"The first monograph to successfully address the dual questions of the development of painting in the Islamic lands in the 19th and 20th centuries and the significance of an indigenous 20th-century artistic tradition . . . presents a lucid and objective discussion of provocative questions related to the evolution of contemporary painting from Islamic lands, including the role of colonial institutions, indigenous patronage, art education, and the formation of a national artistic identity."--Layla S. Diba, associate curator for Islamic art, Brooklyn Museum In this beautifully illustrated book, Wijdan Ali offers a historical survey of the development of modern painting in the Islamic world from the 19th century to the present. She provides background on dominant artistic traditions before 1900 as well as an evaluation of the loss of traditional aesthetics under the impress of Western culture. Ali also explores the persistence and reemergence of calligraphic art as an expression of national artistic identity, and hers is the first book to consider in depth the modern calligraphic school. Ali's account begins with a descriptive survey of the development of contemporary art in the heartland of Islam, from Morocco to Iran. Her discussion incorporates the historical, political, social, and economic factors that brought about artistic and aesthetic changes in the region. Building on this survey, she analyzes the factors behind the evolution of various styles of calligraphic art, their substyles and adherents, and their respective places within the contemporary calligraphic school. In an appendix, she provides biographical data on the most influential modern Islamic artists. More than 150 color and black-and-white photographs allow the reader to see and appreciate the beauty and importance of these works. While a few recent collection catalogs have hinted at the growing interest in the art of the Islamic world, Ali's study is by far the most comprehensive yet undertaken of Islamic art in the contemporary period. It will substantially expand the study and concept of "modern art" beyond the narrow province of American and western European schools and establish a broad foundation for future investigation of modern artistic movements in the Middle East. Wijdan Ali is a painter, art historian, and lecturer at the Institute of Diplomacy, Amman, Jordan. Her most recent publications are What Is Islamic Art? (1996) and Modern Art in Jordan (1996).

Islamic Art is a product of certain forceful factors that created a cultural milieu which was centred on the religious ethos and intellectual affinities inspired by Islam and its followers. No art can grow in isolation and nor did Islamic art. From its early manifestations to this date, it has taken from other cultural traditions and has also given to different social structures and visual languages of the world. This book looks at the artistic output of the Islamic civilization through the centuries, from the time of its inception to its interpretations in the contemporary world. The author has brought the inclusive as well as the exclusive qualities of this great tradition of the world with the empathy and seriousness that this unique art demand.

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

A sumptuous exploration of the ways in which the Islamic arts have inspired the famous jewelry house Cartier, this book accompanies a major exhibition at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Louis Cartier (1875–1942), the grandson of Cartier founder Louis-François, was an impassioned collector and patron of the arts. He was particularly entranced by Islamic arts, especially Persian book arts: their geometric shapes, color combinations, and motifs are apparent in Cartier jewelry to this day. Louis’s younger brother Jacques—an expert in precious stones—traveled to India and the Persian Gulf in 1911 and 1912 to experience the culture and bring home treasures of the Middle East: natural pearls. This was the pivotal moment when the dialogue between these two worlds opened up, eventually blossoming into a beautiful relationship that has lasted for decades. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and the Dallas Museum of Art, Cartier and Islamic Arts delves into the Cartier archives to trace the story of Louis Cartier’s love of Islamic art and the ways in which he incorporated the Islamic world’s stylized motifs into Cartier’s jewelry. Dazzling photographs are accompanied by in-depth texts from a raft of distinguished scholars of both Islam and the decorative arts.

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)

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

Tracing the connections—both visual and philosophical—between new media art and classical Islamic art. In both classical Islamic art and contemporary new media art, one point can unfold to reveal an entire universe. A fourteenth-century dome decorated with geometric complexity and a new media work that shapes a dome from programmed beams of light: both can inspire feelings of immersion and transcendence. In Enfoldment and Infinity, Laura Marks traces the strong similarities, visual and philosophical, between these two kinds of art. Her argument is more than metaphorical; she shows that the “Islamic” quality of modern and new media art is a latent, deeply enfolded, historical inheritance from Islamic art and thought. Marks proposes an aesthetics of unfolding and enfolding in which image, information, and the infinite interact: image is an interface to information, and information (such as computer code or the words of the Qur'an) is an interface to the infinite. After demonstrating historically how Islamic aesthetics traveled into Western art, Marks draws explicit parallels between works of classical Islamic art and new media art, describing texts that burst into image, lines that multiply to form fractal spaces, “nonorganic life” in carpets and algorithms, and other shared concepts and images. Islamic philosophy, she suggests, can offer fruitful ways of understanding contemporary art.

This Stunning book includes more than four hundred reproductions of treasures of Islamic art that span the world. With its large format, exquisite photographs and extensive research, this is a thorough introduction toan exceptional artistic tradition. --