Cute? or Beautiful? 〜Arabesque〜

Have you ever seen Arabic calligraphy before? This calligraphy is one of the way people use to write/draw beautifully the words from Koran, which corresponding to "God's words". There are couple specific rules to do Arabic calligraphy, we cannot draw art whatever we want by quoting from Koran. Looking at historical background, this calligraphy has been developed partly because in teaching of Islam people are not allowed to idol worship. In other words, drawing human beings or animals to create something relates to religion of Islam is thought to be taboo. Therefore, as you can see, Arabic calligraphy is close to cute handwriting in English, which people would have fun or feel accomplishment while and after drawing the works. Moreover, those works would be so meaningful to makers, not only because it uses "God's words".

The other example is that Arabic letters are used in architecture as design too. When I went to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates, I visited ”Sheikh Zayed Mosque” and found out that Arabic letters are naturally blended into constructions unlike Japanese shrined and temples. Since I cannot read any Arabic, I do not even know what it is saying, but it does not have to be quotes from Koran as long as those words are written in holy Koran so that those sentences cultivate people's spirituality. (https://kinarino.jp/cat7-アート・カルチャー/13891-ながーい歴史が育てたデザイン！イスラム模様、その魅惑の世界)

These styles, the way Arabic letters are used, are called "Arabesque”.  Not only area of art, calligraphy or architecture, Arabesque is used in commodity such as pottery and carpet too. Actually, pattern of flours and plants in above picture are also in Arabesque too since those botanical designs seem to last forever like universe. Those ideas, using letters as one of the designs, illustrates that Western Cuteness care about ownership since those constructions have been built forever unless someone try to break them. Therefore, Arabesque is one of the best examples showing feature of Western cuteness.