Friday, August 07, 2009

Must See: Pattern In Islamic Art

"At their best these images express a refined and even sublime aesthetic sensibility, but they always remain perfectly accessible."
Four thousand free images of themes, motifs and designs from Islamic Art. All downloadable, with accompanying analysis, historical significance, bibliography.

Go eat your heart out.

(Via MetaFilter)

Update: Via Feanor, an excellent link to an analysis of the types of symmetry found in Islamic art.

Second update: Rahul sends in another link that looks at the intersection of Islamic Art and Geometry. Great find - thanks Rahul!

6 comments:

FĂ«anor said...

Gorgeous stuff. Reminds me of some papers in tiling theory that I read a while ago. Interestingly, it appears that Muslim artisans recognised the various symmetries that allowed them to tesselate the plane way before these were rigorously established by mathematicians. Here's a small illustrative writeup.

km said...

Feanor: thanks for that link. Some great stuff in it. I'll update my post with your link.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Also, have you seen this (from a while ago)? For the inner geeks in us...

Anonymous said...

Ah, the Penrose tiling. Penrose had something to do with Escher's work as well. A good book which lays out all this territory - sacred art, ancient architecture, number theory, and geometry - is Michael Schneider's "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe". The book works for all ages. Check out his website : www.constructingtheuniverse.com

neha vish said...

Wow! Thank you!

km said...

Anon: Thanks for that recommendation. I am just soaking in all the good stuff from the comments today :)

Neha: Now go write a post (with pictures) about the old buildings in Delhi :)