São Paulo – The São Paulo Sacred Art Museum is offering the course “Art and Islamic Civilization: the Arab Empire”, from February 16th to April 5th, in the city of São Paulo. The classes will take place on Tuesdays and will be given by Plinio Freire Gomes, who has a master’s degree in History at São Paulo University (USP).
The course will cover the main features of art in Islam, showing the artistic manifestations in the Arab world from before the advent of religion up to the interaction occurred with the conquering of the Iberian Peninsula. The professor lived for six years in Damascus, Syria, and now teaches Art History in such places as the Art Museum of São Paulo (Masp) and Casa do Saber (House of Knowledge).
“The topic of each class is a city that was an important cultural center within the development of the Islamic civilization”, explains Gomes. Thus, the student will get to learn about the Islam’s artistic and social development in different time periods, cities and regions, such as Petra, Jordan, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Damascus, Syria, Baghdad, Iraq, Cairo, Egypt, Al-Qayrawan (Kairouan), Tunisia, Al-Andalus, current Andalusia, Spain, and Marrakesh, Morocco.
According to Gomes, the Islamic art has a series of aesthetics elements that make for easy recognition of it, such as the non-representation of people of other living things. “People say that it’s forbidden to depict images, but it’s just not true. What is forbidden is to depict the figure of the prophet and his family”, says the professor.
Gomes says that the absence of figures wasn’t an option by the Islamic artists, but that it follows the precept of the Islamic culture that tangible things are only appearances and that the artist is seeking to depict the essence, therefore, making use of the geometrical art, made of pure forms.
“When we see an arabesque, it’s saturating, it even has a hypnotic effect. But that is a language, it wants to say something. The shapes are telling a story, it isn’t ornamental”, says Gomes. In the course, according to him, the students will learn how to understand these elements. “They are symbols that want to be decoded because they say specific things”, he points out.
Gomes emphasizes, however, that in the 8th century, during the construction of the great Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, Byzantine artisans were hired to do the place’s decoration, in which were used figurative shapes. The geometrical shapes took over the temple’s decoration gradually, he says.
In that period, says the professor, it was also common to find images of human figures in the Umayyad palaces. “Later, it faded out”, says Gomes, explaining that the figurative art started to lose ground to religious art, in which there were no figures representation. “Sacred art was more articulated, more expressive from the aesthetic point of view”, he says.
Outside the architectural field, however, images didn’t disappear from art in the Arab countries. According to Gomes, in book illustration, “the figurative element is omnipresent”. As aforementioned, only the representation of the prophet Mohammed is forbidden. According to Gomes, this prohibition was established “so not to create an idolatry of him (the prophet)”.
The historian explains that in images representing the story of the prophet in which there is a crowd, Mohammed is always the figure with the face covered. “As a human being, he can’t be idolized”, he says, reminding that, according to the Islam, only God should be adored.
Among the most representative dates for the evolution of the Islamic art, Gomes points out the year 711, when the expansion of the Islam of the Iberian Peninsula occurred and also when Arabs conquered part of India. The arrival of Islam in countries of Berber culture and language, such as Morocco, also had a strong impact in the work of Islamic artists.
Course Art and Islamic Civilization: the Arab Empire
Date: From February 16th to April 5th, on Tuesdays
Time: From 3PM to 5:15 PM
Place: São Paulo Sacred Art Museum
Address: Avenida Tiradentes, 676 – Luz – Metro Tiradentes
Price: R$385 (USD 95.12) –Limited openings
Registrations via email: mfatima@museuartesacra.org.br
Information: (11) 5627-5393
The course’s full program is available at www.museuartesacra.org.br/pt/acontece
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
