Collectors' Vandalism of Islamic Art,

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Souren Melikan has a piece in the New York Times (Century-Old Vandalism of Islamic Art, and Its Price, April 15, 2011) about the way so-called cosmopolitan ("cultural property internationalist") collectors dismember unique handwritten manuscript books to separate the attractive pictures from the text which does not interest them and call it "Islamic art". To me, this is a very precise parallel to the way that so-called cosmopolitan ("cultural property internationalist") collectors encourage the dismemberment of unique archaeological sites and the separation of the attractive objects from their context which does not interest them and call it "Ancient art". Its the same thing, the same vandalism. This is how Melikan's article begins:

A chorus of praise greeted the “record for an Islamic work of art at auction” achieved when a painted page torn from a royal Iranian manuscript, the Shah-Name or Book of Kings, brought £7.43 million at the Sotheby’s auction of the Stuart Cary Welch collection on April 6. Little was said about the destruction of the greatest manuscript from 16th-century Iran, intact until 1957 when the French collector Maurice de Rothschild who owned it died.

The extraordinary manuscript commissioned for the library of Shah Tahmasp (1524-76) was acquired by Arthur A. Houghton Jr., a bibliophile whose interest lay in rare English books. He was presumably advised by Mr. Welch, who had long been buying manuscript paintings from Iran and Moghul India. Soon after, Mr. Houghton began breaking up the manuscript. In November 1976, seven pages appeared at Christie’s. Many more would follow, sold through art galleries and at auction, notably at Christie’s London on Oct. 11, 1988.

This astounding example of calculated vandalism perpetrated by a cultivated man is perhaps the most extreme where Eastern art is concerned. But it was by no means unusual. Ripping apart the thousands of precious painted manuscripts removed from Iran, India or Turkey and taken to Europe in the 19th and 20th century was routine among Western dealers. It allowed them to make a bigger profit[...]

Manuscripts from Moghul India, where Persian was the language of literature and administration, suffered a similar fate. In the Sotheby’s sale, a page painted with a scene featuring a ship sailing in choppy waters had been cut from a manuscript. The upper line reproduces a couplet by the 14th-century poet Hafez (not identified in the catalog) and the lower line has a couplet by another poet that does not rhyme with the former, which Sotheby’s does not mention. This botched assemblage, carried out in the 20th century, would be unthinkable in a manuscript of Persian poetry. Pompously dubbed “a page from the Salim [the future emperor Jahangir] album,” the beautiful but mishandled painting brought an astonishing £193,250.

The late Mr. Welch, who studied neither Persian nor Arabic, used to say that it is not necessary to know the languages to look at the paintings. To look perhaps, but to see, and to understand their meaning, it is. Had he mastered a reading knowledge of Persian, the American collector might have realized how intricate the connection is between the image and the written word.

I think the same goes for the commercial dismemberment of the archaeological record, it is clear that the dealers and collectors one talks to about it have not the foggiest idea about how the 'text' of an archaeological site is 'read'. They think its all about who gets to hold the 'pictures'.

In the context of this discussion about destroying archaeology to get out the geegaws, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the names Houghton and Wel[s]h. I assume that the Arthur A. Houghton ("junior" - this one?) is not related to the Arthur A. Horton of CPRI, but who knows? One ripped up manuscripts to sell the dismembered bits on the international market, the other has misgivings about the CCPIA intended to curb the treatment of foreign archaeological sites in the same way, the distinction seems to me to be a fine one. (There is a Corning glass connection).

Melikan talks of the effects of the way foreign collectors treat this cultural property in the following terms:

Detached from their volume and framed as “Persian miniatures,” book paintings are reduced to an arbitrary construct suiting the desire of collectors unaware of the nature of the art. The artificial construct fits into the overall reinvention of the Eastern world by the West.

He refers to the "misapprehension of historical reality that goes together with this reinvention", which again seems to me a perfect parallel to what happens when artefact collectors (such as the coineys) set out to rewrite history on the basis of a few decontextualised and visually attractive "pieces of the past" in their grubby hands.

Collectors of ancient dugups claim a special and privileged familiarity with ancient cultures which somehow magically infuses into them from possession, but Melikan highlights a number of examples of complete ignorance of these matters exhibited by both collectors and the cataloguers of the auction houses which sell these decontextualised "art works".

More on the Shahnameh:
Metropolitan Museum NY: 'The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp',
and its destruction here - Thomas Stone: 'The Houghton Shahnameh, The Whole Is Greater Then The Parts but Sometimes the Parts are more Marketable--Book Destruction for Profit'

Vignette: Decontextualised and put on sale: a framed page of the sixteenth century folio 'Faridun in the Guise of a Dragon Tests His Sons' attributed to Aqa Mirak "part of the scholarly collection of Islamic and Indian Art assembled by the late Stuart Cary Welch" (REUTERS/Toby Melville)