Arts and Religions Dialogue ... the story of creation in the works of Muhammad Rasim and Michelangelo

The virtue of Bodrich-Algeria

Many are the artists whose works carried the noble values ​​and sweetly flirted with life, and made the colors on their paintings speak in a fine aesthetic language and an innate human innate sense, and we can refer to two timeless formative paintings that expressed the story of creation with a living human dimension, they carried features of human history and said much that can be said about Interfaith Dialogue.

Recently, the Iraqi plastic scholar and critic Abdel Rahman Jaafar Al-Kinani presented an interesting idea with a comparative review between the painting "History of Islam" by the Algerian painter Mohamed Rasim (1896-1975), and the Italian Renaissance painter Michael Angelo in his plastic painting "Creating Adam", and Al-Kinani devoted a study in his book "Art in the Eternal Interfaith Dialogue" topic.

Al-Kinani cited two icons in plastic art, the first of which enchanted both the West and the East after the Renaissance artist quoted it from the "Bible", evoking "the story of the creation of Adam" as it appeared in the Book of Genesis, to produce a very accurate and awe painting at the ceiling of the Sistine Church in the Vatican , Sticking to the chronology of facts from right to left.

Could the language of colors be more informative, deeper and more influential than sharp letters, short words and a flowery style of establishing a true and eternal interfaith dialogue? And to what extent can an artist's feather and a painter's talent dissolve the ice of difference and drive away the blurring of misunderstanding between humans, no matter how different their religion, their different ways and their beliefs vary?

Religious art
For his part, Muhammad Rasim did not come close to what cannot be interpreted in the Holy Qur’an, and he depicts his eternal masterpiece, “The History of Islam”, which is classified within the modern “art of miniatures”. Bright magic shortened the time to speak.

Rasim reveals the power of his inspirational tools and paintings from the art of miniatures about the birth of an Islamic civilization in which science, literature and arts flourished.

The Algerian artist became famous for his great work, "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights", for which he received the golden medal from the "French Orientalist Artists Foundation" in 1924, in which he drew tales in ten volumes, and the Algerian artist taught miniatures at the School of Fine Arts in Algeria and wrote books that are "Islamic life in the past" And "Mohamed Rasem Al-Jazaery".

Although he settled for a while in Paris and his frequent visits to the Andalusia region in Spain and London, Rasim sided with the Baghdad Technical School, striving to revive and renew its Arab arts, and was influenced by two of the leading pioneers of the art of ancient Arab miniatures, Yahya Al-Wasiti, who drew the shrines of Al-Hariri and decorated them with a hundred minors in 1237 AD, as well as Persian artist Behzad known for his unique miniatures.

According to the opinion of the Kenyan critic, the person who tends to portray his essence or his creed in a symbolic frame has chosen for his religion a visual symbol that he has personally inspired in a way that is compatible with his religious belief, and against the background that the human being did not realize the story of creation except from the heavenly messages, unlike the myths that rolled in various The ages.

Al-Kinani believes that the story of creation was essentially identical in the Torah, the Bible and the Noble Qur’an, according to his opinion, stressing in a related context that there is no difference except in elaborating the details that came in the book of Genesis, and the totality and reference in the Qur’anic stories.

Allergy and tolerance
The researcher Ammar Sharaan, head of the Arab Democratic Center in Germany, believes that the meaning of dialogue in this regard is not related to intellectual exchange around a round table between religions, but rather a special meeting to adopt the image and symbolic designs in presenting its identity, and to define its existence that distinguishes it from any other religion.

Sharaan explained that putting the idea of ​​art into religions is not without sensitivity; but its excitement from the plastic angle is undoubtedly entering it into the circle of tolerance, and the researcher considered that the story of creation raised the imagination of artists in the world, so they sought to embody them in visual scenes, for example, Michelangelo was the most prominent of them In his immortal work in the Vatican, he mentioned in a related context that the work was inspired as a Christian artist from the book "The Book of Genesis" within the limits of what was presented by theology from "Yigal in the metaphysical world and its incarnation."

On the other hand, the Algerian Muslim artist, Mohamed Rasim, his miniature, “The History of Islam”, took from the recorded historical facts, as events that have their time and place in a earthly world, subject to a heavenly will that has a message. So the difference appeared on this point as the difference between the unseen and the reality, and the bottom line is that Anglo was inspired by the text The religious "The Story of Creation", while Muhammad Rasim derived his topic from the reality that its events were written down.

And the Algerian plastic artist Reda Baghdali considers that raising these ideas in this artistic manner is a violation of the usual restrictions. Baghdadli pointed out that every artist has gone through stages in which he asked such questions in the context of asking about the relationship between spirit and matter, and the inner and sensory truth, whether the artist is academic or Issamia.

The Algerian plastic artist went further, when he said that the drawing was used just like the letter as a symbol to inform about an end, whether political or religious, so interfaith dialogue does not reflect creativity but rather links artists and weaves between them a link of communication and harmony.

The comparison between the two panels raises the idea of ​​rapprochement and building bridges of communication and channels of dialogue, which suggests that relying on art contributes to the openness of man and enhances the values ​​of coexistence.