Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik is a book on the history of ornament by the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl. It was published in Berlin in 1893. The English translation renders the title as Problems of style: foundations for a history of ornament, although this has been criticized by some. [lower-alpha 1] It has been called "the one great book ever written about the history of ornament." [1]
Riegl wrote the Stilfragen while employed as director of the textile department at what was then the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (today the Museum für angewandte Kunst) in Vienna. His primary intention was to argue that it was possible to write a continuous history of ornament. This position is argued in explicit opposition to that of the "technical-materialist" school, according to which "all art forms were always the direct products of materials and techniques" [2] and that ornamental "motifs originated spontaneously throughout the world at a number of different locations." [3] Riegl associates this view with the followers of Gottfried Semper, who had advanced a related argument in his Der Stil in den technischen Künsten; oder praktischer Ästhetik (Style in the technical arts; or practical aesthetics , 1878–79). However, Riegl consistently disassociates Semper's followers from Semper himself, writing that
The theory of the technical, materialist origin of the earliest ornaments is usually attributed to Gottfried Semper. This association is, however, no more justified than the one made between contemporary Darwinism and Darwin. [4]
As the technical-materialist position had attained the status of dogma, Riegl stated that "the most pressing problem that confronts historians of the decorative arts today is to reintegrate the historical thread that has been severed into a thousand pieces." [5] Accordingly, he argued for a continuous development of ornament from ancient Egyptian through Greek and Roman and up to early Islamic and, eventually, Ottoman art.
The Stilfragen is divided into an introduction, which sets out the purpose of the work, and four chapters, each on a theme in the history of artistic style.
The first chapter, "The Geometric Style," argues that geometric ornament originated, not from such technical processes as wickerwork and weaving, but rather from an "immanent artistic drive, alert and restless for action, that human beings possessed long before they invented woven protective coverings for their bodies." [6] He supported this position through an analysis of geometric ornament in Stone Age European art, in particular objects that had recently been discovered in the Dordogne. This ornament, he argued, developed from attempts to represent natural forms in two dimensions, which gave rise to the idea of an outline. After this "invention of line," the cave-dwellers proceeded to arrange lines "according to the principles of rhythm and symmetry." [7]
The second chapter, "The Heraldic Style," addresses compositions of "paired animals arranged symmetrically to either side of an intervening central element." [8] This type of decoration had been associated by previous scholars, most notably Ernst Curtius, with the technical demands of silk-weaving. Riegl argued instead that heraldic ornament arose before the invention of mechanical weaving-looms, and stemmed from a desire for symmetry.
The third chapter, "The Introduction of Vegetal Ornament and the Development of the Ornamental Tendril," traces an unbroken evolution of vegetal ornament from ancient Egyptian through to late Roman art. Here Riegl argues that motifs such as the lotus flower, although they may originally have been endowed by the Egyptians with symbolic significance, were adopted by other cultures that "no longer understood their hieratic meaning," [9] and thereby became purely decorative. In the most famous section of this chapter, Riegl argued that acanthus ornament was not derived from the acanthus plant, as had been believed since the time of Vitruvius, but was rather a sculptural adaptation of the palmette motif. It was therefore "a product of pure artistic invention," [10] and not of "a simple compulsion to make direct copies of living organisms." [11]
The fourth chapter, "The Arabesque," continues the development of the previous chapter through late antique and early Byzantine and into Islamic art. The arabesque is understood here as a geometricized version of earlier systems of tendril ornament, thereby establishing a "genetic relationship between the ornamental Islamic tendril and its direct predecessor, the tendril ornament of antiquity." [12]
The final two chapters are therefore presented as a continuous history of vegetal ornament from ancient Egypt through to Ottoman Turkey, in which individual motifs develop according to purely artistic criteria, and not through the intervention of technical or mimetic concerns. In the introduction it is suggested that this development could be continued to Riegl's own time, and that "ornament experiences the same continuous, coherent development that prevails in the art of all periods." [13]
The Stilfragen remains a fundamental work in the history of ornament, and has heavily influenced the work of Paul Jacobsthal and Ernst Gombrich, among others who have addressed the same themes. [14]
Within Riegl's work as a whole, the Stilfragen constitutes his earliest general statement of principles, although his "theoretical thinking had not by any means reached maturity." [15] By severing stylistic development from external influences, such as technical procedures or a desire to imitate nature, Riegl raised an extremely complicated set of questions regarding the actual source and significance of stylistic change. As Otto Pächt has written:
In the picture that Riegl draws of the development the changes of style are meaningful in a specific way; continuity is not merely carrying on; every stylistic phase creates its own problems which are solved in the succeeding one, only to create new conflicts for which new answers have to be found. Thus the styles change of necessity, or to put it differently: in a kind of 'retrospective prophecy' the art historian shows that artistic development was compelled to move in the direction in which in fact it did. A view with most serious implications. One of them was that if one viewed art history in this way, absolute aesthetic norms became obsolete and had to be dropped. [16]
Thus the concerns of the Stilfragen led directly into those of Riegl's next major study, the Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (Late Roman art industry, 1901), in which he approached style change in late antiquity not as a symptom of decline, but as the result of positive artistic concerns.
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 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 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.
In the visual arts, style is a "... distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories" or "... any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made". Style refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates to other works with similar aesthetic roots, by the same artist, or from the same period, training, location, "school", art movement or archaeological culture: "The notion of style has long been historian's principal mode of classifying works of art".
Josef Rudolph Thomas Strzygowski was a Polish-Austrian art historian known for his theories promoting influences from the art of the Near East on European art, for example that of Early Christian Armenian architecture on the early Medieval architecture of Europe, outlined in his book, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa. He is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History.
Mudéjar art, or Mudéjar style, was a type of ornamentation and decoration used in the Iberian Christian kingdoms, primarily between the 13th and 16th centuries. It was applied to Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance architectural styles as constructive, ornamental and decorative motifs derived from those that had been brought to or developed in Al-Andalus. These motifs and techniques were also present in the art and crafts, especially Hispano-Moresque lustreware that was once widely exported across Europe from southern and eastern Spain at the time.
The palmette is a motif in decorative art which, in its most characteristic expression, resembles the fan-shaped leaves of a palm tree. It has a far-reaching history, originating in ancient Egypt with a subsequent development through the art of most of Eurasia, often in forms that bear relatively little resemblance to the original. In ancient Greek and Roman uses it is also known as the anthemion. It is found in most artistic media, but especially as an architectural ornament, whether carved or painted, and painted on ceramics. It is very often a component of the design of a frieze or border. The complex evolution of the palmette was first traced by Alois Riegl in his Stilfragen of 1893. The half-palmette, bisected vertically, is also a very common motif, found in many mutated and vestigial forms, and especially important in the development of plant-based scroll ornament.
In architecture and decorative art, ornament is decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornaments do not include human figures, and if present they are small compared to the overall scale. Architectural ornament can be carved from stone, wood or precious metals, formed with plaster or clay, or painted or impressed onto a surface as applied ornament; in other applied arts the main material of the object, or a different one such as paint or vitreous enamel may be used.
Celtic art is associated with the peoples known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient peoples whose language is uncertain, but have cultural and stylistic similarities with speakers of Celtic languages.
Viking art, also known commonly as Norse art, is a term widely accepted for the art of Scandinavian Norsemen and Viking settlements further afield—particularly in the British Isles and Iceland—during the Viking Age of the 8th-11th centuries. Viking art has many design elements in common with Celtic, Germanic, the later Romanesque and Eastern European art, sharing many influences with each of these traditions.
The acanthus is one of the most common plant forms to make foliage ornament and decoration in the architectural tradition emanating from Greece and Rome.
The scroll in art is an element of ornament and graphic design featuring spirals and rolling incomplete circle motifs, some of which resemble the edge-on view of a book or document in scroll form, though many types are plant-scrolls, which loosely represent plant forms such as vines, with leaves or flowers attached. Scrollwork is a term for some forms of decoration dominated by spiralling scrolls, today used in popular language for two-dimensional decorative flourishes and arabesques of all kinds, especially those with circular or spiralling shapes.
Alois Riegl was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient academic discipline, and one of the most influential practitioners of formalism.
The Vienna School of Art History was the development of fundamental art-historical methods at the University of Vienna. This school was not actually a dogmatically unified group, but rather an intellectual evolution extending over a number of generations, in which a series of outstanding scholars each built upon the achievements of their forerunners, while contributing their own unique perspectives. Essential elements of this evolution became fundamental for modern art history, even if the individual methods can today no longer claim absolute validity.
Turkish or Ottoman illumination refers to non-figurative painted or drawn decorative art found in manuscripts or on sheets in muraqqa. In Turkish it is called “tezhip”, meaning “ornamenting with gold”. The Classical Islamic style of manuscript illumination combines techniques from Turkish, Persian, and Arabic traditions. Illumination was central to the traditional arts of the Ottoman Turks, who developed a style of illumination distinct from earlier traditions.
Moresque is an obsolete alternative term to "Moorish" in English, and in the arts has some specific meanings. By itself, the word is used to describe the stylized plant-based forms of tendrils and leaves found in ornament and decoration in the applied arts in Renaissance Europe that are derived from the arabesque patterns of Islamic ornament. Like their Islamic ancestors, they differ from the typical European plant scroll in being many-branched and spreading rather than forming a line in one direction. The use of half-leaves with their longest side running along the stem is typical for both.
Islamic ornament is the use of decorative forms and patterns in Islamic art and Islamic architecture. Its elements can be broadly divided into the arabesque, using curving plant-based elements, geometric patterns with straight lines or regular curves, and calligraphy, consisting of religious texts with stylized appearance, used both decoratively and to convey meaning. All three often involve elaborate interlacing in various mediums.
Art history is, briefly, the history of art—or the study of a specific type of objects created in the past.
A Caeretan hydria is a type of ancient Greek painted vase, belonging to the black-figure style.
An architectural style is a classification of buildings based on a set of characteristics and features, including overall appearance, arrangement of the components, method of construction, building materials used, form, size, structural design, and regional character.
Al-Burdayni Mosque is a mosque in Cairo, Egypt. It is located in Al-Dawoudia, near the Mosque of al-Malika Safiyya. It was built by a wealthy merchant, Kareem al-din al-Bardayni in 1616 during the Ottoman rule. The building is made of stone and has gates erected in 1629 on two sides on the west, right of the fountain. This mosque was built under Ottoman rule after the Ottomans defeated the Mamluks in 1517 and ruled over Egypt until 1867. The mosque is built in Mamluk style not Ottoman style which would have been the prevailing style of choice at the time. This is because Karim al-Din al-Burdayni did not align himself with the cultural practices of the Turks neither the Egyptians.
As the first established caliphate, following the Islamic Conquest beginning in 622 AD, the Umayyads captured and occupied the former Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, from Mesopotamia to the Iberian Peninsula until 750 AD. This initial period was catalysed after the death of Muhammad, and marked the formative years of Islamic art.