Q&A with Mughal art historian Yael Rice

Hanes Art Center guest lecturer Yael Rice will host a presentation today titled “Between the Brush and the Pen: On the Intertwined Histories of Mughal Painting and Calligraphy.”

Staff Writer Lauren Clark met with Rice to discuss her interest in the Mughal Empire and what audiences should expect from her lecture.

Daily Tar Heel: How did you become interested in the art and architecture of greater Iran and South Asia?

Yael Rice: I studied abroad in Nepal, in southern Asia, when I was an undergraduate student. I started taking art history courses after I graduated, and my first on Mughal art was actually with Pika Ghosh at UNC.

DTH: What do you find particularly interesting about this area of art history?

YR: I find the sheer abundance of material incredible. There are so many manuscripts, so much architecture and carved stone.

There was a very high quality of Mughal artists. Artisans came from afar, from places like Iran, India and what is now Uzbekistan. There was a convergence of so many different approaches to the arts and forms of knowledge.

DTH: What makes Mughal painting and calligraphy important to the study of art?

YR: It tells us how an Islamic court in the 16th and 17th centuries thought about itself. These documents create a depiction of a dynasty.

DTH: How did you settle on your current area of research?

YR: Scholars often identify Mughal art as a place where one first saw real portraiture in the Islamic world.

There was a move toward depicting likenesses that came out of European art and European visitors to the region. I’m arguing that European influence created portraiture in Mughal art.

DTH: One of your areas of research is physiognomy. Can you explain what this is?

YR: My work shows that there is a much larger history in the Mughal world of physiognomy.

This was where the inner personality of a person is reflected in their outside characteristics. It was a tradition inherited from Ancient Greece, a discipline of Aristotle’s and transferred to the Islamic world in the 16th and 17th centuries.

DTH: What will your lecture address specifically?

YR: I address the close relationship between calligraphy and Mughal painting. There were thousands of materials coming out of the court at this time.

We must remember that these paintings were made originally for books. We are forgetting all the other pages of the book if we isolate these paintings. We forget the illuminators, the inkers, the bookbinders. I want us to think how they work side by side as a collaboration.

DTH: What are you hoping people will take away from the lecture?

YR: The main message I would like people to take away is that the manuscript itself is this really interesting thing where painters and public figures can assert themselves.

For us, books are throwaway objects. Illustrated manuscripts from the 16th and 17th centuries were precious objects. They contained gold and special pigmentation.

Contact the desk editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.