Introduction

This chapter aims to give an overview of some of the major modern art movements in the Islamic Middle East and does not attempt to treat the Islamic world more broadly. It begins with a discussion of the births of some of these movements in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, and goes on to examine a number of themes: changing attitudes towards figural representation; the role of the Arabic script; the response by artists to regional issues and questions of identity and gender; and, in an era where globalisation affects art, the range of new media that artists are employing today.

The term modern in the present context defines art produced in materials and styles associated principally with Western art traditions such as oils, canvas, sculpture and printed images. The story of what Middle Eastern artists do with these new materials, which began to be introduced into this region in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the very different subject matter associated with these new forms now confronting them, is a major feature of the art of this period. Also to be considered is how they react to what is effectively a total break with the past traditions of so-called ‘Islamic’ art and their search for distinct regional and cultural identities. This also parallels the broader effects of modernisation in different spheres of the cultural life of the region at this time, notably in literature.