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Form & shape · Representation

Non-representational

Pure form with no depicted subject.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under form & shape: what is the shape language?

styles make it: 101
as a defining choice: 11
as a usual one: 52
now and then: 38
avoid it: 70

Styles defined by it 11

For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.

Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Traditionc. 690–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southern EuropeA visual system shared across the Islamic world in which proportioned calligraphy, compass-and-straightedge geometry and the vegetal arabesque carry meaning and beauty in place of figurative imagery.
Diné (Navajo) Weaving Design1700–present · North AmericaThe tapestry-woven design tradition of Diné (Navajo) weavers, recorded in Spanish sources from the early 18th century.
Suprematism1915–1925 · Eastern EuropeKazimir Malevich's non-objective art, unveiled with the Black Square at the 0.10 exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, reduced painting to pure geometric planes floating in white, infinite space.
De Stijl1917–1931 · Western EuropeA Dutch movement formed around Theo van Doesburg's journal De Stijl and Piet Mondrian's Neoplasticism, which sought universal harmony through the most elementary means: horizontal and vertical lines, rectangles, the three primaries and black, white and grey.
Mavo1923–1925 · East AsiaTokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925).
Hurufiyya Calligraphic Modernism1949–present · Middle East & North AfricaA pan-Arab and Iranian modern-art movement, begun by Madiha Omar in the late 1940s, that freed the letters of the Arabic script from text and used them as abstract visual units.
Brazilian Concrete Design1951–1975 · Latin America & CaribbeanA São Paulo and Rio movement in which concrete art, concrete poetry and Brazil's first design offices shared one vocabulary: Max Bill's mathematically generated geometry, serial repetition and sans-serif type.
Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)1951–1975 · Southern Europe, Central EuropeZagreb graphic design grown from the EXAT 51 manifesto (1951), which tied abstract art to visual communication.
Casablanca School Graphic Modernism1962–1987 · Middle East & North AfricaA postcolonial modernism formed at the Casablanca fine-art school under Farid Belkahia, where Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Chabâa and colleagues set Amazigh rugs and jewellery, painted ceilings and calligraphy beside a Bauhaus-style merging of art, craft and design.
Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism1966–1999 · Eastern EuropeThe monumental art of Soviet Central Asia after the 1966 Tashkent earthquake: a strand of Socialist Realism mixed with Islamic and national ornament.
Generative & Dynamic Identities2007–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, North AmericaIdentity systems designed as rules rather than fixed marks: logos and graphics generated by code, data or parameters so that they vary endlessly while staying recognisable.

Styles that often use it 52

A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.

Styles that use it now and then 38

An occasional choice in these styles.

It often goes with

Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.

Geometric primitivesin 63 of 101
Typography onlyin 56 of 101
Pattern & repeatin 48 of 101
All-over fieldin 38 of 101
Rotated & vertical settingin 41 of 101
Rectilinearin 49 of 101

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in form & shape