Jordanian art

Traditional art and craft is vested in material culture including mosaics, ceramics, weaving, silver work, music, glass-blowing and calligraphy.

[4] Traditional art was often based on material culture including hand-crafts such as rug-making, basket weaving, silver smithing, mosaics, ceramics, and glass-blowing.

[5] The Jordanian art historian, Wijdan Ali has argued that the traditional Islamic aesthetic evident in craft-based work was displaced by the arrival of colonialism in North Africa and the Middle East.

[11] Showing extensive use of plaster,[12] the Aïn Ghazal statues represent a clear departure from the tiny, faceless figures of the Paleolithic period and mark the dawn of a distinct Neolithic art.

[13] The Nabateans incorporated numerous sculpted panels, figurines and decorative friezes into their buildings at Petra and made pottery.

By the time of the Emperor Justinian (527-565 CE), churches dotted Jordan's landscape and these featured intricate mosaic floors, frescoes and porticos.

[17] The wealth and patronage of the Umayyad period stimulated the construction of religious, administrative and royal residences as well as prompting a distinctive style of bayt (domestic home).

Under the Umayyad, writing assumed a special place, often based on scripture and the life of the prophet, Mahommed, but often seen as the carrier of independent meaning and a subject worthy of ornamentation.

Poets, (known as sha'ir meaning wizard) were thought to be inspired by a spirit (jinn), and were expected to defend the honour of their tribe, and to perpetuate its deeds and accomplishments.

[27] In 1948, George Aleef arrived in Jordan with a group of Palestinian refugees and set up an art studio where he taught local students.

In the late 1950s, a group of young artists who had trained in Europe, returned to Jordan to lay the foundations of the Jordanian modern art movement.

According to Muhanna Dura's memoirs, Aleef taught his students the basics of watercolor, drawing and painting, and the European understanding of perspective.

[37] From around 1955, artists working in North Africa and parts of Asia transformed Arabic calligraphy into a modern art movement.

[38] The use of calligraphy in modern art arose independently in various Islamic states; few of these artists had knowledge of each other, allowing for different manifestations of hurufiyyah to emerge in different regions.