Studies in the Islamic Arts of the Book

Studies in the Islamic Arts of the Book
Author: Robert Hillenbrand
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Early printed books
ISBN: 9781904597490

The studies collected in this volume, some of them rather difficult to access, date mostly from the last fifteen years and focus primarily on Persian book painting of the 14th to the early 16th centuries. In this period, Iran dominated the art of book painting in the Islamic world. The articles reprinted here examine various aspects of this, the golden age of Persian painting. They range from the period of Mongol rule, when the impact of Far Eastern themes and modes radically transformed the heritage bequeathed to Iran by Arab painting - a textbook case of the clash of civilisations - to the dawn of the modern era and the swansong of the classical style of Persian painting under the early Safavids. Yet other articles focus on the roots of book painting in the themes and styles developed in painted ceramics, on medieval Qur'anic calligraphy, on bookbinding and on the remarkably original variations played on the hitherto hackneyed theme of the figural frontispiece by Arab painters. Two major leitmotifs are explored in this selection of essays. One is provided by the constantly varying interpretations of the Shahnama (The Book of Kings), the Persian national epic, and especially the tendency of painters to interpret this familiar text in terms of contemporary politics. The other is the interplay of text and image, which highlights the tendency of painters to strike out on their own and to leave the literal text progressively further behind while they develop plots and sub-plots of their own. These enquiries are set within the context of a concerted effort to explore in detail how Persian painters achieved their most spectacular visual effects. In its combination of general surveys and closely focused analyses of individual manuscripts, this collection of articles will be of interest to specialists in book painting and in Islamic art as a whole. Contents: Preface The Uses of Space in Timurid Painting The Iconography of the Shah-nama-yi Shahi The Iskandar Cycle in the Great Mongol Shahnama Images of Muhammad in al-Biruni's Chronology of Ancient Nations The Arts of the Book in Ilkhanid Iran The paintings of Rashid al-Din's 'Universal History' at Edinburgh Mamluk and Ilkhanid Bestiaries: Convention and Experiment The Qur'an Illuminated The relationship between book painting and luxury ceramics in 13th-century Iran, The Message of Misfortune Literature and the visual arts; New Perspectives in Shahnama Iconography Erudition exalted: the double frontispiece to The Epistles of the Sincere Brethren The Shahnama and the illustrated book Islamic Bookbinding Index

The Making of Islamic Art

The Making of Islamic Art
Author: Robert Hillenbrand
Publisher: Edinburgh Studies in Islamic A
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2021-05-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781474434294

Explores how Islamic art and architecture were made: their materials and their social, political, economic and religious context In their own words, Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair espouse 'things and thinginess rather than theories and isations'. This book's practical, down-to-earth dimension, expressed in plain, simple English, runs counter to the current fashion for theoretical explanations and their accompanying jargon. Its many insights, firmly anchored in artistic practice in architecture, painting and the decorative arts, are supported by ample technical know-how. This bottom-up approach differs radically and refreshingly from that of much top-down contemporary scholarship. It privileges the maker rather than the patron. The range is wide - mosques becoming temples; how religious buildings reflect politics; Yemeni frescoes and inscriptions; domestic Syrian 18th-century ornament; Egyptian bookbinding techniques; recycling and repair in Damascene crafts; conservation versus restoration; narrative on ceramics; metalwork with architectural motifs; lost buildings reconstructed; how objects speak;Muslim burials in China; the role of migrating potters; Mughal painting; stone carpet weights; the use of metals in Islamic manuscripts, calligraphy and modern artists' books. Key Features - Explores previously neglected practice-based approaches to Islamic art - Looks at Islamic art from the craftsman's rather than the patron's viewpoint - Covers not just the Islamic heartlands but extends to India and China, underlining the global presence of Islamic art - Presents material and sources which are usually overlooked in discussions of Islamic art - Revises conventional wisdom in fields as disparate as book painting and ceramics - Illuminates the interface of modern politics and Islamic art Robert Hillenbrand is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Art the University of Edinburgh and Professorial Fellow in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews.

Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia

Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia
Author: Iftikhar Dadi
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2010-05-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0807895962

This pioneering work traces the emergence of the modern and contemporary art of Muslim South Asia in relation to transnational modernism and in light of the region's intellectual, cultural, and political developments. Art historian Iftikhar Dadi here explores the art and writings of major artists, men and women, ranging from the late colonial period to the era of independence and beyond. He looks at the stunningly diverse artistic production of key artists associated with Pakistan, including Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Zainul Abedin, Shakir Ali, Zubeida Agha, Sadequain, Rasheed Araeen, and Naiza Khan. Dadi shows how, beginning in the 1920s, these artists addressed the challenges of modernity by translating historical and contemporary intellectual conceptions into their work, reworking traditional approaches to the classical Islamic arts, and engaging the modernist approach towards subjective individuality in artistic expression. In the process, they dramatically reconfigured the visual arts of the region. By the 1930s, these artists had embarked on a sustained engagement with international modernism in a context of dizzying social and political change that included decolonization, the rise of mass media, and developments following the national independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. Bringing new insights to such concepts as nationalism, modernism, cosmopolitanism, and tradition, Dadi underscores the powerful impact of transnationalism during this period and highlights the artists' growing embrace of modernist and contemporary artistic practice in order to address the challenges of the present era.

What is “Islamic” Art?

What is “Islamic” Art?
Author: Wendy M. K. Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2019-10-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1108474659

An alternate approach to Islamic art emphasizing literary over historical contexts and reception over production in visual arts and music.

Islamic Art in the 19th Century

Islamic Art in the 19th Century
Author: Doris Behrens-Abouseif
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004144420

This collection of essays provides a timely reassessment of nineteenth-century Islamic art and architecture. The essays demonstrate that the arts of that era were vibrant and diverse, making ingenious use of native traditions and materials or adopting imported conventions and new technologies. However, traditionalists, revivalists and modernists all referred in one way or another to an Islamic heritage, whether to reinvent, revive or reject it. Beginning with an historical introduction and an assessment of changing attitudes towards the visual arts the following essays provide case studies of architecture and art in Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Central Asia, India and the Caribbean. They examine such issues as patronage, sources of artistic inspiration and responses to European art. The essays have a relevance and importance for our understanding of the societies and attitudes of that time, and have a direct bearing on the more general debate concerning cultural identity and the integration of modern ideas in the Muslim world. The book is richly illustrated with very many illustrations in black-and-white and in full colour.

Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250

Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250
Author: Richard Ettinghausen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2003-07-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780300088694

This richly illustrated book provides an unsurpassed overview of Islamic art and architecture from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, a time of the formation of a new artistic culture and its first, medieval, flowering in the vast area from the Atlantic to India. Inspired by Ettinghausen and Grabar’s original text, this book has been completely rewritten and updated to take into account recent information and methodological advances. The volume focuses special attention on the development of numerous regional centers of art in Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as the western and northeastern provinces of Iran. It traces the cultural and artistic evolution of such centers in the seminal early Islamic period and examines the wealth of different ways of creating a beautiful environment. The book approaches the arts with new classifications of architecture and architectural decoration, the art of the object, and the art of the book. With many new illustrations, often in color, this volume broadens the picture of Islamic artistic production and discusses objects in a wide range of media, including textiles, ceramics, metal, and wood. The book incorporates extensive accounts of the cultural contexts of the arts and defines the originality of each period. A final chapter explores the impact of Islamic art on the creativity of non-Muslims within the Islamic realm and in areas surrounding the Muslim world.

Islamic Arts from Spain

Islamic Arts from Spain
Author: Mariam Rosser-Owen
Publisher: Victoria & Albert Museum
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2010-06
Genre: Art
ISBN:

From the Alhmabra to Owen Jones, Islamic Arts from Spain tells the story of the art and design produced in Spain under Islamic rule and examines the long-lasting influence of Islamic Spain on European decorative arts. The book looks first at patronage during the 'Golden Age' of the Umayyad caliphate, from the mid-tenth to the early eleventh century, before discussing the Nasrid dynasty who ruled from Granada in a territory much reduced by the resurgent Christian monarchs of northern Spain. It also explores the phenomenon of the 'Mudejar', Islamic-influenced arts produced for non-Muslim patrons in the Renaissance and the craze for the 'Alhambresque', a style promoted by European designers such as Owen Jones. Addressing the creation, suppression, rediscovery and influence of Islamic art in Spain from the eighth to the twentieth century, the book is lavishly illustrated with objects drawn from the V+A's collections, from exquisite ivory caskets,marble tombstones and capitals to architectural models, jewellery, textiles and ceramics.

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture
Author: Finbarr Barry Flood
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1442
Release: 2017-06-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1119068576

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

Islamic Art and Beyond

Islamic Art and Beyond
Author: Oleg Grabar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040243223

Islamic Art and Beyond is the third in a set of four volumes of studies on Islamic art by Oleg Grabar. Between them they bring together more than eighty articles, studies and essays, work spanning half a century by a master of the field. Each volume takes a particular section of the topic, the three other volumes being entitled: Early Islamic Art, 650-1100; Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800; and Jerusalem. Reflecting the many incidents of a long academic life, they illustrate one scholar's attempt at making order and sense of 1400 years of artistic growth. They deal with architecture, painting, objects, iconography, theories of art, aesthetics and ornament, and they seek to integrate our knowledge of Islamic art with Islamic culture and history as well as with the global concerns of the History of Art. In addition to the articles selected, each volume contains an introduction which describes, often in highly personal ways, the context in which Grabar's scholarship developed and the people who directed and mentored his efforts. The articles in the present volume illustrate how the author's study of Islamic art led him in two directions for a further understanding of the arts. One is how to define Islamic art and what impulses provided it with its own peculiar forms and dynamics of growth. Was it a faith or a combination of social, historical, and cultural events? And how has 'Islamic art' impacted on the contemporary arts of the Islamic world? The other issue is that of the meanings to be given to forms like domes, so characteristic of Islamic art, or to terms like symbol, signs, or aesthetic values in the arts, especially when one considers the contemporary world. The Islamic examples allow for the development of new intellectual positions for the history and criticism of the arts everywhere.

Islamic Chinoiserie

Islamic Chinoiserie
Author: Kadoi Yuka Kadoi
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-07-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1474469671

The Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century marked a new phase in the development of Islamic art. Trans-Eurasian exchanges of goods, people and ideas were encouraged on a large scale under the auspices of the Pax Mongolica. With the fascination of portable objects brought from China and Central Asia, a distinctive, hitherto unknown style - Islamic chinoiserie - was born in the art of Iran.Highly illustrated, Islamic Chinoiserie offers a fascinating glimpse into the artistic interaction between Iran and China under the Mongols. By using rich visual materials from various media of decorative and pictorial arts - textiles, ceramics, metalwork and manuscript painting - the book illustrates the process of adoption and adaptation of Chinese themes in the art of Mongol-ruled Iran in a visually compelling way. The observation of this unique artistic phenomenon serves to promote the understanding of the artistic diversity of Islamic art in the Middle Ages.Key Features*Covers various media of decorative and pictorial arts from Iran, Central Asia and China*Deals with a diverse range of issues related to the East-West artistic relationship in the Middle Ages*Features in-depth studies of style, technique and iconography in Iranian art under the Mongols*Includes 125 illustrations, 24 in colour