Category Archives: Art

Picturing the ka‘ba

Architecture, Lithographs, Saudi Arabia


Although few Western non-Muslim travelers penetrated the forbidden zone of the ka‘ba in Mecca, illustrations proliferated by the mid-18th century. The image above was taken from the 1857 edition of Sale’s translation of the Qur’an (London: W. Tegg & Co) and reproduced in Henry J. Van-Lennep’s Bible Lands: Their Modern Customs and Manners Illustrative of Scripture (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875). The two most famous travelers to make surreptitious trips to Mecca were Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1814 and Richard Burton in 1853.

Street Art in Sanaa

"Arab Spring", Contemporary Art, Photography, Yemen


Pasted photography on wall, Sana’a 2012; photograph by Jameel Subay

From Street Politics to Street Art in Yemen
By Anahi Alviso-Marino, Nafas Art Magazine, July 2013

In January 2011, demonstrations inspired by the contentious mobilizations taking place in Tunisia and Egypt started to be carried out in Yemen. Gradually, anti-governmental demonstrators came to modify old repertoires of contention, such as the demonstration or the sit-in, into what became a permanent camp and a new space of contention in Sana’a named “Change Square.” Among the self-proclaimed “revolutionary youth” of a sit-in that lasted until April 2013 were a number of visual artists. Their presence in the Square contributed in giving political demands an artistic expression, alongside using artistic practices as a means of contention. Contributing to the symbolic aspects of this mobilization, artistic practices developed inside and outside the tents. As a continuation of street politics acquired in the Square, certain visual artists incorporated dissent, transgression, and civil disobedience in their artistic practices. Among such cases, street art techniques such as graffiti, free writing, mural painting or stenciling participated throughout 2011 in reproducing political slogans that aimed to overthrow Ali Abd Allah Saleh’s regime.

In 2012 this contentious street art underwent certain changes. Continue reading Street Art in Sanaa →

An Ottoman Scribe

Orientalist Art, Ottoman Empire, Turkey


A Seated Scribe, 1479-80, Attributed to Gentile Bellini, Italian, 1429–1507

The painting above is located in the Gardner Art Museum in Boston. Here is the description posted on their website:

Curious visitors who lift the cover from the unassuming Seated Scribe will be richly rewarded by what they see: an intimate painting in miniature of a young member of the Ottoman court bent intently over a writing pad. Dressed in a navy velvet caftan woven with gold, the elegant youth wears bright silks at his arms and neck. The generous folds of his turban hold in place a ribbed, red taj – headgear worn in the court milieu of Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (1432–1481), who nurtured a passionate interest in portraiture and particularly in western traditions of the genre.

Striking for its gleaming tones and stunning delicacy of line, the Seated Scribe is spectacular not only visually, but also in historiographic terms. The painting’s original dimensions have been trimmed, and a later hand has taken care not only to embellish the image, but also to frame, mount, and, ultimately, historicize it. An added inscription in Persian records the image as the “work of Ibn Muezzin who was a famous painter among the Franks.” Scholars have never doubted that a European or “Frankish” artist painted the Seated Scribe. The pressing issue of late has been who, precisely? Whether the Venetian Gentile Bellini, a renowned portraitist sent to Istanbul in 1479, or Costanzo da Ferrara, a court artist at Naples who also sojourned at the Porte, the specificity of detail in the Seated Scribe leaves little doubt that the artist drew from life.

Once the debate over attribution subsides, the more intriguing issue to raise is whether one can call the work a portrait. Might western pictorial realism have been the point of the exercise? A pronounced crease just above the youth’s elbow suggests the image was initially handled as a loose-leaf, autonomous work of art before being mounted (and in this way preserved) in a sixteenth-century album. Like other western-style works Mehmed II commissioned or obtained during his sultanate, the Seated Scribe may have been used as a pedagogic tool for rising artists of the Ottoman royal workshop. A slightly later copy of the miniature (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington) certainly affirms its value for Ottoman and Persian artists as a pictorial model worthy of imitation. If the pictured youth is not a scribe but an artist, shown in the act of drawing while he himself is being drawn according to Western pictorial practices, the Seated Scribe taught by poignant example – it sits indeed at the nexus of Ottoman art and European traditions of representation.

Source: Susan Spinale, “A Seated Scribe,” in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 97.

Tabsir Redux: Mocha Musings #4: Morocco to Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Coffee, India, Lithographs, Morocco, Orientalist Images


Area: 219,000 sq. mi
Population: 2,750,000
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Scenes: Morocco Leather; City of Morocco; Street Scene in Morocco

previous post I began a series on coffee advertising cards with Middle Eastern themes. One of the most colorful collections is that provided by the Arbuckle Coffee Company. In my great, great aunt’s album there were several Middle Eastern and North African nations represented, but she did not have all the cards. Here is a final potpourri from Arbuckle’s 1889 series, starting with Morocco above. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Mocha Musings #4: Morocco to Afghanistan →

Tabsir Redux: Mocha Musings #3: Turkey and Persia

Coffee, Iran, Lithographs, Orientalist Images, Turkey


Area: 63,800 sq. mi
Population: 4,490,000
Government: Absolute Despotism
Scenes: Merchants Buying Carpets

previous post I began a series on coffee advertising cards with Middle Eastern themes. One of the most colorful collections is that provided by the Arbuckle Coffee Company. In my great, great aunt’s album there were several Middle Eastern and North African nations represented, but from a different series than in the Arbuckle’s 1889 series. The 1889 version of Turkey is shown above, but my aunt’s version of Turkey is decidedly more imaginative:

Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Mocha Musings #3: Turkey and Persia →

Tabsir Redux: Mocha Musings #2: Egypt

Archaeology and Antiquities, Coffee, Egypt, Lithographs, Orientalist Images

previous post I began a series on coffee advertising cards with Middle Eastern themes. One of the most colorful collections is that provided by the Arbuckle Coffee Company. In my great, great aunt’s album there is a card depicting ancient Egypt, which is shown above.

In the 1889 series depicting the nations of the world, Egypt also appears:


Area: 11,000 sq. mi
Population: 6,806,381
Government: Turkish Vice Royalty
Scenes: Date Palm; The Obelisk of Luxor; Cotton Barges on the Nile

[Tabsir Redux is a reposting of earlier posts on the blog, since memories are fickle and some things deserve a second viewing.this post was originally made on March 6, 2010]

The Egyptian Blue Lotus

Egypt, Lithographs, Plants, Travel

Few names are more revered in the early history of botany than Linnaeus, whose taxonomic system systematized the effective ordering of plants and animals according to sexual reproduction. Although he himself did not doubt that certain genera were created by the God of Genesis, his system could easily be adapted after Darwin introduced a mechanism that challenged the previous dogma of “fixity of species” since Eden. There were numerous artists who contributed to drawing the vast amount of new plants and animals that Linnaeus began to classify. One of my favorite works is by the physician Robert John Thornton, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who in 1807 published his New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus.


Robert John Thornton

Thanks to archive.org, this beautiful volume can be read online. This is a delightful read, when it is not possible to visit a real garden. The volume is dedicated to the British queen, and begins with the following metaphor:

In Eastern Language high and mighty Potentates are compared to lofty Trees which afford Food and Shade to the sun-burnt Traveller. In the more temperate Regions of the Earth, Kings and Princes are contemplated as the Sun, which sheds his benign Radiance everywhere, inspiring each Object with new Life and Refreshment: by the Concurrence, therefore, of all Nations, the great Attribute of Sovereignty is Protection-, from conferring of which by Your Most Gracious Majesty, the Science of Botany in Great Britain chiefly owes its present Advancement…

The text consists of charts explaining botanical terms and a series of illustrations and basic descriptions of flowers. I present here the pages dealing with the blue Egyptian water-lily (Nymphaea coreulia), with the exquisite image of the plant.

Continue reading The Egyptian Blue Lotus →

Art not for art’s sake

Gender and Sexuality, Orientalist Art, Orientalist Images


Gérôme’s “The Slave Market,” left; Inanna in Damascus by Sundus Abdul Hadi, Iraqi artist, right

Before Edward Said revitalized the term “Orientalism” in his seminal 1978 book of the same title, the major use of the term was for a genre of Western art, centering on exotic depictions of an imagined or at least embellished beyond the real “Orient.” The Gérôme painting of “The Snake Charmer” of the paperback version perfectly captured the prejudicial element that Said rightly exposed in much of the literature and academic writing about the Middle East and Islam. Such a biased representation cannot be glossed as mere “art for art’s sake,” if indeed art is ever really only for “art’s sake.” I recently came across a painting by Sundus Abdul Hadi, an Iraqi female artist, that responds aesthetically to another famous Orientalist painting by Gérôme; these are the two images juxtaposed above. There is nothing inaccurate in either painting. Selling female slaves was a lucrative trade throughout the Islamic era and current sexcapades by wealthy Arab sheikhs are well known.

The response painting is a brilliant counter to Gérôme. Both highlight the exploitation of women as sex slaves, either in the older legal and literal sense or the modern illegal but still practiced nonsense. It is possible to look at either picture and focus on the naked body of a woman on display. This is the voyeur’s gaze, which is often the prime motive for creating as well as viewing such a work of art. But when placed side by side with the modern response painting, the very fact that the woman is still only an object for purchase overrides a one-directional voyeurism. This is not simply a scene of the imagination, but a reality that has outlived the 19th century Orientalist genre and indeed is hardly unique to a genre exposing the bodies of Oriental women. Continue reading Art not for art’s sake →