slamicrnamentegacy of atentiquity

Islamic Ornament

ARH 394/MDV 392M/MES 386 Wednesdays 10-1

Stephennie Mulder

Instructor email: [email protected] Classroom Location: ART 3.433 Office: DFA 2.516 Class Meeting Time: W 10-1 Office Hours: Friday 10-11

Islamic art is famous for its tradition of ornamented surfaces, while Western art has often used ornament primarily to highlight or enhance the impact of an image. This course is a comparative study of the role of ornament, which takes as its founding premise that both Islamic and European art emerged from the same Late Antique visual milieu: in which abstract, geometric, and vegetal ornament played a key, (though often neglected) role. The study of ornament has a long and important history in art and design, but with the advent of modernism, ornament was deemed ethically suspect and inimical to art’s higher purposes. Nevertheless, in the past few decades, under the aegis of postmodern theory, ornament has assumed a renewed significance. We will explore multiple scholars’ perspectives on ornament: its practical function and creation, its ability to transform surfaces and thereby change their reception and meaning, and its role as a semiotic device and broader social function as a marker of class, faith, or exoticism.

An important proposal we will explore is the idea that ornament is not mere “decoration,” but rather has a rich functional and symbolic role to play in the human response to and understanding of art. With this role in mind, a key skill students will acquire in this course is the ability to make a visual analysis of a work of art whose primary feature is its ornament. What is the place of abstraction, and when and how is it employed? To what degree may we say ornament is linked to the natural world, especially vegetal ornament? How, in Islamic art, does writing function as ornament? What is phenomenological promise of ornament, its role in the enhancement of diversion and pleasure, and how does ornament fulfill that promise? We will also explore the way in which ornament has a distinctly transient role, how it is often associated with a conception of the “exotic” and as such, tends to move fluidly across boundaries of medium, culture, and society. Examples of this transience range from the reception in Islamic lands of medieval Chinese porcelain, to medieval Europe’s hungry market for elaborately decorated Islamic metalwork and textiles.

slamicrnamentegacy of atentiquity

Class Requirements: Attendance and participation Periodic presentations of readings Presentation of research project to class at end of semester Research paper on topic of your choosing (15-20 pgs.)

Required Texts: Ernst Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art, (New York, 1979). James Trilling, The Language of Ornament, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001).

1 Accommodations: If you need accommodations for exceptional needs please notify me at the beginning of the semester by obtaining a letter from the Services for Students with Disabilities Office. You may contact the SSD Office at 471-6259 or 471-4641 TTY.

slamicrnamentegacy of atentiquity

Week 1

• August 29 Introductory Lecture & Discussion

PART ONE: Theoretical Foundations for the Study of Ornament

Week 2 What is Ornament and…Why Should We Care?

• September 5 *James Trilling, “Introduction”, from Ornament: A Modern Perspective, pp. 3-17. *James Trilling, “Preface” and “Chapter 1: Appreciating Ornament”, from The Language of Ornament, pp. 22-90 (but don’t despair, it’s at least half pictures!) *Eva Baer, “Introduction”, from Islamic Ornament, pp. 1-5. *Oleg Grabar, “Introduction”, from The Mediation of Ornament, pp. 3-7.

Week 3 Biology and Perception or: Is a Desire for Ornament Innate?

• September 12 *Robert Gregory, “Learning How to See”, and “Realities of Art”, from Eye and Brain, the Psychology of Seeing, pp. 137-193. *E. H. Gombrich, “Introduction: Order and Purpose in Nature”, from The Sense of Order, pp. 1-16.

Week 4 Patterns and Processes

• September 19 *James Trilling, “Ornament as a Conventional System”, from The Language of Ornament, pp. 146-184. *E. H. Gombrich, “The Challenge of Constraints”, from The Sense of Order, pp. 63-94

Week 5 Oleg Grabar and The Pleasure Principle Psycholanalytic and Emotional Apects of Art and Design

• September 26 *SKIM and read summary on pp. 74-77: Ray Crozier, “Form and Design” from Manufactured Pleasures: Psychological Responses to Design, pp. 40-77.

2 *Jonathan Harris, “Psychoanalysis and radical politics after the 1960s”, “Self, sex, society, and culture”, “Psychoanalysis and systems of signification”, and “Sight, social ordering, and subjectivity”, from The New Art History (pp. 130-160) *Oleg Grabar, “A Theory of Intermediaries in Art”, from The Mediation of Ornament, pp. 9-46.

slamicrnamentegacy of atentiquity

PART TWO: Islamic Ornament

Week 6 Late Antique Art and its Interlocutors

• October 3 *Peter Brown, ““A World Restored: Roman Society in the Fourth Century”, from The World of Late Antiquity, pp. 34-47. * No Author, Sassanid Empire (ca. 2 pp) *Edith Porada, The Art of the Sassanians (ca. 10 pp.) *Claude Cernuschi, “Adolf Loos, Alois Riegl, and the Debate on Ornament in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna”, in Blair and Bloom, Cosmophila, pp. 45-56. *Jas´ Elsner, “The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901,” Art History 25 (2002), 358–379. *SKIM Alois Riegl, “Foreword” and “The Leading Characteristics of Late Roman Kunstwollen”, from Late Roman Art Industry (Spätrömische Kunstindustrie), trans. Rolf Winken, pp. XI-XXIV and 223-234. *Ellen Swift, “Introduction” and second half of Chapter 1, “Interiors: Non-figurative Floor Mosaics and Other Domestic Decoration,” from Style and Function in Roman Decoration, pp. 1-25 and 70- 104.

Week 7 Islamic Art, Ornament, and Aesthetics: an Introduction

• October 10 *Barbara Brend, “Introduction”, from Islamic Art, pp. 10-19. *Valérie Gonzalez, “Introduction” and “Beauty and the Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Thought”, from Beauty and Islam, pp. 1-25. *Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, “Ornament and Islamic Art”, and “Insular and Islamic Cosmophilic Responses to the Classical Past”, from Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen, pp. 9-30 and 39-44.

Week 8 Geometry and Interlace in Islamic Ornament

• October 17 *James Trilling, “Interlace”, from The Language of Ornament, pp. 134-145. *David Wade, “Introduction”, from Pattern in Islamic Art, pp. 7-13. *Valérie Gonzalez, “Abstraction, Kinetics and Metaphor: the ‘Geometries’ of the Alhambra”, from Beauty and Islam, pp. 69-93. *Oleg Grabar, “The Intermediary of Geometry”, from The Mediation of Ornament, pp. 119-154 (lots of pictures).

3 Week 9 The Arabesque and the Character of Islamic Vegetal Decoration • October 24 *Annemarie Schimmel, “The Arabesque and the Islamic View of the World”, from Ornament and Abstraction, pp. 31-35. *Terry Allen, “The Arabesque, the Bevelled Style, and the Mirage of an Early Islamic Art”, from Five Essays on Islamic Art, pp. 1-15. *Master Mahmud and Inlaid Metalwork in the 15th Century”, from Venice and the Islamic World, pp. 213-225, lots of pictures) *Maria Vittoria Fontana, “Islamic Influence on the Production of Ceramics in Venice and Padua”, from Venice and the Islamic World, pp. 280-293, ca. 8 pp. text) *Alois Riegl, “The Arabesque: an Introduction”, from Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament (Stilfragen), trans. Evelyn Kain, pp. 229-305. *Yasser Tabbaa, “ The Sunni Revival” and “The Girih Mode: Vegetal and Geometric Arabesque”, from The Transformation of Islamic Art During the Sunni Revival, pp. 11-24 and 73-103.

Week 10 “A Rainbow More Colorful than the One in the Clouds” Muqarnas Ornament: Stereotomic Virtuosity and Heavenly Vision

• October 31 PAPER PROPOSALS DUE *Mohammad al-Asad, “Applications of Geometry”, from The Mosque: History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity, pp. 55-70, ca. 9 pp. text) *Yasser Tabbaa, Selections TBA, from “Muqarnas Vaulting and Ash’arī Occasionalism” and “Stone Muqarnas and Other Special Devices”, from The Transformation of Islamic Art During the Sunni Revival, pp. 103-162, lots of pictures).

Week 11 Al-Khatt al-Jamil (Beautiful Writing): The Singular Role of Calligraphy in Islamic Ornament

• November 7 *Wheeler M. Thackston, “The Role of Calligraphy”, from The Mosque: History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity, pp. 42-53, ca. 3 pp. text). *Valérie Gonzalez, “The Signifying Aesthetic System of Inscriptions in Islamic Art”, from Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture, pp. 94-110. *Irene Bierman, “Initial Considerations” from Writing Signs: the Fatimid Public Text, pp. 1-27.

Week 12 Ornament Over Mimesis: Islamic Art and Figural Representation

• November 14 *Terry Allen, “Aniconism and Figural Representation in Islamic Art”, from Five Essays on Islamic Art, pp. 17-37. *Oleg Grabar, “An Aesthetic of Persian Painting”, from Mostly Miniatures: an Introduction to Persian Painting, pp. 124-146, lots of pictures.

4 *Priscilla Soucek, “The Life of the Prophet: Illustrated Versions”, from Context and Content of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, pp. 194-209 *Orhan Pamuk, excerpts from the novel My Name is Red: “I am a Tree” pp. 56-61, “I am Red” pp. 224-27 “I am a Horse” pp. 262-66. *Gregory Minissale, “Reading Anti-Illusionism” from Images of Thought: Visuality in Islamic India 1550-1750, 1-23.

slamicrnamentegacy of atentiquity

PART THREE: An Ornament for Our Times

Week 13 Ornament and Modernism Toward a Contemporary Theory of Ornament

• November 21 *James Trilling, “Ornament in the Age of Modernism”, from The Language of Ornament, pp. 185- 215. *Markus Bruderlin, “Introduction: Ornament and Abstraction”, from Ornament and Abstraction, pp. 17-27. *Phillipe Büttner, “In the Beginning was the Ornament—From the Arabesque to Modernism’s Abstract Line”, pp. 86-105, (ca. 3 pp. text, the rest pictures.) *E. H. Gombrich, “Issues of Taste” and “The Psychology of Styles”, from The Sense of Order, pp. 17-32 and195-216. *Oleg Grabar, Review once again “A Theory of Intermediaries in Art”, from The Mediation of Ornament, pp. 9-46 (half pictures, ca. 20 pp. text). •James Trilling, “Epilogue”, from Ornament: A Modern Perspective, pp. 227-231.

Week 14 Student Presentations • November 28 Half hour per presentation: ca. 10-15 min. presentation, followed by discussion.

Week 15 Student Presentations

• December 5 Half hour per presentation: ca. 10-15 min. presentation, followed by discussion.

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