Blog 7: Something about Arts

Recently I read a novel called My name is Red. The novel impressed me deeply. In the book, A great painter in Turkey said, “When we talk about artistic style, I should say that style is the mistakes which are made by an artist who aims at leaving messages to tell people that the masterpieces belong to whom.” I was shocked by these words, for the idea was totally different from ours about painting art.
Through the whole book, the author explains the attitude of people in the Muslim world towards arts. They can only accept the traditional painting called miniature. They strictly demand every miniature to follow the fixed painting skills and that every piece of miniature should describe a certain part of legend. In their mind paintings will be meaningless if they are separated from stories. And every feature should be symbolic, not realistic. Every miniaturor need to humbly practice again and again imitating the former masters’ work without any creativity and finally they will be familiar with painting. They heap scorn on the western painting skills and regard iconography and perspective as the guilty of breaking Allah’s rules. Even the sultan who is the leader of the muslin world cannot have their own portrait. They got a saying that a painter cannot paint a real horse unless they became blind, because unless a painter practiced tens of thousands of times he could not acquire the skill, and at that time his eyes must have become blind because of the tiredness.
In the book, many masters quote stories to prove their view. For example, once upon a time, there was a miniature master who kept painting humbly through his lifetime. And his work was well estimated by the sultan. However when the master became old, greed defeated his caution so that he secretly used some special skill to finish a miniature. All the people found that there was something uncomfortable in the beautiful miniature even though they could not tell what was wrong. At last the master committed a suicide grievously.
However the western painting values different qualities. In the western world, people pursue their own styles. Every work should have unique features and be creative or realistic. They use perspective and shadows to really describe what they have seen. Through the painting we can see the vivid scene as well as the master’s spiritual world.
I think those differences reflect the values of different culture. Western culture concentrates on individuals. Everyone should be unique and everyone should be equal. Sometimes it is aggressive, for everyone wants to fight for their own rights and cannot bear to be ignored, while Asian culture is different. it values the humbleness and does not stand out. However, as the globalization comes, these differences are changing gradually. Only if the west and the east learn from each other can they evolve to catch up with the need for the time.