The New Categorizations of Style in Contemporary Islamic Calligraphy Paintings in Malaysia

Abstract

Islamic contemporary paintings stand as one of the identities of the nation. The pluralisme of its styles has been depending mainly towards the classification of Muslim artworks introduced by Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi in 1986. Due to the expansion of art media, its technique, individual quality and aesthetic experience, this paper intends to search for the new styles emerged from the amalgamation of the three art traditions: Islamic, Western and Malay art, from the study made on Islamic calligraphy paintings selected from year 1947 until 2005. Among 707 paintings collected, 110 have been selected as samples to represent the diversity of the material, year, artist and painting technique. These paintings have been scrutinized using qualitative method (grounded theory) and the final finding introduces 5 main styles which could accommodate in precise the paintings into its own suitable categories based on the the latest art mainstreams