Islamic art encompasses many artistic disciplines, including calligraphy, architecture, painting, ceramics, textiles, and glass. The author of the article, “Art of Islam,” covers aspects of the Islamic art language. They include how Arab art is related to Islamic art, the overall idea of Arabic calligraphy, the Arabesque, sphere and cube, and the Alchemy of light as examples of Islamic art forms. Since figurative representations are generally inadmissible in Islam, the expression takes on religious meaning in art, illustrated in the calligraphic engraving practice. It furthers spiritual and creative significance in calligraphy, a key aspect of Islamic art.
Islamic architectural style, such as mosques and opulent paradise gardens, is also steeped in religious connotations. In Islamic art, recurring aspects such as spatial floral or stylized designs are used in factors that include the Arabesque.
The author’s assumptions in presenting the thesis are that Arab art is a vague term. It creates a fabricated homogeneous Arab culture that subverts the reality of a diverse region filled with a plethora of diverse experiences and ways of seeing the universe. Although Arab artists emphases on finding insight from the realities of modern life, it is only through Western awareness that their particular cultural scenario is defined. One of the significant issues of framing and labeling art from the region as Arab art underlines the dominance of only a few narrow interpretations of Arab culture. The question boils down to whether the phrase ‘Arab art’ corresponds to a distinct reality.
According to the article, Greek, Byzantine, early Christian, and Roman art styles and pre-Islamic Persia’s Sassanian art inspired Islamic art. Persian styles were introduced with various nomadic infiltrations, and Chinese impacts had a pivotal effect on Islamic pottery, artwork, and textiles. Moreover, the author’s valuable concepts are that three key characteristics of Islamic visual art are geometric patterns, floral motifs, and calligraphy. These elements, which frequently overlap throughout art forms and genres, are impacted by Quranic precepts.
The outstanding strength of the reading is that it provides a clear representation of the abstract style, which is a distinguishing feature of Islamic art. Unlike Western art, it is made up of geometric shapes and designs rather than images and figures.
The Arabesque interlinking of geometric, leaf, and floral design features, is one of these art forms. One common myth about Islamic art, as in the previous views, is that it is iconic and contains no characterizations of animals or humans. Consequently, Islamic art produces a void that excludes all of the globe’s upheaval and ardent ideas, replacing them with a sequence that expresses tranquility, balance, and peace. The Islamic revelation, not chronological precedents or impacts, is the ultimate source of Islamic art. This unique origin explains its remarkable consistency across space and time.
Furthermore, the question that comes to mind from the article is that since the signs of creation begin through imagination. It is through imagination that we can trace them back to their emergence and definitions and that we can comprehend them by identifying the aspects of the transcendent that they appear. Islamic arts restore the essential components of our environment to their archetypal and geometric realms, which are more easily integrated into the divine unity, making Islamic culture and its arts so centered on geometry. Therefore, art created by Muslims, and perhaps even art created in Islamic communities, is not always Islamic art. The component of art, as formed by discovery, rather than the artist’s individuality, differentiates an Islamic work.
Work Cited
Burckhardt, Titus. “Art of Islam: Language and meaning.” World Wisdom, Inc, (2009).