ANICONISM

One of the most recognised characteristics of Islamic art is its use of abstract linear or vegetative patterns and geometric forms, which are widely considered to be the only aesthetic form available to Islamic artists.

In order to appreciate the purpose of aniconism in Islamic art, one must first understand the historical context of Islam and its relationship to images in the art of Christianity. Islam explicitly rejects both the notion that God is present in the holy trinity and the belief that the human body is made in God’s own image as a narcissistic fallacy that is ‘an obstacle to human imagination’^[1217] and a barrier to comprehending the Divine. To Muslims, God is a being beyond all earthly presence: even the Prophet Muhammad does not represent or embody God but rather is the ideal of man on earth. The strong visual tradition in Christianity of creating portraits and sculptures of Jesus and other important religious figures as points of reference for prayer and worship is thus highly offensive to some Muslims who consider it an attempt to humanise God as earthly and finite.

The almost universal practice of abstraction over figuration in places of religious worship can also be attributed both to the fact that aniconism was the officially sanctioned approach to artistic representation of the Caliphates prior to the fourteenth century.^[1219] This was because it was believed that the use of geometric forms was a metaphor for expressing the Divine whose perfection is ‘synonymous’ with the ‘repetitive pat­terns, exactness of proportion and symmetry’ of Islamic art.^[1220] Thus, by inundating the viewer’s sight with a visually unending display of complex and interwoven pattern, Islamic art does not attempt to imitate Divine creation but invoke contemplation in the observer of the inhuman and transcendent quality of God.^[1221] The use of this ‘infinite pattern’ can be observed not only in decorative wall designs, but also in the most celebrated architecture of the Islamic world, including the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain,^[1222] where over 800 columns form a seemingly infinite forest of double horseshoe arches that are intended to elicit in the viewer a feeling of awe and contemplation of the divinity of God as eternal and everlasting. The practice of aniconism and its religious purpose is not restricted to the art of the historical Islam, but is also found in the practice of modern artists in Malaysia, including Sulaiman Esa and Khatijah Sanusi, both of whom utilise arabesque infinity patterns as symbols of their belief in the transcendence and unity of God as the Original Source.^[1223]

VII.