Dr. Samir Mahmoud : ‘New perspectives on Islamic art: How and why does non-figurative art move us and evoke an emotion?’
The lecture explored a wide ranging array of interdisciplinary perspectives that try to answer this one question: How and why does non-figurative art move us and evoke an emotion? He will drew on some medieval Islamic textual sources in addition to contemporary neurosciences, phenomenology, art history, and psychology to form a dialogue across the centuries that centres on the perceptual qualities of non-figurative art (geometry, vegetal motifs, and to a certain extent calligraphy). He then explored the question of an Islamic prohibition on creating images of livings things from this angle.