What is 'Islamic' Art?: Between Religion and Perception

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Review ------ 'This book is exactly what art history needs when it attempts to think about Islamic art. Instead of asking what properties make an image Islamic, this book asks, what is an image in Islam? When art history begins to understand its secularism, concepts like art, image, vision, matter, and history necessarily change. Shaw gives us a different perceptual culture, one that begins from Islamic discourses, and gradually becomes visible as art and history. It is the first book of its kind, and I hope there will be many more.' James Elkins, School of the Art Institute, Chicago 'By questioning the primacy of the art object and placing the experience of perception at center stage, Shaw challenges a number of paradigms within the field of Art History. In this master stroke of scholarship, she pries open the affective and aesthetic landscapes of pre-modern Islamic cultures, untethered from any single-point perspective and re-enchanted by the soaring poesis of her prose.' Christiane Gruber, University of Michigan 'A radical rethinking of modern art history and the secular terms of Islamic art history. Stepping out of the perspectival frame, this marvelous book unpacks not only a vibrant Islamic perceptual culture thriving on sensation and mimesis but also imagines the possibility of studying art from a de-colonial angle. An amazing tour de force revealing an alternate approach to art!' Birgit Meyer, Universiteit Utrecht 'A question that may seem simple, but behind that door is the history of everything - the shape of thought, the logic of imagination, the cradle of taste. Creative, sophisticated, fluent and spirited, Shaw paints in the rich landscape that gives meaning to self and other.' Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Istanbul Bilgi University Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) Book Description ---------------- Investigating what is Islamic about Islamic art through analysis of the Qur'an, Hadith, Sufi texts, ancient philosophy, and a rich corpus of transcultural poetry, Shaw challenges the historicism, secularism, and regionalism of traditional art history with new means of perceiving Islamic painting, music, and geometric pattern. Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) About the Author ---------------- Wendy M. K. Shaw is Professor of the Art History of Islamic Cultures at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her work focuses on the impact of coloniality on museums, archaeology, preservation, and historical, modern, and contemporary art, with emphasis on the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey, regions of Islamic hegemony, Sufism, and transregional art historiography. She is the author of Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (2003), and Ottoman Painting: Reflections of Western Art from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (2011). Read more ( javascript:void(0) )