Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

It’s difficult to imagine architecture without representational sketches and drawings that lead to its completion during the construction of buildings. These drawings are multi-faceted in their origins. They are means of communicating ideas regarding a constructional detail of artifacts within the horizontal or vertical landscape, but also they can be works of art in itself and means of representing thought and imaginary reality as has been demonstrated throughout history of art and architecture by people like Piranesi. One can dwell in Piranesi’s imaginary drawings as one equally can find refuge and sustenance in interiority and depth of Rumi’s Poetry. The collection of drawings presented here are based on Rumi’s poems, an attempt to reveal the concentrated vision of Rumi’s meditative spaces in his mystical odes (ghazals) and quattrains (rubai) by exploring the single motif of Sufi landscape where the subjects evoke an atmosphere of solitude and aloneness.. Empty foregrounds in these illustrations allow viewer to enter the drawing while shadows help breakdown the sense of scale and perspective creating an intensely meditative space to dwell. Rumi was not interested in poetry. It was for him a way of being. The spontaneous words chanted during the Sufi dances, the short poems, as well as mystical odes were often without logical cohesion. Like these illustrations, they have a unity that comes from deep devotion and quest for religious experience.