Islamic Arts 23 Islamic Arts Diary by Lucien de Guise


TURKISH DELIGHT IN DIVERSITY Tere is a lot of calligraphy going on at the moment, especially in Saudi Arabia with the Jeddah Biennale, which closes in May. Tere is also a great sense of loss as the Islamic world’s pre-eminent calligrapher died recently at the age of 88. Hasan Çelebi really made his mark as a traditionalist in a field that has come to be dominated by ‘fine artists’ more than the old-fashioned practitioners of Islamic calligraphy. His history is very much tied to a Turkey that many have forgotten. Apart from having a new name,


Türkiye was once the setting for numerous military coups. Not that Hasan Çelebi was ever caught up in that world. In his early twenties he had decided to be a calligrapher – along with being an imam and a muezzin. He was taught by masters such as Hamid Aytaç and Kemal Batanay. One of his biggest breaks came in 1983, when he was commissioned with the responsibility of restoring the inscriptions on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. He went on to craft inscriptions for numerous other mosques and buildings around the world, including the Netherlands, South Africa, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan.


status because of this title. If I have served this nation and its culture, it was my duty as a citizen’. Other tributes paid to the later


A household name across the Islamic world, Turkish master calligrapher Hasan Celebi has died at the age of 88


Tere were also many exhibitions


held in diverse locations. It was as a teacher that he will probably be most fondly remembered. Tis might become complicated later as he shared his name with another calligrapher. Te earlier Hasan Çelebi worked during a true golden age. Te reign of Suleiman the Magnificent was the high point of the Ottomans when they were the leaders of the Islamic world. Te later Çelebi was globally recognised as ‘Chief of Calligraphers’ in 2019. He accepted with characteristic humility: ‘I am grateful for the public’s appreciation. However, I do not view myself as someone who has attained a special


Çelebi were sometimes in a form that would be totally incomprehensible to his predecessor. Five years ago, renowned street artist Muhammed Emin Türkmen transformed Çelebi’s calligraphy of the 40th verse of Surah Al-Naml into a mural on a 130-square-metre wall in Trabzon. Türkmen completed the piece in two and a half days. It took 20 kilos of paint to achieve this. Te legacy of Turkish calligraphers


through the ages is still a prime component in the Islamic-art auctions that are taking place soon in London. Te Ottoman legacy that is less apparent is a contribution to Orientalist art. Although this market has grown considerably in recent years, there is still only one Turkish artist who has made a huge impression. Western Europe and, to a smaller extent, the US were the big names in this genre during its heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Out of the thousands of Orientalist painters whose work filled the drawing rooms of affluent collectors, the Ottoman achiever was Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910). His paintings don’t often appear at auction, and none has ever outdone the sensation caused by his ‘Young Woman Reading’, which sold for almost £7 million at Bonhams in 2019. Bonhams have another Hamdi


A Reception in the Harem by John Frederick Lewis, signed and dated ‘J F Lewis RA/1873’, watercolour and bodycolour, 76.2 x 106.7 cm


HIDDEN LONDON


In the absence of any major new Islamic-art exhibitions happening since the magnificent Great Mughals opened at the V&A, there are at least some tantalising smaller showings. Te most surprising of these is the newest exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Siena: Te Rise of Painting 1300-1350 has more Christian paintings than I have seen for a long time, accompanied by some small but splendid textiles from the Islamic world. Te mainly silk weavings are on occasion related to Mongol conquerors, but all are from Muslim courts of Iran, Central Asia, and Spain. Similar textiles appear in the highly Christian religious paintings, which is a relatively well-known phenomenon but rarely highlighted as prominently as at this exhibition. Te most striking example is from 14th-century Nasrid Spain, with colours as rich as they could possibly


be after 700 years. Te complex geometry of the designs impressed artists such as Duccio sufficiently to give them a place of honour in his paintings of the Madonna and Child. Te exhibition ends on 22 June. At the other extreme of opulence


is a small but captivating display in the Islamic-world gallery of the British Museum. War Rugs: Afghanistan’s Knotted History also ends in June and has become especially topical with militarism becoming the top geopolitical issue of the day. Looking back to 1979, Russian troops crossed the border into Afghanistan and began a grim war that lasted 10 years. Afghan weavers started to include imagery of modern warfare in the carpets and rugs they have been producing for centuries. Birds were replaced by military aircraft. Guns took the place of flowers. Demons fought alongside tanks. Tis fusion of


Bey work for sale by this Ottoman multi-tasker who combined politics with creating one of the finest Ottoman museums and producing a steady stream of paintings. Te Hearth is one of the few to reach the market and is an early example of his classic Orientalist style. He took up painting after developing depression from his career as a city mayor. Dated to 1879, it is a very early example of the harem scenes that Hamdi Bey would return to often. It was an environment he understood, unlike every other Orientalist artist. He avoided the typical errors and fantasies that came with this setting. In Te Hearth, Osman Hamdi experimented with elements that


traditional crafts with the recording of contemporary history created a new type of visual expression: Afghan war rugs. Te British Museum has an


extensive collection, shown alongside a selection of objects that explore Afghanistan’s complex past and turbulent present. Initially bought by military personnel, journalists, and diplomatic and humanitarian staff working in the region, war rugs are now collected and exhibited worldwide. Tey continue to be produced to this day to reflect Afghanistan’s changing political landscape. Te range on display is informative and very well presented, alongside the clothing worn by Hamid Karzai. Te only thing that is missing from the comprehensive storyline is the notorious 9/11 Twin Towers version of the rugs, which might touch a raw nerve, especially among the British Museum’s many American visitors.


ASIAN ART | APRIL 2025


The Hearth by Osman Hamdi Bey, signed and dated ‘O Hamdi Bey 1879’ (upper left), oil on canvas, 52.5 x 41 cm


Inspiration for Siena’s painters came from textiles such as this crimson velvet fragment from 13th-14th century Iran, The Metropolitan Museum of Art


would later become his trademark. As the authority – and a descendant of the artist – Edhem Elder writes: ‘Te setting is a carefully studied, but imaginary, Ottoman interior with a magnificent fireplace similar in form to those that can still be admired today in the harem of Topkapı Palace today, while the tiles are freely borrowed from the mosque of Rüstem Pasha. Te typically Oriental niches on either side of the hearth, the shelves on a muqarnas cornice, and the hexagonal floor tiles complete this architectural ensemble. A variety of objects and textiles break the austerity of the decor: on the left shelf, a large İznik plate stands next to a tulip vase (laledan); on the right, a coffeepot (kahvedan); inside the niche on the left, an inkwell (hokka) and a reed pen (kalem); a few carpets and cushions with Caucasian motifs (Kafkas) bring additional warmth and colour to the scene. Perhaps the most interesting decorative element is the wooden calligraphic panel hanging to the left of the fireplace. Behind a rather banal and predictable aspect, it reveals an exciting private joke, as the calligraphy spells out the artist’s name – Osman Hamdi – in an intricate Kufic script, crowned by “1295” the date of the Hegira corresponding to 1879’. Hamdi Bey enjoyed semi-hidden signatures, seldom spotted by his clientele who were almost invariably not Ottomans. At the same Bonhams auction is a very different type of Orientalist


artist. John Frederick Lewis (1804- 1876) was a semi-reclusive Englishman who tried as hard to be ‘an Oriental’ as Hamdi Bey tried to be an internationalist – marrying two French women. Lewis tried to live as an Ottoman pasha in Egypt for ten years but ended up moving to the outskirts of London afterwards. His views of the Ottoman empire were as removed from reality as Hamdi Bey’s were rooted in it. Lewis became one of England’s most prominent 19th-century painters, convincing his eager clientele that his work was something seen from the ‘inside’. Tis was especially true after William Makepeace Tackeray visited Lewis and wrote of the artist’s ‘dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life’ in that city, and his enviable existence as a ‚languid Lotus-eater’. Te watercolour at Bonhams has


not been exhibited publicly for over 60 years and is a larger version of a celebrated oil painting by Lewis at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Te level of additional detail contained in the watercolour version may be explained by Lewis’s notorious dissatisfaction with the financial rewards of watercolour in England; he called it an ‘unremunerative’ medium. He had also found that by mixing watercolour pigments with Chinese white, they could rival the look of oils. Tis, in addition to his precise and laborious brushstrokes, might persuade potential patrons that a watercolour was far more than an informal study or quick preliminary sketch. Seen together, the paintings by Lewis and Hamdi Bey show how vital the Ottoman world was to Orientalist artists, and how important the details of their interiors were. Te only thing missing is calligraphy.


Afghan war rug marking the exit of Russian troops in 1989, The British Museum


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