Author: jessylarson

In the U.S., a great deal of importance is placed on our names; as John Proctor says in The Crucible, “How may I live without my name?”  People in the U.S. typically have names deriving from their family’s country of origin or their family’s religion.  Like how ‘Patrick’ is a typical name from Ireland or ‘Rebecca’ is a common Judeo-Christian name.  People in Middle Eastern countries have a similar tradition; with names stemming from background, religion, and often meaning.  For example, one popular name for boys is ‘Abdul,’ meaning ‘servant of God,’ and a common name for girls is ‘Aisha,’ coming from the name of Muhammad’s favorite wife.  There are also historical allusions, like the popular Persian name ‘Cyrus,’ from Cyrus the Great, who founded the Persian Empire.  Other Arabic names include ‘Lela’ (born at night), ‘Jamaal’ (handsome), and Rasheed (thinker).  Some examples of Persian names are ‘Aleah’ (God’s being), ‘Kira’ (sun), and ‘Hussein’ (good looking).

(Shakira – Grateful)

Most of us are probably used to the ‘first name + middle name + last name’ system.  Traditionally, our parents choose our first and middle names, and our last name comes from our father’s side of the family.  Though many people from Middle Eastern countries have adopted a more Westernized approach, whether out of convenience or because of colonialism, there are traditional ways of writing names; however, they can vary depending on specific area.  One way is to set the name up as somewhat of a ‘family tree;’ for example, the name:

Layla bint Hussein walud Malik Al-Qasim

translates to ‘Layla, daughter of Hussein, son of Malik, of the Qasim family.’  Like in traditional Western families, the children also take the name of the father’s family.  Some families, particularly in the West, have shortened their names to be ‘first name + father’s name + father’s family name.’  So, using the above example, the name would be Layla Hussein Qasim.

There are many Middle Eastern names that have Western counterparts.  For example, the Persian name for Roxanne is ‘Roxana’ and a form of Anthony is ‘Antwan.’   This is partly because many names that we consider to be ‘Western’ actually come from the Middle East because of the nature of their Biblical origins.  Many times, Middle Easterners are caricatured by the West as having strange, long, or difficult to pronounce names.  Though it should always be kept in mind that American or European names may seem very unusual to someone from, say, Beirut, be careful.  You may be making fun of someone with the same name as yourself.

Like most students who have been at U of M for a couple of years, I’ve discovered a few things at the school that deserve more recognition than they get, my favorite being the Special Collections Library on the 7th floor of the Grad. I was first directed to this collection last year when writing a research paper, and have since used it for much more firsthand research, but probably mostly just for my own interests. There are several sections of the Special Collections Library, but my favorite is the Labadie Collection. The Labadie Collection is one of the largest collections of radical political documents from 19th-21st Centuries in the world, and has pretty much anything you can imagine in that genre. Last year I was doing a research paper on a random political cartoon from 1873 France and they had an original copy of it in their archives. You can spend hours (and I have) just looking through their extensive collection of pamphlets and posters, even if you aren’t a radical anarcho-communist trying to smash the state (but you go to U of M so obviously you are). The Special Collections Library also has an awesome selection of medieval documents and facsimiles, which are wonderful for seeing all of the details and small intricacies that you would never be able to see by just looking on the internet. They also have scrolls, which is another experience that can’t be reproduced over the internet or looking at a book copy. There also many other sections of the Special Collections Library that have amazing documents of history, including an actual document written by Galileo, and I really suggest exploring this stuff while you are still at U of M (you commie).

Hello and welcome to 2012; here is a list of my 5 favorite books that I read in 2011:

5.  The Monument by Kanan Makiya.  I wrote a previous post on Saddam’s victory arch, the subject of this book.  I had read one other book by Makiya, The Republic of Fear, about Ba’athist Iraq under Saddam.  Makiya is a political dissident from Iraq and was forced to publish under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil until recently.  From reading The Republic of Fear, it was no mystery to me that The Monument would largely center on the nature of Saddam’s unique brand of pan-Arab fascism, but I didn’t expect it to have the level of art historical writing or image theory that it does.  I rarely read anything relating to Middle Eastern art, but Makiya applies the history surrounding it and Western art theory to the creation and interpretation of the victory arch, which makes it wholly relatable.

4.  The Silence of the Sea by Vercors. This was the first fiction novel I have read in awhile; it’s very short and only takes a couple of hours to read.  It was written in 1942, right at the height of the Nazi’s occupation of France.  It details the forced quartering (like, housing, not tearing apart by the limbs) of a German officer in the country house of and older French man and his young, female niece.  It explores the definition of

resistance, and the extent and moral limits of inaction.  The old man and his niece choose to resist the occupation by ignoring the presence of the German officer, despite very human temptations.  The beauty of The Silence of the Sea is that it has no direct answer as to what constitutes resistance; for Vercors, inaction is not necessarily passive support as many condemnations of civilians under Nazi occupation seem to muddle up.

3.  Marianne into Battle by Maurice Agulhon.  This book chronicles the history of the French female allegory for liberty, named Marianne.  Agulhon engagingly chronicles how Marianne arose out of the 1789 revolution and quickly became a propagandist tool into the 5^th Republic.  If you are interested in the small details of history then I certainly recommend this book.

2.  Eye Scream by Henry Rollins.  I actually read this in high school, but I reread it this past year and got way more out of it the second time around.  Henry Rollins, former singer/yeller for Black Flag and consummate angry person, has been more known in recent years for his spoken word than hardcore punk.  Unsurprisingly, Eye Scream is violent, sociopathic, and wonderfully lyrical.  Rollins’s aggressive intensity is mirrored only by the sadly honest clarity of his worldview.  I love this guy so much, I’ll probably write a whole column on him soon.

1.  Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer.  These are the memoirs of Speer, who was Hitler’s chief architect and the Minister of Armaments for the Nazis.  It was secretly written mainly on scraps of toilet paper while he was serving a 20 year sentence imposed at Nuremburg.  When it comes to Nazi ‘confessions,’ they typically seem to be Eichmann-like, saccharine and dishonest, apologies, with no real remorse.   Speer isn’t begging for forgiveness in his memoirs, but accepts responsibility for the role he played.  He isn’t slobbering with excuses of brain washing or having no other choice, but instead treats his readers like adults.

Hey Wolverines, welcome back to a new semester. To hopefully inspire you to take an art history class, here are some of my favorite interesting facts from history that make those classes so enjoyable:

In Soviet prisons, it was once common to tattoo portraits of Lenin and Stalin over an inmate’s vital organs, in the hope that guards would not harm them in those areas out of respect for the two Communist leaders.

A lot of people associate Marie Antoinette with her iconic enormous hair. She famously filled it with various event-appropriate objects. Reportedly, she had a (what one can only assume was horrific) birth scene placed in it when her sister-in-law delivered her first child. She was fond of filling it with fresh fruit and vegetables from her garden, with suck up aristocrat women following suit. The highest measurement we have

for one of these hair styles is 6 ft, Marie would have to crouch down in her carriage to accommodate it. There are actually 3 reported deaths of court ladies whose hair was so high that it caught on a chandelier and they were in effect hanged. These hair pieces were made from wire, horse hair, cotton pads, fake hair, and the wearer’s own hair.

Louis XI of France, appropriately nicknamed the Star King, was a paranoid despot who very much believed in astrology. He was so unnerved by his astrologer’s accurate prediction of a court lady’s death that he ordered for the astrologer to be defenestrated (yeah, THAT word) from a top window of the palace. However, right before the astrologer was about to be told of his impending death, the king asked him to predict his (the astrologer’s) own death and when it would occur. The astrologer replied “I shall die just three days before Your Majesty.” Louis XI was so bothered by this that he canceled the defenestration (look it up, that word is a history fact on its own).

Napoleon wore a black handkerchief around his neck for every battle except for one, where his black handkerchief was accidentally thrown in the wash and he was forced to wear a white silk cravat. That battle was Waterloo.

Picasso’s first word was the Spanish word for ‘pencil.’

Despite the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, many monuments erected under deposed dictator Saddam Hussein remain.  The continued public display of these remnants of Iraqi Ba’athism is a testament to the continued debate within Iraq as to how Saddam’s legacy will be evaluated in a historical context.  The focal importance of the monument is remembrance; it seeks to answer the question as to how a leader can confront their eventual absence.  For a shrewd but malicious ruler like Saddam Hussein, the need to confront this absence was one that materialized particularly bluntly during and after Iraq’s sanguinary war with Iran in the 1980s.  Like ancient monument works of the Near East’s past, Saddam’s commissioned statues personify victory in the body of the leader.  This emphasis on a singular cause for a nation’s collective victory was made, possibly most curiously in the case of modern Iraq, in the triumphant arch called the Swords of Qādisīyah. In this monument, the physical body of the ruler is placed in tandem with the historical heritage of Iraq and implicitly takes responsibility for the achievements of the nation.

The Swords of Qādisīyah was opened to the public on August 8, 1989, though plans for the large construction began in 1985 when Iran and Iraq were still deeply embroiled in war. The monument was meant to be a victory arch for Saddam, in the tradition of ancient Roman arches, in spite of the reality that the war was, firstly, not over, and secondly, not exactly an Iraqi victory.  The monument consists of two large arms, emerging out of the earth, each holding a sword, crossing them in the center.  The archway marks an entrance into Baghdad’s parade-ground and was part of a much broader monument and urban planning project designed by Saddam in an attempt to mirror Haussmann’s renovation of Paris in the hopes of placing Baghdad in league with world centers like New York and London.  At the arms’ bases, nets filled with the helmets of killed Iranian soldiers place the monument in specific reference to the ongoing war.  However, the element of the Swords of Qādisīyah that places it in the realm of leader-centered propaganda is the fact that the arms are actual replicas of Saddam’s own, made from casts that preserved every detail, right down to his thumbprint and the small hairs on his forearms.

Saddam’s choice to only display his arms is unusual; it reveals a confidence in the cultural permeation of his image in Iraqi society.  Previous artistic commissions on Saddam’s part assure us that the absence of his very recognizable face is not due to any humility, or a humble attempt to distance himself from an Iraqi achievement; his Stalin-like visage was plastered nearly everywhere, from a giant plywood cutout of himself standing over the ancient Babylonian gate of Ishtar to everyday postage stamps.  So the question is, why would Saddam go to such detailed lengths to interject his presence into a monument like the Swords of Qādisīyah, yet leave his mark so ambiguously?  Though Saddam’s arms are bearing swords, they work to create a paradoxical duality that both implies action and violence, yet also places that action outside of the realm of reality.  While the swords act as a reminder of violence, particularly in conjunction with the Iranian helmets and the inseparable association of the monument with the Iran-Iraq War, they are still swords, an archaic form of weaponry that would probably not last long in modern warfare.  The choice to use swords over, say, machine guns, was meant to invoke the defeat of the Persian Sassanian Empire at the Battle of Qādisīyah in 637, effectively beginning the Islamicization of Iran.  From the very beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, it was constantly pitched by the Ba’athists as Saddam’s Qādisīyah, invoking another defeat of Iran while asserting Iraq’s religious heritage.

This religious aspect is puzzling on several accounts.  Firstly, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime was officially secular.  Saddam modeled his vision for Iraq, and himself, around previous authoritarian regimes, particularly the Soviet Union under Stalin.  The ideals of pan-Arab nationalism sought to eliminate the tribalism and sectarianism that divided Iraq, uniting Iraqis in a common identity instead of Kurd versus Arab, Sunni versus Shi’a.  The cult of personality surrounding Saddam replaced the right to diversified religion; Saddam was Sunni so this was the preferred sect, but it was merely another component of the personality cult.  In a sense, he was ipso facto being deified; Saddam’s religion took importance simply because it was his religion.  Similar to ancient beliefs, the state religion was dictated, and manipulated, by the ruler.  Similarly, Saddam’s juxtaposition of the very relevant, contemporary form of his arms with swords that allude to Medieval Iraq, doubly charged considering their holy status, act to breach the divide between the political implications of the present war and their predestined outcome.  Saddam, however, is actively utilizing symbols of Islam to draw a parallel between an ancient religious heritage and a modern political struggle.

Also vexing about Saddam’s use of the Battle of Qādisīyah is the fact that it is inextricably connected with the martyrdom of Shi’a holy figure Husain, believed to be the grandson of Muhammad, in Karbala in 680.  Shi’a Islam is the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and has been since their revolution in 1979, one year prior to the onset of the Iran-Iraq War.  In addition to this seemingly obvious conflict, Saddam’s track record with the Shi’ite population within Iraq was not one that would encourage their support.  Catalyzed by the execution, or martyrdom to Shi’as, of Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr in 1980 (“If my little finger were Ba’athist, I would cut it off”), Saddam’s paranoid repression of Shi’as gained a new degree of cruelty. His infamous massacres of the Shi’ite regions, particularly in Basra, of Southern Iraq in 1991 were part of the rational for U.S. invasion. Yet, the monument, and most of all the ceremony that opened the Swords of Qādisīyah to the public, is expressly Shi’ite.  On August 8, 1989, Saddam Hussein inaugurated in the new monument with a televised ceremony, where he triumphantly rode through the archway on a white stallion.  To anyone an Iraq, a culture immersed in Islamic imagery similar to the permeation of Christian iconography in the West, the combination of the bared swords and the white horse would unmistakably be invoking the martyrdom of Husein, who was supposedly killed while riding a white stallion. This is a very popular image in Iraq, where Shi’ite pilgrimages to Karbala mark one of the most important rituals in Islam.  Once again, Saddam consolidated both the victory over the Persian Empire in the 7^th Century and what Saddam perceived to be a victory against Iran in the 1980s into his singular, corporeal form.

So why would Saddam, a figure so centered on the calculated persecution and dismemberment of the Shi’a sect, willingly and openly support a propaganda campaign that seemingly strengthens and mobilizes that sect?  The answer may lie in a strange form of unification, wherein the subtext of all religious imagery under Saddam was national unity over that sectarianism.  Kanan Makiya posits that, despite his repeated assurances of his religious sincerity, Saddam Hussein was merely a political actor manipulating a heritage to secure victory.  Makiya writes that “National unity prevailed in the face of foreign aggression; this is the Ba’athist line on the war.”  Saddam saw himself as a political theorist, one who successfully, and to the chagrin of Iran, avoided the Lebanon-like miasmic disintegration into sectarian violence that had been expected during the long war with Iran.  Saddam’s triumphal ceremony that opened the Swords of Qādisīyah was, inherently, a performance similar to those in the ancient Near East where a select group was chosen for inclusion, while others were excluded.  However, it must be looked at in the broader ‘performance’ of Saddam’s presidency.  Makiya contends that Saddam was a historical ‘actor’ in so far as he shifted ideology depending on audience; the performance of his presidency excluded the Shi’a population while his Swords of Qādisīyah ceremony integrated their religion to his own benefit.  On the divide between the public audience and the state-directed performer in ancient Egypt, art historian John Baines writes that there is an unmistakable dichotomy between the sacred space of the state and the passive audience.  According to Baines, “the iconography [of performance] constitutes both spectacle and exclusion.”  Saddam resides in the supernatural realm, defined by victory and religious heroes of Iraq’s past, and the audience is, for the most part, watching through a television screen, listening on a radio, etc. The audience takes no part in the ceremony, much like the underlying meaning that Iraqis took little to no part in the war.  An inclusion exists to the extent that elements of the audience are superficially integrated, but the overlying message is one of dominance and singularity.

Throughout different time periods and spanning continents, artists have devised techniques through which they may convey specific spiritual messages with the purpose of instructing the faithful.  This is often accomplished through a reliance on commonly understood symbols that allude to religious stories or sacraments.  By pictorially recreating sacred scenes the artist has the ability to manipulate the emphasis of the parable in a way that is congruent with contemporary ideals important to their respective religion.  Two works demonstrating this are Rogier van der Weyden’s Alter of the Seven Sacraments and an early 3^rd/late 2^nd Century stupa called Scenes from the Life of Buddha.  Though they are from vastly different eras and sections of the world, both works clearly use iconography already fixated in their cultures to instruct and pass on holy messages.

Rogier van der Weyden’s Alter of the Seven Sacraments is a complex image that uses several methods in relating the sacraments and the Passion to the Church’s laity.  The work, a triptych, superimposes the scene of Christ’s crucifixion onto the everyday scenes of Christian worship.  The physical presence of Jesus on the cross, surrounded by worshippers seemingly unaware of this, accomplishes two things.  Firstly, it acts as “reportage,” or the illusion that the work comes from a firsthand account of the crucifixion.  It also modernizes it, making it more relatable.  The holy figures are in Flemish clothing and are in the center of a clearly European church.   The viewer’s eye is even directed toward the center figure of Christ above any other image; the figures gesture in his direction and the pillars along the cathedral are parallel to the cross.  The panel containing the Passion is considerably more filled with natural light from the church’s windows then the adjoining panels, which look bleak in comparison.  Van der Weyden also took great pains to demonstrate linear perspective and the illusion of space; the floor is elaborately tiled and the ceiling’s overlapping arches rescind into the backdrop without the common appearance of flatness displayed in many contemporary works.  Including these embellishes, though they have nothing to do with the story of Christ, adds to the believability of the painting.  It gives the impression that the artist was present at Calvary and is not simply giving a vague or broad idea of what might have happened.  Also crucial in the placing of the crucifixion in the center of the cathedral is its relation to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.  Though the exact date of the triptych is unknown, it was most likely painted before 1450, only about 70 years before the Protestant Reformation and the clash between transubstantiation and consubstantiation.  In the van der Weyden, a priest can be seen in the act of presenting the Eucharist behind the central figures.  This could be an indication as to why the surrounding figures of the church take no notice of the crucifixion; it says to the viewer that though Christ cannot be seen during transubstantiation, he is still very much physically there.

The Altar of the Seven Sacraments extensively makes use of common religious iconography that would be familiar to even the most infrequent of church-goers.  Van der Weyden includes typical imagery, like angels presenting the sacraments and the arma christi, the “weapons of Christ.”  Accompanying scenes of each sacrament is an angel displaying a banner about the holy act.  This is directly instructional to the viewer, whereas the central figures in the crucifixion are more useful as evidence of the corporeal nature of transubstantiation.  From left to right, the colors of the angels’ robes darken; at birth the robes are white, symbolizing innocence or beginning, but slowly turn to darker shades as the sacraments progress with life.  The Last Rites are, of course, black.  Characteristic of the Catholic Church, this acts as a memento mori; it reminds the viewer of the inevitability of their death but it also instructs them on how best they might live in order to attain eternal life with God.  Also meant to advise the faithful on how best to live in a manner pleasing to God are the arma christi.  In “The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response,” Flora Lewis writes that the arma christi “epitomize the desire to encompass and anatomize the Passion.”  Present in the Altar of the Seven Sacraments are the cross, the nails driven into Christ, the wounds of Christ, the crown of thorns, and arguably the pillars which Jesus was tied to while being flagellated.  As “weapons,” the arma christi act as principles with which followers of Christ can defeat Satan in the struggle over their sponsa, or soul.  These are particularly pertinent to the Altar of the Seven Sacraments because they, like transubstantiation, emphasize the physical nature of the Christian doctrine.  The arma christi evoke the brutality of the torture and subsequent execution of Christ while reminding the viewer of their fate in the afterlife if they do not follow Christian teaching, made all the more relevant by the juxtaposing of the life-cycle representing angels.  The Altar of the Seven Sacraments uses various symbols pervasive throughout European Christian society to underscore the importance of literal Church doctrine, like transubstantiation, and the need to follow Christian teaching, as seen in the arma christi.

Similar to the Altar of the Seven Sacraments, Buddhist art also used familiar imagery to galvanize the faithful.  The late 2^nd/early 3^rd Century stupa from either Pakistan or Afghanistan, Scenes from the Life of Buddha, shows the same sacrosanct duo as the van der Weyden: familiar iconography coupled with the purpose of instruction.

Though the Buddhist work does not have the advantage of color like the van der Weyden and was created in a time and place foreign to linear perspective, it does find methods through which religious stories and their accompanying lessons can be passed.  Like the arma christi, the Buddhist stupa has various symbols that denote religious life as well as allusions to the central religious figure, in this case Buddha.  One of these symbols is the urna, or forehead mole which marks a level of spiritual insight, like a third eye.  Another physical characteristic of the Buddha is the ushnisha, or the bump on the top of his head that is often mistaken for hair.  It is meant to resemble an adage to the brain, a sign of Buddha’s unique amount of knowledge.  Like the representations of Christ’s torture and execution, these images are very bodily and connected with the religious figure.  They serve to remind the faithful, along with the Buddha’s inward gaze and the empty space between him and the demons tempting him, that spiritual enlightenment comes from within.

Important in this stupa are Buddha’s gestures.  According to Vidya Dehejia, early Buddhist art places a strong emphasis on action versus inaction.  Buddha is making calm gestures while seated but the demons surrounding him thrust violent gestures toward him.  Buddha signals to the Earth Goddess that he is about to attain enlightenment by making the bhumisparsha mudra, or “earth touching gesture.”  His arms are lowered in contrast to the raised arms of the demons.  The same can be said of the facial expressions in the stupa; the demons’ faces are twisted into rictuses of anger with eyes all pointed directly at Buddha.  Buddha, however, is stoic and faces the viewer, possibly a reminder of what the Buddhist should concentrate on.  Also notable is the difference between Buddha’s possessions and those of the demons and how each makes use of them.  Buddha scarcely has any items, only a simple robe lacking any ornament.  His items are based on necessity.  The demons on his peripheral have more elaborate clothing and some have headdresses; they also brandish weapons and ride horses.  To a follower of Buddhism, the combination of violence and material possessions could be seen as directly in line with Buddhist teaching.  Though more subtle then the van der Weyden, Scenes from the Life of Buddha instructs its audience through centrality and unity; it puts the religious prophet at the center of the teaching and encompasses symbols and gestures that reflect their teachings.

Spirituality in art finds methods through which to pass on a message because its strength lies in its need to serve a purpose.  For the religious, a work of art can be spiritually inspiring as well as instructional.  Culturally pervasive iconography indicates to the viewer the purpose of the work and the artist has the ability to interpret how it is presented in any way they wish.  Symbols in works demonstrate an acknowledged and established understanding of doctrine which gives unity to the art pertaining to that religion.  Understanding symbols along with the artist’s interpretation is crucial in understanding the work of art.