Featuring multidisciplinary research by an international team of leading scholars, this volume addresses the contested aspects of arabesque while exploring its penchant for crossing artistic and cultural boundaries to create new forms. Enthusiastically imported from its Near Eastern sources by European artists, the freely flowing line known as arabesque is a recognizable motif across the arts of painting, music, dance, and literature. From the German Romantics to the Art Nouveau artists, and from Debussys compositions to the serpentine choreographies of Loïe Fuller, the chapters in this volume bring together cross-disciplinary perspectives to understand the arabesque across both art historical and musicological discourses.
Introduction: The Arabesque Aesthetic
Anne Leonard
Chapter 1: Spatchcocking the Arabesque: Big Books, Industrial Design, and the
Captivation of Islamic Art and Architecture
Margaret S. Graves
Chapter 2: Poet, Artist, Arabesque: On Peter Corneliuss Illustrations to
Goethes Faust
David E. Wellbery
Chapter 3: The Lithographers Mark and the Magic of Synchrony
Cordula Grewe
Chapter 4: The Decorative Line of the Nabis: Expressivity and Mild
Subversion
Clément Dessy
Chapter 5: Ephemeral Arabesque Timbres and the Exotic Feminine
Gurminder Kaur Bhogal
Chapter 6: Arabesque in French Music after Debussy
Stephanie Venturino
Chapter 7: Drawing a Line with the Body
Juliet Bellow
Chapter 8: About An Arabesque
Jonah Bokaer
Anne Leonard is Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture and author of The Tragic Muse: Art and Emotion, 17001900.
