My review of Idol Anxiety at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum appears in the Forward (link here). Here’s a selection:
Most of the works that appear in the exhibit Idol Anxiety, at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, feature Christian and pagan content. But exhibit curator Aaron Tugendhaft credits the “heightened awareness” he developed from studying the Talmud as a child with helping him discover “valuable distinctions not seen by others” in the process of how objects avoid becoming idols.
“And some of the worst Muslims in the world live in America,” says Siraj Wahaj in the podcast “You can have the family you want” (audio at Muslimmatters.org).
The Republican running on an “anti-Sharia” platform tells FrontPage:
Our education system is bankrupt at all levels. Our universities do not prepare our young minds to see anything bad about Islam. Here in Nashville at Vanderbilt University you can get a degree in Islamic Studies and never read the life of Mohammed—and never read the entire Koran. You study Sufi poetry, Islamic art and Islamic history viewed as a glorious triumph. No kafirs suffer in this program and there is no history of Jew, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist suffering under Islamic rule for the past 1,400 years. A graduate from this program then goes out into the world professionally trained to be an apologist for Islam, a dhimmi. And this program is standard at all schools, not just Vanderbilt.
The diplomat and founder of Ottawa’s National Arts Centre was Anglican but “was thinking the same thoughts as a Catholic or a Jew or a Muslim” and felt “The soul is a more important part of our being than character.”
Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in front of the bridge he built in Jerusalem, which is supposed to symbolize King David’s harp:
Bridges are instruments of peace.They join places that were separated. They permit people to meet.They even are meeting points.They are done for the sake of progress and for the average citizen.They even have a religious dimension. The word religious comes from Latin, meaning “creating a link.”
This particular understanding has a very deep meaning,especially in Jerusalem,which contains in its name the words shalom,salaam,peace. A bridge makes a lot of sense in a city like Jerusalem.
Says curator Alison Darnbrough, who was surprised to discover Pakistan has a “buzzing” art scene. But then comes the gross generalization that plagues so many articles on Islamic art:
While calligraphy was praised in the Islamic world, paintings were less so. This is because the religion forbids depictions not only of Allah and Mohammed, but of human figures.
I’ve dealt with this question in “Are drawing and painting haraam?” (in The Arab American News). It continues to surprise me that people, even educated curators and historians, write off a long tradition of representational Islamic art for no reason.
See an example here, where Mohammed sits in the top left corner, as an angel presents him with a map of the Holy Land. This patronizing nonsense about Islam being anti-art has to stop.
With the Spertus Museum’s recent “censorship” of its exhibit of Holy Land maps, it is especially nice to see that famous (and autistic) artist Stephen Wiltshire has drawn Jerusalem.
One blog says Wiltshire also wants to draw Tel Aviv, and quotes: “Jerusalem was the hardest city I’ve ever encountered to draw. There are many tiny details that are without architectural order or reason.”
This is part of a larger tradition of Holy Land mapping, that includes Bünting’s 1581 clover-leaf Jerusalem, famous for casting the city as the center of the world. Other artists have included New and Old Testament scenes or the “Templum Salomonis” (like von Breydenbach does) in their maps, juxtaposing the old and the new.
Wiltshire’s is surely more helpful for tourists than Bünting’s symbolic map, but the clover does show how artists tend to create the Holy Land in their own image, which is perhaps where Spertus encountered its troubles. Kudos to Wiltshire for creating a non-partisan view.
See Wiltshire draw Rome in the YouTube video below.
Joseph A. Massad, who is up for tenure at Columbia (see here for the controversy), had claimed in his review of Ankori’s book “Palestinian Art” that she plagiarized from Kamal Boullata. The review appears to have been removed from AJ’s site, but here is a version that seems to be reliable (HT: The Angry Arab News Service).
I interviewed Ankori for this piece on Frida Kahlo, and my own review of “Palestinian Art” is here.
The Qatar Museum Authority’s fund raising campaign for the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin was a “big success”
“Christian art, in its true sense, should glorify God and should communicate truth, goodness and beauty,” says Rachel Ross, assistant director of the Foundation for Sacred Arts
Lorna Byrne, who sees angels, finds they mostly “chime with the angelic figures of religious art and popular mythology”
Charles Saatchi, who is being compared to Midas, is buying students works
In the piece I wonder why Holocaust restitution has attracted such attention while looted Islamic art doesn’t:
The National Gallery of Art is to be commended for bringing attention to Afghani art, and it probably would not hurt many Americans to learn that there is culture and beauty in Afghanistan beyond the tyranny that shows up in much of the reporting on the region … But there needs to be even more attention to looted works, and “Hidden Treasures” and … the general rule is that Afghani and Iraqi art is ignored. Perhaps with more such exhibits and projects all looted works can be returned to their rightful owners with the sort of success rate being achieved with art looted by the Nazis.
My column “Gods and Idols,” a review of “Idol Anxiety” at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art through November 2, appears in the National Catholic Reporter (online here).
Here’s a selection:
Idolatry is a dirty word in academic and artistic circles, where it is viewed as a term imposed on objects that cannot resist the pigeonholing. One person’s idol is by definition another’s god. The Smart Museum’s show “Idol Anxiety” at the University of Chicago explores this complicated relationship between worshiped objects, the artisans who create them and the audiences who experience them.
“I want young people to understand how the Bible has enormously impacted literature, art, music, culture, history and politics,” says Sen. Roy Herron, sponsor of a bill to give “non-denominational” Bible electives to Tenn. students.
“An Inch From the Heart” at the San Diego Art Institute comes from a course that encouraged students to reflect on “perspectives from Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism, Judaism, as well as the writings of Plato, Marx, Buber, Rand and many others.”
Naveed Ahmad, head of investments-wealth management for Dubai Islamic Bank, says Islamic banks are ignoring Islamic art funds
Andrew Sullivan posts on a debate about secular religion and art/propaganda
Don’t lead those people go! Church members are mad the police went easy on roof thieves
As SF papers are abuzz with news (here and here) of the new Jewish museum, the UAE opens the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization (see here), and Qatar builds the Museum of Islamic Art
Rev. Robert Reed, minister to prisoners, also collects of their art
“Prayers and Meditations”: a collaboration of 11 Maine artists
Rev. Patrick Pointer, award-winning carver, says “Everything I do in life is an extension of my ministry”
“Treasures Rediscovered” shows Chinese Buddhist sculpture, “a relatively young subject of art-historical study”
VMFAhires John Henry Rice, “the new associate curator of South Asian and Islamic art”
Design Without Borders reflects “a cultural mosaic … and embraces ethnic, cultural, religious and gender diversity”
Mary Eberstadt on “the problems of Dull achievement,” including the “infuriating claim that religion is inseparable from — even responsible for — artistic achievement of the very first order”
The Louvre has lent 270 pieces to the Quebec museum, including “several of its Islamic artworks that ‘don’t usually travel’”
An “unprecedented” show, “entirely of works from wartime contemporaries of Iraq,” opens at Pomegranate Gallery in NY
“[T]here’s a sort of classic idea of the critic as a voice out of a cloud, a pocket Jehovah, which I plainly have no use for,” says Peter Schjeldahl in a great interview with Jillian Steinhauer
M.P. Prabhakaran reviews two Indian artists’ Hindu dance and painting collaboration
Mordy Shinefield exposes a “growing cult” of ultra-Orthodox Jewish students risking expulsion for listening to “anti-yeshiva student” David Draiman of Disturbed
[Boston Globe] From donuts to keffiyehs–is Rachel Ray destined for trouble with the Israel lobby? Jeffrey Goldberg has this stunt picture of Ray with a “costume change” to “any future Middle East-related wardrobe malfunctions.” Ed Brayton over at Dispatches adds another Photoshop gag. This is just the latest in a series of stories like Urban Outfitters’ anti-war scarf (see here).
In other news, Picasso goes to Abu Dhabi (Boston Globe), Wittenburg Door posts on the “Ten Worst Movies About Jesus” (HT: DMN Religion Blog), a French photography exhibit of France under Nazi rule controversially shows “happy people going about their lives as normal — not a country under brutal military occupation” (NPR), and Yasmina Reza’s comedy “Art” at Everyman wonders, “Why do we see each other if we hate each other?” (Baltimore Sun)
Above: A sacred dish rag. “Now, I’m a materialistic atheist,” writes Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaeology, “but I’d still find it in pretty poor taste if someone started to make dish rags with a picture of the Crucifixion or calligraphy of the Islamic creed. And the picture-stone dish rag is pretty much comparable to that.”
