Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires-New Studies in Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Art and Culture ed. by Kishwar Rizvi

Abstract

Reviewed by: Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires-New Studies in Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Art and Culture ed. by Kishwar Rizvi Cleo Cantone Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires-New Studies in Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Art and Culture, Kishwar Rizvi (Editor), Leiden & Boston: Bill, Vol. 9 Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World, 2018, pp. 222. isbn: 9789004340473 The deliberate dynastic focus of the volume is justified by virtue of the comparable availability of artists' genealogies from the imperial ateliers of the Mughals, Ottomans and Safavids. Accompanying an emerging field in art historical scholarship interested in the perception and reception of art, Affect, Emotion and Subjectivity turns our attention to "the motivations behind the great works of art and architecture, the ways in which they were funded, and the roles they played within their broader political and religious contexts" (p.1). In fact the perhaps unusual use of the word 'affect' in the context of art criticism, is intended in the psychological sense of an "emotion or desire influencing behaviour", and according to Rizvi, "a physical or mental response to artistic and cultural productions that are themselves manifestations of personal, social, and communal experiences" (pp.4-5). It would therefore appear that we can have a 'performative' response to art, or rather, that the act of art appreciation is not solely a visual one: the viewer's response to a work of art participates in creating a "visual exegesis" of the work of art (p.3). The reference to 'Early Modern' Muslim Empires in the title is not accidental: the period under consideration, 15th to 18th centuries, presents a Renaissance taking place in tandem with the European Renaissance where artists were similarly concerned with the construction and representation of identity. Although not the focus of this volume, the interactions between Europe and the Muslim world in this period1 would have been worthy of a cursory mention given the mutual influences in the material and visual arts (notably portraiture, the theme of Emine Fetvaci's third chapter in the volume). Opening with Susan Babaie's [End Page 245] chapter, the author points out that recent studies in the era of 'global histories' do not necessarily highlight anything but the centrality of Europe and that it is time, therefore, to consider the different nature of "Islamic art", its intestinal relationship with the written word, its complex relationship with representational art and the alternative notions of architectural signatures. Babaie extends this argument to include the regional nomenclature given to artists, architects, artisans, craftsmen, etc signalling that their signatures or lack of them on their work "did not allow social space for 'individuality'" and that this in turn foments a sense of 'backwardness' in relation to "European modernity and its concept of the human as master of personhood" (p.25). Rather than signifying the professional status of the individual, a signature transmitted a 'fluidity in self-definition' as artisans were trained in different media. By including the names of the architect/builder of a mosque, caravanserai or shrine, argues Babaie, alongside that of their patron, indicates not only their rise to prominence but also promoted a 'complex conceptual agenda' in the context of a Safavid Shi'a notion of kingship. Furthermore, the fact that the name of the architect appears in the epigraphic band but not that of the calligrapher, at first glance, seems perplexing given the prominent role of calligraphic art in Muslim culture. One possibility is the 'fluidity' of craftsmanship and the other is the credit given to the 'designer' of the epigraphic programme who was, in fact, also the architect. Nevertheless, by virtue of the lack of a "biographical corpus" of information on individual architects, precludes the emergence of 'architect-personalities' (with the rare exceptions of Sinan in Ottoman Turkey) yet by 'signing' next to the name of the patron/ruler on prominent parts of their creations conferred a new and 'inescapable' visibility: from Qavam al-Din Shirazi's early 15th century mosque in Mashhad, to Mirza Kamal al-Din's early 16th century shrine in Isfahan and down to the 17th century elsewhere in Iran, the architect...