What is "Islamic" art?: between religion and perception

This book began as an exploration of the image in Islam. It ended up exploring how one might relinquish concepts like the image and art to conceive of perception through an Islam, often overshadowed by politics, essential to a sense of emotive knowledge that emerges through engagement with the arts. Instead of defining the image, art, or religion, this book asks: What is art if the primary sensory organ is neither eyes nor ears, but the heart? Where are the boundaries between the senses as we take in the world? What is art if dreams and visions are as real as materiality? How can art make-present, and not just re-present?

"Revealing what is 'Islamic' in Islamic art, Shaw explores the perception of arts, including painting, music, and geometry through the discursive sphere of historical Islam including the Qur'an, Hadith, Sufism, ancient philosophy, and poetry. Emphasis on the experience of reception over the context of production enables a new approach, not only to Islam and its arts, but also as a decolonizing model for global approaches to art history. Shaw combines a concise introduction to Islamic intellectual history with a critique of the modern, secular, and European premises of disciplinary art history. Her meticulous interpretations of intertextual themes span antique philosophies, core religious and theological texts, and prominent prose and poetry in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu that circulated across regions of Islamic hegemony from the eleventh century to the colonial and post-colonial contexts of the modern Middle East." --

Introduction : from Islamic art to perceptual culture -- The Islamic image -- Seeing with the ear -- The insufficient image -- Seeing with the heart -- Seeing through the mirror -- Deceiving deception -- The transcendent image -- The transgressive image -- Mimetic geometries -- Perspectives on perspective -- Conclusion : out of perspective.