs.
It was once poetically described as “a pearl set in an emerald.”
Leonard said that when the architect first saw the castle, “he was just wowed.”
Jones then spent a year depicting the structure’s various Arabesque designs for the first of two books. Only color would provide the reader with the hypnotizing aspect of these endless spirals and intricate parabolas. At his own expense, the architect researched and improved the fledgling art of chromolithography, which for the book required a dozen separate stampings for each color plate.
Owen, a trendsetter, promoted his own theories as to design and the use of color. When London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 was unveiled at the Crystal Palace, the architect was responsible for the interior sets that endlessly repeated Arabesque motifs.
Five years later, Owen published “The Grammar of Ornament,” a lushly illustrated book that’s still in print.
His two books were hugely influential for many artists and designers and the art of Arabesque was becoming a movement in illustration and composition. The 19th-century textile designs of the Englishman William Morris, intricate enough to seem almost hallucinogenic, are a prime example.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, the style of Arabesque could be found in advertising illustration, musical composition and even dance. The American Loie Fuller gained prominence at Paris’ Folies Bergere for her innovative serpentine dance of veils.
Audiences were dazzled by the billowing flourishes of her large silken dress, manipulated by poles that she held. All this energy was further dramatized by her pioneering use of colored lighting, in rhythm to the dance. In 1893, Henri deToulouse-Lautrec captured a frozen image of her dance in a “brush and spatter” lithograph.
Standing next to the cloudlike, abstract illustration Leonard said: “It’s considered one of the most extraordinary prints Toulouse-Lautrec ever made.”
Born in the late 19th century the innovative style of Art Nouveau, known for its sinuous curves and design inspirations springing directly from nature, derives directly from the Arabesque movement.
The works of the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, one of Art Nouveau’s front-runners, were strongly influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec’s images. During his short life, Beardsley was unequaled in his depictions of theatrical motifs and myths.
Standing next to one of Beardsley’s depictions of Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome” Leonard referred to the illustrator’s “great innovations of the line. There’s no one else who does exactly what he does.”
The curator further explained that Beardsley was also representative of “English Decadent Art,” a rebellion against acceptable norms. Many of his x-rated illustrations, which steamrolled propriety, would have given many a Victorian the vapors.
Alphonse Mucha, perhaps best known for his advertising posters, was also in the vanguard of Art Nouveau. The Czechoslovakian often created timeless images of women, whether delicate or rustic, with an accompanying kaleidoscope of perfectly balanced design. An 1898 advertisement for cigarette rolling papers merges the swirl of smoke with the swirl of a blonde’s hair. This particular poster enjoyed a renewed popularity in the mid-1960s when many Baby Boomers discovered a new use for the product.
As the tour concluded, Leonard pointed out a 1924 painting by Henri Matisse titled “Pianist and Checker Players.” Much of the Frenchman’s work was replete with Arabesque images and this composition virtually pulsates. Two boys play the board game while a woman plays piano nearby. The floral wallpaper is alive, as is the flowered rug in a room that’s a riot of color.
“This is almost a summation piece,” Leonard said. “It sums up a lot of the themes of the exhibit.”
The curator suggested that the painting may serve as an antidote to the severe criticism one writer made regarding Arabesque, describing it as a “fungus.” In her 1890 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Gilman went on to describe the movement as “an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions.”
In 1910, Matisse had visited the Alhambra and was doubtless influenced by the scope of its designs. The painting pulls out all the stops. As Leonard notes in the companion catalog, “Matisse’s trick is to make of this welter not a hopeless cacophony but a coherent balanced composition.”
With all of its color and design, the room seems to vibrate.
Although not in vogue at this time, the movement enjoyed a long and healthy life and any suggestions that it has vanished are greatly exaggerated.
“Once you start looking for it, you find it all over,” Leonard said. “Everything turns into an Arabesque.”
“Arabesque” continues through March 22 at the Clark Art Institute, which is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $20 for the general public. Those under age 18 and students with identification are free.
Don Stewart is a freelance writer who lives in Plainfield. He has written for the Greenfield Recorder since 1994.