Islamic Art

Interior Ibn Battuta Mall – Dubai, UAE

To generalize Islamic art without a firm grasp of Islam is a daunting task. In some sense, it seems incredibly ignorant of me to attempt to do so when the region called the middle east is comprised of several cultures, races, religions, and distinct histories. Furthermore, the artistic traditions of Islam are as varied as anything else and are hard to categorize in any specific social framework. Despite this, such artistic work seems the most appropriate choice for expanding a appreciative view of humanity that can be defined as non-western. To best secure at least something correct, I will limit this glance to Islamic geometric art.  I found it difficult to find artist names behind many of the works I discovered but many are worth seeing.  I suggest  independent research to discover many of the anonymous patterns in pottery, textiles, and mosques. Richard Henry – Unmayyad Pattern (2006)

Most everyone is familiar with geometry and patterns.  The above image by Richard Henry is included here to give some mathematical frame of reference.  The artistic emphasis of these ideas gained prominence due to certain religious rules in Islamic religious texts forbidding the portrayal of human forms in worship.  Additionally, the advanced mathematical discoveries in the middle east brought about some wonder toward the patterns of these ideas. The underlying message in such geometries, within the Islamic context, is the infinite and natural power of God. It is important to note that ideas like zero, our decimal counting system, and algebra originated from India and the middle east. Arabic calligraphy is also similarly celebrated and made the subject of many past and current Islamic art.  A shocking break from this tradition can be found in the photography of Shirin Neshat.  While other more current but traditional forms are in the following:

Mohammand Ehsai – He is Merciful (2007)

Mohammand Ehsai – Ghermez (1985)

These paintings by Mohammand Ehsai are breathtaking.  I’ve always been fascinated with graffiti art as one of the four pillars of American hip-hop culture.  While Islamic culture is quite different from Hip-Hop, these images strike me in a similar way.  The meaning of the words is dwarfed by the visual presentation.  My peripheral understanding of this art form is one where religious worship is manifest in the words of Islamic teachings.  In this context, such art can be seen as sacred as the paintings from Christian traditions during the Renaissance.  There is a tremendous amount more to say about this art form but would require a greater understanding of Arabic, Islam, the middle east, and geometry.  I hope this has been an interesting but brief introduction into what I think is some of the most beautiful art ever crafted.

Far East from West

 

 

Tang Yin – Seeing Off a Guest on a Mountain Path (1505-1510)

Chinese painting, as with many aspects of Chinese culture, is centered around tradition. During the Ming Dynasty, Chinese painting took on more individualistic impressions.  Considered one the of the four greats of the era, Tang Yin is celebrated not only as painter but also a poet and calligrapher.  Indeed one of the most noticeable aspects of the Chinese painting style is the use of calligraphy (often a poem) and similar brush work in the actual painting.  The painting style of the Ming Dynasty more closely tied painting and calligraphy together.  What makes this painting significant is that until recently it was thought to be by another artist from five hundred years earlier.  The poem was instructive to scholars recently in attributing the work to Tang Yin.  As a poet, his style was distinctive and obviously played a big role in the determination of authorship.

What attracted me to this painting is the way in which it exemplifies many aspects attributed to Chinese painting.  The most obvious differences are the use of ideograms (calligraphy) as a poetic device to accompany the scene.  Another obvious difference is the vertical orientation and many paintings were in scroll form painted on silk.  The bigger and less obvious differences are the often dwarfed human presence against the landscape and a landscape of infinity diminishing background.  Both employed here, these techniques give the impression of an overwhelming massiveness to the world.   Chinese and many Asian cultures focus less on the individual but rather on the oneness of the universe.  A similar sentiment might be found in landscape painting which turned away from religious empowerment of humanity over nature.  In this painting, there is a small figure traveling on a road within a world much larger.  The diminishing background, where further objects blend into nothingness, add to this ominousness.  While this particular example is somewhat devoid of color, that may simply be a by-product of age.  Many western art pieces have been restored to display vibrant color.  Like statues of ancient Rome and Greece, there may be no way to know what the original color was if any.

Reference:  http://etcweb.princeton.edu/asianart/selectionsdetail.jsp?ctry=China&pd=&id=1035566

N is for New and Improved

Plagiarism and Influence: A Virtual Exhibit

Artists:

Shepard Fairey

A street artist and contemporary graphic designer, Shepard Fairley is also a DJ. Similar to using various songs to create complex compilations, his visual art appropriates various found material for distinct projects.

Joy Garnett

Based in New York, Joy Garnett is a painter who often develops her ideas for paintings from found photography. She looks for the blurred lines between photojournalism and art.

Dwayne Booth aka Mr. Fish

Primarily a cartoonist, Mr. Fish contributes work to the LA Weekly and Harpers.org. His work often depicts a bitting commentary on current affairs with a style ranging from simple blocky figures to detailed pencil renderings.

Manabu Ikeda

Living and working in Tokyo, Manabu Ikeda is a Japanese mixed media 2-D artist. His work often contains highly detailed images combined to create complex narratives.

 

 

Anyone who has watched a videotape or digital video disc is well aware of a menacing FBI warning against copied distribution. Yet we now live in a world where almost any perceptible medium can be digitized, moved, changed, and copied and copied and copied. As much can be made clear in the actions of our own blogs where someone else’s hard work and possible intellectual property are now available on countless internet webpages. Ignoring the legal quagmire countless artists face in this Brave New World, we can see in the last couple thousand years that artists found inspiration from their predecessors. Imagine if the ancients rose from the grave to demand renaissance artists of the sixteenth century cease and desist. But life was perhaps not as complicated nor as well documented.

So here we are in an era where music, film, and visual art are the stomping ground for creativity. With a constant stream of input all around, artists have embraced the possible notion that there may in fact be no such thing as an original idea. It may also be that nothing is anything without being the by-product of its environment. This virtual exhibit seeks to explore some of the themes surrounding plagiarism, influence, and appropriation.

We start with Mr. Fish. Like many political cartoons, the following examples by Mr. Fish combine straightforward imagery and no shortage of opinion. The unique and diverse style of Mr. Fish incorporates many iconic symbols or current new photographs into new more complicated messages.

Mr. Fish – Maverick (2008)

In Maverick, we see possibly one of the most recognizable scenes from the Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schulz. This cartoon came out a few weeks before the Presidential Election in 2008 and a closer inspection portrays a less than stable McCain and Palin. Politics aside, Mr. Fish has not only appropriated a style so recognizable it could only be seen as Schulz’s, but has also emphasized a particular well established and documented relationship crafted between characters in the Peanuts cartoon. The point here isn’t that Mr. Fish is relying on the success of Peanuts to sell his work, but rather he’s taking a well-known narrative to illustrate a phenomenon in current events. It would be similar to the literary reference to something as a Trojan horse or Catch 22.

Mr. Fish – 40 Years (2009)

In 40 Years, the message is not so clear. Printed during the recent 40th anniversary of the Woodstock concert in 1969, Mr Fish has taken the original concert poster and made a simple statement about the futility of war-protest. The comment here is complex in the somewhat anti-climatic role Woodstock was for the love movement combined with the countless civil demonstrations during the same decade in America. Mr. Fish has again taken an iconic image from the concert and used it to illustrate a short history of war protest in America.

Mr. Fish – Obama Sunset (2009)

Co-opting another now well-known symbol, Mr. Fish has taken the ‘O’ from Barack Obama’s campaign and reinvented the image as a sunset. This sunset shows a figure riding out in the classic fashion signifying the reality of broken campaign promises. I like this image for it’s simplicity and nature to be contradictory.

Shepard Fairley – Hope (2008)

Keeping with Mr. Obama, The Hope poster was not explicitly a part of the Obama presidential campaign. It was created by Mr. Fairley using a photo from the Associated Press. There are ongoing legal battles between the two and proves well the controversial nature of this style in art. Whether or not Shepard Fairley is found guilty, the image remains one of the most memorial from the long battle for the presidency. I appreciate the image for it’s strong political message and effective simplicity. The money made from this image brings up all kinds of complications to this controversy. It may be art should be free to make and free to see. Here is where the free-idea-internet is in conflict with for-profit artists. Pieces like Hope blur these lines and beg the question again: What is art?

Joy Garnett - Molotov (2004)

In a similar circumstance to that of Shepard Fairly, Molotov by Joy Garnett was created from a found photo on the internet. The original photo in question was taken in 1979 by Susan Meiselas. During an initial showdown, Garnett complied to take down the painting but not before dozens of web-peer artists used the painting image as their own in art with the famous fighting man. The stories are complex behind the original photo and the painting. In a simple view, here we find art created from life which itself is art created from life. Is one so different from the other? Is there such a thing as intellectual property? If anyone can own anything, it will be images like these in the collective culture.

Manabu Ikeda – Foretoken (2008)

Foretoken, a dense sharp work, is at first a wave but presides over a more familiar wave in the lower left corner.   Mt. Fuji Off Kanagawa or “The Wave” by Hokusai is a famous woodblock print from Japan and similar in shape and theme to dwarfed image in Foretoken. Comparing the two, there is almost a sense of similar impending natural doom separated by 200 years in creation. The latter work by Manabu Ikeda is so highly-detailed it seems impossible to realistically see everything in any short amount of time. In one close-up, there is another co-opted style from M.C. Escher.

Manabu Ikeda – Foretoken (detail)

Spotting this and what could be an eternal stare to see everything, it may be possible to find other taken styles. Yet, here I feel an homage to the predecessor like a cover to a celebrated song. Still, there is clear outside influence and use of style. Overall it is ambitious and immense and somehow draws another vague line between what is art without what has come before it. Behind all this progress are the actual artists who create it step by step together.

F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M is for Miró

Joan Miró – Harlequin’s Carnival (1924-25)

Larger image: Here

The triumph of industry and scientific achievement was pervasive in the modern world. The shift from religious faith to scientific faith found a western world willing and wanting to apply the scientific method to everything. Applied to war, science and industry left Europe nearly destroyed with unseen horrors and millions dead. Looking inward, the science of Psychology was born from Sigmund Freud in Vienna. Here the mind is segmented and notions of the conscious versus the subconscious are suggested. Freud went further to attribute certain behavior as inherent in the subconscious and developed the practice of psychotherapy to, somewhat ambitiously, determine the working of the mind. Freud was famous for his writing on dream interpretation and considered dreams to be very real insights into the subconscious.

In many ways, surrealistic paintings like that of Miró are an exploration of the subconscious or a more generalized theme from the mind’s eye. It can sometimes be hard to determine anything “meaningful” from a surrealist painting and as much can be said of the subconscious. If anything is universally true for dreams, it is that there aren’t anything like being conscious. In one sense, while a dream may hold elements of reality so may it be askew in some way. This inevitably led to bigger philosophical questions about reality and mental life. Overall, there is a willingness to except the mental world as real as anything else. The surrealist painter was now conveying something very real but born of the imagination rather than the perceptible world.

Miró’s Harlequin’s Carnival, conceived of in Paris, comprises very odd constructions of color, shape, and form. Far from the natural landscape, Miro sets his subjects against a stark colored background in an almost cartoon setting. The figures and relationships between figures are nonsensical but distinct. There is a touch of the familiar with musical notation, arrows, a window, a guitar, faces, a ladder, and insects maybe. For all of that, little is in normal context. What I find so interesting is that while I am bewildered with nearly everything I see, I also find my eye to be captivated and entertained by what I’m seeing. The colors are chosen among a few and placed upon the image in such a way to move the eye and balance the composition. Outside of that, there is little here that makes sense to me. For that, I could look at something like this for a long long time and always be entertained. Another appeal, is a hint of Bosch in Miro’s work that I recall from the fantastical figures within the Garden of Earthly Delights. Most important, there is no indication that this image is anything in particular and that is preferable to something rather obvious and left to be unconsidered any further.

E is for Experience

While not to my visual taste, Impressionism seemed to signal a shift away from the representational view. No matter how fantastical the subject matter, painting had up until that point not ventured too far from the natural properties of light.  Most adhered to this standard. The Realists and Romantics of the time maintained a proper sense of natural color and perspective.

Fanatics of Tangier by Eugene Delacroix (1838)

Fanatics of Tangier by Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix is a good example of the standard use of color and perspective. The exotic scene is far-fetched but not in terms of color, value, or perspective. Whether or not this place exists, it still is familiar to the senses as a possibility. The Impressionist broke this convention and forced the question: What is art? Questions of this sort are difficult to answer but still interesting. The difficulty of the art question that Impressionism asks is important and may be the one reason I applaud the effort. Visually, I don’t care for the style but overall champion abstraction.  The Impressionists were likely the first to venture into the abstract on purpose. The notion of capturing or conveying an experience is ambitious and asks another interesting question: Does what we experience vary from person to person?

Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor, Le Havre by Claude Monet: (1874)

In Fishing boats Leaving the Harbor by Monet, we see what is altogether very blurry and maybe a little boring. Everyone is familiar with rain and the nature of water to skew vision. It makes sense for the scene to be blurry. It is enough to get a rough outline of a sailboat to know we see a sailboat. While I can’t say I enjoy the overall drab color and dreary landscape, the image here might bring some consideration about the method of painting rather than scene itself. Until now, it may not have occurred to the viewer how to capture some frozen image of a rainy scene, which itself changes quite quickly. Here the impressionistic techniques to work on a wet surface and let colors mix on the canvas mimics the way in which color shifts in the rain. It may be however that this scene isn’t trying to illustrate rain at all but the wet feeling of being shoreside. In either case, Monet has brought the experiential aspect of water to the viewer and only at the cost of a more natural representation. To be more representational would have been to rob the viewer of the decision about what can be seen on any rainy day.

Portrait of Claude Monet by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1875)

Self-Portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1910)

In the above paired portraits by Renoir, there is an even further shift from the representational.  This greater abstraction may have only been possible with the Impressionist’s change in convention. The first portrait from 1875 has a soft treatment to color and visible brushstrokes. The subject’s movement continues as poised to act but also reflective. The characteristic blur leaves this image in motion for the viewer to consider and determine some visual experience. In the later Self-Portrait, Renoir has left other conventions behind. The bold red background is unnatural at best and similarly bold strokes of various color build up to form the jacket, tie, and hat of a much older Renoir. In some ways, the subject seems flat but still in the foreground by contrast. In this abstract image, the Impressionist diciple has already outgrown the question of simple subjective observation. As much can also be said for subsequent art movements. What makes the Impressionistic style entertaining is the questions that are asked. What is art? What is the relationship between the artist and the viewer? What is it for something to be representational? I applaud the Impressionists for breaking convention and putting forth at least some attempt at answers.

D is for Democracy

Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 “Ode to Joy” (1824)

Audio of first movement: Here

The rise of nation states following the fall of holy roman rule led to immense monarchies. While abiding by separate cultural or geographic roots, these kingdoms still maintained massive power over their subjects. Centralized power had only trickled down to a handful or large nations from one empire. Primed with the momentum of a successful reformation and the rise of reason via the enlightenment, the notion that citizens could rule themselves was a popular one. The divide between the commoners and the aristocracy was sharp and some of the most outspoken critics were artists. The music of the classical era became increasing popular within the middle class. This was due in part to the actual physical needs of larger works requiring larger orchestras. The symphony had been born and had outgrown the palace chamber. With these larger productions came the need for greater patronage. The public concert was the answer and now a middle class as well as aristocrats could enjoy music by great composers of the time.

While it may be that popular themes beget public performances, it is also true that composers weren’t simply playing to their audience to pay the bills. Beethoven was one of the great composers of the era and sympathetic to the revolutionary movements spawning across Europe. He was born with middle class roots as both his father and grandfather were musicians. The French Revolution (1789-99) was also happening in the prime of Beethoven’s touring career. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony exemplifies a tie to the middle class in two significant ways. The first speaks to the growing physical size of the orchestra. The final movement of the ninth includes a choral part which was very new to the symphony form. This chorus, in addition to the large number of instruments, was likely bigger in magnitude than even previous orchestras. Only a public space could house such a performance. The second is the actual words contained in the chorus. Beethoven takes his choral inspiration from the poem “Ode to Joy” by Friedrich Schiller, an icon of revolutionary Europe. This poem was heavily censored as it was essentially a declaration of independence piece which translates as happiness rather than joy and taken from the notion of “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Beethoven’s’ inspired words such as “All men become brothers” and “A friend proven in death” become a signal not only of equality but of revolutionary struggle. This sentiment was close to the hearts of the common folk, the middle class, and those who sought to change ruling power structures in Europe.

C is for Canon, Endlessly Rising.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Regis Iusfu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Refolula (The Musical Offering) (1747)

Various audio/video is linked below in text.

The Musical Offering by J.S. Bach is a complex composition finished after only two months in 1747. The story of its creation and legacy has been the source of intrigue for historians, music scholars, and mathematicians. To appreciate The Musical Offering, an understanding of its creation is necessary. Bach had been a visiting guest of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, himself a lover of music and avid flutist. The King had long admired Bach and beckoned his arrival to try his skills on the King’s collection of pianos, which had just been invented. Bach’s reputation as a masterful improviser led the King to provide a theme of his own creation for Bach to work with. He asked Bach to create a three-voiced fugue based upon his own theme. Bach failed to work out, to his satisfaction, a decent fugue containing such a complex theme on the spot. In Leipzig, over the course of two months, Bach not only finished the piece but included ten canons, a three-part sonata, the three-part fugue, as well as a six-part fugue. This was based on the King’s Theme which he titled The Royal Theme and became the key part of The Musical Offering.

This was a masterful accomplishment for even the most skilled musician. Douglas Hofstadter, in his inspiring book Godel, Esher, Bach, compared the idea of improvising a six-voice fugue to that of “playing sixty simultaneous blindfold games of chess, and winning them all.” While a six-voice fugue is nothing to ignore, perhaps the most stunning contribution to The Musical Offering is a canon called the Endlessly Rising Canon. Based again on the King’s Theme, the second voice plays the same theme backwards as the first plays it forward. The genius of Bach allowed for this to continue where the listener might imagine quite a departure from the beginning, actually arrives again to start all over. A way to imagine this, would be to fashion a Mobius strip out of the actual musical notation. As much as Frederick the Great may have been a patron to the arts and a musician himself, The Musical Offering was a gift to the King. The included Endlessly Rising Canon, based on Frederick’s own theme, was intellectual progress and an homage to the King. In presentation with an accompanying letter , Bach wrote of The Musical Offering that: “this irreproachable intent, to glorify, if only in a small point, the fame of a monarch whose greatness and power, as in all the sciences of war and peace, so especially in music, everyone must admire and revere.” However modest, Bach’s work left an impressive composition in a Royal theme designed to never end.

My interest inThe Musical Offering is somewhat aside from the actual sound.  I am honestly not a fan of classical instrumentation.  The improvised complexity is what fascinates me and the use of the idea of infinity.  On a side note, the music itself is not explicitly written to be played by only classical instruments. The 1968 recording and platinum selling Swtich-on Bach showed that electronic instruments could just as easily perform similarly complex works.  Incidently, Switched-on Bach was so popular that it legitimized synthesisers and helped popularize their use in musical composition.  With The Musical Offering, complex riddles and insights are abound.  From the beginning, Bach’s Latin title: Regis Iusfu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Refolula has two riddles within it.  The first being that the first letters spell out the archaic Italian name for a fugue: ricercar.  The second is the play on words with ‘canonic’ which also means “the best possible.”  Bach has left many puzzles within including the infamous Endlessly Rising Cannon.  I admire the effort to create something so grand and as a gift.

B is for Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthy Delights (closed) 1503-1504

Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthy Delights (open) 1503-1504

Large detail of inside:  HERE

The Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights is an immensely ambitious piece. Clearly centered on religious themes, the true meaning intended by the artist is still a mystery to many scholars. The painting is on a wood triptych or opened three-paneled work separated by hinges that, when closed, form a fourth image. The closed triptych image followed by the three open images, viewed left to right, tell a Christian-based account of the Earth’s creation and humanity’s relationship to sin. The closed panel is a depiction of Earth prior to animal life. The inside panels start with the Garden of Eden on the left, scroll to the right with the centered image of earth, and finally Hell on the right panel. The work’s name is attributed to the detailed center panel where many nude human figures engage in various sinful activities.

While the northern humanist style was illustrated with highly detailed technique, a major influence of Bosch’s masterpiece was the Christian Reformation. Widespread corruption of the Papacy in Rome was met with strong revolt in Northern Europe. The Vatican practice of selling indulgencies as a get-out-of-hell certificate perverted the true meaning of Christian doctrine. While little is known of Bosch, his work often depicted a life on earth as the true testing ground to the temptation of sin. Gloriously depicted, the center panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights displays various sins engaged in by wild human forms. Focusing on human choice and temptation, Bosch displays the growing popular belief that individual actions were of greater consequence when compared to formal rule by the Vatican.

The Garden of Earthly Delights is no doubt a departure from typical renaissance works. The northern renaissance movement relied more heavily of the Gothic myths of the region as compared to classical themes in Italy. The subject matter in Bosch’s work is often filled with imaginative monsters and daemons. Clearly the depiction of Hell in the last panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights is meant to conjure similar visions as moral warning and consequence to the sins of the center panel. These horrific scenes and odd human forms likely influenced later surrealist painters from Spain where the work resides.  Finding a home in Spain is probably due to the Spanish war with the Netherlands shortly after Bosch’s Death. The Dutch revolt (1568-1609) kept Phillip II, a Hapsburg and Spanish king, engaged with war in the region to maintain Catholic rule. Phillip II owned several Bosch Paintings and the Spanish likely commissioned several prior to outright war. The Dutch eventually succeeded in revolt but like any clash of cultures, art was pervasive and transcendent.  While no clear surreal influence can be attributed to Bosch’s work, The Garden of Earthly Delights is strange in its own right.

My interest in The Garden of Earthly Delights and the reason I chose it to explore for this assignment are as much about the artist as are the unusual images. Bosch was highly unconventional. His name, in fact, was not Bosch at all but taken from his hometown, Hertogenbosch, where he lived for his entire life and likely created this piece. He also signed his work, which was also unusual for the time. Bosch left little information about himself or his work. This has led to various interpretations and mysteries surrounding the work. Without absolute knowledge of Bosch’s intent, greater analysis has been given to his work. Bosch’s depictions of suffering on earth are also very strange. Various monsters and odd-shaped creatures make appearances all over his paintings. The Garden of Earthly Delights not only features gruesome forms in the Hell panel but various odd happenings and manifestations on the centered earth-garden panel. These oddities are cause enough to give the work a closer examination. This curious appeal must have not been lost on the artist.

A is for Art

This is a picture of rocks balanced in a stack.