THE STUDY OF PAINTING AND THE ARTS OF THE BOOK

Abstract

essays in this volume are revised versions of papers first presented at the conference, The Making and Reception of Painting in the Pre-Modern Islamic World, held in May 1999 under the auspices of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. Over two days, the speakers presented new research on various topics about painting and the arts of the book in the pre-modern Islamic world. Despite the breadth suggested by the conference's title, the majority of papers reflect a critical mass of scholarship that has grown up around painting and the arts of the book in Iran, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and within a literary milieu that was predominantly Persian, in the so-called classical period of Persian painting, spanning the fourteenth through the sixteenth century. Some of the essays dealt with earlier periods or expanded the geographical boundaries to offer perspectives on the art tradition in its formation and in its later reception as a cultural construct. division of this volume's essays into four categories reflects the organization of the conference.' As defined at the conference's inception, the categories encompass, first, the materials and methods used for book production; second, the conception and realization of painting; third, theories of painting and aesthetics; and fourth, later responses to paintings and books. By providing a thematic framework, these categories allowed a critical discussion of the physical and written sources that extended beyond the specifics of individual papers to question methods used to study manuscript painting and generally accepted scholarly paradigms and the foundations of arguments. critical insights of the four discussants-Yves Porter, Marianna Shreve Simpson, Irene Winter, and Gillru Necipoglu-greatly added to the debate. From its formative stages, Persian painting in both manuscripts and single-sheet images quickly emerged as a principal subject of scholarly interest, alongside the equally developed categories of architecture, ceramics, and carpets. Significant space was allocated to painting and the arts of the book in the first exhibitions of this century; indeed, some of them displayed painting to the exclusion of all other arts.2 But it has been quite a long time since a conference was devoted exclusively to painting and the arts of the book, and this r quires some comment. Chang s in the scholarship on Islamic art and architecture, as well as in pedagogy, have been reflected in the conf rences of recent years. A few-for example, a recent conference on the exhibition and collection of Islamic art,3 and another about pre-modern Islamic palaces4--were organized along thematic lines. Conferences on the art and architecture of the