One of the things that surprised me in my early twenties (other than hair loss and how everyone over 40 thinks all you do is get laid) was my own deep interest in Islamic art. It was not a subject I thought I ever would delve into; growing up, I had always preferred the fleshy immediacy of a Greek or Roman statue to the intricate and mystically encoded line-work of an Islamic calligraphy. After a childhood spent entirely in Pakistan, I think I was just sick of all the things that were shoved down my throat here, and Islamic art, ubiquitous in our post-Zia boardrooms, was one of those things.
This was, quite obviously, a massively silly assumption on my part, born of self-loathing and ignorance more than knowledge or understanding. Islamic art has a history as rich and deeply textured as any other civilizational body of art, and one more difficult to understand than most. It’s spread over millennia and across peoples; it contains everything from manuscripts as thin as fairy wings, to massive paintings of the conquest of Mecca, all the way down to miniature paintings produced in what is now our very own Pakistan. It’s all out there, and the most amazing creations are exceptions, not rules. The only difference is that we don’t want to believe it ourselves. A narrowly defined, visually stunted and historically vacant version of Islamic art has been one of the many blessings that the House of Saud has bestowed on its benighted brethren.
But of course the truth about Islamic art is as rich and complex as it is about everything else under the sun. Many years ago, in Venice, I came upon a wonderful little picture, on wood, no more than a foot tall. It was a three-door altar, made with faded gold leaf and brilliant blue paint, and it showed a Madonna figure staring demurely off-stage. It seemed like a regular example of iconic art of the 14th century, but then I saw that the Madonna’s halo, a jumble of what I thought were decorative motifs, was actually curved Arabic lettering that spelled out the words “There is no God but God.”
Now I’m a sucker for hybrids (hybridity means mixing, which usually requires the dissolution of fundamentalisms of all kinds), and I thought that little Islamo-Christian Madonna was simply marvelous, an instructive relic from a time when it was possible to comfortably inhabit what are now two mutually exclusive religious traditions.
And it is with hope too that I have now learned about North America’s first Museum of Islamic Art. It opened a few weeks ago in Toronto and is backed by – who else? – The Agha Khan. The US$300 million museum is the first such space – massive, state-of-the-art, and located inside the civilized world – that is dedicated exclusively to showcasing Islamic art. It will mainly display the thousands of artifacts from the Prince Agha Khan’s private collection, which I imagine to be unbelievably sumptuous and rare.
But the best thing about this seminal museum is the structure itself. The Agha Khan commissioned two octogenarian architects (a Japanese and an Indian) to come up with a contemporary design that wasn’t encumbered by trying to look “Islamic.” By avoiding the cartoonish trappings of indicative culture (domes, arches, camels-on-the-desert-against-a-setting-sun), they allowed themselves to create something new and therefore expand, in a real way, our notions of what Islamic art and architecture can look like.
[quote]When the arches and domes and minarets of Islam were first built, they were inventive and purposeful[/quote]
Bravo, I say. Of course we can have a beautifully modern building to house Islamic art! Why must everything connected to this communal culture be rigidly derived from the same exhausted motifs? A lot of Muslims who are stuck in the past don’t seem to understand that when the arches and domes and minarets were first built, they were inventive and purposeful. As a culture, it would behoove us to think of new things that fulfilled those purposes now.
One of the first shows at the museum featured the work of six artists from Pakistan. I imagine this was an effort to introduce the viewers to how Islamic art is manifested in Muslim countries today. It’s always great to see Pakistanis in world-class museums, especially in this one, despite the show’s trite, slightly nauseating title (“Garden of Ideas”). It does remind me that I rarely get to see such things here. It was true of internationally published Pakistani writers before the spate (okay, gurgle) of local literature festivals. Remember how you had to have an international visa and an air ticket if you wanted to see Mohsin Hamid or Daniyal Mueenuddin talk about their work?
Now, apparently, we are coming up with a Lahore Biannual for Art, which I hope will be good, but I don’t think our plans need be that ambitious.
Why, for instance, has the Shakir Ali Museum in Lahore not hosted an exhibition about how the modern master influenced younger artists? The guy was the principal of the NCA, taught the teachers of the masters, and other than a little portrait hanging in the principal’s office has been all but forgotten. Ditto for Khalid Iqbal and Colin David.
My pet theory (not a large pet, mind you – more turkey than tyrannosaurus) is that it is uncomfortable for us to deal with things we can’t immediately identify as Islamic. This is why we have trouble embracing Shakir Ali’s cubist experiments and the sensuous female nudes in Colin David’s work. That’s also why calligraphy and miniature art sell so well here: people want things they can hang in their drawing rooms, things that radiate prosperity and cultivation but remain within the ambit of our post-Saudi notions of acceptability and appropriateness.
I think that’s very sad. And I think we could all learn a thing or two about our past, present and future by looking at the Agha Khan.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter
This was, quite obviously, a massively silly assumption on my part, born of self-loathing and ignorance more than knowledge or understanding. Islamic art has a history as rich and deeply textured as any other civilizational body of art, and one more difficult to understand than most. It’s spread over millennia and across peoples; it contains everything from manuscripts as thin as fairy wings, to massive paintings of the conquest of Mecca, all the way down to miniature paintings produced in what is now our very own Pakistan. It’s all out there, and the most amazing creations are exceptions, not rules. The only difference is that we don’t want to believe it ourselves. A narrowly defined, visually stunted and historically vacant version of Islamic art has been one of the many blessings that the House of Saud has bestowed on its benighted brethren.
But of course the truth about Islamic art is as rich and complex as it is about everything else under the sun. Many years ago, in Venice, I came upon a wonderful little picture, on wood, no more than a foot tall. It was a three-door altar, made with faded gold leaf and brilliant blue paint, and it showed a Madonna figure staring demurely off-stage. It seemed like a regular example of iconic art of the 14th century, but then I saw that the Madonna’s halo, a jumble of what I thought were decorative motifs, was actually curved Arabic lettering that spelled out the words “There is no God but God.”
Now I’m a sucker for hybrids (hybridity means mixing, which usually requires the dissolution of fundamentalisms of all kinds), and I thought that little Islamo-Christian Madonna was simply marvelous, an instructive relic from a time when it was possible to comfortably inhabit what are now two mutually exclusive religious traditions.
And it is with hope too that I have now learned about North America’s first Museum of Islamic Art. It opened a few weeks ago in Toronto and is backed by – who else? – The Agha Khan. The US$300 million museum is the first such space – massive, state-of-the-art, and located inside the civilized world – that is dedicated exclusively to showcasing Islamic art. It will mainly display the thousands of artifacts from the Prince Agha Khan’s private collection, which I imagine to be unbelievably sumptuous and rare.
But the best thing about this seminal museum is the structure itself. The Agha Khan commissioned two octogenarian architects (a Japanese and an Indian) to come up with a contemporary design that wasn’t encumbered by trying to look “Islamic.” By avoiding the cartoonish trappings of indicative culture (domes, arches, camels-on-the-desert-against-a-setting-sun), they allowed themselves to create something new and therefore expand, in a real way, our notions of what Islamic art and architecture can look like.
[quote]When the arches and domes and minarets of Islam were first built, they were inventive and purposeful[/quote]
Bravo, I say. Of course we can have a beautifully modern building to house Islamic art! Why must everything connected to this communal culture be rigidly derived from the same exhausted motifs? A lot of Muslims who are stuck in the past don’t seem to understand that when the arches and domes and minarets were first built, they were inventive and purposeful. As a culture, it would behoove us to think of new things that fulfilled those purposes now.
One of the first shows at the museum featured the work of six artists from Pakistan. I imagine this was an effort to introduce the viewers to how Islamic art is manifested in Muslim countries today. It’s always great to see Pakistanis in world-class museums, especially in this one, despite the show’s trite, slightly nauseating title (“Garden of Ideas”). It does remind me that I rarely get to see such things here. It was true of internationally published Pakistani writers before the spate (okay, gurgle) of local literature festivals. Remember how you had to have an international visa and an air ticket if you wanted to see Mohsin Hamid or Daniyal Mueenuddin talk about their work?
Now, apparently, we are coming up with a Lahore Biannual for Art, which I hope will be good, but I don’t think our plans need be that ambitious.
Why, for instance, has the Shakir Ali Museum in Lahore not hosted an exhibition about how the modern master influenced younger artists? The guy was the principal of the NCA, taught the teachers of the masters, and other than a little portrait hanging in the principal’s office has been all but forgotten. Ditto for Khalid Iqbal and Colin David.
My pet theory (not a large pet, mind you – more turkey than tyrannosaurus) is that it is uncomfortable for us to deal with things we can’t immediately identify as Islamic. This is why we have trouble embracing Shakir Ali’s cubist experiments and the sensuous female nudes in Colin David’s work. That’s also why calligraphy and miniature art sell so well here: people want things they can hang in their drawing rooms, things that radiate prosperity and cultivation but remain within the ambit of our post-Saudi notions of acceptability and appropriateness.
I think that’s very sad. And I think we could all learn a thing or two about our past, present and future by looking at the Agha Khan.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter