Blog 6: Islamic Art

When I found out about this assignment, I am going to be honest, I wasn't very excited. I am currently in a Humanities class and had to attend the Wier exhibit being displayed in there now for an assignment. As much as I may have said that I loved the exhibit in the paper, I truly just found it to be boring. Even though I am still not an avid fan of paintings, I did find the Islamic exhibit more enjoyable in comparison to the Wier exhibit.

I feel like a lot of people don't care much for these kinds of art works because of the negative connotation that has been attached to the word "Islam". For me, the media has kind of engrained the term "radical Islam" into my brain, to the point that whenever I hear the word Islam I think the word radical as well. At first thought, the exhibit simply feels unappealing. After thinking about it for a while I decided that I needed to throw out any negativity I had because I would not get a powerful aesthetic experience if I went in with these notions. Because of this, I enjoyed the exhibit very much and gained some cultural knowledge in the process.

I honestly can say that I do not know much about Islamic culture because there are so many things that just confused me about the artwork. Obviously, it wasn't based on Christianity. Christianity is not a dominant religion in Islam so it would make sense as to why there is hardly anything that could be interpreted as a Christian symbol. Christian art is very much based on very strong, bible based stories; whereas Islamic art seemed to be religious, but in a more subtle away. Just by the things that they are wearing and doing, you can tell that there is religious context, but in a more every day life kind of way. We shouldn't need such strong symbols to remind us of who we are and what we stand for all the time. Going back to the basics of life is just another way of reminding us of the simplistic nature of a religious person, and in turn, making us more spiritual people. Islamic art accomplished this for me, even though I am not too familiar with the religion or culture.

I have always thought that the simpler something it is, the more capability that it has to inspire people in multiple different ways. While the paintings physically weren't very simple looking for the most part, the message was.