DU2873 Islam and Image: Beyond the Bilderverbot

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2019
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
prof. Finbarr Barry Flood (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. Ivan Foletti, MA, Docteur es Lettres, Docent in Church History
Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: prof. Ivan Foletti, MA, Docteur es Lettres, Docent in Church History
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The course will be held from May 13-17, each day from 10 do 12 and from 13 to 15. The perception of Islamic art as an aniconic art is long-established and pervasive. The idea was canonized in nineteenth-century Germany by the coining of the term Bilderverbot (lit. image prohibition) to denote an antipathy to image-making seen as characteristic of both Islam and Judaism. On the one hand, this assumed antipathy to figurative art in the Islamic world is often said to have inspired the development of characteristic art forms: calligraphy, geometry and vegetal ornament. On the other, it is generally assumed to have inspired historical acts of iconoclasm, even up to our own day. And yet, neither the material nor textual evidence supports the idea of a blanket ban on the production or consumption of certain kinds of images in Islam. Moreover, accounts of the relationship between Islam and image by those outside the tradition are characterized by striking inconsistencies and paradoxes – at various times, for example, Muslims have been depicted as both iconoclasts and idolaters. This lecture series will explore some of these paradoxes in a series of thematic lectures ranging from late antiquity to modernity. It will consider the kinds of materials that might serve to construct a history (or histories) of attitudes to images and image-making in the Islamic world, and the difficulties inherent in such a project. Drawing on a recent proliferation of publications on aniconism and iconoclasm more generally, it will discuss such topics as the ontological status of images, their social function and material (in)stability.
Literature
  • Finbarr Barry Flood, “Idol Breaking as Image Making in the ‘Islamic State’,” Religion and Society: Advances in Research (7, 2016), 116-138.
  • Priscilla Soucek, "Niẓāmī on Painters and Painting," in Richard Ettinghausen, ed., Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1972), 9-21.
  • Houari Touati, « Le régime des images figuratives dans la culture islamique médiévale, » in idem., ed., De la figuration humaine au portrait dans l’art islamique (Leiden, 2015), 1-30.
  • S.H. Griffith "Christians, Muslims and the Image of the One God: Iconophilia and Iconophobia in the World of Islam in Umayyad and Early Abbasid Times," in Die Welt der Götterbilder, edited by B. Groneberg, et al. New York 2007, 347-380
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
The course is taught: in blocks.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
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