Islamic art in educational publications of late 19th - middle 20th century

The interest in the artistic culture of Islam, which differs from other artistic phenomena, has been reflected in such educational publications as «History of Art». Consideration of some popularizing works of the period of formation of scientific Islamic studies contributed to the identification of three perspectives of cultural and religious aspects of the presentation of the art of Islam. The first is the perception of the artistic culture of Islam as another (alien), its meaningful and communicative limitations. The second is the productivity of the study of the phenomenon of Islamic art in the context of the formation of the Islamic world as a whole, taking into account the cultural interactions and transformations that have determined its specificity. The third is a concrete expression of the general problem of the correlation between art and religion in the process of their cultural existence. Islamic art culture as it represented in «Histories» shows that in the history of art religion is a factor but not the driving force of the process.