CONTEMPORARY REVERBERATIONS

In Bosnia and Herzegovina and the world, few people know that the only European winner of the prestigious Aga Khan's Award for innovative developments in the contemporary architecture of mosques is an architect from Bosnia and Herzegovina, academician Zlatko Ugljen, who was awarded this prize in 1983 for the design of Šerefudin's White Mosque in Visoko.

At present, it is the architecture of mosques in Europe that is one of increasingly omnipresent and significant topics of the contemporary European architecture. Through this topic one can reflect on the issue of the relationship between tradition and modernity, as well as on the way in which the heterogeneous Islamic culture presently existing in Europe can unambiguously though in harmony with the environment underscore the religious purpose of the building and cultural-historical heritage of the countries they come from, by their visual identity, and the basic principles of form. Thus, since the late 1980s and opening of the first major Islamic Cultural Center of Zagreb (1987), through the Islamic Center of Rijeka (2013) and the recently opened Islamic Religious and Cultural Center in Ljubljana, all the way to the conceptual contemplation of the contemporary mosque in Azra Akšamija's project Nomadic/Wearable Mosque Bosnian Muslims' spirituality has become part of this dynamic debate, which “create new values in the European context”, as was pointed out in the rationale for the most prestigious architectural prize in Slovenia, Plečnik Award for Architecture, which was awarded to the Islamic Religious and Cultural Center of Ljubljana in 2020.

The centuries-long presence of the Islamic culture and tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina has significantly determined the physiognomy of Bosnian and Herzegovinian cities, its architecture, the way of interior design and the design of intimate spaces, customs and culture of daily life, and understanding of art. A large number of archives, libraries, private and museum collections across Bosnia and Herzegovina store manuscripts of exceptional beauty which testify of the high level of the culture of literacy in Oriental languages, many calligraphic works of various styles, miniatures of intense colors and drawing artistry which accompanied academic works in the field of medicine, botany, astronomy, geography and which are a permanent inspiration to contemporary artists. Interiors of mosques and Bosnian houses are still decorated with Bosnian rugs and rugs from various parts of the Islamic world, which are the earthly picture of the heaven of this world (Nasr, 2005), and which extol the beauty and harmony of God's creation, same as works in golden embroidery and filigree weaving in metal. 

The religious, spiritual and intellectual environment of the Islamic culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina has left a powerful and permanent influence on architecture, particularly residential, on fine arts and design, music and literature. From novels by Ahmed Hifzi Bjelevac, Skender Kulenović, Meša Selimović, Nedžad Ibrišimović, Dževad Karahasan and poetry by Musa Ćazim Ćatić, Abdulah Sidran, Džemaludin Latić, Hadžem Hajdarević, Husein Hasković, to mention just a few names, to contemporary performance of sevdalinka in the opus of Damir Imamović and Amira Medunjanin.

Islamic art is presently facing challenges of its terminological and conceptual definition, particularly in its encounter with the history of art of the Western cultural circle. The comprehensive term 'Islamic art' encompasses everything: what is commonly considered as the sacred art, such as mosques and transcripts of Qur'an to works in metal, wood, textile or glass which are used in daily life, and which the West considers (merely) segments of the applied art (Blair&Bloom, 2003). The prefix 'Islamic' can be understood as endeavor that every aspect of human cognition and formation, including arts, should reflect the idea of tawhid and admiration of God's creation, which encompasses the entire human life and blends from the holy to the profane, from public to private, from eternal to worldly. 

It is difficult to single out any segment of the spiritual, academic and cultural life where the dense Oriental fabric which arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the culture of Islam is not inscibed without underscoring the distinctiveness of the encounter between the culture of Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the culture of the West. Thus, architects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and their colleagues, architects of the Land Government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognized the authenticity of Bosnian traditional house, the beauty of its pure forms, extraordinary harmony with the natural environment, brightness and airiness, as well as the functionality of its interior. They advocated its preservation and defined its encounter with the architecture of European modernism as a distinctive style in the history of European modern architecture, and named it architecture of the “Bosnian style”. Ever since, high aesthetic and functional particularities of Bosnian Muslim house inspired many international and local architects and artists in the entire 20th century: from studies by Dušan Grabrijan and Juraj Neidhardt between the two wars and their seminal work Arhitektura Bosne i put u savremeno (Architecture of Bosnia and Road to Modernity) to contemporary projects by Zlatko Ugljen and Amir Vuk Zec, who maintained respect for the existing ambience, original materials and measure of shape. 

For centuries, people in Bosnia spoke several languages: Bosnian, Arabic, Persian and Turkish and wrote in different scripts: Latin, Cyrillic, Arebica, Bosančica (Bosnian Cyrillic). The unique form of script, Bosančica, which was used in many charters of the medieval Bosnian aristocrats and rulers and which lived among common people even in the centuries of the Ottoman administration, assumed a new expression in the contemporary graphic design by Amra Zulfikarpašić and in the paintings by Šemso Gavrankapetanović. 

Tradition cannot be inherited; as T.S. Eliot wrote in the early 20th century, you must obtain it with great labor. Tradition includes a sense of history, which in turn includes the observation of both what was in the past and what is present in it as if, as Eliot pointed out “the whole literature has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order” (Eliot, 1982).

Examples of such an approach can be found among contemporary designers in Bosnia and Herzegovina: from one-of-a-kind and textile design to the production of furniture.  Two Bosnian and Herzegovinian companies – Konjic-based Zanat and Tešanj-based Artisan – opened the traditional woodcarving to contemporary reflections in design, but have preserved the refined attitude toward the material and the homage to handiwork. Even their design of the pavilion at the prestigious Furniture Fair in Cologne in 2019 was inspired by the traditional process of rug weaving.

Growing up among the old Bosnian houses in the Bistrik neighborhood, from the dilapidated facades of which he deciphered destinies of the people who lived there, is woven into the painting sensibility of Safet Zec. The whole story about the warmth of intimacy, about love for the mother, about the beauty of the garden is inscribed into the painting Portret majke (Mother's portrait) by Safet Zec of 1972. The relationship between life and death, as well as man's striving toward spiritual righting are depicted by nišans (tombstones) on the paintings by Seid Hasanefendić. The stylized, anthropomorphous nišans, scattered like white flowers in the courtyard of his native house in Brčko, have become a permanent and peaceful reminder of man's transience in this world ever since the earliest days of his childhood. Graphic prints by Emir Dragulj, Dževad Hozo and Mersad Berber are characterized by similar sensibility, by conversation with the hereafter. 

A simple, rhythmical alteration of colored stripes on sheets and mats in Bosnian houses in the cycles of paintings by Edin Numankadić and in series of carvings by Salim Obralić reveal their primordial beauty of colors and fabric, beyond their mere use value. In the same way, Salim Obralić recognized the original artistic challenges in the patina of old copper plates and expressive lines of coppersmiths' works, and thus the plates grow into large graphic prints and copper items into playful mobile discs.

Awed by the beauty of Persian and Ottoman miniatures in the archives of Gazi Husrev-beg's Library and patterns on the rugs in the National Museum in Sarajevo, and remembering the beauty of his family home, in his studio by Sarajevo cathedral Behaudin Selmanović spent years painting unique paintings in the history of the contemporary Bosnian and Herzegovina painting which blended a great knowledge of the European modernist painting and the playful lines and splendor of Oriental colors. 

“I have never painted abstractly because I could never paint anything more amazing than an Oriental rug”, once saidOmer Mujadžić, a painter from Bosanska Gradiška, the youngest enrolled student of the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts and its years-long professor. For years, he incorporated in his paintings the warmth of his family home and hearth as he kept them in his memory.He knew, as he used to say, that he could “fare better” but he persisted on painting as he felt, knowing that he “cannot escape from the world which he carried in himself. And one must be true to his nature”(Peić, 1968).

References:

• Blair, Sheila S. and M. Bloom, Jonathan (2003), “The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field”, The Art Bulletin, 85(1), pp. 152-184.

• Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1982), Tradition and the Individual Talent: Perspecta, Vol. 19, pp. 36-42.

• Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (2005), Islamska umjetnost i duhovnost, Sarajevo.

• Peić, Matko (1968), Naš i svjetski: Omer Mujadžić, Zagreb.