VART 249 - Arts of the Islamic World

CR: 3
The Islamic world inspired a tremendous range of artistic works of arts, with masterpieces in painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, ivory, metalwork, and illuminated manuscripts. It also covered a very large geographical spread, reaching from Spain to Afghanistan. This class will cover the materials from these regions over the course of nearly 1,000 years, from the foundation of Islam in the 7th century to the 17th century with the two last Islamic empires, the Ottoman and the Safavid. Lectures will consider the various ways that works of art were defined and employed within Islamic cultures, and will discuss the special identity of the arts produced by and for Muslim societies, considering the balance between the geometric and the figural, the sacred and the secular.