Birk’s work owes a debt to the hard-edged, sunny look
of artists like David Hockney, as well as to the bright, clear
look of cartoons and graphic novels. It also has a bit of that
surfer dude sensibility.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Birk — by then an established
artist with a national reputation — began to focus his
energy on the U.S. war in Iraq. The violent depiction of
Islam in American popular culture, he says, had nothing to
do with the Islamic people he had met while surfing around
the world.
The Qur’an, which had become a hated book in the
U.S., seemed key to the whole situation. “For so many
people it was an evil book, a violent religion!” he says.
Birk, who is not religious, bought a copy and began to
read it. He found it lovely and lyrical. Soon he began to
think about creating his own Qur’an as a work of art, an
illuminated manuscript in the tradition of ancient scribes.
He nearly abandoned the idea, though, as he
contemplated the beauty and perfection he saw in
reproductions of centuries-old illuminated manuscripts. “It
would be foolhardy for me to try to make anything that
rivals these,” he thought. But then, by chance, he visited
Chester Beatty Library in Dublin — yes, he was in Ireland
to go surfing — which houses one of the most important
collections of Qur’ans outside the Middle East. He went in
and looked at old manuscript versions of the book made by
long-dead scribes.
“That was a big revelation,” he says. “You could see
the mistakes they had made. They were handmade human
objects. Not perfect.”
Starting in 2005, Birk wove text and images into more
than 200 separate paintings, each measuring 16-by-24
inches, all done, like traditional illuminated manuscripts,
in gouache — a kind of opaque watercolor — and ink. The
Schnitzer exhibition will contain all but about 10 of the
paintings; those are in the hands of private collectors.
The process was meditative. “I had to really concentrate
on the text and spend a lot of time pondering it, because
transcribing is much slower than just reading,” he says. “So
it was a very calming and thoughtful time.” He borrowed
the text for his book from several 19th century translations,
giving American Qur’an a quaint, archaic flavor.
The imagery he used with the text is completely
American and profoundly different from what you might
expect. Birk made no effort to illustrate the Qur’an’s text
in any literal way; instead he used individual suras as loose
inspiration for the paintings that surround them.
These partly obscured paintings show every aspect
of American life: Taco stands, construction workers, a
wedding, a space launch, a political rally. A pregnant woman
gets an ultrasound in one; in another, a man fixes a flat tire.
And, in perhaps the most dramatic image, people on a
New York street look up and see one of the World Trade
Center towers on fire after the first airplane has hit.
Birk was aware of the real dangers of taking on such
a project. The year he began work on the project, Danish
cartoonist Kurt Westergaard did a cartoon depicting
Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban; because of death
threats the cartoonist has been under protection ever since.
“That was disheartening,” Birk admits.
But Birk’s Qur’an doesn’t condemn Islam. It doesn’t
depict, in any way, the Prophet Muhammad. In a strict
sense, it is not a Qur’an at all, as it’s in English, not Arabic.
To test the waters, Birk also reached out to Islamic
religious leaders and scholars, showing them the work in
early stages. Finally, he took on the project out of admiration
and respect. He has received little harsh criticism for his
project — and no serious threats.
Birk says he thought originally it would take him four
years to complete the project. After four years of work,
he took stock: He was barely halfway there. In the end,
producing the paintings for American Qur’an consumed
nine years of his life.
“It took me a long time,” the artist says. “But every
day I worked on it was fascinating. It’s fascinating as a
book, it’s fascinating as a document and it’s fascinating as
a religion.”
The reception for American Qur’an will run from 6-8 p.m. at the Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art on the University of Oregon campus. The
exhibition continues at the museum through March 19. The book American
Qur’an will be available for sale in the museum gift shop for $100.
THREE PANELS FROM ‘AMERICAN QUR’AN’
eugeneweekly.com • January 19, 2017
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