when western artists were first exposed to african masks, they made a huge impression. there's obvious reasons for this. however, recently, in art history, due to a popular obsession with "otherizing" people, it's become taboo to describe these as a different, unique art. ... https://hell.twtr.plus/media/dd397b141cf69c6ab14809f8829492e5c5cf6c9553813b1b0b62c04aad5ae4d6.file

is it because christianity… fractured more? is it because of how christianity relates to political power (in varying ways) - and how that dovetails with aesthetics? is it because of the place and time christianity originated in, as opposed to where and when islam originated? https://hell.twtr.plus/media/12dbaa810e8abfcbfc54e6b70791def657feea6c0805eb92351ae537e75177a1.file

does it have to do with the bible: its viewpoint, authors, context, relationship to art, culture, compared to the quran, and its view on those things? an islamic wing makes sense. ive been there. it feels cohesive. what does this mean about christianity? thoughts for the mind. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/1d8ff3d6979b7c9bcebedf554fc45ec264d06afff35ebfe8f3cc894025bb54c0.file

it is it a political power + aesthetics thing? maybe. southeast asia is pretty far from turkey. that doesn’t feel like it. is it a cultural aesthetics thing? eh. does the southeast asian art really share “a culture” with the iraqi art other than… being muslim? its a circle. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/c9ddb15af633f981583dc9907b56b248d84635cbcc530c9938a3cab5da17b0de.file

is it because the museum exists in a (post… sorry) christian culture, so, they see the distinction more between varying christian art, meanwhile throwing “islamic” art under some kind of foreign, reduction-ary blanket? no. its at least not just that, in my opinion. then, why? https://hell.twtr.plus/media/510435f302e4003eaf07ef71574cfc29f0c993e5be7a6546f40df121d2ff421a.file

the christian art is broken up geographically - early european, medieval, late european - all separate from the american christian art. if there was christian art from india, it would be in the india section. but then, theres just a whole “islamic wing”. thats interesting. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/98acf908786123c8c2f39bac9c3b3ca7e6364efca330993b09becd213b7616aa.file

this is not an administrative slight of hand. some internal documents refer to it as “islamic art”, and so on. the issue raised is that there would never be a “christian art” wing - and, there isnt. i dont think ive even been to a museum with a global collection that has that. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/48440daa2f213eb7984d0c0e7a806802c743e2e48b4660831ea803a63f5e7c53.file

an interesting practical case study in religious aesthetics surfaced when the metropolitan museum of art, in 2011, opened a wing of the museum titled: Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia functionally, this is the islamic wing of the museum: https://hell.twtr.plus/media/20a04c3d60a7b0b9144e17f1b588c6ab5671c9e0fc0434f92a93920bf2f8ba7f.file

the significance of this was that beyond that sphere (i.e. keep going out, from earth at the center) things were perfect, static, unchanging. that made them dependable and thus predictable. meanwhile under the moon-sphere, things changed, morphed: thus were far less predictable. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/5ec52454777c223415560340880f9251de4c81b10ed25ff5896bc9cbdcfbb5eb.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/b4dae4790cbd1c2628687fe23d4f483b67dce074431b384c5020ddc927097352.file

occasionally in some older work (medieval, back into antiquity) you will see the word sublunar or sublunary. this is the sub-lunar (under the moon) world. you can see the little moon in the inner ring here, illustrating our previous conception of the cosmos as concentric spheres: https://hell.twtr.plus/media/b81e3571a979f71f3834d4b94a4775ec326253f01a8a35c6ffd910e77a2f3c88.file