Holiday parades in Ottoman miniature of the XVI–XVIII centuries

Abstract

In the world history of art one occurs with events that can be interpreted as generators of the idea of creating an artistic composition designed for action and perception not in the closed interiors of a palace or a temple, but in vast social spatial zones. Something similar happened in the official culture of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th – first half of the 18th century. One of the manifestations of the country's creative rise at that time was the development of monumental decorative art of a theatrical-scenery character. A source of our knowledge about this kind of creativity is the texts and illustrations of manuscripts of a special genre – Surname, or "The Book of Festivals." Two manuscripts of this genre, dating from the 1580s and 1730s, and abundantly and colorfully illustrated with historically authentic images of festive parades, suggest the emergence of such phenomena of avant-garde art of the twentieth century as Installation art and Performance art in such a distant past as the Ottoman Turkey from the 16th to early 18th century