Islamic Art

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I did not go to art school, but that doesn't stop me from learning about art every single episode of this show.

Betty: Hi, and I'm Betty. I am also someone who did not go to art school and of course, I always love learning about art and going to continue to do so every episode until we are bored of it, which I don't know [laughs] I don't think we'll be ever.

Quinn: I really thought you were going to say until we die, which like, I don't know if I'm ready to commit to that. Like it might happen, but don't know if I'm ready to commit to that. [laughing]

Betty: We'll see how it goes.

Quinn: Well today we are kicking off a little bit of something unusual. So if you have listened to the show for a little while, you know that both of us have a deep love of modern and contemporary art. And so not all, but a lot of our topics do tend to slant towards, I would say art from like the 1900s on. Which is great because there is so much to talk about, obviously, from the last 120 years there are so many amazing topics, but we wanted to challenge ourselves to take a step back, maybe several steps back in time. And so today is the first episode of a little mini series we're doing about major religious art traditions. And so obviously some of the oldest enduring art out there is religious art. And we're going to do two episodes each, so four episodes in total going back and forth talking about four different religions and their art traditions. Obviously this is nowhere near comprehensive. This is not even, I would say, like a general introduction perhaps to these full art traditions, because every single one of these is going to span continents and centuries. And we're not trying to give a full guide here. What we are going to do is talk about a few of the most major pieces of each art tradition and sort of like works that are particularly representative or particularly famous, as well as talking a little bit about some of the interesting things in the history of each of these religions, as they relate to art.

Betty: I'm definitely very interested to get into this, or this series of topics. Again, I think we definitely like to learn more about art. And we want to, we really want to go back in history and learn about things that are ancient. And the thing I really like about religious art is the fact that, you know, because these are precious objects, a lot of them do stand the test of time and you can go back centuries or thousands of years like to like, not only learn about religious traditions, but also just about, you know, entire cultures and you know, what people valued back like hundreds and thousands of years ago. So I'm very excited. 

Quinn: There is lots to learn. Well, I am kicking off our first episode of this series with a little special all about Islamic art. This is actually an extremely interesting one to start off with because the term Islamic art is not strictly religious, which makes it kind of weird in this case. So Islam is a religion that was developed in the 600s—which is so funny to say I'm like, my brain wants to say 1600s, but no, 600s—based on the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. And the term Islamic Art in the centuries since then means art that was developed around the religion of Islam. But it also refers—generally has historically referred to all art from the quote unquote “Islamic world.” Which means basically like the areas of the world where Islam has been predominant, areas of the world where Muslim people have ruled empires and dynasties throughout history, which means that like at its broadest term, Islamic art can mean anything from 1400 years of history and everything from areas of China to areas of Spain. So that's a lot and it's not really what we’re trying to do here, because this series is specifically supposed to be about religious art, not just art from the area of the world where it was predominantly one religion. It's not quite the same thing. And also in contemporary times we've developed this revolutionary concept of actually saying what things mean. So for example, like at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, instead of calling the section the Islamic Art Gallery, they're calling it galleries—they’re calling it “Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia.” Which is a way of being a lot more specific about what they actually mean. And also stressing what different regions of the world are actually talking about instead of being like, I dunno, it’s the Islamic world!

Betty: Yeah. That makes sense. Because a lot of, obviously in these 1400 years, even in areas that's been predominantly ruled by like an Islamic ruler or empire. There’s still people of like lots of other faiths that lived amongst each other. And I think the interesting thing is to look at like how Islam influenced some of the local cultures of whatever part of the world we're talking about. 

Quinn: Oh my god, absolutely. And also like the broadening of the term Islamic art comes from that direction and also comes to the direction of like, if a Christian person makes a work of art in a Christian country that has nothing to do with Christianity, you wouldn't call that Christian art, but that's what they were doing to like Islamic art, where it's like, oh, this is a Muslim person in a Muslim country. So it's Islamic art. And it's like, but if it has nothing to do with Islam, then is it? And you can define that lots of different ways, but I'm saying for this episode specifically, we are focusing on things from the actual religion of Islam.

Betty: Good to know.

Quinn: Yeah. I'm broadening it down from, you know, everything, to like, you know, most things. Very specific topic. But I do want to get into a little bit of different art traditions. First of all, I want to mention real quick, a couple of things I'm not talking about. There are really historically rich traditions of textiles and glass in Islamic art. I unfortunately just had to make decisions about which things I was going to focus on. And so I'm not talking about those two things, but I just want to say they're important. There'll be links in the show notes. We're just not going to get into them today.

Betty: I mean, we could probably do an entire podcast series just on like, you know, every style of Islamic art. So maybe we will, one day.

Quinn: it's very rich. There just had to be some decisions. But I wanted to focus in on a couple of specific things. And the first one of that is calligraphy.

Betty: Yay.

Quinn: Thank you for the yay, calligraphy deserves a yay.

Betty: I'm very interested in calligraphy and I'll elaborate, but go ahead first.

Quinn: Well, a brief introduction to it. So calligraphy is very popular in Islamic art. It's very popular in use of architecture and this is all very closely tied to the Qur'an, the holy text of the Islamic faith. And so basically excerpts and quotes from the Qur'an are very commonly use for Islamic calligraphy. They're like the predominant thing, and they are used as decorations in buildings, especially mosques, as well as, you know, just general calligraphy use. And there are lots of different forms of calligraphy, but I will just start by saying the oldest form is called kufic. Which it’s a little bit debated, but our best understanding right now is that it developed in the end of the 600s, the end of the seventh century in Kufa, Iraq, which is where the name comes from. And the main sort of stylistic things about it are that it's very angular and linear. But there's no strict standardization of kufic. And so kufic calligraphy from different regions may look very different. So I'm going to send you a picture right now. This is one variation of kufic that you can see right here. This of course will be in the show notes.

Betty: Yeah. It looks very, I guess, linear, it looks like there's like lots of dots and lines that are just perpendicular to each other. It almost looks like music notes.

Quinn: Oh, I could see that. Yeah. If you're not, if you can’t look at this right now, the sort of defining feature looking at kufic is that there's lots of straight lines. And there's lots of like very straight long lines. And so I do see how this is almost like music notation. I also, I want to hear your thoughts on this and calligraphy in general in a second. But I have to say, I realized while researching this, is that I think calligraphy is better in a language you don't speak. Because I was looking at English calligraphy and it just was kind of frustrating because as a person who like primarily reads, you know, like typed things or my own handwriting, you know, I don't have the brain to read hard things. And so it was just kind of frustrating to look at calligraphy because I can't really understand it well, even though I feel like I should be able to. And I have the same thing when looking at like Mandarin calligraphy is even worse because like, I don't, I'm a native speaker in English and I am not that great at Mandarin. And, and so trying to read that calligraphy is nothing for me. Whereas, like when I'm looking at Arabic calligraphy, I can just appreciate the artistry from it. My brain is not trying to read it because I don't know any Arabic.

Betty: It's similar to like, I think looking at abstract art, I guess. Like obviously to somebody who does read this text, like they can, they can also read what it says, but in a way I do think, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks this, like calligraphy expresses more than just the actual words on the, whatever, like on the thing. There’s more artistic expression that comes with the style and the way it's written. I mean, I'm interested in calligraphy mostly because I had to actually learn Chinese calligraphy when I was growing up in China, and for a few years I actually had to take like traditional lessons with like a brush and an ink. Like I was taught how to like grind the ink and like dip it in the ink stone and write, you know, actual calligraphy with the traditional instruments. And I wasn't very good at it. It's very hard. But to me, like that experience for me, it was like, it was more than just like copying some words onto a piece of paper. There was more artistic expression that comes with it. And one thing I actually just, you just reminded me of when it comes to calligraphy and Islamic art is the city that I grew up in, which is called Xian, we actually have one of the largest mosques like in the world, it's called the Great Mosque of Xian. And in there there's actually also Chinese calligraphy, like of the Qur'an. So like the Qur'an translated into Chinese and like I assume Chinese characters and it's written in Chinese calligraphy style. So that's like, I've actually, even though I grew up there, I've actually never been in it. And I would actually love to go in and see like, you know, the Chinese version of the calligraphy when it comes to Islam.

Quinn: That is so cool. That is one of the buildings that I actually looked at talking about today. And then I ended up going with a different one. But yeah, but that was one that showed up as like, sort of a very famous example of a form of Islamic architecture, obviously with the Chinese styles mixed in as well. And so very much a melding of like different languages and architectural styles. Well while we're still talking about calligraphy, though, I do want to talk about one other form of Arabic calligraphy which is called Naskh. It's basically a cursive form of Arabic calligraphy that was used for more informal purposes. Because you could, you could write it a lot faster. And as well as like doing these transcriptions and like working faster basically. And so I'm going to send you a picture of example of that as well. And I want to get your reactions to this, especially as in comparison to the Kufic calligraphy.

Betty: This looks a lot different. Like I think before the other, the Kufic calligraphy was very like straight lines and angular, this looks very dynamic and I want say like swoopy, like there—

Quinn: It's cursive!

Betty: Yeah, which makes sense. It does seem like I think, like when I think of Islamic calligraphy, which I'm not very familiar with at all, obviously, but like when I've gone to like museums and I've seen artworks from the Islamic world like this, I think this is what I'm used to seeing. So it looks more familiar to me.

Quinn: Yeah. I would say even as, again, another person who doesn't know Arabic, like looking at this visually, it does look closer to other Arabic that I've seen like in modern day. And this is, like as the more informal and common form, this is the basis for what modern Arabic is today.

Betty: This actually reminds me, I actually recently watched a really good YouTube video by this really awesome YouTuber. His name is Al Muqaddimah and he does like all kinds of really interesting videos on like Islamic history and things like that. And he recently did a video called “Why did the Islamic World Reject the Printing Press?” And part of it has to do with the fact that it's really difficult to recreate these characters in Arabic, like I remember he was saying something like one letter has like multiple forms, depending on where it is in the word. And in order to create a printing press that has like all the forms of every character, it was excruciatingly difficult. Anyway, there's more to that reason. So you guys should watch the video. I will put it in the show notes, but it, it did remind me of that. 

Quinn: That is very cool. Check that video out. So moving away from calligraphy for a little bit, I did want to spend a moment talking about the patterns in Islamic art. And so the two sort of main schools of patterns that are common… throughout all of Islamic art, but I would say, especially what we're going to be talking about here is in like mosque decorations, are vegetal patterns and geometric patterns. So very common understanding of Islamic art is that the Qur'an bans images of like any figures, basically any representation of like humans or animals or anything like that. And this is not 100% true for like all of, again, like the very broad umbrella of Islamic art. But generally speaking, when you're looking at religious art and especially art in mosques, no, you're not going to find figures. You're not going to find representational art, what you're going to find are these beautiful patterns. So you have these geometric patterns, which I think are what, like most people are gonna automatically think of when you talk about like mosque design, Islamic geometric patterns are very famous. The earliest of these geometric patterns that we have currently found are from the 800s in the Great Mosque of Kairouan. And they were pretty simple. They aren't like the incredibly elaborate ones that we see in lots of mosques today and in sort of the centuries after that point. But these were like these eight pointed stars. And then this progressed over, you know, the next 1200 years it's been since then, to now you see incredibly intricate, complicated patterns. You often see eight point and stars repeated as well as like a two square with one that's rotated 45 degrees to the other. Those are two very common shapes that you see repeated over and over again in these geometric patterns. And in the show notes there’ll be a couple of examples from like the earlier less complicated ones, as well as ones that came along later on that are just infinitely elaborate.

Betty: A lot of the more elaborate patterns, like they, I guess they remind me of fractals where you have like these infinitely repeating, but like the rotating and I don't even know how to describe, but like these infinitely repeating patterns and they're like a lot of them are very mathematically precise and which is of course why it's featured a lot in architecture because a lot of I am seeing even on the page that you sent me, some of it are decorative patterns on like walls, but some of these patterns are the actual, like architectural plan of a mosque, it's based on some sort of like fractal or repeating pattern. Like it seems like math is embedded in everything.

Quinn: I know. It's so cool. It's so impressive. You even see these kinds of patterns on—like a very important part of a mosque architecture is the dome. Not every mosque has a dome, but most do at least have one. And you'll, you'll sometimes see like these geometric patterns on the outside of those domes even. And so they're just kind of like a shining beacon of beautiful geometry. Well the other form of pattern that is commonly used is the vegetal patterns. And so these are kind of, as opposed to sort of the repeating geometry of these more geometric patterns, the vegetal patterns are more nature inspired. They have, you know, curved lines and other things that you're not seeing in the other form, but these are also like hugely varying. They could have flowers or plant designed or be more abstract, but sort of inspired by these natural lines and shapes. And these also appear in mosque decorations very commonly, but also on all sorts of things from like covers of the Qur'an or like the textiles that we aren't really talking about, you know, especially, I would say like in textiles and carpeting, and these are very common.

Betty: I see a lot of them on like ceramics and I guess, yeah, this is the organic form as opposed to the geometric patterns. And the thing that's kind of cool is like, I see that there's a lot that would mix calligraphy and these vegetal patterns, it's almost like because the calligraphy is also very curvilinear and organic looking. So it's almost like the text is like dancing with these natural patterns.

Quinn: That is such a good point, and the last little section I'm going to talk about today is two different examples of Islamic architecture. But in these like more famous examples, as well as like basically any mosque or other religious buildings that's closely tied to Islam, you're going to see geometric patterns, vegetal patterns and calligraphy of the Qur’an. And so that's why we're talking about it. This first one that I want to touch on is called the Dome of the Rock.

Betty: I have heard of this place.

Quinn: Yes. This is a very famous building. This was constructed at the end of the 600s. So Islam is still pretty fresh at the time. Which is exciting. So this isn't actually a mosque but it is a holy site. In Islam it's the site of the Miraj, which is where the prophet Mohammad ascended into heaven. And so obviously that's a very important site and it is basically a shrine and it’s one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Muslims. So like I was just talking about this, in this building, you see tons of gorgeous decorations. You don't see those geometric patterns so much, because as I said before, those prominently developed in the 800s. But you do see the vegetative motifs. And you see calligraphy. As we kind of alluded to before with a lot of these major, especially like buildings, anywhere that that is built as a mosque or other religious building is still going to be very influenced by the kind of architectural traditions of where it is because, you know, these, some of these buildings are being built like clear half across the world from each other. And so the sort of design and the decoration of Dome of the Rock is also very influenced by the major pre-Islamic civilization that was in this region, which is this Sasanian empire. And so there's a lot of traditions from that as well, which is cool. And so, you know, a mosque that's built in China is going to be extremely different from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Betty: Yeah, for sure. Earlier I mentioned the, that there's the Great Mosque of Xian, which like, of course there's like local kind of like Asian influence. Like it, it looks very different from Dome of the Rock.

Quinn: The last specific thing that I want to talk about today is one of the most famous… things in the world, which is the Taj Mahal.

Betty: I have heard of this place too.

Quinn: Yes. So I just, I couldn't have this episode without talking a little bit about the Taj Mahal. It is just straight up one of the most famous buildings in the world. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it's been described by them as the “Jewel of Muslim art in India.” So this is, specifically it's Mughal architecture, which is Indo-Islamic architecture that was developed in like the 16, 17 and 18 centuries. The Taj Mahal specifically was commissioned in 1631 and it was actually built to be in the memory of Shah Jahan’s wife Mumtaz Mahal, because she died while giving birth to their 14th child. The 1600s were wild. But anyway so it took, it took so long. So the construction started in 1632. They were finished the mausoleum for her in 1648, and then they weren't finished all of the surrounding buildings and garden for another five years. So this took all in all over 20 years to build, which makes sense. It's huge. So again, this building is not a mosque but it does have a mosque in it. It’s, you know, primarily was built in honor of this woman and had a mausoleum for her, but also has tons of other stuff in it because it's huge. And so one of those buildings is a mosque and the whole thing is decorated with these forms of traditional Islamic art. The calligraphy, the geometric and vegetative patterns. And of course that calligraphy is all passages from the Qur’an. And so again, I keep saying this, but it's just saying it again. You know, this is another example of this intersection between like Islamic art traditions and religion with the architectural and art traditions of the region, like created this specific form of Mughal architecture. And that now we have just one of the most, what's considered one of the most beautiful and most famous buildings in the entire world that stands there as just a testament to this.

Betty: It’s interesting to see like the same or similar motifs of the vegetative and intricate geometric patterns on like a lot of the decorative surfaces, but I mean, to me, obviously it looks different from Dome of the Rock. Like one, because the arches are pointed arches and the domes are pointed and it's yeah, it looks like it's, it's built in a different style, but I think also one of the differences, at least I can notice from the pictures is that it seems like the Taj Mahal has a lot less of the super colorful mosaics where it's like these intense colors. It seems like there's a lot more, it's a lot more monochromatic. Like the emphasis is more on the like actual geometrical and organic elements than the color patterns.

Quinn: Yeah it’s interesting to even consider like all the differences of two different buildings that are both like extremely important and famous. Not only are they like half a continent away from each other, they also were built almost a thousand years apart from each other.

Betty: This kind of goes back to what I was mentioning in the beginning of the episode that it's just, I do, I want to say like really impressive that these like artistic traditions are practiced or passed down. Like after all these, like thousands of years and across the world, you have just these similar motifs and styles and decorations that, like it lasted like all this time. And there's a connection between these buildings, even though they're so far apart in distance and time.

Quinn: It's so cool to be able to look at them and, you know, remark on their differences and note their different sort of traditions they're blended with, but also like, see those through lines and see where the Taj Mahal’s artistry has like built on the traditions from Dome of the Rock, even with all that distance and time apart and how you can still pretty much draw a line from one to the other. That's really cool.

Betty: I do like the, I think it is interesting that like, because a lot of people who practice Islam, like there is the restriction of not depicting figures and deities and animals, like that there's the limit of just using geometric and organic patterns. Like I think in a way kind of inspired a lot of creativity. It's almost like they just went all out on the geometry. It's like, well we will just explore these simple concepts to the max. And I think that's like, that's really interesting.

Quinn: Yeah, I don't want to put down Christianity or anything because there's tons of like very beautiful art traditions in Christianity too, but like, they sure did love just painting Jesus over and over again. And I think there's something to be said for like, not having something like that to fall back on.

Betty: Yeah. Well it just kind of like, obviously, I mean, I think I've mentioned before, I'm not a super spiritual person myself, but I think, and obviously there's very, there's a lot of different ways for people to experience like spiritual-ness and divinity, but I think, I almost feel like a lot of these very like beautiful abstract patterns, like can create that sense of like, you know, feeling very spiritual. Like you don't have to look at a literal picture of a God to, to have that sensation.

Quinn: Yeah. We didn't even get into that too much because part of these decorations is that they're gorgeous and that they're decorative. And part of it for some people is that there is a religious experience from them. And it's almost, I feel like we've talked about this a lot, like even relating this back to modern abstract art is that like a lot of abstract artists found spiritual experiences in their art and in transcending representational form. And they found that to be something even beyond the ideas of like color theory or decoration or whatever, they found that to be almost like you can access, for them, a higher plane than you can by representing real life. And it's almost like this is a very similar idea, just done in a, is a specific religion rather than, you know, like what I think was very often, very broadly kind of like spiritual non-religious abstract artists of the 20th century.

Betty: I think that's a really great comparison. Cause it kind of shows you that like, even people from thousands of years ago and now are discovering these aspects of art that's beyond just the visual, that they can have these more transcendental experiences. And it's yeah, it’s like people from thousands of years ago and now, we’re pretty much still the same people.

Quinn: That in a kind of shady way gives a look into some of the stuff we're going to be talking about next week when you are taking over.

Betty: Yeah. Next week, I will be talking about Christian art or, you know, a very broad overview of various forms of Christian art.

Quinn: I am so excited to learn more about pictures of Jesus and also things that are not pictures of Jesus.

Betty: Yes. There will be Jesus and not Jesus, is what I know now. 

Quinn: Everything is either Jesus or not Jesus, I guess. 

Betty: Like I said, like this topic, Christian art is also very broad.

Quinn: Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pictorial. You can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial, or you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. There'll be lots of fun pictures up on the Instagram account for this one. And you can also follow me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @articulationsV and I am also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, we also have a Pictorial Podcast YouTube channel, where you can find some of our older episodes that's currently uploaded on there, but we will be uploading new episodes as well in the future. So if you are listening to this one on the YouTube version, you will be able to see all these beautiful patterns as we talk about them.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!

[post-music]

Quinn: Sorry, there’s, there’s a person—my neighbor is watching The Office and I can't hear the show, but every 25 minutes, I hear the theme song. [laughs]

Betty: [laughing] Yeah, I heard something in the background.