INDIA & ISLAMIC ART

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India and Islamic art

 

India art from the 3th century B.C. was mainly Buddhist art. It was also the art of sculpture.

 

Until A.D. 800, Hindu architects and sculptors built temples and shrines with plenty of sculptures. Many of these temples were carved in rock cliffs. Among these buildings, nearly thirty caves carved in Ajanta, in central India, must be mentioned. Besides sculptures and bas-reliefs, there is a series of wall paintings considered among the greatest masterpieces ever made by man.

 

The outstanding quality of these frescoes made them into models not only for artists who painted murals many years after, but even for manuscript illustrators.

 

In the Middle Ages, artists in India drew on palm leaves, which necessitated a long and narrow format, They marked the surface with metalpoint, a primitive pencil. Then they scattered dark blue dust on the surface and blew it off in order to get the drawing.

 

In the 14th century, paper was introduced in India. It came from Persia and helped in the making of drawings and miniatures which, from then on, were to be painted with water-colours and opaque colours (gouache).

 

In 622 Mohammed left Mecca and went to Yathrib (now Medina) ,Saudi  Arabia , and founded a new religion: Islam .

 

A hundred years later the Islamic world was an empire that covered a vast territory, from Tibet to the Atlantic Ocean, and included all the peoples and nations of the southern coast of the Mediterranean.

 

The Koran , the holy book of Islam, does not ban the representation of images in art. However, the ancient Muslim theologians pontificated that drawing people implied a sinful arrogation of the divine power of creation and doing so easly banned in religious books and buildings. Islamic artists then developed all sorts of decorative embellishments until the koran was revised and no reason could be found for the previous ban.

 

In the 14th century Tamerlane, heading the Mongolians, went as far as Turkey and India and established the first Timurid school of miniaturists in Persia. Persia then become the artistic centre of Islamic art.

 

Among athers the schools of Herat and Mughal of Akbar were established at this time; and artists such as Bihzad, Aga Reza, and Reza i`Abbasi were working during this fertile period. Reza i`Abbasi was the most prominent Islamic draftsman and painter, and also the founder of the Abbasi school.