Religious Pop Art

Yousuf Saeed has posted a web page of his work on Islamic[ate] pop art in South Asia. He’s got a really good write-up with fantastic examples. Spend some time poke around. It’s an interesting discussion about the localization of universal aspects of Islam to a new cultural reality.

From the site:

Although most Muslim posters available in India portray the shrines at Mecca and Medina or the Quranic verses in calligraphy, one can also find the portraits of local saints, their tombs, and the miracles, represented as vividly as in a typical Hindu mythological scene. It is important to explore how this visual depiction or iconography has not only been legitimized in Islam (considered by the orthodox to be an iconoclastic faith), but also allowed to thrive in the form of a mass culture.