A Sufi Reflection on Artistic Expression
Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize Winning Novel: My Name is Red
Image: Osman Hamdi Bey’s The Tortois Trainer
“A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds.” — My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk
It’s been almost two months since I disembarked from my journey through Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, the Nobel Prize-winning book set in 16th-century Constantinople. In addition to the dazzling renderings of the imperial treasury, bustling bazaars, and workshops where artisans illustrate illuminated manuscripts, Pamuk’s reflections on art’s relationship with the human spirit have not left my mind. The Turkish author brings to life the world of Islamic miniaturism and the struggles undertaken by kaftan-clad men who labored endlessly over illustrations of timeless tales through a careful synthesis of fact and fiction.
Pamuk approaches artistic expression with an acutely Sufi-Islamic sensibility that is worth examining, regardless of religious affiliation. Pamuk asserts, through his fictional miniaturists that “...painting is the act of seeking out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He sees the world.” (79) Rather then trying to paint items as they are present in the world around us, illustration is used as a means of revealing the essence of what is to be depicted; the essence visible in full only to the divine. They would “[attempt] to depict the world that God perceives, not the world that they [saw].” The miniatures that adorn the Metropolitan Museum’s gallery walls are not meant to be a window into a moment in time; instead, they are intended to exist outside the very conception of time in a world hidden from our own.
However, the pursuit of otherworldly portrayals is not intended to replace our appreciation for the mortal world. After all, “Allah created this worldly realm the way an intelligent seven-year-old boy would want to see it; what’s more, Allah created this earthly realm so that, above all, it might be seen.” Art is meant to serve as a means of celebrating beauty, especially when we feel we are peering through a portal that may, in fact, be divine.