At LA Museum, A Powerful And Provocative Look At 'Islamic Art Now'

If you called Andy Warhol a Christian artist would that make sense?
- Professor Ali Behdad

Amir Mousavi's 2011 work Untited, #8, from the series Lost in Wonderland. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art and NPR.

by Susan Stamberg, NPR

Art galleries are generally quiet, hushed spaces, but at the Los Angeles County Museum a show called Islamic Art Now is sparking some heated discussions as visitors ponder the photographs, paintings and neon sculptures on display.

Moroccan photographer Lalla Essaydi has covered every inch of a reclining odalisque with graceful Arabic calligraphy. The gorgeous woman is staring right at us, and viewers wonder: Is the writing protection? A shield? Imprisonment?

Translating the calligraphy, curator Linda Komaroff doesn't see it that way. "I see it more as: This is who I am. See me for who I am. Read me if you like, but this is me," she says.

Egyptian-German artist Susan Hefuna's Woman Behind Mashrabiya I is a black and white image of a shrouded woman looking out from behind a pierced screen. We can't really see her, but she can see us. Is she protected? Trapped?

"It's very mysterious — and deliberately so," Komaroff says. "It's this notion about: Do we really understand? ... To me, a lot of these images are a challenge to an American audience to maybe rethink what their perceptions are of women in the Middle East, women in the Islamic world. Maybe they're not that different from us after all."

Some provocative images may feel very different from Western experience. Viewers get an extreme close-up in Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's 1996 photograph Speechless. We see a portion of a woman's face, circled by a black headscarf. At her right ear, what looks at first like a clunky earring turns out to be the barrel of a gun. With a look of determination, she's pointing the gun directly at the viewer.

V&A in row over self-censorship after Muhammad image is taken down

Poster removed from museum website – but scholars of Islamic art fear ‘terrible loss for shared global heritage’

The Victoria and Albert museum is one of a number in the UK whose collections contain images of Muhammad. Photograph: Alamy, courtesy The Guardian.

Warning: this article contains the image of the prophet Muhammad, which some may find offensive.

by Emma Graham-Harrison, The Observer

The Victoria and Albert museum has attempted to conceal its ownership of a devotional image of the prophet Muhammad, citing security concerns, in what is part of a wider pattern of apparent self-censorship by British institutions that scholars fear could undermine public understanding of Islamic art and the diversity of Muslim traditions.

Similar images have been shown in exhibitions across Europe and America without prompting outrage, much less protests or a violent response. Made by Muslim artists for fellow Muslims, they come from a long but often overlooked tradition.

British museums and libraries hold dozens of these images, mostly miniatures in manuscripts several centuries old, but they have been kept largely out of public view. Fear of displaying them is apparently driven by controversy about satirical or offensive portraits of Muhammad by non-Muslims, despite the huge difference in form and purpose.

When the V&A was asked if it held any images of Muhammad after the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, it said there were none. A US expert later provided a link to a poster in its collection, with the inscription “Mohammad the Prophet of God”. That page in the database was deleted last week, but can still be found in a cached version. A spokeswoman said their original response was “an honest error”.

“Unfortunately we were incorrect to say there were no works depicting the prophet Muhammad in the V&A’s collection,” a spokeswoman, Olivia Colling, said in an email, adding that the image had subsequently been taken down because of security concerns. “As the museum is a high-profile public building already on a severe security alert, our security team made the decision that it was best to remove the image from our online database (it remains within the collection).”

The museum has many items that are not on display but form an important part of its educational and cultural mission. Colling declined to say whether the museum had consulted Muslim communities about who might consider the image offensive, or whether it had received any threats directly related to the poster, created in Iran around 1990.

There was not a single complaint when another contemporary Iranian image of Muhammad was included in a 2013 exhibition in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, hung next to a Christian icon, as part of an exhibition on cross-cultural encounters.

The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet

The Charlie Hebdo killers were operating under a misapprehension. Courtesy Topkapı Palace Library and Newsweek.

by Christiane Gruber, Newsweek

In the wake of the massacre that took place in the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, I have been called upon as a scholar specializing in Islamic paintings of the Prophet to explain whether images of Muhammad are banned in Islam.

The short and simple answer is no. The Koran does not prohibit figural imagery. Rather, it castigates the worship of idols, which are understood as concrete embodiments of the polytheistic beliefs that Islam supplanted when it emerged as a purely monotheistic faith in the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century.

Moreover, the Hadith, or Sayings of the Prophet, present us with an ambiguous picture at best: At turns we read of artists dared to breathe life into their figures and, at others, of pillows ornamented with figural imagery.

If we turn to Islamic law, there does not exist a single legal decree, or fatwa, in the historical corpus that explicitly and decisively prohibits figural imagery, including images of the Prophet. While more recent online fatwas can surely be found, the decree that comes closest to articulating this type of ban was published online in 2001 by the Taliban, as they set out to destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

In their fatwa, the Taliban decreed that all non-Islamic statues and shrines in Afghanistan be destroyed. However, this very modern decree remains entirely silent on the issue of figural images and sculptures within Islam, which, conversely, had been praised as beneficial and educational by Muhammad 'Abduh, a prominent jurist in 19th century Egypt.

In sum, a search for a ban on images of Muhammad in pre-modern Islamic textual sources will yield no clear and firm results whatsoever.

Enchanted by the Myth of the Orient

Max von Oppenheim was an astute observer of the Near East. He was also captivated by its history, culture and way of life. In fact, Oppenheim's entire adult life is an illustration of how difficult it is to reconcile the captivating dream of the Orient with the sober political reality of the region – a difficulty that remains to this day. 

The German archaeologist and explorer Max von Oppenheim. Courtesy Qantara.

by Kersten Knipp, Qantara

In the days when Max von Oppenheim lived in Cairo, relics of past ages – carpets, wall hangings, old chests, vases and dishes – could be picked up quite easily in the bazaars of the Egyptian capital. Such charming works of art and craftsmanship, which were no longer used in the large cities of the Arab world at the close of the nineteenth century, were very popular with historians and explorers, who sought to answer the tantalising question as to what life must have been like in the Orient before the arrival of the Europeans; when life in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus moved to a completely different rhythm. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was very hard to imagine what things must have been like in that period.

In his book "From the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf", the archaeologist Max von Oppenheim (1860–1946) wrote that although there was no European theatre in Beirut, one could find "numerous café chantants, where guests could listen to balladeers, French chansonettes and Bohemian ladies bands."

Although he felt that all of this was undoubtedly pleasant and a sign of progressive modernisation, he knew that it was simply another time, a period of transition leading into a new epoch, an era in which the old one would be lost.

"It goes without saying, of course, that there is no lack of Oriental coffee houses where Arab music is played." Yet, things were not as they once had been. At the time he wrote the above lines, Arab music had become merely one form of entertainment among many. The residents and guests of Beirut had a choice and could freely decide what they want to hear. This meant, however, that the days when only Arab music was performed, were gone forever.

The widening Gulf

On the explosion of Middle Eastern investment in Western art and an exhibition of Iranian art at the Asia Society

 

The Museum of Islamic Art. Courtesy James Panero and The New Criterion.

 

by James Panero, The New Criterion

 

A few years ago, I came as close as I’ll ever get to the center of the art world. Over Dover sole at Sant Ambroeus, a restaurant on the Upper East Side, I sat across from someone who might have been mistaken for an out-of-place young grad student. While she was at Duke, my lunch companion, class of 2005, had double-majored in literature and political science. Now at Columbia, she was pursuing a masters in public administration. Casually dressed, she looked as though she were on a study break from Butler Library. Her demeanor was reserved, a little shy, and serious. “It’s work all the time. Sometimes it’s just very difficult, but I think it’s doable,” she explained. The “art world’s most powerful woman,” as The Economist has called her, had much on her mind.

Between taking classes at the time and raising her family, Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, known as Sheikha Mayassa (a name that has a James Bond ring to it), runs the museum operations of Qatar, where she is the fourteenth child of the former Emir and the sister of the current one. “I’m still figuring out the best ways to do all this. I set up video conferences. I have my staff come to New York every month. Then I take classes,” she told me. Funded by the oil and gas riches of her principality, a thumb-shaped pile of sand that sticks into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Peninsula, Mayassa has been leading an acquisition program that, by a wide margin, has recently spent more money on art than any other entity. “The small but energy-rich Gulf state of Qatar is the world’s biggest buyer in the art market—by value, at any rate—and is behind most of the major modern and contemporary art deals over the past six years,” The Art Newspaper wrote in 2011. On ArtReview’s 2013 “Power 100” list, which ranks “the contemporary artworld’s most powerful figures,” Mayassa is ranked number one.

Calligraffiti

Deitch Takes Another Look at ‘Calligraffiti’ for New York Gallery

Leila Pazooki, This Is Not Green, 2009,  Illuminated neon tubes,  19.29 x 78.74 in / 49 x 200 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

by Carol Kino, The ArtsBeat, New York Times

Last month Jeffrey Deitch resigned as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Although he won’t step down immediately, the art world is abuzz with rumors about what he’ll do next. Perhaps a clue to his future interests may be found  in “Calligraffiti: 1984-2013,” an upcoming show at the Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea opening Sept. 5.

It will explore the relationship between graffiti and calligraphy with the work of nearly 50 artists, from Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Keith Haring and his protégé “LA II” (as Angel Ortiz is known). Many of the artists are Middle Eastern, including Shirin Neshat and Hossein Zenderoudi, and several are street artists, like the French-Tunisian star eL Seed.

The show essentially updates “Calligraffiti,” an exhibition that he and Ms. Heller collaborated on in 1984, back when he was a Citibank art adviser with a passion for street art, and she was an Upper East Side dealer specializing in art from the Middle East, primarily Iran.

Inspired by Islam

“22500 Pages” by Hadieh Shafie, which is made of tightly wound scrolls, resembles op art. Photo Courtesy San Antonio Express-News

by Elda Silva, San Antonio Express-News

Past and present come together seamlessly in Soody Sharifi's collages. Still, something seems off.

In “Fashion Week,” contemporary women who have been digitally dropped into an ancient Persian court scene strut a catwalk that leads to an empty throne. Modestly dressed in street clothes, the ersatz models' heads are covered by hijabs of varying lengths. Meanwhile, their precursors enjoy the show free of head scarves.

The piece by the Iranian-born, Houston-based Sharifi is one of 20 works featured in “The Jameel Prize: Art Inspired by Islamic Tradition.” The traveling exhibit organized by London's Victoria and Albert Museum is currently at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Inaugurated in 2009, the international biennial prize recognizes contemporary artists and designers who draw on Islamic traditions of art and craft. Some of the pieces in the exhibit, such as Sharifi's, touch on social and cultural issues.

The works in the exhibit are not, strictly speaking, “Islamic art,” says Tim Stanley, senior curator at the V&A.

“Visually, you sense things pulled from Islamic culture and reworked in a way that's relevant to the contemporary world,” Stanley says. “So I think it's really good because it allows you that very quick understanding that there is actually a relevance of Islamic tradition to contemporary art.”

Female Warriors of Art at Tate Modern

by Karen Ruimy, The Huffington Post, UK

As I was sitting at the Buying Committee of the Tate Modern, my eyes were arrested in awe and also complete ignorance by a piece from an artist I did not know about, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. I was struck by the strength of her art.

The fact that she is a woman working in Iran, in her 80s, made her even more striking. The committee could not complete the purchase. My heart was so sure: this is a major artist, from the depth of the Middle East, this area of the world that is going through some dark ages. She is a star, we cannot let this piece go, let's find a solution.

What made me think of the strength I found in Louise Bourgeois? I still cannot help comparing those women and their force in their art.

So I started to find out about Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. I found she spent her earlier years in New York, studied at Parsons School of Design and Cornell University, collaborated with Warhol, was friends with Pollock, De Kooning and many other geniuses. But she decided to go back to her country where she developed her art with traditional Iranian crafts like reverse glass painting, cut mirrors and Sufi symbolism.

This woman travelled to America and Paris searching for art education. And she always tried to come back to her land despite so much segregation for her as a woman, as an artist-woman... her art was confiscated and burned during the revolution. And eventually she went back to live in her country.

Safar/Voyage: Contemporary Works by Arab, Iranian and Turkish Artists

April 20, 2013 – September 15, 2013 | Public Opening April 20 7:00-9:00 pm Audain & O'Brian Galleries

Safar/Voyage will be the first major exhibition of contemporary art from these regions to be shown in Vancouver.  It is constructed as a journey in the company of 16 artists, each of whom is neither fixed inside the territories of the Middle East nor permanently diasporic. These artists define themselves and the world according to their own creative representations, often informed by culturally specific conditions.

Wrapping the globe, their diverse artworks speak to the universal theme of voyage (a translation of the Persian safar), from the external and geographical to the internal, emotional, and existential. They acknowledge the realities of political turmoil and revolution, and how politics frames both trauma and desire, whether individual or collective. Voyage is seen to take many forms.

Expressed in media ranging from painting, sculpture, and video installation to performance and a carpet, it is as innocuous as tourism (with a twist), as disturbing as war—the violent crossing of borders—and as philosophical as the transience of life. The artists of Safar/Voyage are positioned as our guides, their visions mined for reflections on some of the most urgent issues of our time.

The artists featured are Adel Abidin, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Nazgol Ansarinia, Kutlug Ataman, Ayman Baalbaki, Ali Banisadr, Taysir Batniji, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hefuna, Raafat Ishak, Y.Z. Kami, Farhad Moshiri, Youssef Nabil, Hamed Sahihi, Mitra Tabrizian, and Parviz Tanavoli.

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Fereshteh Daftari, former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. MOA Coordinating Curator Dr. Jill Baird, Curator, Education & Public Programs.  The exhibit will be accompanied by a publication.The exhibition will feature a wide range of public programs including curator and artist talks, musical performances, as well as the Hassan and Nezhat Khosrowshahi Distinguished Lecture Series featuring talks by noted architects and scholars Nader Ardalan, Daniel Roehr, Hossein Amanat, and Abbas Amanat.

Art Dubai 2013: A diverse affair

Galleries from 30 nations converge on the city for Art Dubai 2013. Raising awareness is top priority

 

The letter that never arrived, 2013, by Bita Ghezelayagh. Courtesy Gulf News

by Jyoti Kalsi, Gulf News

A spotlight on West African art, an open-air sculpture gallery by the sea, and an in-depth look at MENA (Middle East Nervous Anxiety) — these are some of the highlights of Art Dubai 2013, to be held at Madinat Jumeirah from March 20 to March 23. The seventh edition of the art fair, which is presented in partnership with the Abraaj Group and sponsored by Cartier, will feature 75 galleries from 30 countries, showcasing latest works by more than 500 artists. Among the booths to look out for is Arndt Gallery’s (Berlin) recreation of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s recent exhibition of Gothic sculptures at the Louvre in Paris; London gallery Victoria Miro’s solo show by legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama; and a group exhibition of kinetic art by Edwin’s Gallery, Jakarta.

“The fact that we have galleries from 30 countries makes us the most global art fair. But we are also proud to be the largest showcase for artists from the Arab world,” Fair Director Antonia Carver says.

This year, the fair’s Marker section is focused on West Africa and features galleries from Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Ghana and Senegal. The theme of these concept stands, curated by Lagos-based curator Bisi Silva, is the rapidly evolving nature of West African cities and the impact of these changes on urban society. “Marker exemplifies our aim of making Art Dubai a place of discovery and cross-cultural exchange. Last year, our focus on Indonesia led to the start of many long-term exchanges between Indonesia and the Gulf region, including a section on the Arab art world at the Biennial in Yogyakarta. This year we chose to look at West Africa because we have seen that there are extraordinary artists and art centres there. We want to create awareness about art from that region and encourage cultural interactions and greater synergies that build on the historic and present links between Africa and the Middle East,” Carver says.

Although it is a commercial event, Art Dubai has also played an important role in creating awareness and understanding about contemporary art and engaging the local community with art through its extensive non-commercial programme of curatorial and educational projects. These include free public seminars and talks, art workshops and tours, and various commissioned projects. New curatorial elements added this year are a mobile art gallery located in a truck that will visit different areas of the city; and Sculpture on the Beach — an exhibition of large-scale artworks located on the Mina A’Salam beach. The artworks selected by curator Chus Martinez range from Iranian artist Bitta Fayyazi’s quirky figures, made from pipes and broken porcelain, to Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri’s steel creations. “This picturesque location gives our galleries the freedom to think beyond the confines of their booths and to display large-scale artworks,” Carver says.

Muslima: Muslim Women's Art and Voices Featured at IMOW Exhibition

by Samina Ali, The Huffington Post

As the curator for the International Museum of Women’s new global exhibition, Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, the one question I’m repeatedly asked is, “What common trait do Muslim women artists and leaders around the world share that strikes you?”

My answer: their courage.

The sad reality is that many of us have grown accustomed to –and comfortable with –seeing Muslim women portrayed as victims.

Yet brave women around the world undertake heroic acts every day. Many do so without anyone bearing witness.

 

From Iranian artist Shadi Ghadirian's series "Nil, Nil," included in the International Museum of Women’s online exhibition at muslima.imow.org. Courtesy Shadi Ghadiria and The Huffington Post

To even out that ledger, I want to share the heroic stories of three women I interviewed for Muslima. It’s just a small glimpse of what you’ll see in the upcoming exhibition, which just launched.

Dr. Shirin Ebadi is the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. For more than 40 years, Dr. Ebadi has worked to improve the lives of women and children in Iran.

Pearls of Persian art

Late collector’s Islamic collection spans centuries and genres
 

“There’s a real breadth here,” said the exhibition’s curator, Mary McWilliams, who holds the namesake chair as Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art. The collection contributes “a scope and depth that we didn’t have before.” Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer, Courtesy Harvard Gazette.

by Katie Koch, Harvard Staff Writer

Among the roughly 170 pieces of Islamic art that Norma Jean Calderwood and her husband left to Harvard, one in particular hints at the late collector’s philosophy: an earthenware bowl bearing, in precise calligraphy, the epigram “Greed is a sign of poverty.”

Calderwood was a patron of the arts and a renowned Boston philanthropist, and her legacy of generosity was as rich as her varied collection of Persian and Iranian objects, which spanned more than a millennium (from the ninth through the 19th century) and a variety of genres, from glazed ceramics to illustrated manuscripts to lacquered pen cases.

Now that little-seen collection, amassed by Calderwood over 30 years and donated by her and her husband, Stanford, to Harvard in 2002, will be put on public display.

“In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art,” which opens Thursday atthe Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, is both a celebration of Calderwood’s championship of once-obscure work and a showcase of the vibrancy of Iranian culture over time.

“There’s a real breadth here,” said the exhibition’s curator, Mary McWilliams, who holds the namesake chair as Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art. The collection contributes “a scope and depth that we didn’t have before.”

Among the fruits of Calderwood’s labors are folios from illustrated manuscripts of famed medieval Persian poems, such as the “Shahnama” (“Book of Kings”) and the “Khamsa” (“Quintet”); elegant ceramic bowls bearing both Islamic teachings and lines of Persian poetry; and single-page compositions such as “Young Dervish” by Riza Abbasi, the most influential artist of 17th-century Iran.

Pop Goes the East

Eric Parnes on Pop Culture, Being Iranian-American, and the 15th Islamic Arts Festival

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

Currently exhibiting in Sharjah is the 15^th Edition of the long-running Islamic Arts Festival. Featuring over 1,700 works of art from a variety of mediums, including painting, installation, and video art, and showcasing pieces from 45 local and international exhibitions from 18 countries, the festival is among the most prominent of its kind in the Middle East.

Over the holidays, I chatted with the festival’s headlining artist, Eric Parnes, about the exhibition, his artistic journey, and the concept of ‘Islamic Art’, among other things. 

What themes and ideas were most prominent in the festival?

This was the first year I was actually approached by Sharjah’s Art Directorate of the Department of Culture and Information – the Islamic Arts Festival’s designated coordinators – and asked to participate through a solo show featuring my work, so I don’t have any previous experience with the Festival to accurately assess exactly how the 15th Edition differs from the previous ones. However, at this year’s private inauguration event (which took place on December 12), the Ruler of Sharjah – His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi – reiterated the ideals for the program to be a global pioneer in its comprehensive embrace of, and showcase of, authentic examples of Islamic Art from different periods and regions, wherever they happen to originate from.

The 15th Edition of the Islamic Arts Festival’s promoters also expressed that this year’s production aimed to offer a balanced presentation of ‘classic art’ based on traditional foundations, along with ‘contemporary-like’ [sic] art that will offer fresh concepts, but that are held to the standards of what they believe to be ‘Islamic Art’. I intentionally quoted the phrase ‘contemporary-like’ from the Festival’s official press release simply to demonstrate the underlying hesitations that permeate all modern-day considerations when Islamic Art is poised to be reintroduced in the languages of contemporary art.

Ultimately, if applied correctly, contemporary Islamic Art should be created in a thoughtful way that is truly meaningful to our present human condition. It shouldn’t just simply utilise ‘innovative modern techniques and mediums ruled by digital technology’ [sic].

I think this has probably been the primary challenge for the Festival this year, or for anyone working with new voices in Islamic Art being introduced anywhere today. At this Festival, there was even an official presentation of a special seminar entitled The Versatile Compositions of Islamic Arts, which brought together various scholars, who specifically discussed how contemporary art has surfaced in Islamic Art projects within the past twenty years, amongst other subjects that needed to be addressed when reassessing the question, what exactly is ‘Islamic Art’ now?

The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces

An Interview with Jennifer Heath, Writer, Activist and Curator

by Valerie Behiery, Islamic Art historian, Ph.D., IAM

"My motivations are complex, even somewhat convoluted, but in a nutshell, I grew up in veiling cultures –both heavily Roman Catholic and Muslim– and thus know from experience that what the West perceives as the whys and wherefores of veiling –primarily oppressive, antiquated customs of the “Other”– are often distorted. I wanted to dispute those notions." (Jennifer Heath)

 

Jennifer Heath is an independent scholar, award-winning cultural journalist, critic, curator, and activist. Her most current exhibitions are “The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces,” which has been touring the United States since 2008 and “Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource,” which began traveling this year. Others include the renowned “Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate.” She is the author of eleven books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Veil: Women Writers on its History, Lore, and Politics and Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women (with Ashraf Zahedi) both published by the University of California Press. Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace (with Ashraf Zahedi) is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press, and her collection, The Jewel and the Ember: Love Stories from the Islamic World, is currently under consideration. Future art exhibitions include “The Map is Not the Territory: Parallel Paths-Palestinian, Native American, Irish,” to launch at The Jerusalem Center Gallery in September 2013.

 

The exhibit, The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces, is part of a larger project of yours to unpack the veil which also includes a book. Why did you find it important to address what has become a charged symbol of supposed cross-cultural conflict with both words and images? Tell us also bit about what made you want to address the veil.

 

I love that you say “unpack the veil” – because that is precisely what we’re doing. Unpacking the history and the universality of the veil and veiling practices, so as to bring it to light, engage received wisdom and challenge stereotypes. My motivations are complex, even somewhat convoluted, but in a nutshell, I grew up in veiling cultures –both heavily Roman Catholic and Muslim– and thus know from experience that what the West perceives as the whys and wherefores of veiling –primarily oppressive, antiquated customs of the “Other”– are often distorted. I wanted to dispute those notions. This is also why I wrote The Scimitar and the Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam. In order to understand the multiple truths inherent in any issue, and speak those truths to power, we must contextualize. The book, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics (University of California Press, 2008) tackled the veil from as many cultural and historical angles as possible –Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, various secular and pagan and pre-Abrahamic points of view, male veiling, mourning, the arts– by writers who approached the topic via personal, political and/or scholarly paths. Having had a visual arts, as well as a literary background, I wanted also to see what artists were thinking and doing. And since I am interested in issues of social and environmental justice, I wanted to combat what I perceive as violations of civil liberties and discrimination against veiling practices, particularly in Europe.

Art commentator offers insight on Middle Eastern art scene

by Bianca Bonomi, The National

Anthony Haden-Guest is to the world of art commentary what Hans Ulrich Obrist is to the world of curation. Both operate in fields traditionally excluded from the monographic series of art history, which prioritises an interest in the artist and the art over the distribution, dissemination and exhibition of these works. Both have pioneered interest in their relative areas; both are celebrated as prolific and engaging individuals.

As a writer, reporter and cartoonist, Haden-Guest has contributed to the world's most lauded publications; as a bon vivant and socialite, he has become part of the art world of which he writes. Rumoured to be the inspiration for the British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, he has documented his findings in, among other titles, True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World and The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night.

Having written extensively on the art market, Haden-Guest is bound up in the global arts scene and has watched the growth of the Middle Eastern cultural movement with keenness. "I've been going to the Middle East for many years," he says. "I covered the Lebanese civil war and so I started going to the region extensively from 1980 onwards. I'd go and see the galleries there and was interested in the wealth and scope of the art on show."

For Haden-Guest, the clichéd view of Arab art as "white and gold and ornamental" doesn't ring true. "In reality, it is far more complex than that," he says. "For instance, identity plays a strong role, whether an artist is Egyptian or Lebanese, whether they have spent their working career in London or Paris and how those European influences factor into the work, how different cultures complicate it."

A New World of Art

Gallerists, artists and the curious public decamped this week from the United Arab Emirates as Art Dubai drew to a close. As was to be expected, not only art, but also political messages played a major role at the fair. Werner Bloch reports

'Ali, give us strength' by Khosrow Hassanzadeh (photo: Werner Bloch)

Berlin gallerist Matthias Arndt spends much of his time travelling the world, but he had never experienced anything like this before. On 21 March, the opening day of Art Dubai, police detectives suddenly appeared at his stand and demanded that he take down a picture by his premier artist within thirty seconds. The art experts in Dubai's police department had discovered at the show works by the Iranian painter Khosrow Hassanzadeh that the censors found objectionable.

What made the work so controversial were the words "Ali madat" ("Ali, give us strength"), which were written on the canvas. Invoking Ali is an everyday matter for Shias, but Sunni-dominated Dubai evidently mistook these words for a political battle cry. Especially now that tensions between Iran and the West are on the rise, the overcautious Emiratis thought that a line had been crossed.

At the latest with this incident, it is plain to see how eminently political Art Dubai – the most important art fair in the Arab world today – has become.

Artists crossing the line: Ultra-sensitive Emirati censors insisted that "Ali, give us strength" by Khosrow Hassanzadeh be removed from the stand of Berlin-based gallerist Matthias Arndt at the art fair Art Dubai  

Khosrow Hassanzadeh (photo: Werner Bloch)

 
Art looks at the Arab revolution

Mounted for the sixth time at a luxury hotel, framed by palm trees and one of Arabia's most beautiful beaches, Art Dubai is still the most elegant and luxurious fair in the world. And as there is – with the exception of Doha – not a single museum for Arab contemporary art in the Middle East, Art Dubai assumes this function as well. It is not merely a trade fair, but rather the showcase par excellence for Arab contemporary art.

When Cultural Identity Is Denied

By Souren Melikian, The New York Times

When the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia were inaugurated at the Metropolitan Museum in November, few visitors were ungracious enough to ask why the book published on the occasion is titled “Masterpieces From the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

The department, of course, has not changed its name. The longer denomination echoes the preference that art historians like the head of the Islamic department Sheila Canby have for historically accurate characterizations. Ms. Canby, who has devoted a lifetime of research to Iranian studies, said, “This has crystallized a real issue in the field that we have been calling ‘Islamic art.”’ 

A glazed tile from the 13th- and 14th-century Koranic frieze in Natanz that was  taken off the walls and sold as single pieces to Western museums.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

The denial of cultural identity in such a meaningless phrase is deeply resented in those Islamic lands, which have ancient cultures that are considerably longer than any West European nation. Most Western scholars appear to be unaware of it. 

Yet, the phrase spread in the later 19th century, largely because of the French. The notion of an “Art Musulman” received significant museum credentials at an exhibition held in 1878 at the Paris Trocadéro and was set in concrete following the first important art show of works of art from the “Arab lands, Turkey, Iran,” etc..., at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1903. 

This was the age of European colonial occupation, which continued to expand after World War I as France and Britain shared the spoils of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The “Islamic art” myth conveniently matched the Western perception of all these non-European people with funny names written in the same Arabic alphabet. 

'Islamic Art' as Catchall Term

By Souren Melikian, The New York Times

The West has a problem when dealing with the cultures of the lands that adhered to Islam over time. It begins with apprehending their differences, far greater than those that separate European nations.

On the museum scene, the meaningless label “Islamic art” is stuck to works visually and conceptually unrelated. 

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which ranks among the world’s four or five greatest institutions of its kind, the recently opened “Islamic department” unwittingly illustrates the confusion. 

A glass bowl with  eagle emblem about seven inches  high is labeled at the Met as being from mid-13th-century Syria. Metropolitan Museum of Art 

When visitors stroll into the galleries devoted to European paintings, they will not see panels from 15th-century Germany hanging together with pictures from the Florentine Quattrocento on the excuse that they are Christian. And Chinese scrolls will not be thrown together with ones from Japan or Korea on the basis of shared Buddhist themes. The arts of China, Japan and Korea, whether Buddhist, Confucianist or other, are considered from the historical perspective of their cultures, sparing viewers any aesthetic inconsistency. 

When it comes to Islamic lands, inconsistency is apparently not a worry. Never mind that their histories explain the highly distinctive character of the art of each broad cultural area. 

Historic Iran, broken up into the modern states of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan, plus bits here and there, shares with China the privilege of being one of the two oldest civilizations in the world with an uninterrupted continuity on its own territory.