Dan Alexis E.

Lim Section UV

2015-13188 6 November, 2017

It was interesting learning about Islamic art. In general, there is always something

defining about each art style. one could also find many similarities between different art

style. From my perspective, if I could put it in shorter words, my view of Islamic at is that

it's something diverse but limited. There was so much to Islamic art, but its religious

forms have more impact.

I learned a lot from how the religion greatly influences their art. I am a Roman

Catholic, but I developed atheistic views as I grew older, therefore I chose not to get

involved in devoting myself to some spiritual life. That however did not affect how I want

to learn about religions, because there so many things one can learn from them,

regardless if you believe them or not. There is clearly a certain border between Catholic

art and Islamic art. The way I see it, Catholic art is very much similar to how Roman art

is made, but with context of the ways of the catholic church, its history, and heavily relies

on the representation of popular figures of that religion such as Jesus Christ or the Virgin

Mary with realistic paintings or sculptures to tell the story. The Islamic art, or the

religious part of it, is completely opposite of that. They have more similarities to Egyptian

art, and I like to think that it's more simplistic due to the rules they have placed. Many

people of Islam believed that the concept of God relies on the Word in the Qur’an. Their

God is the words themselves and that any forms of figurative representation of this god

is forbidden as it signifies competition against the one and only Creator, and would also

lead to idol worship. So artists literally take these words from the Qur'an and make them

as beautiful as possible, because that's how they believe how divine Allah is to them,
and I greatly appreciate that perspective. Personally, I love calligraphy as an art form

because artists can express meaning by writing the words with different strokes. That's

something I wished to see in Catholic art. I could see their point of view against

figurative representations in religious settings. In Catholic art, grand sculptures of Jesus,

Virgin Mary, the saints and others were used so that believers could pray to them.

Personally, what piques my interest the most is that most of the art of Islam is based

on geometry. They use this as compensation for avoiding sculptures of human beings or

paintings of the like. I like how they give so much importance to shapes, repetition,

symmetry, and mathematics in their art. Even the calligraphy has some mathematical

basis to them. The process seems so simple but if you look at the bigger picture, the

final product is just as intricate, depicting the beauty in the concept of infinity and divine.

Truly, Islam art really is something. Aside from the beauty it presents through its

calligraphy and arabesque-style art, it knows how to leave a certain feeling in me. I can't

describe what it is, but that feeling can't be sensed in other forms of art I have

encountered so far.