The Muslim ban on iconography means they can never produce true art. They are crippled by being limited to advanced and elaborate decorating.
Without statuary and representational art, they can produce pretty things but can never touch the beautiful and sublime.
I don't know, that mosque looks pretty fucking beautiful to me
Statuary is literally a dead art form outside of state-sponsored civic monuments and representational art is both 1)not any more inherently valuable than symbolic, geometrical or abstract art and 2) idolatry.
can muslims produce good memes?
Ahmadinejad and MemeriTV screencaps have been pretty dank
>outside of state-sponsored civic monuments
it was always like that lol
Pretty much. Statues go hand-in-hand with civic cult, which is why they were so widespread in Greece and Rome and any nation that aspired to be like them.
Their calligraphy and mosque decorating is pretty, calming, and promotes contemplation of the divine I guess. But for Europeans it's also sterile, autistic and alien.
Biology is the root, culture is the flower. They have their thing and it doesn't speak to us.
It's not art.
All Muslims should be exterminated.
Something that's pretty, calming, and promotes divine contemplation is sterile, autistic, and alien to Europe? If anything it's the most similar to European tastes, and it's Hindu and Sinic austerity that's the most alien considering how Islamic architecture is heavily influenced by Byzantine architecture.
>Without statuary and representational art, they can produce pretty things but can never touch the beautiful and sublime.
>posts a picture of a mosque that is both beautiful and sublime
what did he mean by this?
the greeks actually weren't that big on free standing statues, they much preferred reliefs
>Stained glass windows and vaulted arches
>Alien for Europeans
There's a reason why so many mosques easily became churches and vice versa with just a few touch ups and renovations.
The only reason you see them so much is because all the woodblock art has desintegrated
those are cheaper options. Just because the majority of people don't drive a rolls royce doesn't mean they don't want one.
> geometry and simmetry are bad
Geometry and symmatry are all muzzie art has. It is literally just elaborate versions of the doodles you used to make in the margins of your notebook when you were bored in school.
I guess that means I have a stronger cultural connection to nameless Muslim tile setters than Michelangelo then huh.
I think both churches and mosques can be pretty beautiful. It's those fucking Chink and Jap temples that look like something between a public bathroom and a warehouse.
Are you just pretending to be retarded?
What about Persian miniatures?
That's beautiful but its of course Iranian. Almost every good thing about Islam came from pre-existing Persian culture and later Persian-Muslim contributions. Very little is originates from ethnic Arabs except perhaps the Arabic language which ill concede is great.
>Thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of non-Arab (Persian) descent... They invented rules of (Arabic) grammar...[60] great jurists were Persians... only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, "If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"... The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them... as was the case with all crafts...
>Arabs dominate only of the plains, because they are, by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption.
>... they will keep despoiling and raiding and conquering with ease until their people are defeated, then imitate them with mutual conflict and political decline, until their civilization is destroyed. And Allah is capable of their creation, and He is the One, the Victorious, and there is no other lord than Him.
>It is noteworthy how civilization always collapsed in places the Arabs took over and conquered, and how such settlements were depopulated and the (very) earth there turned into something that was no (longer) earth. The Yemen where (the Arabs) live is in ruins, except for a few cities. Persian civilization in the Arab 'Iraq is likewise completely ruined. The same applies to contemporary Syria.
>Furthermore, as we have stated before,147 it is the nature of (the Arabs) not only to appropriate the possessions of other people but, beyond that, to refrain from exercising any (power of) arbitration among them and to fail to keep them from (fighting) each other.
I think it is safe to think of it as the work of Islam, not just as the work of persians.
Muhammed galvanised the Arab people into spreading their new religion not just through the Middle East, but through much of Asia, Africa and Europe.
In doing so they didn't just pick up manuscripts from Egypt, ideas from Greece, silks from China and a number system from India: they synthesised and modifed, and, given they were treating new converts as their brothers, it was not a specifically "Arab" thing.
Islamic art > Pre-Renaissance christian art.
muh 2d
>to Europeans it's alien
You think?
Are the Celts Crypto-Muslims? Should they be exterminated too?
I will concede that Arabic as a lingua franca and Islam as common worldview facilitated an efficient scholarly network. Nevertheless, the fact that a hugely disproportionate amount of the actual work was done by Persians shouldn't be ignored. In fact, I've heard it called the "Persian Golden Age" by specialists like richard frye.
irfan habib:
>“[T]his particular phase in Islamic history was marked predominantly by the Mu’tazilite school of philosophy, which was based on freethinking and rationalism. It was an ecumenical setting for science, where savants of nearly all creeds and origins worked towards a common purpose. And this was not something new, it was a long established pre-Islamic tradition in the Near East, where translation of scientific and philosophical texts from Greek to Syriac took place….“
My personal theory is that the Arabic language and Islamic culture initially facilitated much learning. As time went on though, cultural Arabization and behavioral patterns slowly crept in (cousin marriage, tribalism, etc...) after that initial boom. Its not Islam that screwed over the middle east; it was the arabization that came with it. Although Persians today still reject arab identity, I'm unsure as to how "arabized" they are culturally.
>I think it is safe to think of it as the work of Islam, not just as the work of persians.
And the quote about Persian contributions is from Ibn Khaldun, not me. Try this, look up several Islamic contributors during this age. More often than not, they will be Persian.
>The organization of the Caliphates was based on the Persian Sassanian system of bureaucracy and government.
>Most Islamic architecture is influenced by Persian architecture.
>Most Muslim intellectuals were Persian
>Islamic Garden = Persian Garden
>Islamic Carpet = Persian Carpet
Like I said, almost beautiful element of Islamic culture is ultimately Persian in origin.
>The Muslim ban on iconography means they can never produce true art. They are crippled by being limited to advanced and elaborate decorating.
>All Muslims are Wahhabis.
Strict adherence to God's commands produces a different kind of art.
Plus geometry is a reflective microcosm of the greater universe.
OR
Muslims are subhuman savages who have no capability to experience or even imagine true beauty, which is why they destroy everything good and beautiful everywhere they go.
"The Tortoise Trainer", by the Turkish painter and archaeologist Osman Hamdi Bey.
"Two Musician Girls", by the same artist.
A man reciting the Kuran.
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>He thinks grotesque gaudiness is beautiful.
Literally just elaborate decorating. Not art.
Fun fact: the depicted mosque is a work of the 20th century and was designed by Western architects. Stained glass isn't tradionally a feature of Islamic architecture
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Has a systematic method behind it, yep it's art.
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>completed in 1888
>Production of coloured glass in west Asia has existed since the 8th century.
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Awesome
Catastrophe
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The problem with calling it either Arab or Persian is that the actual culture of the period was Arab-Persian, an imperial fusion culture that originated simultaneously in Syria, Arab/Persian Iraqs, and Khorasan from a mixed population. When these authors speak disparagingly of Arabs, they mean specifically the Bedouin, but will go on to claim descent from an Arabian tribe half the time.
It's best not to think of it as an ethnicity in this time period. Being Arab by the 9th century onward was more like being a Latin who may have Roman, Celtic, or Germanic ancestry but reads in Latin and identifies with a broader Roman culture.
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So is this an architecture thread now?
Christianity bans idolatry too
Be sure not to confuse Christianity and Catholicism
Catholics aren't Christian
Both of you can't spell symmetry
Most of beauty to the human eye has to do with abstraction, contrast, and symmetry. Islamic geometric designs follow all of this. While it lacks the faces the human brain loves so damned much is imagines random objects as such, it is a beauty without real-life comparison. Only humans could create something such as those thousands of perfect diamonds in every color imaginable in one place. While making a human out of marble is an amazing and beautiful feat, it is still trying to reach (and maybe give a bit of gratuitous proportions to) an every day object.
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they are either
-being crippled by their religion so they're being unable to produce art at their maximum
-descerneding the standard art "tools" necessary to make "true" art and they literally phased out, being able to make true art without having to imply some of our typical concepts in it
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>>>/reddit/
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Isn't this a wonderful world we live in, where there is so much variation, so much beauty to be found and to be made?
Palestinian television has created countless Shlomo memes.
I am Maliki Sunni and last I checked if I draw Muhammed I will probably be lynched to death.
Go to Google Images and search for Islamic Architecture or Islamic Decorations, you uncultured pig-eating son a bitch.
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The Irish? Yes
>Pig eating
Damn right, you goatfucking dunecoon. Mecca will be glassed and all of you parasitical inbred retarded savages will be exterminated.
This is Trump's America now, faggot.
dont triangulate, the fact still remains that ethnic Persians did almost everything.
>triangulate
?
In any case, that's not strictly speaking true. Many were Arab-Persians, as in those who came from mixed families where settled Arabs intermarried with local Iranian and Mesopotamian nobility. They took Arabized names traced back to these settled tribes. This is why almost all of the notable figures of the golden age came from regions which had originally settled large Arab populations - the Jazira, Basra, Khorasan, and Andalusia, while regions like southern Iran or the Caspian region that did not see that same settlement did not produce the same caliber of individuals.
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>it's a Veeky Forums talks about art thread
Don't listen to these degenerates, many idols in Arabia.
Nice meme, but you do raise a valid point. Many people assume the Middle East was completely iconoclastic when in fact they simply didn't like representative art in sacred spaces. They had no trouble with depicting humans and animals in private and secular state buildings like palaces. There are even accounts of automata, such as a giant horse and rider in Baghdad that supposedly turned to face the direction of greatest threat to the city. Many of these unfortunately did not survive the repeated sackings of the age, which happened to target palaces more than austere religious buildings in the first place.