History or Project? The Double Life of Islamic Art Since the 1970s

Abstract

This article argues that since the 1970s a duality divides the concept of Islamic Art. On the one hand, we have Islamic Art as the subject matter of a modern mode of historical inquiry, invented and developed in the colonial period in Europe but then taken up by scholars from around the world, including Muslim academics. This is the Islamic Art of Islamic Art History as a field of secular scholarship. But then, in the decolonization period, and more pronouncedly since the 1970s, we witness the birth of another concept of Islamic Art that is not focused on the past. This second notion of Islamic Art seeks to envisage Islamic Art as a component of a future-oriented project of reorganizing life under and against modernity. It locates Islamic Art not primarily in historical objects but more importantly at the center of a contemporary “civilizational vision” of Islam. This latter Islamic Art is an explicitly modern project with a professedly social reform agenda. This article explores the challenges that this duality in Islamic Art poses to the discipline of Art History, particularly in terms of the relationship between the two academic fields of Islamic Art and Global Modernism.