ندوة جوتنجن للدّراسات العربيّة والإسلاميّة

Göttinger Orient-Symposium

Das Göttinger Orient-Symposium und das Graduiertenkolleg "Götterbilder – Gottesbilder – Weltbilder" der Universität Göttingen laden ein zum Vortrag:

“The Power and Problem of the Image:
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Traditions”

Prof. Dr. Christiane Gruber

Associate Professor of Islamic Art

Department of Art History, University of Michigan

Abstract: This presentation will examine a number of paintings of the Prophet Muhammad produced in Persian and Turkish lands from the fourteenth century to the modern day. These paintings represent Muhammad’s individual traits, primordial luminosity, and veiled essence, and their pictorial motifs reveal that artists engaged in abstract thought and turned to symbolic motifs in order to depict the Prophet’s human and divine nature. Artists also appear to have been inspired by various mystical beliefs and popular practices, seeking or displaying piety through pictorial forms. As a result, paintings of the Prophet underscore the intricate, historically contingent, and otherwise poorly understood conventions of prophetic “portraiture” while simultaneously bearing witness to both the power and the problem of the figural arts in Islamic artistic traditions.