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So to point out some problematic elements that seem to be overshadowed by the multimedia format of this piece and the focus on visual analysis...a
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread"> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/02/arts/design/shah-jahan-chitarman.html">https://www.nytimes.com/interacti...
1 - "But soon Indian artists would encounter another tradition of immense refinement, from a faraway source. That source was Persia."
why is "Persia," which is continuously conflated here with other Persianate cultures, a "faraway source"? Since when?
why is "Persia," which is continuously conflated here with other Persianate cultures, a "faraway source"? Since when?
(con& #39;td) And how do we just go from Timurid Persianate art as influence and skip over the Safavids entirely? like the earlier painting of Jahangir embracing Shah Abbas is RIGHT THERE
2 - "The son who succeeded [Shah Jahan], in a bloody struggle, was a Muslim fundamentalist who cared little for the arts."
"Fundamentalist" is an anachronistic term that tells me more about the writer than the person he is writing about. D+
"Fundamentalist" is an anachronistic term that tells me more about the writer than the person he is writing about. D+
3 - "By 1858, the British crown took over. The Mughal empire faded away, though not its allure."
Really. The Mughal empire just happened to "fade away" as the British crown "took over." That& #39;s one way to soft-pedal colonialism I guess
Really. The Mughal empire just happened to "fade away" as the British crown "took over." That& #39;s one way to soft-pedal colonialism I guess
4 - "It’s a Muslim masterpiece made 2,500 miles from Mecca." --> I& #39;m sorry what. WHO TALKS LIKE THIS. Also no one tell this guy you will find Muslims doing things even farther away from Mecca
5 - "Elsewhere, Muslim artists abjured images. In Central Asia, however, they depicted lovers in gardens or princes on horseback. (Some even pictured Muhammad himself.)"
That "elsewhere" is doing a lot of work here. Too bad that work is lazy af. D+
That "elsewhere" is doing a lot of work here. Too bad that work is lazy af. D+
This kind of language functions on the presumption that elite visual artistic production (w/the appropriate level of religious cosmopolitanism) reflects an enlightened Muslim discourse that is in contrast to "fundamentalism." Just as ShahJahan is depicted as the center of a halo,
...the author frames Mughal rule as an exceptional form of Muslim engagement with both art and non-Muslims, on whose peripheries--"elsewhere" and "faraway"--Muslims lie in darkness, as evidenced by the "abjur[ing] of images," neither of which are actually historically true
It is a subtle but very specific politics at play here. We can discern whom the author is thinking of when he anachronistically refers to "fundamentalism" and name-checks Mecca seemingly out of nowhere. The eschewing of any Safavid references also fits this political framing.
And of course there is a lot to be said when Europeans are depicted as gently taking over and then simply become part of the visual analysis
