saxon math : High Art From Men Of Letters

Thick black lines wave and interlace, following the trail of a hand. Single letters or words, created with a swish of a house-painter's brush, become powerful abstract images. Even those of us who know not one letter of Arabic script can appreciate the way it has been transfigured or incorporated at "Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East," which runs at London's British Museum until Sept. 2. The show moves from sacred texts, through poetry and magic, to art that comments on current life in the Middle East.

Most of the material is from the museum's own collection of contemporary Middle Eastern art, started in the mid-'80s. The journey starts with the Koran, showing how
different kinds of script — the flowing Thuluth and the blocky, geometric Kufic — lend themselves to pattern-making. Japan's Fou'ad Kouichi Honda transforms Koranic verses into repeating patterns using mirror writing, while Jordanian Nassar Mansour turns the word Kun (Be) into a stark, sweeping form that's almost Art Deco.

Poetry demonstrates even more strongly the presence of a culture at ease with the distant past, one that West Europeans might envy. We use the language of Shakespeare without knowing it, but which of us can conjure up a single Anglo-Saxon verse? In the Arab world, people are still quoting poets from the Middle Ages and beyond.

Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.