WEST ASIAN ART

West Asia is rich in cultural heritage, and this is clearly evident in the variety and quality of regional arts
and crafts.

Typical artistic forms from the region include:

• Embroidery
• Ceramics
•Wood carving
•Inlaid wood designs
•Calligraphy
•Hammered metalwork
•Blown glassworks

Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn.

Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take forms including art
ware, tile, figurines, sculpture, and tableware. While some ceramics are considered fine art, as pottery or
sculpture, some are considered to be decorative, industrial or applied art objects.

Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by
two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine,
or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object.

Inlaid Wood Designs is a design or pattern on an object which is made by putting materials such as
wood, gold, or silver into the surface of the object.

Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a broad tip
instrument, brush, or other writing instruments.

Hammered Metalwork’s is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or
large-scale structures.

Blown glassworks is a glass forming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble (or
parison) with the aid of a blowpipe (or blow tube).

Although these are some of the most acclaimed art forms contributed by West Asia, their aesthetics can
be seen in almost any product from the region even including such things as handmade soap from Syria or
Lebanon.
The Islamic artistic heritage of West Asia, found in illustrated manuscript folios, ceramics and textiles, is
represented in the Gallery holdings by only a few examples that do not do justice to the great traditions of
this part of Asia. Our small collection of West Asian art is dominated by ceramics, some of which
demonstrate the characteristic technique introduced by Islamic potters of lustre decoration with its
luminous sheen from a glaze made of the finest metals such as silver, gold and copper.

West Asian art goes back to the earliest presence of people in West Asia, in the form of little stone
or clay fertility figurines. Around 9000 BC, they were carving stone at the temple of Gobekli Tepe. They
didn’t carve human figures (we don’t know why not). But they carved all sorts of animals that probably
had symbolic meaning at this temple.

By 7000 BC, in the first little settled towns, people were making masks and big statues of people. This
one is made of gypsum plaster and reeds, with tar eyes. Although it isn’t life-size, it is about three feet
tall. Probably it originally wore real clothing, or had clothing painted on.

By the beginning of the Bronze Age, about 3000 BC, the Sumerians were making much more complex
statues. Because there is not much good stone in Mesopotamia, and also a terrible shortage of wood, the
Sumerians made most of their statues out of clay. This makes Sumerian statues look very different
from Egyptian ones of the same time, because the Egyptian ones, cut from square blocks of stone, tend to
be squarish, while the Sumerian statues, built up out of lumps of clay, tend to be roundish.

2500 BC. People in Mesopotamia invented writing. Now we begin to get representations of actual
historical events, mainly war victories. The kings set these up in the temples to thank the gods for helping
out, and to show how powerful the king and the gods were. One example is the Vulture stele, shown here.
By this time, sculptors were willing to have human beings on their stone carvings.

Under Babylonian rule, around 1700 BC, you still see those rounded West Asian forms, even though
these statues are made out of stone. By now it has become part of the way people think about their bodies
and about the world in general.

Can you see the writing all across Gudea’s skirt? This is a way of representation that begins in Egypt, but
seems to be taken over into Mesopotamian art about a thousand years later.