The Comparative Study of "Spiral" Motif in Islamic and Environmental Art

The spiral pattern has been used as a valuable and important decorative element in the ornamentation, referred to as "Arabesque". The spiral or arabesque movement was not just for decorating different types of building surfaces, but also had sacred signs. Next, we look at the symbolic meaning of this pattern in Islamic Art. In this paper, the author concludes that the manifestation of this pattern in Islamic art, which is also Arabesque, can also be a kind of environmental art because it is used in three dimensional environments and more importantly, Islamic artists inspired by nature have created this pattern. However, in the eyes of the Islamic artist, it was not objectively likeable and had a tendency for subjective truth, so, by stylizing the design, they came up with a pattern that lost any resemblance to nature. Also, the Islamic artist, like the environmental artist by choosing the environment as the context of the artistic work, has been a return to the original human way of creating human work and the long-standing relationship with nature, so these meanings have led to a commonality between environmental art and Islamic art. In this article, based on the works of contemporary ground artists and Islamic art and examining different examples, their common views on the use of spiral motif are studied and analyzed. "Spiral" is one of the forms in nature that has many mysteries within itself. There are lots of spirals in the nature such as plants, galaxy and atom that have spiral shapes. Human beings have always paid attention to this symbolic and mysterious element, and make a sacred meaning for this shape. Art, like life, approaches the spiral, and the artist, inspired by nature, uses this symbolic element to create his work. Art has always strived to base its truth on nature, which is why every artistic creation is a symbolic aspect of the truth of nature. Naturally, it manifests itself in artistic creations. As mentioned earlier, the origin of the spiral pattern goes back to nature. The artists of Islamic art were inspired by the curved lines in nature and created the Islamic design. Western artists' thinking about art and beauty is sensory-ideal imagery and blends nature with feeling and myth. Nature has always been a reference point for Western art, and especially in environmental art, the land, as the space and the place familiar with human is the bed of artistic work. While Eastern imagination is subjective-intuitive it conceives of beauty and truth in the abstract nature beyond the earth, and of the latent and subjective, and the extrasensory, which is naturally the origin of the art of the East. There is, of course, a common denominator that both of these arts have always linked earth proportions and celestial abstractions with curved lines, which is the spiral pattern. In this article, the semantic and formal connotation of the "Spiral" is expressed in a comparative way between Islamic art and environmental art, as well as the relationship between the beauty of the spiral and the common point established between the art in the East and the West and its symbolic meaning in these arts. By study on the works in environmental art, such as the Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty”, and in Islamic art, which is "Arabesque" as a kind of environmental art, it was concluded that "Spiral" is a common motif between Islamic art and environmental art, and it ultimately leads to unity in the meaning and form. The balance, tranquility, dynamism and harmony of this motif have made artists use it to achieve the concepts of holiness, unity and beauty in their work. The type of this research is qualitative and research method is descriptive-comparative. Also Theoretical framework of research is based on the views of traditional philosophers.