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Colour, Light and Wonder in Islamic Art

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About Colour, Light And Wonder In Islamic Art

Product description The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In his approach to the study of colour in Islamic art, Trevathan creates meaningful dialogue between artistic production, artistic media, and the intellectual, aesthetic and philosophical concepts relating to the subject. Here, he proposes an enlightened new approach to the way we consider colour in Islamic art and architecture. Examining works in relation to their aesthetic contexts, he reveals the relevance of choice colours used in artworks, which in turn provides insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of colour and aesthetics. The seventeenth-century Masjid-i Shah mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. The building of Masjid-i Shah emerged alongside, or as a result of, a culmination of writings on light and colour by some of the most important scholars in Islamic and Persian history. Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the backdrop of the Masjid-i Shah, revealing the differences in how such artworks were conceptualized at the time of creation and how they are received today. Through addressing the artistic production of this masterpiece of Islamic architecture, Trevathan shows that the careful combination of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns expresses knowledge beyond those perceived in the corporeal world. This includes how the experience of bright and luminous colours may have served an epistemological function leading towards a noetic understanding of God. This suggests that a broader consideration of Islamic aesthetics is required, one that encompasses the potential for sensual experience to prompt a journey beyond sentient knowledge. About the Author Idries Trevathan is a curator and conservator with more than a decade’s experience working with Islamic art collections in the Muslim world and beyond, including the Islamic Arts Museum in Malaysia. Treyathan works regularly on conservation projects and has conducted technical and aesthetic colour studies on a range of Islamic art objects, including the Malay Qur’an manuscripts, Damascene reception rooms and Ottoman porticoes in the grand mosque in Mecca. Trevathan trained as an art conservator at the City & Guilds of London Art School and earned a PhD in colour in Islamic art from the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts, London. His achievements have been recognised by numerous awards, including the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies Prize for Research, the Hamad bin Khalifa Scholarship, the Zibby Garnett Fellowship and the Knights of the Round Table Award. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION The celebrated art historian John Gage offers the brilliant, but seemingly evident assertion that colour in art is the ‘‘most vivid surviving manifestation of general attitudes to colour expressed in visual form.’’ Because our experience of colour has always been commonplace, he proposes that it is through art that one can understand historic colour value and meanings. In many ways, this book is an exploration and discussion of the above statement. The assertion that the artwork can be used to understand more about "general attitudes to colour" presents an interesting idea in relation to this book which also looks at a work of art and the materials used to create it with the aim of trying to understand the contexts that frame the aesthetic experience of colour within the premodern Islamic world. Consequently, this work attempts to shed light on the experience of the viewer, as well as attitudes towards colour, aesthetics and the intellectual background. This enquiry into the aesthetic experience of colour is pursued in order to understand more fully the particular use of colour in a work of art and the implications of the premodern Muslim aesthetic experience of colour more generally. Research into colour meaning in Islamic art is worthy of greater attention. Certain aspects of the subject have occasionally engaged the attention of historians: for instance in 2009, some of the world’s leading Islamic art historians were brought together to explore the subject further, at the Hamad Bin Khalifa Biennial Conference 'And Diverse are their Hues: Colour in Islamic Art and Culture’. The common approach at this conference was to address colour in Islamic art in terms of historical, sociological and enumerative perspectives; however some speakers looked at colour from other aspects, in particular, Samir Mahmoud, who drew on a range of exegesis of Qur’anic verses that explicitly refer to colour. Particular reference was made to the Sufi commentaries on the nature of colour by Islamic philosophers such as Najmuddin Kubra (13th century) and Alludawlah Simnani (14th century) in their phenomenology of colours. Mahmoud paid particular attention to Henry Corbin’s ground-breaking work on these authors in his The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism and other essays where Corbin explores, amongst other things, parallels between these Sufi texts and Goethe’s ‘Farbenlehre. Mahmoud asked the pertinent question, central to this work, do such theoretical treatises on colour reveal anything about the use and meaning of colour in Islamic art? It was not Mahmoud's intention to provide a final answer to the question, but to contribute to the debate and, in his words, to '’rehearse many of the arguments put forward by Henry Corbin with the intention of placing his work on colour theory back in the limelight after years of neglect’'. Despite their invitation for further research in this area, the subject has remained largely unexplored. Interestingly, more than anyone it is John Gage who, although he has not focused specifically on Islamic art, has furthered the study of colour in art by providing clear and coherent commentaries on a historical understanding of colour in his two books Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism and Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. These two volumes necessarily span a wide range of issues including Greek colour theory, mosaics, stained glass, heraldry, the rainbow, colour vocabulary, chemistry of pigments, and correlation of colour with music. A notable success in Gage’s work, which this study attempts to replicate, was his capacity to consider the wider context by investigating how various colour disciplines, in particular scientific and philosophical, were once incorporated and interrelated through art. Although his interest in Islamic visual culture was only fleeting, his ability to bring a more nuanced understanding to this topic can be attributed to his multi-disciplinary approach which is founded on his brilliant assertion that because premodern man’s experience of colour was commonplace and available to most people, ‘’It is an aesthetic intent which gave it value. It is in pictures, or when we see in terms of pictures, that these colour relationships take on coherence. Hence the central importance of art for the study of colour in the larger social context.” Therefore, although Gage was primarily interested in investigating colour meaning in art, he hypothesized that since colour has a vivid life outside the realm of art its problems, even within the realm of art, cannot be understood exclusively from within the history and theory of art itself. Thus he suggests that, at least in respect to colour, theory and history must be seen to be part of a larger picture. It would seem natural to assume that examining art in relation to the larger picture, including contemporary texts, in order to consider the intellectual context of the period in question would be the bread and butter for any art historian and yet, in relation to colour, this approach is surprisingly novel in the study of Western art and uncommon in the study of Islamic art. Referencing the wider historical, social and cultural contexts is not only applicable, but highly pertinent to the study of colour in Islamic art since very little is available in the way of artistic and aesthetic treatises. Yet few attempts have been made to discover the relationship between an Islamic understanding of colour and what is evident in the works of art themselves. This begs the question as to whether using the artwork itself to look at colour perception might enable scholars to understand ways in which premodern Muslims expressed ideas about colour from within their own aesthetic context. In order to address this question, the present work aims to reassess colour in Islamic art by examining the phenomenon from a more integrated perspective, one that attempts to understand it in relation to the Islamic artists’ worldview in ways similar to those used by Gage in his work. The work of Gage thus presents a model, not only in relation to his findings on colour in art and culture, but also his integrative approach that draws on a range of intellectual and historical disciplines including science, philosophy, religion and art. Thus using the artwork itself to look at aesthetic contexts in relation to colour will enable this study to further understand the ways premodern Muslims may have understood and engaged with colour in art. The scope of this book is at the same time broad and intentionally limited. Broad, because it looks at colour, which is a phenomenon forming part of basic human experience, by examining ideas, objects and buildings that span continents and large swathes of history, and limited, because the scope of the subject of colour is so vast as to make any exhaustive treatment unattainable. The intention here is not to make a detailed analysis of the origin and development of colour theories throughout Islamic history, but rather, to examine Islamic ideas about colour through the prism of one building; the 17th century Masjid-i Shah in Isfahan. Chosen on the basis of representing one of the finest examples of colour use on a grand scale anywhere, this mosque bears witness to a long and celebrated tile making tradition that possessed a highly sophisticated knowledge of the laws of colour both technically and aesthetically. According to the great historian of Persia Arthur Pope, the saturation and intensity of harmonious colours found on the Masjid-i-Shah (Shah Mosque) is no less than a “culmination of a thousand years of mosque building in Persia . . . the formative traditions, the religious ideals, usage and meanings [and the] ornamentation are all fulfilled and unified in the Masjid-i-Shah, the majesty and splendour of which places it among the world’s greatest buildings”. This technical and aesthetic peak did not arise in cultural or scientific isolation but emerged alongside, or as a result of, a great culmination of metaphysical writings on light and colour by some of the most important scholars in Islamic and Persian history. Indeed the Safavid era is marked by a coalescence of four prominent Islamic schools of thought that placed light and colour at the core of their writings: the Ishraqi (Illuminist) School of Suhrawardi; the Irfani (gnostic) School of Ibn Arabi; the Peripatetic School of Ibn Sina; and the School of Kalam (theology) of al-Ghazali. In addition, an intellectual edifice which has its basis in the teachings of above schools as well as upon the specific tenets of Shi'ism as found in the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet and Imams reached its completion. A synthesis is created which reflects a millennium of Islamic intellectual life. During the Safavid period, with the artistic and intellectual renaissance that took place, the philosophy of these schools of thought received special attention from such influential figures as Mir Damad and Mulla Sadra. These philosophers, as well as the grand architect of the Masjid-i Shah, Sheikh Baha'i al-Din al-Amili’s (henceforth Sheikh Baha’i), founded what is now known as ‘The Isfahan School of Philosophy’. According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, this school was patronized by the court of Shah ʿAbbas, centered in the new Safavid capital of Isfahan, and initiated as part of the wider Safavid cultural renaissance associated with his reign. Speaking about the Safavid use of colour, the Iranian architect Ardalan suggests that the synthesis of philosophy and wisdom proffered by the School of Isfahan ‘’provokes an art that seeks to saturate the senses and produces the heralded miniatures of Sultan Muhammad, the Ardabil carpet, the gardens of Fin and the Hasht Bihisht, the Masjid-i Shah and the harmonic synthesis of the Safavid city of Isfahan.” Moreover, according to Nasr, the Safavid period provides ‘’evident proof of the relationship between Islamic spirituality and intellectuality on the one hand and art on the other’’, while in other Islamic periods the oral tradition has left no direct written trace to enable this relationship to be studied in detail by historians. Therefore, this work considers how these various philosophies and wisdom traditions, as well as their integration during the Safavid period, help to understand more about the wider intellectual context surrounding the aesthetic experience of colour particularly in relation to the Masjid-i Shah. In order to understand more about how contemporary viewers may have experienced the materials employed in the decoration of the building, this work attempts to the excavate descriptions of coloured materials that would have been experienced similarly to the colourful glazed tilework used in the Masjid-i Shah. Such descriptions are drawn from a variety of sources including travelogues and histories as well as the classical Arabic dictionaries notably the Lisan al Arab (Arab Tongue). Descriptions of buildings and objects are taken from travelogues which include the 11th century writings of Nasir-i Khusraw, those of the 13th century traveller Ibn Jubayr and the 17th century traveller Evliya Celebi. Finally, this category also includes some terms taken from Arabic poetry that describes and evaluates colours on the basis that the language and outlook of the Arab world provided a cultural heritage for the wider Islamic world including that of the Safavids. Attention is also given to writings on colour that address physical and physiological aspects of the experience of colour. Examples of this type of literature include lapidaries by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), Kashani (d.1258) and Nishaburi (d.1300) and artistic treatises by Safavid court calligraphers and artists such as Sadiki Beg (d.1610) and Dust Muhammad (d.1565) all of which describe different aspects of either colour mixtures, making paint or painting. This category also includes Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitab al-Manazir (his treatise on optics) and the encyclopaedic Rasa’il (Epistles) of the Ikhwan al safa (Brethren of Purity) in which they examine visual and aesthetic perception. Yet another type of literature reviewed addresses the experience of colour in relation to knowledge and knowing. Examples of this type of literature can be found in mystical and theosophical treatises by Sufi practitioners such as Najm al-Din Kubra in his Fawatih al-Jamal wa Fawatih al-Jalal (Aromas of Beauty and Preambles of Majesty), Suhrawardi’s recital Aql-Surkh (The Red Intellect) as well as Muhammad Karim-Khan Kirmani’s Risalat al-Yaqutat al-Hamra (The Book of the Red Hyacinth) all of which are addressed in this research. As part of the wider discussion into the Safavid period with its artistic and intellectual renaissance, comparisons are also made between this principal decorative technique Haft rang employed in the Masjid-i Shah and the wide distribution and celebration of earlier works such as the 12th century poem entitled Haft Paykar (Seven Portraits) by the Persian poet Nizami. This epic poem uses the seven colours of the Haft rang colour system and draws analogies between the application of glazes on tiles and the process of spiritual transformation. Significantly, the poet associates all of this with the Prophet Muhammad's bestowal of colour to the seven planets during his ascension to heaven (Mi’raj) following the Night Journey (Isra’a). Although the literature referenced above may fall under different disciplines and categories, it is important to point out that the author does not treat them as exclusive of one another. All the primary sources reviewed in this research are understood as part of an interrelated process that documents the premodern Islamic engagement with light and colour. This process is thus related to Berlekamp’s suggestion that the premodern Islamic engagement with the world was a “coherent symbiosis” in which the visual, intellectual and spiritual modes of engagement are conceived as successive steps. Therefore, by the term aesthetics, the author refers not only to sense perception and sensual experience leading to discursive knowledge (judgement, taste, etc.) but also the relationship of these experiences with immaterial or non-corporeal knowledge. For as Valerie Gonzalez observes in her book Beauty and Islam, the premodern understanding of aesthetics was integrative of wider intellectual context that does not assume separateness of the (aesthetic) object of study. Discussing aesthetics in premodern Islamic contexts she posits that it was integrative of various other fields of knowledge. She writes, “Aesthetics . . . manifests itself in the dual problem of physical beauty and divine beauty, and sensory perception and inner perception.” Consequently, in order to take this expanded understanding of aesthetics into account, an attempt is made here to examine the aesthetic experience of colour by applying the concept of “coherent symbiosis” which considers the wider intellectual context. Thus, in the same way, this concept is employed as a framework both in relation to its object of study as well as in the way it is studied. As such, this work does not see irreconcilable differences between the various premodern Islamic writings on colour and treats them as situated on different but ultimately connected planes of experience and understanding. In order to interpret and extrapolate on these primary texts, a heavy reliance is made on secondary sources who write on Islamic aesthetics such as Necipoğlu, Akkach, Gonzalez and Elias. These scholars are significant to this study principally because their work has dramatically opened up the subject and provided new methodological tools that complement the field’s long-standing art historical approach. This work draws on their work both in respect to their findings and methodologies employed which examine classical Islamic thought in the light of contemporary theories and, in so doing, demonstrate the value of seeing the subject within a much wider context of parallel thinking. In addition, this research is not restricted to Islamic texts but also borrows ideas from studies that address similar questions in Christian art and architecture and from seminal studies on medieval aesthetics in particular Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages and Etudes d’Esthetique Medievale by Umberto Eco and Edgar De Bruyne respectively. This study asserts that Islamic ideas regarding colour, while specific to the Islamic world, did not emerge in a vacuum but were preceded by rich Christian and Classical traditions. Therefore, beyond attempting to investigate the intellectual context that was specific to the premodern Islamic world, this study also investigates the possibility that writers on Christian aesthetics have encountered many of the same misconceptions and methodological problems found in their own fields of study, albeit decades earlier. Indeed one discernable motive underlying this work, and the work of De Bruyne and Eco, is a desire to correct the misinterpretation by other scholars who have tried to reduce the aesthetic delights of medieval man to shallow sensual enjoyment, or what De Bruyne has described as “the joy of ‘gold and glitter’”. Indeed, a review of publications in the field of Byzantine studies in relation to medieval aesthetic experience has shown that this was a tendency in this field. As such it has been helpful to see how some Byzantine scholars have tried to develop new approaches in order to gain a fuller understanding of their own field. For example, Liz James sees the current discourse in the study of Byzantine art as the “legacy” of 19th century scholars whom she describes as desirous of “fixed order . . . a scheme into which everything fits neatly” and with “the ‘scientific’ cast of mind, in which nothing is valid unless defined and categorized”. James sees this approach as insufficient in that it does not take into account Byzantine society, which she describes as, “A society in which multiple references and associations were keenly appreciated, and limitations of category avoided". Her observations could also be applied to the study of Islamic art and aesthetics. As the same could be said of the study of aesthetics in premodern Islamic contexts, this then raises questions about the potential dangers in interpreting all Islamic artworks using one system of approach. More particularly, does the interpretation of Islamic artworks using just one model run the risk of missing some of its most powerful characteristics whose meaning may not be fixed or easily identifiable such as the use of colour in abstract patterns? This study also provides a more detailed consideration of the materials used to create the work of art and information about their attainment and use by the artist. Scant attention has been given to how artists and craftsmen obtained and prepared their colours. This gap in knowledge is indicative of a wider problem which the art historian John Gage bemoans as one of the least studied aspects of the history of art namely, its materials and tools, while the specialist on impressionist painting Anthea Callen states, Ironically, people who write on art frequently overlook the practical side of their craft, often concentrating solely on stylistic, literary or formal qualities in their discussion of painting. As a result, unnecessary errors and misunderstandings have grown up in art history, only to be reiterated by succeeding generations of writers. Any work of art is determined first and foremost by the materials available to the artist, and by the artist’s ability to manipulate those materials. Thus only when the limitations imposed by artists’ materials and social conditions are taken into account can the aesthetic preoccupations, and the place of art in history, be adequately understood. As such, rather than looking at colour merely in terms of its historical deployment in relation to particular artefacts and techniques, this study attempted to compare theoretical literature (the text) with the process of the creation and application of colour in art (the materials). By looking at possible connections between the colours used during a particular time period in relation to theoretical texts from the same time and in relation to the actual sourcing and process of producing the colours based on scientific material analysis, it was possible to make connections between these three areas. In this sense, this investigation has tried to address the craftsmen’s colours not simply as abstract hues, unconnected to the intellectual and aesthetic context, but as repositories of values in their own right. The outcome of this approach has been to show how the scientific analysis of artists’ materials has brought about some new concreteness, in terms of actual materials and techniques, to the historical understanding of aesthetical concepts in Islamic art. Scope versus limitations Defining the scope of this study, which examines the wider context surrounding the premodern Muslim engagement with colour, presented many challenges. Mainly, the study of colour encompasses many aspects, which would be impossible to discuss. Having said this, the use and experience of colour in Islamic contexts has not been sufficiently considered, and indeed has barely been broached by previous scholars. Therefore this study was forced to be broad and discursive in its approach. Since the texts examined in this research incorporate rich scientific, philosophical and religious dimensions, it is necessary at this initial stage to take a broad view of such writings by making general connections between ideas and objects of the same milieu of premodern Islam. The wide ranging and disparate comparisons between ideas, other texts and art and artistic materials are made with the intention of opening up possibilities of finding good questions, and suggesting and testing a lens through which concrete cases can be further scrutinized and elucidated by others. In addition, the question of whether or not the colour concepts and ideas found in the literature were shared amongst the general population, particular groups or specific persons, including artists and craftsmen is not addressed. This is not the purpose of this study, which seeks to draw connections between texts of various types, artwork and materials, to consider broad attitudes about colour in order to know more about experience, perception, and knowledge. As to whether a text was read by an architect or craftsman and used in relation to creating art and architecture is not addressed here because the sources and line of research required to provide answers to this question are different to those pursued in this study. The purpose here is to try and understand more about the experience of the viewer and craftsman, as well as attitudes towards aesthetics and the intellectual context in order to gain further insight into colour in Islamic art. As such, this approach is in accord with the Islamic art historian Necipoglu’s observation that regardless of whether particular mystical and philosophical texts actually exercised a direct influence on builders and decorators, the ideas and concepts presented in these writings provide “fragmentary glimpses into widespread aesthetic sensibilities that acted as a general backdrop against which visual idioms were formulated and reformulated in specific historical contexts.” Finally, the author concedes that a 21st century understanding of earlier premodern perceptions of colour remains a 21st century engagement. Indeed conditions have irreversibly altered the ability to understand fully the premodern Islamic aesthetic perception of colour in art and architecture. This follows Samer Akkach’s argument that “what in a premodern context used to be intuitively available has now become the object of discursive understanding”. He continues, “It is, therefore, important to stress that the barrier of consciousness that is commonly recognized today as separating modern subjects from their traditions must also be seen as distancing them from the immediacy of symbolism.”