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Titelbeschreibung
"Masterpieces of Islamic Art." "Kuwait : Dar Al-Athar Al-Islamiyyah, 1990.". "Good condition. - Preface: When one looks back on the long months of strenuous effort involved in the organisation and execution of a project of this scope, one experiences nothing less than a sense of awe. To realise this project, people from different backgrounds have met in friendship and have worked together in a unison inspired by a living feeling for the spirit of art itself. -- This feeling for art has proved to be a strange and powerful catalyst which has telescoped distances and changed even our sense of time. Under the impulse of this feeling, differences have been dissolved, the unfamiliar has been revealed as somehow familiar, and objects of great beauty, formerly separated by great distances, have been brought together under a single roof, here in Kuwait. With the magic of the unifying spirit which lies behind all art, differences in time, in space and in national aspirations have been resolved. -- All the efforts required to exhibit an enduring record of an enormous cultural achievement, would not have been possible had people been content merely to remain cloistered in their own domains. The project required that people should feel the impulse to move towards each other in a spirit of cooperation. Without such a willing movement, this exhibition would never have become the reality we are privileged to experience now. -- The cooperation in exchange of ideas and experiences during the last year have enabled the State Hermitage -- Museum and the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah to organize this marvellous exhibition and the publication of the catalogue, which so adequately provides a permanent record of the exhibits. Experts from the Soviet Union and Kuwait have spent a long time, preparing for this exhibition. Need I elaborate on the effort involved in the assembling of these objects, in writing the accompanying texts, in the translation, the photography, the design, the printing, the editing and the publications? All those individuals involved, whether named figure-heads or anonymous workers, deserve the credit for this monumental undertaking, which is itself a clear evidence of the collaboration between two civilisations and nations. It seems that no boundary may prevent communication, or the intellectual and cultural expansion of a civilization so deeply rooted in a cultural soil. This cultural expansion, which we see demonstrated so convincingly within the exhibition itself, is Islam, which stretched as far east as China, and as far west as Spain and the Maghreb. At its most influential, this culture transmitted the bright light of learning and civilization to a Europe desperately seeking a new vision and identity after the collapse of the old Roman Empire. This fact has been argued by many scholars such as Le Bon, Gustave and Lévi Provencal who, after studying with such profundity the Islamic contribution in the realms of science and art, admitted that the West was indebted to the Muslims for many of its later achievements. -- The visitor will find in the exhibition and the catalogue only a fragmentary reminder of the vast dimensions of the Islamic contribution to the world, yet incomplete as this is, it leaves no doubt in one's mind of the great Islamic achievements and innovations in the cultural domain. -- The State Hermitage Museum collection of Islamic art is rightly considered one of the most important in the world, as is intimated by Dr. A. Ivanov in his introduction to this catalogue. It is perhaps pertinent to remind the visitor that one third of these beautiful and important objects come from the Eastern provinces of the Islamic world - from Iran, central Asia (Transoxania), central Russia, and India. These provinces contributed significantly to the spread of Islamic civilisation, scholarship, science, philosophy and arts. When, in perusing the old biographies, the reader notes the names of so many Islamic cities, he finds that this is because scientists took their names precisely from such places - we may see this in such names as (Herat Khwarezm, Termez, Sugnak etc), which are remembered for their famous sons and daughters. In this exhibition we find objects manufactured in these same areas, which thus offer a fascinating and material confirmation of the importance of these Islamic places and names in art and history. This is especially true of the connexions revealed -- in the art of the northern Mongol tribes and the tribes in the Caucasus. Here, in this exhibition, we see the ancient famous names of places made almost tangible in the form of these beautiful objects: now we have before us real objects which lend a habitation and reality to those areas which were previously known to us only in the names of great men. -- Some of these works of art from the State Hermitage Museum stand alongside similar objects from the Dar al- Athar al-Islamiyyah. This arrangement of bringing objects from the State Hermitage Museum and Dar al- Athar al-Islamiyyah under one roof is quite intentional. The comparisons which arise naturally in the mind of the visitor will invite a valid comparison between objects of similar manufacture, technique, decorative vocabulary, style and origin. -- I cannot bring this preamble to a conclusion without thanking all those people who have participated in making this exhibition possible. -- Hussah Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah -- Director -- Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah. ". 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