Write about any aspect of this lecture that is of interest to you.

The lecture for this week is The Sacred Art of Kufic Calligraphy: an Aesthetic Reflection, by Dr. Valerie Gonzalez. It is only 35 minutes, but packs a wonderful depth of understanding about the essential expressive meanings in calligraphy, particularly the oldest formalized form, Kufic calligraphy, and makes clear the differences between written words – the marks and their meanings, epigraphy – and the sacred aesthetic gesture unique and specific to calligraphy, expressing the word of God through marks. As a visual artist, I really appreciate the way that abstraction communicates to us as humans, and this lecture really pulls together the ways calligraphy express and convey the divine. This video does not cover all calligraphy forms, but discusses Kufic calligraphy on an aesthetic level. The spoken and written word are linguistic forms of communication, art is also a language. This video speaks to this dimension of communication, the visual, aesthetic dimension, in calligraphy, and the way it is used throughout Islamic cultures. It relates to last week’s “aniconism” concept, showing that much of the art in Islamic cultures, in its use of calligraphy, is “logo-centric” – or word-focused – rather than iconographically focused. I really got a lot out of this video, and I hope you will also!

For this assignment, you may:

1. Write about any aspect of this lecture that is of interest to you.

2. Post photographs of various types of calligraphy that you are interested in, with some didactic (instructional) comment about what you are showing us.

3. I know we have at least one student in the course who writes calligraphy. I would be so delighted if any of you who write calligraphy would share with the rest of us some of your calligraphy, and share any thoughts you wish about what this practice means to you!

4. Try your hand at calligraphy yourself! Don’t be intimidated of afraid to post things that aren’t “perfect”, we all start somewhere, and after seeing the gorgeous patterns so many of you created for the “aniconism” post, who knows, maybe some of you if you tried it would decide you would like to practice the art of calligraphy!

I look forward to reading and seeing your posts!

Laura

https://youtu.be/f5aDyxoTr6g?t=1m22s The Sacred Art of Kufic Calligraphy: an Aesthetic Reflection, Dr. Valerie Gonzalez

Reflect in ePortfolio

Requirements: | .doc file