Art of Non-western Cultures
For centuries, high art society has been dominated by European art that has filled art museums to the brim in work made almost entirely by white Europeans. Recently, however, museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago have come to recognize that there is a whole beautiful world out there that has been making art for even longer than European cultures. While the contemporary art community is doing good work in raising up artist from a wide variety of cultures, there is still a full rich history to explore from the centuries of the past. While walking through the Art Institute for my first of two days that I would get to spend at one of the best museums in Chicago, I decided to visit that Islamic art exhibit since I have never been in it before or at least thoroughly studied it.
The culture of Islam is one that is wide and global spanning several different countries. According to Pew Research, there are currently 1.6 billion people in the world who are Muslim. For reference, that equals about 24% of the entire world's population and there are 49 countries in the world where the population is predominantly Muslim. First walking into the exhibit, I was greeted with a wall explaining the definition of the term Islamic, both the cultural terms and the countries that are defined as Islamic. According to the wall text in the art institute, countries that are a part of the Islamic culture are those that countries that are predominantly Muslim or under the rule of Islamic law.
In the religion of Islam, there is a ban against the depiction of the prophet Muhammed and other “images of devotion” according to the Art Institute. Due to this, there is very few sculptures or human depictions in Islamic art. Being thus, Islamic art focused on other forms of art which are mainly split up into four different categories: calligraphy, geometric patterns, plant based patterns, and figural representations of humans or animals. In our discovery of Islamic art we will take a look at each of these categories and their purpose inside the greater scope of Islamic art.
Calligraphy is one of the most visual clues that something is Islamic art because of the very distinct style of arabic. According to the Metropolitan Museum of art, the calligraphy was not only used as visual ornamentation but often had deeper symbolic meaning. According to the wall text, this specific piece shown is a page of a Shikasta Nasta’liq that has caligraphy in the middle and floral patterns in the margin. This piece was used for record keeping in 1767. While this writing is more secular in nature, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK islamic calligraphy was often used for religious texts or very important texts such as poems and praises of rulers. The Met notes that while calligraphy was meant to transmit words, not all muslims would be able to read it and it did often take on an ornamental purpose.
This is a tile fragment from the Victoria and Albert Museum from Bukhara dated from about 1359, that displays calligraphies more ornamental purpose.
Geometric patterns are also extremely important in Islamic art. According to the Met, the geometric style came not only from the artists of Islam but also from the intellectuals of the society such as mathematicians, astronomers, and scientists to create the intricate combinations and patterns that are so famous in Islamic art.
The front of these pair of doors from the 14th century displayed in the Art Institute show an inlaid decoration on the top panels of the doors. These doors show the use of geometric repeating patterns as ornamentation within architecture. While this door clearly was used quite a bit from the amount of deterioration on the inlaid ornamentation, you can still see the repeating circular pattern created by intertwining lines and shapes.
The next major theme in Islamic art is that of vegetal, or plant-based, patterns that are commonly found.
This tile in the Art Institute, dated from the 16th or 17th century, displays a cluster of grapes and grape leaves surrounded by other flowers and basic floral patterns. According to the Met “vegetal motifs and patterns in Islamic art are largely devoid of symbolic meaning.” This meant that the grapes and other symbols within this tile are probably just for decoration, rather than having any deeper meaning. However, the tile itself does have a deeper meaning because it is ceramic. According to wall text in the Art Institute, porcelain was never made in the middle east at this time but was instead imported or imitated through the creation of fritware. This specific tile is indeed made of fritware showing the collision of two major societies at the time and their exchange of goods and ideas.
While going over the scope of Islamic art we need to address the final form of art, figural representation. As previously discussed, the Islamic culture does not allow for the depictions of religious figures or idols and because of this, there are very few sculptures of people in Islamic art. Despite this, there are still the figural representations of some figures, most popularly animals.
This striding elephant from the 17th century is carved from ivory, which is elephant tusk. According to the Met, the Islamic culture saw the creation of living forms as something that only God had the power to do and thus artists were often criticized for attempting to imitate the power of gods. The Met also notes that those works of art that did include figural representation, especially religious ones, were often destroyed so if they did exist we would not have any examples of them today. However, they say that non-religious ornamental representations provided less of an issue so they were often spared. This means that this elephant probably has very little symbolic meaning or else it would not have survived history. According to Al-Islam.org, the year the prophet Muhammed was born is known as the year of the elephant, meaning that this elephant sculpture could still have a religious connection though it cannot be certain. 
While all of this art is centuries old, there are still modern Islamic artists that are incorporating traditional islamic art motifs into art. Artist Hassan Hajjaj is a contemporary artist working out of Morocco who infuses traditional Islamic art with far more contemporary themes. This work, part of the series My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume I, incorporates the floral, vegetal patterns with the modern human figure, which would not have been found in traditional Islamic art. Hassan’s work shows that the Islamic culture is still extremely influential in art as he has done work such as took pictures of singer Cardi B. for the cover of New York Magazine and is known as “the Warhol of Marrakech” in the art world, as reported by ArtNet.com
In this second image, in the background, you can see a pattern similar to that found in the 14th century doors from the Art Institute.
As we can see, the Islamic culture has a very unique art style that displays the beauty of a very rich culture. Though non-western art has been neglected by the high society of art, we can see that they have dearly been missing out.
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