Wonder at the Warnock Lecture: An Interview with Dr. Thadeus Dowad
Grace Shi - February 18, 2023
Warnock Lecture at the Block Museum of Art, February 8, 2023. Photo by Elizabeth Upenieks.
Each quarter, sponsored by a generous gift from Liz Warnock, Northwestern University’s Department of Art History proudly invites a leading scholar of art history to deliver the Warnock Lecture. This quarter, the department hosted Professor Emine Fetvacı, the Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor in Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College.
Last Wednesday evening at the Block Museum of Art, Professor Fetvacı delivered a lecture entitled "The Wonder of Paper Joinery at the Ottoman Court." By examining the work of Ottoman “paper joiner” Kalendar Pasha (d. 1616), Fetvacı emphasized the role of paper cutting in the early modern Ottoman court. She discussed the experience of “wonder” in medieval and early modern Islamic periods—a word used to describe a sudden feeling of surprise and delight; which was thought to be the goal of artwork produced in this era. Through his seemingly seamless paper joinery, Kalendar Pasha’s work inspired this sensation. This definition of “wonder,” which indicated a sense of bewilderment and awe, was a shift from the medieval definition of the word, which generally held religious connotations. Fetvacı emphasized paper joinery’s role in the Ottoman court (for instance, diplomats viewed paper-cutting folios in social gatherings), and the craft’s close relation to studies of geometry and architecture.
I had the privilege of interviewing Professor Thadeus Dowad, a scholar in the field of Ottoman art and Assistant Professor in Northwestern’s Art History department, about his thoughts on the lecture.
Grace: Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. My first question is, what surprised you the most in the lecture?
Professor Dowad: The first thing I’d say is that, because of the earthquake in Turkey, Professor Fetvacı’s lecture was a surprisingly beautiful and emotional event with so many members of Northwestern's Turkish community present, including undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. It was a flash of joy and beauty in an otherwise very dark moment. Being in that full auditorium and looking at these beautiful objects was a nice break from reality.
One of the things that was surprising about the content of the talk was that Professor Fetvacı’s past scholarship has focused on figurative painting, particularly figures in Ottoman art. She is now moving to work on abstraction and paper joinery. These objects are kind of difficult to talk about. They're technically very complex and don't represent anything. So, it can be difficult to understand what is going on with them. I was both impressed and enlightened by Professor Fetvacı’s approach to that material. She's not only attending to the materiality of these objects, but also doing rich and beautiful visual analyses of them. I'm realizing that there's so much to be said about objects that just look pretty, but seem to have no sort of conceptual or historical value.
Grace: I agree, it was wonderful for undergraduates to get a glimpse into subject matter that is not broadly taught in an undergraduate introductory course.
Dowad: Absolutely. Many of the materials that she showed us are not available online, or even in publications. She had cell phone images that she took at the Met, and photos that were given to her by Topkapı Palace [in Turkey]. These are objects that you would usually need to physically go into archives to see. To view them in such rich quality was such an amazing experience, not just intellectually, but also visually.
Grace: Given your expertise in the field, what parallels do you see between your research and did Professor Fetvaci bring any nuanced views that changed your prior perspectives?
Professor Dowad: Absolutely. I asked the department to invite Professor Fetvacı for this lecture because I work on Ottoman painting in a later period than she does. I work on the 18th and 19th centuries, and as someone who's interested in the long history of Ottoman painting, it can be good to know what's going on during the “Renaissance” or earlier. For me, Professor Fetvacı’s work is the gold standard for thinking about Ottoman painting in this earlier moment.
Additionally, as someone who's trying to chart the transitions and changes in Ottoman painting over time, her work is an origin that I am trying to understand. For example, what happens afterward? How do things change? Moreover, why do they change the way that they do between what I work on and what Professor [Christina] Kiaer works on [20th-century modernism]? Additionally, one of the biggest points of transition is the movement of Ottoman painting from manuscripts to canvases. I'm really interested in that transition, so Professor Fetvacı has taught me so much about manuscript painting and its evolution.
In regards to how the lecture changed my perspective, one thing that was profound to me about the material that Professor Fetvacı studies is the shift in how paper is used in Ottoman art in this period: from a surface to a medium. To me, that’s really interesting. I had the chance to discuss this with her—she's interested in seeing how this changes because there is very little writing on this topic. For example, we don’t know how paper joinery evolved over the course of the 17th century. I think that Professor Fetvacı is taking the skills that she has mastered and thinking about figurative painting. She’s pushing the very frontiers of what we know about Ottoman artistic production in this period. We can think about materials like paper becoming active agents in the history of Ottoman painting in a way that they weren’t before.
Grace: If this lecture really piqued someone’s interest to delve deeper into this field, where do you recommend they start? Is there any literature that you recommend?
Professor Dowad: We have both of Professor Fetvacı’s fantastic books in our library. I would highly recommend checking those out. They are treasure troves of incredible insights. [Fetvacı’s books include Picturing History at the Ottoman Court (Indiana University Press, 2013), and The Album of the World Emperor: Cross-Cultural Collecting and Album Making in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul (Princeton University Press, 2019)].
Otherwise, I would recommend Northwestern students take Ottoman art history classes with me. I love this material, and I'm hoping to be able to offer more courses on Ottoman art and its longer histories.
To contribute to the ongoing earthquake relief efforts in Turkey and Syria, donate to the organizations below:
Turkey Earthquake Relief Fund by Turkish Philanthropy Funds
Turkey's Search and Rescue Association (AKUT)
The Syrian American Medical Society
