Hopscotch: Snapshots of Art Books on Calligraphy, Islam, and Text
Islamic Art, Luca Mozzati (Prestel) $85
Covering fourteen centuries of Islamic art, this aptly-and-authoritatively titled monolith of a book is slightly larger in dimension than a vinyl record, though its 320 pages, containing over 400 full-color images, make it far heavier. The book’s art is arranged geographically, covering three continents. Accompanied by essays by on topics from architecture to geometric forms to specific historical periods dominated by , the art objects featured include paintings, miniatures, ceramics, textiles, carpets, metal works, and calligraphy.
The Aura of Alif, ed. Jürgen Wasim Frembgen (Prestel) $60
Munich-based Wasim Frembgen offers an alif to ya introduction to the art of Islamic calligraphy in one of the most interesting coffee table books of late 2010. Adorned itself with a transparent dust-jacket band, the book features a wide range of calligraphy-adorned everyday objects, including ceramics, leather, metal, stone, textiles, and wood. My favorite images feature heavily stylized, almost-Escherian calligraphy, like Figure 25, of an Amulet Scroll with Qur’an from Iran or North India (Lucknow), from the 18th -19th century. Jamal J. Elias’ essay “Truck Calligraphy in Pakistan” is another favorite, featuring brightly colored Bedfords with Islamic calligraphy-adorned crowns.
Ten Poems from Hafez, Jila Peacock (Sylph Editions) £30
Produced for an exhibit at the British Museum in 2006, master
calligrapher Jila Peacock’s ten calligraphy animals fully reproduce her own translations of Hafez’ poems in the two-dimensional forms of their respective namesake animals. The flexibility of the Arabic alphabet, when in Peacock’s capable hands, allow for a sophistication of word art that makes John Hollander’s “Swan and Shadow” look amateurish at best. Like all Sylph Editions titles, characterized by works in which text and image interact with each other, Ten Poems has been elegantly produced, “care given equally both to content and to form.”
Art, Word and Image: 2000 Years of Visual/Textual Interaction, John Dixon Hunt, David Lomas, & Michael Corris (Reaktion Books, distr. U Chicago P) $55
Hands down the most exhaustive work yet published on the subject, Hunt, Lomas, and Corris begin their study in Classical Greece, move through Medieval and Renaissance Art, and end digital media-saturated present day. The book is quite literary, with Joseph Viscomi’s chapter on Blake’s illuminated work, Jeremy Alder’s on Paul Klee’s poem/paintings, and Michael White’s on Kurt Schwitters. With over 300 images, most in full color, the book itself is something of an anomaly: neither fully coffee table art book or art history text book, but a combination of the former’s beauty and the latter’s utility.
DS
