The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam By Irene A. Bierman, ed. (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press in association with the Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, 2005. 172 pages.)

Abstract

This volume is the fifteenth publication in the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Conference
Papers series, each of which contains the lecture presented by the
recipient of the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award for excellence in Islamic
studies along with contributions by other scholars dedicated to a special
topic. For the first time ever, in 1996 the award was presented to an art historian,
Oleg Grabar, who chose “The Experience of Islamic Art on the
Margins of Islam” as the theme of the fifteenth conference. 

The crossing of boundaries by artifacts, decorative elements, or figural
subjects from one cultural hemisphere into another, as well as the perception
of the “inherited” monuments of other cultures, is a broad and still largely
unexplored field. While studies following the wandering of motifs are quite
numerous, the reasons for their selection and tacit integration into new contexts,
along with their reshaping and revaluation, are not dealt with very
often. Each of the five articles directs our attention to a particular border area
of Islamic culture during a particular period, ranging from the Middle Ages
to the present. Each contribution also approaches the question of how
(regardless of the way) acquired Islamic objects and monuments were
dealt with from a specific angle. The result is a small and very diverse collection
of experiences that surely does not offer an overview of all responses
to Islamic art. However, it convincingly demonstrates how revealing research
on the cultural margins can be ...