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Tauriq/Tastir, heartbeats from Al-Andalus
November 13, 20147:30 p.m.
CORDOBA
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Samuel de los Santos Gener, 9 – Cordoba)
7:30 p.m.
Free entrance until the event’s capacity is reached.
A conference given by artist and writer Hashim Cabrera
Casa Árabe and the Friends of Medina Azahara Association are presenting this conference, in which Cabrera offers us reflections on the alternation between naturalism and geometric abstraction in the art of Al-Andalus. The event will be introduced by Juan Serrano, President of the Friends of Medina Azahara Association.
According to the most prestigious contemporary art analysts, naturalism and geometric abstraction seem, in principle, to be the two great currents in Western art in the twentieth century. However, this dialectic, beyond just composing an alternation of its own in accordance with a specific period of history, as might be the case of modernity, has spread across all cultural areas and periods, constituting a dynamic which explains not only comings and goings in art history, but also the very heartbeats of cultures and civilizations. Their inevitable alternations express nothing other than a much more widespread reality which, above all else, has to do with the human condition and the role of human beings in the world.
The culture of Al-Andalus offers us a beautiful and interesting example of this alternation, with a precise timeline that takes us from the atauriques, or floral arabesques made during the height of splendor in Cordoba's caliphate at Madinat Al Zahra, to the geometric abstractions of the late period of Granada's Nasrid kingdoms. Tauriq and tastir, naturalism and geometric abstraction, express diverse “moments” in the vicissitudes of Spanish-Muslim civilization, displaying the changes in attitudes and values which the society of Al-Andalus gradually experienced from its birth, splendor and universal projection to its implosion, decadence and, in the end, disappearance.
The alternation between naturalism and geometric abstraction in the case of Al-Andalus shows us the existential and genealogical paradox of a society and a culture which integrated various ways of thinking, being and living, constituting what we would like to think of today as the “Cordoba Paradigm”: none other than a socio-political framework for intercultural integration and an all-encompassing, holistic attitude towards reality.
According to the most prestigious contemporary art analysts, naturalism and geometric abstraction seem, in principle, to be the two great currents in Western art in the twentieth century. However, this dialectic, beyond just composing an alternation of its own in accordance with a specific period of history, as might be the case of modernity, has spread across all cultural areas and periods, constituting a dynamic which explains not only comings and goings in art history, but also the very heartbeats of cultures and civilizations. Their inevitable alternations express nothing other than a much more widespread reality which, above all else, has to do with the human condition and the role of human beings in the world.
The culture of Al-Andalus offers us a beautiful and interesting example of this alternation, with a precise timeline that takes us from the atauriques, or floral arabesques made during the height of splendor in Cordoba's caliphate at Madinat Al Zahra, to the geometric abstractions of the late period of Granada's Nasrid kingdoms. Tauriq and tastir, naturalism and geometric abstraction, express diverse “moments” in the vicissitudes of Spanish-Muslim civilization, displaying the changes in attitudes and values which the society of Al-Andalus gradually experienced from its birth, splendor and universal projection to its implosion, decadence and, in the end, disappearance.
The alternation between naturalism and geometric abstraction in the case of Al-Andalus shows us the existential and genealogical paradox of a society and a culture which integrated various ways of thinking, being and living, constituting what we would like to think of today as the “Cordoba Paradigm”: none other than a socio-political framework for intercultural integration and an all-encompassing, holistic attitude towards reality.
Foto: Tauriq / tastir