COLUMNS from the Director 4 Events 5 COMMENT Mikhail Piotrovsky On
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•01 08/10/07 11:03 Page 1 COLUMNS PLACE From the director 4 52 Yuri Zinin on the culture of hammam Events 5 FILM COMMENT 56 Vika Smirnova on Iranian film Mikhail Piotrovsky on the culture of Islam 8 REVIEWS COLLECTIONS 58 Chris Gordon on Abbas Kiarostami Ada Adamova on Nizami’s ‘Khamsa’ 10 59 Jaakko Rustanius on Time of the Storytellers Elena Tsareva on prayer rugs 14 60 Maria Korostoleva on Soviet and Nazi Propaganda Nasser D. Khalili on the Khalili Collection 16 SPOTLIGHT ART AND MONEY 62 Stefano Carboni on Venice and Islam Sergey Skaterschikov on investing in the art of Islam 18 PREVIEW 64 The tent of the Emir of Bukhara at the Hermitage THE WRITTEN WORD 66 Dmitry Ozerkov on the Hermitage 20/21 project Louis Werner on the m anuscripts of the Sahara 20 67 Matt Brown speaks with Charles Saatchi Sergey Kozin interviews Slavoj Zizek 24 69 Celebrating Eimuntas Nekrosius Robert Irwin on Scheherazade 26 70 Boris Godunov rediscovered Efim Rezvan on the Uthman Qur’an 28 LISTINGS ARCHITECTURE 73 International exhibitions diary Alexander Rappaport on the architecture of St. Petersburg 30 77 Important sales and events The St. Petersburg Mosque 32 Andreas Tölke interviews Zaha Hadid 34 MY HERMITAGE 78 Oleg Grabar recalls a first visit to the Hermitage TERRA INCOGNITA Christine Martens on Central Asian textiles 38 CHILDREN’S PAGE Polina Fomina on the whirling dervishes of Turkey 42 Anastasia Zlatopolskaya 80 on shadow theatre in Istanbul The hat as status symbol in Anatolia 44 Maryam Rezvan on Islamic talismans 46 Cover: Glazed earthenware tile, Ottoman Empire, AH 1118 (AD 1706). Courtesy the Benaki Museum, Athens. RETROSPECTIVE This page, from top: Loggia, Palazzo Ducale, St. Marks, Venice. Bibi Seshanbe ceremony, Bukhara, Uzbekistan pho- Mikhail Piotrovsky tographed by Christine Martens. Zaha Hadid photographed and Efim Rezvan in conversation 48 by Steve Double. The St. Petersburg mosque photographed by Mikhail Borisov. Adam Cvijanovic, Love Poem (10 Efim Rezvan on the SOYCE expedition to Yemen 50 minutes after the end of gravity), detail, 2005, Flashe and housepaint on Tyvek, 426.7 x 228.6 cm. Courtesy the Saatchi Gallery, London. •02 08/10/07 12:19 Page 2 CONTRIBUTORS Mikhail Piotrovsky Polina Fomina GUEST EDITORS is the Director of the Hermitage is a journalist and anthropologist working Museum; member of the Russian in television and author Efim A. Rezvan Deputy Director of the Peter Academy of Science; full member of the of a weekly column in Vecherneye the Great Museum of Russian Academy of Arts; Deputy Vremya. Anthropology and Ethnography Chairman of the President’s Council for (Kunstkamera), member of the Art and Culture; Professor at St. Maryam Rezvan Russian Academy of Sciences; Petersburg State University; and is an oriental scholar and researcher at Editor-in-Chief of ‘Manuscripta Chairman of the union of Russian the Peter the Great Museum of Orientalia’, International Journal Museums. Anthropology and Ethnography for Oriental Manuscript (Kunstkamera), managing editor of Research; Professor at the Ada Adamova Manuscripta Orientalia. Oriental Faculty and Faculty of is an art historian and Head Researcher Philosophy, St. Petersburg State of the Oriental Department of the Yuri Zinin University. He is the author of Hermitage Museum. Keeper of the is a journalist and orientalist with RIA dozens of research works published in Russian, English, Arabic, Iranian collection and author of numer- Novosti and was the chief representative French, German, Italian, Persian, Finnish, Uzbek and Japanese. ous books and articles on Persian paint- of the news agency in Algeria, Iraq, ing, she has organised several exhibitions Tunesia, Israel and the UAE. on the art of Iran. Oleg Grabar Professor Emeritus at the Vika Smirnova Institute for Advanced Study in Elena Tsareva is a film critic and cultural the School of Historical Studies is a scientific researcher at the Peter the researcher who is a frequent Princeton. His research has had Great Museum of Anthropology and contributor to Teatralny Peterburg and a profound and far-reaching Ethnography (Kunstkamera). She is a spe- Iskusstvo Kino. influence on the study of Islamic cialist in early textiles and organiser of art and architecture. His exten- seminars. Christopher Gordon sive archaeological expeditions is an independent curator and journalist and research trips have covered Louis Werner who has worked with major museums the vast expanse of the Islamic is a freelance writer and documentary and galleries internationally. world in Africa, the Middle East, filmmaker living and working in New and Muslim Asia. York. Jaakko Rustanius is an artist, writer and curator based in Sergey Kozin Helsinki. Nasser D. Khalili Associate Research Professor, is a translator and Biblical researcher, and and Member of the Governing Editor-in-chief of Germenevtika publish- Maria Korostoleva Body at the School of Oriental ing house. is head of programs and exhibitions at and African Studies at London the Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg University. He is a scholar, col- Anastasia Grib as well as an independent curator and lector and benefactor of inter- is an orientalist, critic, journalist and play- critic. national standing and has wright and creator of an Internet project assembled, under the auspices dedicated to Muslim calligraphy. Matt Brown of the Khalili Family Trust, a is a journalist and editor. Former arts number of impressive art col- Alexander Rappaport editor of The St. Petersburg Times lections in a broad range of is a well-known philosopher and special- and now its deputy editor, Matt fields including the world’s most ist in the history of architecture. He cur- frequently appears on the international important colletion of Islamic Art. rently divides his time between the media to discuss Russian United Kingdom, Russia and Latvia. life and culture. Author of the book 99 Letters on Art, in Stefano Carboni Art historian and Oriental which he examines the material of others Tatiana Fyodorova scholar, Curator and without being bound by the strict dis- is a photographer, member of Administrator in Charge of the course of art history, he offers new intel- Kunstkamera expeditions and has Metropolitan Museum’s lectual approaches and viewpoints. exhibited her work in Finland, Department of Islamic Art Greece and Russia. Mikhail Borisov is the Chief Editor of Pod Klyuch maga- John Varoli zine, an itinerant photographer and foot- is the arts correspondent in Russia for ball fan. Bloomberg News and the Art Newspaper. Born and raised just outside Andreas Tölke of New York City, he has lived in Russia is a Berlin-based independent writer in since 1992. the fields of art, architecture, and design. Robert Irwin He is a contributor to such publications Dmiitry Ozerkov is a writer and scholar who has taught Arabic and Middle Eastern history at Oxford, as Elle Décor, Madame, Marie Claire is Curator of Contemporary Art and the Cambridge and London universities. Irwin is the author of numerous specialised Maison, and Welt am Sonntag among 20/21 project at the Hermitage Museum studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism as well as novels including The others. and has published on such diverse topics Arabian Nightmare. as Freud, Miró, the Russian avant-garde, Christine Martens and Spanish art of the 70th century. Slavoj Zizek is a NY-based independent researcher is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher and cultural critic. He is profes- and has contributed to Hali magazine and Anastasia Zlatopolskaya sor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana and at the European Graduate School in other publications. As a 2008 Fulbright is a photo-correspondednt working in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Over the last 20 years Zizek has participated in more than Scholar she is documenting the relation- Istanbul and has made films and 350 international philosophical, psychoanalytical and cultural-criticism symposiums ship between textiles and the Islamic oral exhibitions about Russian around the world and is the author of numerous publications. tradition in Central Asia. immigration in Turkey. •04 08/10/07 11:26 Page 4 ISLAM IS ALWAYS WITH US In today’s Europe Islam is usually assumed to be an alien and inimical Editorial Board Mikhail Piotrovsky (chairman), power which threat- Derk Sauer, Geraldine Norman, Michael Maltzoff (founder) Guest editors Stefano Carboni, Oleg Grabar, Nasser D. Khalili, Efim Rezvan ens western civilisa- Executive Editor of the English version Christopher Gordon tion. This image is, in Editor Joseph Pugh the main, due to Translator Alexey Moskin Managing Editor of the Russian version Anastasia Grib Western paranoia. Assistant Editor Zoya Necheporenko Islam has long been a Photographers Anastasia Zlatopolskaya, Tatyana Fedorova part of Mediterranean Designer Nadezhda Timofeeva civilisation and today Proofreader Olga Abramovich Hermitage magazine typefaces is an important part of Ilya Ruderman, exclusively for Hermitage Magazine 2006 the daily life of many Special thanks to Nurhan Atasoy countries in Europe Thanks and acknowledgements Jane Lombard, Richard E. Doughty, Geraldine Norman, Liubov Kudryavseva, Annabel Fallon, Valerie Engler, Rod Macneil, and in America. In Russia, Islam was and is the religion and Mohameden Ahmed Salem, Laetitia Sadier, Timo Vartiainen, Milla Unkilla, Nicolas the way of life of significant parts of its population (Siberia, Iljine, Tobin Auber, Stefania Patrini, Sawaya & Moroni spa, Roger Howie, Davide Volga, the Northern Caucuses). The ‘exotic’ element of Giordano,