ART-THE WHOLE STORY

From the 4th century AD, Byzantine art evolved from Roman art
transformed by the Christian religion. Art was at the service of the Church
and of private religious faith. In the form of icons, images took on an inner
spiritual value, with the seen standing for the unseen. However, they were also
violently contested by iconoclasts, who believed the seen was supplanting

the unseen. Islam, born into the same eastern Mediterranean world, tended

towards similar iconoclastic beliefs, but alongside a geometrical and
calligraphic art that also generated traditions of refined stylized realism.
Although Islamic art itself developed out of the Roman and Byzantine styles,
it was also enriched by the Sasanian art of pre-lslamic Persia. The Sassanid
period saw some of the highest achievements of Persian civilization and the

forms and motifs of its art travelled eastward into India, Turkestan and China.

In the 1st century Bc the figure of Buddha was first carved in stone at
Gandhara in present-day Pakistan, establishing the model for later Buddhist
art. As Buddhism spread from the Indian subcontinent throughout Asia and
the rest of the world, it exerted its own influence on the burgeoning arts of

China, Japan and Korea. As the religion evolved in each host country it brought
With it new forms, such as statuary and monumental sculpture. Japan's
earliest art was connected with Buddhism, but from the 9th century, as the
COuntry turned away from the influence of China, the secular arts became
more important and painting grew to be the strongest artistic tradition. In
a sOCiety where people wrote with a brush rather than a pen, there vwas an
intuitive understanding of the aesthetics of painting