The new issue, number 19, features essays on a fragmentary Kufic Qur'an of Early Abbasid style produced in Central Iran; cuttings from a 12th-century Bible written in southeastern France for a Carthusian monastery in the orbit of the Grande Chartreuse; a large folding panorama of the Brazilian city of Salvador in the state of Bahia, taken around 1880 by German photographer Rodolpho Lindemann; French traveler Jane Dieulafoy’s 19th-century photographic documentation of Ilkhanid monuments, including the Emamzadeh Yahya, one of Iran’s most plundered tombs; the wartime encounter between Polish painters stationed in Baghdad and Iraqi artists during the British military reoccupation of Iraq in 1941–45; and the integration of photography and poetry in East German samizdat artists’ books of the 1980s.
Doris Chon, Executive Editor of the Getty Research Journal notes, “The articles featured in this inaugural open-access issue address a dynamic range of cultural production that spans four continents and 11 centuries. With this decisive transition to a freely available digital publication, the journal upholds its mission to deliver original scholarship on global visual art to the broadest possible readership.”
Abstracts from issue 19:
Northern Africa or Central Iran? An Investigation into the Production Place of a Fragmentary Kufic Qur'an at the J. Paul Getty Museum
Mahdi Sahragard
One of the ambiguities in the history of Islamic calligraphy is the determination of the regions where each script prevailed in the first three Hijri centuries. This ambiguity is due to the dispersion of book leaves and the lack of reliable colophons in early copies. The J. Paul Getty Museum preserves a few leaves of a Qur'an that is one of the significant examples of Early Abbasid style. This Qur'an was discovered in Kairouan, Tunisia, so historians have attributed its origin to that place. Yet, evidence proves it was produced in Central Iran. This evidence includes the eastern-system diacritic and the Abjad script used in the sign for the numeral 10 āyahs; moreover, its script resembles the monumental script of some of the signed New Style Qur'ans copied in Isfahan and Rayy. Because the Getty Qur'an is copied in D.I script (the subgroup described by codicologist and paleographer François Déroche), the D.I script can be attributed to Central Iran.
Cuttings from an Illustrated Twelfth-Century French Manuscript Bible in Los Angeles and Berlin
Beatrice Alai and Peter Kidd
A historiated initial depicting the Old Testament prophet Micah, cut probably in the 19th century from a 12th-century illuminated manuscript and acquired by the Getty Museum in 1989, is here placed in its temporal, geographical, and religious contexts through an examination of its decoration, script, and text, in combination with the evidence provided by fifty further cuttings from the same manuscript in Berlin—most of them unpublished—and one in a private collection. From this study it emerges that the cuttings come from a Bible written in the third quarter of the 12th century in southeastern France for a Carthusian monastery in the orbit of the Grande Chartreuse.
Jane Dieulafoy in Varamin: The Emamzadeh Yahya through a Nineteenth-Century Lens
Keelan Overton
This article explores the condition and reception of Varamin’s architectural heritage from the Ilkhanid period (1256–1353) during the late 19th century. I use two relatively untapped sources: the photographs of French traveler Jane Dieulafoy (1851–1916) and the account of Qajar statesman Eʿtemad al-Saltaneh (1843–96). Reading these sources in tandem paints a robust picture of Varamin when it was becoming known for luster tilework and its Emamzadeh Yahya tomb complex was being steadily plundered. While our travelers captured a seminal moment in Varamin’s history, this study ultimately moves beyond their frames and encourages a present-day appreciation of the city’s still-standing monuments.
Baghdad Kept on Working: Painting and Propaganda during the British Occupation of Iraq, 1941–45
Anneka Lenssen
This article explores the late-colonial context for a wartime encounter between Polish and Iraqi artists during a period of British military reoccupation, 1941–45. Linking E. L. T. Mesens’s propaganda work for the Allied cause to the activities of Polish painters stationed in Baghdad, particularly Józef Czapski (1896–93) and Józef Jarema (1900–1974), and to those of Iraqi artists Jewad Selim (1919–61) and Jamil Hamoudi (1924–2003), it demonstrates how a consortium of artists and officers came to model a version of modern art construed as free inquiry into form, or “art alone.” Polish artists mobilized propagandistic narratives about threats to civilization, including the loss of Paris as an open city. Responses by Iraqi artists both reflect and refract the Allied version of civilizational values. As such, the Polish-Iraqi encounter represents an early, not-yet-postwar reckoning with doubts about the progression of artistic practice in a world in which barbarous violence was always imminent.
Overthrowing Reality: Photo-Poems in 1980s German Democratic Republic Samizdat
Anna Horakova and Isotta Poggi
In the 1980s, the youngest generation of artists to have been raised in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) experimented collaboratively to produce work in intermedial genres, with particular focus on synthesizing poetry and such visual arts as photography and printmaking. Drawing on the rich collection of East German samizdat artists’ books in the Getty Research Institute (GRI), this article examines diverse approaches to design integrating photography and poetry that emerged from within this vibrant community, including artistic practices of dialogue across consecutive pages (Wolfgang Henne and Marion Wenzel), montaged works (the artist’s trio of the Günther-Jahn-Bach Editionen), and handwritten poems combined with found photographs, drawing, and overpainting (Inge Müller and Christine Schlegel). The intermedial focus and the limited print-run editions, which—because of a legal loophole—allowed for modest circulation of these largely uncensored materials, enabled artists to speak about controversial issues such as the environment, the legal system, transgenerational feminist solidarities, or accountability for Germany’s Nazi past.
The Perpetual Unfolding of Photographic History: A Previously Unknown Panorama of Salvador, Bahia, by Rodolpho Lindemann
Julieta Pestarino
This article examines a panoramic photograph of the Brazilian city of Salvador, in the state of Bahia, taken around 1880 by Rodolpho Lindemann. Recently added to the collection of the GRI, this large six-part folding work has not been mentioned in previous studies or in the foremost books on the history of photography in Brazil, suggesting that its existence has not been widely known. Although it bears no signature or stamp, comparison with a drawing based on the photograph made it possible to determine its authorship. This article explores connections with other panoramic images produced in the country in order to propose a framework for thinking about the representation of landscapes and cities according to the panoramic tradition as well as the question of unknown authorship in photography.
Published by the GRI since 2009, the Getty Research Journal presents peer-reviewed articles on the visual arts of all cultures, regions, and time periods. Topics featured in the journal often relate to Getty collections, initiatives, and broad research interests. The journal welcomes a diversity of perspectives and methodological approaches, and seeks to include work that expands narratives on global culture. Beginning with this issue, texts are published under a Creative Commons-Attribution Noncommercial (CC BY-NC) license. The journal is produced and published using Quire, Getty’s open-source software, and is freely available in web, PDF, and e-book formats.
