Download Free Studies In The Islamic Decorative Arts Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Studies In The Islamic Decorative Arts and write the review.

Islamic artists channelled their energies not into easel painting and large-scale sculpture, but rather into what Western scholars, obeying a very different hierarchy of art forms, rather disparagingly term the decorative arts or even the minor arts. In point of fact, some of the greatest masterpieces of Islamic art are in the media of ceramics, metalwork, textiles, ivory and glass. Often the images they bear express a complex set of meanings, for Islam inherited much material from the iconographic systems of earlier civilizations, notably those of the ancient Near East and of the classical world. Islam also developed its own distinctive vocabulary of signs and symbols. Accordingly, questions of iconography and meaning bulk large among the studies gathered together in the present volume. These studies, written over a period of almost thirty years, and taken from a wide variety of published sources, deal with aspects of the decorative arts from Spain to India and from the 7th to the 17th century. They focus in turn upon ceramics and metalwork; on coins, carpets and calligraphy; and on carving in wood and ivory. They are arranged under three headings. The first comprises general surveys of the field covering the content of these arts and confronting the challenges they present, such as the Islamic approach to three-dimensional sculpture. The second deals with questions of iconography and meaning, while the third comprises a series of studies devoted to specific media such as ivory, woodwork and numismatics. This volume therefore offers not only a general introduction to some of the problems posed by Islamic art, but also readings of key objects in an attempt to explore their meaning; and finally, an in-depth focus on individual objects representing specific genres and media.
This lavishly illustrated volume features 19 articles by Bernard O'Kane on a wealth of topics in medieval Islamic art, from the Siyah Qalam album paintings and Arab and Persian illustrated manuscripts, to Egyptian and Iranian decorative arts, and to epigraphic developments in Persian and Arabic.
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 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
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.
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 Visual Culture, 1100-1800 is the second in a set of four selections of studies by Oleg Grabar. Its focus is on the key centuries - the eleventh through fourteenth - during which the main directions of traditional Islamic art were created and developed and for which classical approaches of the History of Art were adopted. Manuscript illustrations and the arts of objects dominate the selection of articles, but there are also forays into later times like Mughal India and into definitions of area and period styles, as with the Mamluks in Egypt and the Ottomans, or into parallels between Islamic and Christian medieval arts.
The studies collected in this volume, some of them rather difficult of 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.
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)
Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art addresses how researchers can challenge stereotypical notions of Islam and Islamic art while avoiding the creation of new myths and the encouragement of nationalistic and ethnic attitudes. Despite its Orientalist origins, the field of Islamic art has continued to evolve and shape our understanding of the various civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Situated in this field, this book addresses how universities, museums, and other educational institutions can continue to challenge stereotypical or homogeneous notions of Islam and Islamic art. It reviews subtle and overt mythologies through scholarly research, museum collections and exhibitions, classroom perspectives, and artists’ initiatives. This collaborative volume addresses a conspicuous and persistent gap in the literature, which can only be filled by recognizing and resolving persistent myths regarding Islamic art from diverse academic and professional perspectives. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, visual culture, and Middle Eastern studies.