On Modern Arab Art

This is a fascinating book on a subject too rarely discussed: Arab art. We often hear “Islamic art,” but Shabout argues we shouldn’t map the two concepts onto each other. “Islamic art” as a concept has long roots, and is often described as primarily the decorative arts and calligraphy, given the proscriptions against figural representation. That discussion is contentious, and I tend to side with those who argue the prohibition wasn’t meant to stop mimetic depiction wholesale but to prevent idolatry — most pre-Islamic Arabs would have encountered this sort of art as pagan idols. It matters, because Islamic art has never really lacked figural representation: sift through it and you’ll find plenty, largely in Persianate or Shiʿa spaces. Still, the bulk of the Arab world doesn’t seem to have had long-standing figural traditions, though recent scholarship has begun to push back, especially regarding the Maghrib.

Arab art as something distinct from Islamic art was, Shabout argues, galvanized through Arabs’ contact with Orientalists and their time in Europe; many early Arab artists were self-taught in forms like painting, and Arab art was largely generated in response to Western art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Then, in the middle third of the twentieth century, the Western avant-garde turned toward abstraction, which corresponded closely with the traditional Islamic arts, and many Arab artists drew on old Islamic techniques — calligraphy especially, and geometric form. Iraq was an important site of this creativity, while groups like the Casablanca School in Morocco did important work drawing on artisanat and the North African past.

The most interesting material is in the second half. In the first, Shabout works fairly theoretically through what “Arab art” is and means; in the second, she mobilizes a series of artists, largely Iraqi, which opens up far more interesting discussion of how the art developed. I wish the book were longer — with introduction and conclusion it runs to about 150 pages — but Shabout was very early to the debate over “Arab art,” and I’m sure much has been published in the two decades since (it came out in 2007, though while reading I’d assumed it was only a decade old). It’s well worth reading for anyone interested in art history, especially in the Global South.