The Experience Of Modernity In Islamic Artistic Examples From 19Th And 20Th Century
The oscillation between continuity and rupture seems an uneasy one in characterizing historical constructs. It is specifically problematic in discussing 19th and 20th century art from the Islamic world, and to a large degree easily recognizable within the art historical scholarship. As it will be discussed in this essay, continuity vs. rupture model is a conceptual framework which is adopted to explain the experience of modernity as showcased in the artistic examples form the Islamic world in the 19th and 20th century; It is to concede, repeat, discover that the system of aesthetics was interrupted or not interrupted by the premises of modernism and the advancement of technologies; that the aesthetic systems experienced a rupture with their longstanding artistic practices, or, continued the same systems and local specificities and, organically, assimilated, the new changes.
As general as this binary sounds, it potentially can bring further confusion, since one wonders whether the continuity vs. rupture concerns subject matter or iconography, compositional considerations or materials and techniques. In this essay, I will not aim to skip these nuances. Rather, I will clarify through specific examples from recent publications in the field, how this model has been applied and what is at stake in each of these approaches. I will conclude that continuity vs. rupture can be function in a correct methodological framing which is grounded, more than merely technical or visual aspects of works, on the contextual understanding of localities and specific histories. To be clear, it is perhaps best to discuss from where the necessity of such a mode of evaluation came from. The travelogue and reports written by colonial administration or foreign visitors is famously known to 19th century Islamic art scholars. An “unfavorable comparison of the present with the past, ” these narratives identify signs of decadence by arguing the degenerate (a failure at hybridity) and commodified 19thc century art which does not resemble the exquisite “image” of the classical Islamic art. While these visitors were not specialist in art, their judgment proved to influence later studies and the formation of the field of Islamic art and deterred the studying of the art of 19thc century and 20th century from the Islamic world. The disappointment of these narratives, that of seems to lie in doubled failure, in the case of Qajar art. The art of the 19th century Qajar for example, does not comply to the excellent example of Safavid art, but it also, does not comply to the rules of Western painting including perspectival rules, the illusionistic configuration of space, and so forth. This is most importantly troublesome for these observers in light of the introduction of photography to Iran and the European training of the contemporary Iranian artists. No doubt that the model of continuity and rupture can have multiple iteration in various places, but the Qajar model provide a more comprehensive context, due to the scope of scholarly research, sources and the many 19th century report available.
An album of artists' drawings from Qajar Iran published in 2017, discusses a complete album from the 19th century Qajar Iran. The examination of this album provides an alternative approach and a counterargument for 19th century art that can be characterized as a response to the narratives mentioned above. The album under discussion is an album of preparatory models of drawings, plus a number of prints and paintings, the two latter hard to classify. As regards subject matter, it encompasses a wide range of subjects, including humans, animals, ornamental, and unprecedented scenes from women’s private lives. : To be more exact, not all the essays in this volume offer a new approach. As discussed in Trent Barnes article, the signs of rendering is manifest in most of these drawings; the thick outlines, the existence of few to no details in the drawings, and the sole emphasis on the important elements was to increase the speed of production, hence to make the transferal to other medium quick and accurate. Moreover, the signs of pricking and pouncing affirms the usage of this drawings in other mediums, including, most of all, the lacquer objects. In “Reflection of the Najaf Circle of Artists in Isfahan, ” Mary McWilliams brings examples of direct quotes between lacquer objects and drawings in the album arguing that these drawings were tools of transfer and were to be used, preserved and shared by artists, as aide-mémoire in their daily work. Some of these drawings also seem to be copied from other mediums, including photographs and painting of the royal figures.
The signs of gluing and cutting as the result of excising the pictures from their previous context, make clear the extended life of these drawing, placing them in a highly mobile network in which images traveled through time and medium. Such a system is not strange in light of the older practice of album making. It indicates “a closed system of repetitions, reuses and recombination’s” in other words a continuity of practice and tradition. This highlights the existence of a representational reproduction system at a time when the mechanical means of productions including lithography and photography were developing in Iran. The album as an object, not only was a traditional system for proliferation and multiplying of images but it also was viewed as a precedent for new technologies of image reproductions, including used as a model of dealing with these new technologies, that is lithography and photography. This album however exhibits difference with the albums of 15th and 16th century in terms of arrangement and foreign patron.
To clarify the importance of photography and its role in maintaining the artistic reproduction system of albums, another recent exhibition catalogue, affiliated with the above album is perhaps most useful. In “The Technologies of image, ” Roxburgh is using the concept of “remediation” to explain the reappearing of the same images and designs across mediums. He defines remediation as the mediation and refashioning of one medium into another (however not necessarily chronologically). As an example, we can say that the perspectival system of painting was refashioned and remediated in photography and then in TV and Cinema. Accordingly, remediation is the process of reemploying the possibilities of systems of representation, and the perpetual transferal. Through such a concept, it is perfectly possible to characterize the Qajar albums in which subject, composition, and features of the medium was preserved and the images were extremely mobile.
In a sense, this is an idiosyncratic Qajar painting; a “hybrid” image of a royalty flanked by traditional Persian elements but with a naturalistic treatment of the seated figure. Prince Ardeshir Mirza is placed in the corner of a room, a corner that is actually invisible, but we are left to infer it from the convergent lines of the wall and floor. The dark blue carpet with excessive spiral decorations and the geometrical patterns at the dado seem to be typical elements of Persian painting. One can also see the incorporation of words, written in Nastaligh script, into image which allude to the miniature painting treatment of enmeshing word and image. The coloring of the room is without shading however a partial tonal modelling can be seen in the treatment of hands and on the garment and less noticeably in the legs, but most specifically on the face. Unlike Persian miniature here we do not see the figures to be attached to a flattened two-dimensional space. The figure claims a heavy presence, but at the same time the figure looks like sliding from the bottom of the page, the same fleeting and not-grounded quality of miniature figures. The scene it does not seem to be in a correctly-rendered perspective, which is bizarre when we know that its painter had western training. Nevertheless, a half-window is located on the left wall behind which we see part of a naturalistic landscape. The placement of the figure in the space is very similar the photos taken from seated Qajar royal members. Moreover, the frontality of the image and the way the space has been trimmed, also the treatment of the face resembles the features of photographic image. Hence, this painting has a “combinatory” aesthetic system and perfectly shows the remediation of the medium of photography in painting since, as noted some features of photographic patriate have been adopted by the painter.
In “Painting after Photography in the 19thcentury Iran, ” Roxburgh brings more examples of the same compositional setting and the remediation of painting and photography. In this article, he argues that the introducing of the technology of photography should not be considered as a replacement for painting. Photography did not displace and debilitate painting in Iran and did not lead to a mounting decadence. Rather, it was assimilated into the medium of painting and even some examples of lacquer. It was, as we saw in the case of the album, another mode of reproduction previously experienced with the albums. It is a flawed analogy but one can fancy that negatives of the photographs and the drawings of the album in terms of their ability for image proliferation could be compared!
Nevertheless, one wonders if the implications of this self-nourishing model and of continuity explained through Qajar art and its remediation are always exempt from the negative evaluation of 19th century Islamic art. The emphasis on the cyclic, self-referential system might be inferred as belonging a society which is closed and self-sufficient. It also implies another negative association with the Orient according to which these societies as timeless with little capacities for renovation. Characterization of the album as a repository, if not unpacked carefully, facilitates the attributing of a persistent “traditionalism” to 19th century Qajr art. I argue that, ascribing and crediting the repository models of albums is not enough in argue for a repository of images that assimilated the modernism with few to no troubles. It is more important, for future research, that system of thought which generated those remediation is, even very briefly, examined. Why did Abul-Hasan Ghaffari think it was fine to incorporate one medium into the other? How are we to make sure that he was familiar with albums and their remediation? What are the cultural incentives which generate such philosophies of art? How can we make sure that this “combinatory aesthetics is not read as just a degenerate hybrid.
Before proposing ways to deal with the questions, let us see how the rupture model works. When we move to towards the art of the 20th century from the Islamic world, surprisingly we still see the resonation of the 19th century decline paradigm which even looks more problematic than when applied to Qajar art. A scholar who also argues for a continuity model, this time in relation to Contemporary Islamic art, is Susan Babaie. In “the Voices of authority: locating the modern in the Islamic art, ” Babaie criticizes the rupture paradigm in that it has led a dismissal of the modernity in Islamic art. In other words, the 19th century degradation of Islamic art to non-art, hybrid, degenerate and inauthentic, has created a historical vacuum between classical Islamic art and post-modernist contemporary art of the Middle East which problematizes future efforts to have a worthwhile understanding of contemporaneity in Islamic art. The prevailing epidemic seems to be an absent of a proper (“authentic”) modernity to which “contemporary manifestation could be anchored. ” The result of such model is that the contemporary artworks in the canon of global contemporary art have been celebrated for their social and political complexities rather than pinpointing historical, local, cultural specifies. The perils in this situation lies on the generating of a boom in the market for certain works which creates a fictive urge for to producing art based on a predetermined formula. To elaborate this, I discuss a famous, “canonized, ” work by Shirin Neshat. Shirin Neshat is among the first contemporary artists from the Middle East whose works obtained international recognition and fame. More than that, it can be an exemplar through which it becomes evident how a certain understanding of contemporary art from the Islamic world was shaped and continues to be so. Such understanding does not acknowledge the art historical continuity between Neshat’s work and a long-standing tradition, most importantly an artistic modernity before the contemporary. In Figure six, we see a black and white photograph by Shirin Neshat from the series “Women of Allah” (1999). Woman’s hand being placed at the center of the image is touching her lips; her face we don’t see but still parts of her black veil is visible. The hand-silence gesture is accompanied by handwritten inscriptions in Persian on fingers and on the back of the hand. Through such composition and the hand-silence gesture one can assume that these are the words that might have come from the mouth if there was no urge or imposition of silence. Created after her travel to Iran after a long time and being confronted by a revolutionized Iran, this image and other images in the series of “Women of Allah, ” are usually taken as her dissatisfaction, aesthetetatized protest and indicative of women’s oppression in Iran. This might be an interpretation, though a simplistic one, but such a reading which only takes into account the political, ironical aspects, suffers from the obliteration of the work’s art historical precedents and inspirations.
The inscription of the hands in the circle reads “Ya Ghamare Bani Hashim, ” which is a reference to a character in Karbala incident, an important part of Shi’ism. These words are frequently being repeated in the public and more private mourning tradition in Iran. This use of Shi’i mythology and the vernacular elements has an artistic precedent, namely the Saqqakhaneh movement (year). Not only in the content, but also in style this image resembles many paintings of Saqqakhaneh movement which incorporated the handwritten words in their works. Saqqakhaneh was the first actual modernist movement in Iran that is mostly being dismissed in reading of Women of Allah. Such precise and informed art historical reading of the work not only posits the work in a better light in present contemporary art discourse but also refutes a model of rupture which does not recognize the cultural proclivities and a continuous organic art historical lineage, examining the work only “in the context of “Iran’s topicality in the West. ” Interest in the modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and the formation of a category tilted “Islamic contemporary, according to Babaie, began not by a comprehensive search into the art of the region but by diasporic artists who only spent limited years in the Islamic worlds
Similar to the decline narrative which troubled the appreciation of the 19th century Iranian art whose results was crediting only classical, original Islamic art, another form of reductionism can be noticed in relation to contemporary art from the Islamic world. Canonization of exilic artists for their critique of Islam and for depicting turbulence and political revolt creates a familiar paradigm. Making an analogy needs many requisites but it seems invincible not to compare 19th century market and interest for classical, original works of Islamic art that created a situation in which copying of classical work proliferated, and the contemporary curatorial favoritism and proposes market which has created a fictive urge that eventually leads to a dismissal of various contemporary artistic concerns and the artists who do live in Europe and the U. S. For Babaie, the continuation of classical Islamic art into modern and modern into post-modern, seems essential for the field of Islamic art’s regeneration and avoiding misinterpretation. But does this mean that the continuity paradigm is never dysfunctional? Before answering this question, I would like to discuss the scholarly controversy over using word as a painting element in Modern art from the Middle East. In 1980 the British museum acquired a number of modern calligraphic paintings and exhibited theme in an exhibition titled After this exhibition, a number of scholars wrote about the calligraphic painting, termed it as a modern art movement in Islamic art. Notoriously, Wijdan Ali’s book Modern Islamic art: development and continuity provides a full examination of these practices, plus a taxonomy based on different relationships that such artworks have established with calligraphy and the script. Ali choses to gather these attempts, script in painting and sculpture, under the term Calligraphic School of Art. It is calligraphy that for Ali has the centrality even in the designation of the categories he assigns she uses the term calligraphy frequently. S he contends that the use of calligraphy in the painting certainly ties itself to Islamic calligraphy, the only one medium that remained immune to the plight of 19th century travel narratives.
Interestingly many of her categories are impossible to squeeze under classical Islamic art. For example, in her category it is hard to imagine a continuity between this and the works of calligraphic painting. Ali does not in explaining this claims for continuity, at least one can say that her argument does not seem very consistent. Nationalism created a cultural gap for building identity. Ali discusses briefly that the reason behind the popularity of the use of words for a long time was the specific cultural modes of Islam in which word and image are intertwined. The kind of aesthetics would satisfy the taste of Muslims; in other words, it is in harmony with their long-established mode or artistic consumption. Nada Shabout’s book “Modern Arab art” in many ways is a counterargument for Ali’s insistence on continuation Shabout project is connected to pan-Arabism and ascribing a singular place for modern Arab art, while distinguishing it Iran and Turley. To do so she refers to the “altered status” of Islamic calligraphy in the 20th century as result of socio-political changes and nationalistic concerns, the formation of Arab countries and specifically the united Arab world of post 6 June war. Consequently, Arabic letter was considered as an element of localization and Arabness. Shabout discusses that, interest in using letters was generated during these artists stays in the West, especially in France, when any connection to their origins was desired. Also, it was an influence of experiments with letter in European modernism. Arabic letter becomes the sign for modern Arabic identity.
Shabout completely rejects Ali’s term Calligraphic school of art which implies that these modern works are the continuation of traditional calligraphy calls it, frequently, “Hurrufiye is not a continuation of calligraphy nor did it find its beginning in the traditional sources…it is completely separate from calligraphy. ” Shabout concludes that “it is rather simplistic to group different experiences under one label, be it Hurufiyah or Calligraphic school of art. Her own suggestion is to divide the works into two major categories: in first the letter is merely a component in the work which involves a different form of creativity. In the second, the letter is the work. This last group also include the popular trend of commercial Hurufiyah which is largely conditioned by the market. Shabout concern can be justified if returning to the beginning of the discussion, this has the potential to lead to an understanding of Islamic art as closed, unable to refurbish, and become modern, living in a cyclical perpetuation. Shabout and Ali both go to extremes in utilizing continuity and rupture paradigm. Shabout project is useful in terms of more specification given to the Islamic art but it is harmful in homogenizing Arab world as one, tied through language. In other word, it the advantage of such project would be the stripping of orientalism and hyper-visualization of calligraphy as the solely continuous unshaken model of art not disturbed by plights of modernity. It also seems that by doing this the modern Arab art cannot possessed the same art historical models and the natural growth of art. The work exhibited and sold in the Middle East present might lose their exoticism if a project like Shabout can be accepted. But one needs to ask what are the substitute narratives that are imposed? Shabout does not want to put the mapahszing that letters were not used for their sole asthtic purpsoses which is not always true. Zoomorphic can be also asthtic ut she is ready to discsrd this because it does have a prayer function.
In some of the articles, especially in “Assimilation and Rupture: Qajar Ink and Watercolor technique” we see the binary articulated for the technique. Mycah Braxton argues that the rise of europena drawing to be used in pedagogical context, most famously dar alfunun, brought about a rupture “a technical shift.
