‘From Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art’

by Finbarr Barry Flood

Anne Ginsberg

‘Islamic Art’A ‘sub-field’ of Art History

As seen in widely-distributed Art History survey texts

A vast consolidation of 1,400 years of art from Islamic cultures– spanning several countries, within which many different ethnicities, languages, religions, and

cultures existed.Caught between religious and cultural identification

Inclusions and Exclusions Provide Coherent Format:• Geographically focused on central Islamic lands of Middle East, North Africa and

Spain• Reliance on what has been collected and is currently accessible– depended on

what was readily accessible to European and American scholars• Emphasis on elite artistic production (i.e. Dynastic) over material culture• Begins with the building of the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina and generally

ends with the inception of the study of Islamic Art in 1800

Reception of European Art in 19th C.

Although the blending of Islamic Art with art of other cultures was seen as innovative and vibrant in pre-colonial times– the hybridity of European and Islamic Art during the time of the 19th c. European ‘narrator’ was seen as an amateurish attempt at superior European art and a loss of authentic , traditional Islamic Art.

In this way, these artistic works reaffirmed and undermined the superiority of European art .European travelers expressed feelings of repulsion toward ‘hybrid’ works, and nostalgia for ‘traditional’ Islamic Art.

Traditional Local Past

Modernity (Euro-American) global Present

Oil painting, 1800-1830 (made), IranVictoria & Albert Museum

Qajar PaintingQajar dynasty ruled Iran the late 18th C. – 1925

Under threat of British and Russian colonialism, the Qajars initiated cultural and social reform.

Many Qajar artists studied in Europe

Use of oil paint and adaptation of European royal portraiture, photography, and artistic legacies of Iran.

Only in the past two decades has Qajar art surfaced in the canon of Islamic Art

Good Muslim, Bad MuslimA reassessment after 9/11

• Renewed interest in Islamic Art and its potential to ‘bridge the cultural divide’

• From ‘inappropriate’ reception of European Art in 19th C. – to failure of Muslim countries to conform to European and American defined modern civilization

• Valorizing of the past ‘greatness’ of Islamic Art and looking to past for direction for the future

• Neo-imperialism privileges passivity of an Islamic Art devoid of the legacy of colonialism and contemporary issues

Shadi Ghadirian (Iran, born 1974) Untitled, 1998Photograph, Gelatin-silver bromide print

“My pictures became a mirror of how I felt: we are stuck between tradition and modernity.”Shadi Ghadirian

Qajar SeriesInspired by studio portraiture in Iran in the late 19th c. and using modern objects.

“When I read of Islam in the papers these days, I often feel I am reading of museumized peoples. I feel I am reading of people who are said not to make culture, except at the beginning of creation, as some extraordinary, prophetic, act.” – Mahmood Mamdani

Contemporary Artist in Iran