Lecture: Beyond the “Bilderverbot” – From Tactile Piety to Floral Figures in the Arts of Islam

On the occasion of the special exhibition «In the Name of the Image»

The idea that Islam has promoted specific attitudes to figurative art is widespread and pervasive, encapsulated in the notion of an Islamic “Bilderverbot”. As a result, it is often assumed that pious Muslims of the medieval and early modern period hadonly two possible options regarding engagement with figurative art: to abstain, or to indulge in ways that transgressed assumed religious taboos. This lecture attempts to sketch a middle ground between complete acceptance and total rejection that has been obscured by the dominant “all or nothing” perception of the historical relationbetween Islam and image. This lost middle ground is manifest in physical traces of reception – marks of devotion, censure, or erasure - that hint at selective engagements with figurative imagery by the pious. But it is also exemplified by a remarkable range of experiments with producing figurative imagery in modified forms in order to reconcile a desire or need for figurative imagery with a concern for conformity to certain pious strictures.

Speaker: Professor Finbarr Barry Flood, Director at Silsila: Center for Material Histories, New York, Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University
Door opening: 30 minutes before the event starts
Space limited

Series of lectures on the occasion of the special exhibition «In the Name of the Image»:

• Mi. 2.3.2022: Das jüdische «Bilderverbot» und das künstlerische Schaffen des Judentums in Antike und Moderne (DE)
• Mi. 9.3.2022: Rietberg-Talk: Wir Bildermacher (DE)
• Mi. 16.3.2022: Beyond the “Bilderverbot” – From Tactile Piety to Floral Figures in the Arts of Islam (EN)
• Do. 24.3.2022: Bilderflut und «Bildersturm» in der arabischen Welt (19.–21. Jh.) (DE)
• Mi. 6.4.2022: Bilder im Kult: Objekte im Ritual und die Bilderfrage im lateinischen Westen (DE)
• Mi. 20.4.2022: Seeing is Believing is Seeing: Über Wirklichkeit und ihre Abbildung im digitalen Zeitalter (DE)
• Mi. 27.4.2022: The Prophet as a “Sacred Spring”: Late Ottoman Hilye Bottles (EN, online)
• Do. 12.5.2022: The European "Bilderverbot": Jews, Muslims and the Prohibition that Never Was (EN)