Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture

by Valerie Gonzalez

Overview

'Beauty and Islam' explores aspects of aesthetics in classical Islamic thought in the light of contemporary theories, offering new perspectives on Islamic art and architecture with examples ranging from the Qur'an and the Alhambra to the works of present day artists and philosophers. Tracing the roots of Islamic aesthetics back to the works of the great philosophers of the Middle Ages such as Avicenna and Averroes, Valerie Gonzalez finds that aesthetic theory in Islam must be seen within the much wider context of parallel thinking on theology, ethics, physics and metaphysics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780755699346
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/24/2001
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Valerie Gonzalez has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and is currently a Research Associate at the School of Architecture, Marseilles.

Table of Contents

Beauty and the Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Thought
• The Aesthetics of the Solomonic Parable in the Qur'an
• Understanding the Comares Hall of the Alhambra in the Light of Phenomenology
• Between Abstraction, Kinetics and Metaphor: The "Geometrics" of the Alhambra
• The Signifying Aesthetic System of Inscriptions in Islamic Art

Editorial Reviews

This book is a fascinating, mind-teasing, and frustrating, at time brilliant, sometimes convoluted, but always stimulating investigation of Islamic aesthetics. Choice

From the Publisher