(WCA) Art Gallery
Art Gallery
This review has been designed to help you narrow down the most important works of art covered in this Module. It is NOT meant be a replacement for reading the text, but to serve as a supplement. You are responsible for keeping up with the reading in your text as well as provided supplemental readings/websites.
The religious arts of West and Central Asia are united by the traditions of the region: Buddhism and Islam. Historical cultures of West and Central Asia reside in a vast area that includes the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant, Anatolia, Greater Iran, Central Asia, Inner Asia, and Himalayan Asia. These regions have had shifting political boundaries throughout their histories and include lands associated with the former Soviet Union and modern China. They form the heart of the ancient Silk Route that connected the Greco-Roman world with China and India.
Buddhism
Figural art is a primary form of visual communication in Buddhist communities in Central Asia, as it is across Asia. Figural imagery is used to depict Buddhas and various attendants, teachers, practitioners, and deities. This is an iconic culture, and the presence of invoked figural imagery is important to Buddhist practices. These figures may be venerated in shrine settings, may inhabit conceptual landscapes and palaces of ideal Buddhist worlds, may be found in mandalas, or may be depicted in paintings.
Islam
- Islamic art that is created for religious purposes does not contain figural imagery. Mosque architecture is decorated with non-figural imagery, including calligraphy, geometric, and vegetal forms. Manuscripts or objects containing sacred texts may contain calligraphy, illumination, or geometric and vegetal decoration, but do not contain figural imagery.
- Figural art is an important subject of Islamic art in West and Central Asia. Islamic cultures draw a clear distinction between sacred and secular contexts, and figural imagery abounds in secular works, such as decorative arts and manuscript painting, which often depict sociological types, such as hunters or courtiers, or narrative subjects, such as the ancient kings and heroes of the Persian Shahnama. Religious ideas or content are sometimes carried over into secular art forms and may be illustrated when they become the subject of courtly or popular literature and poetry. For example, the prophet Moses might be illustrated in a manuscript of the Khamsa of Nizami. He would not be illustrated, however, in a manuscript of the holy Qur'an.
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is an important religious practice in Islam and Buddhism and is a key focus of several monuments and artworks in West and Central Asia including the following: the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam; the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; and the Buddha sculpture Jowo Rinpoche, considered the most sacred image in Tibet.
Painting
Painting in West and Central Asia usually took three forms: wall painting, manuscript painting, and in the Himalayan regions, the painting of thangkas (large paintings on cloth) of Buddhist deities and mandalas. Calligraphy was a prominent art form, particularly in Islamic art in West Asia where beautiful forms were created to transmit sacred texts. Calligraphy is found on architecture, decorative arts objects, and ceramic tiles, as well as in manuscripts written on paper, cloth, or vellum.
Metalwork and Textiles
Metalwork and metallurgy flourished in West and Central Asia in the creation of metal plaques, vessels, arms, armor and tack, sculpture, and decorative objects of all kinds. Islamic metalwork is widely regarded as one of the finest decorative art forms of the medieval world. Metal sculpture was an important art form in Central Asian and Himalayan Buddhist art, which created Buddhist figures in bronze, copper, brass and silver, and often ornamented them with gilding, metal inlay, and paint. Metal artworks were created through various processes including casting, beating, chasing, inlaying, and embossing. Textile forms from this region include silk-tapestry weaving, silk velvets, and wool and silk carpets.
Review the West and Central Asia works in the Art Gallery presentation below.
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