Thu 14 Mar, 2019 Persian and Islamic Arts, Research Forum, Research Seminars

From Persepolis to Isfahan: interrogating Safavid ‘antiqu...

This paper asks whether and how material appropriations of pre-Islamic antiquity occurred in 16th to 17th-century Iran. We look for new perspectives on the spoliation and creative visioning of imperial Achaemenid (6th to 4th centuries BCE) and Sassanian (3rd to 7th centuries CE) ruins in the wake of Shah Abbas…

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Mon 26 Nov, 2018 Persian and Islamic Arts, Research Seminars

What’s it worth? European Art at the Persian Court

Early-modern European accounts of the Safavid Court agree on one thing: Persians loved splendour, as much, if not more than their European counterparts. A splendid art collection was the ultimate mark of distinction in the West, so some European visitors to Persia were alarmed to find that upwardly-mobile Persians seemed…

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Wed 15 Jun, 2016 Persian and Islamic Arts

The Arts & Science in Early Islamic Spain

There is a symbiotic relationship between design, art and visual culture, and the exact sciences, which is attested in early scientific objects from al-Andalus and in medieval Arabic texts. In this talk I explore the objects, spaces, and figures that illuminate this relationship, focusing on ‘Abbas Ibn Firnas (d. ca.…

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Thu 28 Apr, 2016 Persian and Islamic Arts

The Kaaba of New York, and the Point behind Painting

This talk concerns the Internet-based outcry that occurred on 11.10.06, when it was reported by the U.S.-based Middle East Media Research Institute, that an Islamist website had, the day before, alleged that Apple Inc.’s under-construction flagship storefront in New York resembled the Kaaba of Mecca and was thus intended to…

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Thu 18 Feb, 2016 Persian and Islamic Arts

Who’s Hiding Here? Artists and their Signatures in ...

Various Persian manuscripts dating from the 15th and 16th centuries contain illustrations and illuminations signed by their artists in minute script. Often these all-but-invisible signatures are tucked within the frames of illuminated title pieces or worked into a composition’s architectural or landscape setting. Wherever their placement, they were deliberated positioned…

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Mon 16 Nov, 2015 Persian and Islamic Arts, Research Forum, Research Seminars

In Defence and Devotion: Affective Responses to Images of...

While a number of studies have tackled the question of iconoclasm in Islamic traditions, paintings of the Prophet Muhammad reveal that the practice of viewing and responding to images in Islamic traditions are more varied and complex than previously thought. Pre-modern pictorial evidence increasingly suggests that there existed a range…

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