Reviews for Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture

The average rating for Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-25 00:00:00 Tacara Baumler Valerie Gonzalez writes an accessible group of essays on Islamic Aesthetics. She writes clearly and perceptively for a field that is often needlessly obscure. I think the two best essays here are the one on the medieval philosophy and the one on the phenomenology of the Alhambra’s Comares Hall. In the first essay she asserts that not much understood about Islamic aesthetics, which I don’t believe.. She explores the connection between Islamic aesthetics and Greek philosophy, which naturally results in classical criteria. Avicenna, Ibrahim Rushde, Averroes like the Scholastics place conider beauty An attribute of God. The other essay in my opinion proves that the practice of referencing in Islamic art necessarily results in mental images. Man cannot get away from assigning physical content to intellectual ideas. The ceiling of the Alhambra references the seven Heavens of Islam by making physical levels rising to the ceiling. Yes the ceiling does not represent stars but it references them in design thus summoning up other ideas. It shows me that man cannot get away from the physical image even if it is only inside his head.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-08 00:00:00 Rene Maradiaga good