A NEW EXPANSION OF ISLAMIC VISUAL ART ART OF DRAWING PICTURE AND PRECURSOR DRAWING PAINTERS

METE ÇAMDERELİ

ABSTRACT

Islamic societies were not far from the visual culture for centuries, and there is no doubt
that they teemed with many visual products; they left a huge visual heritage to the future
generations. Their visual designs, as the art of drawings, have evolved in a special way
and differently from the West. The approach of Islam to the appearance of living things
forced Muslim artists to produce visual designs different from the other arts’ imaginary
perspective. A sequence of visual arts from calligraphy to illumination and to marbling
has become a tradition in Islamic societies. But in the present time articulation of new
artistic quests to Islamic art can be observed. Of these visual arts, drawing-picture is the
most prominent one. In this study by drawing-picture we mean cartoon/illustration/
caricature at the same time to give an implicit determination to the art of the artists we
shall mention. These two leading artists who performed/is performing the drawing art
as a visual matter from the second half of the 20th century to the utmost of their lives and
understand the drawing’s expression opportunities as an existence fight in the globalized
world are Naji al-Ali, Palestinian drawing-painter and Hasan Aycın. Anatolian drawingpainter.
This study will focus on the two famous drawing-painters, who are mentioned as
the representatives of drawing-picture art in the Islamic societies, with drawing-pictures
and an example analysis of a drawing-picture from each of the artists given, and their
drawing-picture styles will be identified. The process of the descriptive analysis will have
its roots in symbolism and in iconology as methodology. At the end of the study by the
example analysis of Naji el Ali’s and Hasan Aycın’s drawing-pictures, drawing-picture
as a new Islamic art will be explored and a methodical suggestion about analyzing a
drawing-picture will be presented at the same time.