Aporia in Umayyad Art or the Degree Zero of the Visual Forms’ Meaning in Early Islam

Abstract This article re-examines the established findings about Umayyad art as a transitional production essentially anchored in Western and Eastern Late Antique traditions that have inspired it. It argues instead Umayyads brought an aesthetic revolution laying out foundations of what has become known “Islamic ornament,” predominantly aniconic form. An epistemological shift from history to critical inquiry allows us show that, beyond adaptive borrowing pre-existing forms, redefined art’s condition meaning based on unprecedented attitude images visual discourse informed by Islamic ontotheology logocentric metaphysics.