Linda Bastian will be presenting during the Friday morning seminars (June 6).
"My own art has been powerfully influenced by Islamic art that I saw in many countries in the Middle East, while I was teaching there (6 years/Egypt, UAE, Qatar, and Oman)."
The presentation is one she was invited to give to the Omani Historical Society and the Cross Cultural Group in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Again, in Linda's words,
"Briefly, it is an attempt to answer the question, 'How to read meaning in Islamic art?' This is not only an aesthetic question but a spiritual one, as this art is visible most intensely in mosque design, and it is assumed to have meaning since it is not randomly composed either vertically through history, or horizontally across continents. Various scholars have attempted to 'read' Islamic art and I present these ideas to the audience, through looking at the three types of Islamic art: arabesque, geometric and calligraphic. We are familiar with reading images in realistic Western art, which allows the viewer to see both the style (formal attributes of color, line, etc.) and the content (the image presented). But in Islamic art, there are no images (mostly), so one can only read the formal elements, and presents us with abstract and non-objective images much like "modern" art today in the West. So, one looks to the culture, to the religion, to ask what we should be thinking and feeling when we look at, for example, the stunning blue and yellow arabesque tiles of the Shah mosque in Isfahan, or the density and complexity of geometric tiles in Egyptian mosques."
More? Linda's website
We'll also have a panel on the media with Peter Heydon, Tom Payzant and Walt Wheeler entitled "Shaping Our Grandchildren's World: Media and Message"Prior to coming to NMH the class of 1958 read newspapers, listened to radios, waited impatiently for the newsreel to end before the feature film began at the local movie theater, and were becoming familiar with Chet and David. Toward the end of our college years we discovered that the "medium is the message" and Marshall McLuhan was becoming a cult figure by the mid sixties. In 2008 newspapers are rapidly losing circulation, conglomerates are buying up television and radio stations to control programming and message, public broadcasting struggles to raise money to stay on the air with high quality programming and the internet increasingly becomes the place of choice to go for information with expectations for immediate gratification and reliable information.There is a new language for text messaging which our grandchildren who are digital natives are teaching us. Blogs, chat rooms, YouTube, My Space, Face Book, Google and Wikipedia are destinations of choice. Peter, Tom and Walt will have a conversation with each other and with you sharing perspectives based on our own experiences with media and our thoughts about the future.
Still to come? Information on two other presentations by classmates: Sister Chris Allen, an historian; Tom Chase. NMH Class of '58Latest Update: 29 Feb 08 (ww)
URL: http://nmh58.org/programs.htm