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93-591: This series of grotesques , created from 1749 by Francesco Ferdinando II Gravina, Prince of Palagonia, aroused the curiosity of the travellers of the Grand Tour during the 18th and 19th centuries, for instance Henry Swinburne , Patrick Brydone , John Soane , Goethe , the Count de Borde, the artist Jean-Pierre Houël or Alexandre Dumas , prior to fascinate surrealists like André Breton or contemporary authors such as Giovanni Macchia and Dominique Fernandez , or

186-530: A frieze . According to Ralph Nicholson Wornum in 1882: "The western arabesque which appeared in the 15th century derived from Roman remains of the early time of the empire, not to any style derived from Arabian or Moorish work. Arabesque and Moresque are really distinct; the latter is from the Arabian style of ornament, developed by the Byzantine Greeks for their new masters, after the conquests of

279-614: A loggia corridor space in the Apostolic Palace open to the elements on one side, were decorated around 1519 by Raphael 's large team of artists, with Giovanni da Udine the main hand involved. Because of the relative unimportance of the space, and a desire to copy the Domus Aurea style, no large paintings were used, and the surfaces were mostly covered with grotesque designs on a white background, with paintings imitating sculptures in niches, and small figurative subjects in

372-556: A symmetrical pattern around some form of architectural framework, though this may be very flimsy. Such designs were fashionable in ancient Rome , especially as fresco wall decoration and floor mosaic. Stylized versions, common in Imperial Roman decoration, were decried by Vitruvius (c. 30 BC) who, in dismissing them as meaningless and illogical, offered the following description: For example, reeds are substituted for columns, fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes take

465-491: A "fote and Couer of siluer and guilt enbossed with Rebeske worke", and William Herne or Heron, Serjeant Painter from 1572 to 1580, was paid for painting Elizabeth I's barge with "rebeske work". The styles so described can only be guessed at, although the design by Hans Holbein for a covered cup for Jane Seymour in 1536 (see gallery) already has zones in both Islamic-derived arabesque/moresque style (see below) and classically derived acanthus volutes . Another related term

558-735: A "way out". The term " Theatre of the Grotesque " refers to an anti- naturalistic school of Italian dramatists, writing in the 1910s and 1920s, who are often seen as precursors of the Theatre of the Absurd . Characterized by ironic and macabre themes of daily life in the World War 1 era. Theatre of the Grotesque was named after the play 'The Mask and the Face' by Luigi Chiarelli, which was described as 'a grotesque in three acts.' Friedrich Dürrenmatt

651-574: A cave" from the Italian grotta , 'cave'; see grotto ), an extravagant style of ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered at Rome at the end of the fifteenth century and subsequently imitated. The word was first used of paintings found on the walls of basements of ruins in Rome that were called at that time le Grotte ('the caves'). These 'caves' were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea ,

744-473: A cave, or grotte in Italian. The palace's wall decorations in fresco and delicate stucco were a revelation. The first appearance of the word grottesche appears in a contract of 1502 for the Piccolomini Library attached to the duomo of Siena . They were introduced by Raphael Sanzio and his team of decorative painters, who developed grottesche into a complete system of ornament in

837-705: A central medallion combined with acanthus and other forms" by Simon Vouet and then Charles Lebrun who used "scrolls of flat bandwork joined by horizontal bars and contrasting with ancanthus scrolls and palmette ." More exuberant arabesque designs by Jean Bérain the Elder are an early "intimation" of the Rococo , which was to take the arabesque into three dimensions in reliefs. The use of "arabesque" as an English noun first appears, in relation to painting, in William Beckford 's novel Vathek in 1786. Arabesque

930-654: A close connection between the Sicels and the population living in the central Italy like the Etruscans . 38°04′47″N 13°30′41″E  /  38.07972°N 13.51139°E  / 38.07972; 13.51139 Grotesque Since at least the 18th century (in French and German, as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus

1023-466: A direct continuation of the medieval traditions of the drolleries in the border decorations or initials in illuminated manuscripts . From this the term began to be applied to larger caricatures, such as those of Leonardo da Vinci , and the modern sense began to develop. It is first recorded in English in 1646 from Sir Thomas Browne : "In nature there are no grotesques". By extension backwards in time,

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1116-801: A formal introduction to classical values and to the dangers of grotesque or mixed form. Indeed, the departure from classical models of order, reason, harmony, balance and form opens up the risk of entry into grotesque worlds. Accordingly, British literature abounds with native grotesquerie, from the strange worlds of Spenser 's allegory in The Faerie Queene to the tragi-comic modes of 16th-century drama. (Grotesque comic elements can be found in major works such as King Lear .) Literary works of mixed genre are occasionally termed grotesque, as are "low" or non-literary genres such as pantomime and farce. Gothic writings often have grotesque components in terms of character, style and location. In other cases,

1209-606: A horse is given legs made of leaves, a man has crane's legs, with countless other impossible absurdities; and the bizarrer the painter's imagination, the higher he was rated". Vasari recorded that Francesco Ubertini, called "Bacchiacca" , delighted in inventing grotteschi , and (about 1545) painted for Duke Cosimo de' Medici a studiolo in a mezzanine at the Palazzo Vecchio "full of animals and rare plants". Other 16th-century writers on grottesche included Daniele Barbaro , Pirro Ligorio and Gian Paolo Lomazzo . In

1302-488: A new shape with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll , when a girl meets fantastic grotesque figures in her fantasy world. Carroll manages to make the figures seem less frightful and fit for children's literature , but still utterly strange. Another comic grotesque writer who played on the relationship between sense and nonsense was Edward Lear . Humorous, or festive nonsense of this kind has its roots in

1395-465: A period of disuse in the nineteenth century, when a more minimal page layout became popular with printers like Bodoni and Didot , the concept returned to popularity with the arrival of the Arts and Crafts movement , Many fine books from the period 1890–1960 have arabesque decorations, sometimes on paperback covers. Many digital serif fonts include arabesque pattern elements thought to be complementary to

1488-476: A revival of Ancient Roman style. This large array provided a repertoire of elements that were the basis for later artists across Europe. In Michelangelo's Medici Chapel Giovanni da Udine composed during 1532–1533 "most beautiful sprays of foliage, rosettes and other ornaments in stucco and gold" in the coffers and "sprays of foliage, birds, masks and figures", with a result that did not please Pope Clement VII Medici , however, nor Giorgio Vasari , who whitewashed

1581-541: A sense of the grotesque clash of opposites. In a similar fashion, Ernst Friedrich (1894–1967), founder of the Berlin Peace Museum, an anarchist and a pacifist, was the author of War Against War (1924) which used grotesque photographs of mutilated victims of the First World War in order to campaign for peace. Southern Gothic is a genre frequently identified with grotesques and William Faulkner

1674-540: A subject of debate; not all art historians are persuaded that such knowledge had reached, or was needed by, those creating arabesque designs, although in certain cases there is evidence that such a connection did exist. The case for a connection with Islamic mathematics is much stronger for the development of the geometric patterns with which arabesques are often combined in art. Geometric decoration often uses patterns that are made up of straight lines and regular angles that somewhat resemble curvilinear arabesque patterns;

1767-470: A tablet or candelabrum might provide a focus; frames were extended into scrolls that formed part of the surrounding designs as a kind of scaffold, as Peter Ward-Jackson noted. Light scrolling grotesques could be ordered by confining them within the framing of a pilaster to give them more structure. Giovanni da Udine took up the theme of grotesques in decorating the Villa Madama , the most influential of

1860-548: Is moresque , meaning " Moorish "; Randle Cotgrave 's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues of 1611 defines this as: "a rude or anticke painting, or carving, wherin the feet and tayles of beasts, &c, are intermingled with, or made to resemble, a kind of wild leaves, &c." and "arabesque", in its earliest use cited in the OED (but as a French word), as "Rebeske work; a small and curious flourishing". In France "arabesque" first appears in 1546, and "was first applied in

1953-411: Is a major author of contemporary grotesque comedy plays. In architecture the term "grotesque" means a carved stone figure. Grotesques are often confused with gargoyles , but the distinction is that gargoyles are figures that contain a water spout through the mouth, while grotesques do not. Without a water spout, this type of sculpture is also known as a chimera when it depicts fantastical creatures. In

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2046-410: Is a reflection of unity arising from diversity; a basic tenet of Islam. The arabesque may be equally thought of as both art and science . The artwork is at the same time mathematically precise, aesthetically pleasing, and symbolic. Due to this duality of creation, the artistic part of this equation may be further subdivided into both secular and religious artwork. However, for many Muslims there

2139-423: Is also used as a term for complex freehand pen flourishes in drawing or other graphic media. The Grove Dictionary of Art will have none of this confusion, and says flatly: "Over the centuries the word has been applied to a wide variety of winding and twining vegetal decoration in art and meandering themes in music, but it properly applies only to Islamic art", so contradicting the definition of 1888 still found in

2232-622: Is an immense variety of motifs and figures, the three main tropes of the grotesque are doubleness, hybridity and metamorphosis. Beyond the current understanding of the grotesque as an aesthetic category, he demonstrated how the grotesque functions as a fundamental existential experience. Moreover, Astruc identifies the grotesque as a crucial, and potentially universal, anthropological device that societies have used to conceptualize alterity and change. In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and fantastic human and animal figures, usually set out in

2325-513: Is at this point that a grotesque creature such as Frankenstein's monster begins to be presented more sympathetically as the outsider who is the victim of society. But the novel also makes the issue of sympathy problematic in an unkind society. This means that society becomes the generator of the grotesque, by a process of alienation. In fact, the grotesque monster in Frankenstein tends to be described as "the creature". The grotesque received

2418-468: Is disputed. Arabesque art consists of a series of repeating geometric forms which are occasionally accompanied by calligraphy . Ettinghausen et al. describe the arabesque as a "vegetal design consisting of full...and half palmettes [as] an unending continuous pattern...in which each leaf grows out of the tip of another." To the adherents of Islam , the Arabesque is symbolic of their united faith and

2511-478: Is no distinction; all forms of art, the natural world, mathematics and science are seen to be creations of God and therefore reflections of the same thing: God's will expressed through his creation. In other words, man can discover the geometric forms that constitute the arabesque, but these forms always existed before as part of God's creation, as shown in this picture. There is great similarity between arabesque artwork from very different geographic regions. In fact,

2604-583: Is often cited as the leading exponent. Flannery O'Connor wrote, "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one" ( Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction , 1960). In O'Connor's often-anthologized short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find , the Misfit, a serial killer, is clearly a maimed soul, utterly callous to human life, but driven to seek

2697-421: Is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, however, grotesque may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes an audience feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity . The English word first appears in the 1560s as a noun borrowed from French, itself originally from the Italian grottesca (literally "of

2790-406: Is performed by a skillful artist." The delight of Mannerist artists and their patrons in arcane iconographic programs available only to the erudite could be embodied in schemes of grottesche , Andrea Alciato 's Emblemata (1522) offered ready-made iconographic shorthand for vignettes. More familiar material for grotesques could be drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses . The Vatican loggias ,

2883-488: Is simply a villain or a monster .) Obvious examples would include the physically deformed and the mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also included. The reader becomes piqued by the grotesque's positive side, and continues reading to see if the character can conquer their darker side. In Shakespeare's The Tempest , the figure of Caliban has inspired more nuanced reactions than simple scorn and disgust. Also, in J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of

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2976-611: The Oxford English Dictionary : "A species of mural or surface decoration in colour or low relief, composed in flowing lines of branches, leaves, and scroll-work fancifully intertwined. Also fig[uratively]. As used in Moorish and Arabic decorative art (from which, almost exclusively, it was known in the Middle Ages), representations of living creatures were excluded; but in the arabesques of Raphael , founded on

3069-456: The Islamic view of the world (see above). The depiction of animals and people is generally discouraged , which explains the preference for abstract geometric patterns. There are two modes to arabesque art. The first mode recalls the principles that govern the order of the world. These principles include the bare basics of what makes objects structurally sound and, by extension, beautiful (i.e.

3162-628: The Loggias that are part of the series of Raphael's Rooms in the Vatican Palace , Rome. "The decorations astonished and charmed a generation of artists that was familiar with the grammar of the classical orders but had not guessed till then that in their private houses the Romans had often disregarded those rules and had adopted instead a more fanciful and informal style that was all lightness, elegance and grace." In these grotesque decorations

3255-492: The acanthus , with its emphasis on leafy forms, and the vine, with an equal emphasis on twining stems. The evolution of these forms into a distinctive Islamic type was complete by the 11th century, having begun in the 8th or 9th century in works like the Mshatta Facade . In the process of development the plant forms became increasingly simplified and stylized. The relatively abundant survivals of stucco reliefs from

3348-486: The bizarro genre of fiction . Other contemporary writers who have explored the grotesque in pop-culture are John Docker , in the context of postmodernism; Cintra Wilson , who analyzes celebrity; and Francis Sanzaro , who discusses its relation to childbirth and obscenity. Alien Resurrection (1997) is the only film rated by the MPAA to have "grotesque images" in its rating description, mainly due to its depiction of

3441-409: The spurred "G" ), whereas popular neo-grotesque typefaces include Arial , Helvetica , and Verdana . Arabesque (European art) The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foliate ornament, used in

3534-493: The "genuine antibourgeois style". Some of the earliest written texts describe grotesque happenings and monstrous creatures. The literature of myth has been a rich source of monsters; from the one-eyed Cyclops from Hesiod 's Theogony to Homer's Polyphemus in the Odyssey . Ovid 's Metamorphoses is another rich source for grotesque transformations and hybrid creatures of myth. Horace 's Art of Poetry also provides

3627-489: The "grotesque" figures, in the ordinary conversational sense, commonly appear in the genre grotesque art , also known as fantastic art . One of the first uses of the term grotesque to denote a literary genre is in Montaigne's Essays . The Grotesque is often linked with satire and tragicomedy . It is an effective artistic means to convey grief and pain to the audience, and for this has been labeled by Thomas Mann as

3720-424: The 17th and 18th centuries the grotesque encompasses a wide field of teratology (science of monsters) and artistic experimentation. The monstrous, for instance, often occurs as the notion of play . The sportiveness of the grotesque category can be seen in the notion of the preternatural category of the lusus naturae , in natural history writings and in cabinets of curiosities. The last vestiges of romance, such as

3813-634: The European past as the Islamic world, with "grotesque" gradually acquiring its main modern meaning, related more to Gothic gargoyles and caricature than to either Pompeii -style Roman painting or Islamic patterns. Meanwhile, the word "arabesque" was now being applied to Islamic art itself, by 1851 at the latest, when John Ruskin uses it in The Stones of Venice . Writers over the last decades have attempted to salvage meaningful distinctions between

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3906-462: The Islamic world, typically using leaves, derived from stylised half-palmettes , which were combined with spiralling stems". It usually consists of a single design which can be ' tiled ' or seamlessly repeated as many times as desired. Within the very wide range of Eurasian decorative art that includes motifs matching this basic definition, the term "arabesque" is used consistently as a technical term by art historians to describe only elements of

3999-728: The Middle Ages, the term babewyn was used to refer to both gargoyles and grotesques. This word is derived from the Italian word babbuino , which means " baboon ". The word "grotesque", or "Grotesk" in German, is also frequently used as a synonym for sans-serif in typography . At other times, it is used (along with "neo-grotesque", "humanist", " lineal ", and "geometric") to describe a particular style or subset of sans-serif typefaces. The origin of this association can be traced back to English typefounder William Thorowgood , who introduced

4092-529: The Newborn xenomorph and the failed clones of Ellen Ripley , who all featured grotesque human–alien ( hybrid ) characteristics. Grotesque manner also can be found at Disney's famous ride, The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, Walt Disney World and other theme parks, where some of its details may contain a symbolism of Memento Mori , Samsara's circle or themes describing the fragility of human existence, passions that baffle and how they could be avoided or find

4185-451: The Rings , the character of Gollum may be considered to have both disgusting and empathetic qualities, which fit the grotesque template. Victor Hugo 's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is one of the most celebrated grotesques in literature. Dr. Frankenstein's monster from Mary Shelley 's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus can also be considered a grotesque, as well as

4278-454: The West they are essentially found in the decorative arts , but because of the generally non-figurative nature of Islamic art, arabesque decoration is often a very prominent element in the most significant works, and plays a large part in the decoration of architecture . Claims are often made regarding the theological significance of the arabesque and its origin in a specifically Islamic view of

4371-493: The airy well-spaced style used by the Romans and Raphael. Soon grottesche appeared in marquetry (fine woodwork), in maiolica produced above all at Urbino from the late 1520s, then in book illustration and in other decorative uses. At Fontainebleau Rosso Fiorentino and his team enriched the vocabulary of grotesques by combining them with the decorative form of strapwork , the portrayal of leather straps in plaster or wood moldings, which forms an element in grotesques. In

4464-554: The ancient Græco-Roman work of this kind, and in those of Renaissance decoration, human and animal figures, both natural and grotesque, as well as vases, armour, and objects of art, are freely introduced; to this the term is now usually applied, the other being distinguished as Moorish Arabesque, or Moresque." A major use of the arabesque style has been artistic printing, for example of book covers and page decoration. Repeating geometric patterns worked well with traditional printing, since they could be printed from metal type like letters if

4557-403: The angle and the fixed/static shapes that it creates—esp. the truss ). In the first mode, each repeating geometric form has a built-in symbolism ascribed to it. For example, the square, with its four equilateral sides, is symbolic of the equally important elements of nature: earth , air , fire and water . Without any one of the four, the physical world, represented by a circle that inscribes

4650-495: The assimilation of Chinese motifs into Persian art after the Mongol invasion harmonious and productive. Many arabesque patterns disappear at (or "under", as it often appears to a viewer) a framing edge without ending and thus can be regarded as infinitely extendable outside the space they actually occupy; this was certainly a distinctive feature of the Islamic form, though not without precedent. Most but not all foliage decoration in

4743-506: The branches, generally of a linear character, were turned into straps or bands. ... It is characteristic of the moresque, which is essentially a surface ornament, that it is impossible to locate the pattern's beginning or end. ... Originating in the Middle East, they were introduced to continental Europe via Italy and Spain ... Italian examples of this ornament, which was often used for bookbindings and embroidery, are known from as early as

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4836-490: The classical world to the Islamic arabesque. While the Kunstwollen has few followers today, his basic analysis of the development of forms has been confirmed and refined by the wider corpus of examples known today. Jessica Rawson has recently extended the analysis to cover Chinese art , which Riegl did not cover, tracing many elements of Chinese decoration back to the same tradition, the shared background helping make

4929-565: The decoration found in two phases: Islamic art from about the 9th century onwards, and European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards. Interlace and scroll decoration are terms used for most other types of similar patterns. Arabesques are a fundamental element of Islamic art. The past and current usage of the term in respect of European art is confused and inconsistent. Some Western arabesques derive from Islamic art, however others are closely based on ancient Roman decorations. In

5022-567: The decoration of some of the corridors of the Loggie of the Vatican at Rome: grotesque is thus a better name for these decorations than Arabesque. This technical Arabesque, therefore, is much more ancient than any Arabian or Moorish decoration, and has really nothing in common with it except the mere symmetrical principles of its arrangement. Pliny and Vitruvius give us no name for the extravagant decorative wall-painting in vogue in their time, to which

5115-532: The development, categorization and meaning of the arabesque. The detailed study of Islamic arabesque forms was begun by Alois Riegl in his formalist study Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik ( Problems of style: foundations for a history of ornament ) of 1893, who in the process developed his influential concept of the Kunstwollen . Riegl traced formalistic continuity and development in decorative plant forms from ancient Egyptian art and other ancient Near Eastern civilizations through

5208-413: The early Italian revivers of it seem to have given the designation of grotesque, because it, was first discovered in the arched or underground chambers (grotte) of Roman ruins—as in the golden house of Nero, or the baths of Titus. What really took place in the Italian revival was in some measure a supplanting of the Arabesque for the classical grotesque, still retaining the original Arabian designation, while

5301-600: The environment described may be grotesque – whether urban ( Charles Dickens ), or the literature of the American south which has sometimes been termed " Southern Gothic ". Sometimes the grotesque in literature has been explored in terms of social and cultural formations such as the carnival(-esque) in François Rabelais and Mikhail Bakhtin . Terry Castle has written on the relationship between metamorphosis, literary writings and masquerade. Another major source of

5394-478: The extent to which these too are described as arabesque varies between different writers. The Islamic arabesque was probably invented in Baghdad around the 10th century. It first appeared as a distinctive and original development in Islamic art in carved marble panels from around this time. What makes Islamic arabesque unique and distinct from vegetal decorations of other cultures is its infinite correspondence and

5487-525: The fact that it can be extended beyond its actual limits. The arabesque developed out of the long-established traditions of plant-based scroll ornament in the cultures taken over by the early Islamic conquests . Early Islamic art, for example in the famous 8th-century mosaics of the Great Mosque of Damascus , often contained plant-scroll patterns, in that case by Byzantine artists in their usual style. The plants most often used are stylized versions of

5580-467: The first, comprises modern ornaments: moresques, interlaced bands, strapwork, and elements such as cartouches"—categories he goes on to discuss individually. The moresque or arabesque style was especially popular and long-lived in the Western arts of the book: bookbindings decorated in gold tooling, borders for illustrations, and printer's ornaments for decorating empty spaces on the page. In this field

5673-405: The followers of Mahomet; and the former is a term pretty well restricted to varieties of cinquecento decoration, which have nothing in common with any Arabian examples in their details, but are a development derived from Greek and Roman grotesque designs, such as we find them in the remains of ancient palaces at Rome, and in ancient houses at Pompeii. These were reproduced by Raphael and his pupils in

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5766-588: The genuine Arabian art, the Saracenic, was distinguished as Moresque or Moorish." The book Opera nuova che insegna a le donne a cuscire … laqual e intitolata Esempio di raccammi (A New Work that Teaches Women how to Sew … Entitled "Samples of Embroidery"), published in Venice in 1530, includes "groppi moreschi e rabeschi", Moorish knots and arabesques. From there it spread to England, where Henry VIII owned, according to an inventory of 1549, an agate cup with

5859-433: The grotesque decor in 1556. Counter Reformation writers on the arts, notably Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti , bishop of Bologna, turned upon grottesche with a righteous vengeance. Vasari, echoing Vitruvius, described the style as follows: "Grotesques are a type of extremely licentious and absurd painting done by the ancients ... without any logic, so that a weight is attached to a thin thread which could not support it,

5952-490: The grotesque is in satirical writings of the 18th century. Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels provides a variety of approaches to grotesque representation. Corporeal hybridity is an essential marker in Swift. In poetry, the works of Alexander Pope provide many examples of the grotesque. In fiction, characters are usually considered grotesque if they induce both empathy and disgust. (A character who inspires disgust alone

6045-472: The home front became commonplace. The accompanying growth in the prosthetic industry struck contemporaries as creating a race of half-mechanical men and became an important theme in dadaist work.' The poetry of Wilfred Owen displays a poetic and realistic sense of the grotesque horror of war and the human cost of brutal conflict. Poems such as Spring Offensive and Greater Love combined images of beauty with shocking brutality and violence in order to produce

6138-417: The large and feathery leaves called saz became very popular, and were elaborated in drawings showing just one or more large leaves. Eventually floral decoration mostly derived from Chinese styles, especially those of Chinese porcelain , replaces the arabesque in many types of work, such as pottery, textiles and miniatures. The arabesques and geometric patterns of Islamic art are often said to arise from

6231-498: The late fifteenth century. Fuhring notes that grotesques were "confusingly called arabesques in eighteenth century France", but in his terminology "the major types of ornament that appear in French sixteenth century etchings and engraving ... can be divided into two groups. The first includes ornaments adopted from antiquity: grotesques, architectural ornaments such as the orders, foliage scrolls and self-contained elements such as trophies, terms and vases. A second group, far smaller than

6324-422: The latter part of the 17th century" to grotesque ornament, "despite the classical origin of the latter", especially if without human figures in it—a distinction still often made, but not consistently observed. Over the following centuries, the three terms "grotesque", "moresque", and "arabesque" were used largely interchangeably in English, French, and German for styles of decoration derived at least as much from

6417-399: The marvellous also provide opportunities for the presentation of the grotesque in, for instance, operatic spectacle. The mixed form of the novel was commonly described as grotesque – see for instance Fielding's "comic epic poem in prose" ( Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones ). Grotesque ornament received a further impetus from new discoveries of original Roman frescoes and stucchi at Pompeii and

6510-455: The material world, they believe, is a mere ghostly approximation of the spiritual world, which for many Muslims is the place where the only true reality exists. Discovered geometric forms, therefore, exemplify this perfect reality because God's creation has been obscured by the sins of man. Mistakes in repetitions may be intentionally introduced as a show of humility by artists who believe only Allah can produce perfection, although this theory

6603-554: The meantime, through the medium of engravings the grotesque mode of surface ornament passed into the European artistic repertory of the 16th century, from Spain to Poland. A classic suite was that attributed to Enea Vico , published in 1540–41 under an evocative explanatory title, Leviores et extemporaneae picturae quas grotteschas vulgo vocant , "Light and extemporaneous pictures that are vulgarly called grotesques". Later Mannerist versions, especially in engraving, tended to lose that initial lightness and be much more densely filled than

6696-626: The new Roman villas. In the 16th century, such artistic license and irrationality was controversial matter. Francisco de Holanda puts a defense in the mouth of Michelangelo in his third dialogue of Da Pintura Antiga , 1548: "this insatiable desire of man sometimes prefers to an ordinary building, with its pillars and doors, one falsely constructed in grotesque style, with pillars formed of children growing out of stalks of flowers, with architraves and cornices of branches of myrtle and doorways of reeds and other things, all seeming impossible and contrary to reason, yet it may be really great work if it

6789-552: The other buried sites round Mount Vesuvius from the middle of the century. It continued in use, becoming increasingly heavy, in the Empire Style and then in the Victorian period, when designs often became as densely packed as in 16th-century engravings, and the elegance and fancy of the style tended to be lost. Artists began to give the tiny faces of the figures in grotesque decorations strange caricatured expressions, in

6882-545: The painter Renato Guttuso . In 1885, the villa was bought by private individuals, whose heirs are still in possession, and is partially open to the public. Villa Palagonia has been one of the venues for music concerts held within the framework of the Concert Season of Bagheria (Stagione Concertistica Città di Bagheria) initiative since 2017, with free entrance. Palagonìa and Mineo are a rocky area rich of caverns escaved and adhibited to be funerary tombs. One of them,

6975-438: The place of pediments, candelabra support representations of shrines, and on top of their roofs grow slender stalks and volutes with human figures senselessly seated upon them. Emperor Nero 's palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea , was rediscovered by chance in the late 15th century, buried in fifteen hundred years of land fill. Access into the palace's remains was from above, requiring visitors to be lowered into it using ropes as in

7068-405: The preceding cultures terminated at the edge of the occupied space, although infinitely repeatable patterns in foliage are very common in the modern world in wallpaper and textiles . Typically, in earlier forms there is no attempt at realism; no particular species of plant is being imitated, and the forms are often botanically impossible or implausible. "Leaf" forms typically spring sideways from

7161-571: The seventeenth century traditions of fustian, bombastic and satirical writing. During the nineteenth-century category of grotesque body was increasingly displaced by the notion of congenital deformity or medical anomaly. Building on this context, the grotesque begins to be understood more as deformity and disability, especially after the First World War , 1914–18. In these terms, the art historian Leah Dickerman has argued that "The sight of horrendously shattered bodies of veterans returned to

7254-485: The similarities are so pronounced that it is sometimes difficult for experts to tell where a given style of arabesque comes from. The reason for this is that the science and mathematics that are used to construct Arabesque artwork are universal. Therefore, for most Muslims, the best artwork that can be created by man for use in the Mosque is artwork that displays the underlying order and unity of nature. The order and unity of

7347-507: The spiritual world), Islam considers calligraphy a visible expression of the highest art of all; the art of the spoken word (the transmittal of thoughts and of history). In Islam, the most important document to be transmitted orally is the Qur'an . Proverbs and complete passages from the Qur'an can be seen today in Arabesque art. The coming together of these three forms creates the Arabesque, and this

7440-416: The square, would collapse upon itself and cease to exist. The second mode is based upon the flowing nature of plant forms. This mode recalls the feminine nature of life giving. In addition, upon inspection of the many examples of Arabesque art, some would argue that there is in fact a third mode, the mode of Islamic calligraphy . Instead of recalling something related to the 'True Reality' (the reality of

7533-692: The stem, in what is often called a "half- palmette " form, named after its distant and very different looking ancestor in ancient Egyptian and Greek ornament. New stems spring from leaf-tips, a type often called honeysuckle , and the stems often have no tips, winding endlessly out of the space. The early Mshatta Facade is recognisably some sort of vine, with conventional leaves on the end of short stalks and bunches of grapes or berries, but later forms usually lack these. Flowers are rare until about 1500, after which they appear more often, especially in Ottoman art, and are often identifiable by species. In Ottoman art

7626-755: The technique of gold tooling had also arrived in the 15th century from the Islamic world, and indeed much of the leather itself was imported from there. Small motifs in this style have continued to be used by conservative book designers up to the present day. According to Harold Osborne, in France, the "characteristic development of the French arabesque combined bandwork deriving from the moresque with decorative acanthus foliage radiating from C-scrolls connected by short bars". Apparently starting in embroidery , it then appears in garden design before being used in Northern Mannerist painted decorative schemes "with

7719-454: The term "grotesque" and in 1835 produced 7-line pica grotesque —the first sans-serif typeface containing actual lowercase letters. An alternate etymology is possibly based on the original reaction of other typographers to such a strikingly featureless typeface. Popular grotesque typefaces include Franklin Gothic , News Gothic , Haettenschweiler , and Lucida Sans (although the latter lacks

7812-419: The term became also used for the medieval originals, and in modern terminology medieval drolleries, half-human thumbnail vignettes drawn in the margins, and carved figures on buildings (that are not also waterspouts, and so gargoyles ) are also called "grotesques". A boom in the production of works of art in the grotesque genre characterized the 1920–1933 period of German art . In contemporary illustration art,

7905-786: The title character, Erik in The Phantom of the Opera and the Beast in Beauty and the Beast . Other instances of the romantic grotesque are also to be found in Edgar Allan Poe , E. T. A. Hoffmann , in Sturm und Drang literature or in Sterne's Tristram Shandy . The romantic grotesque is far more terrible and sombre than the medieval grotesque, which celebrated laughter and fertility. It

7998-557: The tomb 15 of Mineo (St. Febronia ), has an inscription with letters high 8.5/6 cm on the right side and 13/10 cm on the left one. Palegraphic studies of the funerary public inscriptions are the unique available methodology to date Sicilian tombs back to the VII century BC. Similar archeological findings were held in Licodia Eubea , Sciri (with relevant affinities to the etruscan Tarquinia ) and Mendolito ( Adrano ), showing

8091-810: The truth. The less obvious grotesque is the polite, doting grandmother who is unaware of her own astonishing selfishness. Another oft-cited example of the grotesque from O'Connor's work is her short story entitled A Temple of the Holy Ghost . The American novelist Raymond Kennedy is another author associated with the literary tradition of the grotesque. Contemporary writers of literary grotesque fiction include Ian McEwan , Katherine Dunn , Alasdair Gray , Angela Carter , Jeanette Winterson , Umberto Eco , Patrick McGrath , Jessica Anthony , Natsuo Kirino , Paul Tremblay , Matt Bell , Chuck Palahniuk , Brian Evenson , Caleb J. Ross (who writes domestic grotesque fiction), Richard Thomas and many authors who write in

8184-432: The type was placed together; as the designs have no specific connection to the meaning of a text, the type can be reused in many different editions of different works. Robert Granjon , a French printer of the sixteenth century, has been credited with the first truly interlocking arabesque printing, but other printers had used many other kinds of ornaments in the past. The idea was rapidly used by many other printers. After

8277-533: The unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, which had become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above. Spreading from Italian to the other European languages, the term was long used largely interchangeably with arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements. Rémi Astruc has argued that although there

8370-493: The walls of palaces (but not mosques) in Abbasid Samarra , the Islamic capital between 836 and 892, provide examples of three styles, Styles A, B, and C, though more than one of these may appear on the same wall, and their chronological sequence is not certain. Though the broad outline of the process is generally agreed, there is a considerable diversity of views held by specialist scholars on detailed issues concerning

8463-480: The way in which traditional Islamic cultures view the world. Arabesque is a French term derived from the Italian word arabesco , meaning "in the Arabic style". The term was first used in Italian, where rabeschi was used in the 16th century as a term for " pilaster ornaments featuring acanthus decoration", specifically "running scrolls" that ran vertically up a panel or pilaster, rather than horizontally along

8556-438: The words from the confused wreckage of historical sources. Peter Fuhring, a specialist in the history of ornament, says that (also in a French context): The ornament known as moresque in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (but now more commonly called arabesque) is characterized by bifurcated scrolls composed of branches forming interlaced foliage patterns. These basic motifs gave rise to numerous variants, for example, where

8649-430: The world; however, these are without support from written historical sources since, like most medieval cultures, the Islamic world has not left us documentation of their intentions in using the decorative motifs they did. At the popular level such theories often appear uninformed as to the wider context of the arabesque. In similar fashion, proposed connections between the arabesque and Arabic knowledge of geometry remains

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