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Notes on the Aesthetics of Medieval Islamic Art—and of Medieval Persian Painting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2022
Abstract
The article sets the discussion of Islamic art within the very animated discussions of the last few decades by many prominent scholars that have sought to pinpoint its nature and that have highlighted the twin dangers of over-generalisation and too narrow a focus. Given that the parameters of the discussion have undergone radical change, and the need to revise traditional paradigms, the article confines itself to Islamic art in the medieval period and the central Islamic lands, especially through the prism of nature. Problems of definition and of the usefulness of medieval texts, and the roles of abstraction and contemplation, are reviewed in turn and the article ends with an attempt to define more closely the aesthetics of a single branch of Islamic art, namely medieval Persian book painting.
Keywords
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- Information
- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 32 , Special Issue 4: Studies in Honour of Barbara Brend , October 2022 , pp. 1041 - 1068
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society
References
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11 See Ettinghausen, “Interaction and integration in Islamic art”, pp. 107–131. He states explicitly that his aim is to pin down “certain trends and forces in Islam” through particular examples even though they “can never fully describe the entire extent of each phenomenon” and he notes that while Islam “set but few specific tasks for the artists, it nevertheless created a way of life and attitudes which deeply influenced its architecture…iconography, …ornament, and …material” (p. 107).
12 It has 13 sections of which by far the longest and fullest are the first six, which cover “The Jahiliya; Artistic heritage; Opposition to luxury; Vessels of gold and silver; Silk; Prohibition of pictorial art; and Attitude to craftsmen”. Thereafter, there is a marked change in tone, length, and approach, and the closing sections of the article (which was unfinished and published posthumously) are decidedly weaker and seriously vitiated by an undue emphasis on early Islamic art (“Flat style; Three-dimensional form [see especially pp. 193–197]; Humble base; Transformation of forms; Indefinite pattern; and Unreality and impermanence”).
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25 Aga-Oglu, “Remarks”, pp. 193–202 and I. R. Al-Faruqi, “Misconceptions of the nature of Islamic art”, Islam and the Modern Age 1 (1970), pp. 29–49, and idem, “Islam and Art”, Studia Islamica XXXVII (1973), pp. 81–109.
26 E. H. Madden, “Characteristics of Islamic art”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33.4 (1975), pp. 423–430, again a somewhat disappointing paper in that it is essentially a digest of the views of scholars who see all Islamic art as generated by a religious impulse. As noted elsewhere in the present article, the exclusionary nature of this interpretation, which had its heyday some 50 years ago, has garnered little support subsequently (see, for example, W. K. M. Shaw, “The Islam in Islamic art history: secularism and public discourse”, JAH 6 [2012], pp. 1–34).
27 See, among many other similar writings, Burckhardt, T., “The spirit of Islamic art”, Islamic Quarterly 1 (1954), pp. 212–218Google Scholar and idem, “Perennial values in Islamic art”, Studies in Comparative Religion 1.3 (1967), pp. 132–141; S. H. Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality (Albany, NY, 1987), pp. 3–16. Others in this group include I. R. al-Faruqi, F. Schuon, K. Critchlow, and L. Bakhtiyar.
28 E. Baer, Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images (Supplements to Muqarnas IV) (Leiden, 1989) and L. A. Mayer, L'art juif en terre d'Islam (Geneva, 1959).
29 Shaw, What is “Islamic” Art?, pp. 24–32.
30 Avcioğlu, N. F. and Flood, F. B., “Globalizing cultures: art and mobility in the eighteenth century”, Ars Orientalis 39 (2010), pp. 7–38Google Scholar; F. B. Flood, “From prophet to postmodernism? New world orders and the end of Islamic art”, in Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and its Institutions, (ed.) E. Mansfield (London, 2007), pp. 31–53; Flood, F. B. and Necipoğlu, G., “Frameworks of Islamic art and architectural history”, in A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture. Volume I: From the Prophet to the Mongols (Hoboken, NJ, 2017), pp. 2–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 28–34 and 44–45.
31 Cuddon, B., “A field pioneered by amateurs: the collecting and display of Islamic art in early twentieth-century Boston”, Muqarnas 30 (2013), p. 30Google Scholar.
32 Blair and Bloom, “Mirage”; their use of the words “mirage” and “unwieldy”, like the use of quotation marks for the word “Islamic” or the phrase “Islamic art” by Shaw and Shalem respectively, signals the perennial difficulties of identifying the distinctive nature of Islamic art. No single interpretation is likely to win general acceptance.
33 A. Shalem, “What do we mean when we say ‘Islamic art’? A plea for a critical rewriting of the history of the arts of Islam”, JAH 6 (2012), pp. 1–18. The Munich exhibition of 1910 entitled Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst, with over 3,600 objects on display, was of pivotal importance here (A. Lermer and A. Shalem [eds], After One Hundred Years. The 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” Reconsidered [Leiden and Boston, 2010]; E.-M. Troelenberg, “Regarding the exhibition: the Munich exhibition Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art (1910) and its scholarly position”, JAH 6 [2012], pp. 1–34 with a useful bibliographical overview on p. 1).
34 For regionalism, see Behrens-Abouseif, D. and Vernoit, S., Islamic Art in the 19th Century. Tradition, Innovation and Eclecticism (Leiden and Boston, 2015), pp. ix–xGoogle Scholar and L. Korn, “Intrinsic goals and external influence: on some factors affecting research and presentation of Islamic art”, in Islamic Art and the Museum, (eds) B. Junod, G. Khalil, S. Weber and G. Wolf (London, 2012), pp. 85–86 and Necipoğlu, “Concept”, p. 7 for the connection with nationalism. For revival, see J. M. Scarce, “Ancestral themes in the art of Qajar Iran, 1785–1925”, in Behrens-Abouseif and Vernoit, Islamic Art in the 19th Century, pp. 236–238, M. Ekhtiar, “Innovation and revivalism in Later Persian calligraphy: the Visal family of Shiraz”, in ibid., pp. 259 and 261; L. S. Diba, “An encounter between Qajar Iran and the West: the Rashtrapati Bhavan painting of Fath ‘Ali Shah at the Hunt”, in ibid., pp. 287–289; D. Behrens-Abouseif, “The visual transformation of Egypt during the reign of Muhammad ‘Ali”, in ibid., p. 120; and M. Volait, “Appropriating Orientalism? Saber Sabri's Mamluk revivals in late-nineteenth-century Cairo”, in ibid., passim but especially pp. 134 and 140–143. For another treatment of these themes of regionalism and revival, see S. Vernoit, Occidentalism: Islamic Art in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1997).
35 Shalem, “Plea”, pp. 1–2.
36 Necipoğlu, “Concept”, Islamic Art, pp. 1–26 (originally published in Junod et al., Islamic Art, pp. 57–75). See also, for an overview of the contents of JAH 6 (2012) which simultaneously pinpoints how the historiography of Islamic art came of age, Carey, M. and Graves, M. S., “Introduction: the historiography of Islamic art and architecture, 2012”, JAH 6 (2012), pp. 1–15Google Scholar; see also n. 1 above.
37 Shalem, “Plea”, passim but especially pp. 5, 14–18.
38 Note the inverted commas around that word in the title of Shaw's book.
39 Shalem, “Plea”, pp. 1, 4, 6–13; Necipoğlu, “Concept”, pp. 12–15.
40 Keshani, “Towards digital Islamic art history”, pp. 1–24.
41 Graves, M. S., “Feeling uncomfortable in the nineteenth century”, JAH 6 (2012), pp. 1–27Google Scholar (for some of the reasons behind the surge of interest in Islamic art of the nineteenth century, see especially p. 26). For the concurrent problem of medievalisation, see ibid., pp. 3, 16–25 and Necipoğlu, “Concept”, pp. 2, n. 5, and 4. This is, moreover, a theme that runs right through Shalem, “Plea”.
42 Perhaps the outstanding exception is the pre-eminence of figural art, often striving for realism, in Mughal painting.
43 O. Grabar, “Das Ornament in der islamischen Kunst”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländische Gesellschaft Supp. III.1 (1977), pp. xlii–liv; R. Ettinghausen, with illustrations by R. and S. Michaud, “Islamische Architekturornamente”, Du. Europäische Kunstzeitschrift (August 1976), pp. 20–65, helpfully subdivided into sections: “introduction”, “colour”, “iconography”, “ornament”, and “technical development”; Yarshater, “Some common characteristics”, p. 69.
44 Such as a twelfth-century panel of marble intarsia from Mosul (C. Hillenbrand, The Crusades. Islamic Perspectives [Edinburgh, 1999], pp. 209–210).
45 Which is covered by both glazed and unglazed bricks but from a distance persuades the viewer that the entirety of the dome's surface is glazed (A.U. Pope, Persian Architecture [London, 1965], pl. XXVII).
46 O. Grabar, “Geometry and ideology: the festival of Islam and the study of Islamic art”, in A Way Prepared: Essays on Islamic Culture in Honor of Richard Bayly Winder, (eds) F. Kazemi and R. D. McChesney (New York and London, 1988), pp. 145–152 and I. El-Said and A. Parman, Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art (London, 1976).
47 See Massignon, L., “Les méthodes de réalisation artistique des peuples de l’Islam”, Syria 2 (1921), pp. 47–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar and pp. 149–160 (see also Aga-Oglu, “Remarks”, pp. 176–177 and R. Irwin, “Louis Massignon and the esoteric interpretation of Islamic art”, in Vernoit, Discovering Islamic Art, pp. 163–170) and Ettinghausen, “Character”, pp. 251–267.
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50 For the problems inherent in the term “classical” in this context, see Gruber, C., “Questioning the ‘classical’ in Persian painting: models and problems of definition”, JAH 6 (2012), pp. 1–25Google Scholar, especially pp. 2–12; cf. also L. Golombek, “Toward a classification of Islamic painting”, in Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (ed.) R. Ettinghausen (New York, 1972), pp. 23–34.
51 E. Herzfeld, “Arabesque”, EI1, I (Leiden, 1913), cols. 363a–367b; and E. Kühnel, The Arabesque. Meaning and Transformation of an Ornament, (trans.) R. Ettinghausen (Graz, 1949, several reprints).
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55 Such as Arabic epigraphy incorporating human heads or bodies.
56 Fox, J., The World According to Colour. A Cultural History (London, 2021), pp. 205–211Google Scholar, on green.
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58 Like the affronted zebus on an example of ‘Abbasid lustreware; see K. Otto-Dorn, L'Art de l'Islam, (trans.) J.-P. Simon (Paris, 1967), p. 85, fig. 33.
59 Lings, M., The Quranic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination (London, 1976), pl. 10Google Scholar.
60 For example, Dust Muhammad's opening words in the Preface to the Bahram Mirza album: “Then, the custom of portraiture flourished so in the lands of Cathay and the Franks until sharp-penned Mercury scrivened the rescript of rule in the name of Sultan Abusa‘id Khudaybanda. Master Ahmad Musa, who was his father's pupil, lifted the veil from the face of depiction, and the [style of] depiction that is now current was invented by him” (translated by W. M. Thackston in L. Komaroff and S. Carboni (eds), The Legacy of Genghis Khan. Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353 [New Haven and London, 2002], p. 135).
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64 Idem, “Note sulla terminologia araba dell'arte”, Oriente Moderno 43 (1963), pp. 799–814, especially pp. 811–813.
65 Kühnel, E., “Malernamen in den Berliner „Saray“-Alben”, Kunst des Orients 3 (1959), pp. 66–77Google Scholar.
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67 N. M. Titley, “Persian miniature painting: the repetition of compositions during the fifteenth century”, in Akten des VII. International Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie. München 7.–10. September 1976, (ed.) W. Kleiss (Berlin, 1979), pp. 471–491; A. T. Adamova, “Repetition of compositions in manuscripts: the Khamsa of Nizami in Leningrad”, in Timurid Art and Culture. Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century, (eds) L. Golombek and M. E. Subtelny (Leiden, 1992), pp. 67–75.
68 M. E. Subtelny, ‘The Poetic Circle at the Court of the Timurid Sultan Husain Baiqara, and its Political Significance’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1979), pp. 162–170.
69 See Ettinghausen, “Bihzad”, cols. 1211b–1214a, for an objective overview; for the progress of scholarship to the mid-twentieth century, the period which saw the controversy at its height, see Stchoukine, I., Les peintures des manuscrits timurides (Paris, 1954), pp. 21–25, 68–86Google Scholar, 95, 101–104, 110–111 and 120–141. For more recent contributions to this ongoing debate, see, for example, E. Bahari, Bihzad. Master of Persian Painting (London, 1996); and, for an attempt to reset the problem in new terms, D. J. Roxburgh, “Kamal al-Din Bihzad and authorship in Persianate painting”, Muqarnas XVII (2000), pp. 119–146 and especially pp. 136–137 and 140. See also B. Brend, ‘Review of M. Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzad of Herat (1465–1535)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17.1 (2007), p. 65 and eadem, Treasures of Herat (London, 2022) and, for a cognate tradition, Seyller, J., “A Mughal code of connoisseurship”, Muqarnas XVII (2000), pp. 177Google Scholar, 191, 197 and 200.
70 M. B. Dickson and S. C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh, Vols I–II (Cambridge, MA, 1981). Only one of the 258 paintings in that manuscript is signed, yet Welch has attributed each of the 257 others to various named artists who are known from the literary record to have been involved with the project. The resulting gap between speculation and proof is distressingly wide and poses a huge question mark over the value of the entire exercise.
71 See, for example, the totally different trajectory followed by Canby, S. R., The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp. The Persian Book of Kings (New York, 2014), pp. 21–60Google Scholar, which has produced a flood of arresting insights.
72 I use the word “perhaps” here because Stchoukine never, to my knowledge, explicitly asserted that Persian painting lacked intellectual content. But the layout of his books, with their multiple sub-headings, does not leave room for in-depth discussion of that topic.
73 See Robinson, B. W., Persian Paintings (London, 1952), pp. 3–4Google Scholar (the artist's “social status being that of a skilled craftsman, he made no attempt to edify or instruct. His objects were simply to please the eye and flatter the taste of his patron”); idem, Persian Paintings (second edn, London, 1965), p. 5 (“a Persian painting tells a story, with no conscious attempt on the artist's part to project his own personality or to convey any spiritual message”); idem, Persian Miniatures (New York, n.d.), pp. 5–6 (“all this beauty and richness are on the surface; there is no suggestiveness or symbolism…The appeal of Persian painting is to the eye, and those who look in it for those deeper qualities to which it has never pretended, will undoubtedly be disappointed”). In the introduction to idem, Studies in Persian Art. Vol. II ((London, 1993), p. i, however, Robinson notes “I have a horror of a very personal and practical art like Persian painting being submerged in a viscous tide of art-historical jargon and pseudo-Freudian psychology, and this feeling has probably blinded me to some of the genuine symbolism and Sufi overtones that some miniatures may perhaps contain.”
74 “Persian painting lacks intellectual perception of life and deep meaning; spirituality; tragedy; a full vision of space and the universe—it prefers to create an enclosed theatre; … it panders to an enjoyment of the senses by mastery of colour and line; nothing sordid, melancholic…”: Yarshater, “Some common characteristics”, p. 70.
75 R. Milstein, “Sufi elements in late fifteenth century Herat painting”, in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, (ed.) M. Rosen-Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 357–369, and several subsequent papers.
76 Kia, C., “Is the bearded man drowning? Picturing the figurative in a late-fifteenth-century painting from Herat”, Muqarnas 23 (2006), pp. 85–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Sufi orthopraxis: visual language and verbal imagery in medieval Afghanistan”, Word and Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 28.1 (20212), pp. 1–18; idem, “Art, allegory and the rise of Shi‘ism in Iran, 1487 to 1565”, in Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture, (ed.) C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 2019).
77 Da‘adli, T., Esoteric Images. Decoding the Late Herat School of Painting (Leiden and Boston, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 Balafrej, L., The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting (Edinburgh, 2019)Google Scholar.
79 Guest, G. D., Shiraz Painting in the Sixteenth Century (Washington DC, 1949), pp. 25–31Google Scholar and figs. 6–9; C. Adle, “Recherche sur le module et le trace correcteur dans la miniature orientale. I. La mise en évidence à partir d'un example”, Le Monde Iranien et l'Islam. Société et Culture III (1975), especially pp. 84–100; Chapman, S., “Mathematics and meaning in the structure and composition of Timurid miniature painting”, Persica XIX (2003), pp. 33–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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81 Wright, E. J., The Look of the Book (Washington, 2012), pp. 139–142Google Scholar.
82 Ibid., p. 245.
83 Ibid., pp. 48–62.
84 K. Erdmann, Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpets, (ed.) H. Erdmann and (trans) M. H. Beattie and H. Herzog) (London, 1970), pp. 66–70.
85 H. Ritter, Über die Bildersprache Nizamis (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 28–31, for chin, cheek, nose, eye, hair, finger, and lip, all rendered in hyperbolic terms. The same system works for aspects of nature: roses, narcissi, jasmine, nightingales, cypresses, sky, moon, night, and wind (ibid., pp. 47–48). Thus, both physical and natural features become metaphors, and their depictions are symbols of the laws of life (ibid., p. 73). For an exhaustive list, with specific examples, of how the features of the body are treated in Persian literature, especially that with a Sufi bent, see Nurbakhsh, J., What the Sufis Say (New York, 1980), pp. 7–9Google Scholar (examples: arch of the eyebrow, bend of the curl, circle of the waist, double chin, mole, tuft of hair, and verdant down of youth).
86 Grube, E. J., The World of Islam (Feltham, 1967), pls. 36Google Scholar and 19 respectively.
87 Yarshater, “Some common characteristics”, pp. 63–64.
88 See the research by Chad Kia cited in n. 76 above.
89 For an introduction, see Scarce, J. M., Isfahan in Camera—19th Century Persia through the Photographs of Ernst Hoeltzer (London 1976)Google Scholar; for a fuller account, which incorporates Höltzer's original text and 350 of his photographs, see M. Assemi (ed. and trans.), Ernst Höltzer. Persien vor 113 Jahren. Text und Bilder. 1. Teil: Esfahan (Tehran, 1975).
90 Bohrer, F. N., Sevruguin and the Persian Image: Photographs of Iran 1870–1930 (Washington DC, Seattle and London, 1999)Google Scholar.
91 Scarce, Isfahan, p. 13; Assemi, Ernst Höltzer, pls. 314–315.
92 Bohrer, Sevruguin, p. 110 depicts, in chilling fashion, a thief being buried alive.