Art Books: How Worker Problems Overshadow Islamic Art at Gulf State Museums

THE ART NEWSPAPER
By Jane Jakeman

The Mamluk-era Mosque of Sultan Hassan in Cairo from Egypt and Nubia by David Roberts (published between 1845 and 1849).

"God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art and Culture" is a glossy, profusely illustrated volume resulting from a Palermo symposium with contributions by well-known scholars. "The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor" is a cheaply produced paperback by lesser-known artists and social commentators. What connects two such disparate publications? Light is an enduring topic in Islamic science and art history, much of the discussion stemming from a well-known topos in the Sura of Light (Koran 24:35), where the image of a lamp in a niche is related to revelation of the divine. [link]