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II IMAGINING MUSLIM NETWORKS 141 CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Islamic Art Judith Ernst When we look at Muslims and Muslim cultures in the modern context, we confront the concept of Islamic art. The phrase suggests that the item or artifact in question is Islamic, in origin, in expression and in usage. Yet, how can we sustain such a religious definition of the artifacts and artistic creations that are classified in museums as “Islamic art.”? To accommodate an understanding of religion that includes culture, scholars have adapted the term “Islamicate,”1 suggesting that Islamic may be related to actors or interests but is expressed either by or for a non-Islamic audience, or one where the fine line between Islamic loyalty and other loyalties is shaded. Both Islamic and Islamicate have served to describe the aesthetic realm, but do they help us understand what is Muslim about Muslim networks? Do such networks become Muslim because of their authors, their audience or their content? In this essay I will present a few illustrative examples of artists whose work engages on some level with Islam. I will ask how our usual ways of defining their work become problematic in the context of a networked contemporary global culture. When we look at Islam through the lens of art and artists, we bring into sharp focus questions about how interests and identities help to shape and redefine what is Islamic art in the modern context. If art is a vehicle for self-expression, how does the tangential aspect of religion affect 1 Marshall Hodgson (1974) coined the term “Islamicate”. 142 notions of what constitutes Islamic art? Have advances in communications technology and travel influenced contemporary networks of art and artists identified as Muslim? It is my contention that by framing questions of medium and technique, of style and content, and pursuing issues of patronage and heritage, we can begin to unravel some of the complicated ways in which the Islamic/Islamicate tension plays out in the networked world of the 21st century. Artists and skilled craftsman, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have always been in demand. Subject to patronage expectations and rewards, they have moved from place to place. At times they were spoils of war; sometimes they were prerogatives of empire; at other times they simply went where the work was. Even when artists stayed in place, the arrival of new patrons, especially new rulers, changed the artistic landscape. In 12th-century India, for example, the artisans responsible for the Qutb Minar outside of Delhi were Hindu workmen from that area, engaged to build monuments reflecting the power and cultural antecedents of their new Muslim rulers. Because of this mobility artists and craftsmen have tended to be at the edges where cultures meet and mix. Yet at the same time, their very mobility and malleability have put them at the very center of new networks—reformulated workshops and schools with new mixes of techniques, styles, and subjects, resulting in new synthesized arts, crafts, and architecture.2 The scale of our mobility in the information age has radically changed. Communications technologies have made virtual travel a viable alternative to actually going from place to place. Theoretically we all—or at least those of us with access to modern libraries, the internet, television, telephones, movies, and other accoutrements of modernity—have access to the history and culture of every time and place. Having this access, of course, presumes 2 For a wonderfully lively, fictional account of the effects of such forces on artists and craftsmen in the 17th- century Ottoman Empire, see Pamuk 2002. 143 an elite status. In fact, what we think of as contemporary “art,” whether it is visual art, music, literature, dance, theater, or movies, presupposes a cosmopolitan elite engaged in creating it. What are the consequences for Muslim networks that artists can now move freely through much of the world, and can in one way or another imaginatively engage with the visual and literary traditions of any of them? One result of this heightened accessibility and unprecedented mobility is a person like Jay Bonner (one of the world’s expert designers of Islamic architectural ornament). Jay Bonner’s biography redefines what is meant by Islamic/Islamicate art. From childhood in Menlo Park, California, Bonner doodled complex geometric patterns. In his teenage years he discovered Islamic geometrical design, and then studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where he earned his master’s degree in 1982. Specializing in both geometrical design and arabesque, he has collaborated with an architectural calligrapher from Pakistan, wood carvers in Pakistani Kashmir and Morocco, ceramicists in Turkey, marble workers from India, tile makers from Morocco, and modern architects from the Middle East and Europe. Elements of his design work are now installed in the Great Mosque in Mecca, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and the Mosque at the Data Darbar Shrine in Lahore, Pakistan. In a forthcoming book he outlines his theories on the practical methods used in the past by skilled craftsmen to derive original ornate and complex Islamic geometric patterns.3 Because modern buildings are all designed and built with high-tech procedures and materials, their construction is difficult for those attuned to Islamic(ate) values. As Jay Bonner has noted, it is a constant and delicate challenge to balance the complex technological factors of construction with the traditional techniques still adhered to by the 3Jay Bonner, Islamic Geometric Patterns: Their Historical Development and Traditional Methods of Derivation (Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, forthcoming). 144 craftsmen essential to Bonner’s complex designs. Consider Bonner’s account of networked design and construction on the Sliding Domes project for the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina: “This project was undertaken by the architectural firm Sonderkonstrutionen und Leichbau, headed by Dr. Bodo Rasch, in Stuttgart, Germany. The Sliding Domes project took several years to complete, and the team that worked on this project was made up of many Europeans, several people from England and the United States, a group of highly skilled woodcarvers from Morocco, as well as individuals from Venezuela, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, China, and India. I have no idea as to the religious makeup of all these people, but I assume the team was mostly Muslim and Christian. I do know that there was at least one Buddhist in the group. The actual fabrication process also balanced traditional craftsmanship with state-of-the- art manufacturing. All of the floral ornament on the interior of the domes was hand carved in Morocco by highly skilled and experienced traditional woodcarvers. Over a hundred carvers were employed for over a year while carving these floral elements. The wood was Atlantic cedar from the Atlas Mountains. The beauty of these domes would not have been possible without the skill of these woodcarvers. Conversely, the use of these traditional craftsmen would never have been possible were it not for the high tech engineering and manufacturing of the other components of these domes. There are very real difficulties in incorporating craft-based production into modern architecture. Concerning design, traditional craftsmen have not generally been trained to work outside their regional style, and often find it difficult to create works that use designs that are unfamiliar to them. Production also poses a problem when involving traditional craftsmen in large modern projects. Without training and experience, it is difficult to scale up to the production requirements needed for a large project, or to incorporate fixing details that are compatible with modern construction standards. Likewise, the lack of computer skills will often make it difficult to transfer information. Until more craft studios in countries like Morocco are experienced with larger projects and production requirements, the answer to these concerns is significant onsite supervision. The modern age has made such diversity among design teams more possible than ever before. However, with the rapid spread in the use of the Internet for sending and receiving digital information, I have found that as a consultant, I travel to the 145 offices of my clients less, and work more from my own studio. While this is good for my family life, it is not always ideal in facilitating the cross-cultural exchange of ideas that I advocate”.4 Particularly challenging to Bonner in the context of the Sliding Domes project was the charge given to him to design ornament that was “pan-Islamic,” in other words, design ornament that could be universally recognizable as Islamic and not specific to any geographical region or historical period. This was especially difficult since historically there has never been anything that could be called “pan-Islamic” art. Specific styles and forms have always been associated with particular places, empires, and times. Here is how Bonner describes the dilemma facing him: “By far the most difficult aspect of my own involvement in this project was the initial design of a pan-Islamic floral style. (See Figure 1) The design brief, given to me in 1988, required the creation of a floral ornamental style that would be, at once, recognizably Islamic to Muslims from all parts of the world, but would not be identifiable to any period or region of the Islamic world. Considering the location – the Prophet’s Mosque being a place of pilgrimage for millions of Muslims from all quarters of the world – I felt that this design brief was immensely appropriate. The idea from the client was that the ornament should include all Muslims, and exclude none. The completion of the concept for the design was intensely difficult, but very successful. In designing this motif, I tried first to pinpoint those elements that recur throughout the tradition in the floral idiom, and then to use those common elements in such a way that an essential quality was created.

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