Page 51 - Studio International - December 1972

Islamic carpets own. It is no wonder we sometimes feel that art The architecture, which was the setting for
is out of context, as it sometimes appears that
anything that is out of context when placed in a the carpets, was purposefully transient — all the
gallery, or framed, or on a pedestal, becomes a visible surfaces were sheathed in faience, stucco
work of art. These are our recognition clues or carved patterns, designed to dissolve the mass.
Keith Albarn
that say this is a work of art. Our analytical In this setting the carpets formed a
culture continuously separates in order to continuation of movement physically
define and thus in art, not surprisingly, it enclosing the participant whilst releasing the
After visiting the majestic exhibition of Islamic separates in order to refine. mind to dwell upon the ordered movement of
carpets a group of us were discussing a This urge in our culture to separate in order the universe. Architecture was an integration of
comment by David Sylvester in the catalogue to see is of course entirely at odds with the reason and gnosis devised by the soul of man in
which struck us as peculiarly poignant: 'If I feel vision of unity which inspired the designers of his continual movement towards 'being'. These
. . . . that a coarse peasant rug. . . . is a very great the carpets exhibited at the Hayward. These formal patterns of great subtlety evoke concepts
work of art, I doubt whether I could have seen it carpets do have a frame (a border) but it is not beyond the presence of the object to a sense of
as such but for Matisse.' to separate, but as a window on a pattern of unity with the movements of the cosmos.
This appears, after experiencing these infinite size; a trapdoor opening onto a reality Such concepts were holistic and thereby all
carpets, to say a lot for Matisse and little for our flowing beneath our everyday perception. artifacts, man and nature, were indivisible within
sensibilities, which therefore presumably need This vision of unity within the cosmos was a the great pattern of the universe. The way of
the enshrinement of an object in a gallery before vision of continual movement (Nature) in all thinking therefore combined intellect and
we see it as a 'great work of art'. It appears that things, and expressed the transience of beauty intuition and explored the visible and
we need to separate the object of interest from its and the illusionary nature of reality. The conceptual world as interrelated layers of
context before we can appreciate it as we are physical expression of such a cosmology development. So perhaps we see in their
supposed to appreciate 'works of art'. Do they unconsciously excites us because perhaps it is artifacts the absurdity of our continual urge to
require special criteria? Certain indefinable this sense of an ordered instability, this vision of separate art from artifact, and we see our
qualities which vary from age to age to encourage the whole, that we are seeking. But these were dilemma when faced with the evident need for a
us to separate art objects from artifacts. The not separate from other artifacts, not 'great commonly held cosmology to give substance to
object must, we feel, be capable of standing on its works of art', but part of the physical extensions our own artifacts.

A view of the Arts Council exhibition of the collection of Joseph V. McMullan's Islamic carpets, at the Hayward Gallery, open until io December