Skip to content

Imagery · Systematic

Pattern & repeat

Repeating motifs as the image itself.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under imagery: what kind of pictures, if any?

styles make it: 92
as a defining choice: 20
as a usual one: 35
now and then: 37
avoid it: 2

Styles defined by it 20

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

Amazigh Sign System & Tifinaghc. 0–present · Middle East & North Africa, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe visual language shared by Amazigh communities from the Rif, Atlas and Kabylie to the Aurès and the Tuareg Sahara.
Andean Woven Graphic Systemsc. 600–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphic systems of Andean cloth, the region's most prestigious medium, in which every motif is built on the warp-and-weft grid.
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.
Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)c. 1100–present · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaSquare Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it.
Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design1500–present · OceaniaToi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand.
Batik Pattern Tradition1600–present · Southeast AsiaThe Javanese wax-resist textile tradition in which hot wax is drawn with a canting or stamped with a copper cap, then dyed in successive baths to build layered all-over patterns.
Rinpa & Saga-bon1600–present · East AsiaA Kyoto school of decorative design that revived the poetry and court painting of the Heian period, begun around 1600 by the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu and the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu and carried on less by teaching than by admiration across generations: Ogata Kōrin, Sakai Hōitsu, Kamisaka Sekka.
Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems1700–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Akan textile languages of Ghana.
Diné (Navajo) Weaving Design1700–present · North AmericaThe tapestry-woven design tradition of Diné (Navajo) weavers, recorded in Spanish sources from the early 18th century.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present · OceaniaBarkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures.
African Wax & Fancy Print1880–present · Sub-Saharan Africa, Western EuropeIndustrially printed cotton made for West and Central African markets, first by Dutch and British mills that imitated Javanese batik with resin resist, and later by African mills.
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau)1892–1914 · Western EuropeThe Dutch branch of Art Nouveau, seen mostly in book covers, vignettes and posters.
Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mud-dyed cotton cloth of the Bamana and other Malian peoples, in which the ground rather than the motif is painted: cloth dyed yellow with n'gallama leaves is covered around each sign with fermented iron-rich mud, and the unpainted signs are then bleached pale.
Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present · OceaniaPainting in ochres on flattened stringybark by Yolŋu, Kunwinjku, Kuninjku and other clans of Arnhem Land, carrying ceremonial designs into portable form; collected from 1912, painted through art centres since the 1970s.
Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)1950–present · East AsiaCheap printed cotton covered edge to edge in large, full-blown peonies with lotuses, phoenixes, dragons, mandarin ducks, small florets and auspicious emblems on saturated vermilion, bright pink or sky-blue grounds.
Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism)1951–present · Northern EuropeThe printed-cotton modernism of Marimekko, founded in Helsinki in 1951 by Armi and Viljo Ratia out of Viljo's printing firm Printex.
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.
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.
Memphis Design1981–1988 · Southern EuropeThe Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own.
Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)1981–present · South AsiaPainting on paper and canvas by Pardhan Gond artists of Patangarh and Bhopal, begun when Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, recruited Jangarh Singh Shyam in 1981; the style was later named Jangarh Kalam after him.

Styles that often use it 35

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

Styles that use it now and then 37

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.

All-over fieldin 52 of 92
Repetition & rhythmin 78 of 92
Abundant decorationin 51 of 92
Textile & craftin 51 of 92
Biomorphic curvesin 54 of 92
Geometric tessellationin 38 of 92

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in imagery