ISLAMIC POLLOCK

I take photos of Islamic calligraphic writing on buildings. In a Madrassa in Morocco, I was struck by the caligraphic similarities of this Koranic text and Jackson Pollock’s paintings, photo above.  This building was built in around 800 AD, which was just after the Islamic conquests of North Africa.

I’ve seen a lot of Koranic text on buildings.  But I have never seen the text with such depth.  The interplay of the thick and thin lines gives this separation.  I’m sure there is some stylistic term which describes this approach to decorative Koranic text.

There is such a great all over quality to the composition.  The entire flat space is energized in the same way that Pollock charged his flat space paintings.

Compare this to, say, Pollock’s Number 14 Gray.  I’m simply amazed by the similar energy, all over composition, lines as a direct result of the movement of the hand, etc.

The consonance of writing and drawing remains a preoccupation of these pages.  See for example WRITING AND DRAWING and WRITING IS DRAWING. That’s because with both writing and drawing, the lines put on the paper are a direct result of the movement of the hand.  Pollock worked the same way.  Each application of paint was, as has been described by others, as writing in space.  What you see is of the hand.  WYSIOTH.

Standing in these courtyards, surrounded by this beauty, can become nearly overpowering.  The lack of any iconographic images or statues.  The gentle trickle of water from the fountain.  The raking shadows.

The only decoration, really, is the word of God.  And it is intimately carved and fired into the fabric of the building.  It is close to living inside a drawing.

1.  Pollock, Jackson.  Number 14 Gray.  1951.  Yale University Art Gallery,  New Haven.