UAE to be first Arab Gulf country to have pavilion at Venice Biennale

The U.A.E will be the first Arabic country from the Gulf to create a national pavilion at the world's pre-eminent contemporary art exhibition the 2009 Venice Biennale, signaling its emergence as a new cultural hub.

Venice Biennale is universally recognized as the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event and will present its 53rd International Art Exhibition from June 7 through November 22, 2009.

Abu Dhabi has announced it will create its own independent exhibition as well; with a goal to represent the "contemporary visual arts and culture from the perspective of Abu Dhabi and beyond."

Artinfo reports that the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage has inlisted Paris-based curator Catherine David to organize a "Platform for Venice" for the biennale, which will see her produce a survey of the city "visually interpreted by photographers, artists, and filmmakers from the region and abroad."

Sotheby’s sets record for Any Islamic Work of Art At Auction. The auction included the largest group of sacred curtains ever to appear on the market.

Sotheby’s London was delighted to present the most important Arts of the Islamic World Sale it has ever staged which took place on April 9, 2008.

The auction comprised more than 400 lots of rare and important works of art, including metalwork, manuscripts, weaponry, ceramics, textiles and paintings that span from the 7th century through to the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The sale, which was expected to realise in excess of £9 million, in fact exceeded all expectations and realised £21,524,350.

The auction, which was the most important Islamic Sale ever staged by Sotheby’s, attracted enormous interest from collectors and connoisseurs of Islamic Art across the globe.

The auction total is more than double its pre-sale low estimate of £9.5 million** - £8 million over its pre-sale high estimate (£13.1 million) – representing the highest ever total for any sale of Islamic Art. The extraordinary sum is also in excess of Sotheby’s annual total of £20 million for sales of Islamic, Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian Art in 2007, which was the company’s best-ever result for sales in this category**.

The most important work was an extremely rare 14th-century gold and enamel Royal Belt Buckle from Al-Andalus, which was produced during the Nasrid period (AD 1230-1492) in Granada, Spain. The buckle, which is inscribed with ‘Glory to our Lord, the Sultan’, is an extraordinary example of the art of the goldsmiths in 14th-century Islamic Spain. Its remarkable quality, the technique used by the goldsmith and the royal inscription all suggest that the buckle must have been worn by the Sultan himself or someone very close to him. Only three other enamelled pieces from 14th-century Nasrid Spain, which are made entirely of gold, are known to exist. The offered lot, which is of museum-quality and outstanding importance, was estimated to realise in excess of £600,000; in fact it sold for £983,700 to an anonymous buyer.

A fine group of sacred relics, including an Abbasid ka’ba key and some 22 holy cloths, were also included in the auction. The ka’ba key is arguably one of the most powerful symbols of Islam and this is the only one known to remain in private hands. It is perceived to carry as much blessing as the kiswa cloth that covers the structure itself and unlocks one of the most iconic and highly honoured - certainly within the pan-Islamic community - buildings in the world.

The tradition of dedicating the key to each Caliph seems to have originated with the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad. As a physical object, it is the key to the holiest building of an entire religion; it demonstrates the authority of the reigning monarch and is the ultimate emblem of power. Metaphysically the key represents the unveiling of the soul in the eyes of God, the opening of the mind to enlightenment and the ultimate capitulation to God. Aside from this lot, 58 keys are recorded but despite the number of keys manufactured there are very few extant and of these they are all in museums. The key, which was formerly in a private Lebanese collection, is the second earliest example known – the earliest is dated A.H. 555/A.D. 1160 – and is previously unpublished. It was estimated at £400,000-500,000. In fact that was grossly under estimated, as it sold for £9,204,500.

In the wake of the strong results achieved for the ten sacred curtains offered in Sotheby’s last Islamic Art auction in October 2007, the majority of which sold for well in excess of their pre-sale high estimates, the sale presented the largest group of sacred curtains ever to have appeared on the market to date. The 14 sacred textiles, which together were estimated to realise in excess of £920,000, were headlined by four curtains in particular, the most important being a magnificent Ottoman velvet, silk and metal thread calligraphic band (hizam) from the holy ka’ba at Mecca (illustrated above), which dates from the early 20th century. The second most valuable of the group is an important 19th-century Ottoman curtain from the Tawassul at Medina. Two further significant pieces in the group included an Ottoman curtain from the door of the Ra’isiyah minaret of the mosque of the prophet Hajrat Al-Qabr Al-Nabawi Al-Sharif in Medina (illustrated left), which is highly decorative and includes the embroidered tughra and signature of Sultan Mahumud II (AH 1223-1255/AD) 1808-1838, and a curtain from the tomb of the prophet Hujrat Al-Qabr Al-Nabawi Al-Sharif in Medina. Both curtains were estimated at £80,000-120,000. The curtain from the tomb of the prophet actually sold for $833,969.

Highlighting the manuscripts in the sale was the earliest dated copy of the highly influential astronomical manuscript by Nasir al-Din Al-Tusi’s, the Zij-i Ilkhani. Copied by Muhammad Ibn Mahmoud Ibn Ahmad Al-Jundabi, Ilkhanid, Persia, the manuscript, dated 24th Shawwal A.H. 676/A.D. 1277, is a highly important document of the Kitab al-Zij al-Ilkhani, or the Zij-i Ilkhani as it is known. Copied only four years after the death of the author and leading 13th-century Muslim philosopherscientist Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and a mere eight years after the original was completed in 1270. Al-Tusi, a universal scholar, and perhaps the most prolific author of the Islamic world, is best known in the history of science for his renditions of early Arabic translations of Greek works on astronomy and mathematics, various independent documents on aspects of theoretical and practical astronomy and mathematics, and this manuscript, the Persian scientific manuscript, the Zij-i Ilkhani.

The Zij, which provides the astronomer with the theory and tables to calculate the position of the sun, moon and five naked- eye planets, with the ability to predict eclipses, the lunar crescent and planetary visibility, was one of more than 150 works written by al-Tusi, but it was astronomy itself that brought him fame as a scientist. (The Zij can be used to tell the length of twilight, the altitude of the sun at midday and the exact times of prayer, and was therefore an important handbook for any astronomer and indeed any Muslim). At the age of 60, soon after his appointment as a retainer of the Mongol emperor, al- Tusi was entrusted with responsibility for the Empire’s religious foundations and its finances, as well as the construction of an observatory at Maragha. On completion the observatory’s library was secondto- none and it became a magnet for some of the greatest scientific thinkers of the age. The Zij was the result of many years of research by one of the foremost masterminds of the golden age of Arab astronomy. This rare document of the Ilkhanid era was estimated at £80,000- 120,000 but sold for £378,900.

Highlighting the Arms, Armour and Military section of the sale was an important blade which once belonged to the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (illustrated left). The steel Firangi blade with the personal Shah Jahan inscription was inscribed in India and is dated AH 1055 (AD 1645-1646 /25th Regnal Year / AD 1653). In the Mughal court and much of princely India from the late-16th century, it was customary to wear two swords at the same time: one sword, worn at the waist, was termed kamr shamshir (Persian) or ‘belt sword’ and the other sword was the asa shamshir (Persian), otherwise known in the Deccan as a Dhup (Marathi) or ‘staff sword’, which had long, straight, imported European blades and a khanda or basket hilt, such as the offered lot. The Mughals adopted the asa shamshir from the Deccan in the 16th century and Firangi swords of the type owned by the Mughal Emperors were in general use across princely India.

The section also included a rare 18thcentury Sikh steel armour plate from North West India/Pakistan (illustrated right). The side plate, which is adorned with the ‘Akal Ustat’ verse and conveys the tenth Guru’s perspective on the essence of dharma and the purpose of human life, is virtually identical to a single plate in a complete set of charaina (back, front and two side plates) in the collection of the royal house of Patiala in Punjab. Each of those plates carry inscribed verses from various compositions of the Sikh Gurus written in Gurmukhi script in gold Koftgari. According to family tradition, the set was owned by tenth Guru Gobind Singh before it was presumably gifted to one of their ancestors. The existence of this plate from another charaina set suggests that the Guru commissioned more than one set.

One of the star works among the paintings on offer is a portrait of Fath ‘Ali Shah Qajar (illustrated left) seated against a jewelled bolster on a pearl edged rug, which is attributable to Mirza Baba and the court workshop in Qajar, Persia. The oil on canvas, in the manner of Mirza Baba and the early Qajar style, dated circa 1798, demonstrates areas of enormous artistic strength; the sensitively rendered hands, the facetted jewels, the foreshoretening of the body all point to the hand of a master, and the high detail in the jewel studs of the Shah’s robe, the faceted diamonds modelled in light and shade. The sketchy background however suggests a collaboration of artists which in this case is likely to be Mirza Baba and an anonymous artist, or artists of the court workshop. Such detail provides a fascinating insight into the production of court portraits. The portrait is estimated at £400,000-600,000. It sold for £468,500.

A magnificent late 16th-/early 17th-century Mughal or Indo-Portuguese ivory and wood inlaid cabinet (illustrated right), made in Gujarat or Sind, India/Pakistan, was also highlighted. This cabinet is one of the finest of its kind, a tour de force of the art of sadeli (known in Persia as khatamkari) or micro-mosaic work. Sadeli is a complex technique that involves the setting of minute pieces of ivory, ebony and other exotic woods into a prepared ground and it is a characteristic of a group of cabinets that were manufactured in Sind and Gujarat from the mid-16th century onwards, following the introduction of the micro-mosaic technique to Sind from Shiraz, a notable Persian centre of production.

Other important pieces was an important early 18th-century Armenian gold repoussé bowl with enamel overlay (illustrated left), made in Kayseri, Turkey, executed for a very unique personality in the history of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the person of Patriarch Grigor Shirvantsi (1715-1749) and an important Italo-Islamic carved marble panel, Sicily or Sothern Italy, circa 11th-12th century, which would have originally been set into a wall of a grand building, either a public edifice or a private residence belonging to a wealthy, high status individual.