From Islamic Art to Perceptual Culture

Abstract

This understanding of the dependence of human creativity on the divine, the glory of the world and its material traps, meanders through Islamic discourses. This book weaves a theory from these paths: a theory of perception engaging with but not bound by art or history; a theory of Islam between theology and culture. A theory of an attitude that once was so natural that the need to describe it emerges only from an external space requiring translation. What we conceive as ‘ art ’ plays one part in this broader framework.