The Taming of the Haptic Space, from Málaga to Valencia to Florence

This essay proposes that an Islamic aesthetics and the modes of visuality to which they appeal can be characterized by the use of haptic space and abstract line, terms that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari derived from the work of late nineteenth-century art historians. It argues that abstract line and haptic space traveled in ceramics on the Iberian Peninsula and in the western Mediterranean basin. I examine how Andalusian ceramics engage haptic space and abstract line, how Christian clients took up these designs, and how, in Spanish and Italian adaptations, haptic space and abstract line gradually deepened out and thickened up into optical representations. The essay also examines traveling concepts: gaze theory, from cinema studies to art history; and the haptic image, from art history to cinema studies.