Course: FAH 395 FINAL ESSAY. A Karkhana Album. Visual Arts Essay

A Karkhana Album
Name: JiayunCui
Instructor’s name: Prof. RubaKana’an
Course: FAH 395
November 26th, 2019
In composing the album, the artistic compositions are based on the subject, content and period where the work was undertaken. The works of important practitioners is often found in more than one album where contextualization of the albums necessitated the inclusion of such works even as patrons and collectors influenced what appeared in the album, this partly depended on the artists and availability of the works. In Mughal courtly production, paintings were more likely to be commissioned than other art works, and paintings from the era are also found in different albums. In the album, there is focus on calligraphy, illumination and paintings to reflect he works of different artists and calligraphers.
The first assignment focused on the different works of art from the Chester Beatty Library highlighting how different artists interpreted the world and what they chose to depict. In the image “the Abbasid Caliph Ma’mun at the Hamman by Mughal Emperor Akbar” in 1529, there were gradual changes in Islamic art where more figures were shown and there is distance between the images more than was shown in previous images. different empires promoted art and calligraphy still retained an important place in art This artwork contrasts with European such as Knight, Death and the Devil by Albert Dürer that was 1513 engraving where the German artists focuses on naturalism surfaces and there is depiction of a Christian knight is one of God’s soldiers.
Arabic writing moves horizontally from right to left with interruptions only at the end of the words or where these final letters are presented, and different scripts have been used. the Kufic script that was an angular script arose in the late 7th century, while naskh, thuluth, muhaqqaq, rayhan, twaqi’ and riqa’ emerged as proportional calligraphy scripts. Nasta'liq, Diwani emerged from the 15th century and were preferred by Persians and the Ottoman Empire respectively. Albums including woks on calligraphy, paintings and drawings reflect the history and artistic practices, where Arabic calligraphy is an important art form that was closely tied to Islam.Arabic calligraphy learners practiced over a long period of time and experimented how to place different letters indifferent positions and to organize writing on pages. The album includes the paintings and calligraphy work to reflect the different subject matter and similarities in artistic production approaches.[Maryam Ekhtiar, How To Read Islamic Calligraphy. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), 28-29.] [David J. Roxburgh, "“THE EYE IS FAVORED FOR SEEING THE WRITING’S FORM”: ON THE SENSUAL AND THE SENSUOUS IN ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY", Muqarnas Online 25, no. 1 (2008), 278] [Ibid, 279.]
The second assignment explores two Albums (muraqqa‘) from the on-line collection and the albums were found at Khalili Collections for Album of Muraqqa‘at- MSS 609 Iran, and the Shah Jahan Album is the Metropolitan Museum of Art (met museum). The assignment was relevant to understand the artistic techniques of album page-making n different e...