The Times Goes On...

Funny thing: about two years ago, I offered a story to the NY Times' Arts & Leisure section on the importance of the art coming out of the Middle East, and of exhibiting contemporary Middle Eastern art in the West while Western art was appearing in the Middle East. Apparently, I was too soon. Now, Jori Finkel, a fantastic writer/reporter and my former editor at Art & Auction, takes on the subject in the Times' latest coverage on "The American Qur'an."

With my own book on Islam in the West due for publication in a few months, I found the following particularly interesting:

>>The first exhibitions of Mr. Birk’s “American Qur’an,” a work-on-paper series that is roughly a third complete, is about to open: 30 hand-painted pages at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco starting on Thursday and another 30 at Koplin Del Rio gallery in Culver City starting Friday. (A New York exhibition slated for this fall at the P.P.O.W. Gallery was rescheduled for winter 2010 after a gallery fire.)

“We’re very concerned about repercussions from the Muslim community,” said the Culver City gallery owner, Eleana Del Rio. “But it’s important to know that Sandow did this with the best intentions, no irony or satire intended.”<<

 Ms. Del Rio is clearly aware of something many Americans are not: the dangers associated with presenting the Koran in anything but the most reverential context, even here in the West. Other artists, after all, have taken on similar risks -- like Sooreh Hera, for instance, whose photographs of gay men dressed as Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali led to death threats against her and warnings to the museum where they were scheduled to be shown (until a certain lily-livered museum director gave in). I commend Del Rio and the other gallery owners for their courage and their principles.

I am also, if I may say so frankly, rather proud to have been at the forefront of this - and look forward to more exciting events and projects (my own among them) ahead. Stay tuned.

Five Features Of Islamic Contemporary Art

 *An extraordinary number of the best artists are women. This may or may not related to the oppression of women in Muslim countries, but it is certainly noteworthy.

*Iranian artists seem to draw largely from their Persian cultural heritage, with art that emphasizes aesthetics. Painterly, graceful, and often calligraphic, these works are richly-colored and can be absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.   Top artists: Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, and my personal favorite, Mohammed Ehsai.

 *Iraqi artists, by contrast, are (understandably) focused on the political, and on addressing the political and sociological conflicts of their culture.  These works tend to be more secular in nature.

*A significant number of the women artists work with photography. Examples include Lalla Essaydi (Moroccan), Shirin Neshat (Iranian), Mitra Tabrizian (Iranian), and Raeda Saadeh (Palestinian).

*This summer, the Venice Biennale will feature, for the first time, an entire pavilion of works by artists from the UAE. Other countries represented from the region include Iran (which has been represented at the Biennale in the past) and Pakistan (which makes its debut this year).    The inclusion of these artists reflects the growing interest in Islamic Contemporary art throughout the international artworld.

 

This blog was inspired by passion and surprise. 

A couple of years ago, on a visit to Istanbul, I visited several collections of contemporary Turkish art, and visited some of the city's younger artists.  The work I saw was fresher, more powerful, more beautiful, than any of the art that I had seen in some time. I was captivated.

Later, an exhibition of new Iraqi art came to a new, experimental museum near my home. Eagerly, I attended the opening, having no idea what I might find there.  I had, when the war in Iraq began, held hopes to visit the region and get to know artists there, and to bring Western art to Baghdad.  While I was quickly talked out of this idea, the longing remained. 

What Iraqi artists were producing, I discovered, was even more compelling and exciting than what I had uncovered in Istanbul: poignant, poetic, political without being propagandistic, elegant, seeped in Islamic tradition and enriched by Western culture.

If this was what was happening in Turkey and Iraq, I wondered, what else was being produced by artists in the Islamic world?

And so I began to steep myself in the art that was emerging out of Iran and Palestine and Syria, and being produced by Muslims from the Middle East and Africa who were now living in the West.   The more that I have seen of this work, the more enraptured I've become.

Although many have expressed displeasure with the phrase "Islamic Contemporary Art," I have used it from the start -- with an article that appeared in Art & Auction magazine in 2008 -- and will continue to do so.  These are not simply art works made by people from the Middle East and Africa; some artists come from Turkey and other areas of the Muslim world.  Some are second generation immigrants living in the West. What the art they produce has in common, however, is a harkening to Islamic traditions,  often expressed through calligraphy and calligraphic painterliness in their work, or a political reference to issues of importance in contemporary Islam.   

This blog is my effort to share my passion, and to bring to other lovers of art the joys of what I am discovering.  More, I hope that it will also provide a doorway for the Islamic and the Western worlds to pass through to one another, and join hands.