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Tone & intent · Stance

Spiritual & sacred

Devotion, ritual, the transcendent.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under tone & intent: what should the work make people feel or do?

styles make it: 120
as a defining choice: 26
as a usual one: 43
now and then: 51
avoid it: 7

Styles defined by it 26

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

Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register Compositionc. 0–394 · Middle East & North AfricaThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
Ethiopian Ge'ez Manuscript & Haräg Illuminationc. 500–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe manuscript art of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, written in the Ge'ez syllabary on parchment from the Garima Gospels (radiocarbon-dated to roughly the 4th–7th centuries) to the present.
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.
Armenian Manuscript Illuminationc. 862–1800 · Middle East & North Africa, Eastern EuropeThe illuminated books of the Armenian Church, from the Gospel of Queen Mlke (c. 862) and the Etchmiadzin Gospels (989) to the last manuscripts around 1800.
Hebrew Micrographyc. 895–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA Jewish scribal art in which lines of minute Hebrew script, usually the Masoretic notes that guard the biblical text, are written so that the line itself draws: interlaced frames and star rosettes on full carpet pages, and animals, knights, fish and grotesques in the margins.
Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
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.
Mixteca-Puebla Codex Paintingc. 1200–1560 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted screenfold books of Postclassic southern and central Mexico (not the Maya codices): long strips of gesso-coated deerskin, folded like a screen and painted on both sides.
Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)c. 1230–present · Eastern Europe, Southern EuropeCyrillic letters bound into one even band of ornament.
Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present · South AsiaWomen's ritual wall and floor painting from Mithila in north Bihar and Nepal's Terai, attested from at least the 14th century, seen by W.
Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)c. 1410–present · East Asia, South AsiaTibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa.
Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)1500–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southeast AsiaPictorial writing in which the strokes of a devotional text form one figure: a lion of ʿAli built from the Nad-e ʿAli prayer, a galleon whose hull spells the names of the Seven Sleepers, a peacock, a Sufi cap.
Thai Yantra (Yant) Diagrams1700–present · Southeast AsiaThai protective diagrams in which Pali formulae, written in Khom, a sacred script derived from Khmer, are packed into squares, circles, triangles, spires and the outlines of Buddhas, monks and tigers, often framed by lines of script.
Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present · South AsiaMass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset.
Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe devotional imagery of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods, above all the Mourides: reverse paintings on glass (souwère), made in Senegal's cities since about 1900, and the murals, banners, prints and photocopies that multiply one 1913 photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba across Dakar and Touba.
Bezalel School1906–1929 · Middle East & North AfricaThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
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.
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.
Rorke's Drift Linocut1962–1982 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe prints of the Lutheran art centre that Swedish teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius started at Ceza Hospital in 1962 and moved to Rorke's Drift in 1963: under apartheid, which denied Black South Africans formal fine-art education, the chief training ground for many Black artists.
Woodland School (Legend Painting)1962–present · North AmericaA school of painting from northwestern Ontario, made public when Norval Morrisseau showed at Toronto's Pollock Gallery in 1962 and carried on by Ojibwe, Odawa, Oji-Cree and Cree artists such as Daphne Odjig and Carl Ray.
Western Desert Iconography1971–present · OceaniaThe acrylic painting movement that took form at Papunya in 1971, when men there painted the Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall and then on board, carrying an older practice of sand, body and ceremonial designs into lasting form. 'Western Desert' is an umbrella name: the movement also includes Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Arrernte painters of the Central Desert.
Roots Reggae Sleeve Art & Rasta Iconography1973–1985 · Latin America & Caribbean, Western EuropeThe record sleeves of roots reggae, from Catch a Fire (1973) until dancehall took over in the 1980s.
Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988 · Middle East & North AfricaPosters, murals and stamps of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution and the 1980–88 war with Iraq, which fused the red-white-black international revolutionary poster with Persian miniature and coffeehouse narrative painting.
Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedOne fixed page for the Qur'an across much of the Muslim world: Uthman Taha's fully vowelled Naskh in fifteen justified lines, written so that every page ends at the end of a verse (the late Ottoman âyet-berkenar layout), inside a floral frame, with sura titles in framed cartouches and verse numbers in small round medallions.
Nigerian Pentecostal Crusade Poster & Billboard1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe roadside adverts of Nigeria's Pentecostal and independent churches: billboards, banners and posters on poles, walls and bridges announcing crusades, revivals, conventions and night vigils.
Torres Strait Islander Linocut1991–present · OceaniaRelief prints by Torres Strait Islander artists of Zenadth Kes, which grew from an Indigenous visual art course at Cairns College of TAFE by 1991 and the Mualgau Minaral collective on Mua (Moa) Island.

Styles that often use it 43

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

Styles that use it now and then 51

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.

Folk & sacred symbolsin 85 of 120
Borders & framesin 79 of 120
Hand-paintedin 65 of 120
Framed panelsin 86 of 120
Central symmetryin 94 of 120
Floral & vegetalin 55 of 120

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in tone & intent