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Etel Adnan (1925-2021) was a Lebanese-American poet, essayist and visual artist. This is the first book to present a full account of Adnan’s fascinating life and work, using the drama of her biography, the complexity of her identity, and the cosmopolitan nature of her experience to illuminate the many layers and dimensions of her paintings and their progress over several crucial decades. Adnan came relatively late to painting - her first images were created in the late-1950s in response to the...

This is an acknowledged classic in the field of Saudi Arabian desert crafts. Covering the costumes, equipment, and artifacts of the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia, it examines the work of jewelry makers, leather workers, basket weavers, carpenters and metal workers, with stunning color photographs to illustrate each example. In the engaging text, written by experts in the field, we get a real sense of the traditional lifestyle and ethnology of this enigmatic people. The majority of the costumes, jewelr...

Represents the combined expertise of many of the most respected art historians and cultural commentators from Iran itself, whose knowledge of the country and its traditions brings an entirely new dimension to the study of its architectural and artistic treasures.

This book is devoted to a monumental and superbly illuminated very large early fourteenth-century Mamluk Qur'an in muhaqqaq script. It constitutes the final part (Juz' 30) of a superb two-volume Qur'an of which the first volume is preserved in the National Museum in Damascus while the second volume, from which the present section originates, is widely dispersed. Remarkably, here the final part of the Qur'an is reunited with its magnificent and richly decorated double finispieces, thus reassembli...

This first monograph dedicated to the work of Yael Bartana (born 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel; lives and works in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Tel Aviv) gives a comprehensive overview of the artist's films, installations, performative projects, photographs, and sound works of the past 15 years. From Bartana's early video vignettes to her most recent project "What if Women Ruled the World?" (2017), by way of her monumental trilogy "And Europe Will Be Stunned" (2007-2011) with which she represented Pol...

A spectacular study of calligraphy, the most esteemed form of visual and textual expression in the Islamic world, through a storied collection of Qur’an manuscripts   Spanning more than a millennium, from the seventh through the nineteenth century, Sea of Ink, Forest of Pens: The Art of the Qur’an in the Hossein Afshar Collection sheds new light on the production of deluxe Qur’an manuscripts across Islamic lands through sixty-four exemplary works. The vast majority of these pieces are publishe...

The first title of the Skira Contemporary Arab Artists series, directed by Brahim Alaoui, previous director of the Museum of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris. Bahraini-born Saudi national Faisal Samra graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He worked as an art and graphic design consultant for the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), and later a stage designer for Saudi television. In 2004 he taught in the Fine Arts department of the Amman University in Jordan...

Liat Yossifor's first artist monograph focuses on a series of ever-evolving grey paintings she produced from 2011-2016. Employing a time-based process to create these works, she continuously scrapes, sculpts, and re-works the paint until it hardens on the surface. Of the works here, Yossifor has said, "The grey is so much more for me. The grey is the result of color being consumed, of constant editing. The grey is the result of a thousand paintings that got destroyed in the process of making a s...

This catalogue is the first on the outstanding collection of Arabic and Persian seals and amulets in the British Museum, by a specialist in the field. The first part focuses on the 638 Arabic, Persian and Indian seals covering material from the 8th to the 20th century. The introduction covers seal practice in different periods and levels of society; the role of the seal and the "alama" or motto, the use of figural representation on the seals, seal engravers, the forgery of seals and...

Although the Assyrian kingdom that dominated the Ancient Near East between the ninth and seventh centuries BC had a rich material culture, attested particularly by the distinctive stone wall reliefs and colossal gateway figures, practically nothing is known about Assyrian metalwork. There has been no previous survey of this subject, largely because most of the material was not accessible. This volume makes available for the first time a vast amount of previously unpublished metalwork, muc...

A selection of fifteen well-established artists from across the Maghreb, Levant, and Gulf in conversations moderated by experts on contemporary Middle Eastern art. Historically, artists have been known for their ability to understand emerging trends of thought and emotions before they become clear to the society at large. Yet, outside the art world, artists have rarely enjoyed opportunity to share their ideas. As revolutionary movements challenge decades of authoritarian rule across Arab countri...

How is home-grown contemporary art viewed within the Middle East? And is it understood differently outside the region? What is liable to be lost when contemporary art from the Middle East is ‘transferred’ to international contexts - and how can it be reclaimed? This timely book tackles ongoing questions about how ‘local’ perspectives on contemporary art from the Middle East are defined and how these perspectives intersect with global art discourses. Inside, leading figures from the Middle Eas...

Persian design has a rich and fascinating history. Textiles, books, ceramics, architecture - all were adorned with intricate and decorative patterns reflecting Persian culture. The pictures, patterns and, motifs in this book represent a celebration of this love of artistry and the illustrations are adapted from original designs. Here you will find images that can adapted for your own projects, or used directly to decorate textiles, china, glass, metal, wood and more. You can create your own gree...

"Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture: Essays by Hamid Dabashi" is a collection of writings by the acclaimed cultural critic and scholar. A thorough Introduction rigorously frames chapters and identifies in Dabashi’s writings a comprehensive approach, which forms the criteria for selecting the essays for the volume. The Introduction also teases out of these essays the overarching theme that holds them together, the manner they inform a particularly critical angle in them and the wa...