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THE AESTHETICS AND ART HISTORY OF ISLAMIC CULTURES Islamic Aesthetics An Introduction by Oliver Leaman, The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, 211 pp., d60.00 hdbk, d17.99 pbk
Oliver Leaman has published widely on Islamic philosophy and theology and this book on Islamic aesthetics appears to be a new direction for him, delving as it does into art-historical theory, architecture, music, calligraphy, painting and even the Islamic garden. Although Islamic Aesthetics An Introduction looks at art from the point of view of a philosopher of aesthetics, Leaman is keen to break this mould and asks some fundamental questions about Islamic cultural products, some of them challenging the very basis of Euro-American traditions of viewing Islamic art. For Leaman, the art history of Western societies does not treat Islamic art as an opportunity for aesthetic experience but rather as evidence for historical events or religious and social customs. Leamans enthusiasm for various kinds of Islamic art is often emotional and imaginative, yet restrained by rational analysis. It clearly demonstrates an aesthetic response to the various examples of art which he treats. What emerges in this book is an argument that aesthetic experience can, and should, be liberated from rational explanation and literal meaning because the experience of beauty has its own rules that are not necessarily tied in with the art historians way of thinking, which has more often than not tried to understand Islamic art by relating it to history, religion and society, rather than trying to understand its innate formal and visual qualities. Leamans rst chapter, entitled, Eleven common mistakes about Islamic Art, clearly outlines the objective of the book: to debunk a number of traditional misconceptions about Islamic calligraphy, poetry, painting and architecture. He does this with varying success. One of the rst misconceptions he deals with is really a matter of avoiding the favourite bugbear of recent critical theory, reductionism and essentialism, especially important because Islam is international and cross-cultural and is therefore impossible to pigeonhole. Another misconception is the claim that Islamic aesthetics do not exist, an ethnocentric assumption that has developed because aesthetics in Islamic societies have not evolved into an explicit canon of writing, or as a sub-section of philosophy, as perhaps they have in Europe. This belief is related to other misconceptions Leaman is keen to counter, that art and aesthetics are
ART HISTORY . ISSN 0141-6790 . VOL 29 NO 3 . JUNE 2006 pp 503-528 & Association of Art Historians 2006. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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subordinate, or primarily inspired by religious specically Su concerns. This is a consistent theme that runs through the whole of Leamans book and so it is necessary to return to this at length in due course. As for other misconceptions, such as the notion that calligraphy is the highest form of art, that there is an horror vacui in Islamic art and design practice, or that it is essentially atomistic, or Other, or a minor (decorative) art, Leaman convincingly argues against them in a way that draws in the reader, hinting at the allure of the aesthetic experience of Islamic art. It sometimes seems that Leaman is intent on liberating the aesthetic response to Islamic art from the constraints of being earnest, not only by resisting utilitarian or functionalist justications for art but by pleasantly afrming its power to delight. In this, the author is not far removed from Oscar Wildes seemingly effortless quip that art should have no purpose. Undoubtedly, there are generations of viewers who have intuitively perceived the balance, proportions, visual precision and the lightness of being of the Taj Mahal and countless millions who have wondered at the brilliance and intricacy of Islamic textiles, metalwork, glass and lustreware, many of whom had no knowledge of the social or cultural contexts in which these works of art were produced, or had any idea about the objectives of those who produced them. But this does not detract from the intensity of the aesthetic experience that these art forms are able to inspire. Leaman further justies this almost Romantic approach to understanding aesthetic experience by undermining the edice on which many art historians base their arguments: the known or probable intentions of the artist or patron in the production of the art object. It does not follow that knowledge of these intentions should restrict the aesthetic value of the art object, that we must restrict our aesthetic sensations to those known to have been experienced in the social or historical contexts of the art object, that we must see as they saw. It is the necessity of understanding the art object through the perspective of those who rst set eyes on it that Leaman regards as a kind of ction and this is what he seeks to remove from the equation. In this, he is not too different from those inspired by Roland Barthess theory of the death of the author, with its emphasis on the work and on the reader of the work, not on the personal, social and political objectives of the author, which can never really be known. In this way, Leaman appears to view art history, along with religious, Su explanations of art and political and social explanations of art as encumbrances on the intuitive sensibilities involved in aesthetic experience. Some of the shortcomings of Leamans iconoclastic approach, which seeks to brush aside a densely patterned tradition of art-historical writing in favour of a pure and simple aesthetic reality, surface in some of his detailed criticisms of art-historical writing. True, the art history of Islamic cultures can be tediously cautious and old fashioned, with little knowledge of the progress of art history in other elds but its work in preparing the ground for future development continues. This work consists of answering important questions of identication, where, when and who produced art objects: the very basis of art history without which we might still be calling all Islamic art Muhammadan. Islamic art history and its methods are not static and have progressed. If Leamans target is the art history of Islamic art, his knowledge of this eld

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seems oddly dated. Leaman may be accused of setting up a number of straw men. Many of the works he uses by authors such as Bakhtiar, Critchlow, Golombek, Ettinghausen or Welch are too old to be cited as examples of the current state of art history. Many ideas espoused by these authors and used by Leaman to provide his chapter with Eleven Common Mistakes About Islamic Art are beliefs that are no longer commonly held. And a number of more up-to-date authors he cites that do have these misconceptions are on the periphery of Islamic art and cannot be taken to represent the current eld. If Leaman wanted to address the present state of Islamic aesthetics by responding to art-historical works, he could have consulted a number of standard works that are more representative of the eld. In chapters intricately engaged with arguments about the perception of geometry in various art forms, he could have used Necipoglus exemplary work in this area: The Topkapi Scroll.1 In studies in painting, he might have consulted the work of Lentz and Lowry for Timurid art; or David Roxburgh for prefaces to albums in Persian painting; or given enough credit to the work of Doris BehrensAbouseif, some of whose conclusions in Beauty in Arabic Culture pregure his.2 And as for the point that Islamic art is too various to be categorized with essential features as the term denotes the interaction of very broad historical, geographical and international scales, this observation was made years ago by Michael Rogers, hardly one of the new thinkers in the subject area of Islamic art.3 Many of these authors bring out very complex arguments about aesthetic response that belie Leamans patchy characterization of the impoverished objectives of the art history of Islamic cultures. But sketchy also are Leamans propositions about aesthetic experience, which are never systematically laid out but rather only implied when demonstrating his antagonism towards the history of art (and later, the history of philosophy). It is very easy to say something is beautiful, and to his credit, Leaman states this with aplomb quite often about Islamic art, but it is much harder to give an account as to why this is so and reducing the answer to an inexplicable or mysterious subjective experience will not do. What Leaman tries to do is extend the range of writing about art objects in Islamic cultures to include the pleasure of viewing colours, experiencing rhythms, balances and other abstract qualities in art. But anyone who is familiar with exhibition catalogues and coffee-table books on Mughal artefacts, for example, will know that these aesthetic responses can easily mutate into circular descriptions. Worse, the reduction of Islamic art to the principle of simple pleasure and appreciation of beauty can evolve into a kind of scepticism demonstrated by many curators in the eld of Islamic art who have nothing but contempt for religious, social or anthropological interpretations of the arts of Islamic cultures. This book will no doubt encourage them to continue resisting diversity in aesthetics. It is not essential that Islamic art, to be Islamic art, should provoke complex intellectual stimulation, but it often does. One of the orientalists characterizations of Islamic art, which Leaman does not mention, is vete. This has become an excuse for some kinds of that it reduces its complexity to na British and American art history to continue to believe that Persian miniatures possess a childlike innocence and Leamans remarks about instant and uncluttered aesthetic responses can be used to support this kind of approach.
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For Leaman, the jouissance of the intricate patterning of kinds of Islamic ornament lies in its ability to defy description. But one wonders whether the grunt, or any other monosyllabic expression, is a mark of aesthetic enjoyment or blank ignorance: presumably it/they can stand for both. Verbal description for Leaman is ugly, as if the calm beauty of the object, the incomprehensible peace of art is disturbed by vocal intrusion. And this notwithstanding his own description of Islamic patterns which, as he puts it, sometimes seem to be replete with a libidinal exuberance and sometimes to be shot through with pathos (68). These poetic sentiments come after a great deal of debunking of less fanciful remarks about Islamic geometry, those which speak of stars in the vaults of mosques as comparable to those in heaven, or circles in patterns that may bring the idea of innity to mind. Much of Leamans scorn is poured over the possibility of understanding geometrical patterns as spiritual or religious. And while it is a fair point that art need not be necessarily a representation of religious or spiritual sentiments and ideas, it need not be limited to the kind of sensuous or abstract aesthetic experience which the author champions, either. Although he rails against Su interpretations of art, and, to his credit, his knowledge is detailed and sometimes persuasive, he devotes large parts of the book to explaining different nuances and shades of Su thought (and numerous philosophical ideas), even though he has made it clear that such considerations are unnecessary in appreciating examples of Islamic art. Besides the authors obvious irritation with Su dimensions to Islamic art and his support for more simple (or ordinary, as he puts it) and less learned responses to art objects, it is possible to glimpse the authors curious assumptions about aesthetics in other ways. A knowledge of post-structuralism, demonstrated by an astute analysis of calligraphy and Derrida, has not alerted Leaman to the risks of using binary oppositions to construct a theory of aesthetics: the intellectual versus the intuitive (or sensuous) aesthetic responses to art; the articial and the natural in art; and idealism and realism. The risks associated with such oppositions are that they can be seen to be essentialist and are easily collapsible. Thus he sets the stage, as it were, for a play about a competition for beauty between knowledge and the senses. For him, the knowledge of art scholars and historians comes second place. The viewer who does not take art history into consideration in viewing the art object is at liberty to do so and this may very well not impair his or her aesthetic experience. Leaman is right to state, against a kind of elitism, that it is not necessary to possess a detailed knowledge of the art object in order to be apprised of its beauty. But the art historian who does put social and cultural contexts into play in the consideration of the art object can also appreciate the aesthetic signicance of that object. Knowledge and the senses need not be in opposition. Both knowledge and the senses come into play in an example of Islamic art that Leaman discusses at length. His account of the poet Rumis gloss on the intertexual biblical and Quranic stories of Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaykha (Potiphars wife) is treated at several key points in the book. Persian, Turkish or Mughal artists often illustrate the story of Zulaykha attempting to seduce Yusuf by showing him trying to escape her touch in a dance-like movement, and they often insert a painting into the background

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showing Yusuf and Zulaykha in a passionate embrace, a kind of false conclusion to the story, showing Zulaykhas wishful thinking. This brings into play the possibility of the aesthetic experience of seeing a painting within a painting, a multilayered viewing ve illustration of the story and a parody of process, one that can be seen as both a na art. The embedded painting in the background visualizes or externalizes Zulaykhas desire and shows it, at the same time, as an illusion but it can also remind the viewer that the painting in which this embedded image is enclosed is also an illusion. The image tells a tale, but it also is a commentary on the dynamics of viewing and the power of illusions and this intellectual complexity is presumably why it is a scene that is often chosen for illustration, because it deals both with the nature of sensuous appreciation of beauty and the contemplation of that appreciation, as it is traditional to see Zulaykha characterizing the former aesthetic response (seen in the embedded painting) and Yusuf the latter (shown turning away from her in the foreground). In its illustrated forms in Persian and Mughal visual art, the story of Yusuf and Zulayka is a kind of visual aesthetic treatise where artists relish the opportunity to delight with the rhythm of line, the subtle gesture, the brilliance of colours and yet they seem unable also to resist depicting the embedded painting that distances us from the instantaneous gratication of the senses their art inspires. The work is beautiful in the way in which it has been painted and in the way it mediates meaning to viewers familiar with the story, able to delight also in the complexities of representation. The subtleties of this kind of aesthetic response seemed to have escaped Leaman in his numerous attempts to explain the story and the painting of the story of Yusuf and Zulaykha. Simplicity and complexity, the literal and the gurative are possible in aesthetic experience, sometimes in the form of either of these responses and sometimes in a composite sense, where both are experienced at the same time, as in the foreground or background of a painting. The possibility of the aesthetic experience as a self-reexive mechanism, whether simple or complex, reective of the intellect or desire, depends on the viewers abilities and inclinations, or whether he or she has had the opportunity to view the painting several times over many years. In such circumstances, for the aesthetic experience of colours and forms to be sustained, or made more intense, knowledge might well have to come to its aid. The aesthetic response to an art object changes over time but Leaman appears not to be interested in the gradualism of aesthetic experience. Another issue that Leamans approach raises is whether art induces aesthetic responses because of its realism, and its faithfulness to nature, or because of its highly articial use of formal qualities and its sense of design. Many will already have seen that this is a highly articial conict, because the two can be present in a work of art and be seen to cooperate in the aesthetic experience of it. But Leamans explanation that realism in art reects an acceptance of the material world, as opposed to a Su denial of the world and the world of the senses is too pat. Leaman, as well as many of the art historians he criticizes, sees realism in art increasing from the early Timurid period to the painting of Bihzad and later to Mughal painting as a result of a new general interest in and awareness of the physical world. Art is viewed as a march
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towards psychological realism and the more effective recording of historical events, with increased technical developments in depicting volume and mass. The identication of these qualities overshadows the very evident and semantically signicant idealizing elements in different kinds of Islamic art. Emphasis on the historical accuracy of appearances in painting ignores an aesthetic system built on the subtle idealizing of gesture, symmetry and recognizable patterns of composition. Realism is not, and never has been, a quantitative matter of more or less, but rather, an extremely subjective perception: some see the illusion more easily than the reality it purports to represent. It is far from being unequivocally the case that realism in kinds of Islamic art is simply a result of increased interest in the sense particulars of the physical world. None of the paintings Leaman describes lack an underlying formal language and a highly realistic sense of visual organization. Realistic elements are subordinated to this primary aesthetic. In many cases Islamic painting is never purely a question of the will to mimesis, or a progressive development of naturalism (as Gombrich, for one, characterizes much of Western art), mainly because naturalism and realism are presented within intelligible patterns of a visual order, an order that can be intuited as well as studied. Leamans important contribution to the eld of art history is to have opened up the eld to many questions and debates. Particularly important is his attempt to evolve a sense of aesthetics that takes into account a multiplicity of experiences involved in viewing art, which art scholars tend to limit, or ignore, in their objective to use art as evidence for history. Art history should address the various aesthetic dimensions of intellectual pleasure, emotional fullment, sensuous engagement, rational processing, imaginative wandering, self-reection, the stimulation of memory, or the interaction of all of these things. But problems appear not only in setting up a hierarchy of one kind of response over another but in the setting up of the composite experience over singular or discrete ones. But to go back to the root the work of art the question is whether it can sustain and inspire this broad range of experiences? And is this a way of judging the enduring aesthetic power of the art object? Leaman and many others might very well answer in the afrmative, but would historians of Islamic art, eager to narrow this range down to an historically accurate set of measured intentions and responses? The Su might add that this argument represents the very heart of aesthetics, its expansion and contraction.

Gregory Minissale London Metropolitan University Notes

. 1 Gulru Necipoglu, with an essay by Mohammad al-Asad, The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, Los Angeles, 1995. 2 Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Beauty in Arabic Culture, Princeton, 1998. 3 J. M. Rogers, The Uses of Anachronism: On Cultural and Methodological Diversity in Islamic Art, London, 1994.

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