Arts of Allusion

Exploring analogies between portable objects and monumental architecture, this innovative and beautifully-written book offers new perspectives on ornament, poetics, and visual perception in the medieval Islamic world. It combines formal analysis with the study of primary sources to argue convincingly for the need to acknowledge intersections between artisanal activity and contemporary intellectual currents as intrinsic to the making of Islamic art. -- Finbarr Barry Flood, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the Humanities and Director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories, New York University This is a groundbreaking study on the reciprocities between the plastic arts and monumental architecture of the medieval Middle East. Margaret Graves is to be congratulated for having revealed the multiple and variable meanings of the allusive relationships between objects and buildings in the Islamic world. By showing how philosophy, theology, science and literature were integrated into the design, production, and perception of the artworks presented, she offers an important contribution to Islamic intellectual, social, and art history. -- Gerhard Jaritz, Professor of Medieval Studies, Central European University At last, the book that this subject most needs: an intelligent and learned study which takes our understanding of the Islamic art object far beyond the usual simplistic 'symbolic interpretation' of their ornament. To truly experience mediaeval objects we have to engage with all the physical and intellectual processes of making: not just what they 'look like', but how they engage with all the senses, and how it is above all in reference to architecture, to literature and to philosophy that their power and meaning are to be found. -- Oliver Watson, I.M. Pei Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, Oxford University