Visual edification
Andrew Lambirth
Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands The Hermitage Rooms, Somerset House, Courtauld Institute of Art, until 22 August
AiFtiother successful exhibition at the ermitage Rooms. Hot on the heels of Caspar David Friedrich and Rubens
comes this choice sampling of Islamic art, loaned from the State Hermitage Museum and the Khalili Collection. The Hermitage has a significant Islamic collection, illuminating the historical relationship between Islam and Russia, while the scholar and benefactor Professor Nasser Khalili, who was born in Iran in 1945 and settled in Britain in 1978, possesses a remarkable collection of some 20,000 Islamic items. The two collections complement each other superbly in this small exhibition. Islamic art is such a vast subject that a show of 133 exhibits can only give a flavour of the kind of art one might expect to see in a larger survey, but it certainly whets the appetite for more.
One of the great assumptions we in the West make about Islamic art is that it has to be non-representational, because the depiction of any living being, or of God in human form, is considered idolatrous. Certainly this was the rule for religious art, for the objects and ornaments that enhanced the mosques, which after all were public places, the main administrative outlets of a region, apt for the dissemination of political directives as well as for maintaining the purity of the word of God. But it was not the case with palace art, for rulers who considered they were God's representatives on earth were sufficiently self-confident to exempt themselves from the prohibition on living things. And as palaces were less obviously public places than mosques, figurative art would be less likely to cause an outcry there. So a species of double standard grew up: lyrical 'abstraction' in the mosques, really mostly foliate or floral ornament or complex decorative calligraphy, and an extreme figural mannerism in the palaces — objects and paintings which depicted living beings in a refined way, avoiding the tragic and disagreeable.
The first room of the exhibition plunges us into the beauty of divine art. Here is a wonderful wall of tiles, embroidery and texts. A group of three early-14th-century tiles from Iran, in stone paste, reliefcarved and partly stained blue, with overglaze decoration in lustre, glow decorative
ly with the Koranic inscriptions they carry. The Qur'ans themselves are especially impressive. Taking a plain oblong format and employing ink on vellum, the scribes responsible have made objects of great beauty out of a pattern of ascenders and horizontal lines. The scripts are often deliberately archaic, known as Kufic, allowing an extraordinarily sophisticated degree of pattern-making. Look at the magnificent gold writing on the indigostained vellum of the 10th-century Qur'an from North Africa or Spain. I cannot read the script, but I can appreciate the intensely honed formal and visual skills on show here. Likewise in a large vertical-format Qur'an, with its red vocalisation points and contrasting thick and thin pen strokes. These could be modern abstract compositions.
In another medium is the 18th-century embroidery which simply repeats the word Allah across the width of its blue silk panel. There are more exquisite Qur'ans, prayer rugs and examples of the glass mosque lamps decorated with enamel and gilding which were favourite gifts of the faithful. The next gallery displays overtly figurative art: palace tableware in silver and parcel-gilt, or in glazed stone paste like the turquoise cockerel-headed ewer. I was particularly taken by a delicate silver tray from South-Eastern Anatolia or North Syria, dating to the 12th century, and decorated with gryphons and dragons. Here also is the famous Bobrinsky bucket, dating to 1163, made of brass or bronze and inlaid with silver and copper. More dragons and human torsos feature in its decoration, with a band of horsemen. It is accompanied by the slightly richer-looking (because of its gilding) Fauld bucket, a similar vessel, the principal use of which was as a soap kettle for the bath.
A corridor of miniatures (which will be changed halfway through the exhibition, for conservation reasons) include a languid reclining youth and a Dervish with a rosary who bears a remarkable resemblance to the late lamented Dr David Brown, Modern British art collector and specialist. Flower designs, perhaps for textiles, and the scene of a feast in a spring landscape, all lovely greens and purples, round off this charming interlude. In the remaining two galleries are gathered copes and anklets, sabres and hangings, of superb craftsmanship and design. Look at the Mughal Indian box and cover, dated c.1635, made from gold with 103 Columbian emeralds embellishing it. Or the costly 10th-century, rock-crystal lamp from Mesopotamia.
This exhibition traverses a huge time span — from the 8th to the 19th century — in a matter of a few sparsely hung rooms. Yet the show has a freshness and coherence which is often moving, at other times deeply foreign. (The styles of portraiture, for instance, are not always particularly sympathetic to Western eyes.) Conflicting impulses towards austerity and luxury here intermingle for our visual edification.
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