Islamic art is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of its past life to be reborn as rich and alive as before. The renaissance is the collective attempts of innovative work by British artists such as Vaseem Mohammed who combine classical and post-modernist styles to appeal to the audience of today.

Starting off with no artistic background or experience Vaseem has come a long way to become the artist he is now. Vaseem left his work in the retail industry in search of something which would be more fulfilling. “I come from a retail management background but I got so bored with it so I left. I ended up doing a foundation course which then opened up so much for me. I spent one year on my own basically just painting and experimenting.” Vaseem embarked on a year long course at Tower Hamlets College where he focused on graphic design to teach him the essentials.

Vaseem’s individuality came through at the early stages of his teaching when he refused to conform to the standard and style asked of him. “When I was doing my art and design course my teachers couldn’t help me. I was very stubborn, they used to say you can’t do that and I never used to listen to them.” Vaseem felt there had been a void in his teaching due to his interest in Islamic art and culture. “I needed someone to guide me and there was this amazing Sudanese man who was a 70-year-old master calligrapher, who guided me.” His guide was Osman Waqiallah, a revered artist whose work in the Vatican. Osman got him the art of calligraphy which is now a trademark of Vaseem’s paintings.

Starting out Vaseem’s work was very much experimental and an individual, striking style has emerged. Vaseem has two distinct styles of which one uses calligraphy as the heart of the piece juxtaposed on top of modernist, abstract style work. In his own words Vaseem describes the calligraphy as a representation of Islam’s stability and presence in an ever-changing world.

Vaseem draws from his childhood experiences of living in the East end of London in the Seventies. “That’s what inspires me; I like it, dilapidation, paint peeling off and things like that. In my parents house, which was over a 100 years old I used to peel at the wall paper, as children do, and there was decades of wallpaper there and subconsciously I started using that in my work.”

The surrounding work is done in layers using acrylic and gouache producing different textures and forms. “I keep stripping the layers of paint and eventually there comes some sort of an order. It is symbolic of the environment and the state of the world today. There is so much beauty in the world, Allah created it at the end of the day, and then there is mans destruction of it, whereas the calligraphy always stays intact like the Qur’an. The text is always the same and that is to show that Qur’an is always there whereas the world is ever-changing and evolving.”

 The art of calligraphy was favoured in Islam to figural images to convey its core convictions as Islamic leaders saw the use of figural arts as possible idolatry. Islam’s theocracy then looked to calligraphy for religious expression. Vaseem made a conscious decision when embarking on his career to abstain from using animate images in his work in accordance with this tradition. He found that rather than restricting him in his works this opened up avenues for artistic expression by urging him to experiment with abstract styles. Calligraphy has built a reputation over the centuries as a symbol representing power and beauty and is revered by Muslims worldwide and appreciated by non-Muslims alike. The combination of artistry and scholarship has resulted in a sublime reputation which combines divine and moral representations. The use of calligraphy in Vaseem’s work adds an abstract beauty which draws the eye to the heart of the painting and gives it a soul and meaning.

The calligraphy used is varied and each painting has a complimentary style and design to fit in with the ethos of the piece. Kufic calligraphy has been in used in both the traditional and ornamental styles along with the more elaborate Thuluth and oriental Sini styles. The style is chosen depending on the theme of the piece and for its aesthetic beauty. In each case the relationship between the inscriptions and the disorder of paint produces a profound effect on the viewers urging them to question and understand the complexities of the piece and its message.

The path to art was intertwined with the path to Islam. “I got into Islam at the same time as I got into art. I guess one thing leads to another. It was more to do with the Islamic heritage and the arts as opposed to the religious side, that came later.” His work has a political message along with a religious one and is representative of world events occurring at the time. Vaseem uses his work to introduce people to Islam and make it more open to a wider audience. “I work firstly to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Also it is another window introducing people to Islam. As well as stuff that is happening at the moment and in the past, I’ve found it is a good way of attracting people and engaging them, in debate and discussion especially.”

Architecture is another distinct feature of Vaseem’s paintings. The walled cities painted incorporate the trademark domes, arches and intertwining alleyways that are a signature of Islamic architecture. The paintings are primarily inspired by a trip to Multan, a walled desert city in Pakistan. “There are a lot of saints and many monuments in Multan. These (the paintings) are views of the city. Its how light works with architecture. It’s my own interpretation and it’s just done, it’s not drawn out or anything. I carve these things out and use light and dark. It’s just trying to take manuscripts and putting them in different elements and contexts.”

The paintings share an expression of isolation and yet represent a global community. This is an expression of Vaseem’s own feelings of isolation both amongst the western and Islamic community. The walled cities are often mistaken for paintings of Morocco and other countries with Islamic heritage showing the unification of the architecture and Islam. Architecture in Islam tends to follow certain decorative principles which span all buildings and objects. The same ideas forms and designs recur across the Islamic world which prevail differences in art quality and execution of style explaining the familiarity of Vaseem’s paintings.

Initially Vaseem exhibited his work at Spitalfields market in the east end of London and eventually moved on to open his own gallery nearby. These days he works on commissions as well as private work. He has just finished a commission for an MBI international private jet which involved a set of complimentary paintings. He has also produced props for a forthcoming film called Redlight Runners. The film is being directed by Michael Madsen and the story involves the forgery of a ninth century Qur’an which Vaseem had to reproduce. This involved learning staining techniques to age the Qur’an and detailed study of calligraphy in that era resulting in a masterful replica.

Vaseem plans to travel further afield for inspiration and to exhibit his work. “My future plans are to go to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia to exhibit in a gallery called Zamzam gallery, one of the biggest galleries there. There is a client of mine who is going to take me over and I am hopefully going to do some work for the Saudi royal family.”

Vaseem is very introspective with his inspirations. He prefers to use experiences, emotions and situations which affect him personally than taking inspiration from other artists. “To be honest I don’t really look at much art, I just do my own thing, and I’ve always been like that. I actually refer to books but a lot of my stuff is kind of experimental.” Vaseem’s work is truly innovative and exciting and challenges traditional preconception of views and perspectives on Islamic culture.
Nadia Anwar 

 

    A little piece of Brit Art you can call your own by Hester Lacey

"Moselle" by Paul Ryan, paper pulp and pigment, from pounds 750, from London Contemporary Art Fair, 21-25 January, Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, London N1. 0171 359 3535

Lucy Fields, London Contemporary Art Fair: "We had 40,000 visitors to the fair last year and we were excited that more than half of them were under 45. So, you'll understand that there is a great following for contemporary art in London. We try to be as inclusive as possible, showing work for pounds 100 as well as pieces at the pounds 100,000 cut-off point. We have the Brit Art gallerists like Jay Jopling's White Cube and the Jibby Beanes of the business. But we like to think contemporary art is a broad church and you will find something for you. This year, the Contemporary Art Society are showcasing young artists not represented by galleries in 'Art futures'."

Who killed Cock Robin?" by Mat Collishaw, edition of 10, pounds 2,000, from Lisson Gallery, 52-54 Bell Street and 67 Lisson Street, London NW1. 0171 724 2739 Barry Barker, Lisson Gallery: "Clients come to an established gallery like Lisson because of the relationships we build up with the artists we represent. Mat Collishaw's work is in the 'Sensation' exhibition and he has featured in group shows. This is the first time a body of his new work is seen together as a solo London show. We've had many interested collectors who have followed Mat since his graduation. But we were conscious of a significant number of high-earning young professionals Mat has brought to the gallery. These people spend on contemporary art the way they would on a designer suit. But buying art isn't as capricious as buying Armani. Don't forget that Cool Britannia started with the art world then mutated into fashion." "Orange Box" light box by Tessa Hunkin, pounds 200 from Shop, 1a Princeton Street, London WC1. 0171 404 9249 Tessa Hunkin: "I am a partner in the Mosaic Workshop and most of my work is commissioned mosaic design for interiors. I was frustrated by only working in mosaic materials and wanted to produce pieces using materials like coloured glass and marble, mounted in boxes and back-lit with fairy lights. We opened Shop in October as a showcase for the mosaic mirrors and interiors pieces and my light boxes do have a relationship with the furniture on show. Shop is about lifestyle and contemporary art should be a part of your interior. I suppose selling in a shop environment demystifies the work and people feel comfortable buying in a multi-faceted arena." Screen-printed metal boxes by Jane Duncan, pounds 225 each from Places & Spaces, 30 Old Town, London SW4. 0171 498 0998 Nick Hannam of Places & Spaces: "We sell Fifties and Sixties interiors pieces. As soon as I saw Jane Duncan's work, I thought, 'This is going to work in Places & Spaces.' Out of the context of the shop, her work isn't retro, but she's caught the mood of the shop. But then again, good design - and good art - is timeless. Jane has sold incredibly well already and we're hounding her to give us more. I think people are attracted to Places & Spaces because it is open, light and modern. They don't immediately think of buying a piece of art because the emphasis isn't on art, it's on interiors. But somehow that's worked in Jane's favour. We like to think of her as the finishing touch to Places & Spaces." "Sea" by Sarah Frances, screen print, pounds 50, from Alternative Art, 47a Brushfield Street, London E1. 0171 375 0441 Marlene Dickson, Alternative Art: "The Alternative Art Market is held in Old Spitalfields market every Sunday to 21 December, showing the work of up to 25 artists each week. We want to bring art to the high street without compromising the quality. Spitalfields on a Sunday has a unique atmosphere. It's not as aggressive as Petticoat Lane, where the stallholders growl at you if you browse too long. It is the perfect place to buy contemporary art and you know you can pick up something for pounds 50 to pounds 1,000. We need to take the elitism out of buying art. That's why artists of ours like Vaseem Mohammed are showing work in the Whitechapel branch of Burger King - and he's sold three pieces already. I'm sure Cork Street galleries would turn their noses up at this kind of initiative, but so what?" "Leisure Lounge" by Seamus Nicolson. C-type print mounted on aluminium, edition of 10, pounds 800. From The Agency Contemporary Art Ltd, 35-40 Charlotte Road, London EC2. 0171 613 2080 Bea D'Souza, director, The Agency: "The message we want to get across is that contemporary art isn't as scary as people seem to think. Or as serious. Humour is a major element of Agency artists' work. I take it as a compliment to hear someone laughing with - not at - pieces in the Agency. The Agency focuses on concept-based contemporary art: video installations, photography and CD-ROM. Y mild version of Asquith's Venetia Stanley?) Beckett in my view gets near to the essence of Attlee, and does so in an easy, flowing narrative, which is on the whole well-written. Over the period covered by my 1948 book I respect his accuracy and endorse most of his judgements. After that he tends to see things through slightly more Bevanite spectacles than is my Gaitskellite habit. But as Attlee, with his natural tendency to seek a balance and to eschew joining any Labour Party tribe, was undoubtedly neither wholly Gaitskellite nor wholly Bevanite (although he voted for Gaitskell in the election following his own 1955 resignation as leader) that is hardly in the context a major sin. A possible criticism of Beckett is that his explanations of Attlee's thoughts are sometimes a little jumpy. He describes Attlee's mind as moving one way, and then records a sharp decision the other way. But this was very much the way in which his subject's mind did move, with the great virtue lying not in the quality of the analysis but in the sharpness of the decision. In this respect Attlee was like Truman, but not in many others. Truman was a Kansas City haberdasher who came through the murk of machine politics to be a nearly great President. Attlee was a very established member of the upper-middle classes, who in almost every aspect other than politics respected the values of that class. Mutatis mutandis he was in this way like Gladstone and Asquith. Perhaps, paradoxically, it is, on the form, the best recipe for being a major reforming Prime Minister .

Copyright 1997 Newspaper Publishing PLC
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

  

    Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Beauty is not enough

    Sensual, romantic, ecstatic; these are the traditions of Muslim art. What, asks Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, does this             mean in today's great clash of civilisations?

    Published: 06 October 2006

Last November, I joined a panel debate on the controversial withdrawal by Tate Britain of John Latham's God is Great (1990) from a retrospective of the artist's work at the gallery. The thin and intense Latham (now passed away) was livid: "Tate Britain has shown cowardice over this... It isn't even a gesture as strong as censorship, just a loss of nerve." They took the action, explained the Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar, "because of a particular social and political resonance."

To me and other Muslims, the work appears devout. Three Abrahamic texts shot through clear glass suggest that revealed religions can become rule-bound when real faith lies beyond words and images, pure and reflective as glass. Yet it was assumed by the gallery that Muslims are all volatile and unable to understand such art. The Muslim obscurantists who destroy our peace were given succour. Why no concern that fundamentalist Jews and Christians too might object to the "desecration" of their texts?

Fast-forward to today, and Tate Britain is poised to be embroiled in another kind of controversy. An "intervention" titled "East-West: objects between cultures" has been curated by the Renaissance supremo Lisa Jardine with Matthew Birchwood and Matthew Dimmock, both academic experts on historical Islamic ideas. Nice concept. A teeny accompanying booklet explains: "The variety of objects on display provides an insight into the relationship between societies sometimes considered distinct... Many of these artefacts have been formed and transformed between cultures."

The gallery tried to find curators who come from that space between cultures, but say they were unable to. One British Muslim writer dropped out due to work pressures. Shame, that. In the 21st century, British Muslims should have more real influence in the arts world.

That is perhaps a petty gripe. It is the display that is more dismaying. Spread across several rooms, objects and texts are placed as if for a children's treasure trail, only they stay lost. One example: a small painting of a reclining, apparently post-coital Iranian lady languidly looking at a dog drinking wine from a bowl. It supposedly connects with similar female images painted by Pre-Raphaelites. I don't get the point, I told Deuchar (someone I rate highly). The impact is slight, the timidity underwhelming. He enthusiastically defended the project for its "boldness" and "lightness of touch", and saw it as an amuse-bouche leading temptingly to the big British Orientalist exhibition scheduled for 2008.

Some Muslims, like Deuchar, find the intervention delightful, among them the academic Yahya Birt, the convert son of John Birt. A Muslim intern helping me to research this piece, the Oxford undergraduate Nussaibah Younis, went to see for herself. "The choice of objects was truly bizarre and without any coherent sense of continuation, progression or unity," she said. "The effect is one of jarring fragmentation. Rather than proving a sense of East meeting and complimenting the West, the very layout emphasised the chasm between them."

There have been successful (admittedly more ambitious) exhibitions on East-West encounters and on Islamic aesthetics that have charmed the public and overturned perceptions. The recent Word into Art at the British Museum showcased contemporary Middle Eastern artists who work creatively with the written word, some with transformative calligraphy and derivations, others who dare to go beyond the purely beautiful and turn ink on paper into protest.

The V&A did itself proud with Encounters: the meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800, and this museum now houses the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, a magical space paid for by an Arab businessman to project the entrancing face of our faith, he says. It is already doing much more than that.

Never has it been more important to open up the rivers of words, ideas, knowledge and beauty that have criss-crossed for centuries between the notional East and West. In his book Islam in Britain; 1558-1685, Nabil Matar wrote: "Muslims, through their Arab-Islamic legacy, were part of the religious, commercial and military self-definition of England." Not any longer, now that a new deadly global crusade is upon us. Many in the liberal intelligentsia have enlisted to fight for occidental values they feel are threatened by hoards of uncivilised Muslims. Last month, Martin Amis added yet another such elegant tirade about September 11 and his precious civilisation.

As the skies darken, some of us hope the arts can make the hard lines dissolve. Be wary, though, warns the writer Philip Hensher, of the paradigm of cultural wars and the emerging "redemptive narrative"; that "the sort of Islamic culture that ends in twisted metal and blood splattered across London façades is cancelled out by its ancestral beauty". Muslim art is not an apology, bail money, an excuse and an escape from the dreadful realities swirling around the world and our own heads. The game of compensatory politics is as perilous - Western policies may kill Muslims, but our politicians still admire their ancient mosques and intriguing, labyrinthine cities.

Yet, when zealots on both shores can only visualise a dehumanised them and enlightened us, Muslims, cowering between the armies of brutal obduracy, do seek solace in beauty. I was at the Jameel gallery on the very day of the aircraft bomb plot alert in August. Many other Muslims were there, too. Saul Bellow once said: "Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the middle of chaos." On that panicky Thursday, we sought that stillness. And hope. This is who we were, will be again.

The Spanish poet and dramatist Lorca said of the Moors: "An admirable civilisation with a delicacy unique in the world." Look at us today. Iran and Iraq were centres of Islamic arts and culture until vandals of the East and West destroyed both. Islamic countries are so cruel and chaotic that past glories can no longer waken the spirit there. They have extraordinary artists, but they are individual seekers of light in societies lost in pessimism and hungry for kitsch. In our own Muslim ghettos, philistinism and ignorance prevail. Navid Akhtar, a British Muslim architect and television producer, once explained why: "People when they moved here became disconnected from their living arts. Life was hard. They had little time or money left over. For young people like myself, carpets and various antique objects made by Muslims were for white purveyors at Liberty, not for us." Ironically, as the sense of doom descends over the future, many more Britons, both Muslims and non- Muslims, are engaging with Islamic high culture, past and present.

Talibanised Muslims want to burn the West. In that hated West, or because of it, a Muslim renaissance is breaking through, and has been for some time. (When the men in black turbans arrive they will come for us first - the writers and painters, singers and dancers who give Islam a good name.) To acknowledge this flowering and the intricate connections between Islam and Britain is almost a moral obligation for those of us who fear the consequences of an escalating war between us.

The Prince of Wales recently spoke of "the huge debt we in the West owe Islam, and I think it is a debt too often ignored and forgotten today". The debt goes the other way too, and is as easily forgotten.

The pity of it all is that the current UK-wide Festival of Muslim Cultures, which aims to remedy that, has been ignored by our media too busy chasing bearded, homicidal, fanatic Muslims. The last such Muslim cultural festival was in 1976. Then, the West was embroiled in the oil crisis and all Muslims were thought to be greedy sheikhs in menacing sunglasses.

The director of the current festival, the art critic Isabel Carlisle, passionately believes that "art is the last freedom, it is open and fluid, it is a world in which we can all connect. We want to foster a greater understanding of the Muslim world and open the cultural milieu to young Muslims." Laudable aims though they are - and they truly are - we need more profound, spiky conversations that dare to go beyond easy celebration.

I am uneasy about artistic diplomacy that insists that all art and cultural artefacts from Muslim cultures must be declared "excellent". Some is dross. Muslim art has never been as "pure" as some imagine. In 1908, Egypt opened a school of modern art. Surrealism, abstract expressionism and Cubism were embraced from Beirut to Tehran. One of my favourite paintings is Mother and Child by the Algerian Mohammed Issiakhem - a tribute to European images of the Madonna.

Ask the brilliant Saleem Arif Quadri who feeds his artistic soul, and he names Picasso, Matisse, Damien Hirst (whose work he once bought). Quadri painted 500 pieces inspired by Dante's "Inferno" (40 were bought for the government * * collection). Razia Malik (not her real name), a talented young artist who secretly paints convoluted nudes ("Don't tell my dad"), says she is totally inspired by Lucian Freud and Leonardo da Vinci.

The influences of the East on Europe are as strong. Edward Said's Orientalism saw only colonial exploitation, but Venice and Florence are filled with domes and squares, an infinite blue palette and other palpable influences of the Ottomans and Moors. Rembrandt collected and copied Mughal miniatures; Matisse studied them as he developed his own Modernist ideas. William Morris worshipped the old Ardabil Carpet now on show at the Jameel. Victorian potters copied Arabic and Persian designs in such quantities that they became a mark of quintessential Englishness. When and why was the East-West narrative shaped to fit Kipling's pessimistic proclamation that "never the twain shall meet"?

The art curator Hammas Nasser gets very impatient with rigid boundaries and the "them and us" discourse, which he says is "simplistic and tyrannical. Human beings generally, and artists most certainly, occupy more than one position, many identities. I don't think the Islamic/Western binary is useful."

The exclusion of this cross-fertilisation and of non-white sensibilities from the master narrative continues long after the colonialism that necessitated it. Understanding these complexities deepens appreciation. Rashid Rana is a remarkable artist, one of the contemporary Pakistani artists showing at the Manchester Gallery and at Asia House in London this month. In Rana's Three Veils, you gaze upon images of shrouded female faces in burqas, all beige but subtly different. That is from a distance; the composition is made up of tiny pictures, a modern version of a laborious old Persian technique of using thin brushes to build up an effect, later to become the pointillism perfected by Georges Seurat and others. The pictures, though, are pornographic images, symbolising parallel realities.

Rana is a man of as many identities as his work. "We live in a world in which there is a lot of interaction and exchange of information," he says. "But Western artists need to understand the context from which artists from the East are coming. In Pakistan, we study the context of Western artists. In art history books, there is restricted information about other cultures."

Sixteen years ago, the avant-garde artist Rasheed Araeen curated The Other Story for the Hayward Gallery. He asked then: "Is not the history of art still being written according to the Hegelian historical framework in which only the Western subject is privileged? And is not this privilege achieved by arbitrary removal of other cultures/peoples from the dynamics of cultural continuity?... [Art history] is the only discourse (unlike the discourse of literature and science) which protects its Western territory so rigidly that we find hardly any exceptions to its Eurocentric views."

Overstated and bombastic, yes, and times have changed - but not nearly as much as the art establishment likes to believe. Deuchar agrees that there have been "ruthless, subjective editings of the past" and that Tate Britain, displaying the official story of Britain, has tried to inject questions, to trip up the grand narrative. Looked at that way, the unobtrusive intervention of the East-West show makes absolute sense.

Britishness is expanding and shrinking at the same time. Just when you think you can describe its nature, it changes direction, turns hot or cold, closed or open, easy or confrontational. Gatekeepers are not nimble people at the best of times, but the present landscape of shifting shapes is making many nervous and uncomfortable. Yet they have the power to make or bury an artist. Muslim artists are embraced if they dissent from their traditions, or conform to the romantic fragrances and images of the East. As the art of those who have an Islamic connection becomes bolder, angrier, more political, yet never totally "Westernised", the lack of a parallel critical class becomes more evident and scandalous.

Talented artists in or of the Muslim world subvert conventions even when they appear to be conforming. Ali Omar Ermes is a great calligraphic painter whose work is often cutting. One triptych I love has three words, "No", "Yes" and "But" - his observations on the chicanery of leaders. Discontent creates an edgy spirit and art.

Vaseem Mohammed, from the East End of London, paints in a style that is both Modernist and Islamic. His pictures are broody, moonlit, still, promising danger round the corner. Suad Al-Attar, the British Iraqi painter, has moved from fabulous mythical dreams of old Babylon through ghostly memorials to her dead sister (killed when Clinton arranged for a few bombs to drop on Baghdad), to enormous canvases burning for Iraq.

Quadri, a Sufi, painted pictures of September 11 titled Sensual Songs of Sacred Spaces. Black skies filled with the ashes floating quietly down. The pictures never sold. This artist makes contemplative works pregnant with ideas, and plays with geometry and his take on gravity. These artists resist labels and boxes, confuse the art world.

The younger generation use their traditions to set up new vibrations. Mohammed Imran Qureshi, for example, paints in the style and size of Mughal miniatures - technically exact - but instead of doe-eyed queens he paints an effete young man in pink bell-bottoms, his pose suggesting ambiguous sexuality.

Hamara Abbas, born in Kuwait, has created an installation, a big floor-collage in Islamic geometric design made of paper notices warning "Please do not step". She says: "These are images of war, occupation and territory, saying don't enter our land." Asked if faith is embodied in her work, she replies: "I am quite religious, it is a part of me and informs my artwork." Rana reiterates the sentiments: "Religion is one part of my personality, yes, but my personality is made up of lots of different elements. I borrow from my cultural tradition and that has been influenced by religion. Religion is ingrained in my culture."

Raficq Abdullah, chair of the Festival of Muslim Cultures, believes this is the great divide: "We have forgotten the notion of sacredness in the Western world - with consumerism, globalisation and the secular state. Whereas in the Muslim world a sense of sacredness permeates all areas of the arts."

I have sat with Muslim artists drinking tea or illicit wine as they ponder whether that is true. And if so, why and when did Western art move from the soul to the senses? Is narcissistic art the only destination? Why can a Muslim artist not be judged as just an artist? And is there a place in the West for art for God's sake? Can European custodians of art ever really understand such work? The emerging renaissance of Muslim thought and art, like the European Renaissance, is porous and receptive, a precious thing when arms and men seem hell-bent on destroying all that connects us.

FIVE MASTERPIECES

THE ARDABIL CARPET
The carpet, 34ft by 17ft, was made in Persia in 1539. William Morris said it was of "singular perfection", and so it is; a floral centrepiece, symmetrical and vibrant, bursts out to scatter flowers and branches towards corners and borders that hold in the exuberance before it spills out. V&A, Jameel Gallery

OTTOMAN FOOTBATH
On this decorated footbath, dating from about 1545 and possibly used for washing the feet of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, lotus flowers with slender stems curl around the bowl in cobalt blue, turquoise and pale green - the soul colours of the art of the Middle East and Turkey. British Museum

JADE TERRAPIN
Made for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the 17th century, and carved out of a single piece of jade. The terrapin is life-size and realistic, yet also watery and divine. Sunderland Museum (on loan from British Museum)

SULTAN BAYBAR'S QU'RAN
Commissioned by a court official in Cairo in 1304, the Koran is written entirely in gold, with beautiful geometric frontispieces. It is quintessentially Islamic devout art. The ecstasy it brings on is, for me, both religious and aesthetic. British Library

PERSIAN COUPLE
A sensuous painting of a man and a woman in luxurious clothes, sharing a glass of wine in Persia (1900). This is figurative art, worldly and exuding rebellion. It is up for auction next week; I intend to bid.

Additional reporting by Nussaibah Younis
East-West: Objects Between Cultures, Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8008), to 18 February

 

     
    'Light of Hope' An exhibition of works by Vaseem Mohammed

    At St. Botolph’s Aldgate
    Sponsored by the MBI Foundation
    15 – 29 November 2005

I am delighted to be able to host this exhibition of the works of Vaseem Mohammed in St Botolph's Church. In the light of the 7th July this exhibition, as its name suggests, stands as a beacon of hope for our common future. For years this place has stood at the cross roads of all the major waves of immigration into this country. We values our close links with the local Muslim community, and I hope this exhibition will be a symbol of learning, tolerance and solidarity.
The Rev'd Dr Brian Lee, Rector, St. Botolph’s

 When I first approached Rev’d Lee and asked him about the possibility of an exhibition of Vaseem’s work, I felt sure that he would welcome the idea. St. Botolph’s is a church that has always reached out to the community, and since Vaseem grew up within sight of the church, it just seemed a natural place to show his work. I have admired Vaseem’s work for many years, and particularly his use of calligraphy, a traditional facet of Islamic art.  But I also like the depth and texture of his paintings, and the layers that peel away to reveal, just as the Quranic verses express a revelation.  I find some of his works almost meditative, in the way that the calligraphy forms a rhythm across across the troubled and textured backdrop.

The exhibition is sponsored by the MBI Foundation.  At the Foundation, we aim to make and strengthen links between cultures through educational and cultural activities. This exhibition is a very tangible example of mutual appreciation and respect across cultures, and I would like to thank all involved for making it possible.
Carolyn Perry, MBI Foundation

Last November, I joined a panel debate on the controversial withdrawal by Tate Britain of John Latham's God is Great (1990) from a retrospective of the artist's work at the gallery. The thin and intense Latham (now passed away) was livid: "Tate Britain has shown cowardice over this... It isn't even a gesture as strong as censorship, just a loss of nerve." They took the action, explained the Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar, "because of a particular social and political resonance."

To me and other Muslims, the work appears devout. Three Abrahamic texts shot through clear glass suggest that revealed religions can become rule-bound when real faith lies beyond words and images, pure and reflective as glass. Yet it was assumed by the gallery that Muslims are all volatile and unable to understand such art. The Muslim obscurantists who destroy our peace were given succour. Why no concern that fundamentalist Jews and Christians too might object to the "desecration" of their texts?

Fast-forward to today, and Tate Britain is poised to be embroiled in another kind of controversy. An "intervention" titled "East-West: objects between cultures" has been curated by the Renaissance supremo Lisa Jardine with Matthew Birchwood and Matthew Dimmock, both academic experts on historical Islamic ideas. Nice concept. A teeny accompanying booklet explains: "The variety of objects on display provides an insight into the relationship between societies sometimes considered distinct... Many of these artefacts have been formed and transformed between cultures."

The gallery tried to find curators who come from that space between cultures, but say they were unable to. One British Muslim writer dropped out due to work pressures. Shame, that. In the 21st century, British Muslims should have more real influence in the arts world.

That is perhaps a petty gripe. It is the display that is more dismaying. Spread across several rooms, objects and texts are placed as if for a children's treasure trail, only they stay lost. One example: a small painting of a reclining, apparently post-coital Iranian lady languidly looking at a dog drinking wine from a bowl. It supposedly connects with similar female images painted by Pre-Raphaelites. I don't get the point, I told Deuchar (someone I rate highly). The impact is slight, the timidity underwhelming. He enthusiastically defended the project for its "boldness" and "lightness of touch", and saw it as an amuse-bouche leading temptingly to the big British Orientalist exhibition scheduled for 2008.

Some Muslims, like Deuchar, find the intervention delightful, among them the academic Yahya Birt, the convert son of John Birt. A Muslim intern helping me to research this piece, the Oxford undergraduate Nussaibah Younis, went to see for herself. "The choice of objects was truly bizarre and without any coherent sense of continuation, progression or unity," she said. "The effect is one of jarring fragmentation. Rather than proving a sense of East meeting and complimenting the West, the very layout emphasised the chasm between them."

There have been successful (admittedly more ambitious) exhibitions on East-West encounters and on Islamic aesthetics that have charmed the public and overturned perceptions. The recent Word into Art at the British Museum showcased contemporary Middle Eastern artists who work creatively with the written word, some with transformative calligraphy and derivations, others who dare to go beyond the purely beautiful and turn ink on paper into protest.

The V&A did itself proud with Encounters: the meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800, and this museum now houses the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, a magical space paid for by an Arab businessman to project the entrancing face of our faith, he says. It is already doing much more than that.

Never has it been more important to open up the rivers of words, ideas, knowledge and beauty that have criss-crossed for centuries between the notional East and West. In his book Islam in Britain; 1558-1685, Nabil Matar wrote: "Muslims, through their Arab-Islamic legacy, were part of the religious, commercial and military self-definition of England." Not any longer, now that a new deadly global crusade is upon us. Many in the liberal intelligentsia have enlisted to fight for occidental values they feel are threatened by hoards of uncivilised Muslims. Last month, Martin Amis added yet another such elegant tirade about September 11 and his precious civilisation.

As the skies darken, some of us hope the arts can make the hard lines dissolve. Be wary, though, warns the writer Philip Hensher, of the paradigm of cultural wars and the emerging "redemptive narrative"; that "the sort of Islamic culture that ends in twisted metal and blood splattered across London façades is cancelled out by its ancestral beauty". Muslim art is not an apology, bail money, an excuse and an escape from the dreadful realities swirling around the world and our own heads. The game of compensatory politics is as perilous - Western policies may kill Muslims, but our politicians still admire their ancient mosques and intriguing, labyrinthine cities.

Yet, when zealots on both shores can only visualise a dehumanised them and enlightened us, Muslims, cowering between the armies of brutal obduracy, do seek solace in beauty. I was at the Jameel gallery on the very day of the aircraft bomb plot alert in August. Many other Muslims were there, too. Saul Bellow once said: "Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the middle of chaos." On that panicky Thursday, we sought that stillness. And hope. This is who we were, will be again.

The Spanish poet and dramatist Lorca said of the Moors: "An admirable civilisation with a delicacy unique in the world." Look at us today. Iran and Iraq were centres of Islamic arts and culture until vandals of the East and West destroyed both. Islamic countries are so cruel and chaotic that past glories can no longer waken the spirit there. They have extraordinary artists, but they are individual seekers of light in societies lost in pessimism and hungry for kitsch. In our own Muslim ghettos, philistinism and ignorance prevail. Navid Akhtar, a British Muslim architect and television producer, once explained why: "People when they moved here became disconnected from their living arts. Life was hard. They had little time or money left over. For young people like myself, carpets and various antique objects made by Muslims were for white purveyors at Liberty, not for us." Ironically, as the sense of doom descends over the future, many more Britons, both Muslims and non- Muslims, are engaging with Islamic high culture, past and present.

Talibanised Muslims want to burn the West. In that hated West, or because of it, a Muslim renaissance is breaking through, and has been for some time. (When the men in black turbans arrive they will come for us first - the writers and painters, singers and dancers who give Islam a good name.) To acknowledge this flowering and the intricate connections between Islam and Britain is almost a moral obligation for those of us who fear the consequences of an escalating war between us.

The Prince of Wales recently spoke of "the huge debt we in the West owe Islam, and I think it is a debt too often ignored and forgotten today". The debt goes the other way too, and is as easily forgotten.

The pity of it all is that the current UK-wide Festival of Muslim Cultures, which aims to remedy that, has been ignored by our media too busy chasing bearded, homicidal, fanatic Muslims. The last such Muslim cultural festival was in 1976. Then, the West was embroiled in the oil crisis and all Muslims were thought to be greedy sheikhs in menacing sunglasses.

The director of the current festival, the art critic Isabel Carlisle, passionately believes that "art is the last freedom, it is open and fluid, it is a world in which we can all connect. We want to foster a greater understanding of the Muslim world and open the cultural milieu to young Muslims." Laudable aims though they are - and they truly are - we need more profound, spiky conversations that dare to go beyond easy celebration.

I am uneasy about artistic diplomacy that insists that all art and cultural artefacts from Muslim cultures must be declared "excellent". Some is dross. Muslim art has never been as "pure" as some imagine. In 1908, Egypt opened a school of modern art. Surrealism, abstract expressionism and Cubism were embraced from Beirut to Tehran. One of my favourite paintings is Mother and Child by the Algerian Mohammed Issiakhem - a tribute to European images of the Madonna.

Ask the brilliant Saleem Arif Quadri who feeds his artistic soul, and he names Picasso, Matisse, Damien Hirst (whose work he once bought). Quadri painted 500 pieces inspired by Dante's "Inferno" (40 were bought for the government * * collection). Razia Malik (not her real name), a talented young artist who secretly paints convoluted nudes ("Don't tell my dad"), says she is totally inspired by Lucian Freud and Leonardo da Vinci.

The influences of the East on Europe are as strong. Edward Said's Orientalism saw only colonial exploitation, but Venice and Florence are filled with domes and squares, an infinite blue palette and other palpable influences of the Ottomans and Moors. Rembrandt collected and copied Mughal miniatures; Matisse studied them as he developed his own Modernist ideas. William Morris worshipped the old Ardabil Carpet now on show at the Jameel. Victorian potters copied Arabic and Persian designs in such quantities that they became a mark of quintessential Englishness. When and why was the East-West narrative shaped to fit Kipling's pessimistic proclamation that "never the twain shall meet"?

The art curator Hammas Nasser gets very impatient with rigid boundaries and the "them and us" discourse, which he says is "simplistic and tyrannical. Human beings generally, and artists most certainly, occupy more than one position, many identities. I don't think the Islamic/Western binary is useful."

The exclusion of this cross-fertilisation and of non-white sensibilities from the master narrative continues long after the colonialism that necessitated it. Understanding these complexities deepens appreciation. Rashid Rana is a remarkable artist, one of the contemporary Pakistani artists showing at the Manchester Gallery and at Asia House in London this month. In Rana's Three Veils, you gaze upon images of shrouded female faces in burqas, all beige but subtly different. That is from a distance; the composition is made up of tiny pictures, a modern version of a laborious old Persian technique of using thin brushes to build up an effect, later to become the pointillism perfected by Georges Seurat and others. The pictures, though, are pornographic images, symbolising parallel realities.

Rana is a man of as many identities as his work. "We live in a world in which there is a lot of interaction and exchange of information," he says. "But Western artists need to understand the context from which artists from the East are coming. In Pakistan, we study the context of Western artists. In art history books, there is restricted information about other cultures."

Sixteen years ago, the avant-garde artist Rasheed Araeen curated The Other Story for the Hayward Gallery. He asked then: "Is not the history of art still being written according to the Hegelian historical framework in which only the Western subject is privileged? And is not this privilege achieved by arbitrary removal of other cultures/peoples from the dynamics of cultural continuity?... [Art history] is the only discourse (unlike the discourse of literature and science) which protects its Western territory so rigidly that we find hardly any exceptions to its Eurocentric views."

Overstated and bombastic, yes, and times have changed - but not nearly as much as the art establishment likes to believe. Deuchar agrees that there have been "ruthless, subjective editings of the past" and that Tate Britain, displaying the official story of Britain, has tried to inject questions, to trip up the grand narrative. Looked at that way, the unobtrusive intervention of the East-West show makes absolute sense.

Britishness is expanding and shrinking at the same time. Just when you think you can describe its nature, it changes direction, turns hot or cold, closed or open, easy or confrontational. Gatekeepers are not nimble people at the best of times, but the present landscape of shifting shapes is making many nervous and uncomfortable. Yet they have the power to make or bury an artist. Muslim artists are embraced if they dissent from their traditions, or conform to the romantic fragrances and images of the East. As the art of those who have an Islamic connection becomes bolder, angrier, more political, yet never totally "Westernised", the lack of a parallel critical class becomes more evident and scandalous.

Talented artists in or of the Muslim world subvert conventions even when they appear to be conforming. Ali Omar Ermes is a great calligraphic painter whose work is often cutting. One triptych I love has three words, "No", "Yes" and "But" - his observations on the chicanery of leaders. Discontent creates an edgy spirit and art.

Vaseem Mohammed, from the East End of London, paints in a style that is both Modernist and Islamic. His pictures are broody, moonlit, still, promising danger round the corner. Suad Al-Attar, the British Iraqi painter, has moved from fabulous mythical dreams of old Babylon through ghostly memorials to her dead sister (killed when Clinton arranged for a few bombs to drop on Baghdad), to enormous canvases burning for Iraq.

Quadri, a Sufi, painted pictures of September 11 titled Sensual Songs of Sacred Spaces. Black skies filled with the ashes floating quietly down. The pictures never sold. This artist makes contemplative works pregnant with ideas, and plays with geometry and his take on gravity. These artists resist labels and boxes, confuse the art world.

The younger generation use their traditions to set up new vibrations. Mohammed Imran Qureshi, for example, paints in the style and size of Mughal miniatures - technically exact - but instead of doe-eyed queens he paints an effete young man in pink bell-bottoms, his pose suggesting ambiguous sexuality.

Hamara Abbas, born in Kuwait, has created an installation, a big floor-collage in Islamic geometric design made of paper notices warning "Please do not step". She says: "These are images of war, occupation and territory, saying don't enter our land." Asked if faith is embodied in her work, she replies: "I am quite religious, it is a part of me and informs my artwork." Rana reiterates the sentiments: "Religion is one part of my personality, yes, but my personality is made up of lots of different elements. I borrow from my cultural tradition and that has been influenced by religion. Religion is ingrained in my culture."

Raficq Abdullah, chair of the Festival of Muslim Cultures, believes this is the great divide: "We have forgotten the notion of sacredness in the Western world - with consumerism, globalisation and the secular state. Whereas in the Muslim world a sense of sacredness permeates all areas of the arts."

I have sat with Muslim artists drinking tea or illicit wine as they ponder whether that is true. And if so, why and when did Western art move from the soul to the senses? Is narcissistic art the only destination? Why can a Muslim artist not be judged as just an artist? And is there a place in the West for art for God's sake? Can European custodians of art ever really understand such work? The emerging renaissance of Muslim thought and art, like the European Renaissance, is porous and receptive, a precious thing when arms and men seem hell-bent on destroying all that connects us.

FIVE MASTERPIECES

THE ARDABIL CARPET

The carpet, 34ft by 17ft, was made in Persia in 1539. William Morris said it was of "singular perfection", and so it is; a floral centrepiece, symmetrical and vibrant, bursts out to scatter flowers and branches towards corners and borders that hold in the exuberance before it spills out. V&A, Jameel Gallery

OTTOMAN FOOTBATH

On this decorated footbath, dating from about 1545 and possibly used for washing the feet of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, lotus flowers with slender stems curl around the bowl in cobalt blue, turquoise and pale green - the soul colours of the art of the Middle East and Turkey. British Museum

JADE TERRAPIN

Made for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the 17th century, and carved out of a single piece of jade. The terrapin is life-size and realistic, yet also watery and divine. Sunderland Museum (on loan from British Museum)

SULTAN BAYBAR'S QU'RAN

Commissioned by a court official in Cairo in 1304, the Koran is written entirely in gold, with beautiful geometric frontispieces. It is quintessentially Islamic devout art. The ecstasy it brings on is, for me, both religious and aesthetic. British Library

PERSIAN COUPLE

A sensuous painting of a man and a woman in luxurious clothes, sharing a glass of wine in Persia (1900). This is figurative art, worldly and exuding rebellion. It is up for auction next week; I intend to bid.

Additional reporting by Nussaibah Younis

East-West: Objects Between Cultures, Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8008), to 18 February