Colour, Light and Wonder in Islamic Art

Idries Trevathan

Paperback

9780863560606

The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In this new approach, Idries Trevathan examines the language of colour in Islamic art and architecture in dialogue with its aesthetic contexts, offering insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of interpreting colour.

The seventeenth-century Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. Here, Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the mosque’s backdrop. He shows how careful combinations of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns expresses knowledge beyond that experienced in the corporeal world, offering another language with which to know and experience God. Colour thus becomes a spiritual language, calling for a re-consideration of how we read Islamic aesthetics.

Contents:

1. The Intellectual Context

2. The Work of Art: Masjid-i Shah

3. Colour Systems

4. The Aesthetics of Colour

5. Light, Lustre and Luminosity

6. Colour and the Journey of the Mystic

7. Colour and Spirituality in the Time of the Safavids

8. Meaning within the Masjid-i Shah