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Hugh Fitzgerald: Art Under — And Out From Under — Islam (Part III)

Apr 27, 2017 7:01 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

As discussed in Art Under And Out From Under Islam (Part I), MoMA has been eager to score political points against Trump’s ban by rather confusedly claiming that Western artists have learned so much from the “colonized” (and by implication, Islamic) peoples, and that the creations of Muslim artists put on display somehow prove how wrongheaded is that temporary ban on visas for Muslims from seven countries (only 12% of the world’s Muslims, held up for only 90 days). There is no logical link, of course, but what does mere logic matter when we are protesting a “racist executive order”? Exactly how those artists have been harmed is unclear. None of them have not been prevented from continuing to make art, or to show it anywhere they want; none of those whose works are being shown have apparently been affected by the ban. Nonetheless, the display of some works by Muslim painters was proudly described in ArtNews as a “riposte” to Trump’s “racist executive order.”

I suggested that art museums in the Western world, if they wished to treat of “Art and Islam,” might do better to use their resources for exhibits devoted to the greatest destruction of art in world history, that which has been conducted by Muslims, over 1400 years, vandalizing or destroying many different works of art and architecture – frescoes, mosaics, paintings, statues, synagogues, churches, Hindu and Buddhist temples — wherever Muslims conquered. For this would alert people in the West to one more possible consequence of Muslim demographic conquest that they have not considered.

And there is another issue, involving “Art Under – And Out From Under — Islam,” to which a second exhibit could be devoted. This would be about not the destruction of existing art and artifacts by Muslims, but rather, about the limits placed by Islam on artistic creation by Muslims themselves because of the hadith – to be found in both of the most reliable (Sahih) collections of Al-Bukhari and Muslim, in which Allah’s Messenger reports that “angels have declared that they will not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture” — that has led to a ban, in Islam, on depictions of living creatures. That means no portraits, and no paintings which include depictions of humans (or animals), even if they are only secondary to the main subject matter. Landscapes are acceptable, as long as there is no human figure, however small, in the painting; so, obviously, is abstract art. There have been artists willing to break this ban, especially in secular, rather than religious art. But the ban itself still stands, and has had its chilling effect on Muslim artists, whose highest expression has been in mosque architecture and Qur’anic calligraphy. For 1400 years, Muslims have been prevented by their own faith from enjoying the freedom of artistic expression that non-Muslims take for granted. If true solidarity with Muslims is to be offered, instead of MoMA posturing about “racism,” it should offer an exhibit that shows what those artists have lost by the limitations their faith imposed on what was admissible to create.

Let a few galleries be given over to this exhibit of “Art Under – And Out From Under — Islam.” One might be called the “Islamic Portrait Gallery,” and on its walls would be telling rows of frames, all of them empty. A second gallery would have paintings by Western artists: some portraits, landscapes that contained figures large and small, others that were purely landscapes, while still others would be examples of abstract art, Kandinsky or Mondrian, of such color-field painters as Frank Stella. And finally, photographs of the geometric patterning inside the walls of mosques, possibly hung side by side with photographs of the frescoes, mosaics, paintings, and statuary to be found in churches, of subjects sacred and profane, by way of telling contrast. Visitors to the exhibit could be given cards on which the works displayed would be listed, and might be asked to check, next to each work named, whether it would be, for Muslims, Halal or Haram. That should reinforce their understanding of what that hadith has meant for Muslim artists and Islamic art. Muslim artists should welcome this sign of solidarity, not deplore it. Their real plight – not the 90-day ban on entry to the U.S., but the 1400-year ban on their freedom to depict human beings – is a subject fit for treatment by a major museum.

The two exhibits devoted to “Art Under – And Out From Under — Islam” could also be put on simultaneously. The first would heighten awareness of how Muslims have through history treated the art and artifacts of non-Muslims, right up to the Islamic State’s recent rape of Palmyra. The second would heighten awareness of how Islam has constrained artistic expression, and implicitly suggest, with its examples from Western art, the kinds of things Muslim artists might have created but, halted by a hadith, never had the chance.

Is it conceivable that MoMA would ever put on such shows? Not under present management. Those running the museum seem more exercised about a 90-day ban on immigration for 12% of the world’s Muslims than about the future of either Western or of Islamic art. After all, why should an art museum trouble itself about art, when there’s all that “racism” and “Islamophobia” to complain about? But let us allow ourselves to believe that eventually some enlightened curators and connoisseurs, and some deep-pocketed donors too, will become truly “subversive” – that word favored by art dealers and museum curators alike, as they flog their wares — and decide that museums have a responsibility to show what Islam has meant both for non-Muslim art over the centuries, and for the creative possibilities available to Muslim artists. Such an exhibit would truly “educate and challenge” visitors – as ArtNews complacently claimed MoMA’s exhibit of Muslim artists does. “Art — Under And Out From Under — Islam,” will be strong medicine, true, but given the museum world’s chronic illness, it may turn out to be just what the doctor ordered.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, immigration, Useful idiots Tagged With: Museum of Modern Art


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Comments

  1. Benedict says

    Apr 27, 2017 at 8:39 pm

    The words “wrongheaded” and “logical link” triggered a sad truth in my mind. I wonder if this truth could be applicable here? :
    https://youtu.be/1eXGj_RnGS4

    • Benedict says

      Apr 27, 2017 at 9:07 pm

      BTW, I think the picture accompanying the videoclip above is a wonderful artistic expression of Muslim friday prayers combined with Western leftists participation.
      MOMA should consider adding it to the exhibition.

  2. no_one says

    Apr 27, 2017 at 9:02 pm

    They have sure missed a painting that shows Bulgarians under filthy turks.
    https://www.pinterest.com/pin/441423200961043456/

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 27, 2017 at 11:24 pm

      Yes–no_one–that painting by Makovsky Konstantin is utterly devastating. I have posted links to it here myself.

  3. gravenimage says

    Apr 27, 2017 at 11:19 pm

    And there is another issue, involving “Art Under – And Out From Under — Islam,” to which a second exhibit could be devoted. This would be about not the destruction of existing art and artifacts by Muslims, but rather, about the limits placed by Islam on artistic creation by Muslims themselves because of the hadith – to be found in both of the most reliable (Sahih) collections of Al-Bukhari and Muslim, in which Allah’s Messenger reports that “angels have declared that they will not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture” — that has led to a ban, in Islam, on depictions of living creatures.
    ……………………….

    *Very true*. There is, in fact, very little art in Muslim countries, for just this reason.

  4. Bindon Blood says

    Apr 28, 2017 at 5:47 am

    There is no true “Islamic” art. Islam of ifs self has no artistic tradition. The art that has been labeled “Islamic” is in reality Persian,Greek,Visigothic etc. These countries ,as we all know, were conquered by Islam . The artists of these countries continued to produce what they were allowed to,in spite of Islam. No doubt individual Muslims learned and copied the artwork of the conquered peoples but this is not”Islamic” art. The desert Arabs had little or no art and the Turkish tribes who came later were equally unsophisticated until they were able to profit from the conquered peoples. Islamic art is in reality Christian,Hindu etc. and Western art produced in Countries conquered by Islam.

  5. Jeanette says

    Apr 28, 2017 at 3:41 pm

    Islam does not allow representations of anything created by Allah, as it is considered to be trying to be Allah.

    That is why most of the decoration in buildings and on rugs is geometric designs.

    Another full of sh*t, taqiyyah spouting Muslim.

  6. Graham says

    Apr 29, 2017 at 9:59 am

    If ISIS were successful in destroying all archaeology that predated Islam then all muslim history books would be rewritten to show that only Islam ever existed! We already see islamic history books brainwashing children into believing that there was no Holocaust.

    It was recently explained to me that muslims view allah as being all powerful – they say that, because of this, allah can do anything, including lie! Saying that God cannot lie or sin to a muslim is blasphemous! They will reply “Allah can do anything – he is all powerful!” They have no concept of a Holy, Rightous God. Which helps explain how they can lie to their own children about history.

    Disturbing as this is, it does help explain the mindset behind Islam.

  7. Gen Jones says

    Apr 29, 2017 at 8:32 pm

    Mr Fitzgerald, thank you for this series. As a native New Yorker and avid museum goer I appreciated your intelligent take on it. The way MOMA placed works of lesser weight next to undisputed masters to show their moral superiority is laughable. Especially when something like Shirana Shahbazi’s Composition-40-2011, a large scale ~photograph~ of what looks like billiard balls is placed next to a Duchamp! Even if that was a photorealist painting it would still look like a imitative nonentity that wouldn’t pass muster in a college portfolio. Yet no one in the world of art journalism will say so. There’s an inherent tone deafness if not actual racism to this too, since the works are vaguely “Middle Eastern” (check) Islamic (check) but mostly done by artists who hold dual European identities and work in the West as you have pointed out. There’s a lack of scholarship on the provenance of these works. They’re lumped together for ideological rather than scholarly reasons. Dare I say – the great sin Islamophobes are accused of – they’re painted with the same brush.

    The sad thing is that no artistic institution will mount an exhibition to highlight the shear destruction Islam has done to art and culture for 1,400 years. The Hall of Science in Flushing Meadow Park hosted the idiotic 1,001 Islamic inventions exhibit a while ago and the Children’ Museum currently has a propaganda exhibit called America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far. The price of going against the cultural grain is one thing but the real threat of violence to the institution, the curators, museum staff and attendees will be deemed too great.

    Yet I have hope. If there’s anything the cognoscenti live for it’s to sniff out the latest thing. The latest thing will soon be those who know the truth about the evils of Islam.

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