The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary [1 ed.] 9781474488679

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
Note on Transliteration
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I Defining the Framework and Developing Conceptual Definitions
1 Challenging Points of Entry: Theorising ‘Modern’ and ‘Contemporary’ Art of Iran
2 Historiography of Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran
Part II Discourses on Modern and Contemporary Art
3 The Discourse of Neo-traditionalism: Reflecting the Past into the Present
4 Discourses on Post-revolutionary Art: The 1980s and Early 1990s
5 The Paradigms of Contemporary Art: The Contemporary versus the Specific
Part III Art Practice and Socio-cultural Discourses
6 The Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran
7 Artists’ Attempts to Reclaim Cultural Space versus the State’s Cultural Prescriptions
8 Exhibiting Essentialism: Exoticism and its Attendant Uniformity
9 Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping
General Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World Published in association with Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, Founder and Chair, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute

Series General Editor: Stephanie Cronin, Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Research Fellow, University of Oxford Series Advisory Board: Professor Janet Afary (UC Santa Barbara), Professor Abbas Amanat (Yale University), Professor Touraj Atabaki (International Institute of Social History), Dr Joanna de Groot (University of York), Professor Vanessa Martin (Royal Holloway, University of London), Professor Rudi Matthee (University of Delaware) and Professor Cyrus Schayegh (The Graduate Institute, Geneva) Covering the history of Iran and the Persian world from the medieval period to the present, this series aims to become the pre-eminent place for publication in this field. As well as its core concern with Iran, it extends its concerns to encompass a much wider and more loosely defined cultural and linguistic world, to include Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Xinjiang and northern India. Books in the series present a range of conceptual and methodological approaches, looking not only at states, dynasties and elites, but at subalterns, minorities and everyday life. Published and forthcoming titles The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad Hamid Dabashi The Persian Prison Poem: Sovereignty and the Political Imagination Rebecca Ruth Gould Religion, Orientalism and Modernity: Mahdi Movements of Iran and South Asia Geoffrey Nash The Loneliest Revolution: A Memoir of Solidarity and Struggle in Iran Ali Mirsepassi Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700–1900 Kevin L. Schwartz Muslim–Christian Polemics in Safavid Iran Alberto Tiburcio The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary Hamid Keshmirshekan edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ehsipw

The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary Hamid Keshmirshekan

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com Cover image: Barbad Golshiri, Khāvarān (originally Nār va Ākh (Fire and Oh), when read backwards, it would become Khāvarān), from the Curriculum Mortis series, 2017, installation, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, photo: Sahand Behrouzi. Photo: Sahand Behrouzi, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, 2017. Cover design: Stuart Dalziel © Hamid Keshmirshekan, 2023 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f ) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/15 EB Garamond by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 8864 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 8867 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 8866 2 (epub) The right of Hamid Keshmirshekan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents List of Figures vii Note on Transliteration ix Acknowledgementsx Introduction1 Part I Defining the Framework and Developing Conceptual Definitions 1 Challenging Points of Entry: Theorising ‘Modern’ and ‘Contemporary’ Art of Iran 2 Historiography of Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran

13 48

Part II Discourses on Modern and Contemporary Art 3 The Discourse of Neo-traditionalism: Reflecting the Past into the Present87 4 Discourses on Post-revolutionary Art: The 1980s and Early 1990s 137 5 The Paradigms of Contemporary Art: The Contemporary versus the Specific 169 Part III Art Practice and Socio-cultural Discourses 6 The Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran 7 Artists’ Attempts to Reclaim Cultural Space versus the State’s Cultural Prescriptions

199 221

vi | the art of i r a n 8 Exhibiting Essentialism: Exoticism and its Attendant Uniformity 9 Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping

241 268

General Bibliography 287 Index307

Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

Parviz Tanavoli, A Memorial for Farhād and Mountain, 1961 Parviz Tanavoli, The Wall of Iran 3, 1978 Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Untitled, 1962 Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Untitled, 1972 Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1961 Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1975 Mansour Ghandriz, Untitled, 1963 Mansour Ghandriz, Untitled, 1965 Massoud Arabshahi, Untitled, 1975 Nasser Oveissi, Untitled, c.1964 Sadegh Tabrizi, Untitled, c.1965 Jazeh Tabatabai, Nobat beh estekhāreh shod, Tasbih mollā pāreh shod, c.1970 Siah Armajani, Night Letter, 1957 Mohammad Ehsai, Untitled, 1974 Marcos Grigorian, Ābgousht – Dizi, 1971 Cover of the catalogue of the exhibition Ābi, 1975 Maryam Zandi, from the Revolution series, 1978–9 Bahman Jalali, Sāvāk, Zarrāb-khāneh Street, from the Years of Blood and Fire series, 1979 Hannibal Alkhas, Revolution, 1978 Koorosh Shishegaran, Revolution After One Year, 1980 Habibollah Sadeghi, Rami Jamarāt, 1985 Kazem Chalipa, Self-sacrifice, 1981 Unknown artist, mural painting, Tehran Hayedeh Salehi Lorestani, Still-Life, 1995 Nosratollah Moslemian, Untitled, 2003

97 98 99 100 103 103 106 106 107 109 110 111 111 112 123 124 141 141 142 143 146 147 148 151 159

viii | th e art o f i r a n 4.10 4.11 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

Jafar Rouhbakhsh, Untitled, 1994 Alireza Espahbod, Untitled, 1998 Ahmad Nadalian, New Life, 2006 Morteza Darrebaghi, Dakhil, 2002 Farshid Azarang, Scattered Reminiscences, 2005 Ghazaleh Hedayat, Hair Folder, 2008 Jinoos Taghizadeh, form the Rock, Paper, Scissors series, 2009 Mehran Mohajer, from the Things and Lines series, 2011 Rozita Sharafjahan, from the Sixth Sense series, 2010 Mohammad Ghazali, Untitled, from the Tehran Slightly Sloping series, 2010–13 Barbad Golshiri, As Dad As Possible, As Dad As Beckett, 2000–13 Barbad Golshiri, Khāvarān, from the Curriculum Mortis series, 2017 Neda Razavipour, Self-service, 2009 Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar, from the Bahman’s Wall series, 2009–11 Nazgol Ansarinia, 4 March 2012, Front Page, from the Reflections Refractions series, 2012 Behrang Samadzadegan, Checkered Utopia, 2015 Amir Mobed, Hypocrisy, 2013 Parham Taghioff, from the Asymmetrical Authority 03, 2018 Azadeh Akhlaghi, Qasr Prison, Tehran, Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi 17 October 1939, 2012 Barbad Golshiri, Eulogy of Wearers of Black Raiments (formerly: Bahram Doesn’t See Any Right Wing), 2020 Shahab Fotouhi, Security, Love and Democracy ( for Export Only), 2006 Shahpour Pouyan, Projectile 6, 2012 Rokni Haerizadeh, Khosrow Watching Shirin Bathing, 2008 Nazgol Ansarinia, Rhyme and Reason, 2009 Iman Safaei, Sepeleshk, from the Kucheh series, 2014 Parastou Forouhar, from the Time of Butterflies series, 2010 Sohrab Kashani, The Adventures of Super Sohrab, from the Super Sohrab series, 2013 (revised version of a 2011 iteration)

160 161 175 175 183 184 186 187 187 188 209 210 211 213 214 226 231 232 233 258 259 261 273 275 278 280 282

Note on Transliteration The transliteration of Persian words and names follows the system suggested by the Iranian Studies journal (https://associationforiranianstudies.org/journal/ transliteration), with the exceptions of Anglicised word such as Quran, Shiite, and individuals’ names; their own preferred transliteration has been used if it was accessible. If not, the most common transliteration has been used. In the bibliography, two dates are used to cite Persian materials, mainly periodicals (e.g. 1395/2016). In such cases, the first date is based on the solar Hijri calendar, which is currently used in Iran, and the second one is its equivalent Common Era date.

Acknowledgements Working on this book began during my fellowship (2019–21), supported by the Barakat Trust, at Oxford University. I am therefore most of all grateful for its generous support and also to colleagues at the Khalili Research Centre for Art and Material Culture of the Middle East, Faculty  of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies without which I could not have conducted this project.  Above all I would like to thank Professor James W. Allan, Professor  Jeremy Johns, Dr Luke Treadwell, Dr Teresa Fitzherbert,  Daniel Burt, Susannah Cogan and Thomos Hall and all the librarians at the Bodleian and Sackler libraries. I should further thank my colleagues at  the School of Oriental and African Studies, in particular Professor Anna Contadini and Dr Simon O’Meara for their encouragement and belief in this project. I am especially indebted to my students at SOAS, University of London, for providing the opportunity to share and  discuss parts of my ideas reflected in this book with them. Professor Robert Hillenbrand was kind enough to read a couple of chapters of this book and to give me his insightful comments. I am very grateful for his generous help. I need to especially thank the artists with their inspirational work and all photographers and technicians who were involved in providing the excellent visual materials that I have presented in this book. I am also extremely grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their very helpful comments and suggestions and to the excellent team at Edinburgh University Press, Professor Stephanie Cronin, Nicola Ramsey, Rachel Bridgewater, Louise Hutton, Isobel Birks and Kirsty Woods for all their commitment and support. I furthermore need to thank Sue Dalgleish the copy-editor of this book for her insightful comments. I would also like to acknowledge the support of other

ack nowl edgem ents  | xi individuals, including Saeed and Vahid Kooros, for their generous contribution towards the production costs of this project. Last, but not least, I should also like to thank my family, my wife Mitra and my daughter Pegah, for their patience, constant support and ­encouragement throughout this long project.

Introduction

A

nalyses of non-Western modern and contemporary art that are based purely on Euro-American interpretative models often fail to reflect the discursive contexts of artistic production, or their cultural implications, or their incorporation into local historical narratives. This has created unbalanced historiographical maps and art historical sources that inevitably consign non-Western art to the periphery. This book comes from this very problem. Having worked on the subject of modern and contemporary art of Iran over the past decades, I have come to understand that Euro-American paradigms cannot be uncritically applied to the study of art of Iran on the assumption that these discourses enjoy universal validity. However, to arrive at theories, models, analysis and critiques with real instructive and predictive power, some of the methodology of historiography and art theory has to be applied in the study of the subject. I have therefore attempted in this book to show why it is important to challenge the authority of a single art historical discourse and model and the reproduction of different subjectivities in particular narratives. What I have aimed here is to establish a way that art historical and temporal perception can be defined in the context of Iran. While I have adapted some of the so-called ‘global’ art historical paradigms such as critical theory and methodological models, much of the content of this book is based on primary sources including those written in Persian, my own observations and analysis offered in interviews with artists, curators, art critics and cultural activists. Teaching theory and history of art of Iran and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) in universities both in the UK and Iran has given me the chance to rehearse many of the arguments and to articulate new ideas found within the subject in conversation and interaction with students and colleagues both in the fields of contemporary art history and theory as well

2 | th e art of i r a n as art and material culture of the Islamic world. My close involvement in the art scene of contemporary Iran over the past few decades has also provided a great opportunity to hear the voices of insiders, the prevailing concerns within the art society and culture in Iran and how they have been reflected by artists through their artistic strategies. All these constructed the basis of a set of lenses by which this book’s material is examined. Since my earlier monograph, Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives, published in 20131 and during the past recent years, there have been a number of scholarly publications on the subject in both English and Persian that have all shed light on post-1900 art of Iran.2 Even though these recent sources have played an important role in introducing and developing the history of modern and contemporary art of Iran, certain aspects of the subject remain in need of further scrutiny. One of these themes which this book mainly deals with is the exploration and theorisation of the subject through the examination of art movements and artistic practices in relation to other cultural, social and political discourses during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A number of chapters in this book are substantially extended and revised versions of essays that I have published as journal articles or book chapters since the early 2000s. Certain key issues in these publications have been recalibrated, updated, re-structured and supplemented with new material to make a coherent entity in this volume. On occasion, I have revised and even challenged my earlier ideas. The book is also a complement to my previous monograph and continues that scholarly investigation, although in a rather different format. While the former was mainly a historical study and survey of art of Iran from the late nineteenth century to the early 2010s, this book focuses on discourses and their impact on art movements and practices in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. It does not aim to offer a comprehensive survey, but to selectively explore certain prevailing debates in action during this time. Drawing heavily on a social art historical framework, the setting hypothesis underpinning this book is that discourses that have contributed to artistic paradigms during this period are rooted in contextual conditions in which these works were created. To come to grips with the way that artistic trends in Iran can be traced within the intellectual and political landscape of the country mainly from the 1940s to the present, I have tried to articulate new ideas for relating art to its wider context – whether social, cultural or political – and to bring together critical

introduction  | 3 and historical evidence in order to provide an insight into current artistic concerns. I have attempted to outline and contextualise the implications and meanings of the modern and the contemporary in art of Iran with particular attention to the movements of the recent decades and how they have situated themselves in the context. Since there is already a multitude of publications on the diasporic artists and the attendant discourses with which they are associated, this book is largely focused on art discourses and movements practised in Iran itself. I explore these underlying themes and discourses through a series of case studies, including through close scrutiny of works of artists. The above themes are examined throughout three parts and nine chapters, each addressing specific themes and discourses. Part I, ‘Defining the Framework and Developing Conceptual Definitions’, articulates the central concept around which this book is centred, that is, the question of terminology and definitions of modern and contemporary art of Iran. Both by conceptual and historiographical examination of modern and contemporary art in Iran, it tries to theorise the concepts through an alternative art historical account. Chapter 1, ‘Challenging Points of Entry: Theorising “Modern” and “Contemporary” Art of Iran’, takes a step towards (re)tracing the historiography of modern and contemporary art of Iran. I raise the question of whether artworks created outside the Euro-American sphere, the so-called Global North, can be narrated within existing parameters of art historical conceptualisation and classification. Here I address the problem of terminology and temporality together with how these have been interpreted in Iran. I examine the question of whether the history of the modern and contemporary art of Iran can be defined within or in contradiction to the existing parameters and frameworks of Euro-American and Islamic art historical context. What I try to trace in this chapter, and throughout the book, is built on the genealogies of modern and contemporary art movements in Iran that can be understood within the Iranian cultural history, including corresponding cultural ­developments in other fields of the arts such as poetry and literature. In the second chapter, ‘Historiography of Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran’, I examine the historiography of art criticism and writings on Iranian art from the late 1940s to the 2010s, I selectively discuss the various elements of each art historical narrative, including their ideological premises, sources and discourses, the historical models they are based upon, their temporal

4 | the art of i r a n perspective, as well as their linguistic and terminological choices. These writings consist of periodical articles and critical reviews of exhibitions, reflections from artists, attitudes reflected in various types of articles and books, the latter both in Persian and English.3 I show how negotiating national cultural and political associations, debates on common encounters with modernism, discussions about the values of modern and contemporary artistic practice, questions of authenticity, the constant fluctuation between past and present and their attribution to the nature of Iranian culture reflected in those primary sources. Arranged in a chronological order, beginning with the Khorus-jangi magazine (1949) and ending with the book Persia Reframed (2019), I examine these developments in order to understand how modern and contemporary art of Iran have been perceived throughout this time and how it is reflected through a variety of ideological and conceptual perspectives. Part II, ‘Discourses on Modern and Contemporary Art’, traces the dominant discourses on modern and contemporary art practices by Iranian artists from the 1940s to the present time. Discourses such as the neo-traditionalism of the 1960s, post-revolutionary art of the 1980–90s, the paradigms of contemporaneity of the 2000–10s, and the question of identity in relation to cultural globalisation are examined in this section. The 1960s and 1970s constituted a crucial period in the modern art movement in Iran when there was a developing tendency to confront conflicts between past and present, the search for a ‘national’ artistic identity that coincided with the forces of modernity. Chapter 3, ‘The Discourse of Neo-traditionalism: Reflecting the Past into the Present’, focuses on these decades and explores the concept of neo-traditional art in Iran in this period. Along with the postcolonial Middle East,4 at an intellectual level, the neotraditionalists aimed to create a synthesised form of modern art that fused past pictorial heritage with the modern aesthetic language of art. Without ignoring the artists’ distinct self-referential individualism, I examine how this notion was realised within and in correspondence with Iran’s mid-twentieth century socio-cultural practices. Crucial debates over the creation of a balance between the two polarities of modernism and cultural authenticity that had started in the earlier decades reached to a peak in the 1960s and resulted in the creation of the most acclaimed neo-traditionalist movement, the Saqqā-khāneh tendency. Bringing together both historical facts and analytical and critical

introduction  |  5 accounts, I also examine other elements that may have contributed to the creation and promotion of this movement, namely the influence of the official culture (already materialised through the Tehran biennials and the Shiraz Arts Festivals) and market interests. Starting from Charles Hossein Zenderoudi’s Who Is This Hossein the World Is Crazy About? (1958) and finalising with the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition in 1977, I further scrutinise the aesthetic elements of works and artists who are most linked to the movement, both for their artistic viewpoints and the visual characteristics. Examination of the major discourses on art and artistic production in Iran after the 1979 Revolution, in Chapter 4, ‘Discourses on Post-revolutionary Art: the 1980s and Early 1990s’, I explore the impacts of the revolution and its attendant political and cultural transformations on artistic developments, including emergence of ideological revolutionary art and formulation of the so-called Irano-Islamic art. Divided into two periods, that of the immediate aftermath of the revolution from 1979 until the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 and from 1988 until the 1997 presidential election, I inspect the practical ramifications of the cultural policy of the state, which brought about a set of critical changes in the artistic landscape of Iran. I then explore the key artistic trends and genres within the socio-cultural context of the newly established Islamic Republic and consider the formation of the notion of motaʻahhed (namely, committed to the revolutionary aspirations) art that was sponsored by the Artistic Centre of Islamic Propaganda Organisation (Howzeh-ye honariye sāzmān-e tablighāt-e eslāmi). In the second part, I look into the resurgence of the post-revolutionary modern art movement with examination of the national biennales providing analytical accounts of the dominant approaches in the early 1990s exhibitions during the so-called ‘Reconstruction’ period (1988–97). I moreover illustrate how the official insistence on the necessity of resistance against what was then called the ‘cultural aggression’ (tahājom-e farhangi) of the West was reflected through the national art events. I argue that a large body of art productions created in this period proves the characteristic hesitation of a transitional era between revolutionary radicalism and the upcoming contemporary art trends. Chapter 5, ‘The Paradigms of Contemporary Art: The Contemporary versus the Specific’, looks into the emerging concerns and thoughts with which the Iranian art community were engaged during the late 1990s and

6 | th e art of i r a n 2000s, coinciding with the beginning of the ‘Reform’ period (1997–2005) and its aftermath. It discusses the rather conflicting views in the visual arts in Iran as expressed through artistic practices and events in this period, including art productions and exhibitions as well as critical reviews. The chapter’s focus is on the analysis of the dominant dichotomy in cultural and artistic ideas including the idea of contemporaneity and specificity. I explore concepts, mechanisms, strategies and paradigms of contemporaneity in art of Iran, and try to connect these paradigms to a burgeoning ‘New Art’ (honar-e jadid) tendency as a new type of practice that initially appeared to be an institutionally (mainly by the TMoCA) sponsored art in the 2000s. Belonging mostly to the Third Generation, in this time a dynamic group of young artists – among whom the presence of women was quite visible – increasingly began to practise with new means of media. Through interviews with a number of artists, including Farshid Azarang and Ghazaleh Hedayat, and examination of their works, I show how the preference for specificity changed in this period. I contend that in the 2000s, even with the official interest, the search for identity through art and the need to produce ‘authentic’ works was predominantly expelled from the art scene. I also touch upon the critical discussions against the mainstream contemporary art and inevitable issues arising from the process of globalisation, namely the forces of standardisation, located within the Iranian art scene. Part III, ‘Art Practice and Socio-cultural Discourses’, thematically scrutinises art practice and its socio-cultural implications through chapters on the politics of art practice in Iran, the issue of cultural essentialism and exoticism in relation to the global art scene, recent forces of market demands and artistic strategies to challenge those cultural stereotypes. In Chapter 6, ‘The Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran’, I explore the strategies pursued by artists in Iran, and the wider politics of art practice related to localised historical and cultural landscapes. I look into how individual artists generate their own artistic strategies that are pertinent to the demands of contemporaneity. Concentrating on the period from 2005 onward and the resurgence of conservatism within the political culture of the Islamic Republic, I examine the development of the private art sector and art market regionally and nationally in this period and their roles in the growth of certain trends and genres. I argue that the market system has generated stereotypical ways of thinking among

introduction  |  7 arbiters of taste and value by imposing its own standards. I also consider how artists endorse a politics of resistance to the defined identified cultural signs  – that is, to reductive cultural views that tend to perceive their works solely as geopolitical reflections. Within the contemporary art scene in Iran, just as within local social movements, political interventions with aesthetic dimensions have mobilised a range of approaches; experiments that are more open to reflexivity and individual subjective interpretations. These themes are explored through examination of works of artists including Barbad Golshiri, Neda Razavipour, Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar and Nazgol Ansarinia. Following this, Chapter 7, ‘Artists’ Attempts to Reclaim Cultural Space versus the State’s Cultural Prescriptions’, focuses specifically on different strands of identity politics, their association with the post-revolutionary state’s cultural strategy and the artist’s aesthetic rebellion versus the state’s prescriptions. I explore the ways in which the artists’ focal beliefs about social relations and cultural essentialism find expression in their artwork. I attempt to identify what has happened in the course of contemporary Iranian cultural politics after the 1979 Revolution, which has formed the current struggle between the state’s formulation and the artists’ attempts to reclaim their cultural spaces. I contend that the over-centralised and ideological nature of the Islamic Republic forces any alternative reaction to be similarly and simultaneously in essence ‘political-cultural’. During the past two decades, new interpretations of national culture and counter-narratives of the state’s hegemonic narrative, particularly in artistic strategies, have visibly emerged. I explore how artistic involvement with activism is increasingly moving away from the prescriptive agendas promoted by the state, and hence echoing more widely the ‘subjective turn’ of social movements. Through examination of works of artists, including Amir Mobed, Parham Taghioff and Azadeh Akhlaghi, I then argue that artists have not been absorbed by the state’s soft power, which aims to impose its political and ideological values on the nation’s life. Chapter 8, ‘Exhibiting Essentialism: Exoticism and its Attendant Uniformity’, also provides a critical account of the subject of the politics of identity and examines issues of reception and the politics of representation within the international (Euro-American) exhibition system. Drawing on Said’s study of Orientalism and that of Mitchell’s exhibitionary order, I examine works of contemporary artists from Iran in relation to the stereotypes

8 | th e art of i r a n deployed by Orientalist and neo-Orientalist practices. I discuss how the majority of the artistic events relating to the contemporary art of Iran in Europe and America have tended to rely upon ethno-cultural categories and political identity markers. I address the problematic of the ‘constructed identity’ that is generated by external definitions. I contend that while these reductive framing devices do offer useful marketing tools for Iranian artists, they also have the effect of blurring the complexities of each individual’s art practice. It is directly related to the process of exoticisation, which represents ideological materials by highlighting selected segments of a culture that are presented to consumers who desire to underpin their common identities, as Mitchell has already explained it, by exaggerating the ‘Otherness’ of different cultures. My aim is to explore the tensions that arise when artworks created in the specific socio-cultural context of Iran are viewed in a different cultural environment. By scrutinisation of works of artists, including Shirin Neshat, Farhad Moshiri, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Shahab Fotouhi and Shahpour Pouyan, I talk about the strategies of artists – both residents and expatriates – who differently react to the standardisation and essentialisation of the value system embraced by Western museums and galleries. In continuation of the previous chapters, addressing discourses on art practices in Iran and the socio-political mechanisms (domestic and global) which tend to impose cultural fixity or political prescriptions, in Chapter 9, ‘Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping’, I concentrate on strategies deployed by artists, living either in or outside the country, against those forces, particularly through the language of humour, irony and satire. I argue that deploying irony and addressing contradictions via humorous subversion of cultural expectations and standardisation are the key strategies in artistic practices in Iran. Here art acts as agency criticising the status quo, self-exoticisation or categories constructed only on foreign values or formulation by domestic authorities. For artists residing in Iran, parody serves a normative critical function specifically when certain contemporary art forms allow artists to offer parodic references to art of the past. Drawing on Dentith, Apte, Ziv, Bergson and Hutcheon’s theories of humour and parody, I examine the works of artists, including Rokni Haerizadeh, Nazgol Ansarinia, Iman Safaei, Parastou Forouhar and Sohrab Kashani, and how they address

introduction  | 9 their critical views against formulations constructed by local political forces or the metropolitan art system. Given the existence of parallels in contemporary, but particularly modern, art practices and discourses in Iran and the wider MENA region and beyond, throughout the chapters, I have tried to elucidate some of these counterparts. On occasion comparative accounts and parallels have been briefly brought into the equation with reference to regional perspectives and practices, particularly from the Arab World. However, I have placed particular emphasis on how these perspectives have worked in relation to the specific conditions of art production in Iran. Without laying any claim to exhausting these possible trajectories and modes of reflection – theoretical and historical – the chapters of this book provide a starting point for the myriad conjoining and intertwining historical and socio-political events that have contributed to the formation of art discourses in Iran during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Notes 1. I also published two different versions of this monograph in Persian, one published in 2015 and the other in 2017. For further details, see Chapter 2. 2. A full chapter (Chapter 2) is devoted to a review of these materials. 3. There are fewer publications written in French and German so only two of them are examined in this chapter. 4. See Silvia Naef, ‘Reexploring Islamic Art: Modern and Contemporary Creation in the Arab World and its Relation to the Artistic Past’, Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 43 (spring 2003): 164–74, and Nada Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007).

PART I DEFINING THE FRAMEWORK AND DEVELOPING CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS

1 Challenging Points of Entry: Theorising ‘Modern’ and ‘Contemporary’ Art of Iran

T

his chapter aims to constitute a step towards (re)tracing the history of modern and contemporary art of Iran. It raises the question of whether art productions outside the Euro-American domain, the so-called Global North, can be described within existing parameters of art historical conceptualisation and classification. Here the major issue is the problem of terminology and temporality. How have art histories been interpreted in non-Western regions such as Iran, the so-called Global South, which up until recently were interpreted as the periphery and the Other? How would this question be reflected in the current debates about the idea of a ‘Global Art History’? I examine the question of whether the history of modern and contemporary art of Iran can be defined within or in contradiction to the existing parameters and frameworks of EuroAmerican and Islamic art historical context. Theoretical Paradigms Euro-American historiographical accounts of non-Western modern and contemporary art rarely consider the discursive contexts of artistic production, their cultural implications, dissemination, or their incorporation into local historical narratives. In fact, the classical Eurocentric models of art history writing largely follow a worldview derived from the idea of a linear history, and do not attempt to establish or adapt art historical models in various temporalities and contexts. This has created unbalanced historiographical maps and art historical sources that enforce categories and references mainly affiliated with types of art that are all too often assigned to peripheral spaces. In the meantime, art historical scholarship in Iran1 and on Iran in the West, and more generally the

14 | th e art of i r a n Middle East and North African (MENA) region, has made great strides in addressing these questions during recent years. Over the last few decades varieties of publications on modern and predominantly contemporary Iranian art and its diasporas have appeared in different formats, including journal articles, book chapters, monographs, catalogues raisonnés, exhibition and catalogue essays and private collections.2 The subject has partly grown in the context of what came to be called by art historians, critics and curators the ‘regional’ and ‘ethnic’ turn in contemporary art. An increasing number of Western museums, art institutes, scholars and curators have paid more attention to art of other regions outside the mainstream narratives of contemporary art, including Latin America, South East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. In particular, in the case of modern and contemporary art of MENA, the event of 11 September 2001 was indeed effective in increasing public curiosity in the West for anything connected to Islam, the Middle East, Iran and art included. Over recent years there have been a few attempts made by scholars, mainly art historians – Iranians and non-Iranians – to deal with theorisation of modern and contemporary art of Iran through scholarly research and publications. A large number of these sources have focused on productions which are chiefly aligned with certain interests governed by the agendas of a particular institution or exhibition, focusing on specific collections, preference of the curators, institutions, sponsors or the art market. Notwithstanding that these publications have indeed shed lights on a number of unresearched subjects, concepts, periods or artists, there is still insufficient scholarly literature on the subject making the study of the modern and contemporary art of Iran quite challenging. My aim in this chapter, in particular, is to reconsider the existing historiographical questions when working on art of Iran in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including its potential association and disassociation with the classical discipline of Islamic art history and contemporary ‘global’ art history. I will address major historical, conceptual and theoretical issues as well as those concerning methodological debates and challenges in this field. I further address key points about the problems of terminology: the problematic use of such terms as ‘modern/contemporary Islamic art’ and the exceeding application of the terms ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ without sufficient exploration of their contextual connotations. I will then examine

t heo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 15 how these terms should relate to the art historical discourses, specifically in relation to conceptual and historical definitions in the context of Iran. I argue that from a structural point of view the historiography of art of Iran in the modern time inevitably involves drawing on findings and interdisciplinary approaches from critical art history and theory, alongside social and political science, addressing ideas, values and social processes that rendered art practices meaningful in their context. Questions of Terminology and Conceptual Frameworks One of the encounters in the study of art of Iran is the existing historiographical and methodological incompatibility between the Islamic art history of ‘Persia’ and the global paradigms of modern and contemporary art history in their historical and temporal focus.3 Classical Islamic art historical models, especially by the means represented in the survey books on Islamic art and architecture, are largely confined to the close study of individual objects, under the taxonomic categories of influence, borrowing or transfer based on connoisseurship,4 explored through positivist and empirical methods.5 Until recently in much of the Islamic art literature priority is given to ornament and calligraphy, the latter as ‘the only form of visual art universally admired by Muslims’, and a unique feature that ‘distinguishes Islamic art from other artistic ­traditions’6 in all the arts, including manuscript illustration and architecture, the so‐called minor arts.7 Before recent developments in the field, the prevalent approach in the practice of Islamic art history prioritised formal beauty and technical skill over these arts’ relation to the complex socio-cultural referents. However, as art historian Wendy Shaw maintains, scholarship on Islamic art has begun to move beyond portraying art objects and materials merely by their formal qualities. As an alternative to the earlier classical approaches, this one concentrates on the ideas and social values that contributed to these cultural materials’ significance within their contexts.8 According to Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu in their article on ‘Frameworks of Islamic Art and Architectural History: Concepts, Approaches, and Historiographies’ in Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, this developing approach reflects the extension of the range of formal analysis towards inclusion of contemporary questions of agency, from that of materials and techniques to producers and consumers. They state,

16 | the art of i r a n These responses to broader disciplinary trends are closely related to contemporary discourses of the global and globalization in the disciplines of art history and anthropology, and a current move away from iconographic approaches towards a growing interest in questions of agency, materiality, and subject–object relations.9

Art historians such as Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar contributed largely to the modern scholarship of Islamic art and analysis of history and objects and meaning through analysis of socio-historical context. In his 1951 essay on the state of studies on ‘Islamic Art and Archaeology’, Ettinghausen ‘highlighted the “need to study written primary sources so as to move beyond formal stylistic considerations to wider aspects of meaning and cultural ­context”’10 as one of the future agendas of the field. A similar contextual approach was promoted by Grabar. His emphasis was on the linguistic training of students so that they can combine text‐based and visual analysis that is a common practice in other fields of art history.11 Grabar’s work on Islamic iconography12 is a good example in which he presents a novel interpretation of formal and conceptual aspects of monuments such as the Dome of the Rock and the Taj Mahal in relation to cultural and political history, patronage, and so on. He maintains that My aims are to develop an intellectual strategy for further research on Islamic architecture, and to mediate on a key issue of contemporary thought: whether it is valid to apply the same investigative methods to the art of all cultures, or whether the very nature of artistic experience requires methods created by the culture itself.13

Grabar also uses the example of Islamic ornament to mediate on larger issues of the perception, application and fabrication of visual forms that could be examined through intellectual and hermeneutic values.14 As stated above, Flood and Necipoğlu contend that there is an increasing interest in the field of Islamic art history with a more ‘global’ perspective. They, however, believe it coincides with a concern about its dissolution into a wide variety of specialisations causing separation from the classical methods and scholarship.15 Sheila Blair and Johnathan Bloom, for example, maintain that it could be a useful and even ‘much-needed supplement’ to classical

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 17 methodologies to apply theoretical frameworks for the study of Islamic art. However, they argue that the use of theory should start with a full knowledge of artworks themselves and the contextual situation in which they were created.16 Here ‘a full knowledge of artworks’ seems to be referring to historical knowledge of individual objects, explored through empirical research mentioned above. Blair and Bloom further clarify that only a few Islamic art scholars would find much in common with those who study modern and contemporary art, ‘because few of the tools and methods used in the study of “modern” art are appropriate to the earlier periods, for which written documents are rarely available’.17 However, I do not reckon the incompatibility as mainly the question of availability of written documents. In fact, it should rather be rooted in the methodological strategies. Modern and contemporary art historical studies is anchored around theoretical frameworks as the main point of reference. These studies draw heavily upon critical interpretation of the New Art History and its multi-disciplinary theoretical foundations. As part of the contemporary humanities studies, art history has been able to develop a variety of historical reference systems which relate art historical ideas and values to social changes. Rather than a descriptive marker denoting a fixed typology of objects and periods or historical information, the frameworks of the New Art History provide a conceptual and intellectual provocation in relation to the analysis of modern and contemporary art across specific theoretical frameworks, from gender/power-related to racial, psychoanalytic, philosophical and linguistic approaches. This paradigm emphasises the different strategies through which diverse artists approached the social and conceptual structures upheld by their context and explore the consequences of such processes of negotiation for the visual, spatial and intellectual parameters framing practices and approaches. This paradigm in particular opposes the formalist art history which essentially excludes political implications of artistic practices, somehow acting as agents of capitalism that could also work towards the intentions of the art market.18 In addition to the question of methodology, another issue is the inclusion, temporality and scope. A majority of studies of Islamic art has often been based on the presumption that post-1800 art productions affiliated with the Islamic world should be viewed as derivative parodies of the European norms.19 According to Ettinghausen and Grabar, Islamic art covers ‘the art

18 | th e art of i r a n made by artists or artisans whose religion was Islam, for patrons who lived in predominantly Muslim lands, or for purposes that are restricted or peculiar to a Muslim population or a Muslim setting’.20 Based mainly on religious identity and cultural identification, most of the scholars of Islamic art believe no art after 1800 is worthy of any comment because of a lack of ‘Islamic creativity’ and ‘originality’.21 As evidenced by Blair and Bloom’s statement, ‘Islamic art is generally said to have ended at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the advent of European colonialism and the emergence of distinct national identities’.22 This is an explanation provided by a major group of Islamic art historians for not being very keen on expanding the time frame of their study to the modern and contemporary periods and pondering the question of emergent modern artistic performances in the Islamic world. This elimination echoes ideas based on the concept of ‘authenticity’ that disregard the heterogeneous structure of cultures under the title ‘Islamic lands’ in the modern period, while generating a conception that represents the modern as a markedly European phenomenon.23 It has only been during the past decades, and particularly in recent years, that a number of major exhibitions and publications have contributed to the study of art of nineteeth century and early twentieth century Iran. These exhibitions, such as the Louvre-Lens The Rose Empire: Masterpieces of 19th-century Persian Art Exhibition (2018) held in Lens, Toronto, Kuala Lumpur, Yerevan, Tehran and Doha, were accompanied by a substantial wave of publications on the arts of Qajar Iran.24 Flood, both in his 2005 article, ‘From the Prophet to Postmodernism?’, and the Companions to Islamic Art and Architecture with Necipoğlu, suggests the extension of the canon of Islamic art study by inclusion of post-1800 art of the Muslim countries, including modern and contemporary periods. Although he is not an advocator of the idea of Islamic art and architecture as a singular and uniform entity,25 he believes that the addition of these periods into the field of Islamic art history would expose new outlooks on the ‘nature of modernity and contemporaneity, and on what constitutes the global and local’.26 Blair and Bloom, also in 2003, note the recent attempts in the subfield of Islamic art history to widen the traditional scope of the discipline. They argue that recent developments including political and economic variations within the Islamic world and migration patterns to Europe and the US have inspired Islamic art historians to extend the conventional scope of their

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 19 study and address themes such as twentieth century art and architecture of the Islamic world, along with contemporary art practices by ‘Muslim’ artists in Europe and US.27 They, however, convincingly contend that this attitude would engage a paradox, since there it is no justification for why an art historian who was trained to study the ‘Islamic’ art of eighth century Syria, fourteenth century Iran or seventeenth century India – aside from knowledge of a relevant language – should be more attracted to or capable of delineating the works of Iranian filmmakers or the Kuwaiti women’s contemporary art practices than an expert in the work of Georgia O’Keeffe or Orson Welles.28 Their main argument that I believe is quite relevant is that those ideas of a fixed ‘East’ (Orient) – still influenced by Orientalism – suggest that through Islam, those contemporary artists in Iran or the Arab world essentially share more commonalities with seventh-century Syrians than with, for example, contemporary Americans. Their main argument is that these subjects should not necessarily be relegated to Islamic art.29 The other issue, mentioned also in Blair and Bloom’s description, is that although an interest in modern and contemporary art has grown among a number of historians of Islamic art, presently the major number of them are medievalists or working on the early modern period, with little expertise in the later periods. Flood and Necipoğlu also address the indefinity of how that interest will be developed within ‘a discipline that has traditionally equated visual modernity with Euro‐America, and carefully partitioned the modern from the pre‐modern’.30 At the same time, the debates about the appropriateness of the terms ‘modern Islamic art’ or ‘contemporary Islamic art’, and their kinship with the field of Islamic art and modern and contemporary art are the ongoing subject of several discussions and writings.31 The terms ‘modern Islamic art’ and ‘contemporary Islamic art’, chiefly as a reference to the modern and contemporary art of the Arab world, Iran and Turkey, were perhaps used first in 1989 by the Jordanian art historian Wijdan Ali32 and then came to be recognised as a category used both in academic and exhibition contexts. The curator and art historian Fereshteh Daftari, in the introduction to the exhibition Without Boundaries, Seventeen Ways of Looking, curated by herself at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2005, raises the complex question surrounding the issue of definition of Islamic art and its reductive connotations in the contemporary geopolitical domain. Questioning the very phrase ‘Islamic art’

20 | the art o f i r a n when applied to the contemporary production of a heterogeneous group of artists (living in diaspora), she reminds us that the study of Islamic art was originally an occidental invention, originating in Europe in the 1860s with variable definitions of the term from one context to another.33 With reference to the practices of contemporary artists exhibited in the show, she contends, ‘the term [modern/contemporary Islamic art] can no longer be divorced from religion and politics, and therefore cannot be applied to all indiscriminately without potentially imposing irrelevant readings’.34 Daftari rightly argues, In our present polarized moment, the term is loaded with political and religious sub-texts, and yet it has been applied to artists who do not necessarily use it to describe their own work, who do not permanently live in Islamic areas, and who produce art for European and American art spaces in which Muslim visitors are only a fraction of their audience.35

Challenging the preconceived notions of cultural homogeneity behind this categorisation, she is right to say that merely the artist’s affiliation to a country from the ‘Islamic world’ or his/her place of birth cannot be the right criteria to categorise him/her as a contemporary Islamic artist. Moreover, many of these artists are either not a Muslim or their art is not concerned with any religious signification. This is particularly true in the case of a great number of contemporary artists from Iran who came of age after the 1979 Revolution. They rather consciously intend to abstain from being affiliated with Islamic identity or any religious labelling. This is largely related to the cultural hegemony imposed by the Islamic Republic and its infliction of ideological (Shiite) Islam on all aspects of life, including political, economic, social and cultural. Most historians of art of the contemporary MENA36 accept that Islamic art was a product of its time and contemporary art from the Islamic world, including Iran, equally, responds to its time, everyday practices and sociocultural values which should not necessarily have any association with Islam. Art historian Staci Scheiwiller suggested the use of the term ‘post-Islamic art’ which would combine both sub-fields of ‘Islamic art’ and ‘modern and contemporary art’ into a third hybrid sub-field or new approach to artwork that is contemporary and somehow references Islam.37 Nonetheless, it seems such hybrid terms would not perfectly help with resolving the terminological problem of the earlier term (modern/contemporary Islamic Art) either, as

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 21 they would still carry similar conceptual signifiers. Even Flood and Necipoğlu, who advocate the extension of the canon of Islamic art history, are convinced that the study of modern and contemporary art requires to be examined in a separate volume/s from their Companions to Islamic Art and Architecture, since the question of how to place or approach these subjects still involves challenges.38 Another similar approach, based on the essentialist account of authenticity, has typically been proposed by historians of Western art when dealing with art of the modern and contemporary periods in Iran and the Islamic world in general. I shall explore this in the following section, but it is useful to note an early example of this presumption.39 Roger Fry, the renowned English art critic and artist, wrote the main article in Persian Art, one of the books accompanying the catalogue of The Second International Exhibition of Persian Art at the Burlington House Fine Arts Club, London, in 1931. To be noted is that within an Orientalist structure, emphasising cultural perpetuation, the term ‘Persian art’ is usually used to imply a sub-division within Islamic art and architecture in reference to Iran, and as a denotation of both the pre-Islamic ancient and Islamic periods. The book was aimed at providing an analytical account of the exhibition and to help in understanding the main objects displayed there. Fry traces his intention in the introductory section as to ‘elucidate those nebulous mental and emotional reactions which the word “Persian”, when applied to any object of art, evokes within us’.40 The essay ends optimistically by saying that ‘the Persian genius which has survived so many apparently overwhelming disasters may in future years find the way to revive its ancient splendour and recover its position as one of the great cultural centres of the civilized world’.41 As the art historian Kishwar Rizvi rightly remarks, what seems odd in this introduction is that the issue of a ‘modern’ Persian nay Iranian art is not even anticipated. It confirms the typical notion that modern art fits in merely the West European–North Atlantic axis, and modern Iranian art should therefore seek a recovery only by simulation of the past.42 This view is also related to the historian and cultural anthropologist James Clifford’s argument about the authentic and the ‘authority’ who speaks for ‘other’ group’s identity and authenticity. He questions the essential elements and boundaries of a culture and the way that certain cultures are put in a box of what is authentic by the colonial masters. Clifford persuasively states, ‘self–other relations are matters

22 | th e art of i r a n of power and rhetoric rather than of essence. A whole structure of expectations about authenticity in culture and in art is thrown in doubt.’43 It seems all the above mechanisms have something in common; they create or support the standard narrative that casts the constructed mass, here affiliated to the Iranian culture, by attributing an ethnic, geographical, cultural or political reality to it. A major problem is with the ‘given identity’ generated by external expectations and formulation of this identity.44 This approach towards proposition of a fixed identity and authenticity concedes the reality that the cultural ideologies, endorsing both vision and culture, determine which accounts and themes should be seen as normative. Another key challenge in the study of art of Iran in the modern and contemporary periods is the problem with definitions and characterisations of the terms modern and contemporary. This is an important issue since these terms are increasingly used in scholarly literature, mostly without explanation or justification. As we will see, these terms do not always serve the creation of a temporal and terminological synchronicity with Western art history. The art historian Keith Moxey, in his essay ‘Art History after the Global Turn’, ponders fundamental questions about the discipline of art history which are useful here. He poses questions such as: is art history categorically a Western discipline, or can it peruse some kind of universal value? How do this field’s interests and preoccupations appear from non-Western perspectives? How can insular be art history when realised from a global angle? Moreover, is it possible to address the artistic traditions of non-Western cultures by application of interpretive frameworks adopted in the study of Western art?45 I would like to ask other specific questions, including: what is the status of the history of modern and contemporary art from Iran? What do the terms modern and contemporary denote and connote in art historical inquiry today? What do those terms signify in an Iranian context? Is there something in reference to the aesthetic characteristics, content or a temporal categorisation? How closely should it be linked to cultural and political history? Given the colonial roots of global art history, how do these terms correspond to Western art history or discourses? Given that these definitions and conditions are – at least partly – determined by where one stands in relation to certain historical narratives, could this also mean that the conventions of dividing modern art, for example, into pre- and post-war which define modernism as a uniquely Eurocentric

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 23 phenomenon, might prevent us from identifying other important connections and readings elsewhere? How suitable could the terms and paradigms such as ‘postmodernism’ or ‘neo-avant-garde’ be in the non-Euro-American contexts, where modernism and the avant-garde are signified rather differently?46 The ongoing question is also how ‘local’ perspectives on contemporary art from Iran are defined and how these perspectives intersect with the global art paradigms and contemporary art practices. Before going any further, I need to address another fundamental question which inevitably relates to those earlier ones, that is, are there unified ‘global’ art historical systems that introduce methodologies, temporalities and categorisations to be applied equally in case of all cultural and artistic contexts? The art historian James Elkins rightly expresses concern for how we might incorporate globalisation into our practices for defining a global art history. In his seminal edited volume, Is Art History Global?, he poses questions about the shapes of art history across the world, including: is art history becoming global and can it have a distinguishable system depending on where it is practised? Can the concepts, methods and objectives of Western art history be appropriate for art history outside of the Euro-American domain? Are there alternatives that could be adaptable with current modes of art history?47 He proposes reasons why art history might be considered to encompass a variety of practices, different from one place to another as diffusion of Western models of art history that would be ‘melting into many local practices’.48 Elkins states that one of the reasons why art history cannot be global is that art history is closely affiliated with senses of national and regional identity.49 This idea was exposed in his book, Stories of Art,50 better understood as a contrast with texts like Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art,51 which is chiefly Eurocentric in its own way without paying much attention to non-Western multiple stories of art. Elkins then convincingly demonstrates other reasons why it can be seen as a single and, to some extent, unified enterprise. He, however, argues that this art history would not be a standardised certainty or be circulated consistently around the world. It is rather a field that only shares some basic concepts and purposes.52 His main point is that art history is attached to Western theoretical construction and so there is no individual national or regional tradition of art history. For example, even though Chinese art historians require expertise in completely different sorts of formal concepts and materials for the study of

24 | the art of i r a n Chinese art, their theoretical frameworks and interpretive strategies – from iconography to semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis – continue to be inspired by Western art history.53 I agree with James Elkins’ argument that ‘there is no non-Western tradition of art history’, in the sense that there is any particular tradition possessing its own ‘interpretive strategies and forms of argument’. Even though I am in agreement with him that art history could methodologically become a truly global enterprise ‘whose subject matter changes with its location but whose assumptions, purposes, critical concepts, and narrative forms remain fairly consistent around the world’,54 I believe it should divide into local, or what I would call alternative, practices. Here, I refer to the question of standardisation and unification, in particular in relation to temporalities and concepts. Reflecting on the question of art history as a global field, the cultural and literary analyst Suman Gupta provides an interesting critical account of complications involved in the terminologies and concepts. He maintains that use of the terms such as ‘world art’ and ‘international art’ cannot categorically be divorced from their (aimed) intellectual content and terminological inflections. Arguing that in this discussion questions related to the politics of ‘diversity’, ‘difference’ and ‘multiculturalism’ are equally ambiguous and contested territories, he suggests that approaching that question essentially needs to be an extended and open process.55 In the current practice of art history, the most ‘normal’ Western art historical research continues to be conducted within the paradigm of the modern nation state and national art.56 Art historians around the world typically adopt Western or ‘global’ standards in a specific area and time frame. The historiographical trend towards a ‘world history’, which finally emerges as an alternative of master narrative, expansively charted to encompass the entire world in its purview and to broaden the horizons of the global well beyond its traditional Eurocentric focus. There are, however, concerns over the efficiency of this approach, as to how the local practices could be better informed, characterised or conform to issues and frameworks explored in the context of contemporary Western art history discourses and critical concepts.57 Addressing the unparalleled signification of globality in Western and nonWestern cultural domains, the cultural critic and scholar, Hamid Dabashi, discusses how the categories of regional and global discourse in our understanding

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 25 of contemporary art already presuppose the unexamined categories of ‘local’ and ‘universal’.58 He cogently argues that the claim to universality has been the privilege of art produced in Western Europe and North America, casting a shadow over the art produced in other regions. Dabashi further notes that, from curatorial practices to academic discourse, the constitution of modern and contemporary art is either explicitly or implicitly enacted in the shadow of the West, subjecting the world beyond to the status of ‘the rest’.59 The task of examining this approach to art history is no doubt a critical one as it directs our attention to those epistemic foundations that continue to shape our scholarly practice. Stressing the fluidity of the areas the field has conventionally explored enables scholars of non-Western modern and contemporary art, including those working on Iran, to see the areas for what they are, namely units for analysis that uncover certain phenomena while obscuring others. It enables us to examine how the multiple and diverse locations challenge or reproduce power structures, inequalities and hierarchies. Aside from the question of epistemological foundations, one can identify other reasons for the deficiency of established parameters for formulation of modern and contemporary art of Iran – ranging from the absence of this history from the canon of Western art history to the lack of knowledge production affiliated with this topic.60 Given the unbalanced relationship between the Western canon and other cultural productions, it is not surprising that there is no adequate and deserved trace of modern and contemporary art from non-Western lands in the Euro-American narrative. Here Michel Foucault’s concept of association between power and knowledge and Edward Said’s formulation of Orientalism and its main aim as critique of institution of knowledge production provide useful basis for illustration of the colonial legacies of art and art history. This repudiation has led to the methodological ramifications of the study of modern and contemporary art production outside the West, including Iran. Within this framework, these art productions and historical concepts are predominantly ignored and dismissed by scholars of World Art History, because here again they are typically perceived as either being essentially ‘derivative’ or not ‘authentic’ enough. The problematic issues which emerge within this context are that there is a tendency to evaluate artistic practices either to their affinities to ‘Western’ concepts and therefore to relegate them as derivative or to measure these artworks as merely echoes of

26 | th e art of i r a n authenticity, without taking into account their respective historical context. In such a context, one may detect the generation of artificial norms by ‘global’ art historians as condition for inclusions of peripheral narratives in their canonical account. It demonstrates a methodology that is attentive to the questions of cultural essentialism in art historical discourse. For this reason, it is necessary to critically reflect the normative meaning of abstract concepts such as ‘derivativeness’ and ‘authenticity’ that have emerged within modern and contemporary art history. It further requires our rethinking of terminological definitions of the terms modern and contemporary by critically viewing the possibilities of interpretation of fundamental art historical concepts.61 This conceptualisation and periodisation, therefore, cannot be merely – especially in the case of contemporary art – based on stylistic or aesthetic significance. It should rather rely on conceptualisation of the discursive systems related to the very context of Iran. I argue that in the recent history of Iranian art, we can discern local practices taking shape in parallel with global modern and contemporary art that cannot readily be compared to the Euro-American counterparts. Parameters for Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran Let us start with the term modern and its implications in the art of Iran. It is said that even though modernism was not initially destined to be inclusive and rather exclusively a European hegemony, it is now generally agreed that it can be a global phenomenon.62 Therefore, one way to engage with the modern is to consider the deterritorialised aspects of historic modernism.63 This would evoke the concept of multiple modernities, which indicates that the features and forces of modernity can potentially be received and developed in different ways in different parts of the world. A theoretical perception of multiple modernities highlights heterogeneity rather than homogeneity. The core of multiple modernities lies ‘in assuming the existence of culturally specific forms of modernity shaped by distinct cultural heritage and socio-political conditions. These forms will continue to differ in their value systems, institutions, and other factors.’64 Hence, it is possible that different, equally modern societies have distinctively appropriated modern structures, institutions and cultural systems in a variety of forms around the world.65 Therefore, the idea of contextual contribution in the formation of ‘alternative modernities’ is central to the concept of multiple modernities. As the political theorist and historian

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 27 Timothy Mitchell argues, the notion of alternative modernities stresses ‘the variety of local, regional, and global forces whose combination shapes the particular histories of capitalist modernity, producing different versions in different places. Such formulations provide a less Eurocentric way of acknowledging the importance and variation of non-European developments.’66 It is therefore necessary to envisage multiple locational and contextual perspectives; even if all those perspectives are of universal significance, the genealogies of the cultural, ecological and political practices that determine each of them are certainly dissimilar. This framework is very useful for reading Iranian modernity, which in reality may have produced new aesthetic experiences, cognitive connections and political interventions that differ from those familiar in the West. Only through establishing this conception can an alternative modernity make sense; a modernity that has been specified in terms of its inherent and self-defined interests. Likewise, the idea of a singular (Western-European) modernism and its representation in art practices – historically more-or-less from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century – is replaced by multiple modernisms and multiple possibilities. As it was practised in Iran, during the process of transformation of modern values and norms (arzesh-hā va hanjārhā-ye tajaddod), the existing conceptions themselves actively empowered the original source through their selections from modernism (now-gerāeī). What prevailed in modern art was the consciousness that fuses the norms of both home cultures and adopted ones. This is what I will discuss in the following paragraphs. The modalities for a modernism and artistic approaches produced from within this specific context was accompanied by socio-political struggles for establishing a modern identity. These struggles were mostly involved in the Third-Wordlist notions, which were negotiated through the voices infused with nationalist claims. Hence, the question of to what or for what the artists belong became an existential challenge for them. As sociocultural anthropologist Jessica Winegar convincingly maintains, every act of producing or interacting with modern art in the MENA constitutes an affinity with the processes of modernity,67 as experienced by those elites labelled as local cultural envoys.68 It was then not surprising that the discourses, such as the identity question, authenticity, avant-gardism and modernism, which had preoccupied Iranian intelligentsias mainly involved in social and political reformism during the first decades of the twentieth century, were

28 | the art of i r a n eventually reflected on visual artists’ concerns too. Most of the enthusiastic efforts from the 1940s to 1960s – the so-called ‘post-war’ period – within the country, aimed at exploring cultural roots, occasionally extended back beyond their Islamic past.69 While the search for authenticity within the framework of modern art (honar-e now) was a common feature in the art of modern Iran, in practice adaptation and appropriation was also a major concern.70 Most of the examples of art practices in this period show an attempt to draw their stimulus from artists’ own native culture and history formulated through modernistic approaches.71 In most cases of these practices – unlike Western modern art – one can trace a modern that does not demand a break with concepts of tradition or cultural past. It is rather a modern art which involves the selective adoption and refutation of certain concepts and styles of European modern art movements, constantly, through a process of translation that produces ‘difference’.72 At the same time, most of the pioneer modernists (now-gerāyān) were involved in the idea of avant-gardism and its utopianism.73 For them the forward-looking avant-garde (pishrow), affiliated with the new, and the shock of the new, referred to ‘the nearly endless individual variations of a fusion culture created by artists consciously engaged in one way or another with the conditions of modernity that shaped each of their lives differently’.74 Paralleled with other similar practices elsewhere in the non-Western domains – the MENA region in particular – artists in Iran who adopted avant-gardism felt unrestricted to explore vernacular materials along with the discourse they operate on, rather than opposing them. This was perceptibly partly in sharp contrast to the accepted European version of avant-garde which typically suggests an opposition to mainstream cultural values and a clash with any past norms. Meanwhile, one of the Iranian modernists’ priorities was to find a strategic approach to adopt and adapt their stylistic choices. As a result, in the demands of reality, theoretical discourse and complex abstraction of modernism and its epistemological foundations were second to the issues of stylistic and formal concerns in which pioneers were involved. For example, during the 1940s towards the 1950s the first generation of modernists – mainly graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts (Dāneshkadeh-ye honar-hāy-e zībā), Tehran University, who then studied in European (French and Italian in particular) art institutions – were engaged in re-appropriation of a variety of typically accepted stylistic modern art trends such as Impressionism, Expressionism and Cubism.75

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 29 In her book, Persia Reframed: Iranian Visions of Modern and Contem­ porary Art (2019), Fereshteh Daftari suggests a different conceptualisation of the term modernism and modern art in Iran.76 Her conceptualisation has eventually resulted in a different periodisation from what I suggested above. Although we are in full agreement on the necessity of imagining an alternative modernism in the context of Iran that differs from that of in the West, her account suggests a historical case that dates modernism back to the nineteenth century and the academic realism practised by the Qajar court artist Mohammad Ghaffari, better known as Kamal al-Molk (1848–1940). She suggests the phrase ‘Old Master modernism’ to explain a tendency of which Kamal al-Molk was capable of developing to the highest degree. Daftari is right that modernity in the Iranian context, unlike its Western counterpart, should not be seen as an entirely secular process that was practised in a democratic or technologically advanced society, but rather as representing ‘a society that was awakening to change’.77 Her argument is also very valid that as with the question of aesthetics, Iranian modernism was involved in a complex set of negotiations with the country’s politically and culturally specific tensions.78 She proposes then that even if Old Master modernism seems a contradiction from a Western perspective, it is a logical idea in the Iranian context.79 Describing the reason why Kamal al-Molk could be named a ‘modernist’, Daftari maintains that he was ‘a pioneer on the rupture with the traditional arts, the first to  categorically turn his back on the local tradition of ­abstraction’.80 As explained earlier, I entirely appreciate that different criteria need to be applied in (re)definition of the concept of modernism and its representation in the Iranian context. However, I equally believe that any alternative scenario should be located within largely accepted central paradigms of modernism, stylistic and ideological implications of modern art, and affiliated globally practised movements. As a chief court painter (Naqqāsh-bāshī), Kamal al-Molk’s artistic choice could not be autonomous or based on an individual preference, but had rather to be negotiated within the existing royal system and adjusted in accordance with his patrons’ – the Qajar kings’, Nasser al-Din Shah’s in particular, – tastes: the main element being the Shah’s great appreciation of European naturalist standards. Here the question of individual agency – a fundamental concept implemented within the condition of modernity – is the central point. Furthermore, he was in fact heir of the long-term attempts

30 | th e art of i r a n of earlier Iranian artists – from the seventeenth to nineteenth century – to turn their art towards these standards, rather than pioneering this path. What I try to trace in this chapter and throughout the book is built on the genealogies of the modern art movement in Iran that can be understood within Iranian cultural history, including corresponding cultural developments in other fields of the arts such as poetry and literature,81 as well as artists’ consciousness of the necessity of modernisation (Nowsāzi) of art and culture. It is also rooted in the broad philosophical framework within which the modern art movements took place in any parts of the world, with all their diversity and disunity of forms and styles, which also provides theoretical discourse for the evaluation and legitimisation of modern works of art. Thus it is not only the question of artists’ borrowed idioms from the West that distinguish the pre-modern classicism of Kamal al-Molk from the Cubism of Jalil Ziapour (1920–99), one of the main advocates of modernism in the art of Iran in the 1940s.82 Seen in this light, it was a generational concern with modernism in art, literature and culture at large in 1940s Iran as a necessity plainly proclaimed through vanguard magazines, public discussions, cultural commentary and exhibitions that is the main point of reference. Daftari’s portrayal of Iranian modernism, however, seems to be inclusive and embrace the later artists of the 1940s, including Ziapour and the diaspora artist Manoucher Yektai (1921–2019), another iconic modernist artist.83 In her account, the gap between Kamal al-Molk and the generation of the 1940s remains unexplored: whether Kamal al-Molk’s legacy that dominated Iran’s art scene at least over the four decades of the twentieth century is considered modern, bearing in mind that there was an obvious battle between Kamal al-Molk’s advocates and the 1940s avant-gardes who called the other group ‘conservative imitators’? During the 1930s and 1940s, the art world in Iran, like other cultural fields such as literature and architecture,84 was a space of vigorous contestation around issues of national pasts and futures, the predominant debates during the first half of the twentieth century in Iran. The cultural productions were in fact made to index and embody the key tensions inherent in national engagements over the decades. On the social level, this development can be seen in the resurgence of Iranian values and traditions, while on an intellectual level there was a strong attempt to merge modern values with indigenous ones, as part of the search for a modern identity. This re-appropriation of tradition

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 31 was embedded in an awareness that certain key facets and values of Western modernity became inherent parts of Iranian life. In the 1950s, and particularly the 1960s and 1970s, criticism of the West was growing among a number of Iranian intellectuals.85 For example, this criticism of the West through anti-Orientalism voices targeted the voracious desire among the majority to imitate and emulate the West and its cultural products, known as gharb-zadegi (Westoxification).86 The primary connection of these movements was to inspire Iranians to realise their identity, tradition and national origins. These movements that constructed the spirit of the time and stayed there for decades affected artists’ choices of strategies, seeking to create a modern ‘national’ language with their art. The artists, with their examination of movements and trends in Western modern art, were determined to establish a common validity between inherited specifics and pragmatic modernism that marked Iranian art of their time. Examples of these inherited specifics were cults, rituals and products of folk culture. In their view, these sources had to be linked to modern styles to create a markedly national artistic expression. The neo-traditional Saqqā-khāneh movement in the 1960s was in particular a response to this desire.87 This idea was then developed in the works of many artists, particularly during the 1960s and partly the 1970s. This modernist approach although interrupted by the outbreak of the 1979 Revolution and its aftermaths which derived their power from a strong ideological impulse that dominated all modernistic and nationalistic practices for a decade, resurfaced with vigour in the late 1980s.88 This refers to what I would like to call the ‘rebirth of the post-revolutionary modernism’. I will discuss these practices and their varieties in the next chapters. As with modern art and its affiliation with the condition of modernity, what constitutes truly contemporary art89 (honar-e mo‘āser) emerges from within the conditions of contemporaneity.90 The art driven by the multiple energies of contemporaneity could then be formed variously in a variety of shapes. Contemporary art marks a temporal connecting and a spatial encompassing, a site of a deep tension between very different constructions.91 The major issue here is how has art of Iran in its recent history adapted this condition to its context? Moreover, the increasing globalisation in the contemporary world poses an even more fundamental question, namely: what does ‘the contemporary’ mean?92

32 | the art of i r a n Art historian and curator Mark Godfrey rightly argues that after the critical discourse of postmodernism many art historians and critics started to question any all-encompassing and monolithic model that would describe what is most compelling about contemporary art.93 At the same time, the curator and art critic Okwui Enwezor maintains that, ‘off-centered zones’ of creation, circulation and reception of contemporary art articulate a dispersion of the universal, a denial of the monolithic and a rebellion against the mono-cultural reading.94 Here the contemporary proposes a new position, one that could capture both the emergence of multiple cultural fields – being stimulated by diverse arenas of thinking and practice – and a re-conceptualisation of the structures of legitimation that follow in their wake.95 I agree with the art historian and critic Terry Smith about the contemporary being far from a singular and simple or a neutral substitute for ‘modern’. It rather ‘signifies multiple ways of being with, in, and out of time, separately and at once, with others and without them’.96 After the era of grand narratives, the contemporary suggests a new world relationship, where it operates in areas of the world whose association to Western modernity has not been direct, places where everyday life might be characterised by the persistent possibilities of modernisation and the perseverance of more traditional forms of being. In this condition, there are artists in any part of the world who search for understanding and even contest the socio-political conditions of the present by examining history or the way in which the past is represented.97 Contemporary art, in fact, offers critical connections between aesthetic practice and the challenged terrain of social relations, to ask where we stand in relation to them.98 The contemporary then is not strictly a chronological category whose free detachment could be enhanced by re-attaching it to the longer chain of art history. Art historians Anneka Lenssen and Sarah Rogers, on articulating the contemporary in the context of the Arab world, also agree that understanding the contemporary could be possible when it is seen as a contingent concept rather than a precisely temporal category, something with articulated parameters that change in history.99 What basically makes all variety of contemporary approaches different from the concerns of modern art practices is that they tacitly interrogate the ontology of the present and the question of what it is to be in the circumstances of contemporaneity. Contemporary art is therefore an epitomisation of the spirit of contemporaneity.

t heo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 33 Among others, Smith’s definition of the concept of contemporaneity is perhaps more inclusive. He defines it as the most assumed trait of the current world picture that cannot any longer be sufficiently characterised by terms such as ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’, particularly as it is formed by disaccord between very deep antinomies that cause its opposition to universal generalisation.100 This definition of contemporaneity suggests a development of a wide variety of approaches and strategies based on spatio-temporal contexts that can all be named contemporary art. Therefore, as art historian Tim Griffin argues, contemporary art should be strategic, rather than programmatic. It should continuously assign itself a specific function in line with any specific context.101 The main point is that one cannot fully engage with the idea of the ‘global contemporary’ without also paying careful attention to the particular and local symptoms of the contemporary condition. Contemporary art practices in Iran are inspired by artists’ experiences of living in the present, so that the question for them becomes less a matter of what is canonical contemporary art, and more one of which kinds of art might characterise this condition. It is therefore unsurprising that on many occasions contemporary Iranian artists have engaged in critical re-tellings of the past. Through approaches such as irony, deconstruction and defamiliarisation they generate their critical accounts to address their conditions of contemporaneity. A number of artists in Iran have developed practices that critically trace and strikingly display the new world disorder between the canonical expectations and how the artists from countries like Iran have to comply with them to be visible in the art world.102 Other artists base their practice around exploring their relationships with the specific context of Iran, both spatial and temporal, within the ideological and political systems. Still for others who work with different means of media, examining cultural and social structures, artists’ responses have developed from local political histories to critical accounts of ideologies. More importantly, through their art projects, they question the exhausted binaries of authenticity versus derivativeness, local versus global, sacred versus secular, and so on. One emerging narrative mode, in which these concepts are reflected, can be observed in the appropriation of subversive strategies in artistic expressions and conceptions.103 According to the above theoretical introduction, it is definitely not straightforward to point to a precise time frame for these contemporary

34 | the art of i r a n practices. However, it is most likely that by the 1990s contemporary art started to be practised in Iran. During the late 1990s, the Iranian art scene saw a rapid departure from the newly shaped post-revolutionary artistic modernism. The art practices began to incorporate fresh perspectives with existing contextual actualities. As with contemporaneity, the incentives for this came partially from the international enforcements as also from circumstances within, where the need to register reality in a transitional era in all its shifting forms became overwhelming.104 During recent decades, post-revolutionary Iran has experienced the emergence of generations of artists whose main preoccupation has been the idea of contemporaneity, that is, a passion for being always and only in the present. Like the obsession of social contemporaneity – one of the most significant currents in contemporary Iran – the artists’ works too at many times became involved in the very zeitgeist of this attitude. This coincided with experimentation in new media such as photography, video, performance, installation, digital formats and participatory projects. The conclusion to this process for the contemporary artist is now characterised by the desire for living in the contemporary. Much of the motivation that has driven emerging artists springs from the need to address new subjects, materials and ways of working that had formerly not been possible through the language of modern art. Vivid engagement with the demands of contemporaneity informs the work of artists who are involved in the major intellectual and socio-political currents in their context. Such works of art have become meaningful performative acts, as they have raised awareness vis-à-vis the enforced political violence in the country by the authoritarian state. Reflection of self-criticism, consistently merged with political and social aspirations, is one of the strategic reactions as opposed to constructed stereotypes generated by both the Islamic Republic and the global market.105 Even though the artists are not allowed to portray themes offensive to religion and the political status quo, their works – often implicitly – challenge the existing state of affairs. Here contemporaneity maps the diverse ways in which artists use visual means to define, record and interrogate their presence in time. Conclusion To conclude, the unbalanced relationship between the Western canon and other art historical practices has created an inadequate trace of modern and

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 35 contemporary art from the Global South, including Iran, in the Euro-American or the so-called ‘North Atlantic’ narratives. That said, this unbalanced situation could potentially create productive approaches that can be undertaken with the aim to decolonise the discipline of art history. I have tried to critically examine artistic encounters with the modern and the contemporary in Iran and define alternative conceptual and temporal perspectives which, in some way, counter the Eurocentric historicist readings of these terms and concepts. This art historical approach to Iranian art seeks to challenge these monolithic canonical standards. Tracing an interpretation that moves away from centre–periphery and the classical Islamic art historical models, which both traditionally characterise modern and contemporary art in the non-Western and Islamic lands as mimicry and derivative of its Western/European counterpart, I argue that modern and contemporary art of Iran and their histories need to be realigned. It is through a historiography focused on conceptual, aesthetic and political evolution that we can reaffirm these concepts within these contextual conditions on their own terms. Adopting and appropriating critical paradigms of the New Art History, the perspective that I have formulated on modern and contemporary art in this chapter could be seen as an ‘alternative local practice’ while being extensively global too. This alternative account looks at the transformatory processes that constitute art practice through cultural encounters and relationships where (modern and contemporary) values were appropriated, reconfigured and reaffirmed, as each of these determinedly cultivated its own narratives of cultural interpretations. It examines the way that contemporary Iranian artists deterritorialise the cultural clichés that stereotypically typify Persian/Islamic art, and how in cases search for their association with the past through discursive articulations.106 This art historical perspective thus challenges the contemporary art paradigm that associates a vernacular formal language, or particular socialpolitical stereotypes, defined through neo-Orientalist perceptions.107 This position would enable art history to depict the social reactions to the internal and external impetus and their impacts on the trajectory of Iranian art. My other argument is that although art practices in Iran have drawn on the so-called global paradigms, these patterns have selectively been adapted and appropriated by artists throughout the twentieth and twenty-first ­centuries. The result is the construction of structurally heterogeneous cultural products, which have incorporated elements of Euro-American modernity

36 | the art of i r a n and contemporaneity, while creating a phenomenon of localised alternatives. These contextualised replacements could partly be defined as a response to canonical discourses and an attempt to inscribe new discursive formations. Moreover, modern and contemporary art of Iran has followed ideological trajectories often different from those of ‘Islamic art’. Even though a continuous encounter with the question of cultural belonging and its significations remains as an enduring current within the cultural scene of Iran, the constant re-definition and de-construction of essential and reductive identities, such as Persian, Iranian or (Shiite) Muslim, is the predominant strategy applied by artists. As with contemporaneity, the elemental features that form many examples of art from Iran sprang from the actual conditions of existence as well as ideological frameworks. To many artists, contemporary art is an important platform through which they can contribute to social and political interventions in their country and the contemporary world. At the same time, they aim to divorce their art from cultural formulation and also commodification rooted in the interest of a market-driven art world. Notes 1. In addition to the pioneering works of art historian and artist Ruyin Pakbaz, in particular his Dā‘eratol-ma‘āref-e honar (Encyclopaedia of Art) (3 vols, new edn, 2016), there have been other art historical and critical publications written in Persian, including the author’s book Kankāshi dar honar-e mo‘āser-e Iran (A Search into Contemporary Art of Iran) (1st edn, 2015) and Siamak Delzendeh, Tahavolāt-e tasviri-ye honar-e Iran, bar-rasi-ye enteqādi (The Visual Evolution of Iranian Art, a Critical Analysis) (1st edn, 2016). Meanwhile, there have also been a developing number of MA dissertations and PhD theses written on aspects of modern and contemporary art of Iran. For more details about the abovementioned books and other publications, including periodicals, see Chapter 2. 2. Examples of these works include those which appeared in academic journals such as Muqarnas, Art Journal, Iranian Studies, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Review of Middle East Studies and books such as Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives (2013), Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014), Amazingly Original: Contemporary Iranian Art at Crossroads (2014), Persia Reframed: Iranian Visions of Modern and Contemporary

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 37













Art (2019), several book chapters, and private collections such as Honar: The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art (2017). See Chapter 2 for elaboration on the contexts of these publications. 3. It needs to be noted that apart from the different methodological foundations of such approaches, a different understanding of what constitutes ‘art’ or ‘the arts’ is also a case in point that ideally needs to be discussed in separate research. 4. See Finbarr Barry Flood, ‘From the Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art’, originally published in Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and its Institutions, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield (London: Routledge, 2007), 32. 5. I am very grateful to Robert Hillenbrand for his comments and insights on the literature of Islamic art studies and parts of this chapter that were originally presented as my keynote speech at the University of Manchester in 2018. He notified me that it is certainly one approach, a major one perhaps until some decades ago. However, art historians such as Richard Ettinghausen (1906–79) and Oleg Grabar (1929–2011) contributed largely to the modern scholarship of Islamic art and analysis of history and objects and meaning through analysis of socio-historical context. I should also thank Luke Treadwell for his insights and comments on the incomprehensiveness of my earlier account of the study of Islamic art. 6. Sheila S. Blair and Johnathan M. Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 85, no. 1 (March 2003): 168. 7. Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘Frameworks of Islamic Art and Architectural History: Concepts, Approaches, and Historiographies’, in A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, 1st edn, eds Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 2. 8. Wendy M. K. Shaw, ‘The Islam in Islamic Art History: Secularism and Public Discourse’, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 6 (June 2012): 31. See also Iftikhar Dadi, ‘Reflections on the Conception of Modern and Contemporary Islamic Art’, in Jameel Prize 4, eds Tim Stanley and Salma Tuqan (Istanbul: Pera Müzesi, 2016), 74. The question of methodologies in the study of Islamic art and the need for their revision has been the subject of discussion in particular during recent years. For example, ‘Regime Change’ was the main topic for the 2021 Biennial Symposium of Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor organised by Christiane Gruber. In the introduction to the Symposium, we read: ‘[t]he aim of this

38 | the art of i r a n



9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.



15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

symposium is to focus on moments of “regime change” in Islamic art history and to also direct attention to “regimes” that structure our own field, raising questions of interpretation and method. Scholars will present new research focusing on art and architecture after clear political ruptures; on the replacement of one symbolic order with another; on the transfer of resources from one power to another; and on the promises and pitfalls of new frameworks and approaches to core questions about objects, material, and images, in both the academy and the museum’. https://www.historiansofislamicart.org/eventsand-symposia/events/Regime-Change-2021-04-15.html (accessed 11 August 2022). Flood and Necipoğlu, ‘Frameworks’, 28. Richard Ettinghausen, quoted in Flood and Necipoğlu, 21. Ibid., 21. Oleg Grabar, ‘The Iconography of Islamic Architecture’, in Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla P. Soucek (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 51–65. Ibid., 53. Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). He argues that although ornament can be found in other artistic traditions, it is the predominant form in Islamic art. Grabar further contends that for understanding the phenomenon of decoration within the Muslim context, one should be involved with intellectual and hermeneutic value. (Blair and Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’, 173.) Flood and Necipoğlu, ‘Frameworks’, 4. Blair and Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’, 174. Ibid., 174. See Deniz Tekiner, ‘Formalist Art Criticism and the Politics of Meaning’, Social Justice, vol. 33, no. 2, Art, Power, and Social Change (2006): 40. See in particular Flood’s article, ‘From the Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art’ in which he addresses clearly the problems of study of post-1800 art from the Islamic world in the context of Islamic art history. Blair and Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’, 152, quoted from Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650–1250 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987). See also Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). Flood, ‘From the Prophet to Postmodernism?’

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 39 22. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen (Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, 2006), 11. 23. See Flood and Necipoğlu, ‘Frameworks’, 2. 24. Apart from Layla Diba’s pioneering edited volume, Royal Persian Paintings: the Qajar Epoch 1785–1925 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), the more recent ones include David J. Roxburgh, ed., An Album of Artists’ Drawings from Qajar Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2017), David J. Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams, eds, Technologies of the Image Art in 19th-Century Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); and Melanie Gibson and Gwenaëlle Fellinger, eds, Revealing the Unseen: New Perspectives on Qajar Art (London: Gingko, 2022). 25. Flood and Necipoğlu, 10. 26. Ibid., 8, 9. 27. Blair and Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’, 174. 28. Ibid., 174–5. 29. Ibid., 175. 30. Flood and Necipoğlu, 8, 9. 31. For example, this topic was discussed in the conference on Regional vis-àvis Global Discourses: Contemporary Art from the Middle East at SOAS, University of London, convened by myself, in the session on Knowledge Production and Distribution in the Middle East, July 2013 and at the annual conference of the College Art Association, New York City, the panel on ‘What is Contemporary Islamic Art?’ sponsored by AMCA (Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey), February 2015. 32. See Wijdan Ali, Contemporary Art from the Islamic World (London: Scorpion on behalf of the Royal Society of Fine Arts Amman, 1989), and also Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997). 33. See Fereshteh Daftari, ‘Islamic or Not’, in Without Boundary. Seventeen Ways of Looking (exhibition catalogue, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) (New York: MoMA, 2006), 10. Blair and Bloom also confirm that Islamic art even as it exists in the twenty-first century is largely a creation of Western culture. Blair and Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’, 152. 34. Fereshteh Daftari, ‘Introducing Art from the Middle East and its Diaspora into Western Institutions: Benefits and Dilemmas’, in Contemporary Art from

40 | th e art o f i r a n















the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 187–202. 35. Daftari, ‘Islamic or Not’, 10. Alongside this, as the social scientist Masoud Kamali maintains, ‘it must also challenge the generalising concept of Otherisation, such as the holistic imagination of the existence of a simple and homogeneous “Muslim World”. … This conjectural method of Otherising Muslims and Muslim societies seems to be experiencing a revival in the postSeptember 11th 2001 political arena, in the form of the “new Orientalism”.’ Masoud Kamali, ‘Iranian Islamic Modernities’, in Multiple Modernities in Muslim Societies, ed. Mojtaba Sadria (Geneva: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2009), 50. 36. See, for example, Nada Shabout, ‘Introduction, The Polemics of Modern Arab Art’, in Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 1–12. 37. For the full discussion about this term, see Staci Scheiwiller, ‘Is There Post-Islamic Art or are We Post-Islamic Art? Time and the Condition of “Contemporary Islamic Art”’, in Global Trends in Contemporary Islamic Art, eds Rui Oliveria Lopes, Giulia Lamoni and Margarida Brito Alves (Lisboa: CIEBA, 2015), 111. 38. Flood and Necipoğlu, 8, 9. Only the last article in the second volume of the Companion is a condensed text on ‘Articulating the Contemporary’ by Anneka Lenssen and Sarah A. Rogers. See ‘Articulating the Contemporary’, in A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, eds Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). 39. For a full account of this perception on contemporary art of Iran and its function in the exhibition systems, see Chapter 8. 40. Roger Fry, ‘Persian Art’, in Persian Art, eds E. Denison Ross et al. (London: Luzac and Company, 1931), 25. 41. Fry, ‘Persian Art’, 36. 42. Kishwar Rizvi, ‘Art History and the Nation: Arthur Upham Pope and the Discourse on “Persian Art” in the Early Twentieth Century’, Muqarnas, vol. 24 (2007): 55. 43. James Clifford, ‘Introduction’, in The Predicament of Culture, TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 14. 44. See Chapter 7. 45. See Keith Moxey, ‘Art History after the Global Turn’, in Is Art History Global? ed. James Elkins (New York: Routledge, 2007), 208.

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 41 46. See Mark Godfrey, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, October, 130 (autumn 2009): 30. 47. James Elkins, ‘Art History as a Global Discipline’, in Is Art History Global?, 3. 48. Ibid., 4. 49. See ibid., 10. 50. James Elkins, Stories of Art (New York: Routledge, 2002). 51. Ernst H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1950). 52. Elkins, ‘Art History as a Global Discipline’, 4. 53. Ibid., 19. 54. Ibid., 21–2. 55. Suman Gupta, ‘Territorial Anxieties’, in Is Art History Global?, 243. In a similar vein, Friedrich Teja Bach argues that ‘[t]he reservations one might have concerned a globalized art history are readily apparent. Their common denominator is the fear that today, in the era of politically aggressive globalization, discourse a discipline oriented in this way will be universalistic in the worst sense, so that it could not sufficiently do justice to the differences between the varied forms of artistic and humanistic achievements, and would be – even against the intentions of its advocates – a form of more or less hidden Eurocentrism, or more precisely a centrism of Western cultures, and therefore a form of cultural imperialism.’ Friedrich Teja Bach, ‘The Modality of Spatial Categories’, in Is Art History Global?, 73. 56. See Matthew Rampley, ‘Introduction’, in Art History and Visual Studies in Europe, Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks, eds Matthew Rampley, Thierry Lenain, Hubert Locher, Andrea Pinotti, Charlotte SchoellGlass and C. J. M. (Kitty) Zijlmans (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 3. 57. Flood and Necipoğlu convincingly argue that ‘[i]n the field of art history, as it has developed over the past few decades, the increasing emphasis on the global has been consistently associated with … striking phenomena. … [One is] the reinvention of Europe itself with its centrality to the recuperation of histories of circulation, mobility, and transculturation, thereby producing a new improved, bigger, better, apparently more connected, cosmopolitan and inclusive model of European art history. This often comes at the expense of a vision of cultural history that is truly global in its spatio‐temporal sweep and its attention to the multidirectionality of cultural flows, their historical constitution and impacts, including those to which Europe is entirely irrelevant.’ Flood and Necipoğlu, 33. 58. See Hamid Dabashi, ‘Trauma, Memory, and History’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 17–36.

42 | the art of i r a n 59. See ibid., 19. 60. On exploration of the same subject of knowledge production in the field of modern and contemporary Arab art, see Nada Shabout, ‘Framing the Discipline of Contemporary Art of the Arab World through the Press’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, 51–68. 61. This important issue has been a topic of my other earlier writings, including my book Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives (London: Saqi Books, 2013). I have consciously tried to avoid to ‘conflate under the rubric “contemporary” the modernism of the 1940s and 1950s, the Saqqakhaneh movement of the 1960s, post-revolutionary art, and the discourses of the mid-1990s onward’ as noted by Daftari. See Fereshteh Daftari, Persia Reframed: Iranian Visions of Modern and Contemporary Art (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019), 116. My approach very clearly addresses the divisions between the two terms and their periodisation within the context of Iranian art, applying the term modernism for the period beginning from the 1940s until the late 1990s when I defined the term ‘contemporary’ and why I chose to use it for the art practices created since the 1990s in Iran. This is explicitly reflected in the table of contents and how I carefully selected these terms. To be noted also is that the books’ titles are not always completely author’s choice. 62. See Homi K. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, ed. Anthony Elliot (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999); and Walter D. Mingolo, Local Histories, Global Designs, Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 63. See Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers and Nada Shabout, eds, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (New York: MoMA; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 20. 64. Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, Jens Riedel and Dominic Sachsenmaier, ‘The Context of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm’, in Reflections on Multiple Modernities, European, Chinese and Other Interpretations, eds Dominic Sachsenmaier and Jens Riedel (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1. 65. Ibid., 2. See also Elaine O’Brien, ‘Introduction: The Location of Modern Art’, in Modern Art in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: An Introduction to Global Modernisms, ed. Elaine O’Brien (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 2–3. 66. Timothy Mitchell, ‘Introduction’, in Questions of Modernity (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), xii. American philosopher and historian Marshall Berman also lays out an interpretation of modernity that is grounded

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 43









in the everyday life experiences of the present. These experiences, Berman contends, are ‘spread all over the world’ and cannot be understood as an essentially Western experience. Berman also emphasises that: ‘Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind.’ Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 15. See also the author’s article, ‘Reproducing Modernity: Post-revolutionary Art in Iran since the Late 1990s’, in Amidst Shadow and Light: Contemporary Iranian Art and Artists, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (Hong Kong: Liaoning, 2011), 44. 67. On the formation of modernity and its negotiation in an Iranian context, see the brilliant work of Ali Mirsepassi, Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernisation: Negotiating Modernity in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and for an account of cultural crisis of Iranian society facing with modernity see Darioush Ashouri, Mā va moderniyyat, 2nd edn (Tehran: Mo‘asseseh-ye farhangi-ye Serāt, 1377S/1998). 68. See Jessica Winegar, ‘Introduction: Cultural Politics and Genealogies of the Modern in the Postcolony’, in Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 1. 69. Similarly, regarding the formation of modern art in the Arab world, art historian Nada Shabout argues that ‘those [modern] works remain Arab insofar as their aesthetic themes are drawn from a local, ancient heritage’. Nada Shabout, ‘Conclusion: Arab Art Today’, in Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 148. 70. One can cite many examples of this trend in works of artists from the 1940s–60s that will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. 71. There were indeed exceptions among Iranian artists who adopted modernism in their work during modern art movements, mainly from the 1940s to the 1970s. Artists such as Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam (1924–2018), Bahman Mohasses (1931–2010), Manoucher Yektai (1921–2019) and Behjat Sadr (1924–2009) chose different trajectories in their art practice. They were not inclined to the idea of an artist’s collective belonging to a particular national territory and so did not try to make references to any specific cultural idioms, those particularly related to the concept of Iranian-ness. However, these individual attempts, albeit greatly valued and to be taken into consideration in any art historical account of the modern Iran, are not the main subject of this study.

44 | th e art o f i r a n 72. See Winegar, ‘Introduction: Cultural Politics and Genealogies of the Modern in the Postcolony’, 5. 73. For elaboration on this topic, see the chapter, ‘Decades of Hesitancy and Confrontations: Modernism versus the Status Quo’, in my book Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives, 51–92. 74. O’Brien, ‘Introduction: The Location of Modern Art’, 9. 75. See my chapter on ‘Decades of Hesitancy and Confrontations: Modernism versus the Status Quo’, 51–92. 76. Daftari, ‘Modernism(s): Contextualizing the Terms of Discussion’, in Persia Reframed. This chapter is in fact a developed version of her earlier essays ‘Another Modernism: An Iranian Perspective’, in Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution, eds Lynn Gumpert and Shiva Balaghi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 39–88, and ‘Redefining Modernism: Pluralist Art before the 1979 Revolution’, in Iran Modern, eds Fereshteh Daftari and Layla S. Diba (New York: Asia Society, 2013), 25–43, in which she already suggested this idea. Staci Scheiwiller also argues that the emergence of modernism in Iranian art returns to the late nineteenth century as a point of entry. Trying to reframe the discourses of modernity and the avant-garde in relation to the advent of photography during the Qajar period, she contends that the rise of modernism in Iran is directly connected to the rise of modernism in Europe. Scheiwiller argues that ‘[m]odernism and postmodernism were and are global projects that have encompassed the world at large’ and thus ‘if modern art was in production in Europe during the nineteenth century, then so it was in Iran too’. In this context, she also considers Kamal al-Molk as a painter who ‘revealed a modernist tendency’ since his work represents ‘the contemporary world and not necessarily literary or traditional motifs’. Staci Gem Scheiwiller, ‘Reframing the Rise of Modernism in Iran’, in Modernism Beyond the West: A History of Art from Emerging Markets, ed. Majella Munro (Cambridge: Enzo Arts and Publishing, 2012), 11–32. 77. Daftari, ‘Modernism(s): Contextualizing the Terms of Discussion’, 7. 78. Ibid., 7. 79. Ibid., 7. 80. Ibid., 10. Here the term ‘traditional abstraction’ does not seem greatly clear, since the prior tradition of Persian painting, even in the eclectic forms developed during the Qajar period, cannot be classified as abstract. 81. The pioneer modernist poet Ali Esfandiari, better known as Nima Yooshij (1897–1960) composed the first modern Persian poem entitled Afsāneh

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contem por a r y’ a r t  | 45

82.

83.

84.

85. 86.

87.

88.

89.

(Legend) in 1921. It was, however, during the 1940s when the crucial battle between old and new poetry took place. In the same book, Daftari argues that ‘[i]f the idioms artists borrowed from the West in these years belonged to movements that had passed their peak in Europe, was this art any more modernist than Kamal al-Molk’s classicism?’, ‘Modernism(s): Contextualizing the Terms of Discussion’, 16. Daftari contends, ‘[t]he term “modernism” has shifted in meaning in relation to Iranian art from period to period and from one geographical context to another. For Kamal al-Molk, in the late nineteenth century, academic realism was tantamount to progressive thinking. For Ziapour, a post-World War II artist residing inside the country, Cubism was the tool best suited to shattering the status quo. And Yektai in the diaspora, a contemporary of Ziapour, unconcerned with local specificity or a national language but engaged in formalist project, found his home within modernism as it was defined in New York, in Abstract Expressionism, a movement that was of his time but foreign to the compatriots he had fled behind.’ Ibid., 17. See, for example, Talinn Grigor, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (New York: Periscope Publishing, 2009). See Chapter 3, for more elaboration on this topic. For full exploration of this concept, see Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, trans. Robert Campbell, ed. H. Algar (Berkeley: Mizan, [1962] 1984) and Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 66. For a full account of this movement, see Chapter 3 and the author’s article, ‘Neo-traditionalism and Modern Iranian Painting: The Saqqa-khaneh School in the 1960s’, Iranian Studies, vol. 38, no. iv (December 2005): 607–30. On the post-revolutionary discourse of modernity in Iran, see Farzin Vahdat, ‘Post-Revolutionary Islamic Discourses on Modernity in Iran: Expansion and Contraction of Human Subjectivity’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 35, no. 4 (November 2003): 599–631, and on art, see the author’s article, ‘Discourses on Post-Revolutionary Iranian Art: Neo-traditionalism during the 1990s’, Muqarnas, vol. 23 (2006): 131–57. In the West, this shift has most likely been occurring since the decline of modernism in the 1970s and has appeared in naming, institutional, galleries, museums, auction house departments, academic courses and textbook titles. Some, however, tend to use ‘contemporary’ as a soft signifier of current plurality.

46 | the art of i r a n 90. This term is discussed in Terry Smith’s The Architecture of Aftermath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); ‘World Picturing in Contemporary Art, Iconogeographic Turning’, in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 7, no. 1 (2006): 24–46; What is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Contemporary Art, World Currents (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2011); and Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee (eds), Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 91. See Miwon Kwon, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, October, 130 (autumn 2009): 13. 92. The curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud suggests the notion of the ‘altermodern’. For Bourriaud, the contemporary is an altered modern, a new modern that is constituted by alterity. Quite different from older positions of the modern, today’s altermodern is neither based on the West nor overreacted to regional or nationalist concerns. Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘Altermodern’, in Altermodern: Tate Triennial (London: Tate Publishing, 2009), n.p.n. 93. Godfrey, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, 30. 94. For further illumination of this term and its exploration in contemporary art, see Okwui Enwezor, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, October, 130 (autumn 2009): 38–9. 95. See ibid., 38–9. 96. Terry Smith, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, October, 130 (autumn 2009): 47–8. Also see Smith, What is Contemporary Art? Contemporary Art, Contemporaneity and Art to Come (Sydney: Artspace, 2001); and ‘Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 32, no. 4 (summer 2006): 681–707. 97. See Godfrey, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, 31. 98. See Tom McDonough, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, October, 130 (autumn 2009): 124. 99. Lenssen and Rogers, ‘Articulating the Contemporary’, 1336. 100. Smith, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, 48. See also Amy J. Elias, ‘Chronomorphic Poiesy: Locating the Contemporary’ (paper was written for a talk for the Arts and Public Life Project at the Pennsylvania State University in 2009), 5. 101. Tim Griffin, ‘Questionnaire on “The Contemporary”’, October, 130 (autumn 2009): 62.

theo r ising ‘m odern’ and ‘contempor a r y’ a r t  | 47 102. For full elaboration of the concept of cultural belonging and its relation to localised historical and cultural landscapes of Iran, see the author’s article, ‘The Crisis of Belonging: On the Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, 109–34. 103. See Chapters 8 and 9. 104. See the author’s article, ‘Contemporary Iranian Art: The Emergence of New Artistic Discourses’, Iranian Studies, vol. 40, no. 3 (2007), 335–66. 105. See the author’s articles, ‘Cultural Essentialism in the Context of NeoOrientalism: The Exposure of Contemporary Art Practices from the Middle East’, kunst und kirche, no. 3 (2019): 34–41, and Chapter 8. 106. See Dadi, ‘Reflections on the Conception of Modern and Contemporary Islamic Art’, 74. 107. For elaboration on the concept of neo-Orientalism and its relation to cultural essentialism, see Chapter 8.

2 Historiography of Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran

T

his chapter reviews the historiography of Iranian art during the period from the late 1940s to the 2010s, including their ideological premises, sources and discourses, the historical models they are based in, their temporal perspective, as well as their linguistic and terminological choices. By exploring writings, consisting of periodical (magazines and newspapers) articles and critical writings on exhibitions and biennials, personal reflections from artists, attitudes reflected in various types of press and books, both in Persian and English,1 it examines the development of art criticism and writing on art during the aforementioned period.2 I will show how negotiation of cultural and political associations, debates on common encounters with modernism, discussions about the values of modern and contemporary artistic practice, questions of authenticity, the constant fluctuation between past and present and their attribution to the nature of Iranian culture have reflected in those primary sources.3 Indeed, publications and critical writings and the establishment of art institutions – both public and private – significantly increased during the 1960s and 1970s and after a decade gap re-emerged in the post-­ revolutionary period in the 1990s and 2000s. Arranged in a generally chronological order, this chapter examines these developments in order to gain a wider picture of how modern and contemporary art4 have been perceived throughout this time. I argue that in many examples, largely exhibition reviews (naqd-e nemāyeshgāh), general texts on modern art (honar-e now) and artists’ interviews appearing in periodicals, one can see hesitancy, admiration, wonder, sarcasm, humiliation and constant intellectual conflict of the writers with modern art practices. These texts reveal how socio-political spirits of the

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 49 time affected art and artistic engagements. Therefore, I put particular emphasis on how these writings reflect artistic events, movements and their discursive challenges. Reflections on the Modern Art of Iran The development of modernism in the art of Iran was fuelled by the rapid modernisation processes occurring in other areas of Iranian life, specifically the country’s socio-political culture during the 1940s. The modernisation of the Pahlavi period (1925–79) undertook a form of modernism in adaptation of certain Western developments and institutions. Most of the country’s political, economic and even social apparatus were overhauled based on these ­patterns.5 Instrumental in this shift was the Faculty of Fine Arts (Dāneshkadeh-ye honar-hā-ye zibā),6 which was attached to the first university in Iran, Tehran University, and which encouraged the adoption of modern European art through its pedagogical system.7 At the same time, the growing intellectual atmosphere in Iran, promoting exploration of cultural, social and intellectual productions of the West, modern thoughts and practices, had reinforced the desire of young artists to experiment with modern European artistic approaches. Moreover, in this time, the so-called post-war years, a huge number of famous European works – including novels, poems and philosophical writings – were translated into Persian and analytical discussions on these materials increased among the Iranian intelligentsia. During the 1940s and 1950s it was the faculty’s graduates – many furthered their studies in Europe – who pioneered and shaped Iranian modernism while trying to adopt and adapt it to suit their own needs and aspirations.8 Modernism, however, was a totally new concept in the Iranian art scene and the modernists (nowgerāyān) had a long way to go to initiate their audience into the intricacies of their modern art practices. Thus, given the lack of sufficient platforms and mechanisms (including art magazines or institutional support) for expounding and disseminating modern art and its implications, these pioneers had to take charge of familiarising the public with modern art, what they usually called honar-e now (new art),9 stressing its ‘validity’ and ‘necessity’ through their societies, magazines and exhibitions. They created ground-breaking channels to exhibit and introduce their modern works. The most dynamic forces were the Faculty graduates such as Jalil Ziapour (1920–99), Hossein

50 | the art of i r a n Kazemi (1924–96) and Mahmoud Javadipour (1920–2012) who initiated the first art societies and private art spaces.10 It was during this period that these pioneers united in sharing their interests through various activities, including the establishment of footholds such as the Khorus-jangi (Fighting Rooster) Society and periodical, and the Āpādānā Gallery club,11 Home of the Fine Art (Kāshāneh-ye honar-hā-ye zibā).12 During the late 1940s, in both official exhibitions and later private galleries such as Āpādānā there were public debates around the necessity and the virtues of modern art alongside the controversy around the ‘new poetry versus ­classical’.13 There was a growing verbal battle between supporters of modern poetry (she‘re now) and those of classical poetry. At the same time, a confrontation took shape between modernist and earlier artists – both Kamal al-Molk’s followers, the advocators of academic realism and master miniaturists who were still more or less active. Ziapour, in 1949, alongside other avant-garde artists, poets, musicians and playwrights established the Anjoman-e Khorus-jangi (Fighting Rooster Society), a vanguard body devoted to the promotion of modern arts, including painting, drama, music, poetry and literature. Other founding members of the Society were Gholamhossein Gharib Gorgani (writer, 1923–2003), Morteza Hannaneh (composer, 1922–89) and Hassan Shirvani (playwright).14 The Society became more influential when more key literary and artistic figures joined, including Nima Yooshij (the great avant-garde poet known as the father of Iranian New Poetry, 1897–1960), Sadegh  Hedayat  (novelist, 1903–51), Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh (novelist, 1892–1997), Manuchehr Sheybani (artist and poet, 1924–91), Houshang Irani (poet, 1925–73), Ebrahim Golestan (filmmaker and writer, b. 1922), Farrokh Ghaffari (film director, 1921–2006), Mostafa Kamal Pourtorab (musician, 1924–2016), Bahman Mohasses (artist, 1931–2010) and Sohrab Sepehri (artist and poet, 1928–80). Importantly, the society supported their activities by publishing a periodic magazine of the same name15 to disseminate their ideas on the introduction and promotion of modern arts.16 In Ziapour’s words, Khorus-jangi would not tolerate any reactionary act or traditionalism ignoring the realities of their time. Therefore, what would unite the literary and artistic aspirations of their activities in the society was their sharp criticism of any ‘reactionary’ act.17 A highly influential figure, Ziapour, after his return from his study in Paris under the French artist and teacher André Lhote (1885–1962) in 1948,

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 51 together with his fellow modernists started a controversial campaign to launch modernist ideas such as a rebellion against the status quo. Their activities included exhibitions of modern art, discussions, critical sessions, lectures and publications on modern art, which certainly altogether created a wave of interest in the Iranian art scene. His most important contribution to the establishment of modern art in Iran can be seen in his writings on the introduction and promotion of modern artistic styles, in particular his favourite, Cubism, as opposed to the existing artistic currents in Iran. At the same time, his writings portray a preoccupation with Iran’s indigenous culture and an attempt to discover its compatibilities with the ‘universal language of modern art’.18 Ziapour’s ideas eventually found appreciation in the artistic communities and were consequently reflected in other writings of the period. Meanwhile, a number of periodicals started introducing modern art as a new form of cultural practice in Iran. From the mid-1940s, in parallel with artistic movements of the time, a measure in the press was initiated to help general understanding of honar-e now. Art critical materials reflected contradicting elements in response to the modern art productions. At one end of the spectrum, like the reaction of Iranian culture at large to the forces of modernity, there was a tendency that maintained Iran should go all the way and adopt modern systems in all scopes of life and culture if it aims to capture the fundamental structures of modern Western culture. At the other end were those who believed that whatever is foreign should be understood as adverse and therefore needs to be resisted. Between these two extremes, there was a typical moderate reaction which inclined to accept the inevitability of gaining new forms and structures, new techniques and systems. As the social scientist William Millward explains, the main doctrine of this group was that they could derive from the ‘external forms’ but retain their own values and heritage and infuse the new external structure with their own character and identity.19 A survey of the documents and written material on modern art in Iran during the 1940s and 1950s suggests an immediate lack of a narrative or fully formed picture that could be seen as a historiography of the modern art of Iran. This was due to the lack of knowledge of the subject together with the infrequent dissemination of art criticism. Some of the available articles rely exclusively on artists’ words or assertions; often, however, accompanied by historical errors and biased opinions, particularly those pieces published in

52 | th e art of i r a n newspapers and magazines such as the monthly Sokhan.20 Rarely did these writings engage in any in-depth critical discussion or examination of the subject. Furthermore, the majority of the art criticism was written by those who had come from fields such as literature, which further demonstrates the lack of methodological framework together with an apparent ignorance about art history and theory. The later decades, namely the 1960s and 1970s, however, saw a gradual development of art writing in parallel with other developments in modern Iranian art. What can be seen in the early works discussing modern art is an attempt to define its stylistic conventions and to differentiate the work from other earlier approaches, together with an attempt to win acceptance by both the public and official cultural bodies. This was a common challenge which both new poetry and the visual arts had to be faced with. In this time, there was a close affinity between modern art and literature both in terms of a dialectic intellectual exchange among members of the two groups based on their common concerns. In art, however, the core of the discussions was centred on formal analysis of modern styles. This issue had already become quite bold in the earlier writings by Ziapour. Apart from those written by him and his fellow avant-gardes in the late 1940s, the main contents of the texts that appeared in periodicals and newspapers in the 1950s were exhibition reviews and artist interviews. Later, in the 1960s and onwards, the number of artist’s catalogues and exhibition brochures began to grow. Following the increase of central power during the post-1953 coup d’état and the government’s new political, economic and cultural agendas, with more attention than before paid to artistic affairs, modernist artists gradually received official support from the General Administration of Fine Arts (Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye keshvar)21 that later developed into the Ministry of Culture and Arts (Vezārat-e farhang va honar).22 This was a trend that eventually culminated in the staging of the first Tehran Biennial in 1958 – the first large-scale national art exhibition that provided a platform for presentation of a wide range of experimental approaches. After modernism was institutionally approved, reviews and art critical writings began to address issues such as the formation of national modern art with attention to ‘cultural identity’ as well as its fusion with international modernism. While the early available written material and sources are diverse and difficult to categorise, some common language that was used for the subject can

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 53 be identified. They commonly spoke of two differing approaches to the study of modern art: formal and content analysis. Interviews with artists giving their personal accounts and reviews of art events such as exhibitions, formal interpretations of the works in relation to the contents, were typical themes in publications such as Jām-e Jam,23 Payām-e Now, Sokhan, Ferdowsi and later Rastākhiz, Rastākhiz-e Javānān, Negin24 and the daily Āyandegān and Keyhān. The early texts and art critical reviews on the general subject of modern art, its fundamental definitions and later, the importance of Iranian modernists’ initiatives were written by literary figures such as Bozorg Alavi (novelist and political intellectual – 1904–97), Fatemeh Sayyah (scholar and leftist literary figure – 1902–48) and Reza Jorjani (essayist and literary expert – no birthday, died in 1949). Most of the texts in this period were in nature journalistic criticism, and therefore do not basically offer any art historical accounts of the subjects. However, some of these primary sources can provide useful materials for art historical researches. An example was Payām-e Now, the periodical affiliated with the [Iran-]Soviet Cultural Society (VOKS),25 that in its second issue in 1946 published reviews written by Bozorg Alavi and Fatemeh Sayyah on the 1946 exhibition, supported by VOKS under the Iran’s Fine Art Exhibition (Nemāyeshgāh-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye Iran), in which a variety of existing artistic genres in 1940s Iran were exhibited. The exhibition included the works of Kamal al-Molk’s followers – depicting social subjects in realistic forms, miniaturists, and a number of recent graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts, exhibiting modernistic approaches. That was the first comprehensive national art exhibition held in Tehran that provided a ground for future art exhibitions and a platform to discuss and exchange ideas. Alavi describes three different genres, each with individual characteristics, while mainly supporting what he calls the ‘classical style of Kamal al-Molk’ as revolutionary and criticising the other two, one for being too archaic and out of date (miniaturists) and the other for not being in compliance with what at the time was being practised in Europe, particularly by those who he names ‘radical artists of the time’ such as Picasso and Matisse. He argues that the works of Iranian modernists show affiliation to the art that had been practised some sixty to seventy years earlier by the Impressionists.26 Graduated from Moscow University, the literary critic Sayyah offers her own account of a number of works displayed in the exhibition which can

54 | th e art of i r a n perhaps be considered as the first art critical piece written on the modern art of Iran. She criticises the society as a whole and even the most intellectual classes for not showing any appreciation for the visual arts exemplified in the VOKS exhibition. Appreciating the works of modernist artists, in particular the paintings of Mohsen Moghaddam (1900–87), the same as Alavi, Sayyah criticises the Impressionistic style of Hossein Kazemi, as she believes the style has come from an abolished movement in Europe.27 Jorjani, however, in the  same year offers a different account of works displayed in the exhibition.  While criticising the works of miniaturists such as Hossein Behzad (1894–1968), he praises the works of the young modernists such as Hossein Kazemi, Jalil Ziapour, Mehdi Vishkai (1920–2006), Javad Hamidi (1918–2002) and Mohsen Moghaddam as being innovative and representative of contemporary styles of painting.28 In the later decades, some social thinkers and intellectual activists such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–69) and Simin Daneshvar (1921–2012), who believed in art as a means of expressing social and political aspirations, came to be involved in writing critical texts about the visual arts. Their writings were mainly based on the view of art as a vehicle to convey a message to the public, rather than concentrating solely on the modernistic formal inaccessible qualities.29 What can generally be discerned from these writings, aside from their strong critical tone about these works being parasitic of Western modern art and artists’ reliance on European’s judgments – the latter referring to the presence of key European judges in the Tehran biennials – is that their texts encouraged content-­based figurative works while strongly opposing abstraction. For example, Al-e Ahmad famously backed the work of figurative modernists, such as Bahman Mohasses (1932–2010) and Hannibal Alkhas (1930–2010), while intensely criticising abstract works by artists such as Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937). It, however, seems that the admiration paid to those artists and criticisms made about the others lacked strong knowledge of modern art practices and implications.30 His criticism was rather heavily influenced by the language of Marxist literary criticism. For example, they were critical of modern art practices in Iran as being representative of cultural Westernisation (gharb-gerāi-ye farhangi). The other critical argument by this group was the unperceivability of modern art productions by the public in Iran. An example of these

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 55 criticisms is Al-e Ahmad’s article entitled ‘Tokhm-e seh zardeh-ye panjom’ (The Fifth Triple-Yolk Egg) in which he comments on the works exhibited at the Fifth Tehran Biennial (1966). In that exhibition many paintings had been inspired by calligraphy and Al-e Ahmad, who highly respected meaning in words, harshly questioned its application in painting. He specifically refers to Zenderoudi and writes that ‘the application of “words” in, for instance, a talisman is some sort of mystification, aimed at creating fear and respect in a public who is perhaps not aware of its meaning. Fine, that could also be a visual significance of Zenderoudi’s work for foreigners.’ He then questions ‘are you – our respectable painters – busy witch-crafting? Remember young man! Artists should resolve the complexities existing in relation between objects and individuals and demystifying of mysteriousness of legends.’31 The other critical point exposed in these writings referred to the lack of appropriate attention to Iranian cultural roots (risheh-hā-ye farhangi) in the works of modernists, also being the main reason for the public’s ignorance towards these productions. What proved to be relatively common in all of these critical accounts was the problem of defective treatment of modernism, meaning a lack of knowledge and understanding of the main foundations of Western modernism and seeing it only as an ‘imported’ phenomenon. This was something that was related to the critical discourse of gharb-zadegi (Westoxification).32 Since the mid-1950s when the Iranian art scene witnessed the increasing development of art patronage, the growing number of daily newspapers and magazines devoted a considerable portion of their regular content to art news and sometimes criticism – a development that was certainly unprecedented in this context. During the late 1950s and, particularly, the 1960s, two key topics can generally be addressed through the art critical writings. First was the attention paid to the contemporary international art scene, and the second the necessity of formation of a national art. What was emphasised in those years was the importance of an awareness of what was bang up-to-date on the artistic scene, which mostly referred to Euro-American currents. During these years a number of literary experts, such as Ehsan Yarshater (1920–2018), Parviz Natel Khanlari (1914–90), Nader Naderpour (1929–2000), Javad Mojabi (b. 1939) and Behrouz Souresrafil (b. 1951), art historians and artists such as Akbar Tadjvidi (1927–2017) and Marcos Grigorian (1925–2007)

56 | th e art of i r a n become the key figures in writing about modern art, mainly in exhibition catalogues and magazines.33 Tadjvidi, a practising artist and art historian, was involved in the formation of the Tehran biennials, in particular the first one in 1958,34 and wrote the early scholarly writings on modern art in Iran including the characteristics that appeared in various tendencies.35 In 1967, Tadjvidi wrote the first book on modern Iranian art in French, L’Art Moderne en Iran,36 published by the Ministry of Culture and Arts, in which he provides a historical survey and an overview of stylistic categorisation of works of the most distinguished artists active in the Iranian art scene, in particular in the Tehran biennials. Beginning with Kamal al-Molk and his 1898 trip to Paris and examining the advent of modernism as a phase of ‘imitation’ and ‘adaptation’ of European styles such as Expressionism, Fauvism and Cubism, Tadjvidi maintains that this phase gradually concluded in an Iranian version of modernism. In addition to Yarshater’s numerous pioneering texts, which mainly appeared in magazines and exhibition catalogues in the 1950s, his essay ‘Contemporary Persian Painting’ in his edited book with Richard Ettinghausen Highlights of Persian Art provides an art historical account of modern art movements in Iran, offering interpretation of artists and classification of their tendencies.37 Yarshater’s short essay maps out the Iranian art scene from the 1940s to the 1970s, together with a formal analysis of the works of many individual artists. Although this essay eventually covers modern art productions, like many other writings in this period, there is no particular concern for terminological choices, for example recognition of difference between the terms ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ art.38 Contemporary (mo‘āser) in this sense refers seemingly to a temporal period and what was happening in the art scene at the time of writing the essay. Perhaps the most novel art critical sources on the modern art movement in Iran were those of Karim Emami (1930–2005). Emami, a veteran journalist and translator, started his work in the early 1950s in the Englishlanguage daily Keyhan International, shared his insightful criticism which appeared throughout the 1960s mainly in exhibition catalogues39 and Keyhan International’s art section. In the early 1960s, Emami took up the cause of a new generation of Iranian artists and wrote reviews of their work for Keyhan International, and helped place the work of individual artists in the larger

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 57 context of development of Iranian art.40 He coined the term Saqqā-khāneh to describe a neo-­traditionalist genre, which combined local imagery with modern viewpoints, and continued to promote the movement through his later writings too.41 Emami’s other work, ‘Modern Persian Artists’, in Iran Faces the Seventies (1971) edited by Yarshater and Ettinghausen, is one of the earliest English sources written on Iranian modernist artists. In this essay, Emami writes that in the ‘postwar’ period ‘real modernism’ encroached on the Iranian art scene with the reappearance of those foreign-educated Iranian artists – who had studied in France and Italy in particular.42 He explores the diversity of modern styles and trends among various artists of the time, applying stylistic and formal analysis.43 Among others, the best-documented and stable sources written on the subject are those of the Iranian artist–art historian and critic Ruyin Pakbaz (b. 1939). Active since the early 1960s, and known for his pioneering works in the field, Pakbaz’s acquaintance and close association with many renowned artists and institutions, together with his involvement with various major artistic events and exhibitions, enabled him to produce invaluable sources on the modern art of Iran. In addition to those writings appearing in Tālār-e Iran’s (Ghandriz)44 publications, as well as periodicals and newspapers, he wrote the first art historical introduction to modern Iranian art in his book Contemporary Iranian Painting and Sculpture in 1974. Written originally in Persian and then translated into English, this book provides a broad survey and trend-based categorisation of modern art tendencies in Iran, featuring chapters named after Western modern art movements together with classification of Iranian artists and their stylistic association with those movements. Assuming that the Iranian version of modern art adapted Western artistic styles, in this book Pakbaz classifies Iranian modern art productions into different tendencies, including ‘Impressionist and Post-Impressionist’, ‘Cubist’, ‘Expressionist’, ‘Surrealist’ and ‘Abstract’. He then adds two other tendencies named ‘National’ and ‘Independent’ to describe those trends that do not follow any particular stylistic pattern already existing in European modern art.45 Based on the same assumption that was relatively common in art critical writings, including Tadjvidi’s that was mentioned earlier, modernist works of art created by Iranian artists needed to be understood as belated types of European modern art.46 For example, Pakbaz criticises these productions

58 | the art of i r a n because through the process of adaptation of Western art a ‘deep’ understanding of Western modernism was typically secondary to referring to stylistic and technical sources.47 In Pakbaz’s view, even attempts of modernist artists such as Ziapour to fuse Cubism with local subjects and elements, such as tribal life, vernacular architecture or Persian painting, create an incompatibility with a presumed ‘universal modernity’.48 Although this book starts with Kamal al-Molk (1848–1940) and continues throughout the 1940s to the 70s, yet again the term contemporary is interchangeably applied with modern both in the book’s title and also in the text. Even with Pakbaz’s specific assertions of formal and relatively conceptual implications of the modern, it seems – the same as others such as Tadjvidi, Yarshater and Emami – his use of the term contemporary (in the Persian version of the text, mo‘āser or emruz, meaning ‘today’) signifies a temporal quality, fundamentally connoting at the same time. He continued writing extensively about Iranian visual culture throughout the post-revolutionary period. During the 1960s and 1970s, in response to the cultural needs of the economic boom,49 the state supported publications, festivals and commissions. This facilitated the relatively rapid establishment of reputations and an interest that remained active and thrived in the period before the 1979 Revolution.50 National and international exhibitions were held in Tehran, including the exhibition of Works by Contemporary Iranian Artists51 on the occasion of the Seventh Asian Games in Tehran in 1974, the First International Art Fair in 1977 which presented European galleries, and the Shiraz Arts Festival from 1967 until 1977 which featured performances and exhibitions by both Iranian and western artists.52 Participation of Iranian artists in other exhibitions in Europe and America such as Art Basel Switzerland (1976) and Wash Art in Washington DC (1978) was organised by the official cultural section, particularly the Secretariat of the Empress Farah Pahlavi (Daftar-e makhsus-e Shahbānu Farah Pahlavi) and the Ministry of Culture and Arts. In this milieu there was criticism that Iranian artists measure their success in accordance with Western standards. This approach was further criticised because, according to these critics, it imposed a sort of exotic trend in modern art practices in Iran, rather than a ‘natural development’ within its own context. A good example is a statement by members of Tālār-e Iran (Ghandriz) for their group exhibition in 1969:

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 59 We believe in formation of a national art: an art which even if is not compatible with any of global patterns could preserve its independent character. We also believe that the problems with which an Iranian painter are facing should be resolved here, based on this country’s realities. Therefore, we think participation in international art festivals, biennials and events is not helping [to resolve these problems] and so we construe the attempt to demonstrate these issues [simply] as global [concerns] a scape [from the realities].53

The same disapproval could be discerned in many art critique articles in magazines and newspapers such as Rastākhiz, Rastākhiz-e Javānān and Āyandegān. The core of this criticism was that many works of art were too repetitive and compliant with the taste of the official sponsors and patrons and the interests of the newly formed market. Reflections on the Art of Post-revolution Iran With the advent of the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath creating fundamental political, cultural and institutional changes, modern art practitioners had no choice but to leave the scene. As a consequence of the widespread revolutionary and theocratic ideological forces, the first decade after the revolution saw a monolithic presence of the so-called revolutionary or committed art in the highly state controlled art scene, conveying persuasive and propagandistic messages for mass mobilisation by typically borrowing its stylistic language from socialist realist art. With that immense shift in political and cultural mood and shortly after the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War in 1980 almost all those periodicals that contained art critique materials stopped publishing and a few new ones were restricted to only praising the promotive art of the revolution and the war.54 All publications and press were under the state’s sole control. Gradually, during the 1980s, various revolutionary cultural institutions were formed operating closely with the political and ideological system under the Islamic Republic. Some of these ideologically structured institutions, powered by official political bodies, started publishing their periodicals. Among others, were the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Vezārat-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi) and the Artistic Centre of Islamic Propaganda Organisation (Howzeh-ye Honari-ye sāzmān-e tablighāt-e eslāmi; ACIPO)

60 | th e art o f i r a n which typically emphasised the Islamic and revolutionary aspirations.55 The quarterly Faslnāmeh-ye Honar, published by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and monthly Sooreh, by ACIPO, are examples of these publications. Although differing in their language – the first being somewhat academically structured containing translated texts and interviews and the latter journalistic in nature  – what joined the contents of the texts, representing the most powerful voice in the cultural scene, was vivid condemnation of modernism and modern art. It was presumed that modern art also affiliated with the monarchy regime, ‘through a maddening meaninglessness solely worships form’.56 They both propagate revolutionary and Islamic values represented in traditional and classical arts such as Persian painting. ACIPO’s ideological preference was also evidenced by the later publications in the 1980s and 1990s such as Honar-e Mo‘āser (Contemporary Art, active 1993–4) and later the quarterly Hunar-hā-ye Tajassomi (Visual Arts), which still emphasised condemnation of modernist practices and artists before the revolution because of their disconnection with Iranian culture and the public. Instead, committed religious and politically engaged art was endorsed. Through the sections on ‘international art news’, the editors, who were members of ACIPO, selectively chose the anti-modernist, mainly various neo-figurative art forms practised as representative of of ‘contemporary international art’. Publications on the works of ‘revolutionary artists’ all affiliated to ACIPO, with inclusion of short texts, were the other part of the Centre’s mission. Morteza Goudarzi, a member of ACIPO, wrote a book, Just-o-ju-ye hoviyyat dar naqqāshi-ye mo‘āser-e Iran (Searching for Identity in Contemporary Iranian Painting, 2001).57 While ambiguously carrying the term contemporary, the book broadly covers almost a century of art practices in Iran: from Kamal al-Molk to modern art movements in the 1940–70s and even popular folk paintings of Qahveh-khāneh (Coffeehouse). The main chapter, however, is on ‘Naqqāshi-ye enqelāb-e eslāmi va hoviyyat-gerāei-ye dini va melli’ (Painting of the Islamic Revolution and the Tendency towards Religious and National Identity). Although his approach differs from the absolutist dogmatism presented in the earlier revolutionary publications, the text still reflects an association with similar beliefs.58 The ideological approach has explicitly overshadowed the contents and its exclusive approach to the

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 61 variety of artistic manners in the 1990s, in particular the absence of postrevolutionary modernism.59 Within this context, however, gradually from the mid-1980s a few independent literary and cultural periodicals started publishing critical materials, including art reviews, although consciously choosing not to be offensive to the political system. These cautious expressions, albeit peripheral in comparison with the official loud voices, gave voice to those modernist intellectuals and artists during the troubled post-revolutionary wartime. The main periodicals active during the 1980s and early 1990s consisted of Ādineh, Donyāy-e Sokhan and Gardun. Grappling with censorship and political restrictions, however, these writings, mainly in technical and professional language by artist–critics, provide decisive materials for the study of modern art practices of this period in Iran.60 In the 1990s, in parallel with the newly shaped set of publications, including a number of exhibition catalogues and conference proceedings, by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA),61 administratively under the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the museum’s presence and role in the art scene of Iran was invigorated. This path was developed during the Reform period (1997–2005).62 With a relative relaxation of political and cultural constraints, this period witnessed the resurgence of national and international exhibitions of modern and contemporary practices by Iranian and international artists exhibited in the museum after about two decades in the post-revolutionary period. Along with those events, TMoCA published a number of important sources on the pioneers of modern art in Iran on the occasion of exhibitions of works of these artists held in the museum. The majority of these shows and accompanying publications were curated and edited by Pakbaz. Among others were the series of bilingual (Persian-English) catalogues on key figures of modern art in Iran, such as Hossein Kazemi, Sohrab Sepehri, Houshang Pezeshknia, Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Parviz Tanavoli, Massoud Arabshahi and Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam. Although this series of publications saw a decline by the end of this period, TMoCA more or less continued publishing catalogues of exhibitions on national biennials held in the museum and a number of monographs on modern artists. However, except for the visual values and a few conference proceedings, there are rarely any critical analyses or scholarly texts contained within these publications.

62 | th e art of i r a n The Iranian Academy of Arts (Farhangestān-e honar), affiliated to the presidency, was founded in 1999 as an official national body for policy-making in the fields of the arts, including holding annual seminars, conferences and meetings, suggesting new curricula and programmes within the higher education system and publishing books and journals on different field of the arts, including the visual arts. According to its mission, the Academy is in charge of preserving the national and Islamic cultural and artistic heritage, proposing policies and strategies to encourage innovative research, and promoting Islamic culture in order to confront the threats of invading cultures …63 Although its main focus does not seem to be dealing with contemporary art, on occasions during the 2000s64 the Academy organised a series of biennials of painting, calligraphy and graphic design from the ‘Islamic World’. The comprehensiveness of these events remains under question, but more importantly no significant scholarly publication on contemporary art has yet been produced by the Academy. It, however, held a number of conferences, mainly on traditional art of Iran, some with contributions of international scholars that resulted in scholarly publications. Meanwhile, a number of periodicals, including journals, were also published under the Academy. Although none were devoted solely to contemporary art, among others the annual Khiyāl-e Sharghi, a general journal on the visual arts, occasionally covered aspects of contemporary art. During the late 1990s and particularly the 2000s and 2010s, with the fastgrowing number of art students, graduates, practitioners, artistic productions and exhibitions, the art scene saw a proliferation of art publication, including periodicals, numerous exhibition catalogues, brochures and catalogues raisonnés. For example, the private firm, Iranian Art Publishing65 published a number of bilingual (Persian-English) artists’ monographs, and one on Pioneers of Contemporary Persian Painting, First Generation (1998) written by Javad Mojabi and translated by Karim Emami. This richly illustrated book displays Mojabi’s own memoirs of events together with his personal conversations with artists. Even though it is not a scholarly book, it provides extremely useful material about the key artists of the first generation of modern art in Iran. Iranian Art Publishing also published a short-lived (1999–2001) bilingual (Persian-English) quarterly Tavoos66 that covered writings on Iranian visual arts, theatre, music, architecture and cultural heritage. Inter alia, with its new and innovative format, it was the first art magazine in Iran that aimed

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 63 at a broader audience internationally. During its short life, it enjoyed contributions by the key writers on Iranian art, providing a valuable collection of sources on modern and contemporary art. During this period, the role of publications, in particular periodicals, is becoming more important than at any time before in terms of documentation of the art events, including exhibitions, dominant movements, debates and more importantly in dissemination of knowledge. The recent decades also saw an increasing number of translated books on aspects of contemporary Western art published by private publications. In addition to online magazines, mainly in Persian, dealing with various aspects of contemporary art, there are scholarly journals affiliated to the institutions of higher education, such as art faculties67 and other periodicals with a concentration on contemporary art, both international and Iranian, practices. Meanwhile, the number of art experts, translators and those who are writing on contemporary art has dramatically increased. In addition to periodicals68 run by private bodies and covering aspects of the arts and culture at large, such as Golestāneh, Shabakeh-ye Āftāb, a number of magazines devoted solely to the visual arts, contemporary art in particular, appeared in this period. The most influential contemporary art periodicals are those which are not affiliated to any official institutions. To name a few: Tandis, Herfeh Honarmand, Honar-e Fardā, Aks-nāmeh, Nahib, Āngāh, Posht-e Bām and the online quarterly Kārnamā. The bi-weekly publication Tandis,69 in print since 2002, before its demise in 2020, was the most widely distributed visual arts magazine focusing on contemporary art. It covered a wide range of subjects including news, exhibition and events reviews, as well as discussions on modern and contemporary Iranian artists and translations of short texts on international contemporary art. The quarterly Herfeh Honarmand (Profession: Artist), established in 2004, offers more critical content through its divisions, with sections devoted specifically to ‘painters, photographers, artists and writers’. Whereas both periodicals deal with the contemporary art scene of Iran, including events and individual artists’ profiles, Tandis adopts a rather journalistic language while Herfeh Honarmand offers more analytical discussions mainly through adaptation of a postcolonial approach and a focus on concepts such as Orientalism and anti-globalism. A big portion of materials in Herfeh Honarmand consists of translations of texts on modern and contemporary art issues or individual Western artists. In the latest issues,

64 | the art of i r a n however, the proportion of original material has been augmented by the addition of analytical texts on discursive subjects, particularly critical texts on new trends in contemporary art of Iran. Guarding against what is to be called contemporary (mo‘āser) – what commonly in this periodical is seen as synonymous to conceptual works or the application of new means of media – Herfeh Honarmand’s approach in this regard appears to be comparatively conservative. In this context, the term honar-e emruz (current or today’s art), referring mainly to various figurative art practices made largely by classical media such as painting and sculpture, is used as an alternative to mo‘āser (contemporary). This position, however, usually lacks a strong critical stance or theoretical foundations. The bilingual (Persian-English) quarterly Honar-e Fardā (Art Tomorrow), established in 2010, albeit not long-lived,70 aimed to be both nationally and globally, an exclusive voice of contemporary art of Iran and the Middle East. Operating in the space between academic publishing and artistic presses, it played an important role as a tribune for contemporary Iranian and regional art through coverage of the most up-to-date trends and events. By being responsive to issues of the moment in the visual arts and promoting dialogue and debate, it inter alia aimed to engage in the unresolved, but fundamental questions such as significations of the term ‘contemporary art’ apropos of the concept of contemporaneity and its paradigms in the first issues. Aiming to produce original materials, it enjoyed contributions from a wide array of Iranian and non-Iranian scholars, art historians, critics, curators and artists; through sections on thematic scholarly articles, artist’s profiles and reviews, it provided a novel platform for the introduction of modern and particularly contemporary art of Iran to Iranain and international readers. By its differently structured format from any precedent in Iran, focusing on  national, regional and international contemporary art discourses, during its relatively short existence (2010–13), Honar-e Fardā provided a new format – both conceptually and aesthetically – that became a standard for other periodicals, existing and upcoming. Providing a forum for scholarship and exploration in the field of visual arts, it proved to be a source of knowledge production and theorisation of the most needed and untouched issues in contemporary art of Iran both for Iranian and ­international audiences.

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 65 Publications on the Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran During the 2010s’ privatisation of the art scene that resulted in an increasing number of commercial galleries and growth of the art market, publications on individual artists by private art institutions71 both in and outside Iran developed. Examples of these books – mostly containing rich analytical content – are catalogues raisonnés of Parviz Tanavoli, Koorosh Shishegaran and Ali Akbar Sadeghi in English, as well as Mahmoud Javadipour, Houshang Pezeshknia, Mansour Ghandriz, Ahmad Aali, Faramarz Pilaram and Behzad Golpayegani in Persian.72 During the past two decades, along with the periodicals, a number of books have been published in Persian on the subject of modern and contemporary art of Iran. Pakbaz has continued to produce original informative sources, especially those produced in recent years. In addition to his translated books and a brief book on Naqqāshi-ye Iran az dir-bāz tā emruz (Iranian Painting  from the Past until the Present),73 his landmark Dā‘eratolm‘āref-e honar (Encyclopaedia of Art, (1999 – the expanded version in three volumes was published in 2016) provides an indispensable source – albeit mostly informative materials through encyclopedic entries – in which Pakbaz presents well-documented materials including on modern and contemporary art of Iran. Dā‘eratolm‘āref-e honar is the author’s most significant contribution to the historiography of Iranian art, given also the great lack of well-balanced descriptive historical resources in this area. In addition to Pakbaz’s contributions, there have been a number of other books published in Persian on the subject that have added important resources to the literature. Siamak Delzendeh’s Tahavolāt-e tasviri-ye honar-e Iran, bar-rasi-ye enteqādi (The Visual Evolution of Iranian Art, a Critical Analysis) (2016) offers an analytical account of the evolution of Iranian visual arts from the late Qajar to the end of Pahlavi period, right before the 1979 Revolution.74 By borrowing the notion of the ‘exhibitionary order’75 from Timothy Mitchell’s essay on ‘Orientalism and Exhibitionary Order’, and Edward Said’s Orientalism, Delzendeh bases his argument on the system in which the ‘Other’ – here the art of Iran in the time frame under his ­investigation – is put on display and the depiction of the Orient as an irrational Other. Mitchell argues that this system represents cultures not as

66 | the art of i r a n they are, but as how the Occident believes they should be perceived. Through semiotic and iconographic analysis, Delzendeh classifies the development of modern art in Iran into three periods: first, from the establishment of the Khorus-jangi Society and the Āpādanā Gallery to the First Tehran Biennial (1949–58); second, from 1958 to the beginning of the Shiraz Arts Festival in 1967; and the third, from 1967 to the opening of the TMoCA in 1977. In an attempt to theorise a discursive structure within Iranian art of the Pahlavi period, he categorises those three decades of pre-revolutionary art into three approaches of ‘pure formal’, ‘decorative’ and ‘counter-decorative’. This classification is innovative and different from the other existing accounts, however, not fully convincing or exhaustive when dealing with the actual art tendencies and productions in this period. For example, he fails to elaborate on the socially engaged figurative approach of the 1970s, practised by a group of Iranian artists: an important trend representing the socio-political turbulence in the years before the revolution. Meanwhile, in line with the increasing presence of Iranian artists in European and American exhibitions, including curatorial programmes,76 the recent decades also saw a speedy development of publications on modern and particularly contemporary art of Iran and its diaspora, comprising illustrated catalogues and books, scholarly books and journal articles, online materials and journalistic reports published in English. They have indeed enriched the scholarship of modern and contemporary art of Iran and played an important role in its introduction to the international audience. It seems, however, a substantial portion of these sources have focused either on the pre-revolutionary modern art movements or the works of contemporary expatriate Iranian artists who are now working in the West, also known as diaspora artists. Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution (2002) edited by Shiva Balaghi and Lynn Gumpert is a scholarly book published on the occasion of the exhibition Between Word and Image in the Grey Art Gallery in New York University, that introduces the works of modern Iranian artists of the 1960s and 1970s held in the Grey Art Gallery collection. Therefore, it is sensible that as similar sources published outside Iran, its approach to the art of the period after the 1979 Revolution limits itself to these initial years, specifically the late 1970s in which the art of propaganda and revolutionary posters mainly

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 67 dominated artistic production. Accordingly, the book does not engage in the subsequent decades and contemporary art practices. Amidst Shadow and Light: Contemporary Iranian Art and Artists (2011) is a collection of articles – based on the conference that I convened in 2005 on ‘Contemporary Iranian Art: Modernity and the Iranian Artist’ at Oxford University – and the first attempt to examine the concept of contemporary art of Iran within an academic framework, and to assess its nature in the broader context of contemporary art.77 It involved scholars, art historians, curators and artists from Iran, Europe and the US in order to discuss the existing varieties and transformations of contemporary art practices of Iran, both inside the country and across the diaspora. From revolutionary art, to street murals, to post-­revolutionary modernism and the impacts of globalisation on Iranian artists, all are explored in the book. A large portion of the book, however, reflects the unexamined themes and works created during the Reform period (1997–2005).78 My monograph Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives, published in 2013, was mainly a response to the actual need for a comprehensive scholarly historical study of Iranian art, from the late nineteenth century to the 2010s.79 Within a historical framework, mainly based on chronology, in this book I explore the history of modern and contemporary art of Iran by reconsideration of the increasingly imperative subject of relationship with the  cultural past, modernism and the notion of contemporaneity. The premise that the whole book is built on is that the artistic concerns depicted in the works of Iranian artists are indivisible from the ideological ones. To examine the relationship between art and a series of socio-cultural encounters during the modern and contemporary periods, I explore the underlying themes of the book by means of a series of case studies and works of key artists. I examine how notions such as nativism, nationalism, anti-Westoxification, revolutionary sentiments, political reformism, diaspora and nostalgia – mainly effective in the political and cultural arena – reflected on art and artistic tendencies. This book, however, does not include those visual works such as public art practices that are subjects of visual culture studies. Its focus is rather on materials usually categorised under fine art practices. Approaching art history chiefly through the lens of postcolonial theory and analysing how the socio-political context and discursive practices can be used to understand art and culture, I try to

68 | th e art of i r a n explain how artworks are created as representations of critical junctures of Iranian society in the recent history of Iran. For this reason, albeit all affiliated to Iran, I separated the artistic genres and paradigms within Iran from those practices by expatriate Iranian artists, who are based across diaspora and inevitably involved in very different socio-cultural paradigms. On the basis of the above book, I later adapted two Persian versions of this book, the first published in 2015, entitled Honar-e mo‘āser-e Iran, risheh-hā va did-gāh-hā-ye novin (Contemporary Art of Iran, Roots and New Perspective) and another version with more revisions and expansion in 2017, entitled Kankāshi dar honar-e mo‘āser-e Iran (A Search into Contemporary Art of Iran). As is naturally the case in any translation, based on the linguistic and cultural variance of the two audiences (Iranian and non-Iranian), I modified several parts of the Persian versions. Indeed, one inevitable element to consider was the  consciousness of ­possible imposition of censorship and removal of sensitive contents ­accordingly.80 These considerations had to be applied even in the image sets included in the books. These modifications, accompanied by revisions, were materialised more effectively in Kankāshi dar honar-e mo‘āser-e Iran, given also that I aimed to reflect the latest developments in the art scene and production since the first publication. Abbas Daneshvari’s Amazingly Original: Contemporary Iranian Art at Crossroads (2014) contains a set of chapters which largely present philosophical readings of contemporary art of Iran to the exclusion of the period before the 1979 Revolution. Emphasising Iranian contemporary photography, the book explores aesthetic and historical significance of this art. In explaining his use of the controversial word, Original, in the title, he asserts that he was aware of its illusionary trait, born of a desire for purity where there is none. However, by using this word he wishes to address the independent characteristic of contemporary Iranian art, casting aside historical clichés and banal models. After four essays on ‘The Poetics of Knowledge, Knowing, and Identity: Seismic Shifts across Political Zones in Contemporary Iranian Art’, ‘Expressions of Gender in Contemporary Iranian Art’, ‘Text and Image in Contemporary Iranian Art’, and ‘Memory: The Device of Juxtaposition and Contemporary Iranian Art’ which exhibit the complexities of Iranian art now, Daneshvari provides theoretically articulated interpretations of works of twenty individual artist’s work.81 He, like most of the authors who

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 69 commonly do not differentiate art of Iran produced in Iran from diasporic artists’ productions, homogenises the explored themes in the book for both groups under the rubric ‘contemporary Iranian artists’. This has been reflected on his case studies too: a range of artists both living in the context of Iran and expatriate artists. Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014) by Talinn Grigor compares post-revolutionary state-sponsored visual culture and art productions generated through art studios.82 A big percentage of the book’s content deals with the 1980s, the early years after the revolution and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–8). In Grigor’s account, ‘art’ contains various kinds of visual culture practices, including particularly street murals, mosques, shrines, cemeteries, memorials and stamps during both the 1980s and 2000s (and to a lesser extent the early 2010s), as well as what she calls studio art, referring to fine art practices. Although the treatment of the concept of the contemporary does not seem particularly clear – in terms of the conceptual definition of the contemporary and its redefinition in an Iranian context – she marks the 1979 Revolution as the beginning of the contemporary period. She, however, seems to have considered pre-revolutionary modernists as contemporary too. For example, Grigor divides ‘contemporary artists’ of Iran into four groups of the avant-garde artists of the Pahlavi era, the so-called ‘revolutionary painters’, the ‘children’ of the 1360s (1980s), and the young emerging artists. She then traces the gradual easing of tension between the art of the street and the studio and between the Iranian state and artists under Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, the so-called ‘Reconstruction’ and ‘Reform’ projects respectively, in the Islamic Republic. Grigor’s attempt to associate the state-sponsored manifestation with the private spheres of art, which fervently guard their autonomy from the state’s system, is the core of her argument. Relying heavily on the data provided during her fieldwork trips to Iran, Grigor provides documents and historical information in detail, especially useful for those who are familiar with Iranian political history and culture. Another importan publication is the book Iran Modern (2013) which is based on the exhibition with the same title, held at the Asia Society, New York in 2013, edited by the curators of the exhibition Fereshteh Daftari and Layla S. Diba. It attempts to modify the concept of Iranian modernism as a global endeavour, particularly practised during the Pahlavi period (1925–79). In line

70 | th e art of i r a n with their curatorial strategy, the editors rightly project the notion of Iranian modernism and related modernist artistic practices far beyond sheer imitation and belatedness, but rather as a demonstration of a pluralistic enterprise in parallel with the (Western) global modernist canon. Although the exhibition and book confine Iranian modernism to the Pahlavi period, and so it ends with the outbreak of the 1979 Revolution, they elaborate well, historically and conceptually, artistic trends and movements that were informed by the modernised Iran before the revolution. One of the curators/editors of Iran Modern, Daftari, later published a book, Persia Reframed: Iranian Versions of Modern and Contemporary Art (2019) – an important contribution to the field of modern and contemporary art of Iran. She has been active in curating and writing on modern and contemporary art of Iran for many years and in fact pioneered this field in the West, both with her curatorial projects and scholarly writings. As Daftari asserts, this book is not a survey of the history of Iranian art. Although it starts with a painting from the Qajar era and ends with multimedia productions created in 2018, her focus is on art since the 1960s. Structured both chronologically and thematically, Persia Reframed provides an analytical coverage of a set of important artists, both established and emerging. The chapters of the book try to explore certain key issues and to highlight unexplored themes, as well as to ‘provide a road map for the “contemporary”’.83 According to Daftari, her trajectory parallels postcolonial historiography and emphasises, as in her earlier works, the falseness of any notion of a ‘monolithic Islamic artistic collectivity’, confined to tradition. In an attempt to redefine modernism in Iranian art, Daftari traces this concept back to Kamal al-Molk and his work as representative of ‘Old Master modernism’.84 She further argues that Ziapour’s adaptation of Cubist formal language was an immature attempt to nationalise Iranian art.85 Through discussion on ‘abstraction to figuration’, she attempts to bridge pre-revolutionary modernism in Iran and post-revolutionary contemporary movements. Chronologically more or less in agreement with what I suggested in Chapter 1, she considers contemporary art in Iran as the art practised since the 1990s. However, her definition of the contemporary and practices differs from what I suggest in relation to the concept of contemporaneity. Daftari instead contends that the contemporary is paralleled ‘with the gradual shift to subversive art inside Iran and the emergence of new artists in the diaspora’.86

historiography of modern and contemporary art   | 71 The same as other examples of works writing in the West, the homogenisation of all artists as Iranian – both those living in the context of Iran and across the diaspora – is an approach that she has applied throughout the chapters of the book. Indeed, those chapters and texts on the pre-revolutionary modernists and expatriate artists, such as Tanavoli, Yektai, Farmanfarmaian, Armajani, Neshat, Houshiary and Kami, when Daftari unprecedentedly offers meticulous analysis of their oeuvre, are much stronger than contemporary practices, particularly by those living and working inside Iran. Through a totally different approach, Pamela Karimi’s upcoming book Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (2022) aims87 to examine how artists in Iran engage with ‘space and site’ within the burdens of the Islamic Republic’s regulatory regimes and the art market. Drawing on interviews with artists, musicians, gallerists, designers and theatre experts working inside Iran, Karimi examines art and performance practices including ‘curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitly subversive performances’88 that have not received much attention outside the country. Addressing political, economic and intellectual forces and their relation to art production, the book covers practices created since the 1980s with focus on those that were not meant for official venues but rather those that operate independently, or are entirely sanctioned by the state. Along with the abovementioned books, several scholarly writings on the modern and contemporary art of Iran, either journal articles or book ­chapters, have been written, each dealing with different aspects of the ­subject.89 Moreover, a number of interdisciplinary works and collections of essays in edited volumes have been added to the scholarship. For example, Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity (2013), edited by Staci Gem Scheiwiller, offers an interdisciplinary approach to the notion of state and body in Iranian visual culture during the past one-hundred-and-fifty years. Focusing on the interrelations between the Iranian State, the human body and the notion of performativity, the book incorporates theoretical approaches into understanding the power relations between the Iranian state, its inhabitants and exiles in the Iranian diaspora. Topics covered by this collection include the early photographic, ritual and theatre practices of nineteenth-century Qajar, ritualised architectural spaces

72 | the art of i r a n crafted by the state, artists and filmmakers performing their identities in Iran and in the diaspora, gender and identity being re-enacted in artwork, and the TMoCA’s practices reflecting state ideologies both under the Pahlavi state and the Islamic Republic. This book is particularly important in advancing critical approaches to studying art and cultural products of Iran that have not been fully examined before. It elicits a better understanding of how the complex networks between state, nationhood and diaspora work to create discursive meanings. Another example of an interdisciplinary collection of essays, not only on the visual arts, but also visual culture and cinema, is Hamid Dabashi’s Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture (2019), edited with an introduction by myself. Providing, inter alia, critical texts on Iranian artists and filmmakers – mainly living in the diaspora – such as Shirin Neshat, Nicky Nodjoumi, Shoja Azari, Ardeshir Mohassess and Amir Naderi, it extrapolates more universal issues of concern to art criticism in general. Although not exclusively on Iranian art, the essays and their underlying theoretical and critical logic offer a valuable contribution to the field of modern and contemporary art of Iran. Conclusion To conclude, although one should value the importance of the aforementioned key works in providing what we now call a historiography of modern and contemporary art of Iran, the difficulty of finding a coherent definition and formulation of what the Iranian version of modern art (honar-e now) and contemporary art (honar-e mo‘āser) actually means remains bewildering. While facing the problem of tracing an articulate art historical narrative of the development of Iranian art through writings in Persian periodicals alone is inevitable, it is, however, possible to deduce that modern and contemporary art have developed in tandem with aspects of other cultural and social developments. Recent decades have seen an increasing number of publications on modern and contemporary art of Iran that have contributed extensively in the historiography of Iranian art. All of the sources examined in this chapter – written either in Persian or European languages, English in particular – have indeed played a role in the formation of this emerging field. Through a variety of approaches and formats, from the strong focus on formal and aesthetic

historiography of modern and contemporary art   | 73 principles to interpretation of art productions through purely theoretical lenses or aligned with socio-political circumstances, from writings published in periodicals, exhibition catalogues, artists’ monographs to scholarly books and journal articles, they all have functioned as important means of staging the history of Iranian art during recent times. It is despite all the challenges that authors of these texts have had to grapple with: from restricted rules and censorship in Iran to the usual lack of access to first-hand materials and resources by scholars working outside Iran. These occasionally have resulted in unbalanced and partial judgments in some of these accounts. On the one hand, the fear of systematic censorship has resulted in self-censorship, conservatism and removal of key facts about the artistic currents and flaws within Iran. On the other hand, relying purely on theories and lack of attention to the actualities being experienced by artists and in the art scene in Iran itself have resulted in inflexible subjective or fragmentary readings and occasionally homogenisation of this art by scholars working outside Iran. Consequently, the latter group has been more productive in bringing out important sources on modern art practices and Iranian diasporic art. Despite all the strains and insufficiencies, it is fair to say that these sources have proved to play a decisive role in generating foundations for the study of modern and contemporary art of Iran. Notes  1. There have been fewer publications in French and German. For example, Hadi Tadjvidi’s L’art Moderne en Iran (1967), and decades later Alice Bombardier’s Les pionniers de la Nouvelle peinture en Iran: oeuvres méconnues, activités novatrices et scandales au tournant des années 1940 (2017) are the two rare sources written in French on modern Iranian art. The main focus of both is on the first generation of Iranian painters in the1940s.  2. This chapter will not cover other writings and texts on contemporary traditional currents such as those practised by Kamal al-Molk’s disciples and miniaturists. Likewise, it will not include works of art critics who wrote for individual artists which were published outside Iran mainly as exhibition catalogues. (See for example the works of French art critic Michel Tapié, and American David Galloway who wrote texts on the works of artists such as Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Parviz Tanavoli, Faramarz Pilaram and Behjat Sadr.)  3. Examination of primary documents written on modern art in the Arabicspeaking region proves similar concerns reflecting on these sources. For

74 | the art of i r a n

 4.  5.

 6.

 7.

 8.  9.

10.

11.

12.

c­ omprehensive  examination of these examples, see Anneka Lenssen, Sarah A.  Rogers and Nada M. Shabout, eds, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (New York: MoMA; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018). For definition of these terms, see Chapter 1. See Mehrdad Mashayekhi, ‘The Politics of Nationalism and Political Culture’, in Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, eds Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi (London: Routledge, 1992), 82–115. It was first named the College of Fine Arts (Honarkadeh-ye honar-hā-ye zibā) upon its establishment in 1940 and then in 1948/9 when attached to the Tehran University renamed as Faculty. For full observations of this adaptation, see the author’s chapter on ‘Decades of Hesitancy and Confrontation: Modernism Versus the Status Quo’, in Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives (London: Saqi Books, 2013), 51–92. For more theoretical accounts of this practice, see Chapter 1. Similarly, the application of the term ‘new art’, instead of modern art, can be perceived in early documents and art critical writings in the Arab world. For further examples and implication of this term, see Lenssen et al., eds, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents. In addition to these names, there were a number of women artists who graduated from the same Faculty, including Shokouh Riazi (1921–62), who furthered her study in Beaux Arts, Paris and in addition to exhibiting her works in Tehran taught at the Faculty of Decorative Arts; and Leili Taqipur (1920–2009) who acted as the pioneer of modern book illustration in Iran. Also, Houshang Pezeshknia (1917–72), who graduated from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts and returned to Iran in 1946, was an active contributor in these initiatives. Āpādānā Gallery, the first Tehran private gallery, was founded in 1949 by the ­faculty graduates Mahmoud Javadipour (1920–2012) and Hossein Kazemi (1924–96) in collaboration with Houshang Ajoudani. The gallery served as a centre for promotion of modern art and provided a venue for exhibiting the modernists’ works and debating aspects of modern art and literature. During its short life (about seven months), the works of modernists such as Jalil Ziapour, Houshang Pezeshknia, Javad Hamidi (1918–2002), Ahmad Esfandiari (1922–2013), Mehdi Vishkai (1920–2006) and Abdollah Ameri (1922–2017) were exhibited. For further examination of this gallery, see Alice Bombardier, ‘The Pioneers of Iranian New Painting’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication,

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 75

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

vol. 13, no. 1 (2020): 98–115; https://doi.org/10.1163/18739865-01301007 (accessed 16 July 2021). See Karim Emami, ‘Art in Iran XI. Post-Qajar’, IranicaOnline, https://www. iranicaonline.org/articles/art-in-iran-xi-post-qajar (accessed 23 July 2021). See the author’s chapter on ‘Decades of Hesitancy and Confrontation: Modernism Versus the Status Quo’, and also Katrin Nahidi, ‘Cubism in Iran, Jalil Ziapour and the Fighting Rooster Association’, Stedelijk Studies, vol. 9 (autumn 2019), https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/cubism-in-iran-jalil-ziapour-and-the-​ fighting-rooster-association/ (accessed 21 July 2021). Khorus-jangi did not last long. It was banned in 1950 after publication of only five issues (1949–50). The same editorial team and contributors changed the title of the magazine to Kavir (meaning ‘desert’ in Persian). Its life, however, was even shorter than the earlier one and was banned after two issues. The same team tried a third time and in 1951 they published Panjeh-ye Khorus (meaning ‘rooster’s claw’). This one too was stopped by the press authorities. Interestingly, however, a second series – four issues – of Khorus-jangi, edited by the avantgarde poet Houshang Irani (1925–73), without Ziapour and a number of main founders, was published in 1951. Āpādānā was also the name of the art and literary magazine run mainly by Khorus-jangi’s former editorial board. Only two issues were published in spring (Khordād and Tir – May/June) 1956. The first issue contained texts by Ziapour, Sepehri, Gharib and Nima Yooshij. There were parallels in the Arab world in the modern period, more or less with a similar time frame. The texts on modern art and its validity and necessity were mostly authored by renowned artists of the time as a way to show their cultural and political adhesion with fellow leading intellectuals. They were trying to articulate ‘modernism’ as a global project. The writings also demonstrate how the authors grapple with the question of how to attach local modernism to historical modernism. For a full account of modern art in the Arab world through primary sources, see Lenssen et al., eds, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents. For examination of the Khorus-jangi Society, its related publications and the dialectic exchanges between literary figures and visual artists, see Bavand Behpour, ‘Introduction to “The Nightingale’s Butcher Manifesto” and “Volume and Environment II”’, ARTMargins, vol. 3, no. 2 (June 2014): 118–28. See Jalil Ziapour, ‘Naqqāshi’, Khorus-jangi, vol. 1, no. 1 (1328/1949): 8–19. William G. Millward, ‘Traditional Values and Social Changes in Iran’, Iranian Studies, vol. 4, no. 5 (1971): 2, 3, 11.

76 | the art of i r a n 20. Sokhan magazine was established in 1943 with Parviz Natel Khanlari (1914–90; the renowned literary and cultural figure, also later the Deputy Minister of Culture, 1962–3) as its chief editor. Among others, the editors decided to pay particular attention to Fine Arts through the section on ‘Notes on Today’s Literature and Art’ (Sokhani chand dar bāreh-ye adabiyāt va honare emruz) which started from the third issue. Through this section, modern art, its stylistic approach, aesthetic conventions and a number of important European modernist artists were introduced. 21. The General Administration of Fine Arts was established within the Ministry of Culture in February 1951. In 1961, it came under the supervision of the prime minister and then in 1964 it developed into the Ministry of Culture and Arts. The Ministry was in charge of preparing and supporting the development of art and culture and presenting, improving, and introducing the ancient heritage and civilisation of the country. They were both directed by Mehrdad Pahlbod (né  Ezzatollah Minbashian), the Shah’s brother-in-law, who held the position until 1978. 22. It is also worth tracing the impacts of exhibition projects during the 1940s and their contribution to the official shift towards more engagement with modernist ideas in art and culture. During this time, a number of group exhibitions were organised in Tehran in which works of the majority of practising Iranian modernists were exhibited. The early shows were held in the foreign institutes, such as [Iran-]Soviet and Iran-France Institutes, and later the German Goethe-Institut which became part of a wider project – lasting throughout the 1940s and partly 1950s – aiming to gain institutional acceptance for modern art. Later exhibitions were held in recently opened private galleries in Iran and group discussions and debates between artists and literary figures took place there. 23. A periodical that was attached to the Jām-e Jam Arts Society, established in 1949 with nationalist sentiments. The journalist and politician Darioush Homayoun (1928–2011), together with a group of artists such as Sohrab Sepehri and Manuchehr Sheybani, founded the Society to promote national modern arts. Only six issues of the magazine were published. 24. It was one of the most active platforms to expose art critical writings and reviews of exhibitions in Tehran in the 1960s (published from 1965 to 1980). The main contributors included Karim Emami (1930–2005), Albert Koochooei (b. 1943), Farid Novin (n.d.b) and Parviz Kalantari (1931–2016). 25. VOKS (an acronym for the Russian ‘Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul’turnoi Sviazi s zagranitsei’, All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries)

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 77

26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

was an entity created by the government of the Soviet Union in 1925 to promote international cultural contact between writers, composers, musicians, cinematographers, artists, scientists, educators and athletes of the USSR with those of other countries. The organisation conducted tours and conferences of such cultural workers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VOKS). See also O. D. Kameneva, ‘Cultural Rapprochement: The U.S.S.R. Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 1, no. 5 (October 1928): 6–8. Bozorg Alavai, ‘Nazari beh Nemāyeshgāh-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye Iran’, Payām-e Now, vol. 2, no. 10/11 (Mordad 1325/July 1946): 1–5. Fatemeh Sayyah, ‘Nazari beh Nemāyeshgāh-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye Iran’, Payām-e Now, vol. 2, no. 10/11 (Mordad 1325/July 1946): 6–9. Reza Jorjani, ‘Nemāyeshgāh-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye Iran’, Sokhan, vol. 3, no. 1 (Farvardin 1325/March 1946): 24–31. Their works mainly appeared in Ketāb-e Māh, a literary journal published by the daily Keyhān largely on the basis of discussions they had in their monthly round table. Daneshvar also wrote in Naqsh va Negār magazine (under General Administration of Fine Arts) published from 1955 to 1960. Discussing one of Mohasses’s exhibitions held at the Tālār-e Ghandriz in 1964, Ruyin Pakbaz believes that the high admiration that those literary and intellectual figures paid to his work was not based on their understanding of his modern language. ‘Basically, they even did not feel necessary to learn this language.’ He contends that ‘for sure we, as visual artists, were much more familiar with their works than they were with ours’. N.a, ‘“Tālār” nemud-e yek ārmān (goft-oguy-e Pakbaz, Jowdat, Moslemian, Mourizi)’, in Tālār-e Ghandriz, tajrobeh-i dar ‘arseh-ye ejtemā‘i-e honar, eds Ruyin Pakbaz and Hassan Mourizinejad (Tehran: Herfeh Honarmand Publication, 2018), 83. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, ‘Tokhm-e seh zardeh-ye panjom’, reprinted in Adab va honar-e emruz, ketāb-e sevvom (Tehran: Nashr-e Mitra, 1994), 1384. On the concept of gharb-zadegi and its reflection on the art movements, see the next chapter. Among other writers on art active in periodicals and newspapers one can name Cyrus Zoka (1926–2021) (Sokhan), Iran Darroudi (1936–2021), Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam (1924–2018), Mansoureh Hosseini (under the pseudonym, Dr Assad; 1926–2012) (Ettelā‘āt), Aydin Aghdashloo (b. 1940) (Andisheh  va  honar), Hannibal Alkhas (1930–2010) (Keyhān), Ahmad Shamloo (1925–2000), Behzad Hatam (b. 1949), Behnam Nateghi (n.d.b), Morteza Momayez (1935–2005) and Houshang Taheri (1934–91).

78 | the art of i r a n 34. Another key figure in the initiation of the First Tehran Biennial was the artist Marcos Grigorian who also wrote one of the introductions (the other was written by Yarshater) of the biennial’s catalogue. 35. See Akbar Tadjvidi, Exhibition of Iranian Contemporary Paintings [exhibition catalogue] (Tehran: Fine Arts Administration of Iran, Iran-America Society, American Friends of the Middle East, n.d.). Exhibition held at multiple venues in the United States in 1962. 36. Akbar Tadjvidi, L’art Moderne en Iran (Tehran: Publié Par le Ministère Iranien de la Culture et des Arts, 1967). 37. See Ehsan Yarshater, ‘Contemporary Persian Painting’, in Highlights of Persian Art, eds Richard Ettinghausen and Ehsan Yarshater (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), 362–77. Yarshater has also contributed extensively in other writings on modern Iranian art and literature in magazines or catalogues. 38. See Chapter 1. 39. Emami also curated a number of exhibitions of modern Iranian art, mainly held in the Iran-America Cultural Society during the years before the 1979 Revolution. He compiled several exhibition catalogues, including those which were held in the Iran-America Cultural Society. See for example ‘Art in Iran’ (Tehran: IranAmerica Society, 1965); ‘A Collection of Saqqā-ḵāna Paintings’ (Tehran: IranAmerica Society, 1967); and ‘Modern Iranian Art: A Retrospective Exhibition’ (Tehran: Iran-America Society, 1976). 40. The collection of his writings in Keyhan International has been published in a book entitled Karim Emami on Modern Iranian Culture, Literature and Art, ed. Houra Yavari (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 2014). 41. See Karim Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, in Saqqakhaneh [exhibition catalogue] (Tehran: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 1977), n.p.n. Emami later wrote an entry on post-Qajar art in Encyclopaedia Iranica which provides an accessible overview of the history of Iranian art from the end of the Qajar period in 1925 until the 1980s. See Emami, ‘Art in Iran XI. Post-Qajar’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1987), 640–6. 42. Emami, ‘Art in Iran XI. Post-Qajar’, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/artin-iran-xi-post-qajar-(accessed 23 July 2021). 43. In the same book, Richard Ettinghausen, in his article ‘An Introduction to Modern Persian Painting’, identifies elements that characterise modern art in Iran as a continuation of its Persian past: a predilection for foreign influences, a strong emphasis on colour, a tendency toward abstraction, and the use of calligraphic writing as an artistic vehicle – as well as those that demonstrate a decisive break

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 79

44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

49.

50.

51.

from previous conventions of art production such as the artist as an individual, the shift from a purely formal and unemotional approach to figuration. Richard Ettinghausen, ‘An Introduction to Modern Persian Painting’, in Iran Faces the Seventies, eds Ehsan Yarshater and Richard Ettinghausen (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), 341–8. The name of this influential independent art space, established in 1964, was first  Tālār-e Iran. It was named Tālār-e Ghandriz after Mansour Ghandriz’s tragic death – one of the founders and most active members of the Tālār – in 1966. It was renamed once again in 1975 to Negār-khāneh-ye Iran (Iran Gallery). See Roueen Pakbaz, Contemporary Iranian Painting and Sculpture, trans. S. Melkoniyan (Tehran: High Council of Culture and Art, Centre for Research and Cultural Co-ordination, 1974). This is in contrast to the definition and paradigm of modern art in Iran, introduced in Chapter 1. For the counter argument versus this idea, see Chapter 1. Pakbaz, Contemporary Iranian Painting and Sculpture, 14. However, Pakbaz in his latest writings believes that the ‘most successful’ modernist artists in Iran have achieved ‘outstanding aesthetic syntheses’, although one can rarely see a ‘self-reflection’ in their art. Ruyin Pakbaz, ‘Iranian Art: A Different View’, Art Tomorrow, no +1 (spring 2010): 128. With the rising oil revenues, the public sector’s share of consumption and investment expenditures rose more or less steadily throughout this period. Hashem Pesaran, ‘Economy IX in the Pahlavi Period’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. VIII (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1998), 151. Ervand Abrahamian remarks that ‘hitting a new period of $555 million in 1963–1964, the oil income continued to climb reaching $958 million in 1968–1969’. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 427. With this economic boom, apart from the government agencies such as ministries, banks and Iranian embassies abroad, private companies – the most important being the Behshahr Industrial Group (Goruh-e san‘ati-ye behshahr) – became the major supporters and patrons of modern art. It is also worth noting that at the same time there were foreign cultural institutes and collectors of which the most important was the American collector Abby Weed Grey (1902–83), who patronised Iranian modernists of that period. As is shown in this title, the term ‘contemporary’ was used in this case, like many other instances, as a typical reference to art practices of the time.

80 | th e art of i r a n 52. See also Chapter 3. 53. Anon., ‘Bayāniyeh-ye goruh-e naqqāshān-e tālār-e Ghandriz’, Barrasi: me‘māri, naqqāshi, mojjasameh-sāzi, gerāfik …, no. 6/7 (1969): 1. 54. For an elaborated account of the post-revolutionary artistic scene and artistic practices, see Chapter 4. 55. For an examination of art publications in post-revolution Iran and the political context, see Hamid Severi, ‘Mapping Iranian Contemporary Art Publications and Knowledge-Production’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 69–87. 56. Mohammad Madadpour, Haqiqat va honar-e dini: nazari beh mabāni-ye nazari-ye honar, she‘r, adabiyāt va honar-hā-ye tajassomi-ye dini (Truth and Religious Art: A Look at the Theoretical Foundation of Religious Art, Poetry, Literature and Visual Art) (Tehran: Art and Cultural Research Centre, 2008), 9. 57. Morteza Goudarzi, Just-o-ju-ye hoviyyat dar naqqāshi-ye mo‘āser-e Iran (Tehran: Enteshārāt-i elmi va farhangi, 2001). 58. This tendency plus lack of historical accuracy drew many criticisms from art critics and historians. See also Severi, ‘Mapping Iranian Contemporary Art Publications and Knowledge-Production’, 74. 59. Morteza Goudarzi also published two volumes on revolutionary painting and graphic design: Naqqāshi-ye enqelāb, honar-e mota‘ahed-e ejtemā‘i-ye dinienqelābi (Tehran: Entisharat-e farhangestān-e honar, 1390S/2011) and Gerāfik-e enqelāb, honar-e mota‘ahed-e ejtemā‘i-ye dini-enqelābi (Tehran: Entisharat-e farhangestān-e honar, 1390S/2011). 60. Ali Asghar Gharebaghi, Ahmad Reza Dalvand and Hamid Rahmati, all artistcritics, were the most active in charge of art critical reviews. 61. This period coincided with the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–97) what, according to the Islamic Republic’s literature, was called the ‘Reconstruction’ period. For more detail about the post-revolutionary national art exhibitions in the 1990s, see Chapter 4. 62. The Reform period is paralleled with the moderate reformist Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, Iranian president from 1997 to 2005. For a full account of socio-­ political and cultural developments in this period, see Chapter 5. 63. En.honar.ac.ir/index.aspx?siteid=3&pageid=332/ (accessed 14 August 2022). 64. The Founding Director of the Academy was the artist, architect and former prime minister (1981–89) Mir Hossein Mousavi (b. 1941), who ran the Academy

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 81

65. 66. 67.

68.

69. 70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

for eleven years before his dismissal in 2010. Being one of the main candidates, after the 2009 controversial presidential election Mousavi challenged the election’s result and turned to being the oppositional leader of the so-called Green Movement. He was then dismissed from his post and was put on house arrest. The Academy’s heyday almost came to an end after Mousavi’s discharge and with the arrival of his successor Ali Moalem Damghani (b. 1951) who directed the Academy until 2018. The publication was run by its Founding Director Manijeh Mir-Emadi (Nasseri) (1941–2017). Only five issues of this quarterly were published before it moved to the online version. Among others, Honar-hā-ye zibā (Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University), Nāmeh-ye Honar-hā-ye Tajassomi va Kārbordi (Art University, Theran), Pazhuhesh-nāmeh (Iranian Academy of Arts), Jelveh-ye Honar (Faculty of Art, Alzahra University). All kinds of public press, including periodicals, need to obtain a licence from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. They are constantly monitored and will be easily banned should they include anything crtical of the political system or offensive to the state’s Islamic ideology. During the last years of its publication, it acted as a monthly magazine. I acted as Editor in Chief of this quarterly during its life. The main reason for its end, the same as for other similar cases, was the economically unstable conditions of the press in Iran. In particular, new US sanctions that were imposed in 2012 resulted in a sudden raise of production costs of such art magazines and resulted in closure of a number of them, including Honar-e Fardā. Examples of these publications include books on Bahman Mohasses, Behjat Sadr and Garnik Der Hagopian published by the Tehran-based Aria and Ab-Anbar galleries after exhibitions held in their venues. The latter series, some bilingual (Persian-English), was published by the Nazar Publication, an independent art publisher. In 1990, Pakbaz wrote a comprehensive book entitled Dar jos-o-ju-ye zabān-e  now (In Search for a New Language) in which he asserts the ­universality of Western modern art as a new language to be used in any part of the world. Another book by Tuka Maleki, entitled Honar-e now-gerā-ye Iran (Modern Art of Iran), was published in 2011. Although originally targeted young adults, it offers a well-researched source of modern art and artists of Iran.

82 | the art of i r a n 75. Timothy Mitchell, ‘Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order’, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, eds Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (London: Routledge, 2004), 289–317. 76. One of the earliest examples was the exhibition of Iranian Contemporary Art, curated by Rose Issa and held in the Barbican Centre, London in 2001. A book with the same name was published in which the exhibited works of modernist artists such as Zenderoudi, Tanavoli and Ehsai were included next to those of contemporary artists such as Shadi Ghadirian, Ghazal Radpay (Ghazel) and Bita Fayyazi. Issa, later in 2008, edited a book on Iranian Photography Now. In addition to an introduction, along with works of artists, each photographer contributed a narrative about their life and artistic practice. There have also been a number of exhibition catalogues published during the past few years, including Unedited History, Iran 1960–2014, curated by Catherine David held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and MAXXI, Rome in 2014/15, and In the Fields of Empty Days, Intersections of Past and Present in Iranian Art, curated by Linda Komaroff held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2018. 77. In 2009 an illustrated book, Different Sames, New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art, edited by Hossein Amirsadeghi with inclusion of three essays, one by myself surveying history of modern and contemporary Iranian art, was published by Thames and Hudson (and TransGlobe Publishing). 78. See Chapter 5. 79. I was aware of the fact that the inclusion of contemporary art in the title of the book as the main topic might engender confusion or controversy, since the chapters on historical background, modern art movements of the 1940 to 1970s, the discourses of revolutionary art and post-revolutionary modernism could not, according to the book’s perspective, be named contemporary. However, for various reasons, the publishers’ choice was to have it as the main title of the book. 80. All books should go through the process of obtaining license from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance before publication. They could simply face the so-called momayyezi (censorship) during the process and so be asked to remove or adjust the contents or images. 81. Daneshvari also edited a book on Contemporary Iranian Photography (2017), with inclusion of five essays on contemporary photographic works of Iranian photographers, including Mohammad Ghazali, Mehran Mohajer, Newsha Tavakolian, Shirin Neshat, Parastou Ahadi, Abbas Kowsari, Shadi Ghadirian and Afshan Ketabchi.

historiography of modern and contemporary art  | 83 82. Grigor earlier published a comprehensive study on Iranian architecture and modernism in the Pahlavi period that indeed conceptually and theoretically supports parts of her arguments, especially in regard to pre-revolutionary modernism, in this book too. See Talinn Grigor, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (New York: Periscope Publishing, 2009). 83. Fereshteh Daftari, Persia Reframed: Iranian Versions of Modern and Contemporary Art (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019), xii. 84. See Chapter 1 of this book for more clarification of this concept. 85. Addressing Ziapour’s experience in the post-war years in Paris and its relation to Cubism as part of an effort to reconnect with France’s pre-war cultural past, Daftari argues that Cubism provided Ziapour with a suitable vocabulary to establish an Iranian modernist art in the service of nationalisation. This argument had already been depicted in her earlier article ‘Another Modernism: An Iranian Perspective’, in Picturing Iran, 47. 86. Daftari, Persia Reframed, 115. 87. This book was not released at the time of writing this text and therefore only blurbs and summaries of the contents were available online: https://www.sup. org/books/title/?id=26964 (accessed 12 August 2022). 88. Ibid. 89. Examples of journal articles written by the new generation of scholars include essays by Helia Darabi, Hamed Yousefi, Katrin Nahidi, Combiz MoussaviAghdam, Foad Torshizi, Bavand Behpour, Julia Allerstorfer and Samine Tabatabaei.

PART II DISCOURSES ON MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

3 The Discourse of Neo-traditionalism: Reflecting the Past into the Present

T

his chapter aims to provide an understanding of the concept of neo­traditional art in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s. It concerns the period in modern art in Iran when there was an increasing tendency to confront conflicts between past and present and when the quest for a ‘national’ artistic identity coincided with forces of modernity. This resulted in the formation of a modernistic approach towards prevailing traditional local visual culture: neo-traditionalism. Herein Euro-American modern artistic methods were a required but not necessarily adequate element in the shaping of this art discourse. This process ultimately involves re-contextualisation of the different forms and sources from Western modernism and traditional materials of the artists’ own culture. I argue that the main aim of this approach – ­similarly practised in many non-Western worlds and particularly in the MENA region1 – was to reflect a modified version of modernity2 carried out within other political and cultural domains of Iranian life at the time. It was in fact a negotiation between the universal and the particular that resulted in a neotraditional art.3 This art attempted to re-examine and reinterpret the formal value systems that govern art, typically signified by a set of style markers and techniques. A forward-looking modernist approach in nature, neo-traditional art was engaged with reinterpretation of past values – here largely through formal readings – meant to legitimise a claim to authority over the future. This approach was based on the idea that there is a possible constructed quality of all modern traditions, unlike the haphazardness of customs legitimated in part by their isolation and independence.4 This movement, which had been theorised and conducted by the cultural elites and the political vanguards of the

88 | th e art of i r a n time, combined revival and invention of tradition: a hermeneutic exercise conducted on the materials of the past to make them compatible with the needs of the present. Conscious appreciation of national and cultural identity coupled with celebration of national art was in fact the response to the recurrent debate on the vitality of ‘national heritage’ and its representation in Iranian culture and art. The artists, intentionally or reflexively, were profoundly influenced by their contemporary intellectual, cultural and political climate, referring to social aspirations focused on nationalist sentiments. Along with the postcolonial Middle East, at an intellectual level, the neo-traditionalists aimed to create a synthesised form of modern art that fuse past pictorial heritage with modern aesthetic language of art. Without ignoring the artists’ distinct self-referential ­individualism,5 I examine how this notion was realised within and in parallel with Iran’s mid-twentieth century socio-cultural practices. I argue that through their individual experimentations, artists articulated icons and signs from the past along with cultural requirements of the time within the Iranian context. Grappling with the ever-existing crucial debates over the creation of a balance between the two polarities of modernism and cultural authenticity that had started in the earlier decades reached its peak in the 1960s and reflected on new tendencies, in particular the most acclaimed neo-traditionalist movement: Saqqā-khāneh. I show that it was largely fuelled by the contextual milieu of the period, including the effects of intellectual ideas and their political implications. I also examine the other elements potentially at work that may have contributed to the creation and promotion of this movement, including the forces of official culture and market interests. A Glance into the Saqqā-khāneh Movement Through different modernistic approaches, artists of the Saqqā-khāneh movement looked to cults, rituals and products of folk culture for inspiration. In their view, these roots had to be fused to modern styles to create a distinctly national artistic expression. It was meant to create a stylistic approach relevant to the age in which Iranian artists found themselves with a contribution from the world art scene. The Saqqā-khāneh movement in the 1960s was in fact the result of extensive endeavours of two generations of modernist artists, in parallel with other cultural and political developments, to establish a ‘national’ or ‘Iranian’ art movement. The artists, however, did not restrict themselves to

d isc ourse of neo-traditio n a li s m  | 89 the ties of past cultural triteness. Instead, their strategic reference to the recent cultural past through the examination of products of folk culture aimed at recreating them via new experimental approaches. They attempted to address the discourse of originality as a working assumption that could result in vernacular stylistic solutions. The general perception of the Saqqā-khāneh artists was based on the idea that they could achieve a ‘modern-traditional’ synthesis containing an Iranian identity and character. Parallel approaches can indeed be identified elsewhere in the Middle East around the same time – albeit in different socio-political contexts. A distinguished example was the attempts of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art in the 1950s and pioneers such as Jawad Salim (1919–61) and Shakir Hassan Al-Said (1925–2004) to include folkloric and traditional patterns in their explicitly modern works in order to represent a national modernism that later expanded to Arab nationalism.6 As the art historian John Clark maintains, ‘[a]n important feature of avant-garde practice found elsewhere in Asia is that artists who adopt avant-garde positions feel free to explore indigenous art forms alongside – rather than in opposition to – the discourse they operate on’.7 In all cases, in addition to the artist’s individual explorations, the seminal nature of their work is evidenced to initiate an intense creative debate directed at the issue of collective national identity. The artists were striving after shared validity between inherited specificities and pragmatic modernism, indicative of the Iranian cultural scene of the time.8 Exploring the various resources of traditional and folklorist Iranian arts and crafts, including decorative arts and designs, some of which were still accessible and being produced by local artisans and craftsmen, rewarded the artists with the capacity to create new forms of distinctly ‘Iranian’ art production. The artists of the Saqqā-khāneh movement discovered sources with which they could experiment and combine forms, colours and textures.9 Through their quest, they found numerous stylised forms and elements from traditional arts and crafts, including talismanic and magical seals, pictures and shirts, Shiite religious icons such as the Shiite hand standard (panjeh) or the Hand of Fatima (panj tan-e āl-e ‘abā), motifs from the local handicrafts such as rugs and carpet, old pottery, and Nishapur glazed figs. Elements of painted bowls from Rey adorned with horse-riders, Persian painting, calligraphy and Qajar art were the other formal sources that were subsequently added to those earlier sources.

90 | th e art o f i r a n Whereas the Saqqā-khāneh artists had created modern idioms by adapting various forms of traditional materials to their purposes, their main endeavour was to discover a compatibility between modern Western art – above all abstract art – and the formal aesthetics of the local sources. As Ehsan Yarshater correctly remarks, their works were restatements of those sources, re-workings of them into modern visual statements, and rearrangements of ‘votive objective and religious symbols in a non-religious [secular] context’.10 A Historical Account of the Saqqā-khāneh Movement The term Saqqā-khāneh representing a genre with reference to the works of a number of painters and sculptures within the modern art movement in Iran, was coined by the art critic and journalist Karim Emami in 1962.11 He initially used the term to portray the works of artists, in particular Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937) and Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937), who articulated some elements, chiefly iconographies, that existed in votive Shiite and folk religious graphic art through modernistic approaches, abstraction in particular. It came to be increasingly applied to various forms of modern art practices on which artists variously reflected not only religious-decorative elements, but also all kinds of traditional forms or textures. According to Emami, who was also the lecturer in English at the newly established Tehran College of Decorative Arts (Honarkadeh-ye honar-hā-ye tazʿini) – where most of the artists associated with this movement either studied or taught – the official birth of the Saqqā-khāneh movement was when Zenderoudi’s works, together with his fellow artists, were exhibited at the Third Tehran Biennial in 1962. Referencing directly Zenderoudi’s painting K+L+32+H+4. Mon père et moi (My Father and I), exhibited in this exhibition, Emami’s description clarifies the reason why he chose the term Saqqā-khāneh. Comparing this canvas to the earlier works and sketches he had seen of Zenderoudi a few years earlier, he maintains that external lines of bodies were shaped in geometric order with the carefully written alphabetical characters in the background and the squares, triangles, rectangles and circles coloured in red, green, yellow ochre, and sometimes mild blue. Emami adds that these colours, accompanied by black, had made up the collection of Shiite mourning colours.12 He states that a viewer of Zenderoudi’s canvas would be reminded of Shiite shrines and assemblies. The atmosphere of the

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 91 painting, Emami describes, was religious though not as lofty, grand or spacious as the renowned Iranian mosques, but as familiar and intimate as that of the Saqqā-khāneh.13 Within traditional Shiite folk culture, Saqqā-khāneh (including a continuous link with the sacred well in Mecca, Zam-Zam) had an ultra-historical relationship with the martyrdom of Imam Hossein (the third Shiite imam), along with most of his relatives and companions in the battle of Karbala, Iraq in AD 680. Peter Lamborn Wilson describes Saqqā-khāneh as ‘the “house” or “place of the water-bearer” and a symbolic tomb, a reminder of God’s Mercy … and a reminder of the passion of Karbala’.14 In mid-twentieth century Iran, Saqqā-khānehs literally were votive foundations with charitable structures that were installed for public drinking in the older quarters of Iranian towns and cities.15 Old Saqqā-khānehs typically consisted of a small and inconspicuous niche within which were supplied a water tank, a copper or brass bowl, and small locks or pieces of rag which were fastened to the metallic grid in the exterior part for votive reasons. The Saqqā-khāneh’s interior was decorated with metal trays to which candle holders were attached for those who wanted to dedicate a candle to the memory of their late relatives, and portraits of sacred Shiite imams, altogether conveying a sacred atmosphere. Other typical objects, such as a hand cut out of sheets of brass or tin, associated with ʿAbbās b. ʿAli, Hossein’s half-brother and the water-carrying martyr of Karbala, small pictures or prints of the events of Karbala, enhance the devout mood of the Saqqā-khāneh. Iconographical references, either directly or indirectly, to these iconic and familiar elements could be visible in the early works of artists associated with the Saqqā-khāneh movement, particularly Zenderoudi, Tanavoli and Faramarz Pilaram. Hence, Emami’s choice of the term is particularly perceivable. A common feature among the majority of artists who were most associated with the neo-traditional Saqqā-khāneh movement was that they had affiliations with the Tehran College of Decorative Arts under the Ministry of Culture and Arts. Modelled after the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs, the institution’s objective was to offer new fields of the applied arts, including graphic design, textile design, interior design, painting and sculpture. Established in Tehran in 1960, the College16 not only offered a great opportunity for art graduates from the Fine Art School for Boys,17 but it also reacted

92 | th e art of i r a n to the needs of the new generation by establishing alternative fields of study under the direction of French and Iranian instructors. There, students were familiarised with Iran’s decorative heritage through various courses and were encouraged to seek local sources such as symbols and idioms for inspiration. For instance, the Dean of the College, Houshang Kazemi (1923–2015), a graduate of the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs himself, lectured on ‘decoration’ and acquainted students with the depository of Persian ornamental ware.18 Therefore, conceivably the pedagogical outlooks of the College were one of the reasons that Saqqā-khāneh artists, at least those who studied at this College, drew on the visual elements of Iranian folk culture and decorative motifs as their sources of inspiration. One of the main figures associated with the Saqqā-khāneh movement, sculptor Parviz Tanavoli, describes the initial stage when the first examples of the works later termed Saqqā-khāneh were created.19 Tanavoli recalls how one day in the late 1950s he and Zenderoudi took a trip to the Shrine of Shah ʿAbd  al-ʿAzim20 in southern Tehran and were fascinated by some religious posters, talismanic seals and images all created by folk artists and artisans. At that time, he declares, they were looking for local raw material to be used and developed in their works. The colour scheme, simplicity of forms and rendering of repeated motifs were the most fascinating features that they found in those materials. Tanavoli believes that the first sketches Zenderoudi created based on those sources were in fact the first examples of Saqqā-khāneh works.21 Whether or not artists of this genre agree with this account, what should indeed be credited is that the friendship of Tanavoli and Zenderoudi with their joint searches for Iranian folk culture was undoubtedly one of the key points when examining the formation of this genre.22 Sadegh Tabrizi, the other artist included in Emami’s writings as a Saqqākhāneh artist, believes that the Saqqā-khāneh artists, including himself, started their artistic careers individually. He conceivably contends that each of the movement’s members became fascinated by various traditional sources in a distinct way.23 However, they were probably aware of each other’s activities because of their contact at the College of Decorative Arts and also in artistic clubs,24 such as the Atelier Kaboud.25 Tabrizi recalls that when the artists’ works were assembled and exhibited together in the Third Tehran Biennial in 1962, a relationship between their works was revealed, notwithstanding that

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 93 the works had been created separately and none of them could be considered as following in the steps of the other.26 Yet, a close examination of the early works of these artists proves that while Tanavoli, Ghandriz and Arabshahi appeared to be more independent in their approach, Jazeh Tabatabai and Nasser Oveissi or Zenderoudi and Pilaram were pooling their experiences. Although most of the sources have relied on Emami’s account of the use of the term Saqqā-khāneh and artists associated with it, it does not yet seem perfectly clear how this term should operate within modern art productions in terms of its inclusivity and coverage. According to Emami’s definition in 1962–3, restated in 1977, initially works of artists that employed votive Shiite folk elements, signifying actual Saqqā-khānehs, represented the movement, or as he put it ‘school’.27 However, this was later exclusivity expanded to the works of artists who depicted a variety of traditional pictorial materials via modernistic styles. Accordingly, I believe the history of the movement needs to be classified into two periods: early (from 1962–c.1964) and late (from 1964–77). The first period was devoted mainly to the employment of folk religious elements in the works of artists such as Zenderoudi, Tanavoli and Pilaram. The later period involved all the artists, both painters and sculptors, who drew directly on the traditional art forms of Iran as raw material for their work. They were all adapting forms and themes gleaned from the past (from the Achaemenids to the Qajars, for example) – even if unrelated to Shiite iconography. The pioneers that are often listed with the movement include Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937), Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937), Faramarz Pilaram (1938–83), Mansour Ghandriz (1935–66), Massoud Arabshahi (1935–2019), Nasser Oveissi (b. 1934), Sadegh Tabrizi (1939–2017) and Jazeh Tabatabai (1928–2008). These artists were included in the 1977 Saqqā-khāneh exhibition on the inauguration of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) – no different from what Emami had already marked out in his writings. However, Emami’s inclusive account of the Saqqā-khāneh movement had occasionally contained several other artists as Saqqā-khāneh.28 Thus, it sounds like the curator’s choice was also a relevant reason for inclusion of these names in the show. Unlike most of art movements or groups in art history – Western and non-Western29 – that are made by a coherent group of artists, usually with a collective manifesto, public declarations, group

94 | the art of i r a n exhibitions and close personal camaraderie, Saqqā-khāneh was not an official association with stated goals or a shared manifesto, and the imagery and vocabulary used by the artists varied. Even not all artists whose works were on display in the TMoCA exhibition were akin to be identified as members of this movement.30 Therefore, it is a valid argument to state that this exhibition held at the newly established TMoCA, as an important site of knowledge production governing ‘canonical supremacies’, was indeed a turning point in consolidation of this genre as the most significant art movement in modern Iran. In this, it gave it a historical primacy that according to the museum’s founding director Kamran Diba and the guest curator of the exhibition Nahid Mahdavi, was almost in its sunset in the late 1970s.31 What makes this exhibition32 even more emblematic is that it was in fact one of the key parts of the inauguration of the grand national-official project that was supposed to represent Iran’s global cultural profile.33 Mahdavi, who also wrote texts on individual artists in the catalogue, selected the ‘catching names’ – perhaps based also on Emami’s earlier writings and their identical relationship to the Saqqā-khāneh movement – to demonstrate the most iconic manifestation of Iranian local modern art, along with other Western art works exhibited in the opening of the museum. Emami, who was invited to write the introduction in the catalogue, states: What is the status of the Saqqakhaneh School today? Is it dead or alive? All but one of its members are luckily alive,34 though some of them may not be currently in their best productive years. The mere fact that the present exhibition is assembled on the occasion of the opening of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is itself an indication that the Saqqakhaneh School is a living presence in the arts of modern Iran …35

Here, he also appears to place emphasis on the museum as the main factor for the importance of the Saqqā-khāneh movement and its ‘living presence’. Recognition of the curatorial preference and this arbitrary selection that played a crucial role in the determination of these names as representatives of Saqqā-khāneh is an important fact to be considered when studying the movement and the artists associated with it. While I follow the same path in this chapter, I deliberately prioritise those artists whose works more effectively represent aspects of this neo-traditionalist movement.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 95 Artists of the Saqqā-khāneh Movement In this section, I examine the artists who are most linked to the movement, both for their viewpoints and the aesthetic characteristics of their work, with concentration on their artistic career from 1962 to 1977. In most cases, however, even if each of the artists chose a different pathway after this period and proceeded on their way beyond the movement’s initial boundaries, their subsequent stages are not discrete from the movement’s main destination. Therefore, the claims about the demise of the Saqqā-khāneh movement because of the ‘lack of concord between the members of the group’36 cannot be a valid argument. Overall, the neo-traditionalist Saqqā-khāneh eventually branched into two stylistic approaches. Such artists as Zenderoudi, Tanavoli, Pilaram and Ghandriz37 found the apparent proximity between the stylised forms of traditional Iranian applied and decorative arts and abstract art: representing ‘a highly singular and effectively unprecedented visual experience’.38 Various abstract forms were created in which the ornamental elements and geometrical shapes drawn from different sources of folk art, metalwork, historical architecture and Persian and Arabic calligraphy were juxtaposed throughout the whole canvases typically in symmetrical constructions. Other artists such as Tabrizi, Oveissi and Tabatabai adapted various figurative forms of Persian painting – from medieval manuscripts to the Qajar paintings – in their works. They attempted to transform these to spontaneous self-expressive forms – commonly with addition of multiple elements and textual motifs. This is more or less a unifying aesthetical feature in the works of many of these artists, both in abstract and figurative manners. The use of different motifs and ornaments, presence of multiplicity of elements, including calligraphic forms, either as the main element and or decorative elements that fill different sections of the canvas are the other common features in the works of these artists. Essentially Saqqā-khāneh artists’ references to the tradition was the formal characteristics of the materials they were operating on, including depiction of iconographical features, signs and colour schemes, rather than paying much attention to their contents or their original relevance.39 By concentrating on the pictorial heritage, the artists appropriated modernist thought that suggests artistic expression of an artwork should seek to create

96 | the art of i r a n nothing more than abstract, non-verbal and free of representation, reference and narrative.40 Occasional references to the old Iranian literary sources or the folk proverbs can, however, be found in the works of Tanavoli, Oveissi and Tabatabai. Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937), sculptor, painter and lithographer, was the central figure of the genre and indeed played a leading role in development of this movement both by his work and by his influential presence in the Iranian art scene. He emerged as an avid believer in a modernism attained through forms of popular visual culture and served this folk expression as his inspiration. Rather than being merely affiliated to the modern definition of sculptor in accordance with Euro-American tradition, he proves to be a precursor of the genuine artisans – goldsmiths, silversmiths of Iran.41 What Tanavoli suggests, as a pioneer of modern sculpture in Iran, has grown from a tradition that today is called ‘craft’42 or he himself names it the Iranian ‘traditional designs’. This tradition can be found in metalwork and visual forms of the applied arts of the past (such as metallic tools, swords, etc.). A graduate of the Tehran Fine Art School for Boys and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan in 1959, where he studied with Marino Marini (1901–80), he was then in 1960 involved in the formation of the Tehran College of Decorative Arts as sculpture tutor. Reworking tropes from classical Persian literature, Iranian-Islamic folk art and calligraphy, he produced works that delicately unite self-conscious modernist perspectives with cultural connotations. For example, Tanavoli’s tribute to the legendary Iranian sculptor ‘Farhād the Mountain Carver’ who, for love, accepted the impossible challenge of carving a mountain, materialised in a series of modern sculptures in the early Saqqā-khāneh period (1962–4) and continued in various shapes in his later works. Figure 3.1 is a good example of this period and particularly suggests Tanavoli’s affiliation with Iranian native popular craft on which he has deliberately drawn. His series of sculptures Heech (the Persian word for nothing) – created since the mid-1960s – references both calligraphy and Persian poetry. These sculptures in fact transform the existentialist outcry of absurdity into an allegorical concept. His Heech series, moreover, is a reference to spirituality, and its origin was the theme of annihilation, esteemed in Persian Sufi poetry43 that suggests a mystical condition beyond ‘nothingness’. Practised since the mid-1970s, Tanavoli’s attention to the textual patterns appeared in

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Figure 3.1 Parviz Tanavoli, A Memorial for Farhād and Mountain, 1961, copper, 143 × 87 × 59 cm.

another series, titled Walls of Iran. Inspired by the artist’s earlier works and modelled after ancient Mesopotamian and Persian reliefs, this monumental series of bronze sculptures consists of articulation of intricate inscriptions and pictograms (Figure  3.2). Tanavoli’s continuous quest for digging out new pathways demonstrates the aims to which his art has been dedicated: restating and re-appropriating the past to the present. Herein, he is a sincere believer and true representative of neo-traditionalism. Another influential and leading member of the Saqqā-khāneh movement, Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937), worked closely with Tanavoli during the initial years of his artistic career in the late 1950s. Trained first at the Tehran Fine Art School for Boys and then shortly after at the Tehran College of Decorative Arts, he moved to Paris in 1961. However, he never disconnected himself from Iran’s developing art scene during the 1960s and 1970s.44 In his writings, Emami places a particular emphasis on Zenderoudi’s work as representative of the Saqqā-khāneh genre. In 1963, Emami writes that Zenderoudi ‘has managed to draw the longest applause for his works, and thus

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Figure 3.2 Parviz Tanavoli, The Wall of Iran 3, 1978, bronze, 205 × 100.5 × 66 cm.

has helped his friends be accepted and respected’.45 On several occasions, he used the word ‘group’ to represent those he associated with the Saqqā-khāneh movement, but mostly the phrase ‘Zenderoudi and his friends’ or named an artist as being ‘the member of the Saqqa-khaneh school which Zenderoudi heads’.46 It shows that in Emami’s view, Zenderoudi and his work best represented the genre that he had formulated. For example, in 1964 he praises him as ‘the most dynamic and genial member of the Saqqa-khaneh group’.47 One of the earliest iconic works of Zenderoudi shows his vivid interest in local folk culture, including religious Shiite traditions. Inspired by folk popular paintings called Qahveh-khāneh (Coffeehouse), in the linocut print titled Who Is This Hossein the World Is Crazy About? (1958), four years before Emami coined the term Saqqā-khāneh, Zenderoudi created a series of images that illustrated different events that occurred at the Karbala battle in an expressionistic and somehow satirical manner. He was therefore the first, among others, who started with some votive Shiite iconography, talismans, magic spells and other products of local culture transferring them into modern secular productions.

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Figure 3.3 Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Untitled, 1962, natural pigments on paper mounted on board, 200 × 120 cm.

When discussing criticisms made on Zenderoudi’s art because of his embarking upon ‘the new course as a result of a joke’, Emami points out an important feature in Zenderoudi’s work in the early Saqqā-khāneh period, that is, how he ‘set[s] out to parody a religious drawing’.48 He soon shifted from figuration to abstraction in which he depicted geometrical patterns, talismanic shapes, numbers, charms and calligraphic ornaments, accompanied by references to Shiite iconography such as headless figures on horses, sword, shield, flag … (Figure 3.3). In those works, he presented the canvases using textual forms and alphabetical characters in the background as textures shaped within geometrical forms coloured in the typical colours of religious folk art such as gold, green, yellow ochre, orange and red. The intuitiveness and originality found in his early works appeared to be the most important feature. Later, in the ‘late’ Saqqā-khāneh period, Zenderoudi’s interest in the textual elements as the raw material drawn from the tradition increased, although he had used writings juxtaposed within other visual components in the earlier works. Zenderoudi was, in fact, the pioneer of the use of pure calligraphic forms among other

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Figure 3.4 Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Untitled, 1972, oil and acrylic on canvas, triptych, overall size 315 × 600 cm.

Saqqā-khāneh artists, in terms of his experimental use of these forms as the sole compositional component.49 In these canvases, scripts do not aim to create beauty; rather they maintain undefined space as in mathematics and seek movement like that of poetry and music. This approach shows an affinity to the post-war Parisian avant-garde movement Lettrisme,50 which was still

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active when Zenderoudi moved to Paris. Based on an anarchist and Dadaist belief, the revolutionary manifesto of Lettristes offered a challenge to the fixity of meanings in words and attempted to establish an innovative universal language. With Zenderoudi’s pseudo-scripts too, the characters in themselves carried no particular meaning but were meaningful as organic visual elements and

102 | the art o f i r a n to represent cultural implications (Figure 3.4). In these works, he intellectually refines the graphic geometry of the script. He seems to have developed the talismanic and calligraphic trends into a personalised pseudo-script of signs. Unlike Tanavoli, who has almost continuously been earnest to his original aims of his early Saqqā-khāneh period, Zenderoudi’s oeuvre proves to have evolved through different stages, indeed one of the major ones was his Saqqā-khāneh period. He reverted to his early Saqqā-khāneh experiences a few times, notably in 1972 when he illustrated the Quran, a series of silkscreens accompanied by the French translation of the Quran by the poet Jean Grosjean. In some of these illustrations, a close resemblance is traceable to his early Saqqā-khāneh works. Together with Zenderoudi and Tanavoli, Faramarz Pilaram (1938–83) was the other main representative of the Saqqā-khāneh genre and its dominant tendencies. The artistic development of Pilaram, a graduate of the Tehran College of Decorative Arts, at one stage ran parallel with Zenderoudi, encompassing signs, letters and geometrical forms inspired by Shiite iconography. Emami asserts that Pilaram ‘is closest in spirit to Zenderoudi among his fellow artists, and he is even sometimes called an imitator of Zenderoudi by diehard cynics, but this is an absurd accusation …’51 Pilaram’s major difference, however, is in his mathematical and designed style which demonstrates a contrast with the spontaneous and intuitive characteristics of Zenderoudi’s paintings. His use of old seals, as a connective texture within geometrical compositions, was another feature in his early Saqqā-khāneh works (Figure 3.5). An accomplished calligrapher, Pilaram later in the ‘late Saqqā-khāneh period’ experimented with various styles and mediums, from paintings to huge sculptures, in which textual and calligraphic elements, in his case with reference to anatomical forms of the Nastaʿliq and Shekasteh Nastaʿliq scripts, played the central role. During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he created several expressionistic and colourful paintings in which playful calligraphic elements construct the main part of the canvases. In the subsequent stage, Pilaram returned to the geometric forms in which calligraphic forms functioned as mediating textures on top of geometrical surfaces in the background. In this way, the geometrical background combined with the reflexes of the calligraphic elements appear three-dimensional. In some paintings, rhythms created by the composition of textual elements

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Figure 3.5 Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1961, watercolour, gold and silver, stamp and ink on paper, 181 × 90 cm.

Figure 3.6 Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1975, oil on canvas, 130 × 200 cm.

104 | th e art o f i r a n play visual movements in a symphonic-like space of the canvas (Figure 3.6). Pilaram discovered a harmonious quality between indigenous arts (here calligraphy), music, poetry and modern painting which he consciously executed in his canvases. Pilaram continued experimenting with his calligraphic approach later during 1974–7 with linkage to the Independent Group of Painters and Sculptors (Goruh-e āzād-e naqqāshān va mojassameh-sāzān), an active avantgarde group founded by a number of prominent artists, including Pilaram himself. In the course of 1976–7, he made a number of huge wooden sculptures while continuing to build on his previous experiences in painting. In his latest experiences, Pilaram, who had used textual elements based on traditional calligraphic forms, arrived at a reduction of calligraphic structure to the rhythmic decorative shapes. Whereas the above-mentioned artists were self-consciously affiliated to the Saqqā-khāneh movement, Mansour Ghandriz (1935–66) cannot easily be associated with this genre. However, because of both Emami’s writings and the inclusion of his work in the 1977 TMoCA exhibition, Ghandriz is now considered as one of the main members of the movement. During his short but very prolific life, only the works that he created in the last four years could be linked to Saqqā-khāneh. According to Pakbaz, his close friend and colleague at the Tālār-e Iran,52 the alternative vanguard art space in Tehran, was an artist, who ‘with obsessive care and hesitancy struggled in the various stages of his artistic development to elaborate and define a truly Iranian style’.53 Perhaps more than his fellow artists, he intensely talked and wrote about the formation of a national art genre as a cultural necessity and attempted keenly to materialise this vision through his work. However, Ghandriz did not seem to be very keen on carrying the label Saqqā-khāneh artist; nevertheless, he had no desire to contest it either.54 Ghandriz’s interest in tradition started in his earlier works created in his hometown Tabriz (1957–60) and then in Tehran before he registered at the College of Decorative Arts. His early figurative images reveal the influence of modernist artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Klee and Joan Miro, and at the same time inspiration taken from formal aesthetics of Persian painting. In Tabriz, while studying ancient myths and tales of the Iranian past, he became fascinated by the aesthetics of East Asian landscape paintings.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 105 His awareness of what he called ‘achievements of Western modern artists’ through his experiments with different modernist approaches such as surrealism in 1960–1 made him distinct from the other artists of the Saqqākhāneh genre. In his next phase before his death (1961–6), he became even more deeply involved in the notion of native and national identities in his work. As a graduate of the Tehran Fine Art School for Boys and then a student at the Tehran College of Decorative Arts where some of his closest fellows were inclined towards the new abstract approach, later named Saqqā-khāneh, Ghandriz seems to be affected by the dominant cultural atmosphere of the time, including the Tehran biennials. He moved towards a set of new experimental works. In these works, he tried to combine traditional and modern elements into abstract designs. The core visual elements of these abstract paintings were mythical symbols and tribal forms, including stylised motifs from Iranian old textiles and metalwork painted by the economical employment of colour. Later, inspired from traditional textile and designs, he developed a personal abstract style characterised by geometric patterns and stylised images of humans, birds, fish, horses, the sun, swords, and so on, typically arranged in symmetric order (Figure 3.7). He was attempting to transform traditional motifs into the modern world of his paintings, rather than solely reproducing them. His 1963–4 series of paintings and linocut prints in which organic and geometric forms acquire more clarity are somehow reminiscent of religious iconography. In this, his use of traditional local motifs, popular religious forms – albeit not essentially decorative – associates him with the Saqqā-khāneh genre. However, in the latter part of his artistic career, Ghandriz moved further away from this approach. In those purely abstract canvases, there is hardly a trace of any recognisable traditional motifs (Figure 3.8). They seem rather mechanical items. It appears that his disk-like suns have turned into cogwheels and rosettes to bolts.55 Massoud Arabshahi (1935–2019), who also graduated from the Tehran College of Decorative Arts with a Bachelor degree in Sculpture and Painting (1965) and a Masters in Interior Design (1967), went further back and referred to the arts of pre-Islamic Persia and Mesopotamia, including motifs drawn from Achaemenid and Assyrian art and architecture, and Babylonian rock carving and epigraphs. Similar to Ghandriz, his approach towards restating the

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Figure 3.7 Mansour Ghandriz, Untitled, 1963, oil on gunny, 120 × 90 cm.

Figure 3.8 Mansour Ghandriz, Untitled, 1965, oil on gunny, 70 × 57 cm.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 107 traditional material showed no sympathy with that of Zenderoudi in which he referred to votive religious elements, astrolabes and other products of folk culture. A number of his works in the mid-1970s in which Arabshahi uses geometrical structures occasionally with use of multiplicity of various motifs and elements show some resemblance to the Saqqā-khāneh aesthetic characteristics (Figure 3.9). A close relationship with Islamic architecture and crafts can be found in forms and sometimes colour schemes of these works. However, he at no time used ornamental forms or decoration in his paintings. While he never challenged Emami’s account directly, his English tutor at the College, he was not satisfied with his name being included in the ‘group’ either, especially in later years when his experiments with new materials through various forms of abstraction developed.56 His artistic relationship with other Saqqā-khāneh artists was limited to their general outlook, studying in the same college and also participating in a number of group exhibitions, most importantly the 1977 TMoCA show.

Figure 3.9 Massoud Arabshahi, Untitled, 1975, mixed media on canvas, 180 × 130 cm.

108 | the art o f i r a n One of the key features in Arabshahi’s work was his great interest in textural experimentation on his canvases and later his bas-reliefs. For instance, in his paintings he used techniques such as abrasion and attrition, scraping and rasping the paint away, and the unconventional application of paint with unusual combinations of colours including gold and silver. These experimental abstract works representing a conflation of abstract fields of colour and design were even more distant from the Saqqā-khāneh’s common aesthetics. A number of these works created in the 1970s were published in 1978 in the volume titled Avesta from Perspective of Modern Art by the Niavaran Cultural Centre, Tehran.57 His architectural bas-reliefs also visualise archaeological maps of ancient cities that have the least association with the Saqqā-khāneh iconographical features. Like Pilaram, he was also a member and one of the founders of the Independent Group of Painters and Sculptors and participated actively with his mixed media canvases in their unconventional sets of exhibitions (1974–7). Whereas the above-mentioned artists chose abstraction, other artists associated with the genre including Nasser Oveissi (b. 1934), Sadegh Tabrizi (1939–2017) and Jazeh Tabatabai (1928–2008) preferred figurative approaches. Among these three, only Tabrizi was satisfied to be named as a Saqqā-khāneh artist, whereas the other two were not. The subjects and sources of materials were often identical in their works. The most common forms featured in their works included motifs predominantly inspired by Persian paintings, old ceramics, hand-painted materials (qalamkār), Qajar portraits, Qahveh-khāneh (coffeehouse) paintings and calligraphic inscription. While their designs were commonly complex, the themes of their paintings were few and simple. In Oveissi’s paintings, the typical themes consisted of human figures, riders on horseback, horses and painted old pottery. The women in his paintings – single or in groups of two or three – with large oblong eyes and joined eyebrows are suggestive of the Qajar large-scale paintings.58 His male figures, whether polo players or riders with falcons on their arms, bring to mind some standard types of subjects and forms depicted in Persian painting. These figures were typically illuminated by calligraphic signs (Figure 3.10). Tabrizi, a ceramicist, painter and graduate of the College of Decorative Arts was first inspired by symbolic forms found in such folk arts as talismanic shirts, blue beads, metalwork, old keys and locks, manuscripts pages, practice sheets and

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Figure 3.10 Nasser Oveissi, Untitled, c.1964, oil on canvas, 95 × 136 cm.

old seals. He initially illustrated the rhythmical repetition of motifs with calligraphic forms. Through depiction of identifiable traditional objects, his work signified familiar tales of the past. He also drew upon Persian painting, Qajar portraiture and forms of popular Qahveh-khāneh paintings (Figure  3.11). From his exhibitions in 1970, Tabrizi concentrated more on calligraphic forms as the sole element in his paintings while continuing his earlier approach to folklore subjects and pictorial sources. Tabatabai, sculptor, painter, poet and a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University with a Bachelor degree in 1960, also started with Qajar patterns and religious subjects in the late 1950s, earlier than most others did. His later paintings, illustrating folk tales as their subject, are frisky and humorous. A prolific sculptor and painter, Tabatabai experimented with different techniques and styles; however, he is recognised best for his valiant restatements of traditional Iranian patterns such as Qajar portraits, decorative forms, calligraphic elements and imaginative scenes. Folklore myths and tales inspire the fanciful and playful figures of his metal sculptures, assembled with parts from discarded pieces of old machinery and cars (Figure 3.12).

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Figure 3.11 Sadegh Tabrizi, Untitled, c.1965, mixed media on canvas, 100 × 100 cm.

Although quite independent from the other artists of this genre, the prominent artist and activist, Siah Armajani’s (1939–2020) collages during 1957–9, before he left Tehran for Minnesota in 1960, and also his paintings during the early 1960s showed similar approach and occasionally aesthetic characteristics to the early works of Zenderoudi. Even though he made visual references to pages of old manuscripts, Persian painting, folk tales and sacred Arabic texts, behind the visual correspondence, his works – in contrast to the works of Saqqā-khāneh artists – portrayed political statements, addressing his deep concerns with Iranian nationalism, particularly lead by the Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh through the resistant National Front (  Jebheh-ye melli-ye Iran)59 (Figure 3.13). He continued this approach using textual elements, including Persian writings with fragments of poems by Hafez and Mowlana (Rumi), for a few years in the early 1960s before he shifted to his more known public art projects. To be noted is that the Saqqā-khāneh movement also resulted in the emergence of other tendencies, commonly struggling with reflection of

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Figure 3.12 Jazeh Tabatabai, Nobat beh estekhāreh shod, Tasbih mollā pāreh shod, c.1970, assemblage, n.s.

Figure 3.13 Siah Armajani, Night Letter, 1957, watercolour, ink, seal and collage on paper, 37.4 × 29.8 cm.

112 | th e art o f i r a n traditional materials via new styles. Among others, a calligraphic trend became more popular through a genre later named Naqqāshi-khatt (calligraphic-painting).60 However, unlike the Saqqā-khāneh artists such as Zenderoudi and Pilaram whose use of the letters as a main visual element was depicted through a fragmentary and un-literary approach, the Naqqāshi-khatt artists such as Mohammad Ehsai (b. 1939), Reza Mafi (1943–82) and Nasrollah Afjai (b. 1933) – all professional calligraphers – employed calligraphic forms, commonly with direct reference to particular classical styles such as Thuluth, Nasta‘liq and Kufic, as the dominant element of their works (Figure 3.14). Now artists paid respect to the traditional contents as crucial components of their art. Connoting literary or sacred concepts, their works typically represented readable and meaningful words, religious or poetic verses. Contextualisation of the Movement The neo-traditionalist movement of Saqqā-khāneh in the 1960s with all its varieties was in fact born within a cultural and political context for which

Figure 3.14 Mohammad Ehsai, Untitled, 1974, oil on canvas, 121 × 120 cm.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 113 the questions of collective national identity and revival of past authentic culture were predominant concerns. Faced with the complexities of these fundamental questions, the young artists of the generation of the 1960s were engaged in intensive experimentation, both intellectually and artistically. The social scientist Ali Mirsepassi confirms that, during the 1960s and 1970s, the dominant cultural story of Iran was based on identity politics, crafting social imaginary, including myths, symbols, rituals, national stories, and creation of a modern spiritual identity. He argues that a clear shift occurred  from a modern and cosmopolitan vision of Iran, associated with the post-­Constitution (Mashruteh – the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11) period, to a new national social imaginary defined in terms of religious identity and national tradition. This version of Iranian nationalism differed from the post-Constitution one that was influenced by an Orientalist trajectory of thought emphasising the national identity being directly related to pre-Islamic Persia. This shift, he contends, was a more unified and national narrative about the Iranian nation, shared by a substantial majority of Iranians across political and cultural ideologies and  sensibilities, including secular, religious, oppositional and the ruling elites.61 Mirsepassi also points out the influence of the renowned French philosopher and theologian Henry Corbin’s (1903–78) thoughts62 – promoting ‘Iranian’ and ‘Eastern spirituality’ – on Iranian ­intelligentsia and political elites.63 At this juncture, criticism of the West through anti-Western movements was mounting amongst Iranian intellectuals. These intellectuals ‘embraced, interpreted, and debated ideas such as modernisation, anti-imperialism, and Third Worldism, which had gained currency across the world in the 1960s and 1970s’.64 It was paralleled with the era of the Cold War and decolonisation and in Iran at that time nativist and nationalist debates that were prevalent in both intellectual and political arenas. The key similarity of these movements was to encourage Iranians to discover their lost identity, tradition and national roots. These tendencies among the intelligentsia, which had originated in the 1940s and 1950s, manifested themselves in criticism of the insatiable desire among the majority to imitate and emulate the West and its products. Within Iranian political culture, this so-called ‘toxic’ cultural mindset was known as gharb-zadegi (Westoxification) which was widespread in various scopes of life, literature and art.

114 | th e art o f i r a n The term gharb-zadegi was initially coined by the anti-Western Iranian philosopher known as the ‘Iranian Heidegger’, Ahmad Fardid (1910–94), as a philosophical theory criticising the West and its domination and instead promoting Iranian ‘authentic’ mysticism and spirituality. However, it was the Iranian intellectual, novelist and social critic Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–69) whose highly influential 1962 essay, Gharb-zadegi, intellectually articulated a critical Third World political discourse that grappled with the problems of global capitalism and cultural globalisation.65 He captured the philosophical notion of gharb-zadegi from Fardid and transferred it into a socio-political criticism of top-down autocratic Pahlavi modernisation.66 He politicised and popularised ideas of anti-Westernism and nativism that had been developed by earlier Iranian intellectuals such as Seyyed Fakhreddin Shadman (1907–67). Paralleled with postcolonial criticism of the West and its imperialism, the discourse of gharb-zadegi was a part of the wider discursive shift in the Iranian political culture of the period.67 According to the political scientist Mehrzad Boroujerdi, ‘[t]his period also represented the heyday of nativism and antiorientalism in Iran. During this time, the question of self and other came to the forefront of intellectual deliberations and stayed there for good.’68 In this phase of Iranian intellectual history, a turn to Islamist discourses of authenticity was advocated. Mirsepassi also argues that ‘[a]s a form of romantic nativism, it borrowed from a counter-modern discursive narrative already existing in the West as well as Islamic and Persian mystical tradition’.69 In this period, modern Iranian culture was intensely involved in a nativist current that was animated by the critical account of gharb-zadegi.70 Herein gharb-zadegi corresponded to the Third Worldist fascination with peripheral cultures that were involved in liberation and anti-colonial movements. It, however, somehow formulated neo-Orientalism that still believed in centrality and canonicality of the West. This vision, like elsewhere in Asia and Africa, highly appreciated native cultures. By attacking the West in order to demythologise it, the notion of gharbzadegi generated an ‘authenticism’ that resulted in formation of a cultural ­discourse, rather than a political one. If the Third Worldist discourse ­promoted anti-colonial and anti-tyrannical movements in opposition to the colonisers and their allied states, putting all blame on ruling powers and prioritising political actions, the authentic discourse emphasised

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 115 solitary cultural ideals. This vision did not contradict Pahlavi’s cultural nationalism and could rather contribute to its theorisation. As the historian  Roham Alvandi maintains, Pahlavi Third Worldism was grounded in  a  rethinking of Pahlavism by those thinkers linked to the state who warned the  court  about  the threats of Westernisation and made attempt to replace the Pahlavi vision of Iranian nationalism attached to Aryanism with a notion of Iranianness rooted in Islamic mysticism or Asian civilisation.71 The most remarkable figures involved in this shift included Ehsan Naraghi (1926–2012), Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933) and Dariush Shayegan (1935–2018). They led state educational and cultural establishments that were formed mainly from the late 1960s onward, often under the patronage of Queen Farah, and were engaged with the debate on cultural authenticity.72 The attention to the notion of Iranianness aligned with nativism was largely growing among Iranian elites and indeed this neo-traditional artistic spectrum did not remain unaffected by this milieu. One of the indirect reactions to this notion was the return to traditions, local, folk and national cultures, and ‘national-traditional identity’. The main representatives of the Saqqā-khāneh genre now referred to Shiite pictorial folk culture, which was still alive and highly popular, especially among the middle and lower classes. Their general belief was that these sources had a direct connection with their ‘artistic roots’ and the platform through which they could refer to the cultural ‘self ’. Nevertheless, while the effects of nativist beliefs in terms of their struggle with self-alienation and explicit reference to the very ‘pure’ native materials can be detected on the artists and artworks associated with the Saqqā-khāneh movement, there was no obvious trace of anti-Westernism, and particularly counter-modern strategy endorsed by the anticolonial politics and evinced through the discursive narrative of gharb-zadegi. In this, the same as modern Iranian literature and poetry, a concomitant struggle to reconcile modernity and nativism was traceable in art practices too. In fact, without turning away from modernism, their identity-based approach aimed at creating an alternative modern art with a vernacular aesthetic language to the canonical Western art. Therefore, their referral only to Western modern art movements would not be accurate. However, there have been arguments about the Saqqā-khāneh movement’s relation to Pop Art as an art

116 | the art o f i r a n movement which ‘looks at the symbols and tools of a mass consumer society as a relevant and influencing cultural force’.73 Kamran Diba once argued that by looking at the ‘inner beliefs and popular symbols that were part of the religion and culture of Iran’, Saqqā-khāneh artists similarly consumed these as industrial products in the West ‘but for different reasons and under dissimilar ­circumstances’.74 Accordingly, he names the Saqqā-khāneh movement ‘in reference to Western art, “Spiritual Pop Art”’.75 With an exception of Tanavoli who exhibited interest in Pop Art only for a short period when he was based in Minnesota, US, in the early 1960s, none of the other artists of this genre presented any direct interest or indication about it. Besides, this comparison in essence would contradict the main purpose of creation of an alternative local modernism: the dominant objective among these neo-traditionalists. This comparison could not be valid for another reason too, that is, Pop Art artists did not manufacture popular pictures, but rather offered a refined artistic commentary on some of the effects of the culture of mass media. By appropriating marketing techniques, Pop Art was the first movement to clearly allow for the relationship between art and commerce. None of these happened in the Saqqā-khāneh practices. There is therefore no need to emphasise the fact that the socio-political contexts in which these two movements developed were entirely dissimilar. When surveying the common atmosphere of the art scene, exhibitions and available primary sources in art publications during the 1950s and specifically the 1960s in Iran, such as introductions to the Tehran biennials76 and writings that appeared in the key periodicals,77 two main topics seem to be the focal points of these writings. The first was the awareness of new artistic movements and ‘findings’ in the international art scene, and the second, an eagerness for formation of a ‘national art’ or art with signs of ‘nationality’. An emphasis, now prevalent in those years, was placed on the importance of the issue of current ‘discoveries’ and awareness of what was happening on the global artistic scene, mostly referring to Euro-American art. It was suggested that in order to attend to these achievements, Iranian artists should be aware of the new artistic encounters.78 Since the 1940s when modernism began to be adapted by Iranian artists, those pioneers individually struggled with materialisation of a national version of modern art.79 An early example of an attempt to create an art

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 117 movement based on nationalist sentiments was the Jām-e Jam Arts Society.80 Established in 1949, it was founded by the journalist and politician Darioush Homayoun (1928–2011) together with a group of political activists, artists and poets such as Zia Modarres (1926–81), Shapour Zandnia (1927–97), Sohrab Sepehri (1928–80), Siavash Kasrai (1927–96) and Manuchehr Sheybani (1924–91). The main objective of the Society was to promote nationalism through the arts. Homayoun, himself an intellectual activist, believed that all revolutions started with artistic movements and therefore the Society’s aim was to follow this path. In the first issue of the Society’s magazine with the same name, we read: We have decided to promote a pure national and avant-garde art. Our aim is to facilitate creation of the arts that are rooted from our nation, its pasts, needs and desires … that could grow in line with the Iranian nations’ newly grown nationalism. … We will use all our power against anti-nationalist systems and ideas in the arts scene that aim to turn Iranian arts to something despicable and non-national.81

During its short life, the Society’s enthusiastic attempt to articulate a ‘national art’ that was rooted in Iranian ‘culture, history, folklore, needs, wants, lived experiences and ideology’, and would be shaped through ‘new formats’ with application of ‘techniques’ from ‘international vanguard’ art does not seem to have succeeded in practice.82 This desire later, after the inauguration of the Tehran biennials in the late 1950s, was most notably reinforced and promoted by the cultural custodians: now with the collective aim of creating a ‘national art’ or a ‘school of national art’ through organising grand events such as national art exhibitions. In the 1960s, the state’s sponsorship and support of other foreign and private institutes fostered even more active development of modern art in the country. The governmental cultural sections, in particular the General Administration of Fine Arts (Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye keshvar), later developed into the Ministry of Culture and Arts (Vezārat-e farhang va honar), and the Secretariat of the Empress Farah Pahlavi (Daftar-e makhsus-e Shahbānu Farah Pahlavi)83 played a key role as the leaders of official artistic activities at that time. These activities were marked by decisive currents and events within the cultural scene. These institutions tried to encourage, through patronage of

118 | th e art o f i r a n individual artists and events, the formation of a sort of national school of art that represents national characteristics exposed through modern formats. The key example of these initiatives was the organisation of the Tehran biennials. Through these events, in which the organisers tried to emulate European biennials in particular the Venice Biennale, praise was given to a sort of modern art that reflected national characters. It is no wonder that the Saqqā-khāneh genre met with great success in this pervading mood. Incidentally, all artists associated with Saqqā-khāneh were awarded prizes in the Tehran biennales or other official group exhibitions during the 1960s and 1970s. Cultural modernism fused with the concept of nationality seemed to have been epitomised in the Saqqā-khāneh movement. This was confirmed, for example, in the introduction to the Fourth Tehran Biennial in 1964.84 That is why Saqqā-khāneh artists were later seen as representative of cultural agendas of the state during Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign (1941–79). During the 1960s, modern art developed in parallel with modern poetry. The same as modern poetry, art was basically an urban creation and limited to the middle classes. However, in contrast to modern poetry, art benefited from extensive support from the state. Unlike the modernist poets, writers, playwrights or even a group of filmmakers whose representation of nationalism in their works was based on a concept of salvation and their work often conveyed critical content in opposition to the status quo, modernist artists of this generation were rather inclined to the question of authentic culture that was central to the official cultural policy. Hence, the work of visual artists who enjoyed official support rather appeared utopianist and depoliticised. In contrast, those language-based artists, particularly poets and writers, who received no such public provision, seemed to be critical of that support when it came at the cost of neutralisation of critical ideas.85 The international Shiraz Arts Festival (  Jashn-e honar-e Shiraz), held in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz from 1967 to 1977, was an example of a state-run cultural event and an enterprise that depicted a depoliticised picture of a growing grasp of local cultures and identities. Mostly centred on the performing arts86 and separated into Western and Eastern divisions, the festival emphasised this binary by demonstrating mostly traditional forms of non-Western arts, while Western programmes representing the latest trends were practised by the avant-garde groups.87 Herein it seems the organisers were

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 119 rather inclined towards essentialising national cultures and characters.88 The festival was aimed at being ‘an occasion for Iranian artists to expand their horizons and for non-Iranian visitors to get acquainted with the cultural heritage of Iran’.89 As the historian Houchang Chehabi points out, ‘even for Iran’s more cosmopolitan intellectuals, the idea of “art for art’s sake” amounted to collaboration with the regime’s efforts to depoliticise art’.90 This was evident not only in the Shiraz Arts Festival, but also in other official cultural projects, including the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA).91 They all provided substance for the opposition narrative of gharb-zadegi.92 Notwithstanding that the first public exhibitions of modern art were held in the 1940s by foreign societies followed by artist-run private spaces, it never resulted in the formation of a strong art market before the state’s intervention in the 1950s and particularly during the 1960s and 1970s.93 Along with Iran’s economic growth, the late 1960s and 1970s saw the increasing support of individual artists and artistic institutions by the Secretariat of the Empress Farah Pahlavi. Gradually, many government institutions joined by private companies became patrons of modern art. Some of them included Ministries, National Iranian Radio Television, banks, corporations led by the Behshahr Industrial Group, Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveida and Ehsan Yarshater. Several art museums and artistic clubs in Tehran and other cities, including Isfahan, Kerman and Abadan, were planned and mostly realised. In addition to holding five Tehran biennials (1958–66) and other state-run exhibitions and festivals both in Iran and abroad (mainly in Europe and the US), the General Administration of Fine Arts and subsequently the Ministry of Culture and Arts employed several modernist artists in its different offices, awarded prizes and scholarships for study abroad to the selected artists in different official exhibitions, made instrumental links to international art institutions, and transformed the existing art educational curriculum to the modern one, each playing an important role in creation of a vigorous art scene during the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile, those foreign cultural societies based in Tehran developed their activities providing the Iranian art scene with more vigour. Some of the key actors were the Iran-America Cultural Society,94 the Iran-Italy Cultural Society and the Goethe Institute. Accompanied by these developments, this period witnessed a relative growth in the art market with an increasing number of new commercial galleries.95

120 | the art o f i r a n Amongst other genres of modern art, the Saqqā-khāneh artists gained major critical acclaim and official support as their work epitomised a modern national apolitical art and a marker of Iran’s cultural capital. Saqqā-khāneh’s specific place in Iran’s state-sponsored official culture was reflected in the movement’s popularisation in the 1960s and 1970s national exhibitions, specifically in 1977 by its exposure on the inauguration of the most momentous official art project in contemporary Iran: TMoCA. Along with contemporary Western artworks and performances, the museum, itself a symbol of modernised Iran and its global cultural profile, sanctioned and promoted the best-known ‘national’ modern art movement in Iran: Saqqā-khāneh.96 The attraction of these works in foreign eyes, as an iconic demonstration of nationality and modernity, was indeed the other reason for its official success. The exposure of explicit local implications through modernistic approaches could represent multiple characteristics of Pahlavi Iran: ancient, national, and all at once modern. This could enhance the ‘international prestige’ of the Iranian nation (mihan) to the eyes of the others.97 A good example of this idea was marked out in Emami’s text in 1963 when writing about how well ‘Zenderoudi and his friends’’ works were received by foreign art critics as evidence for their success, while confirming the role of official administrations in the realisation of the Saqqā-khāneh tendency. The text reads, There have been enthusiastic reviews from some foreign art critics, which no doubt were attracted to the works by, among other things, their novelty. There have been official recognition by the General Administration of Fine Arts, which sees its pet idea, creation of a modern school of Iranian painting upon the foundations of traditional Persian art, getting some real substance. And as a result, whenever Iranian art is now to be represented, there is prominence given to the contributions of the new school.98

In the introduction to the First International Art Exhibition of Tehran99 in 1974/5 organised by the National Society of Cultural Relationships, headed by Queen Farah, presenting the Paris Le Salon de’Autumne, Paris galleries, and a section on works of modern Iranian art, Farah Pahlavi writes about the  achievements of a particular genre in modern art of Iran. The description leaves almost no doubt that she refers to the main characteristics of the Saqqā-khāneh tendency:

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 121 Contemporary Iranian arts (honar-e moʿāser-e Iran), be the visual arts, music or dramatic arts, albeit manifested differently, all share the same interests, one of them being their attempt to create connection, both in form and meaning, between national traditions and Western means and techniques. One of the other trends in modern Iranian art (honar-e now-ye irāni) is a kind of ‘avant-gardism’ which is seeking for new means of expressions that occasionally one can see the influence of Western experimentations. However, one of the tangible moods of the works in this tendency is also the effect of [Iran’s] cultural heritage … All in all, the success that this artistic movement has achieved in the international exhibitions in recent years well demonstrates that contemporary Iranian artists can gain a particular place in global level in the future.100

Indeed, I am not simply arguing that the neo-traditional Saqqā-khāneh tendency was a prescribed genre by the official cultural administrations of the Pahlavi regime, or even artists intentionally decided on this path because of their reassurance for a future success. However, given the reasons brought up above, it undoubtedly represented a symbolic marker of the official culture within the Pahlavi era and an ideal version of a ‘national’ modern art. The Saqqā-khāneh movement also received criticism both when it was at its peak and during later decades as being responsive to the Orientalist paradigm of Iranian identity by demonstrating exotic features, typically through decorative traditional elements. Orientalists placed emphasis on the domination of ornament and its constant presence in ‘Persian art’, through the influential work of Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art (1938), and the essentialist notion of intuitive quintessence of crafts throughout the history of Iranian art.101 This notion was not in contrast to the colonial idea that describes modern and rational arts as belonging exclusively to the ‘West’, whereas ancient and intuitive arts fit in with the ‘East’. In this, one can see the correspondences between the notion of national identity and the Orientalist paradigm: the meta-narrative of East–West and its definition under a universal totality. Except for the Saqqā-khāneh movement, there was no dominant movement in Iran on a national basis. However, during the 1960s and 1970s two important artistic collectives struggled with the formation of alternative and independent modern art movements in Iran. One of the leading

122 | th e art o f i r a n non-­governmental independent art space and artistic think tanks composed of a group of young idealistic artists was the Tālār-e Iran (Ghandriz). Started in 1964, it was an art space and also a platform for artistic gatherings in Tehran. Over a period of thirteen years until 1977, it was an active cultural centre holding painting, graphic design, photography and sculpture exhibitions, introducing the works of young artists, translating and publishing books on art and architecture and also periodicals on modern art. The founders of the Tālār consisted of Mohammad Reza Jowdat, Mansour Ghandriz (already associated with the Saqqā-khāneh movement), Ruyin Pakbaz, Morteza Momayez, Hadi Hazavei, Sirus Malek, Faramarz Pilaram (also affiliated to the Saqqā-khāneh movement),102 Ghobad Shiva, Farshid Mesghali and Mohammad Mahalati.103 The majority of the Tālār’s artists were critical of the dominant artistic genres of the time, particularly the Saqqā-khāneh, largely from an aesthetic point of view, but also for other cultural and social reasons.104 Their main point for criticism was what they called the reductive reading of identity marked in the Saqqā-khāneh works by the use of a handful of traditional elements. The lack of meaningful congruency between forms inspired by local-folk traditional materials and (Western) modernism and its foundational worldview was the other critical point made by these artists. For example, grappling with the similar cultural engagement to their fellow artists of the time, in 1971 in an attempt to formulate a definition for ‘national art’, they write: National art is mostly considered as an art that represents traditions, social mores, actions, taste and ethics of a nation. This is a wrong perception, because this interpretation contradicts the concept of ‘living’ art. An art that does not go further than normative values, meaning is unable to create new values, is not only static, but also together with other old social norms will soon or later be left aside.105

In theory, the raison d’être of these artists was to create a modern aesthetic language that could represent ‘nationality’, ‘connect to the society’ and ‘create new values’. However, in practice they were unsuccessful at introducing an alternative national art genre that contained those ideals.106 Another important artistic group active in Tehran in the 1970s was the Independent Group of Painters and Sculptors (Goruh-e āzād-e naqqāshān va mojassameh-sāzān), also known as the Independent Artists Group (Goruh-e

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 123

Figure 3.15 Marcos Grigorian, Ābgousht – Dizi, 1971, found objects, mixed media, mud, straw and resin on burlap, 70.5 × 70.5 × 25.5 cm.

āzād-e honarmandān). It was formed in 1974 with the collaboration of a group of established modernist artists, two already associated with the Saqqākhāneh movement: Faramarz Pilaram and Massoud Arabshahi.107 Other members included Marcos Grigorian, Gholamhossein Nami, Sirak Melkonian, Abdolreza Daryabeygi and Morteza Momayez. Experimental in nature, the group’s main objective was to challenge the art scene in Tehran, reacting to the rise of market-oriented modern art practices exhibited in the growing commercial galleries.108 They were committed to innovation in art by using unconventional materials and media, including performances and installations (Figure 3.15). Their search to ‘open a space for the new’109 materialised in their group exhibitions that were found shocking in the artistic society of Iran.110 In each exhibition, the group invited guest artists working in a variety of disciplines, from graphic design to theatre, cinema and literature (Figure 3.16).111 Although the Independent Artists Group was not basically inclined towards political involvement in its projects, its exhibitions faced controversies with the authorities of the time because of their political nature.112 The fruitful time of this group ended in 1977, a year before the revolution because of the controversies around the group and their works. Conclusion The Saqqā-khāneh tendency represented the critical discourse over the notion of ‘nationality’, the central preoccupation of Iranian modernists, while also

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Figure 3.16 Cover of the catalogue of the exhibition Ābi, Independent Group of Painters and Sculptors (Goruh-e āzād-e naqqāshān va mojassameh-sāzān), Takht-e Jamshid Gallery, 1975.

addressing the authentic discourse that dominated the intellectual milieu of the time. However, it was criticised by a number of their contemporary artists as an icon of the Pahlavi period and was viewed as too decorative and formalistic art that merely nonjudgmentally looked at past cultural products, while overlooking the social and political realities of their surroundings.113 This lack of engagement and apolitical character of their work, as explored above, was one of the reasons for its approval as the representative of the official culture. It could incidentally be also in harmony with the Orientalist notion of the Other through decorative readings of the ‘East’ while creating no contradiction with the Third Worldist notion of Otherness as a solid entity. Thus, Saqqā-khāneh created its iconographic and aesthetic language with a vocabulary borrowed from the past. These iconographical references were typically identical, while they seem not to offer any complex semantic criterion for re-reading them in the present. This approach was in correspondence with official cultural discourses, advocating appreciation of the past through a noncritical modernism. With the outbreak of the 1979 Revolution and following fundamental political, cultural and social transformations in Iran, artistic practices were also thoroughly affected. The revolution brought a rapid end to the Pahlavi’s official culture and whatever was connected to it. One of the important impacts of the revolution on such neo-traditional movements as Saqqā-khāneh, whose modernist proposition represented political culture of the Pahlavi state, was that they entirely stopped functioning.114 They were replaced by revolutionary

d isc o urse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 125 art advocating new values of the newly established Islamic Republic. However, the second decade of the post-revolutionary period witnessed re-engagement of artists of the next generation with identifying what constitutes the specific characteristics of Iranian art within the contemporary world. It was in this continued quest that the essence of the Saqqā-khāneh movement was revived. Notes 1. Examination of modern art practices and the art scene in the Arab world shows a close similarity in terms of strategies performed by artists to create modern local aesthetic languages. In spite of the fact that these strategies are not completely the same, they prove to be rooted in similar concerns with the same aims and objectives. For further study of these practices and documents, see Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers and Nada Shabout, eds, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (New York: MoMA; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018); Silvia Naef, ‘Reexploring Islamic Art: Modern and Contemporary Creation in the Arab World and Its Relation to the Artistic Past’, Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 43 (spring 2003): 164–74; and Nada Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007). 2. For theoretical elaboration on the subject of multiple modernities and alternative versions of modernity in relation to the art of Iran, see Chapter 1. 3. Eric Hobsbawm has already classified what he called ‘invented traditions’ by function into three overlapping types: those that established social cohesion; those legitimising institutions, status or relations of authority; and those whose purpose was socialisation, inculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behaviour (Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 9). Neo-traditional art practised in Iran, as is explored in this chapter, appears to be an incorporation of the first two categories. 4. See John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998), 73. 5. Fereshteh Daftari correctly maintains that the Saqqā-khāneh movement ‘was an empowering trajectory of self-discovery – not merely a national project but [also] a pursuit of personal visions’. Fereshteh Daftari, Persia Reframed: Iranian Visions of Modern and Contemporary Art (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019), 21. 6. For further study of Salim’s approach and works, see Saleem Al-Bahloly, ‘History Regained: A Modern Artist in Baghdad Encounters a Lost Tradition of Painting’, Muqarnas, vol. 35, no. 1 (October 2018): 229–72, and Zainab

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7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

Bahrani and Nada Shabout, Modernism and Iraq (New York: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2009). Clark, Modern Asian Art, 219. For theoretical articulation of the concept of the modern in art of Iran, see Chapter 1. Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n. Ehsan Yarshater, ‘Contemporary Persian Painting’, in Highlights of Persian Art, eds Richard Ettinghausen and Ehsan Yarshater (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), 356. His first documented text in which he used the term Saqqā-khāneh School appeared in 1962 in which, while writing about Parviz Tanavoli, Emami attributes him to ‘Saqqa-khaneh School’, ‘whether he likes it or not’. Karim Emami, ‘Twin City Iranian Artists’ [Keyhan International, November 5, 1962], in Karim Emami on Modern Iranian Culture, Literature and Art, ed. Houra Yavari (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 2014), 154. According to the contents of this text, it seemed he had already used the term in the same year after the Second Tehran Biennial. The other longer text on the movement appeared in Keyhan International in 1963. See Karim Emami, ‘A New Iranian School’ [Keyhan International, June 5, 1963], in Karim Emami on Modern Iranian Culture, Literature and Art, 160–1. For more details about him and his writings, see also Chapter 2. Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n. Ibid. P. L. Willson, ‘The Saqqa-khaneh’, in Saqqakhaneh [exhibition catalogue] (Tehran: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 1977), n.p.n. Today, the simplified form of Saqqā-khāneh with the same origin but a modified function, only to offer water to the passers-by, still exists in Iranian cities. For the history and detailed description of Saqqā-khāneh, see Willem Floor, ‘Saqqā-ḵāna History’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2009), https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/saqqakana-i-history#prettyPhoto/ (accessed 7 August 2021) It was renamed the Faculty of Decorative Arts (Dāneshkadeh-ye Honar-hā-ye taz‘ini) in 1974. These graduates did not succeed in entering the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University. The faculty’s system preferred other secondary school graduates who were more successful than art graduates in the national Entrance Exam. Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n.

d isc o urse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 127









19. 20. 21. 22.

This narrative is quoted from Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n. A shrine in the town of Shahr-e Rey that today forms part of Greater Tehran. Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n. In my interview with Tanavoli in 2010, he confirmed this narrative as a true story. The examples of these products of folk culture, including religious posters in Tanavoli’s collection – all belonging to the 1950–60s – plus close affinity of the two artists in the late 1950s and early 1960s through Tanavoli’s Atelier Kaboud, supports the validity of this account. Zenderoud, however, is quoted as saying that he discovered ancient Iranian art after seeing a talismanic shirt with a prayer on it at the Iran-e Bāstān Museum (Iran National Museum) (Ruyin Pakbaz and Yaghoub Emdadian, Hossein Zenderoudi (Tehran: Māhriz Publication, 2001), 33). 23. Sadegh Tabrizi, ‘Saqqā-khāneh az ānjā pā gereft’, Faslnāmeh-ye Honar-hā-ye Tajassomi, no. 6 (1377/1998): 93. 24. The most famous art club established by Kamran Diba, Parviz Tanavoli and Roxana Saba in Tehran in 1966 was Rasht 29 where most of the key artists of the time, including those associated with Saqqā-khāneh, along with poets, musicians and filmmakers, attended on a regular basis and their works exhibited on the walls. 25. Atelier Kaboud was founded by Tanavoli with some financial support from the General Administration of Fine Arts in 1960. Gradually, this Atelier became an artistic centre for modernist artists such as Zenderoudi, Marcos Grigorian, Sirak Melkonian, Manuchehr Sheybani, Bijan Saffari and Sohrab Sepehri. The pioneer of Saqqā-khāneh, Zenderoudi, held three exhibitions there. Parviz Tanavoli, ‘Atelier Kaboud’, in Parviz Tanavoli: Sculptor, Writer and Collector, ed. David Galloway (Tehran: Iranian Art Publishing, 2000), 93. 26. Tabrizi, ‘Saqqā-khāneh az ānjā pā gereft’, 93. 27. Emami in all his writings, followed by many others, used the appendix ‘school’ to describe this tendency. I also tended to follow this path and applied the word school in my earlier writings, including ‘Saqqā-ḵāna School of Art’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ saqqa-kana-ii-school-of-art/. However, I no longer believe it is technically correct to name it a school. It was rather a widespread tendency within the Iranian art scene in the 1960s and partly 1970s. Thus, I prefer using the words tendency, movement or genre for Saqqā-khāneh throughout this book. 28. On occasions in Emami’s art critical writings in Keyhan International, he

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29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

associated artists such as Behzad Golpayegani, Fereydoun Rahimi-Asa and Ruyin Pakbaz with the Saqqā-khāneh genre while they were never akin to the movement or had any affiliation to it. See for example, Karim Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh Dominant’ [Keyhan International, April 14, 1964], in Karim Emami on Modern Iranian Culture, Literature and Art, 172. See Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n. In the MENA region, for example, the Baghdad Group for Modern Art in Iraq, Contemporary Art Group in Egypt and Casablanca Group in Morocco were all artistic groups with manifestos and collective aims represented through their works in several group exhibitions. According to Emami’s declaration in the catalogue of this exhibition and statements by such artists as Arabshahi, Oveissi and Tabatabai, they were later not satisfied that their names should be included as members of the movement. The author’s conversation with Nahid Mahdavi in New York in 2010 and email exchange with Kamran Diba in 2020. According to the catalogue of the exhibition, the show included works from collections of ‘Queen Farah Pahlavi, the Behshahr Industrial Group, Karim and Goli Emami, Mr and Mrs Kamran Diba, Mr and Mrs Homa Hajebi, Mr and Mrs Adib Hoveyda, Mr and Mrs Reza Majd, Sadegh Choubak, Massoumeh Seyhoun, Mrs Ghandriz, Louise Qotbi and the individual artists’ (Saqqakhaneh [exhibition catalogue], n.p.n.). For examination of TMoCA’s role in cultural diplomacy during the final decade of the Pahlavi dynasty, see Samine Tabatabaei, ‘Nation Branding: The Prospect of Collecting Modern and Contemporary Art in Pahlavi Iran’, in The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and its Global Entanglements, ed. Roham Alvandi (London: Gingko Library, 2018), 202–9. Mansour Ghandriz died in a car accident in March 1966. Emami, ‘Saqqakhaneh School Revisited’, n.p.n. Mohammad Reza Jowdat and Ruyin Pakbaz, ‘Nemāyeshgāh-e dasteh-jam‘iye naqqāshi’, Ketāb-e Sāl-e Tālār-e Iran (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e tālār-e Iran, 1344/1965): 10. See also Aydin Aghdashloo, ‘Baqiyeh hameh harf ast’, Honar-e Mo‘āser, no. 2 (Azar–Dey 1372/November–December 1993): 46. Although he is preferably categorised as an abstract artist within the Saqqākhāneh context, he considered himself a figurative artist who looked at subjects from an abstract perspective. Mansour Ghandriz, ‘Man beh sohulat-e bayān va āzādi-ye erādeh imān dāram’, Ferdowsi, no. 714 (1344/1965): 16. Norbert Lynton, The Story of Modern Art (Oxford: Phaidon, 1980), 2.

d isc o urse of neo-tradition a li s m  |  129 39. An exception is perhaps Tanavoli who is a passionate collector of local materials, metalwork and applied arts products of Iranian folk culture. He has extensively worked and written on the meaning and functionalities of the materials by which he has been inspired. 40. See Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, eds, Visual Culture: The Reader (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 11. 41. For more elaboration of this concept and its connection to Tanavoli’s art, see the author’s introduction to his book, ‘Parviz Tanavoli’s Small-Scale Sculptures’, in Javāherāt-e Parviz Tanavoli (Parviz Tanavoli’s Jewellery) (Tehran: Bon-gah Publication, 2008). 42. An examination of the four Persian words for art or craft – san‘at, fann, pisheh and honar – and a tracing of their usage back to the fifteenth century reveal that until the second half of the nineteenth century they were employed interchangeably. Maryam Ekhtiar, ‘From Workshop to Bazaar to Academy: Art Training and Production in Qajar’, in Royal Persian Painting: The Qajar Epoch 1785–1825, Two Hundred Years of Painting from the Royal Persian Courts, ed. Layla S. Diba (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 50–1. 43. See Sheila S. Blair, ‘Parviz Tanavoli’, in Gardens of Iran; Ancient Wisdom, New Visions (Tehran: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004), 225. 44. He had an active presence in the Iranian art scene, exhibiting his work in Tehran and participating in almost all major exhibitions and events, such as Tehran biennials and group exhibitions of modern Iranian art in Iran and abroad. 45. Emami, ‘A New Iranian School’ [Keyhan International, June 5, 1963], in Karim Emami on Modern Iranian Culture, Literature and Art, 160. 46. Emami, ‘Katouzian and Tabatabai Top Biennale Awards’, [Keyhan International, April 12, 1964], in Karim Emami on Modern Iranian Culture, Literature and Art, 169. 47. Emami, ‘Saqqa-khaneh Dominant’, 171. 48. Emami, ‘A New Iranian School’, 161. 49. There are similar tendencies and practices in the MENA region, among Arab  artists who used Arabic letters and calligraphic forms within the precepts  of modern art. Art historians of modern Arab art, such as Nada Shabout,  name  the calligraphic movement in the Arab world Hurufiyya (meaning letter) in reference to the Sufi mystic movement in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in which letters were seen as primordial signifiers and manipulators of the cosmos. See Nada M. Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007),

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50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

55.

80; and Shabout, ‘Huroufiyah: The Arabic Letter as Visual Form’, in Modern Art in The Arab World: Primary Sources, eds Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers and Nada Shabout (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 142–3. Iraqi artists Madiha Omar (1908–2005), Jamil Hamoudi (1924–2003) and later, Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), Egyptian artist Omar El-Nagdi (1931– 2019) and Sudanese artist Osman Waqialla (1924–2007) are considered as the pioneers of the genre. Lettrisme was a Paris-based avant-garde movement which started in the 1940s and flourished during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The movement had its political theory in Dada, based on the politics of language. One of the most important aspects of their work was its utopianism and creation of a new system of language. Calling themselves ‘new Dadaists’, their famous motto was ‘Dada has died and Lettrism has been born’. For further elaboration of the different calligraphic tendencies in modern art of Iran, see the author’s article, ‘Neo-calligraphism and its Different Varieties in Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art’, in Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Craft and Text, eds Mariam Rosser-Owen and Venetia Porter (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 423–42. Emami, ‘Saqqa-khaneh Dominant’, 171. After Ghandriz’s sudden death in a car accident in 1966, the Tālār was renamed after him, Tālār-e Ghandriz. In the exhibition to his commemoration, in the exhibition brochure we read, ‘an intimate, determined and noble artist left our small circle of contemporary painting, while his searches in creating a national and progressive language of painting would remain unfinished.’ Hassan Mourizinejad, ‘“Tālār” az āghāz tā pāyān’, in Tālār-e Ghandriz, tajrobeh-i dar ‘arseh-ye ejtemā‘i-ye honar, eds Ruyin Pakbaz and Hassan Mourizinejad (Tehran: Herfeh Honarmand Publication, 2018), 51. Pakbaz, Contemporary Iranian Painting and Sculpture, 33. In a note in 1963 he writes, ‘I see that my paintings along with those of my … friends are said to belong to a particular school, with much controversy. I do not see myself voluntarily staying in this school or painting in this way. It is clear that the paintings of a small group of painters have brought about this school, and Mr Karim Emami is in charge of this label. Whether we agree with it or not, labels are hardly important, thought and exposition of social and environmental realities of the artist, which constitute his world, are.’ Ruyin Pakbaz, ‘A Look at the Paintings of Mansour Qandriz’, in Mansour Qandriz, from One Sun to Another (Tehran: Nazar Publication, 2019), 12. Ibid., 12.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 131 56. Solmaz Naraghi, ‘Khallāqiyyat khatarnāk ast, Massoud Arabshahi dar goft-ogu bā Aydin Aghdashloo’ (Massoud Arabshahi in conversation with Aydin Aghdashloo), Art Tomorrow, no. +1 (spring 2010): 186–9, 189. 57. It is mostly said that Arabshahi was commissioned to produce a large number of illustrations based on the Avesta (the holy book of Zoroastrianism). However, in my interview with Arabshahi in 2009, he told me that he in fact never meant to produce those works printed in that book as illustrations of the Avesta. He had in fact already created a series of work that attracted the attention of Firouz Shirvanlu, the director of the Niavaran Cultural Centre under the Queen Farah Foundation, and then the Centre published the volume, titled Avesta from Perspective of Modern Art, with reproduction of those paintings. 58. One of the favourite subjects of the royal Qajar portraiture was representation of young female dancers, musicians and acrobats. Representing the ideal beauty in that period, the facial features of the females with joined eyebrows, almondshaped eyes, puckered lips, and flamboyant hairstyles represent these paintings. 59. Founded by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (in office 1951–3) in 1949, it was an opposition political organisation in Iran. It was the first and most important pro-democracy and nationalist group operating in Iran. 60. Meanwhile, the works of a number of artists outside these two tendencies demonstrated an affinity with calligraphy. Among others, Mansoureh Hosseini (1926–2012) and Gholamhossein Nami (b. 1936) could be cited. See my article, ‘Neo-calligraphism and its Different Varieties in Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art’. 61. Ali Mirsepassi, ‘The Imaginary Visions of Iran in 1930s and 1970s’, the lecture given at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 15 November 2018. 62. Corbin wrote four volumes, entitled En Islam Iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques that were translated from French into Persian and became highly popular among Iranian thinkers and even political figures, including the scholar of Islamic thought Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933) who was director of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. During Nasr’s directorship (1974–8), Corbin held various philosophical courses and lectures. 63. Mirsepassi, ‘The Imaginary Visions of Iran in 1930s and 1970s’, [lecture]. 64. Roham Alvandi, ed., The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and its Global Entanglements (London: Gingko Library, 2018), 2. 65. See Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, trans. Robert Campbell, ed. H. Algar (Berkeley: Mizan, 1984).

132 | the art o f i r a n 66. Ali Mirsepassi, ‘Introduction’, in Iran’s Troubled Modernity: Ahmad Fardid and His Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 17. 67. Ali Mirsepassi and Mehdi Faraji discuss the two decades of the 1960s and 1970s being witness to a cultural transformation that they call ‘quite revolution’. Quiet revolution in their view ‘refers to a “national imagination” that was fashioned in Iranian cultural institutions, as well as in intellectual circles, during the late 1960s and 1970s. It crossed political lines through the unifying notion of gharb-zadegi …’ (Ali Mirsepassi and Mehdi Faraji, ‘Iranian Cinema’s “Quiet Revolution”, 1960–1978’, Middle East Critique, vol. 26, no. 4 (2017): 1). 68. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 132. 69. Mirsepassi, ‘Introduction’, in Iran’s Troubled Modernity, 16. 70. Ibid., 6. 71. Alvandi, The Age of Aryamehr, 19–20. 72. Ibid., 19–20. 73. Kamran Diba, ‘Iran’, in Contemporary Art from the Islamic World, ed. Wijdan Ali (London: Scorpion on behalf of the Royal Society of Fine Arts Amman, 1989), 153. 74. Ibid., 153. 75. Ibid., 153. 76. The First Tehran Biennial was staged in the Abyaz palace in 1958, with the recommendation and artistic advice of Marcos Grigorian (1925–2007). This marked a turning point in modern art of Iran and reflected official sanctioning of the modern art movements. There were five series of the event held on a regular basis. The first four biennials included the works of Iranian artists. The Fifth Tehran Biennial was a regional exhibition in 1966, consisting of artists from Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. 77. For more details about periodicals in this period, see Chapter 2. 78. Ruyin Pakbaz and Mohammad Reza Jowdat, ‘Fa‘āliyyat-e mā keh dar Tālār-e Iran shekl migirad’, in Ketāb-e Sāl-e Tālār-e Iran (1344/1965), 1. 79. On artistic initiatives in the 1940s and 1950s, in particular the Khorus-jangi Society, see Chapter 2. 80. For further examination of the society, see Khayzaran Esmailzadeh, ‘Saqqākhāneh dar tasvir-e tārikh’, Herfeh Honarmand, no. 57 (autumn 2015): 61–72. 81. Darioush Homayoun, ‘Ancheh dar pish dārim’, Jām-e Jam, no.1 (1328/1949): 4.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 133 82. Homayoun, ‘Honar-e melli’, Jām-e Jam, no. 2 (Ordibehesht 1328/April 1949): 39–41. 83. It was in charge of national educational, health and cultural organisations. 84. Catalogue of the Fourth Tehran Biennial (Tehran: Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye keshvar, 1343/1964). 85. See Vishakha N. Desai, Vasif Kortun and Hamed Yousefi in Conversation with Lynn Gumpert, ‘Modernisms’, in Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, ed. Lynn Gumpert (New York: Grey Art Gallery, 2019), 26. 86. The programmes of the Shiraz Arts Festival consisted of four categories of theatre, music, traditional performance arts and film. Only a few exhibitions of modern Iranian art were included in the annual event during the initial years. For a full list of programmes see S. Afshar Ghotbi in collaboration with A. Ovanessian, ‘Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of Arts (1967–1977): Detailed Catalogue of Events’, available at: . 87. See H. E. Chehabi, ‘The Shiraz Festival and its Place in Iran’s Revolutionary Mythology’, in The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and Its Global Entanglements, ed. Roham Alvandi (London: Gingko Library, 2018), 172. 88. See Desai, Kortun and Yousefi in Conversation with Lynn Gumpert, 29. The Ministry of Culture and Arts organised its own annual Festival of Culture and Arts (  Jashn-e Farhang va honar) from 1968 to 1977, which, unlike the Shiraz Arts Festival, was based on a domestic agenda of acquainting the Iranian audience with their ‘cultural heritage’. 89. Chehabi, ‘The Shiraz Festival and its Place in Iran’s Revolutionary Mythology’, 168. 90. Alvandi, The Age of Aryamehr, 22. 91. See Tabatabaei, ‘Nation Branding’, 202–19, and Helia Darabi, ‘Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art as a Microcosm of the State’s Cultural Agenda’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 221–45. 92. Chehabi correctly maintains that although the festival contained various art forms, many of them uncontroversial, the annual festival is mostly remembered for the Western avant-garde performances that offended the sensitivities and feelings of the Iranian public. Among others, the most scandalous performance was Péter Hálasz’s play Pig, Child, Fire! at the 1977 festival which explicitly

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depicted nudity and sex. The 1977 festival was highly criticised by the opposition as a vivid representation of the Pahlavi regime’s gharb-zadegi and their disapproval of Islam and Iranian culture (Chehabi, ‘The Shiraz Festival and its Place in Iran’s Revolutionary Mythology’, 187–9). 93. Aside from a few foreign collectors, such as Abby Weed Grey, there was no strong private art market in Iran and therefore the market essentially relied on the state’s support and its institutional sponsorship. 94. For example, the exhibition Art in Iran in November 1965, entitled Art in Iran, displayed modern Iranian art, including artists associated with Saqqā-khāneh. 95. Among others, the most active ones were Honar-e Jadid (est. 1955), Sabā (est.  1963), Mess (est. 1964), Litu (est. 1971), Borghese (est. 1964), Tālār-e Ghandriz (est. 1964), Seyhoun (est. 1966), Tālār-e Naqsh (est. 1969), Sullivan (est. 1969), Zarvān (est. 1973), Zand (est. 1972) and Sāmān (est. 1976), as well as a few public ones, including Khāneh-ye Āftāb (est. 1970), Mehrshāh (est. 1973), Takht-e Jamshid (est. 1974) and the Galerie Cyrus in Paris where works of Iranian modernists were exhibited. (The renowned French art critic Michel Tapié was the key figure involved in curating exhibitions in the galley.)  96. Kamran Diba (the founding director of the museum), in the catalogue of the 1977 Saqqā-khāneh exhibition at TMoCA, after a short introduction about the importance of Saqqā-khāneh as a national modern school of art, states that ‘[w]ithout the Tehran Biennials and consistent encouragement of Her Imperial Majesty, such movements in Iranian art would not be possible’ (Saqqakhaneh, catalogue of the exhibition, n.p.n.). 97. For further examination of publications, particularly the periodicals, where this vision was encouraged, see Chapter 2. 98. Emami, ‘A New Iranian School’, 162. 99. The exhibition was held in Tehran from 21 December 1974 to 21 January 1975 and consisted of painting, sculpture and architecture. A year before, in October 1973, Iranian art including Qajar and Qahveh-khāneh paintings  together with works of modernist artists had been exhibited in the Le Salon de’Autumne in the Paris Grand Palais. According to the exhibition catalogue, the event was inaugurated with the presence of Farah Pahlavi and Claude Jacqueline Pompidou. The exhibition was aimed to be the first from a series of exhibitions of Iranian modern art with a guest country to be held annually.

d isc ourse of neo-tradition a li s m  | 135 100. ‘Payām-e olyā-hazrat Farah Pahlavi shahbānu-ye Iran’, in Catalogue of the First International Art Exhibition of Tehran (painting, sculpture, architecture), Tehran, the National Society of Cultural Relationships, 1974, n.p. 101. For a full examination of Pope’s influential work, in particular the ornament and its primordial place in Iranian arts, see Siamak Delzendeh, Tahavolāt-e tasviri-ye honar-e Iran, bar-rasi-ye enteqādi (Tehran: Nazar Publication, 2016). 102. He left the Tālār shortly after its establishment. 103. Other artists including Nasser Derakhshani, Bahram Rohani, Garnik Der Hocopian, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Hassan Vahedi and Said Shahlapour later joined the Tālār. 104. Mohammad Reza Jowdat, another close friend and colleague of Ghandriz, argues that even Ghandriz guarded against Saqqā-khāneh. N.a, ‘“Tālār” ­nemud-e yek ārmān (goft-o-gu-ye Pakbaz, Jowdat, Moslemian, Mourizi)’, in Tālār-e Ghandriz, tajrobeh-i dar ‘arseh-ye ejtemā‘i-ye honar, eds Ruyin Pakbaz and Hassan Mourizinejad (Tehran: Herfeh Honarmand Publication, 2018), 102. 105. Pakbaz, ‘Pishgoftār-e daftar-e sevvom-e “Fasli dar Honar”’, in Tālār-e Ghandriz, eds Pakbaz and Mourizinejad, 166. 106. Their theoretical ideas in practice resulted in a kind of Constructivist (due to its idealistic view of socio-cultural constructions) abstraction. Influenced by Bauhaus, although their programmes were received well by the audience, mainly university students, artists and intellectuals, through public exhibitions and discussions, their work itself could not generate any connection to the public. 107. Tanvoli was also a member, but left shortly after its formation. 108. Parviz Barati, ‘Hameh-ye risheh-ye man dar injāst’, a conversation with Gholamhossein Nami, Shargh Newspaper (18 June 2011): 8. 109. See Bavand Behpour, ‘Introduction to “The Nightingale’s Butcher Manifesto” and “Volume and Environment II”’, ARTMargins, vol. 3, no. 2 ( June 2014): 125. 110. In addition to their first presence as a collective in the First International Art Exhibition of Tehran in 1974/5, members of the group organised five exhibitions: Contemporary Iranian Artists (Mess Gallery; 1975), Ābi (Takht-e Jamshid Gallery; 1975), Gonj va Gostareh 1 (Volume and Environment I) (Iran-America Cultural Society; 1975), Basel International Art Fair, Switzerland (1976), Gonj va Gostareh 2 (Volume and Environment II) (Sāmān Gallery; 1976) and Wash Art (Washington DC; 1977). 111. These included Sirus Malek, Hannibal Alkhas, Behzad Hatam, Bahman Boroojeni,  Monir Shahroodi Farmanfarmaian, Changiz Shahvagh, Asghar

136 | the art o f i r a n Mohammadi, Ghobad Shiva, Mohammad Saleh Ala, Mohammad Ehsai, Koorosh Shishegaran and Nazi Atri. 112. In their first exhibition in the Mess Gallery (1975), Grigorian’s work was ordered to be removed from the show by officials. In the second show, Gonj va Gostareh 1 (Volume and Environment I), Grigorian exhibited unusual pieces, consisting of a chair secured with ropes to a wooden cage-like platform together with slides showing photographs of the artist sitting on a broken chair with three legs projected onto the exhibition wall, and Momayez made an installation of hanging knives from the ceiling of the gallery, both conveying political messages in reference to power relations. In the third exhibition, Ganj va Gostareh 2 (Volume and Environment II), Momayez presented a different version of his knife installation by planting twenty-five knives in twenty-five pots, one was painted in gold and placed higher than the others. According to one of the members, Nami, the installation referenced the official exhibition 25 Years of Iranian Art held around the same time. (Barati, ‘Hameh-ye risheh-ye man dar injāst’, 8.) 113. See Combiz Moussavi-Aghdam, ‘Art History, “National Art” and Iranian Intellectuals in the 1960s’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 41, no. 1 (2014): 146. This is still the dominant criticism being raised in art critical discussions in Iran. 114. See Chapter 4. Most modernist artists including those affiliated to Saqqākhāneh left the country and those who stayed had no opportunity to present their works. Some eminent members, such as Zenderoudi, who had left Iran long before the revolution, cut their links with the Iranian art scene perhaps because of a lack of official interest in their works.

4 Discourses on Post-revolutionary Art: The 1980s and early 1990s

T

his chapter examines the major discourses on art and artistic production after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. My examination is divided into two periods; first, that of the immediate aftermath of the revolution from 1979 until the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988; and the second, from 1988 until the 1997 presidential election. I argue that the effects of the revolution and its socio-political and cultural impact on artists and artistic trends in Iran should be analysed in two ways: by examining first the debates on revolutionary art, and secondly, the practical ramifications of the cultural policy of the state, which together brought about a set of fundamental changes in artistic enterprises. I examine the Islamic Republic’s official discourses and their role in the development of new post-revolutionary artistic trends. I then explore the key artistic trends and genres within the socio-cultural context of post-­ revolutionary Iran and consider the impact of the revolution on the formation of the notion of motaʿahhed (namely, committed to revolutionary aspirations) art. I look further into the 1990s and the re-emergence of the intellectual and artistic preoccupations of the pre-revolutionary generation, mainly from the 1960s, and will examine the relationship between their thoughts and those of the earlier modernist movements. Discourse of Revolutionary Art The 1979 Revolution was clearly one of the major turning points of Iranian history. The political ideology of activists in the 1960s and particularly the 1970s, inherited from nativism, populism and anti-imperialism, allowed for an extensive coalition of both leftist and Islamist political groups and individuals

138 | th e art o f i r a n to challenge the Pahlavi political system which resulted in the revolution.1 Through the post-revolution power struggle, however, the other fronts were gradually removed from the scene by the Islamists who reserved full control of the new revolutionary, now religio-centric, system. The utopianist notion of ‘returning’ to an imagined authentic Islamic self, advocated by the romantic intellectuals of the previous decades, was now fused with the global revolutionary struggle against Western and particularly American imperialism. Thus, one of the main messages of the revolution, imbued with localised imagery, was the demand for an idealised return to the past.2 Iran’s presumed revolt against modernity after 1979 is often thought to represent the culmination of a backlash against the process of modernisation undertaken by the Pahlavi regime (1925–79). In other words, it was a direct and indirect response to the policies of positivist modernity implemented by the old regime and an ontological battle against imported values versus indigenous forms of social and political identity. Accordingly, as the social scientist Haggai Ram states, the revolutionaries ‘set out to eradicate the hegemonic historical narrative of the Pahlavi monarchy by creating a counter-historical narrative that was ideally structured to fit the new teleology of the revolution’.3 Much modern culture and modernity was suddenly viewed as essentially decadent, founded upon existential and materialistic values. The idea of modernism was viewed as a danger to the religio-centric belief-structure of the Islamic (i.e. Shiite) worldview. During the first decade of the post-revolutionary period, it was almost impossible to discuss political, economic and cultural realms separately from revolutionary effects. Those profound changes in various domains of Iranian life, politics and culture after the revolution had a marked effect on the formation of post-revolutionary art. Various art patrons, such as official bodies of the Pahlavi state, public and individual collectors and gallerists, disappeared from Iran’s art world and were all replaced by the revolutionary state, which came to exert full control over all cultural affairs. Modernists were considered as representatives of tāghuti (‘infernal’; that is, being connected to the Pahlavi regime) and gharb-zadeh (Westoxificated) figures. From the early postrevolutionary years, not only did the state and other artistic, public and private sectors including ministries, banks and the press withdraw their support from modern art, which they had given before the revolution, but they even tried to battle against it or be simply indifferent to it. The challenging issue

d isc o u r ses on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 139 specifically in the first years after the revolution was that artists were prevented from interacting with the world outside Iran, which had gradually been shaped during the 1970s with the official support and through foreign societies based in Tehran. This situation indeed fostered a clash with and halt to the growth of modern art movements in Iran. Artists who were then assuredly determined to participate in global modern art and gradually even the contemporary art scene were unable to practise that way any longer. However, amid this complex situation, a number of the established modernist artists as well as a noteworthy number of emerging artists chose to stay in Iran. With the radical transformation of Iran’s cultural infrastructure, the 1979 event brought to a sudden standstill the official artistic policies of the Pahlavi regime, which were anchored in the concurrent promotion of nationalism and modernism. They were both challenged by the revolutionaries as the key cultural elements of the previous regime. The art before 1979 was affected by distinctive currents following within the mainstream of the revolution. The developing revolutionary discourse, mainly involving ideas, was concerned with developing relationships between the masses and artistic production and then with the propagandistic extension of revolutionary aspirations. During mainstream extremism, various modern art practices transferred to a sort of ideological art based on revolutionary ideals, which initially appeared to be popular among the masses – the main supporters of the revolution. Avant-garde was then seen as being too elitist and inaccessible and therefore should be banished. It was argued that modern Iranian art practices, despite expanding in the 1960s and 1970s, had lost the public.4 This ideologically based criticism embattled the modernist artists and elites arguing that they were working simply for themselves, and found fault with them because of their preference for sheer formalism over content and meaning in their works.5 Common to all of the pre-revolutionary modern art forms, was their contrast with the provocative, promotive, idealistic and persuasive language of the motaʿahhed art that presented ideologically refined products of the post-revolutionary regime. In other words, to the revolutionaries, modern art practices lacked a direct political, religious, social or ethical message to ‘educate’ and ‘guide’ the Iranian public. Similarly, the term honare mardomi (demotic popular art) in revolutionary terminology referred to a kind of r­ epresentational art portrayed through the aesthetic language of realism, symbolism and occasionally expressionism.6 The principle of honar-e mardomi

140 | th e art o f i r a n lay in the belief that art should be subservient to the ideological values of the revolution, and a tool for propaganda. In 1983, the minister of Islamic Guidance (Ershād-e eslāmi) of the time (and later, in 1997, the president), Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, announced: We ought to introduce art as one of the important branches of human culture and history, and as a way to conceive of and enhance the pious and grand human spiritual character for people, who are the symbols and embodiments of those values, and whose characters are mixed with the Islamic Revolution’s values and aspirations. [Exposing art] in any other way would be a disloyalty to both art and human beings …7

This statement is reminiscent of what Peter Chelkowsky and Hamid Dabashi call ‘art of persuasion’.8 During the first decade after the revolution, revolutionary and Islamic ideology overshadowed the production of artworks, which were transformed into a political tool, ‘designed to make legitimate claims on political obedience’.9 As a deliberate and long-lasting effort at creating propaganda in visual forms, governmental agencies, organisations and other cultural groups used the visual arts as means to promote, disseminate and solidify the objectives of the Islamic Republic. It is worthwhile noting here that a socialist trend, dealing with social and political currents of the time, had already been launched by a group of artists in the early 1970s, a few years before the revolution. These artists, largely from the younger generation, but also a number of established figures, individually attempted through their art to respond to the social and cultural changes occurring in the Iranian context and in reaction to mainstream modernism. In particular, these sensibilities were portrayed in the genre of social documentary in the works of photojournalists such as Kaveh Golestan (1950–2003), Abbas Attar (1944–2018), Bahman Jalali (1944–2009), Hengameh Golestan (b. 1952), Rana Javadi (b. 1953), Maryam Zandi (b. 1946), Mahmoud Kalari (b. 1951) and Ahmad Aali (b. 1935) (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). Meanwhile, through mainly paintings and posters, an emphasis in works of another group of artists appeared to be placed on Third Worldist and leftist concerns, yet much less on religious contents. Also recognisable was the influence of antiimperialist and anti-capitalist ideologies, already depicted in Soviet Socialist Realism and Mexican mural paintings. The Iranian-Assyrian artist Hannibal

d isc o u r ses on p ost-revol ution a r y a r t  | 141

Figure 4.1 Maryam Zandi, from the Revolution series, 1978–9, analogue black and white photo printed on gelatine paper, 24 × 29 cm.

Figure 4.2 Bahman Jalali, Sāvāk, Zarrāb-khāneh Street, from the Years of Blood and Fire series, 1979, analogue black and white photo printed on gelatine paper, n.s.

142 | the art o f i r a n Alkhas (1930–2010) was one of the key figures of this approach. Alkhas, who had graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1959, taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Tehran University where several members – younger artists, later named ‘artists of the revolution’ (honarmandān-e enqelāb) – were studying. Alkhas’s figurative expressionist style depicting mythical and religious (Assyrian-Christian) subjects now shifted to portray social and political subjects, including social inequality and the misfortunes of the poor under the Pahlavi regime (Figure 4.3). The influence of his style and aesthetic framework are traceable in a number of early works of the so-called revolutionary artists such as Kazem Chalipa and Adham Zargham. He pioneered political murals in post-revolutionary Iran by execution of one of the earliest murals, together with a group of his students, on the wall of the US Embassy in Tehran recently occupied by a group of revolutionary university students in 1980,10 and several other walls of Tehran’s main streets during

Figure 4.3 Hannibal Alkhas, Revolution, 1978, oil on canvas, 140 × 140 cm.

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 143 the early years of the post-revolution. Stylistically and thematically, he was highly influenced by Mexican murals: visual storytelling dominated by antiimperialist sentiments. In the interim, a younger generation of artists such as Nosratollah Moslemian (b. 1951), Mohammad Hassan Shiddel (1929–?), Bahman Borojeni (1942), Manouchehr Safarzadeh (b. 1943), Shahab Mousavizadeh (b. 1945), Bahram Dabiri (b. 1950), Samila Amirebrahimi (b. 1950), Niloufar Ghaderinejad (b. 1957), Ayoub Emdadian (b. 1950) and Masoud Sadedin (b. 1956) joined this movement in the 1970s. Of these independent artists, the Shishegaran brothers (Koorosh, Behzad and Esmail) stand out for their creation of very popular posters on the theme of revolution and anti-imperialism (Figure 4.4). By representing vivid and familiar symbols such as guns and

Figure 4.4 Koorosh Shishegaran, Revolution After One Year, 1980, offset print poster, 70 × 50 cm.

144 | the art o f i r a n clenched fists – symbols of solidarity, unity, strength, defiance or resistance – mixed with ambiguous screwed spring-like lines, Koorosh Shishegaran’s posters provided a sense of community in a context increasingly characterised by extreme mobility and rapid change. Their aim was in fact to pursue a bold new language that would achieve the wishes and needs of the era of the crowd. This phase, however, came to a complete halt due to the incompatibility of their political interests with the master narrative of the Islamic Republic. It was already clear that this group of artist’s practices had nothing in particular to do with Islamic sentiments, and the artists had no shame in following their separate paths ideologically. It was, therefore, simply not to be tolerated by the new state that these Third Wordlist revolutionary concerns, previously very popular even among the different factions involved in the revolution, be practised after the consolidation of the Islamic Republic. Much of the ‘revolutionary art’ was executed by a group of young ideological artists who shared common socio-political, revolutionary and certain religious interests. These artists exhibited their large-scale paintings in a major show in the Ershad Assembly (Hoseyniyyeh-ye Ershād) in Tehran, quite an unusual space for an art exhibition, in 1978, a few months before the victory of the revolution.11 The Assembly was a non-traditionalist Islamic institute and was normally known for lectures on history, culture, society and religion mostly attended by university students. Several ‘religious-intellectuals’ such as Ali Shariati (1933–77) held anti-Pahlavi talks there during the 1970s. This marked the beginning of the Centre of Islamic Thought and Art (Howzeh-ye andisheh va honar-e eslāmi), later under the Centre of Islamic Propaganda Organisation (Sāzmān-e tablighāt-e eslāmi). A few years later, in 1982, poets, film-makers, writers and musicians joined the group and established the Artistic Centre of Islamic Propaganda Organisation (Howzeh-ye honariye sāzmān-e tablighāt-e eslāmi).12 The most important figures of the group (mainly art students at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University, and the Tehran Faculty of Decorative Arts) include Kazem Chalipa (b. 1957), Hossein Khosrowjerdi (b. 1957), Habibollah Sadeghi (1957–2022), Nasser Palangi (b. 1957) and Iraj Eskandari (b. 1956), and later Mostafa Goudarzi (b. 1960), Ali Vazirian (b. 1960), Abdolmajid Hosseini Rad (1959–2014), Morteza Asadi (b. 1958), Abolfazl Aali (1955–87) and Abdolhamid Ghadirian (b. 1960).

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 145 It soon became obvious that the ‘artists of the revolution’ were formally supported by cultural officials and their works appeared in all public places through different formats such as posters and murals. During the 1980s these artists filled exhibition halls, civic institutions and public spaces, the most important one the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art,13 now being used as a majestic gallery space for public exhibitions, with large propaganda paintings, posters and murals. In the introduction to what proved to be one of the major official post-revolutionary exhibitions, held at the TMoCA in 1983 on the fifth anniversary of the victory of the revolution, exhibiting the mota‘ahhed art, reflections on the contents could be traced: The dominant atmosphere of the works demonstrates a united message of artists who have created their art with sincerity, faith, and solemnity compliant with principles of the Islamic Revolution, posing the messages of the revolution and, more importantly, creating a committed and eloquent art. We need to believe that after an interval of dormancy in the formation of post-revolutionary art, particularly the visual arts, caused by the early conflicts after the revolution, we can now see in these exhibitions the flowering and growth of talent; artists whose art does not originate in dilettantism but is full of message, faith, and sincerity.14

In terms of theory, as the above quote reflects, the frequent use of such equivocal expressions as ‘spiritual identity’ and ‘elevation of forms’ for Iran’s postrevolutionary art, along with the absence of principles and accurate methods for its analysis, only intensified problems of its definition. For example, a message that Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–89) addressed to artists in September 1988 urged that revolutionary art be conceived as ‘the gnosis of challenge’, ‘the rejection of uncommitted art and art for art’s sake’, ‘the revolt against violence’, ‘the illustration of martyrdom’ and the ‘dedication to Islamic values’.15 In practice, the various forms of revolutionary art practices, especially posters, stamps and murals,16 calligraphic forms, geometric patterns and Shiite iconography were dominant features, mixed with figuration and promotive quality inspired by other twentieth-century revolutionary art, especially that from the Soviet Union, Mexico and Cuba (Figure 4.5). In spite of the central difference between the Iranian revolution and those main revolutions of the twentieth

146 | th e art o f i r a n

Figure 4.5 Habibollah Sadeghi, Rami Jamarāt, 1985, oil on canvas, 200 × 150 cm.

century, namely in their forward-looking approach based on Marxist utopianism, and the 1979 Revolution’s focus on the Islamic past in order to redefine the future – the systems of artistic production, centred on radical and propagandist ideas, were alike. Furthermore, as the historian Nikki Keddie convincingly contends, the Islamic state incorporated features of socialism and a ‘Third Worldist’ reaction against the West, while simultaneously retaining the Islamic identity that was still central to most Iranians.17 Social commitment and storytelling conveying persuasive political messages were among the most common features of these works and further increased their popularity and acceptance among the public, since they were direct and readily comprehensible. Popular beliefs and rituals were transformed into banknotes, stamps and school textbooks, all aiming towards mass mobilisation for the revolution and war.18 There were constantly various links between political propaganda, religious ideology and visual expression in these works. In particular, after the onset of Iran–Iraq War

d isc o u r ses on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 147 (1980–8), praising martyrdom with an emphasis placed on simulation of the war and the battle of Karbala in AD 680, in accordance with the official narrative of the Islamic Republic, was depicted in various means of visual expressions (Figure 4.6). Addressing both the imposition of the war by Saddam Hussein on Iran and the Iranian people’s massive sacrifice on the battlefield defending their country against Iraqi troops, the war was officially termed the ‘Imposed War’ (jang-e tahmili) or ‘Sacred Defence’ (defāʿ-e moqaddas). In the revolutionary artists’ repertoire, martyrdom emerged as the dominant theme with the use of Shiite iconography and symbols. Political murals, in particular, reflected ‘one of the most tactical and long-lasting visual efforts aimed at promoting martyrdom, and especially martyrs of the Iran–Iraq War’.19 Quranic verses or sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini were also a prominent feature in murals written in Persian and Arabic, and occasionally even in English. Large politically charged public murals expressing a deep commitment to the revolutionary values and commemorating the revolutionary struggles and the war’s heroes were painted on the main walls of the cities to mobilise the viewers during the war (Figure 4.7). During this period, art centres were established in various ministries and militia units, including the Martyr and Veterans Affair Foundation (Bonyād-e shahid va jānbāzān) and the War Propaganda Army-Staff (Setād-e tablighāt-e jang)

Figure 4.6 Kazem Chalipa, Self-sacrifice, 1981, oil on canvas, 300 × 200 cm.

148 | th e art o f i r a n

Figure 4.7 Unknown artist, mural painting, Tehran.

– all of which promoted the Islamic Republic’s official discourses on the war. At this juncture, the so-called Cultural Revolution20 (1980–3) caused the temporary closing down of all universities, which affected them destructively through the process of ‘cleansing’ universities of dissident professors and students. The main aim was to ‘purify’ the education system from Western influences as well as from staff who did not believe in the Islamic system – being secular or leftist – both main forces against the regime’s theocratic ideology. In addition to interrupting the education and professional career of many, it struck a major blow to Iran’s cultural and intellectual life and achievement.21 After the re-opening, like the other fields of studies, art institutions came under the absolute dominance of revolutionary ideological agendas. This situation lasted throughout the 1980s; nevertheless, after the end of the war in 1988 the production of art as propaganda meaningfully diminished. Resurgence of Post-revolutionary Modernism The end of the war marked the second phase of post-revolutionary art and culture which was in dialogue with modernity. If the revolution initially constituted a watershed with regard to the issue of modernity, about a decade later an urgent post-revolutionary need to cope with modernity emerged in both Iranian society and culture. This period saw the reflection of the issue of national identity on an art informed by national-Islamic characteristics

d isc o u r ses on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  |  149 coupled with modernist paradigms. Gradually from the late 1980s and increasingly during the 1990s, new trends including post-revolutionary modernism started to resurface. By the end of the war, Iranian society started to reconstruct itself after the destruction caused by the conflict in different realms including sociocultural and economic life. According to the Islamic Republic’s terminology, this period, corresponding with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency (1989–97), was termed the ‘Reconstruction’ period. One of the key political developments in this period was marked by Rafsanjani’s skill in promoting his pragmatic policies in the face of resistance from Islamic revolutionary extremists. He favoured scaling down Iran’s isolation from the international scene, inter alia with reintroducing its relationship with Europe as part of a strategy to use foreign investment and free enterprise to recover the country’s war-torn economy. At the same time, the eight-year war with Iraq was to create crucial problems in Iran for years; nonetheless, it led to an increasing sense of nationalism throughout the country. The early revolutionary Islamic universalist tendency (pan-Islamism echoed in such themes as ‘export of the revolution’ and disapproval of nationalism) had contributed to the Islamists’ susceptibility to patriotic values. Yet, the state increasingly adapted its universalist Islamic ideology to the national context. Furthermore, according to the sociologist Farzin Vahdat, ‘[i]n its own peculiarly dialectical manner, [the Islamic] discourse has not completely abandoned the principles of modernity. Indeed, the contradictions it has engendered can be viewed as driving the dynamic search for modernity since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.’22 Moreover, Haggai Ram contends that The fact that Iran’s postcolonial realities remain wedded to, and embedded in, Eurocentric discursive formations and subjectifications is perhaps yet another testimony to the 1979 revolution’s failure to live up to its decolonizing, emancipatory vision of overthrowing the Shah’s brand of repressive modernity in favor of what Michel Foucault controversially described as the politics of ‘Islamic spirituality’.23

Posing a critical account of the notion of ‘epochal break’, despite its dominance in the discourse of Iranian history, Ram further interestingly argues that the 1979 Revolution ‘did not serve as an epistemic or epochal break in Iranian

150 | the art o f i r a n history’.24 The sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol also confirms that ‘revolutionary crises are not total breakpoints in history that suddenly make anything at all possible if only it is envisaged by willful revolutionaries’.25 In Iran’s post-war reconstruction period, the country’s embrace of relative economic development transformed the underlying social contract from one of revolutionary sentiments and existential oppositions to one grounded in expectations of development and progress. Therefore, it is not surprising that during the late 1980s and early 1990s new trends, attitudes and methods, distinguished from those of the earlier post-revolutionary art, unfolded dynamically. Modern art practice, after about a decade, was regenerated and showed renewed influence in the early 1990s. Up till then the core of works exhibited in the formal exhibitions – the most important ones held on anniversaries of the revolution – mounted in various public spaces comprised the works of the motaʿahhed artists, later together with a range of traditional arts including calligraphy and miniature painting that was then termed Irano-Islamic Negārgari.26 During the early 1990s, however, a survey of the works presented in the national biennials shows that a small, yet fully visible, section of these exhibitions included the works of the aforementioned artists, in particular those of revolutionaries. The majority of the works reflected a modernist tendency towards traditional motifs and folklore arts (Figure 4.8). In this era, cultural officials, in particular the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Vezārat-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi; formerly the Ministry of Islamic Guidance),27 which was in charge of cultural and artistic affairs, eagerly proposed revolutionary and Islamic (Shiite) cultural values that should supposedly result in formation of the so-called ‘Irano-Islamic art’, gaining its own characteristics different from Western art. The expressed interest of officials within the country explicitly promoted these values as resistance to what they called the ‘cultural aggression’ (tahājom-e farhangi) of the West. These expressions were still influenced by the ontological and political underpinnings of gharb-zadigi (Westoxification), addressed through a critical interpretation of the works of Iranian intellectuals during the 1960s and 1970s.28 The distinguishing features of this climate, now led by political elites in the 1980s up until the early 1990s, were still anti-colonialism, antiWesternism, and a desire to find one’s authentic culture. More specifically, there was continued preoccupation during these decades with ‘the West’ as

d isc o u r ses on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 151

Figure 4.8 Hayedeh Salehi Lorestani, Still-Life, 1995, gouache and collage on paper, 80 × 60 cm.

a universal model dominating a troubled Iranian ‘self ’ and a resistance to an imperialist West. At the same time, while the young generation of artists were keen to use the ‘modern language’ of art, a deliberate resuscitation and reconstruction of traditional Iranian art by a ‘profound’ study of its foundations was recommended by official art custodians. However, those aims did not appear to be anchored in any specific theoretical foundations or practical patterns, particularly in art practice. In practice, theoretical discourse of modernism was additional to the issues of cultural concern with which artists were engaged within the country. A large body of art works created in this era – remaining there for almost a decade – demonstrates the characteristic hesitation of a transitional episode between revolutionary radicalism and the upcoming contemporary concerns. This period still saw the maintenance of the ever-present concern for legitimacy with tributes to the past in the name of the future. Now, a host of older questions resurfaced. The romantic intellectual ideas of the 1960s and 1970s with a return to an ‘authentic’ and glorified Iranian and Islamic self were now also cases in point. The struggle of the generation of artists in the period before the revolution, mainly during the 1960s when modern Iranian art was

152 | the art o f i r a n at its peak, and its concern about the issue of cultural identity had resulted in nationalist artistic movements. The Saqqā-khāneh movement was the epitome of this concern in that period.29 In the 1990s, the issue of an art informed by national identity was again an underlying precept of compelling force. During the period after the revolution, the population greatly increased and largely consisted of young people. Despite various difficulties and restrictions caused by the revolution and war, a great many of the younger generation gravitated towards different forms of arts, especially the visual arts. At the same time, a new middle-class and technically educated stratum of the Iranian population was formed, and a large number of the younger members of this class studied fine art and music and this resulted in significant production. Hence, the number of artists and applicants to study or practice art increased tenfold over what it had been in the 1970s. By the end of the 1980s, commercial galleries that had hitherto been inactive or closed gradually started to reactivate their careers, while a few new public spaces were also established. They began to exhibit non-political and nonpropaganda art; the majority were various forms of modern art. By then the Iranian artistic scene seemingly required a comprehensive exhibition in which various post-revolutionary artistic activities and tendencies could be aired. Following several years of haphazard activity, the Visual Arts Administration (Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye tajassomi), under the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, began organising regular art biennials and triennials,30 all mainly held at the TMoCA, the Niavaran Cultural Centre, Vahdat (formerly Roudaki) Hall and the Azadi Cultural Centre. The most important and controversial among them was the First Iranian Painting Biennial, opened in the autumn of 1991, twelve years after the revolution. Although this biennial was in reality the sixth, since there had been five Tehran biennials before the revolution,31 it seemed that the organisers did not find it necessary to justify its title.32 The introduction to the catalogue of the biennial still praises motaʿahhed art, however, now with a softer tone and an addition of issues such as the importance of national identity and its exposure in Iranian art. At the same time, it condemns the earlier modern art practices, most probably affiliated to the pre-revolutionary artists, as symbols of ‘imitation’.33 Put forward as one of the key issues of the first biennial was the question of ‘cultural authenticity’. However, there was no

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol ution a r y a r t  | 153 standard definition of or literature regarding this term, a rhetorical device that referred largely to post-Islamic Iranian culture. For example, the same introduction to the biennial reads: Revision of values and authenticities is neither an artistic and mental reaction nor a weakness towards modernism. Rather it is a solid attempt to attain an artistic identity that is understood based on visual and subjective frameworks originating from our … cultural authenticity …34

The organisers nonetheless seemed to require a justification for the major component of the exhibition that was non-political, by addition of an optional theme to the biennial, entitled ‘Palestine’.35 As such, the biennial secretariat aimed to emphasise its allegiance to revolutionary aspirations and one of the ongoing issues in the Islamic world. During the first biennial, the TMoCA hosted a conference entitled ‘The  First Visual Arts Conference’, in which scholars and artists discussed the  issue of ‘cultural and artistic identity’ (hoviyyat-e farhangi va honari) and  the  portrayal of national identity in art.36 The introduction to the ­conference proceedings tries to frame this question by saying, What response have we contrived against the mighty storm of recent centuries that has blown from the West and has assumed different shape and emphasis in every period? Is there any way to preserve our culture and art? What is the responsibility of the young generation of revolutionary artists? [To answer to] these questions and tens of similar questions, we hold this conference.37

The contents of the debates and arguments of the conference bear an immediate resemblance to the key artistic and intellectual concerns in the period before the revolution, in particular the 1960s. Cultural and artistic identity were themes that had already been thoroughly discussed then, even though now a new emphasis was placed on ‘revolutionary’ and the Islamic essence of contemporary Iranian culture.38 Hence, despite the fact that this debate prioritised the content of traditional values over the forms, it did not essentially differ from the earlier one. Interestingly twelve years after the revolution, the subject of the ‘identity crisis’ re-emerged. It appeared that the cultural officials of the Islamic Republic had hoped that the biennial could characterise in both

154 | the art o f i r a n form and content a kind of national Islamic art, in accordance with the socalled Islamic revolutionary values. The major part of the biennial consisted of works representing a tendency that took inspiration from traditional materials, featuring forms of pre-Islamic Persian arts, Islamic motifs, scenes of Sufi dancing, details of traditional architecture and elements of folklore arts as references, through modernistic approaches and occasionally through realistic forms. The priority was explicitly given by the biennial judging panel to the artists’ attention paid to formal aesthetics of then called Irano-Islamic art, including geometric motifs and calligraphy, representation of religious traditions and rituals, and so on.39 The first biennial also featured the works of different traditional genres, including Qahveh-khāneh (coffeehouse) and Negārgari (including miniatures and illuminations) painting. The other increasingly popular genre was Naqqāshi-khatt (calligraphic painting), exhibited through the works of the established pre-revolutionary artists, along with a new generation who had joined the club. Unlike other modernists such as Saqqā-khāneh artists, the artists practising this genre were able to continue their artistic career in the post-revolutionary era, mainly because of inclusion of religious and even occasionally revolutionary content in their work. The following national biennials in the early 1990s, including the Second Iranian Painting Biennial held in 1993, followed almost the same path, but gradually acquired a more moderate attitude towards modernism. A number of established modernist artists were invited to exhibit their works next to the huge number of emerging artists, a great many of them women artists, who enthusiastically experimented with various modernistic approaches. There was no particular restriction in subject matter or content applied in these exhibitions any more. Although the selection criteria bore parallels with those of the first biennial and earlier exhibitions,40 it was clear by then that the nature of Iranian art was now tending towards modernism. The dominant approach was to synthesise traditional forms and concepts with modern tactics, what could be termed neo-traditionalism.41 In the succeeding biennials, the majority of existing trends being practised in the art  scene were represented – mostly leaning towards modernistic approaches – with the exception of Negārgari, which as of 1993 was given separate biennials. There was, however, no sign of ‘contemporary art’ yet,

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  |  155 among all these practices exhibited in the national biennials up until the 2001 exhibition of Conceptual Art. While the cultural officials suggested that more attention be directed to national and Islamic arts as a solution to the crisis of Iran’s artistic identity, there was no proposition about the creation of a ‘national school of art’.42 One of the projected solutions was that artworks should refer to the ‘principal structures’ of past Iranian art – not simply a formal reference, but should instead be concerned with the content and meaning of the traditional arts.43 Another growing ambition, now stated openly throughout the formal discussions, was participation in the international art scene, which would later become a central target for both artists and cultural officials. Until then in the post-revolutionary period, there were only a few occasions that mainly traditional, rather than modern, artistic productions were exhibited abroad. The first Iranian arts and crafts comprehensive exhibition, named ‘A Festival of Iranian Art’, was held in Dusseldorf, Germany from 12 September to 13 October 1991. Launched to introduce ‘Iranian art to the West’, this exhibition encompassed 150 works, most of them by traditional Iranian artists and craftsmen, including miniature paintings, carpets, calligraphy, Qahveh-khāneh paintings, ceramics, tiles, and so on.44 It was conceivably aimed to represent the pre-defined Islamic nature of post-revolutionary Iran through these samples. It would have also categorically met the presupposed Orientalist perception of art from Iran. Now, for the first time during the national biennials there were suggestions about the need to participate in the international art scene by exhibiting modern art productions by Iranian artists abroad. There also existed ideas about inviting foreign judges45 or turning the biennials into an international biennial,46 conceivably on the model of the Fifth Tehran Biennial in 1966 and other similar pre-revolutionary events of the 1960s and 1970s.47 The idea of sponsoring international exhibitions was also announced by the art officials as one of the upcoming programmes on the agenda.48 The ‘preservation of artistic identity’ through the ‘deliberate’ attention to ‘resuscitation’ and ‘reconstruction’ of traditional Iranian art was recommended to artists as the main condition for a successful presence on the international scene.49 Meanwhile, the necessity of paying more attention to modernism and its universal language was a similar concern to that of the pre-revolutionary biennials, particularly of the 1960s.50 This idea was

156 | th e art o f i r a n predominantly supported by the modernist art critics and artists whose main goal now was the revival of modernism in art in Iran. Ruyin Pakbaz, for example, suggested that when Iranian artists confront ‘cultural aggression’, instead of sheltering in tradition, namely a few clichéd patterns, artists should apply the language of modern art.51 However, it did not seem there was yet a great appetite for ‘contemporary art’. Visible among members of the intelligentsia living in post-revolution Iran were similar signs of sensitivity to the issue of cultural identity and to the situation of Iranian society in an ever-changing world. This sensibility was typically reflections on the conjunction of modernism and traditionalism that structured Iranian society. In his book Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Society Confronting the West (1992), the philosopher Dariush Shayegan talks about ‘the mental distortions afflicting those civilizations that have remained on the sidelines of history and played no part in the festival of changes’.52 Focusing on the Iranian case, he underlines how enriching the situation can be if one accepts the ambivalent challenge consciously, lucidly and without resentment. Similarly, there were suggestions about the inevitability of an awareness of this peripheral situation: ‘Man of the border zones’ who carries all the relations and cultural baggage of his entire past and present, with all their contradictions and paradoxes,53 nevertheless is keen to participate in the ‘festival of changes’. Intellectuals now more ardently discussed modernity and its essential presence in Iranian culture and art, maintaining that through an organic approach to contemporary Iranian life, artists could creatively combine modern aesthetic language of art with any traditional materials that could still be meaningful. From their point of view, a dialogue with contemporary life, culture and interests needs to be established in this art. At the same time, these intelligentsias criticised the insufficiently informed imitation and acceptance of modernism, which might result in a superficial modishness, while also opposing a worthless return to the past by the mere reproduction of the traditional image.54 Now, the phrase ‘creating a modern Iranian visual language’ was used to explain the approach of the modernists, namely neo-traditionalist artists, whose goal was described as an effort to establish a self-determining style of modern art. In their practices, then, the most crucial concern was automatically the question of visual language.

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol ution a r y a r t  | 157 Post-revolutionary Neo-traditionalism During the early 1990s, neo-traditionalism increasingly started to develop among young practising artists. These neo-traditionalists, like their precursors of the 1960s, aimed at creating an equilibrium between the historical past and modernism. This neo-traditional art should also be positioned within modernist discourse because it was mainly the product of the newly formed situation, in which the dominant artistic conversation about artists’ own cultural values was acknowledged in parallel with modern social values. Although, for a decade, officials had tried to promote the importance of attention to the ‘meanings and contents behind the sheer traditional forms’, since there was no theoretical and practical agenda to support this prescription, the focus of most of these artists remained on formal solutions. In practice, the revolution and its precepts created a gap between the two generations of pre-revolutionary neo-traditionalists and the post-revolutionary modernists whose aims and strategies appeared to closely resemble each other. Accordingly, it seemed the emerging practitioners were not fully aware of the former generation’s experiences and indeed their artistic enterprises. Hence, it was not unexpected to discover parallel experimental patterns in the works of young modernists of the 1990s to those of Saqqā-khāneh artists. Revival of symbolic motifs, iconographical elements from folkloric and religious culture, local crafts, traditional forms of Persian painting, Qajar portraiture and calligraphic patterns – now also themes of ancient Iranian mythology and mysticism – with use of similar techniques to those neo-traditionalist works, including seal’s effect and gold sheets mounted on the canvas, textures inspired by traditional Iranian architecture, such as mud, straw and coloured tiles, all made a reappearance through modernistic paraphrases. Despite the fact that the majority of the exhibiting works both in the national exhibitions, such as biennials, and in the growing number of commercial galleries55 proved this dominance, this observation was not totally inclusive of all modern art productions, in particular those created by the more established figures. The latter belonged to a generation that had the opportunity to undergo two courses of twentieth-century Iran: pre- and post-revolution, and to assimilate both periods practically and intellectually. The same parallel could be traceable in Iranian poetry and fiction, which in Iran’s post-war period, despite all restrictions and censorship imposed by the

158 | the art o f i r a n state, flourished. Modern poetry and literature grew within a complex situation and the suppression of dissent through the works of both established and emerging actors in this period. Throughout the great variety of the 1990s neo-traditionalists, two main approaches could be perceived: figuration and abstraction. Through a modernist lens, the figurative artists were involved in social concepts while simultaneously drawing from the conceptual and pictorial aspects of art of the past. Experimenting with a variety of modern approaches, particularly expressionism, symbolism and surrealism, representation of mythological and epic subjects from traditional sources such as the Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh also emerged as their references to past Iranian culture.56 Their endeavour was to adapt these subjects to the modernist frameworks. Amongst the great number of both established and particularly emerging artists, most notable figures of this genre were Nosratollah Moslemian (b. 1951), Ahmad Amin-Nazar (b.  1955), and Jamshid Haghighat Shenas (b. 1963). Particularly exemplary were the works of Moslemian. While continually re-examining and reinterpreting traditional Iranian artistic sources, his art concerned contemporary socio-political realities, especially those being practised in Iranian society. His paintings were complex and presented experimental attempts with techniques and styles, mostly where figuration meets abstraction. Works of Moslemian (living and working in Karaj) represent a generation who witnessed one of the most crucial periods of Iranian history and such events as revolution and war, and their aftermaths. While being aware of the preceding modernist artistic movements,57 this generation was more crucially involved in the ever-present challenges of cultural engagement. Herein, the work of Moslemian is an eloquent representative of the characteristics of post-­revolutionary Iranian art. Although his work was first rooted in radical political ideologies in the 1970s, it then moved to a more poetic expression, even the works in which he addresses disasters of the Iran–Iraq War. Many of his paintings register the impact of conflict and the turmoil of the present time in Iran and are continually referring to those existing realities, which are not explicitly visible, yet need to be examined. His work reveals social confrontations and elicits a wide variety of emotional responses and interpretations, as if to him the process of creating means discovering contradictions and connections, continuity and disruption, and exploring the idea of beauty versus

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 159 reality. In his canvases, familiar visual elements and symbols inspired by ancient Iranian myths, visual vocabulary and poetry such as Mother Earth, romantic couples and ethereal women represent political metaphors. As a model of clarity, the suspension of various elements in his canvases is the epitome of the paradox and suspense which exist in his society and life. As such, his art is highly autobiographical.58 He believes that it is expected of an artist to explore his own background when he acts towards the complicated realities existing in the contemporary world. With this reaction to the world, the artist exploits elements from his own culture and those of others. Having selected his visual vocabulary from ancient myth, classical poetry and even Qajar art, Moslemian’s art increasingly tended to critically explore these traditional patterns and cultural symbols in order to address the existing conflicting nature of Iranian politics and society at large (Figure 4.9). In addition to the aforementioned neo-calligraphic genre, in abstract works of this period there existed interest in post-Islamic Iranian art, favouring mystical and spiritual concepts. Notable figures of this genre were Jafar Rouhbakhsh

Figure 4.9 Nosratollah Moslemian, Untitled, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 190 × 250 cm.

160 | the art o f i r a n (1941–96), Ziaodin Emami (1922–2008) and Homayoun Salimi (b. 1948). Although Rouhbakhsh began his professional career in the years before the revolution, his most prolific artistic career was shaped in the post-revolutionary years, especially the 1990s, during which he was an active and influential artist and art teacher. His paintings during the late 1980s and 1990s closely correspond to early Saqqā-khāneh works, in particular Zenderoudi’s initial paintings, forming the background with geometrical shapes and filling them in with numerous tiny signs and unreadable pseudo-hieroglyph elements. Rouhbakhsh’s use of stylised elements does not aim to depict any familiar traditional motifs or patterns, either drawn from Iranian folk art or religious sources, but to freshly examine the geometric structure of past Iranian-Islamic art and architecture. Forms in his painting are not thematic; they are rather independent entities, free of any narrative or symbolic meaning (Figure 4.10). The visual implications of the picture were created through abstract elements, resulting in pictographic metaphors and poetic feelings without any reference to a literary text.

Figure 4.10 Jafar Rouhbakhsh, Untitled, 1994, oil on canvas, 70 × 50 cm.

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol ution a r y a r t  | 161 In this context, a number of established artists – many active since the 1960s – began to reactivate their presence in the art scene more effectively. Artists including Aydin Aghdashloo (b. 1940), Ali Akbar Sadeghi (b. 1937), Shahla Habibi (b. 1945), Parvaneh Etemadi (b. 1947), Mehdi Hosseini (b.  1943), Mohammad Ali Taraghijah (1943–2010) and Farah Ossouli (b. 1953) in various ways addressed references to traditional Iranian materials, such as Persian painting and old Iranian crafts. They, however, adapted and appropriated them into their own self-determined styles. Along with these artists, other groups of modernists thrived in this period. Among them, there were those who had started their career before the revolution, but some were from the younger generation whose practices represented different genres of post-revolutionary modernism. Among the most prolific established artists, working in a variety of stylistic approaches and media including painting, sculpture and photography, one can name Alireza Espahbod (1952–2007; see Figure 4.11), Farideh Lashaei (1944–2013), Samila Amirebrahimi (b. 1950), Bahram Dabiri (b. 1950), Iraj Karimkhan Zand (1952–2006), Koorosh Shishegaran (b. 1945),

Figure 4.11 Alireza Espahbod, Untitled, 1998, acrylic and oil on canvas, 110 × 110 cm.

162 | th e art o f i r a n Saeed Shahlapour (b. 1944), Ya‘qub Ammamehpich (b. 1946), Bahman Jalali (1944–2009) and Pariyoush Ganji (b. 1945). Conclusion For about a decade, art practices in Iran were under the excessive influence of revolutionary values while modernism was viewed as a threat to the Islamic worldview endorsed by the revolution. Those characteristic currents succeeding within the prevailing aspirations of the revolution created a sort of promotive and persuasive art, termed motaʻahhed, that overshadowed all other types of modernist art productions. The emerging revolutionary discourse was concerned with the propagandistic stream of revolutionary goals. This situation remained until the end of the Iran–Iraq War when post-revolutionary modern art started to take shape. This development occurred with the contribution of pre-revolutionary established figures along with a generation of newcomers whose main preoccupation was to create modern works while addressing the issue of cultural specificity. The dominance of the latter trend became gradually obvious through the formal national art exhibitions and the art scene in Iran in the early 1990s. The synthesis of traditional materials and concepts with modernist strategies would define the unequivocal feature of work of these artists, what could be termed post-revolutionary neo-traditionalism. The 1990s also saw an increasing push for political reform. From the mid1990s, during the latter part of the so-called Reconstruction period within the Islamic Republic, as the political scientist Mehrzad Boroujerdi remarks, the state could no longer afford to ignore the open calls of a critical mass of secularminded professionals, who were demanding the liberalisation of the educational system, relaxation of artistic and cultural restraints and abandonment of cultural xenophobia towards the West.59 It was the 1997 presidential election, in which Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, the former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance (1983–92), was elected president that marked a turning point in the contemporary history of Iran, whereby post-revolutionary Iran entered a new phase. From 1997 on, reformists won several elections with huge majorities and instituted an increased relative relaxation in the press and other cultural matters with reformist ideas. It marked a future transitional stage brought about by Iranians from all walks of life, but especially by the young and by women, who displayed a clear sense of having the right for decisive

d isc o u r ses on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 163 participation in their own destinies and the affairs of their country. By opening up society to more liberal democratic circumstances, the modernist movement and more importantly contemporary art practices paved the way for developing new discourses in Iranian art and culture. One of the direct outcomes caused by the opening of cultural boundaries was the development of artistic and cultural dialogue with the outside world. While weight was still given by officials to the depiction of Iranian artistic heritage, even in contemporary art practices in interaction with the international contemporary art scene in the new millennium,60 as we will see in the following chapters, in the upcoming decades artists gradually claimed their own individual cultural space versus the state’s formulations. Notes  1. See Roham Alvandi, ‘Introduction’, in The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and its Global Entanglements, ed. Roham Alvandi (London: Gingko Library, 2018), 25.  2. Lynn Gumpert, ‘Introduction’, in Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution, eds Shiva Balaghi and Lynn Gumpert (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 11.  3. Haggai Ram, ‘Multiple Iconographies: Political Posters in the Iranian Revolution’, in Picturing Iran, 98.  4. Mostafa Goudarzi, ‘Darāmadi bar naqqāshi-ye mo‘āser-e Iran’, Faslnāmeh-ye Honar-hā-ye Tajassomi, no. 2 (1377/1998): 66.  5. Ibid., 66.  6. Meanwhile, interestingly, works such as those of the Qajar court artist Kamal al-Molk (1848–1940) and his followers that had long been removed from the Iranian art scene since the ascendance of modernist art in the 1940s, resurfaced again and were exhibited in official exhibitions, perhaps because of their naturalistic language and also ‘anti-modern’ character.  7. Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, ‘Honar-e risheh-yāfteh az adyān’, Faslnāmeh-ye Honar, no. 3 (1362/1983): 16.  8. Peter Chelkowski and Hamid Dabashi, Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2000), 32.  9. Ibid., 32. Using art as a political tool was up to a degree similar to what was practised in other countries in the MENA region, particularly in Iraq. After the Iraqi Socialist Baath party assumed power succeeding the July 1968 Revolution,

164 | th e art o f i r a n

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

art was considered by the state as a propaganda tool. The government had total control over Iraqi artistic production, exclusively promoting Baathist propaganda art during the 1970s and 80s. For a full account of art in Iraq during these decades, see Nada Shabout, ‘Modern Arab Attitude Toward Art’, in Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 54. In November 1979 a group of Iranian revolutionary college students, later named  Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line (Daneshjuyān-e mosalmān-e peyrow-ye khatt-e emām), took over the US Embassy in Tehran and seized ­hostages – fifty-two US diplomats and citizens. After Khomeini’s supporting statement, in revolutionary terminology, the embassy was called the ‘American spy den’ (Lāneh-ye jāsusi-ye āmrikā) while in the West the situation was known as the Hostage Crisis. The hostages were held for 444 days until January 1981 when they were released after the outcome of the American Presidential Election with the victory of Republican Ronald Reagan. Alkhas, who was the mentor of several members of these artists, participated in this exhibition, although he later chose a separate path from this group and their joint programmes. For publications by the ACIPO, see Chapter 2. The Museum was reopened in 1980 almost a year after the revolution with an exhibition of paintings curated by Hannibal Alkhas, representing different revolutionary ideological ideas, including those by leftists, socialists and Islamists. The first director of the TMoCA after the revolution, Massoud Shafiei Monfared, a revolutionary figure himself, in an interview in 1979 entitled ‘Museum of Contemporary Art got rid of the American monopoly’, stated that the museum would be at the service of the revolution’s aspirations in educating people but would not be the advocator of American values any more (‘Muzeh-ye honar-hā-ye mo‘āser az enhesār-e amrikā khārej shod’, Keyhān (24 Ābān 1358/15 November 1979). Anon., ‘Seyri kūtāh dar nemāyeshgāh-ha-ye bozorgdāsht-e ayyām-e daheh-ye fajr, payām-e vahed-e honarmandān’, Faslnāmeh-ye Honar, no. 3 (spring–summer 1362/1983): 335. Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahifeh-ye emām 21 (Tehran: Mo‘asseseh-ye tanzim va nashr-e āsār-e emām Khomeini, 2006). For an in-depth study of political murals in post-revolutionary Iran, see H.  E. Chehabi and Fotini Christia, ‘The Art of State Persuasion: Iran’s Postrevolutionary Murals’, Persica, 22 (2008): 1–13, and Christian H Gruber,

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol utio n a r y a r t  | 165

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

‘The Message is on the Wall: Mural Arts in Post-revolutionary Iran’, Persica, no. 22 (2008): 15–46. Nikki R. Keddie and Eric Hoogland, The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 11. See Chelkowski and Dabashi, Staging a Revolution, 6. Gruber, ‘The Message is on the Wall’, 27. It was directed by the Cultural Revolutionary Headquarters and later by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council. See Nikki R. Keddie, ed., Modern Iran: Roots and Results of the Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 250. Farzin Vahdat, God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), xiii. Haggia Ram, ‘Post-1979 Iran: Anti-Colonialism and Legacies of Euro-American Spaces and Temporalities’, Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polity, and Identities, vol. 9, no. 2 (2010): 91–2. On Foucault’s views and writings on the revolutionary struggle in Iran, see Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Ram, ‘Post-1979 Iran’, 91. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 171. The word Negārgari came into use because ‘miniature’ was considered a Western term that could not fully express the characteristics of Persian painting. The ministry was established in 1979 and first named Ministry of National Guidance (Vezārat-e ershād-e melli) and then in 1980 changed to Ministry of Islamic Guidance (Vezārat-e ershād-e eslāmi) and finally in 1987 renamed with the current title, Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Vezārat-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi). See Chapter 3. For a comprehensive study of the Saqqā-khāneh movement, see Chapter 3. The major biennials and triennials included works created by painters, graphic designers, illustrators, photographers (genres of photojournalism and documentary in particular), cartoonists, ceramicists and sculptors. See Chapter 3. See the Catalogue of the First Biennial of Iranian Painters (Avvalīn nemāyeshgāh-e dosālāneh-ye naqqāshān-e Iran) (Tehran, 1370/1991), and Mostafa Mohajer,

166 | the art o f i r a n

33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

‘Avvalin nemāyeshgāh-e dosālāneh-ye naqqāshi-ye Iran’, Faslnāmeh-e Honarhā-ye Tajassomi, no. 2 (1377/1998): 119. Catalogue of the First Biennial of Iranian Painters, 1. A Selection of Works of the First Biennial of Iranian Painters (Gozideh-i az āsār-e avalin nemāyeshgāh-e dosālāneh-ye naqqāshān-e Iran) (Tehran: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 1371/1992): 3 The First Biennial consisted of two sections: the main part was entitled ‘The Free Subject’, and the second part ‘In Advocacy of the Palestinian Islamic Revolution’. Mohammad Sohofi, ‘Introduction to the First Visual Arts Conference’, in Hovīyyat-e farhangi va honari: majmuʿeh bahs-hā-ye konferāns-e honar-hā-ye tajas­somi (Proceedings of the First Plastic Arts Conference) (Tehran: Anjoman-e honar-hā-ye tajassomi (komiteh-ye entishārāt), 1372/1993), 5. Ibid., 5. See Habibollah Ayatollahi, ‘Bohrān dar honar-e emruz-e Iran’, in Hovīyyat-e farhangi va honari, 96. See Catalogue of the First Biennial of Iranian Painters. The judging panel announced its criteria for selecting works thus: ‘Having considered the valuable subjects (Islamic Revolution; spiritual thought; mystical subjects; social, political, and cultural issues) … the formal aspect of works that … should be inspired by the [Irano-Islamic] cultural and artistic heritage, with an innovative and creative approach.’ See Anon., ‘Dovvomin nemāyeshgāh-e dosālāneh-ye naqqāshi-ye Iran’, Māh-nāmeh-ye Honar-hā-ye Tajassomi, no. 4 (1372/1993): 1. For its definition, see Chapter 3. See Chapter 3. Mohammad Ali Rajabi, ‘Hoviyyat va haqiqat-e naqqāshi-ye emruz’, Honar-e Mo‘āser, no. 3 (1372/1993): 68. Catalogue of ‘A Festival of Iranian Art’ (Tehran: Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance publication, 1991), 2. During the early biennials in the 1990s, a number of foreign artists and art critics (mainly from France and Russia) were invited by the TMoCA. However, they were only meant to visit the exhibitions without playing any other role, including in the biennials’ judging process. It is worthwhile noting that the Iranian Caricature Biennial had already become an international exhibition in 1991 by both inclusion of works of Iranians and international cartoonists and by the judging of the biennial by Iranian and foreign jury members.

d isc o u r s es on p ost-revol ution a r y a r t  |  167 47. Examples of such opinions appear in the articles or interviews published in the issues of Naqsh devoted to the Second Biennial exhibition and conferences. 48. The Deputy of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Artistic Affairs Abolghasem Khoshroo announced this in his talk in the Second Visual Arts Conference held in TMoCA. See ‘Sokhanrāni-ye āghā-ye mohandes Abolghasem Khoshroo dar marāsem-e eftetāhiyyeh-e dovomin konferāns-e honar-hā-ye ­tajassomi dar muzeh-ye honarhā-ye mo‘āser’, Honar-e Qodsi (Proceedings of the Second Visual Arts Conference) (Tehran, 1373/1994), 32. 49. Catalogue of the Second Iranian Painting Biennial (Naqqāshi-ye moʿāser-e Iran) (Tehran: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 1373/1994), 2. 50. See Chapter 3. 51. Ruyin Pakbaz, ‘Taqābol bā tahājom-e farhangi’, Honar-e Mo‘āser, no. 3 (1372/1993): 72. 52. Daryush Shayegan, Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Society Confronting the West, trans. from French by John Howe (London: Saqi Books, 1992), vii. 53. Faraj Sarkouhi, ‘Daheh-ye shast: adabiyyāt va honar dar gir va guriz’, Ādineh, no. 75 (1369/1990): 67. 54. Ibid., 67–8. 55. In addition to the Barg Gallery and other major official galleries affiliated with the Tehran Municipality in the 1990s, more than thirty galleries in Tehran and gradually in other Iranian provinces were established. 56. It is worthwhile noting one of the successful group exhibitions in this period, entitled ‘The Epic of Kings (Shāhnāmeh) and the Contemporary Iranian Artist’, held in honour of the one-thousandth anniversary of Ferdawsi’s Shāhnāmeh in 1990. Curated by Ruyin Pakbaz, participating artists included Nosratollah Moslemian, Mir Ya‘qoub Ammamehpich, Sara Irvani, Massoumeh Mozaffari, Soghra Zareh, Abbas Saranj, Touran Ghadiri, Hossein Ghara-Gozlou, Parastou Forouhar, Arya Eghbal, Amin Nourani, Fatemeh Etemadi and Davood Mozaffari. 57. Moslemian declares: ‘I am aware that previous generations of artists sacrificed their talents and innovativeness in order to deeply understand and then internalise the achievements of contemporary art while also taking into account their own cultural situation. It appears that they carried out, more or less, their artistic responsibility within their own time and context. What has been the effect of their attempts and experience on our work? Is it possible to have an artistic identity and to play a role in the formation of contemporary Iranian art (honar-e mo‘āser-e Iran) without consideration of our roots, pictorial traditions, or findings of

168 | th e art o f i r a n previous generations?’ Nosratollah Moslemian, ‘Chigūneh yak honarmand mitavānad shoru‘ beh naqqāshi konad’, Donyā-ye Sokhan, no. 25 (1370/1991): 90–1. 58. Interview with the author, 2001. Also see, Nosratollah Moslemian, ‘Mosāhebeh bā honarmandān’, Gardun, no. 19–20 (1373/1994): 68. 59. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, ‘The Paradoxes of Politics in Postrevolutionary Iran’, in Iran at the Crossroads, eds John L Esposito and Rouhollah K. Ramazani (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 18. 60. Abdolmajid Hosseini Rad, ‘Naqqāshi-ye now-gerāy-e Iran dar hichkojā-ye in jahān-e pahnāvar na-istādeh ast’, Naqsh (series for the Fifth Painting Biennial), no. 25 (1379/2000): 8.

5 The Paradigms of Contemporary Art: The Contemporary versus the Specific

T

his chapter examines the emerging ideas and concerns that dominated the Iranian art community during the late 1990s and 2000s, coinciding with the beginning of the period known as the ‘Reform’ period (1997–2005). It discusses the rather conflicting views in the visual arts in Iran as expressed through artistic practices and events in this period, including art productions and exhibitions as well as critical reviews on these developments. It further explores concepts, mechanisms, strategies and paradigms of art practices in Iran, and tries to connect these paradigms to a burgeoning ‘contemporary art’ in Iran in the 2000s as a new type of time and space in art critical inquiry. The chapter’s main focus is on the analysis of the dominant dichotomy in cultural and artistic ideas which Iranian artists had to confront. These include the idea of contemporaneity: being imbued with the spirit of the time, and specificity: being engaged with collective and individual identity; both existing practices in Iranian society and culture at large. The first involves the idea that alter-modernist imagery is one of fragmentation and hybridisation – the scattering of histories and the recombination of their diverse elements.1 The second refers to the ever-present obsession and engagement with cultural and frequently social concerns and deep-rooted anxieties about national and cultural identity. The two concerns raise the important question: is it possible to uncover an art discourse that is contemporary, while also being specific? I touch upon critical discussions raised by the debate over questions of contemporaneity, including the inevitable issues arising from the process of globalisation, namely the forces of standardisation, located within the Iranian art scene. I will address questions such as how an effect of the globalisation

170 | th e art o f i r a n process and globalising forces can directly influence the representation of locality in the works of artists (with reference to tradition, expressing views of contemporary local problems or as having a localised nature). This is related to discussions of the younger generation of Iranians’ demand for participation in global processes of communication. I discuss the developments that have empowered this eagerness. I will then address how an intellectual and aesthetic change that is also intended to initiate a contribution to global culture becomes a primary aim for the new generation. The main question is: how could localised languages adapt to globalised art discourse? While this chapter reflects my own observations, it also relies heavily on the analysis offered in interviews with artists, critics, curators and some former administrators in artistic affairs. Contemporary Art is Born As was argued in Chapter 1, like other cultural practices, contemporary art practice in Iran first incorporated elements of Euro-American contemporary art models, but later attempted to create appropriated versions of contemporary art. It was most probably by the 1990s that Iranian art witnessed a gradual change, departing from the frame of the lately developing post-revolutionary artistic modernism and incorporating new viewpoints of existing realities. The motivation for this came partly from the international art scene and also from the cultural landscape of the era within Iran, where the necessity to record reality in all its changing forms became compelling. However, before discussing the implications of these changes, we need to reflect on some of the debates that have arisen around the driving spirit of the contemporary in Iran. Towards the end of the 1990s, a set of new attitudes and approaches to art practices and their relations to the realities of the Iranian context developed. Several factors contributed to this transformation and new dynamic developments. More artists entered the art scene in this period than at any other time in the past. The most striking change was the appearance of a zestful group of young artists among whom the presence of women was quite noticeable. Moreover, institutions supporting artistic activities, mainly the TMoCA and art faculties, alongside newly formed non-governmental societies of Iranian artists and art journals emerged and developed at the same time.2 Likewise, the arrival of the information age and mass means of c­ommunication led to an expansion of the art audience and created a propitious atmosphere.

pa r a digm s of contem p orar y a r t  | 171 Hence,  after about two decades of a lack of relationships with the outside world, during this period the boundaries relatively opened up; there was more access to information through the internet, satellites, periodicals and books, and unprecedented exhibitions of Iranian artists overseas and a number of contemporary Western and non-Western artists in Iran. All these initiatives were instrumental for Iranian artists to be exposed to contemporary artistic debates and formats in the international art scene. They became stimulated by the great variety of other cultural artefacts and documents now made available to them. Artists then became determined as fast as possible to go along with current artistic approaches and with what they supposed was happening in the contemporary international art scene among their counterparts. Now the obsession for the new generation was largely explained as participating in the contemporary art discourses. This was also justified as the cross-cultural nature of contemporary art partly pertinent in the context of a globalising era. Meanwhile, in spring 1997, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami was elected president. Popular among both the public and the cultural elites, he came to power with a more moderate liberal view of Islam and the Islamic Republic, with promises of more freedom and relaxation of the press and political and cultural reforms. During Khatami’s presidency (1997–2005), post-revolutionary Iran experienced a period of ‘cultural thaw’, and the relaxation of restrictions on art led to the emergence of a generation of artists whose main preoccupation was being contemporary. This era was known as asr-e eslāhāt, or the period of the reform movement. Intellectuals, artists and cultural activists were becoming more optimistic about their abilities to further change in their own lives and in Iranian public life as a whole.3 During the 1990s, Iranian public space began to be the battlefield of cultural openness, citizenship, gender equalities and political reform.4 The change in cultural and political ideas had its roots in Iranian reality itself. The post-revolutionary intellectual discourse which was inclined to conform to the West was a phenomenon of the 1990s.5 Unlike their intellectual predecessors, thinkers in the 1990s generally tended not to have similar simplifications, that is, ideological views that emphasised one factor as central to solving Iran’s problems.6 Within the political landscape of the Islamic Republic, establishing relationships with the world – which was then justified according to the notion of ‘Dialogue of Civilisations’, advocated by Khatami himself – provided a new

172 | the art o f i r a n atmosphere for cultural and artistic exchanges between Iranian and EuroAmerican institutions in this period that was unparalleled since the revolution. Khatami’s administration was able to offer a period of moderation within the country and more encouragement was given to communication with the outside world which had for long been strongly opposed by previous officials. The third phase of post-revolutionary art and cultural practices began with this reformism when the new movements and discourses grew and developed in Iranian art.7 Although no comprehensive study is available, it was clear that the majority of the emergent artists in this period were young, belonged mostly to the Third Generation8 (already a majority in Iranian society), were educated and middle-class, and came mostly from central Iranian cities, in particular the capital Tehran. Gradually after 1997, the artistic environment in Iran witnessed a dramatic change. In this period, unprecedented enterprises took place for the first time since the revolution; there was an official body to promote art exhibitions domestically, collect the works of local artists and, more significantly, advance the works of Iranian artists in the international arena. With this increasing interest, exhibitions and art activities multiplied rapidly in big cities, especially Tehran. The TMoCA, as the main centre for artistic exposure of contemporary art, resumed support of non-political art through group exhibitions. Highly effective, the museum, under the Visual Arts Administration (Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye tajassomi)9 with directorship of Alireza Sami Azar (director 1998–2005), played a pivotal role in promoting various forms of contemporary art, particularly those created by Iranian artists. It supported the visual arts through the establishment of programmes, including continued art biennales (now in direct collaboration with the new societies of artists). TMoCA held thematic exhibitions of both contemporary art of Iran and various kinds of contemporary Euro-American and Asian art (among which one can cite the exhibitions Turning Points: 20th-century British Sculpture in 2003 and Contemporary Japanese Art in 2005, both held at the museum).10 National and international gatherings and discussions on different aspects of contemporary art and culture were organised with enthusiastic participation of the artistic community. Private galleries operated with more confidence, while the artists’ works received increased public exposure through national biennials and group exhibitions. At the same time, the museum supported a number of exhibitions of contemporary art from Iran overseas, including in

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 173 Europe, the US and Asia through which contemporary practices by the emerging Iranian artists were introduced to foreign audience; among others was the Iranian Contemporary Art exhibition curated by Rose Issa at the Barbican Centre, London in 2001. A keen desire to establish a relationship with the international art scene was a response to the need of many young artists who were eager to have transnational cultural links.11 The presence of Iranian artists in international artistic events and exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale12 were a direct result of the opening of cultural boundaries. Eagerness to find appreciation and credibility in the art world outside Iran was supported by the country’s artistic officials. While the international circulation roster for Iranian artists developed during the 2000s, initially through official channels, but later private sector or the artists’ individual channels, it also established new reputations for artists. Those years brought success to certain Iranian artists through exhibitions outside the country, where they received recognition and awards in a few international exhibitions, including the Sharjah Art Biennial (2001), the Beijing International Art Biennial (2003) and the Asian Art Biennial in Dhaka Bangladesh (2003/4).13 By the end of the 1990s a number of young artists had increasingly begun to practise using new means of media which were unprecedented. However, it seemed that there was initially a simplified idea that any art practised using these media was straightforwardly seen as contemporary, especially when set in contrast to art that used to apply visual aesthetics presented in traditional media like painting and sculpture. This idea was largely based on the Greenbergian account of medium specificity, emphasising the idea that each art form needs to discover its medium-specific or essential conditions. The artists’ enthusiasm for experimenting with new idioms that related to the contemporary paved the way for the development of what was then called ‘conceptual art’ and later named ‘New Art’ (honar-e jadid). The designation conceptual art first meant rejection of traditional artistic mediums in favour of various new media. Similarly, the term New Art, which was used for the first time for a national exhibition in 2002,14 was extensive because it included various forms of fine art media such as video, installation, photo art, audio art, environmental art, performance, and so on. Yet gradually, during the subsequent years, no media preference was observed in the artists’ practices. Not only that eagerness to apply unconventional media, but also artists’ particular attention to ideas in

174 | the art o f i r a n their art – in opposition to formalism inherited by artistic modernism, which was prevalent in the art scene of Iran – marked this shift. Hence, there were even a growing number of artists formerly working in such media as painting, sculpture, photography, cinema or theatre who switched to new fine art media. These artists ranged from emerging young talents to older established artists and filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016), Daryoush Mehrjoui (b. 1939), Seifollah Samadian (b. 1954) and Atila Pesyani (b. 1957). Although still within the cultural norms of the Islamic Republic, it was now possible for practitioners of New Art to perform or make their works with the support of TMoCA, which came to be a supportive and encouraging space, and to exhibit their works – both inside and outside the country – with more flexibility. For these artists it was a success to have a chance to experiment with new expressions in innovative languages, which were, luckily, backed by the official art establishments of this period. Here, however, an essential dissimilarity can be discerned between this New Art and what had already been practised in the West under the rubric of Conceptual Art. Ironically, unlike the avant-garde art of the 1960s and 70s in Europe and the US which – in parallel with the radical political movements of its time – precisely aimed at challenging art institutional norms and promoting a critical attitude towards the institutions of the art world, New Art in the context of Iran of this period, to a certain extent, appeared basically to be an institutionally sponsored art. Initially a great number of works by the emerging artists were experimental, occasionally demonstrating explicit adaptation of Euro-American precedents in terms of aesthetics, general themes and approach with no particular inclination to seek social and political ends through their art. Among others, environmental and ecological issues and themes relating to religion and spirituality were the most common subjects (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). Therefore, within this agenda, the radicalism and subversive nature of the conceptual movements had to be refined according to the state’s instructional norms insofar as being exhibited. Here the question of artistic autonomy in this framework is a case in point. Interestingly, in my interview with Sami Azar, he confirmed that the TMoCA promoted this movement for three main reasons. First, the necessity of ‘updating’ Iranian art, which since the revolution was about twenty years ‘behind’ the world contemporary art scene. For about twenty years, all the windows had been closed with very limited resources, such as art books and

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 175

Figure 5.1 Ahmad Nadalian, New Life, 2006, photo taken from the artist’s engraving on stone in the nature, village of Polour, Iran.

Figure 5.2 Morteza Darrebaghi, Dakhil, 2002, installation, TMoCA.

magazines, being allowed to be imported. The second reason was that ‘modern art’ was forfeiting its audiences (emphasis mine). Its elitism, which was already experienced in the West, was quite obviously problematic.15 And the third reason was that the museum was losing its visitors.16 Sami Azar, as director of the museum, was seeking new strategies and plans to respond to this problem: holding ground-breaking exhibitions that would attract a great number of artists and larger audiences (mainly young people). The New Art exhibitions

176 | the art o f i r a n indeed met this goal by breaking attendance records and unprecedented presence, even of those who were perhaps visiting the museum or an art exhibition for the first time.17 At this juncture, based on interviews with curators of these exhibitions and available written documents, it was clear that some key figures involved in those events believed that what would distinguish New Art (or what was generally named conceptual art) practices from different forms of earlier elitist ‘modern’ art was the inclusion of ‘meaning’.18 In their view, New Art should necessarily contain concepts and messages built on religious or spiritual subject matter in order to represent the so-called Iranian-Islamic identity. Examples of these works could be detected in the early exhibitions held at formal venues, in particular TMoCA (Figure 5.2). It was then not surprising that in the exhibitions of that kind in the early 2000s, an attempt was realised to insert themes to generate specific characteristics of an ‘Iranian New Art’ and to apply them as criteria for the evaluation of works of art.19 The same criteria, the most important one being the extent to which the artists dealt with the issue of cultural identity, were applied for selection of those works of artists for overseas exhibitions supported by TMoCA, as an assurance to gain acceptance and success in those events.20 This confirms that, at the same time that the issue of ‘updating’ Iranian art was imperative to the reformist cultural administrators, cultural and artistic specificity was also a vital element that was mainly meant to include a variety of specific characteristics such as historical and social particularities, typically conforming to official policy. An increasing number of exhibitions testified to the rapidly developing interest in the New Art movement and experimenting with the new means of art expression. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that there were five major exhibitions of art to which the label Conceptual Art or New Art was attached as a means to single out a specific tendency emerging in the early 2000s. Although there had been a few instances of conceptual art being practised by artists, in particular before the revolution in the 1970s and also in the 1990s, the first national exhibition was held at the TMoCA in summer 2001. The most important examples of the 1970s practices were the exhibitions of the Independent Group of Painters and Sculptors, in particular the works of Marcos Grigorian and Morteza Momayez.21 After those events, in April 1992, after about a two-decade interval, a conceptual experience took

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 177 place in Tehran. A group of young experimental artists, including Ali Dashti, Shahrokh Ghiyasi, Sasan Nasiri, Farid Jahangir and Mostafa Dashti, experimented with a variety of materials on different floors of a dilapidated house that would be destroyed very soon after the project was completed. They named their group Contemporary Art Workshop (Kārgāh-e āzād-e honar-e moʿāser) and their practice ‘Project 92’ (porojeh-ye 71). The other important event after this took place in 1998 with a project titled ‘Experience of 98’ (Tajrobeh-ye 77) by the same Contemporary Art Workshop, consisting of Sasan Nasiri, Bita Fayyazi, Farid Jahangir, Khosrow Hassanzadeh and Ata Hasheminejad. This group exhibition, titled ‘Art of Destruction’ (Honar-e takhrib), was held in a shabby house in Tehran. In the following year, Bita Fayyazi, Mazyar Bahari, Sadegh Tirafkan and Khosrow Hassanzadeh held a multimedia show titled ‘Blue Children, Black Sky’ (Kudakān-e ābi, āsemān-e siyāh) in an old house in central Tehran dealing with the theme of pollution in Tehran. A recurring event,22 it was the TMoCA’s exhibitions, however, that proved to be influential in the formation of a movement in Iranian art that now can be called contemporary. While the sense of experimentation around New Art was intense during this heady period, successive exhibitions at the TMoCA were likewise rewarded with increasing attendance. Now, having official support, this movement developed to be mainstream in the Iranian art scene. Meanwhile, more ideologically structured institutions also actively appeared to enter the scene in this period; amongst others, the Iranian Academy of Arts (Farhangestān-e honar) was the most important. Affiliated to the presidency, it was established in 1999. The Academy’s key objective was to ‘protect and promote Islamic, national and local art (both traditional and contemporary)’.23 Within this agenda, much of what was considered local – as having the nature of a localised culture with reference to traditions – was proposed as being worthy of preservation. According to this view, local art needed to be based on cultural specificities and should challenge cultural aggression (of the West). During the 2000s under direction of the well-known politician and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi (director 1999–2010), the Academy organised various visual arts exhibitions and biennales of ‘contemporary art from the Islamic world’, including calligraphy, posters and painting, mainly held at the Academy’s newly established gallery, the Sabā Cultural and

178 | the art o f i r a n Artistic Centre.24 Although on occasions collaborations took shape between the Academy and TMoCA, in particular for national biennale exhibitions, the Academy’s programmes and events generally never attracted as many participants or as large an audience as those of TMoCA, mainly due to their themes and conservative approaches. Also, an appetite had already developed for the new, unconventional and, in short, ‘contemporary’. Much of the dynamic, driving, emergent artists in this period sprang from the urge to tackle new materials, subjects and methods of working and exhibiting that were not particularly encouraged by the Academy. In the meantime, a small group of artists were still influenced by debates such as those on cultural identity which had been discussed mainly since the exhibitions in the early 1990s. Using various materials and themes from indigenous sources with the aim of constructing ‘independent’ or ‘authentic’ art was partly the result of those ideological debates instructed by the state. A ‘unique’ form of art based on the ideology of the revolution containing traditional Islamic or the so-called Irano-Islamic values25 had been suggested from the early post-revolutionary years. The question of how a work of art could adopt these values, on many occasions – as in similar cases elsewhere in the MENA region and so-called Islamic world – had typically led to the solution of use of clichés of decorative motifs and calligraphic patterns (this had already been practised extensively by the pioneering artists some decades ago). The question of specificity had further received individual reactions to it in various ways: from a nostalgic psychological reference to the past to embodiment of cultural memory. However, even with official interest, with the end of the 1990s, the search for identity through art and the need to produce ‘authentic’ works was predominantly expelled from the art scene. In the 2000s, a growing notion was formed that was a sharp reaction against the idea of cultural specificity and indigenous expression in artwork. Specificity in this generation was mostly transferred to various forms of self-expression or self-presentation.26 A common trend, for example, was self-portrayal in the works of artists working with the different media such as photography, video, and so on, now accessible to them. Others moved critically towards social issues such as the exploration of highly gendered notions of public space and tradition. Ideally, their aim was perhaps to shift to the fore alternative visions of their identity in an ­increasingly globalised art world.27

pa r a digm s of contem p orar y a r t  | 179 The works of some of these artists gained much of their characteristics from an engagement, however filtered, with the demands of contemporaneity. Within this contemporaneity, the artists sought to identify with, and represent, what it is to live in the contemporary moment. The art historian and critic Terry Smith convincingly remarks on the key point about contemporaneity by noting that art growing out of the complexities of contemporaneity does not offer easy explanations. Despite a connectedness, contemporaries ‘subsist in a complex awareness that, given human difference, their contemporaries may not stand in relation to time as they do’.28 The experience of the shared space of the contemporary is then paradigmatically specific and conceptually multiple and plural. Its contours vary depending on the geo-political terrain, both real and metaphoric, on which one stands. Smith then suggests that we navigate the terrain of the contemporary by pressing ‘radical particularism to work with and against radical generalization, to treat all the elements in the mix as antinomies’.29 Contemporaneity lies in this very disjuncture, in Smith’s word antinomies.30 These antinomies can be identified in notions of temporality within the contemporary which is provoked by the contemporary’s insistence on immediacy, encounters and contingency. There were themes which Iranian artists looked at as vital issues of their time, such as presentation of their country’s psychological and political challenges. Although many were not directly addressed through critique of the status quo or use of offensive language to the state’s political or ideological interests, the works of artists clearly demonstrated the challenges. Critical Accounts of the New Art Movement At this juncture, there were objections from different factions of art society against the mainstream art practices, including various forms of conceptual art. In addition to censure to fit with cultural taste enforced by the officials mentioned above, the critics reasoned that many New Art artists looked upon art practice as an imported style, among other ‘things’, rather than as a ‘process’ to be perceived.31 According to them, art is a ‘process’ involving genuine feelings aroused by contextual situations, even if these were not felt simultaneously in the West and countries like Iran. Therefore, they denounced the mainstream contemporary art practices in Iran, mainly those of the conceptualists, by

180 | the art o f i r a n saying that regardless of the aesthetic appeal of some of the works produced by these artists, they lacked ‘originality’.32 Here, they emphasised ‘the necessity of relationship and integration between work of art, artist and the cultural background; meaning where an artist lives and where he/she creates his/her work are the essential condition of originality’.33 The critics moreover contended that the apparent similarities with other art production elsewhere are, however, so close that it is difficult to define them as affinities, appropriations or plagiarisms. Another more conformist faction of critics emphasised that movements such as conceptual art are a ‘Western production’, and are in essence incompatible with ‘Iranian culture’.34 They, however, failed to propose any definition of this ‘essence’ and the reason for its incompatibility with Western art. An argument arose from a group of critics,35 who mainly wrote in the two major art magazines – the quarterly Herfeh Honarmand and bimonthly Tandis – maintaining that the new wave of Iranian artists rarely produced anything genuine from what they borrowed from Western counterparts because they had not experienced the essential context in which the original works were created.36 They believed that the application of new artistic manners, without coming to grips with the essence or the original historical context of these approaches, often led artists to ‘mannerism’ in their works. The main problem, according to them, was that the questions were already proposed elsewhere and whoever responds best to these questions is the winner. This mannerism in the contemporary art of Iran, at its best, followed a specific Western approach whose success was already guaranteed, they argued.37 From their perspective, the meaning of mannerism in the art of the Global South (jahān-e jonub) in general, commonly in many developing countries, is a genre whose pattern is based on contemporary Western art.38 The strong presence of postcolonial thought can be discerned in these words and were similarly reflected in several critical voices in the Iranian art community in the 2000s. For example, Iman Afsarian (b. 1974), artist and one of the main editors of Herfeh Honarmand, believed that, unlike the previous generations who brought about the revolution and fought in the war, the new generation does not believe in Don Quixote any more. Al-e Ahmad39 or Shariati40 are no longer their heroes; essentially their heroes are not political figures or ideologues at all. They have lost faith in heroes. Therefore, their works reflect absurdity and despair.41

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 181 Another criticism, which sounded more legitimate, was that all forms of New Art – exhibited in different venues and supported by official institutions, mainly the TMoCA, and even by the public audience – follow a sort of ‘social modishness’ or ‘cultural pretension’ and do not pose a real cultural dialogue, and so were derivative products that did not have any basis in the artists’ lived experience, namely the artist’s genuine encounter with the world. From the point of view of these critics, even the enthusiasm of the Iranian public for these artistic productions could only be a criterion rather than an essential value. ‘Thus like any popular social event, these interests are not necessarily valuable in themselves.’42 The focus of their argument against the mainstream was on the term ‘lived experience’ (tajrobe-ye zisteh), and its effect on art and its importance in evaluating the work of art. The critics argued that many of the younger practising artists working with New Art were producing products that on many occasions had no real connection with their needs and priorities. A number of artists, they contended, were living in the world of the internet, not in their own surroundings. Because of this, the ‘Twin Towers’ were more interesting to them than events that were happening in their own country. ‘Our contemporary artist is more affected by September 11th than by road accidents in his/her own country that cause tens of thousands of casualties each year.’43 In other words, this criticism rightly suggests that the artworks merit should be measured based on how it is linked to the lived experience of an artist and is related to the concept of contemporaneity, no matter which language is used.44 They argued that the New Art tendencies and their sudden interest in Iran did not have legitimate ground in Iranian society and culture, and were rather based on a competition to be up to date and be accepted in the global art scene. This criticism addresses the forces of globalisation and their impact on development of these interests resulted occasionally in the depictions of localised marks in the works of some artists. The latter is perhaps related to the notion that the two sets of processes of globalisation and localisation are linked dialectically and work with and against each other at the same time. Both David Held and Anthony McGrew have also noted that globalisation, as a universal phenomenon, gives rise to opposite forces of particularism and localisation. While promoting universal values, standards and processes, globalisation provokes particularistic reactions along the lines of nationality and ethnicity, particularity against Western cultural influences.45 It seems that this

182 | the art o f i r a n process on the one hand encouraged Iranian artists to familiarise themselves with the latest idioms practised dominantly in the Euro-American art scene and on the other hand caused a kind of reaction against it by seeking refuge in cultural or artistic specificities. For them to be successful in the global scene, they were usually ‘advised [by officials] to use an “international language” and at the same time benefit from “local accents”’.46 This resulted in the formation of stereotypes in the works of artists in which issues of sexuality and gender relationship and the position of women (veil in particular), politics (censorship, terrorism and the nuclear issue) and traditional archetypes (calligraphy and traditional motifs, the Qajar odalisque and the ancient legends) predominated. For instance, the Iranian critics, some even practising the New Art themselves, challenged the approach that in some respects represented the condition of the feminine subject within the postcolonial, transnational cultural politics of the West, commonly shown in the works of a number of known Iranian artists such as Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) and Shadi Ghadirian (b. 1974). The issue of the market, particularly the Western, or so-called ‘global market’, and its effect on Iranian art was another area of apprehension. There was a convincingly constant concern that increasingly wide market-oriented production, unless properly understood, would abandon the artists to a pathological production of art for international art festivals and exhibitions.47 Artist, writer and translator Farshid Azarang (b. 1972; living and working in Tehran),48 who worked with photography and fine art media, preferred not to be named as a member of the new movement. In 2006, he told me the reason for this dissatisfaction was that the new artistic movement in Iran had a mania for mixing media rather than experimenting with them. ‘We are concerned about “DVDs” rather than “media” themselves.’49 This situation, he argued, would not change unless the current canonical order (between the West and the rest) changes, meaning that this unequal relationship is amended. However, he said he very much doubted this would happen! Similar to views raised earlier by the critics, he also believed that even specificity meant that an artist needed to demonstrate his/her difference in the minds of others. The experience of this neutrality, not active participation, for him was a feeling of boredom rather than acridity or anger.50 Talking about how an artwork could be most expressive in the context in which it is created, Azarang told me that rather than wondering if he was

pa r a digm s of contem p orar y a r t  | 183 influenced by one sort of art or another, he preferred to think about an audience whom he already knew and whom he imagined would communicate with his work. He enjoyed drawing the viewer’s attention to the narrative and quality imparted by objects and the media themselves. For example, his use of text in his works, albeit not truly a new approach, was consistent with his main artistic principle: ‘no matter if the language has already been practiced elsewhere’. He typically used the texts that he had already read (or experienced) himself and thought had the capacity to affect the reader. His other interest, reflected in his works created in the 2000s, was his genuine interest in family relationships, which he himself experienced as signification of his lived experience containing both contemporaneity and specificity (Figure 5.3).51 Ghazaleh Hedayat, photographer and interdisciplinary artist (b. 1979; living and working in Tehran), expressed similar ideas in response to the same question about the idea of contemporaneity vis-à-vis specificity in her art. She believed that the encounter of the Iranian art scene with new media and contemporary art was too sudden. This created a problem which was a lack of recognition of the historical and contextual characteristics of this art and their associations with artists’ personal lives. She was also critical of a number of artists who typically seemed as if they had seen a dimness from afar and felt

Figure 5.3 Farshid Azarang, Scattered Reminiscences, 2005, photo collage, size varies.

184 | th e art o f i r a n that they needed to reach it. To do this they started struggling in any possible way to shorten the distance. She believed that ‘while in the West, the artist, his life and his work seem inseparable, meaning that the work of art is his selfexpression, this could rarely be seen in the works of Iranian artists’.52 She elucidated her own artistic view as although she often thought of self-expression initially, she was conditioned to think of her audience, which could be both Iranian and non-Iranian.53 Hedayat believed that encountering restrictions while living within Iranian society and politics and finding solutions for how to deal with them were parts of her lived experience, although she never tried to take advantage of this situation by victimising herself in her art (Figure  5.4). Here she referred to the fact that the easiest path for Iranian artists, in particular women artists, would be to present themselves as they are seen by the outsiders, as the ‘Other’ who is ‘gazed at’.54 It would have become complicated if, for example, Iranian society and women were represented with bizarre variations and striking extremes, varied beliefs and social paradoxes.55

Figure 5.4 Ghazaleh Hedayat, Hair Folder, 2008, installation, 100 × 100 cm.

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 185 Contemporary Art in the Post-reform Era The reform period ended in 2005 with the election of the radical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (president 2005–12). Accordingly, while trying to revive and re-endorse the same cultural policy practised in the 1980s – namely promoting Islamic and ideological revolutionary values and at the same time expressing xenophobia towards the West – which had expired years before, governmental support for different forms of non-ideological and experimental contemporary art practices, in particular New Art, principally stopped. This, however, provoked an unenthusiastic response by artists. Many artists of this new generation did not believe those debates on ideological and revolutionary values would make sense any more. To many of them, contemporary art could not simply be translated into the particularities of the artist’s nationality, since that status would contradict the artist’s perception of his or her autonomous subject-position. This phase also marked the beginning of the development of the private art sector and individual initiatives by artists who were able to continue and even empower the path that they had already started during the earlier years. The artistic movement, which had started in the early 2000s, now showed renewed influence and dominance in the art scene of the country, and more specifically through foreign networks and exhibitions. Private sectors such as commercial galleries gained more influence from their international connections, sharing their artists with the global art scene. A new development in the contemporary art of Iran emerged along with its international recognition. Several artists from the younger generation began to turn away from searching for the concept of contemporaneity in time or age, instead dealing with it by representing their own world; even if those issues have already been discussed and resolved elsewhere. For example, by means of the parody and distortion of satirical works, they tried to make transcendence possible; the transcendence that lies in the direction of ‘what there is’ while proposing and constructing ‘what could be’.56 Examples of contemporary practices, now not only restricted to the use of new media, were marked by an acknowledgment of the psychic, philosophical, autobiographical, cultural and political settings in which they were created, and of the demands that these conditions made upon practice, and

186 | th e art o f i r a n

Figure 5.5 Jinoos Taghizadeh, from the Rock, Paper, Scissors series, 2009, three-dimensional offset print on lenticular, 50 × 35 cm.

the extent to which they provided the content of much of these arts. The best works of this kind were, however, contemporary art, not because of their use of new media or marketing, but because they were about one of the most imperative personal, social and political needs of the time. If self-criticism and reflection are a part of the critical idea of contemporary thought and art, this was seen through the more recent works of Iranian artists, works that were consistently blended with political and social aspirations. Evincing critical analysis through biographical illustration, surrounding life, lived experiences, and so on were among the dominant approaches of art of this period. While their work was often concerned with scepticism and contemporary

pa r a digm s of contem p orar y a r t  | 187

Figure 5.6 Mehran Mohajer, from the Things and Lines series, 2011, C-Print, 15 × 20 cm.

Figure 5.7 Rozita Sharafjahan, from the Sixth Sense series, 2010, mixed media, collage and sewing on canvas, 160 × 160 cm.

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Figure 5.8 Mohammad Ghazali, Untitled, from the Tehran Slightly Sloping series, 2010–13 old polaroid film, 8.5 × 10.8 cm.

inquiries, the aim was predominantly explained as a reflection of the spirit of contemporaneity. In particular, through their work, many artists sought to disengage themselves from the older nationalistic or identity-centred agenda which had long dominated aesthetic discussions of Iranian art; instead addressing complex and at times contradictory connotations of contemporary Iran in which multiple temporalities were at play. Their work celebrated different possibilities for mapping contemporary Iranian culture. Through politically complex works, these possibilities were addressed through several overlapping themes such as generational questions in society, politics of gender and social corruption, and personal narratives revolving around isolation, memory and nostalgia (Figures 5.5–5.8). Conclusion During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a cultural and intellectual explosion gave voice to many new ideas in art, just as in social and political discourses. In the 1990s, in parallel with growing interest and eagerness in Iran’s art scene to experiment with new idioms of contemporary art and the demands of being ‘up to date’, the reformist official art administrations set up a series of programmes that were instrumental in the formation of the New Art movement. Post-revolutionary Iran in the late 1990s and particularly the 2000s saw the beginning of a new era in development of contemporary art. In this period,

pa r a digm s of contem p orar y a r t  | 189 for artists, many from the new generation, experimenting with new means of media from two-dimensional works to installations, from personal individual experimentations to conceptual works, were all signs of freedom and liberation from rules and obligations. This speedy growth did not remain without criticism. One was related to the official promotion of this movement resulting in unhealthy impositions of the state’s soft ideological interest. This officially appropriated anti-modernist and politically safe art, quite opposite to its original nature practised earlier elsewhere, could carry cultural specificity by inclusion of themes such as ‘spiritual’ and religious content. Meanwhile, many were still caught between ideas of the appeal of the application of new media and the appeal of contemporaneity and its prevailing paradigms. The criticism, then, arose from a group of critics in Iran about the lack of historical originality and understanding of contextual meanings of this art. The other reproach was that these kinds of art productions were conditioned by the international contemporary art world rather than by the essential needs of Iranian culture. Critics maintained that as the genesis of art does not occur in a void, to acquire universal significance every great work of art should be the product of a specific environment. They argued that cultural practices are based on flows and therefore need to be constituted at the site where the flow takes place. After the Reform period ended in 2005 and the official support for this art was consequently over, a new wave of more self-governing contemporary art grew within the private sector and artists’ individual networks. Now, the necessity for constant repositioning led contemporary practices to a dynamic development of new forms of expression, mainly of symbolic and metaphorical traits. This was undoubtedly a critical juncture at which to contemplate the prospects for the development of the new visual art movement in Iran. The vast scope of Iranian art at this time was not as homogeneous as before, but continued to grow more complex and multifarious. It showed, however, Iranian culture and art’s prolonged struggle to establish a place in the contemporary world. Here, the importance of the question of cultural intellectual self-criticism was revitalised. The new generation was not concerned with the task of re-experiencing what had already been experienced by the previous generations, but instead felt an urgent need for individualism and self-­ expression in various possible ways. The younger generation, practising various modes of contemporary art, were concerned – in its imaging mode  – with

190 | the art o f i r a n self-presentation. They responded to the changing cultural climate of their country by creating works that incorporated, yet departed from a personal or collective past. Interpreted variously, for these artists the question of contemporaneity or the driving spirit of the contemporary became the main point of reference. Their works were part of the wave of change transforming contemporary Iran: alternately challenging boundaries, documenting contradictions, or reinterpreting cultural heritage and social realities. Notes  1. See John R. Campbell and Alan Rew, Identity and Affect; Experiences of Identity in a Globalizing World (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 5.  2. The Society of Iranian Painters (Anjoman-e honarmandān-e naqqāsh) and the Society of Sculptors (Anjoman-e mojassameh-sāzān) were both established in 1999 as independent cultural-artistic associations funded exclusively by membership fees. However, they benefited from the financial support of the Visual Arts Administration during the reform period. They were first housed in the newly established Iranian Artists’ Forum (Khāneh-ye Honarmandān), which was set up in Tehran in 2000. They later moved to their own individual venues.  3. For full elaboration on this topic, see Ali Mirsepassi, ‘Debating Marshall Berman in Iran’, in Adventures in Modernism: Thinking with Marshall Berman, ed. Jannifer Corby (New York: Terreform, 2016), 2–16.  4. See ibid., 7.  5. See Afshin Matin-Asgari, ‘The Intellectual Bestsellers of Post-Revolutionary Iran: On Backwardness, Elite-killing, and Western Rationality’, Iranian Studies, vol. 37, no. 1 (March 2004): 87.  6. See Nikki R. Keddie, ed., Modern Iran: Roots and Results of the Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 304.  7. See the author’s article, ‘Contemporary Iranian Art: The Emergence of New Artistic Discourses’, Iranian Studies, vol. 40, no. 3 (2007): 335–66.  8. This term was perhaps first used in the press and political conversation during the 1997 presidential election and in the reformist mottos to emphasise the importance of this generation – born after the 1979 Revolution – who actively supported the reformists during the election.  9. Formerly named Centre of Visual Arts (Markaz-e honar-hā-ye tajassomi), under the Deputy of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Artistic Affairs, it was established in 1983. Until recently, the director of the

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 191

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

Visual Arts Administration was the director of the TMoCA too. They are now two separate posts. It was in this period that art activities, including those in major public galleries, started to experience a period of more relaxation in rules. Even commercial galleries, which had to first gain approval from the Visual Arts Administration before exhibiting each show, were freed from this restriction in this period. In this context, it in fact was a great development within the Islamic Republic system and its centralised control of cultural and artistic affairs. Other important exhibitions of European artists in this period included Joan Miró in 2000, Arman in 2003, and Heinz Mack and Gerhard Richter both in 2004. For further details about the museum’s programmes in the reform period, see Helia Darabi, ‘Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art as a Microcosm of the State’s Cultural Agenda’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: I. B. Tauris), 221–45. In my interview with the former director of the TMoCA, Alireza Sami Azar, in 2006, he told me that ‘this need really existed and the museum provided the opportunity for it to happen and for this generation of artists to be seen’. The first presence of contemporary Iranian art in the post-revolutionary period was in the fiftieth Venice Biennale in 2002. Hossein Khosrowjerdi (b. 1957), Nosratollah Moslemian (b. 1951) and Simin Keramati (b. 1970) respectively received prizes in these events. As a part of TMoCA’s supported programmes, the exhibition was held at the Tehran Gallery (attached to the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran) in 2002. It is worthwhile noting, however, that this raises a somewhat problematic comparison between Iranian and Western art history. As was fully explained in the earlier chapters, the newly reborn post-revolutionary modernism never attempted to co-opt the discursive system of Western Modernism because its discourse did not aim for the ‘decidability of utopian meaning’ or to realise itself as a formalist object. It was concerned, rather, with its own methods, one that matched the concerns of the artists about living in the rapidly changing environment of post-revolutionary Iran when the alternative modernism was just being born. The author’s interview with Alireza Sami Azar, 2006. Sami Azar traced the political atmosphere which provided the ground for this development, saying, ‘The reformist government was itself encouraging us to

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18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

develop artistic activities and our relationship with the rest of the world – among others, the West. We were advised to be active in the cultural scene, to end Iran’s political isolation.’ Ibid. These notes were included in the Call for Submission for the first Conceptual Art Exhibition in 2001 written by the main curators of the exhibitions Abdolmajid Hosseini Rad and Asghar Kafshchian Moghadam, both university professors and member of the Howzeh Honari. (See Chapter 4.) The author’s interview with Hamid Severi, the former director of the Research Office at the TMoCA, 2006. Severi remarks that ‘accordingly, even the works such as Mandana Moghaddam’s [who lives and works in Sweden] installation titled Chelgis II (2005), which was conveying clear political and feminist messages, was approved to be exhibited in the Iranian pavilion in the 2005 Venice Biennale’. Ibid. For further details about the group’s history and works, see Chapter 3. Major ‘conceptual’ exhibitions held from 1998 to 2005 included the First Conceptual Art (2001), New Art 1 (2002), New Art 2 (2003), Spiritual Vision (2004) and Gardens of Iran: Ancient Wisdom, New Visions (2004). The two latter ones were in fact thematic exhibitions in which the theme of Iranian-Islamic identity was prioritised over the idea and media-based nature of earlier events as the curatorial criteria. Following the same path, initiations were made for another national exhibition with the title of A Thousand and One Nights, but this never materialised with the fundamental shifts in cultural policy, including changes in the TMoCA’s directorship, after the 2005 presidential election. The author’s interview with Sami Azar, 2006. http://honar.ac.ir/index/ (accessed 6 August 2008). Its activities declined after the dismissal of the founding director Mousavi (also a practising architect and painter) in 2010. (See also Chapter 2.) For further illustration of this term and the 1990s’ post-revolutionary art, see Chapter 4. Examples of this approach towards the Self are depicted in the exhibitions Deep  Depression (Afsordegi-ye ʿamiq) in 2005 and Deeper Depression (Afsordigi-ye ʿamiq-tar) in 2006, in reaction to the end of reform period and the collapse of hopes in Iranian society, both curated by Amir Ali Gahsemi. For elaborations on these alternative visions, see Chapters 7 and 8. Terry Smith, ‘Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 32, no. 4 (summer 2006): 703.

pa r a digm s of contem p orary a r t  | 193 29. Ibid., 704. See also Atreyee Gupta, ‘On Territoriality, Temporality, and the Politics of Place’ (The And: An Expanded Questionnaire on the Contemporary), Field Notes, 01 (2012): 73–80. 30. Smith begins his book What Is Contemporary Art? by defining key currents within contemporary art. The ‘first current’, he contends, sits at the top end of the art-world scale and comprises three sub-currents: an uneasy mix of ‘spectacular repetitions of avant-garde shock tactics’, a ‘re-modernising’ tendency, and ‘retrosensationalism’. Smith, What Is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 7. Such art may look radical but it lacks the avant-garde’s ‘political utopianism and their theoretic radicalism’. Ibid., 265. These characteristics are far from coherent; in fact, they are more often competing or clashing with one another. While this combination seems to have little in common, Smith regards this whole current as collectively contributing to an ‘aesthetic of ­globalization’. Ibid., 7. 31. Iman Afsarian, ‘Dur-nemāy-e naqqāshi-ye now-gerā-ye Iran; manerism-e jahān-e jonub’, Herfeh Honarmand, no. 2 (1381/2002): 125. 32. Ibid., 125. 33. Iman Afsarian, ‘Hoviyyat ān chizi ast keh beh ejrā dar mi-āyad: goft-o-gu ba Mansur Barahimi’, Herfeh Honarmand, no. 5 (1382/2003): 124. 34. Mostafa Goudarzi, ‘Rāh-e chahārom’, Honar-hā-ye Tajassomi, no. 2 (1377/1998): 10. 35. Among others, Iman Afsarian, Farshid Azarang, Mohammad Hassan Hamedi and Vahid Sahrifian can be named. 36. Iman Afsarian, ‘87% bali’, Herfeh Honarmand, no. 1 (1381/2002): 104. 37. Anon., ‘yad-dāshti bar honar-e mo‘āser-e Iran (6)’, Shargh (daily newspaper), no. ccclxxxvi (1383/2005): 14. 38. Afsarian, ‘Dur-nemāy-e naqqāshi-ye now-gerā-ye Iran; manerism-e jahān-e jonub’, 125. 39. Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–69) was a renowned Iranian writer and social and political critic. His idea of anti-Orientalism and anti-Westernism was widespread during the 1960s and 1970s. His famous book Gharb-zadegi (Westoxification) on various spheres of life, literature and art, was the bible of many intellectuals throughout those decades. See also Chapter 3 for further exploration of the term. 40. Ali Shariati (1933–77) was a well-known religious intellectual, philosopher and political activist who was one of the main thinkers of the 1979 Revolution. Shariati was a hero of Iran’s young religious intellectuals during the 1970s and a ‘patron saint’ of the revolution that he did not live to see.

194 | th e art o f i r a n 41. The author’s interview with Iman Afsarian, 2006. The same subject is reflected in Kaveh Basmenji, Tehran Blues: Youth Culture in Iran (London: Saqi Books, 2005), 320. 42. Afsarian, ‘Hoviyyat ān chizi ast keh beh ejrā dar mi-āyad’, 120. 43. The author’s interview with Afsarian, 2006. 44. Afsarian, ‘nazariyyeh-ye tajrobeh-ye zisteh, amuzesh’, Herfeh Honarmand, no. 7 (1383/2004): 144. 45. David Held and Anthony McGrew, ‘The Great Globalization Debate: An Introduction’, in The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate, eds David Held and Anthony G. McGrew (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 41. See also Ali Akbar Mahdi, ‘Iranian Women: Between Islamicization and Globalization’, in Iran Encountering Globalization, Problems and Prospects, ed. Ali Mohammadi, forward by Fred Halliday (London: Routledge, 2003), 49–50. 46. The Author’s interview with Shahab Fotouhi, 2006. 47. The criticisms presented above were quite similar to critical points raised in the period before the revolution, mainly during the late 1960s and especially during the 1970s when modern Iranian art was at its peak. As was explored in Chapter 3, the lack of meaningful homogeneity between various forms of Iranian folk-traditional arts and modern Western art in the works of neo-traditionalists was repeatedly the case in point. Formalism was another obstacle for which those artists who were trying to fuse traditional material with modernist styles of the time were criticised. The artists’ attempt to achieve success through acceptance and confirmation of Western critics who were involved, for example, in the Tehran biennials was another subject of criticism. The critics maintained that that could result in a sort of imposed ‘tourist-oriented’ trend in Iranian art. (See  M. R. Jowdat and R. Pakbaz, ‘Nemāyeshgāh-e dasteh-jamʿi-ye naqqāshi’, Ketāb-e Sāl-e Tālār-e Iran (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e tālār-e Iran, 1344/1965): 10.) This sort of criticism was effectively approved in the initial years after the revolution by the new revolutionary artists. See for example, Abdolmajid Hosseini Rad, ‘Shekl-hā-ye honar-e sonnati va naqqāshi-ye moʿāser-e Iran’, Honar-hā-ye Tajassomi, no. 2 (1377/1998): 140; and Goudarzi, ‘Rāh-e chahārom’, 8. 48. He does not live in Iran any longer. However, as the interview took place in 2006 and what he raised as critical statements and also about his own work were related to the time, in order to avoid any confusion, his living location at the time is indicated. 49. The author’s interview with Farshid Azarang, 2006.

pa r a digm s of contem p orar y a r t  | 195 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Ibid. Ibid. The author’s interview with Ghazaleh Hedayat, 2006. Ibid. Ibid. The author’s interview with Barbad Golshiri, 2005. The author’s interview with Barbad Golshiri, 2006. For more explorations of these practices in the post-reform period, see Chapters 6 and 7.

PART III ART PRACTICE AND S O C I O - C U LT U R A L DISCOURSES

6 The Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran

T

his chapter looks at the issue of ‘belonging’, which itself is related to localised historical and cultural settings, and fuels a complex debate in the art of Iran today.1 I will explore the strategies pursued by artists in the Iranian context, and the wider politics of art practice relating to this fundamental yet unresolved question. I argue that the lack of an effective presence of public platforms during recent times, such as academies or museums, has left individual artists to generate their own artistic strategies that are relevant to the demands of contemporaneity – the concept that was fully explored in Chapters 1 and 5. In this chapter, I examine this concern through the works of a number of artists, situating them with reference to the concepts of identity, ethnicity and transnational contemporaneity. With reference to selected works, I also consider how artists enact a politics of resistance to explicit ethno-cultural identity markers – that is, to reductive cultural views that tend to perceive their works as geopolitical reflections. Influenced by contemporary discussions on globalised art, their art practice aims to revisit a well-established debate within art-historical discourse: namely, whether art should have creative autonomy, or whether it is only ever determined by its context. Within the contemporary art scene in Iran, just as within social movements, political interventions with aesthetic dimensions have mobilised a range of approaches; experiments that are more open to reflexivity and individual subjective interpretations. As will become clear, for some artists, artistic practice is an intellectual and activist project that serves as a fitting site for the possibility of responsible and socio-political art. This attitude is closely aligned with the belief that art must have an intellectual function and should contribute towards representing society, if not serving it.2

200 | th e art o f i r a n In the second part, through four case studies of artists’ works, I examine how artists act against the erasure of contextual frames, which demonstrates an awareness of the fact that contemporary art is capable of transcending the politics of location. I will discuss the current dilemma of how contemporary artists in Iran have responded to Iran’s social and cultural complexities. Discursive Paradigms Contemporary art of Iran, in the process of adaptation to and appropriation of the Euro-American artistic paradigms, has sought to reflect the phenomena of its own contemporaneity.3 This alternative context of contemporaneity ideally aims, in turn, to create new discursive constructions in the contemporary era. A familiar debate within this arena concerns whether it is possible to articulate specific cultural issues while addressing contemporaneous questions related to the broader global field. This reveals deep-rooted anxieties that relate to the issue of cultural belonging and identity, and their possible affinity with international concerns. It might first be useful to consider the origin of some of these practices that have sought to engage with the global arena. As I argued in Chapter 5, by the end of the 1990s a number of young artists, in rather a short time, increasingly began to make use of new and unprecedented means of media. At the same time, artworks appeared that were aligned with contemporary art processes integrating new perspectives that reflected existing circumstances in the country. The stimulus for this movement came partly from the contemporary international art scene and partly from domestic conditions, where the need to record reality in all its ever-changing forms had become more urgent. The emergence of new media and various contemporary idea-based approaches arguably enabled a more sustained critical and direct social address than was possible with earlier forms of modernism.4 This new trend was first established in the early 2000s, when it found support in official institutions – in particular the TMoCA.5 A common thread uniting these artists was a yearning to be contemporary: to incorporate into the practices of internationalism concurrently and in a tangible manner. They now needed to participate in the ‘contemporary’, not simply produce works that are indifferent to their context. Inevitably, then, this drive to comply with global value systems would entail an understanding

p olit ic s o f art p ractice in contem por a r y i r a n  | 201 of the global art system. At the same time, there seemed to be an insatiable demand within the global system to reveal what might be defined as ethno-­ cultural identity markers, often encapsulated through specific, clichéd symbols: subjects such as cultural heritage, tradition and gendered experience, which would also adhere to typical definitions of ‘cultural authenticity’.6 This insatiable demand would in return affect choices of subject matter and imagery. This often leads to the prohibition of cultural aspirations or forms of address when artwork is exhibited. The impulse to suppress cultural statements or gestures within the exhibiting establishment is a response to the presumed demands of the metropolitan art world, rather than to domestic sensibilities. References have been made in Iranian art to issues from traditional imaginary and cultural platitudes to explicit controversial political subjects. Exploring these themes in art would be a strategy whose parameters are at least clear to win recognition internationally, although not necessarily domestically. Examples of a nostalgic aesthetic approach towards local and national imaginaries are not hard to find. Here one should be aware of the issue of the essentially dissimilar reception and reading of these artistic practices which aim to demonstrate cultural particularities in accordance with international demands at home to the global scene. Artworks that are praised by the world exhibition centres as strongly representative of the cultural mood of the country are fiercely criticised at home, as it is said they aim only to win the endorsement of ‘the Other’. Despite the fact that these artists are more widely represented in certain art circles – and are indeed associated with such trend-setting schemes – there is criticism of this situation at home, where it is argued that their position is based on stereotyping these trends.7 The tensions between the two opposing movements – representing the claims of cultural homogenisation on one hand and of cultural heterogenisation on the other – are clearly reflected in the products developed by artists: global forms, aesthetics, functions and concepts versus local values and desires. Nevertheless, the global art scene cannot be seen simply as a readily available platform by which local art is introduced onto a global scene. The question that results from this is: how does the hegemonic language of art discourse affect an artist for whom it is not his or her mother tongue? Intellectual and artistic strategies are central to the challenge of dealing with this hegemonic structure.

202 | th e art o f i r a n The issue of cultural otherness has also been framed by the Iranian state, although making use of different ideological resources from what the international, almost unanimous value systems would propose. The question of a return to a glorified past and political stance against modernity, which gathered momentum in the 1979 Revolution, is still present in the cultural policy of the Islamic Republic. The use of various materials and themes from native sources to construct ‘independent’ or ‘authentic’ works, supporting the idea of cultural specificity and indigenous expression in artwork, has been partly the result of this formulation.8 The materialisation of this idea can be seen in the works of artists who are still influenced by such debates as that concerning the creation of a unique artistic identity within the cultural domain of the country, aired in particular during the 1960s. This decade had already seen the influential role played by the neo-traditionalist Saqqā-khāneh artists.9 It was when artists assimilated new impulses from inside the country, while aiming to contribute to the process of modernisation and its alternative formulation and to record their country’s intellectual discussions – the notion of collective cultural and national identity. Visual expressions of such ideals were complex and individualistic, but the challenge to realise those ideals through the use of both local materials and universal modes of expression was immediately evident in the work of these artists. Using ancient, traditional or indigenous materials in order for their work to be identified especially as ‘Iranian’ was to a certain extent the impact of nativist and nationalist beliefs which had been variously presented throughout the recent history of Iranian art. The artists appropriated the Western canon and discourses, but looked for inspiration in native popular culture. The result was a new form of art inspired by modernist trends in the West while at the same time questioning Eurocentric hegemony, as well as incorporating elements from local cultures in order to promote more polycentric and alternative aesthetics. Interestingly, in addition to the wide domestic realisation that these artists received, their works were also relatively successful in gaining recognition from a number of foreign exhibitions held at the time, as it was taken to constitute the perfect way of representing Iranian, or more broadly ‘Middle Eastern’, art. The cultural administrative bodies of the Islamic Republic have aimed to designate a ‘standard’ identity built on political agendas. This over-centralised, anticompetitive and ideological idea suggests that this identity is an essential component of Iranian cultural essence and materiality. In terms of the ‘official

p olit ic s o f art p ractice in contempor a r y i r a n  | 203 culture’ and its practice in recent decades, if Khatami’s presidency enabled a relative cultural and intellectual flourishing, giving voice to new ideas in art as well as in social and political struggles within the system, the election in 2005 of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic marked another huge shift. After 2005, the official attitude towards art echoed the first phase after the revolution. This can be seen in exhibitions, such as that held at the TMoCA in 2006, that looked at ‘resistance’, in reference to the Palestine–Israel conflict. This continued throughout the second round of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, after the 2009 controversial election, with more restrictions imposed from the official bodies on art and culture activities. In this period, official attempts were made to endorse revolutionary and political Islamic principles, and to promote extreme anti-Western sentiments. However, the majority of the art community, including the newly established artists’ societies, culturally reacted against this situation by refusing to participate in public events.10 In addition to a number of retrospective exhibitions on the pioneers of modern art in Iran following the pattern that had been established in the Reform period, TMoCA organised a few exhibitions mainly in collaboration with the cultural attaché of the German embassy in Tehran, namely Käthe Kollwitz & Ernst Barlach (2008) and Gunther Uecker (2012), which displayed works of the contemporary German artists. These exhibitions, however, did not receive the same enthusiastic response from the art community as in the heydays of the museum during the early 2000s, both in terms of their curatorial quality and the number of visitors.11 During recent years the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has set up regular formal art events, including the continuation of national biennials (not held on a particularly regular basis), the annual Fajr Festival of Visual Arts (  Jashnvāreh-ye honr-hā-ye tajassomi-ye fajr),12 the annual Festival of Youth Visual Arts (  Jashnvāreh-ye honr-hā-ye tajassomi-ye javānānn), as well as art expos all from within the state’s rarefied ideological ghetto and politics of culture.13 While there has been no serious effort to promote the contemporary art of Iran internationally through the public sector in recent years,14 these events, at their best, have limited themselves to a small portion of the existing cultural potential of the country. This lack of inclusivity has turned against the cultural norms of the status quo and in turn formed strong alternative pathways. Since there was a limited chance for showing their work in or

204 | the art o f i r a n through official venues such as TMoCA, artists have had no choice but to focus their attention outside the country through the private sector. Various exhibitions of works by Iranian artists were held in Europe and America during the 2000s and 2010s.15 Currently the administration’s ideological view of culture obviously frowns on any kind of critical or alternative art practices: usually denoted by unconventional contemporary practices and media, site-specific works, or performances which are practised in private spaces or through the artists’ personal networks. Restrictions are also applied to some kinds of artwork – photographic in particular – that according to the defined formula of cultural and ideological standards are seen as ‘misleading’ cultural products acting against national religious ‘values’ or the political system. The same approach is adopted in relation to all cultural products, including art publications operated under the heading of ‘regulation’. Any message critical of the state’s ideological system is not tolerated and is condemned by the system, which principally believes in directing and guiding the national culture towards the ‘right manner’ (the main connotation of the word ‘ershād’, meaning ‘guidance’, included in the title of the ministry). During Hassan Rouhani’s presidency – the president who won the election in 2013 with his promise of moderation, ‘hope’ and ‘contrivance’ against the former extremism – these circumstances remained almost unchanged. Although there were no fundamental changes within official artistic policy, the election initially to a certain extent brought to an end the pessimism felt by the artistic community and private sector towards the cultural landscape of Iran, particularly with regard to the level of official adverse interventions. There were a few attempts by TMoCA to organise a number of non-political national and international exhibitions, modelled on those held during the Reform period. Among others the most important ones included irregular shows of the museum’s Western collection, Neo-traditionalism and Contemporary Iranian Art (2014), and retrospective exhibitions of Wim Delvoye (2015), Tony Cragg (2017) and Modern Arab Art from the Barjeel Art Foundation (2016). However, the former, excessive, lack of inclusivity and ideologically oriented scheme of the governmental cultural sector had turned the majority of the artistic community against the existing state of affairs and towards becoming increasingly anti-establishment, creating powerful commercial and independent sectors. Consequently, by the late 2000s, the art scene in Iran was growing

p olit ic s o f art p ractice in contem por a r y i r a n  |  205 in parallel with cultural funding centres operating within the private art sector, and an increasing level of production was seen by individuals and private institutions in this area. During the past decade, international (US in particular) sanctions and their attendant restrictions have created unstable situations and a lot of pressure on artistic exchange and interactions, particularly with the international art scene. However, a number of non-official events, both inside and outside Iran were held that attracted a greater number of emerging artists who would not accept restrictions imposed on them by official regulations. Among others, MOP CAP,16 the Vista Contemporary Art Prize17 and Persbook18 were the most popular contemporary art competitions. Meanwhile, various online platforms and art centres have provided platforms for young artists and facilitated the introduction of contemporary art produced in Iran to the international art spectrum, and occasionally held exhibitions of foreign artists in Iran that assured an alternative to institutional standards.19 There have also been small curatorial projects structured within these private sectors.20 The inclusion of emerging artists, together with panel discussions and events, little presented in the Iranian art scene before, have been organised in a few private galleries, a recent development introduced to the practice of art in Iran. The past two decades have also seen a flow of regional and international market interest in ‘Iranian art’. Geopolitics and the state of the economy have been at least partly responsible for this recognition. The recent development of the regional art market in the Middle East, in particular Art Dubai and Christie’s bi-annual auctions in Dubai,21 has been further exemplified in art fairs, auction house sales and exhibitions. Aligned with this development, the local market has also been greatly affected with the creation of commercial galleries and large art centres. The Tehran annual auction, now taking place twice a year, follows the pattern of international auctions but on a national scale and started its activity in 2012.22 More recently, Teer Art, established in 2019 with the collaboration of Tehran’s key commercial galleries, formed the first private national art fair in Iran. It consisted of two events, held twice a year: the Teer Art fair and the Teer Art week, taking place throughout Tehran and featuring gallery exhibitions, urban art installations, panel discussions, studio visits and public tours.23 The latter was an alternative to the governmental art events and also non-governmental auctions, but had to end in 2021 mainly because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

206 | th e art o f i r a n Overall, this market inevitably favours certain kinds of genres, including modern Iranian masters, mainly those who were at their height in the 1960s and 1970s, and more marketable media such as painting and sculpture, and on a much smaller scale photography. This interest has indeed found parallels in the majority of commercial galleries. The number of newcomers is increasing, and along with the economic institutions such as banks,24 several young collectors are likewise joining the club. The diffusion of pseudo-‘neoliberal’ economic ideology and market values in recent years in Iran and their attendant marketisation attracted a new group of art buyers. Given the current economic instability of the country and the high degree of liquidity in the hands of a small cluster of the newly shaped post-revolutionary rich, art represents a less risky commodity for investment and a means to secure their capital for those who can afford it than many other options. There are other reasons for the growing interest in collecting contemporary (although still largely modern) art locally, mainly on the part of a new generation of rich buyers. One is to gain prestige – as for the rich elsewhere. This has nevertheless created problems resulting from the increasingly rarefied and exclusive character of the market: such as, that this new market would generate a process whereby art and culture increasingly capitulate to the logic of economy. The issue of exclusivity also arises again. Here the question of standardisation makes itself felt, which is not very different from the perspectives of the world exhibition system or the state’s clichéd definition of authenticity.25 Here one should note the pivotal role played by the auctions and art fairs in shaping what constitutes ‘significance’ in contemporary art. This might result, in turn, in an unhealthy homogenisation according to the familiar, clichéd criteria. Yet, a growing number of artists, unconsciously or consciously, make work whose sale is guaranteed. Various kinds of calligraphic trends, explicit social representations, are the most fashionable examples among other market-oriented genres. This, however, is threatening the position of a large group of practising artists, in particular including the emerging younger generations, who are not willing to comply with the market system. In addition, this system could generate stereotypical ways of thinking among arbiters of taste and value by imposing its own standards. The main point for criticism is that the market inevitably aims at commercial success and is not particularly interested in other aspects of art, including the social role that contemporary art could play. These economic institutions ignore the contextual meanings of

p olit ic s o f art p ractice in contem por a r y i r a n  | 207 artworks and hence add ‘aesthetic censorship’ to the state’s censorship as the only criterion based on commodity value.26 Many artists, however, have set aside the issues of the pricing of their work, focusing instead on making it with uncompromising rigour. To avoid any straightforward interpretation or clichéd reading of the work of art by the abovementioned stereotyped frame of the world exhibition, the art market and the state’s official ideological frameworks, Iranian artists are asked by domestic critics to avoid complying with these expectations. They are encouraged to be more complex in approaching their art, to try not to be trapped by those conditioned systems of reading. There has thus been an attempt to re-orientate this discourse – a drive to change the terms of the debate and a resistance to ‘categorisation’ and the cliché-ridden idea, rejection of the notion of an art industry itself, and of ideological formulations around their work. Many artists avoid iconographic clichés. When they apply any symbol of their belonging, such as traditional features or the implications of political and social issues as a response to their immediate context, they constantly interrogate their re-presentation in their work. Here it can be seen that the maintenance of the cultural ideals presented in the works of those previous generations has now become challenging, perhaps because these cultural standards and their presentation hold little influence over those who do not identify with them. Works that best reflect this challenge are those not simply pertaining to what is here and now, but offering an intentional artistic construct that asserts a particular temporality and spatiality for itself. Such works consider the most demanding personal, social, cultural and political issues of the time, recognising the need to communicate clearly, with an eye to the complexities of contemporary culture. This perspective enables them to resist the temptation of exhibiting exotic imagery.27 Their works reflect contradictions and demonstrate critical ideas through autobiographical exposition and elements of everyday life. This criticism goes even further when addressing collective memories, deconstructing tradition, belonging and identity. In Stuart Hall’s terms, these practices are not ‘the rediscovery but the production of identity. Not an identity grounded in archaeology, but in the re-telling of the past.’28 This persistent concern with challenging norms is sometimes epitomised through humorous commentary on those ideals instead of their commemoration, as was offered by

208 | the art o f i r a n artists of earlier generations. Accordingly, although themes such as tradition, gender and dislocation may appear in the works of contemporary artists, these are embedded within larger concerns about culture and society. A familiar strategy is to address the limitations of normative paradigms concerned with social status. These works in effect could recreate the semiotics of the society. Although a large number of artists reject any reference to anything collective, their work adheres to an ironic, and at times sarcastic approach to the evident desires of the past, the subject that I will explore in Chapter 9. Making use of culturally sacred or symbolic objects, the artists struggle to redefine them by the use of critical discourses. Socio-politically Engaged Art Practices The work of Barbad Golshiri (b. 1982, living and working in Paris) represents a paradoxical circumstance: the simultaneity of symbolic local meanings with metaphors that resonate internationally. His art is critically responsive to Iran’s contemporary political culture and questions its official ideological grounds. Golshiri’s series of tombstones, Curriculum Mortis (2013–15), explores the issue of death. This theme is an essential concern throughout his work and in this series appears as the main theme of his art practice. Here the physical bodies are replaced with tombstones, both physical and ephemeral, resulting in the gallery space becoming a graveyard where he actually executed and installed several works of this series. In his sculptural installations, each work has its own title, and the artist addresses each death individually, ‘creating grave markers so closely attuned as to become physical manifestations of the people they commemorate’.29 The artist’s personal history is as deeply intertwined in this work as are the histories of the dead. The graves include those of Samuel Beckett – a stone with the inscription ‘[There is] no God’, a tombstone of Jan van Eyck, and finally Golshiri’s own tombstone (Figure 6.1). ‘Walking through this makeshift graveyard, we are moving through a mindscape of the artist; each grave presents a portal into worlds beyond the present one …’30 In a metaphorical act, the artist creates an ephemeral tombstone for a man who for political reasons could never have a tombstone on his grave, signifying those political prisoners that were executed in 1988 and never had the right to be buried normally or have a tombstone. The stencilled text in Persian narrates his labyrinthine death (Figure 6.2). Each time his family visits the cemetery, they bring along the

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Figure 6.1 Barbad Golshiri, As Dad As Possible, As Dad As Beckett, 2000–13, iron, ashes, 200.3 × 100.2 × 28.3 cm, the artist burnt hundreds of works he had produced during 13 years prior to creation of this work in 2013, including his writings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, prints, sketches and so forth.

stencilled tombstone with them, place it on the grave and stealthily pour soot powder on it. The text is thus imprinted and depending on the wind strength vanishes in a few hours or a few days. The act is repeated as a ritual. The simplicity and minimal aesthetics of these works challenge traditional appearances of tombstones that celebrate death and martyrdom, befitting his larger gesture of outdoing and questioning authority without making a frontal attack on it.31 The interactive installation/performance, Self-service (2009), by Neda Razavipour (b. 1996, living and working in Tehran and Switzerland) actualises violence by signifying the ways in which chaotic violence permeates the whole society (Figure 6.3). The project was staged first at the Azad Gallery, Tehran, in the autumn of 2009,32 just a few months after the controversial June presidential election, with Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad’s victory for a second round in office. The post-election period witnessed a phase of political urgency, mass protests

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Figure 6.2 Barbad Golshiri, Khāvarān, from the Curriculum Mortis series; the piece was originally called Nār va Ākh (Fire and Oh) and when read backwards that would read Khāvarān, the name of the cemetery where thousands of the executed political prisoners were buried in unmarked mass graves in 1988; 2017, installation, TMoCA, photo: Sahand Behrouzi.

against frauds in the election, through the so-called Green Movement, that continued for several months. The anti-fraud demonstrations, led by the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi (the other main candidate), were violently suppressed by the police. The visitors in the galley were offered opportunities to cut pieces of hand-knotted Persian carpets and take them away in envelopes printed with a phrase from Plato’s Republic, signifying the genesis of democracy. A repressed surge of violence had to be released to make the participants cut the carpets into pieces, so that in two days what was left on the gallery floor was only a devastating scene of leftover pieces of carpets. It involved the audience in an ethical dilemma: one could contribute to the success of an interactive happening, but in the process also destroy one’s cultural legacy and heritage. This project returns to a central question identified in this chapter – that of the artist’s cultural belonging – and to question surrounding actualities. It is in this light that we can read the subtlety and layered complexity of this artwork, in particular given its siting of social reality in the Iranian context.

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Figure 6.3 Neda Razavipour, Self-service, 2009, interactive performance.

212 | th e art o f i r a n The works of Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar (b. 1977; living and working in Tehran) convey an ambiguous presence, moving between the idea of faith, on the one hand, and the official propaganda on the other.33 His work reflects on the recent history of Iran and reacts to the current social state of affairs in his country by a re-contextualisation of symbols of political propaganda in Iran. Using unconventional mediums such as cigarettes, neon light, and other craftmade materials, his work presents ironic interpretations of hybrids between local traditional materials such as calligraphy, Islamic architecture, religious texts, political propaganda and those of the consumerist and globalised popular culture widespread in Iran (for example his Khatt-e pul-sāz-e pārsi (Persian Moneymaker Calligraphy), 2009, and Talk Cloud (2013)). Bakhshi Moakhar integrates everyday objects from his surroundings into his work – objects that have acquired a political character beyond their commonplace everyday use. The installation Bahman’s Wall (2011) is made up of the Bahman cigarette, a low-quality post-revolutionary brand alluding to the month of Bahman, the month of victory of the revolution (Figure 6.4). As in previous works, Bakhshi ironically depicts formal features of typical traditional Iranian-Islamic architecture such as geometric forms and ornaments to address existing cultural crises and contradictions in post-revolutionary Iran. The wall consists of geometric motifs executed by the use of numerous pieces of cigarettes. The subversive characteristics of this complex work is generated through both the title of the work referring to the months of Bahman, also associated with the cigarette with the same name, and the structural forms of the work with repetitive motifs signifying the implausibility of official revolutionary and religious propaganda. The cigarettes further imply a ‘hopeless’ act that one might obsessively carry out just to kill time – just like the act of smoking a cigarette.34 Therefore, Bahman’s Wall gently comments on the political failure of the state and its relation to everyday life in contemporary Iran. The projects of Nazgol Ansarinia (b. 1979; living and working in Tehran) raise similar questions by examining the systems and networks that reinforce her daily life, such as routines, events, and the relationship they form with larger societal changes in Iran. A number of Ansarinia’s projects feature sensuous ornamental images from traditional sources, such as carpets, architecture and old manuscripts. Their inherent contradictions deepen as images of contemporary society are concealed in their traditional shapes. They suggest

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Figure 6.4 Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar, from the Bahman’s Wall series, 2009–11, installation, cigarette, tinplate, 240 × 100 × 20 cm.

possibilities for recreating alternative identities out of a rich layering of available pasts. In a moment, in turn, this contradiction can fracture and subdivide under our gaze. In her Reflections Refractions series (2012), she re-constructs pages of daily newspapers containing headlines and writings by re-structuring the whole pages into fragmented geometric formats (Figure 6.5). Using collage techniques, Ansarinia’s reference to geometric forms of traditional Islamic architecture as a formal and conceptual device, the same as Bakhshi Moakhar, challenges the official master narratives. It also aims to negotiate the questions of imperfection and poor dissemination of information, in particular its circulation in the Iranian context. These deconstructed writings and images,

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Figure 6.5 Nazgol Ansarinia, 4 March 2012, Front Page, from the Reflections Refractions series, 2012, newspaper collage.

common in Ansarinia’s works, challenge the concept of representation as a depiction of a scene or an object, a description of an event, the writing of history, or the rendering of a memory. In these works, the encountered images and their constituent elements are themselves at odds with their message – the images simultaneously devour and eject the message. Conclusion Each of the artists I have discussed here, who have adopted the vanguard position and represent a wider group of art practitioners in contemporary Iran, are wary of issues such as ‘Iranian-ness’ and of labels such as ‘Perso-Islamic’ – in particular, of how such issues or labels might invoke stereotypes about cultural

p olit ic s o f art p ractice in conte m por a r y i r a n  | 215 production and art, and of the underlying politics of representation. In their various ways, they seek to tackle the questions of belonging, and how to reconcile these issues within the wider context of contemporary global art within which contemporary discourses are juxtaposed and discussed. They attempt, as the art theorist Irit Rogoff puts it, to avoid naming their identities through their ‘belonging’ to a particular nation or ethnic group, trying instead to find other, more ephemeral and immaterial levels to their heritage which will allow them – and us as viewers – to inhabit a much larger terrain.35 This indeed resonates with the idea of contemporaneity and its aim as a phenomenon that can erase the boundaries of location. This idea is the basis of an understanding that ‘belonging’ is by necessity a performative stance that has to be rehearsed daily.36 The central challenge is to define an alternative set of criteria, defined from within rather than from outside,37 to express themselves, while they gain recognition from the art world as it presently exists. Thus, in the perception of these artists, their central concern is not the marketability or exotic quality of their works, but rather their own effort to depict grapples with reality and lived experience in critical and meaningful ways. This intellectual strategy renders the contemporary landscape of artistic production as an important space for the negotiation of cultural, political and social ‘renewal’. It has created a new trend that questions the socio-political and cultural forces driving their society. This is what is often termed contemporary artistic and cultural practice. Contemporary, in this usage, takes on a very specific meaning, relating not to a work’s own aesthetic qualities, but connoting certain politically subversive qualities. Visual art practice in Iran has become compelling, relevant, critical and political – though, significantly, not ideologically political – in the postrevolutionary era, upon the death of ‘institutional ideology’ as it were. These artists thus refuse a paradigm that solely associates a vernacular language with uniqueness. Nevertheless, it is important to note that I am not merely disputing the opposition between the central and the marginal – some artists’ works have in fact made a good case for the deficiency of this binary. These artists are already aware of the traps of authenticity that endorse the globalised art world. As these artists produce and circulate work within local infrastructures, they also negotiate global concepts in a context where local values retain significant power – mainly by appropriating them both.

216 | th e art o f i r a n Notes  1. There are many parallels in contemporary art of the Arab world and, more generally, the MENA region. For example, for contemporary art practices in Egypt and its relation to the question of authenticity, see Jessica Winegar, ‘Cultural Authenticity, Artistic Personhood, and Frames of Evaluation’, in Creative Reckonings, The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 88–130.  2. It is a confirmation of Hal Foster’s statement in his essay, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’, when he discusses the paradigm in ‘advanced art on the left’. He maintains that ‘there is the assumption that the site of artistic transformation is the site of political transformation, and, more, that this site is always located elsewhere, in the field of the other: in the productivist model, with the social other, the exploited proletariat; in the quasi-anthropological model, with the cultural other, the oppressed postcolonial, subaltern, or subcultural’. Hal Foster, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’ in The Traffic in Culture, Refuging Art and Anthropology, eds George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 302.  3. For definition of the concept of contemporaneity and its relation to art practice in Iran, see Chapters 1 and 5.  4. For further discussion of post-revolutionary modernism, see Chapter 4.  5. For details and the role of the museum on the Iranian art scene in this period, see Chapter 5 and also Helia Darabi, ‘Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art as a Microcosm of the State’s Cultural Agenda’, in Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: I. B. Tauris), 221–45.  6. For a discussion on the contribution of the global exhibition system in essentialisation of cultures, see Chapter 8. Also, for the viability of the relationship between contemporary art and the artistic traditions of Islam, see Sussan Babaie, ‘Voices of Authority: Locating the “Modern” in “Islamic” Arts’, Getty Research Journal, no. 3 (2011): 133–49.  7. See Chapter 5.  8. For full exploration of this subject, see Chapter 7.  9. Chapter 3 provides a full account of this period and the dominance of the neotraditional art movement. 10. After Ahmadinejad’s controversial re-election in 2009, a major number of artists and art activists, including artists’ societies, signed declarations advocating

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11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

a boycott of collaboration with government institutions which lasted until the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani. See Darabi, ‘Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art as a Microcosm of State’s Cultural Agenda’, 254. Inaugurated in 2008, it is held on the annual celebration of the revolution in winter. The first ten festivals were divided into two sections, national and international, and named Fajr International Festival of Visual Arts (in line with the more established Fajr Film Festival). They were categorised based on the media – representing the standard official categorisation of art. The national section consisted of media including painting, sculpture, illustration, calligraphy, pottery and ceramics, and Persian painting; and the international section included poster design, photography, cartoons and documentary film. Since 2019 (the eleventh festival), it has turned into a national festival and other media including handmade print, and more recently new media, have been added to the categories. These exhibitions are conventionally held in public art centres and museums under the ministry – in particular TMoCA, the Niavaran Cultural Centre and the Sabā Cultural and Artistic Centre (the latter under the Iranian Academy of Arts). For further details, see the author’s book, Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives (London: Saqi Books Books, 2013), 235–6. The only exception is perhaps the Venice Biennale. In the post-revolutionary period, Iranian art has been exhibited (at intervals) through its pavilion at the biennale from the fiftieth Venice Biennale in 2002 onwards. There have been differing, sometimes unclear strategiesover the years, from the participation of forty artists of different generations in 2015 to a one-man show (works of sculptor Bizhan Basiri who lives and works in Italy) in 2017. In 2019, the head of the Centre of Visual Arts (under the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance), Hadi Mozafari, confidently announced that they were not ‘afraid of Venice Biennale’s Lion any more’. He claimed that the Iranian pavilion that year – in which the organisers tried to represent pictures of the past, present and future of Iran through the works of three artists, Reza Lavasani, Samira Alkhanzadeh and Ali Mirazimi – was particularly attractive to the juries. ‘Digar az shir-e biyenāl-e veniz nemitarsim!’, 9 Dey 1998/30 December 2019/https://www.ghatreh.com/ news/ (accessed 24 February 2020). For more details about these exposures, see Chapter 8. MOP CAP stands for the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize, which was a biennial art prize organised by the Magic of Persia, a UK based charity, started in 2009 with the last round happening in 2015. The introduction to the MOP CAP

218 | the art o f i r a n reads, ‘MOP CAP is a worldwide search for the next generation of contemporary Iranian visual artists who have the potential to make a significant impact in their field. The goal of the prize is to provide an opportunity for emerging artists to gain international exposure, and to engage in artistic experimentation and cultural exchange …’ See http://www.magicofpersia.com/index.php?rel=program_ details&id=18/ (accessed 8 December 2019). 17. Started in 2016, the Vista Contemporary Art Prize, held annually by the Vista Gallery, a private art gallery in Tehran, is a public call for young and emerging contemporary artists. Judged by a group of Iranian independent art historians, artists and curators, the competition has received a very positive response from the younger generation of artists. 18. Established in 2009, Persbook is an annual online contemporary art competition for artists who reside in Iran and is held both virtually and actually in different venues in Tehran. Its website reads ‘[The main aim of Persbook is to provide] an unbiased free climate for presentation and introduction of Iranian youth works and an independent dynamic climate for interaction and synergy.’ See http:// persbookart.com/ (accessed 2 September 2021). 19. Established in 2015, the Pejman Foundation, for example, is a non-profit art foundation that aims to promote contemporary art created by Iranian and nonIranian artists. The Foundation has held curatorial projects such as exhibitions of artists in its main building in southern Tehran, the Argo Factory (formerly one of the first factories to produce beverages in Iran). In addition to these exhibitions, through its residency programme at the Kandovan centre (the other part of the foundation), it has supported projects, granted sponsorship to artists, and held different workshops and lecture programmes on contemporary art in collaboration with local and international artists and curators. Founded in 2014, the New Media Society was a non-profit project space co-founded by Amirali Ghasemi. Its focus was on archiving and facilitating projects related to new media arts. It also held events such as talks and workshops, symposiums, exhibitions and also artist residency programmes. It basically acted as a mediator for presenting emerging artists across the country with their projects. (https:// newmediasoc.com/new-media/about/ (accessed 3 November 2022)) Its activity ended in 2022. As for online platforms, one can name the Sazmanab contemporary art centre. Active from 2008 to 2018, it was an independent non-profit art centre in Tehran. Sazmanab was started as an art space and residency programme in Tehran in 2008 by artist-curator Sohrab Kashani. It created curatorial projects and supported art projects in a wide range of media through exhibitions,

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20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

residencies for artists, curators and researchers, workshops, and talks (https:// www.sazmanab.org/ten/information/#i1/ (accessed 1 October 2021)). There is, however, an excessive lack of reflection on the theoretical side involved in curating contemporary art and the issue of curatorial knowledge. The range of issues relating to curating contemporary art exhibitions is expanding but it is mainly discussed in practical terms with insufficient attention being paid to the underlying theoretical discourses involved. Started in 2006 the Christie’s bi-annual auctions on Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art were held twice, in spring and autumn, each year in Dubai. Since 2017, the Christie’s autumn auctions have been held in London. The auction’s name has now been changed to ‘Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art’. Directed by Alireza Sami Azar, the former director of TMoCA, the auction’s aims and objectives are described as: ‘to introduce the best of Iranian art ranging from established and emerging Iranian artists to Iranian art collectors and global audience. It is an endeavour to fulfil the increasing interest in modern and contemporary Iranian art and to facilitate the acquisition of the best quality works of various genres. It also aims to support the domestic art market as a key basis for the international market …’; see https://tehranauction.com/en/about-us/ (accessed 1 October 2021). See https://teerart.com/about/ (accessed 3 October 2021). After the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, this turned into a virtual event and eventually ended in 2021. In addition to individuals, the Pasargad and Ayandeh banks, both private, are now the most important collectors of modern and contemporary art of Iran. The Passargad’s collection, consisting mainly of modern art pieces by Iranian artists, has been exhibited through temporary venues as the Pasargad Contemporary Visual Arts Museum. See Chapter 8. See Yād-dāsht-e Barbad Golshiri dar bāreh-ye bongāh-hā-ye eqtesādi va onar; nān bā āzādi, https://www.honarmrooz.com/ (accessed 20 August 2019), See Chapter 8. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Colonial Discourse and PostColonialism, A Reader, eds Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 393. WSI Administration, ‘Barbad Golshiri. Curriculum Mortis’, Wall Street International, 23 September 2013, https://wsimag.com/art/4037-barbadgolshiri-curriculum-mortis/ (accessed 20 September 2019).

220 | th e art o f i r a n 30. Ibid. 31. See Bansie Vasvani, ‘Barbad Golshiri: Curriculum Mortis at Thomas Erben Gallery’, Daily Serving, dailyserving.com/2013/10/barbad-golshiri-curricu​lummortis-at-thomas-erben-gallery/ (accessed 17 August 2014). 32. This interactive project was performed once again at the Paris exhibition Iranian Art Now, curated by Fereshteh Daftari in 2012. 33. For further study of Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar’s works, see Helia Darabi, ‘Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar’, Art Press, no. 17 (May/June/July 2010): 72–4. 34. The artist’s unpublished statement. 35. Irit Rogoff, ‘Regional Imagining’, in Unleashed: Contemporary Art from Turkey, eds Hossein Amirsadeghi and Maryam Eisler (London: TransGlobe, 2010), 52. 36. For full exploration of the concept of performativity and its relation to the practice of making identity, see Chapter 7. 37. Rogoff, ‘Regional Imagining’, 52.

7 Artists’ Attempts to Reclaim Cultural Space versus the State’s Cultural Prescriptions

F

ollowing on from the previous chapter, this chapter deals particularly with different strands of identity politics, their association with the post-­ revolutionary state’s cultural strategy and the artist’s aesthetic rebellion versus the state’s expectations. I explore the ways in which the artists’ focal beliefs about social relations and cultural essentialism find expression in their artwork. I further examine strategies employed by artists and art activists in Iran concerned with re-thinking notions of embodiment and performativity in tension with the political contexts of the country. I attempt to identify what has happened in the course of contemporary Iranian cultural politics during the post-revolutionary period, which has formed the current power relations between the state’s cultural prescription and the artists’ attempts to reclaim their cultural spaces. This chapter explores how artistic involvements with activism are increasingly moving away from the utopian and prescriptive agendas promoted by the state, and hence echoing more broadly the ‘subjective turn’ of social movements. As was mentioned earlier – and I would like to reiterate it here – artists have not been absorbed by the state’s soft power, which aims to impose its political and ideological values on the nation’s life. Artists’ resistance is debated through their works by referring to themes such as history, memory, social conventions and power relations. Power Relations and Artistic Subjectivity It was addressed in earlier chapters that in contemporary Iranian cultural life, including artistic activities, one can detect the central presence of the Iranian state and its role in standardising the conventional paradigms in all cultural

222 | the art o f i r a n and artistic moods. Political scientist Shireen Hunter rightly argues that in addition to Islamicising Iran’s cultural life, the post-revolutionary state sought to install a revolutionary spirit into the country’s cultural and artistic life. Indeed, a principal tenet of the Islamic Republic’s cultural philosophy was that art must be in the service of the revolution and Islam. In other words, artistic expression had merit only to the extent that it advanced the goals of the revolution, meaning instilling an Islamic and revolutionary spirit into the people.1 The autocratic state has sought to dismiss demands for democratic rights and values by dismissing them as Western-imposed values, foreign to the Islamic ‘nature’ of the Iranian nation. Although certain artistic expressions may have been stimulated from this socio-political repression, there are others that are suffering from the Islamic Republic’s imposed limitations on civil society and freedom of expression. In this vein, the ubiquity of direct and indirect censorship has left a profound mark, particularly in those artists who are intellectually critical of this situation.2 What the state has attempted to do is formulate a definition and fixation of an ‘authentic’ identity based on an essential idea to present itself as a homogeneous entity. As explored in Chapter 4, popularisation of the idea of an ‘Iranian’ identity in the Pahlavi era was replaced by fundamentalist values coming to the surface in the early post-revolutionary period, where they remained to some degree. As anthropologist Mostafa Vaziri remarks, ‘[t]he reinforcement of historical national identity by the Islamic regime was bound to a common code of culture that was centred on Islam as opposed to the secularism of the Pahlavis’.3 The state has further tried to fuse Shiite culture and politics into a single integrated political culture,4 which has effectively been institutionalised. It is, however, said that amongst the political leaders and intellectual architects of the Islamic Republic one can trace major prerevolutionary writings and speeches that had a strong nationalistic resonance. Therefore, it is not surprising that the majority of the Islamic Republic’s leaders speak of an ‘Islamo-Iranian’ culture and identity, as they believe there is an interdependent relationship between (Shiite) Islam and Iran.5 Hunter maintains the most important shift for the Islamic regime has been to legitimise the concept of Iranianism as a parallel focus with Islam and national loyalty as a component of Iranian cultural identity. The Islamic Republic has now recognised the notion of an Iranian nation, and therefore the term ‘Iranian Islamic’

a r t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cult ur a l s pa ce  | 223 is used within official language, even if the Islamic element has been the subject of more emphasis.6 It sought to institutionalise an Islamic political culture that was suggested to be an integral part of Iranian cultural psyche and materiality. It resulted in an Islamicisation process being instituted closely aligned with the clerical Islamic culture – the Islamic Republic’s way to ‘rehabilitate’ an ‘Islamically ill’ society.7 This over-centralised, monopolistic and ideological nature of the post-revolutionary state forces any alternative reaction to be similarly and simultaneously in essence ‘political-cultural’.8 Therefore, the Islamic Republic, assuming a hegemonic position in control of the state, took any cultural transformation very seriously. The state has then been in direct control and exercised a strong influence over all cultural and artistic productions, particularly those related to the public sectors or exposed publicly. In particular, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (formerly called the Ministry of Islamic Guidance) developed overall control over cultural production. Although this fundamental system of belief has witnessed relative moderation, specifically during the Reform period (asr-e eslāhāt, 1997–2005), that is Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, and to a much lesser extent Hassan Rouhani’s presidency (2013–21), it was recognisably reinforced during Mahmoud Ahdmadinejad’s and again with more strength in Ebrahim Raisi’s tenure (started in 2021).9 Meanwhile, the public state-governed events and exhibitions’ lack of inclusiveness has created powerful private sectors. By the late 2000s, Tehran’s commercial galleries and art centres established a series of national and international projects invested in an art scene that promised an alternative to institutional norms and governmental spheres. However, as was shown in the earlier chapters, in practice this development created its own complications, namely creating market-oriented genres that generated exclusivity. Although these recent non-governmental or unofficial platforms to a degree provided a local, regional and international channel of possibility for particular genres of art practice to be developed,10 many other types, specifically those critical and non-commodifiable artworks, of contemporary art are normally absent in these events. In effect, it has caused the concealment of other kinds of contemporary practices, in particular alternative art production in this scene.11 Based on the state’s ideologically structured views, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance created regulations that governed exhibitions, movies

224 | th e art o f i r a n and other forms of the arts.12 According to the ideologues of the state, ideology is used to remedy social, psychological and cultural maladjustments, such as moral and political strains.13 A few years after 1979, the post-revolutionary state and its cultural and artistic institutions, mainly the ministry, began to encourage an approach to traditional, Islamic and so-called Eastern art in opposition to the Pahlavi Euro-American-oriented cultural direction. As was fully explored in the previous chapters, in the major art exhibitions the artistic administrators suggested that more attention be paid to Islamic and now also national arts as an answer to the crisis over artistic identity caused mainly by the infinite Euro-Americanisation of Iranian culture and art by the Pahlavi regime (1925–79). It was not surprising that during the 1980s and early 1990s the impacts of the revolution and Islamic Republic’s ideological paradigms on the artistic atmosphere of this period was directly evident. Nevertheless, as philosopher and social scientist Ramin Jahanbegloo maintains, the very notion of ‘ideology’ gradually lost much of its coherence in the later years among the new generation of Iranian intellectuals and art activists and accompanied the crisis of political legitimacy in Iran.14 He further contends that ‘today, a democratic notion of identity, emphasising the formation of a pluralistic civil society in Iran, is more welcomed among the new generation of Iranian elites than romantic or traditionalist notions of Iranian identity’.15 Thus, from the majority of the artists of the new generation surrounded by an increasingly globalised world, this formulation of culture does not seem to be plausible any longer. In fact, rather than internalising the demands of the dominant ideology or the inert perception of the subject against power,16 as Michel Foucault, Michel De Certeau and John Fiske argue, artists as social subjects can be active agents in countering the dominant ideology. This emphasises the notion of resistance against the ideological representation of power. One then witnesses an artistic and intellectual reaction against stereotypes, namely ideas of particularism and arrested ‘monolithic’ or ‘one-view’ formulas. This reaction aims to create visibility for artists as individuals and social agents. It further generates stronger voices for contemporary art resonating with social needs and discontent with the status quo. The outcome of this resisting act is creation of artworks that represent iconography of socio-political and moral contravention; creations that turn into appliance of socio-cultural criticism and political contention.

ar t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cul t ur a l s pa ce  | 225 By institutionalising a collective identity, the state is still attempting to attain what cultural historian Suman Gupta in his book Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies (2007) calls the over-determination of what one may think of as individual identity markers. According to Gupta, ‘such overdetermination of identity markers could be thought of as the reduction of individual identity to an aspect (or some aspects) of itself – to become an identifiable member of the identity-based collective – for political purposes’.17 He, however, maintains that this formulation is not workable as what makes an individual identity unique is a combination of identity markers such as physiognomic features, gendered experiences, socialisations, histories of locations and memories, cultural habits and religious beliefs.18 These and other similar arguments suggest that those definitions of collective identities are basically ideological fictions, imposed from above and used to divide and control nations. It is now understood that the instabilities of collective identity reveal more about power relations in identity constructions than apparent stabilities and emphasise the social constructionist rather than essentialist character of collective identities.19 This pre-defined collective identity for those artists practising within the cultural life of Iran is the very case that they aim to subvert through their performativity against this essentialist political proscription, while reclaiming their own cultural spaces and self-identification (Figure 7.1). Their main credence agrees with Paula M. L. Moya’s notion of ‘subjective identity’, maintaining that within the dialectical concept of identity ‘subjectivity’ refers to one’s individual sense of self, interior existence and lived experience of being.20 This identity is widely understood as lived in ways that occasionally break down its contiguousness with a geographically circumscribed locality.21 In defining collective cultural identities, Stuart Hall convincingly observers a similar implication: Identities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions. They are subject to radical historicization, and are constantly in the process of change and transformation.22

Here, an emphasis should be placed on the importance of more or less performative processes, including elaboration and construction, with respect to experience and identity. Performativity somehow equals relativists’ ideas of

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Figure 7.1 Behrang Samadzadegan, Checkered Utopia, 2015, watercolour on cardboard. 85 × 105 cm. In this series, the artist portraits an ambiguous amalgamation of the recent past trying to imagine and recreate this history, an unedited and distorted rendition of history, by depicting the veiled aspects of historical ‘truth’.

(de)constructive identities and stands in opposition to essentialist views of identity, which the state ultimately promotes through its official channels. Hall’s definition of identification suggests a similar connotation, confirming that identity is constructive. He contends that through the discursive approach, identification is ‘a construction, a process never completed – always “in process”. It is not determined in the sense that it can always be “won” or “lost”, sustained or abandoned.’23 Furthermore, identity insists on the experiences of the subject, especially one’s experiences of oppression and the possibility of a shared alternative, an alternative which may not necessarily be compatible with what the state is trying to frame. Hall’s idea about identity deployed here is therefore not an essentialist but a strategic and positional one. According to Hall, the essentialising concept of cultural identity advocates ‘corrective’ and ‘true’ self-hiding inside members of the community. It superficially imposes ‘selves’ which can stabilise or guarantee unchanging cultural ‘belongingness’.24 Hall continues exploring the same idea by saying: [T]hough those so-called cultural belongings seem to invoke an origin in a historical past with which they continue to correspond, actually identities

a r tist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cult ur a l s pa ce  | 227 are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not ‘who we are’ or ‘where we come from’, so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves.25

Taking the temporal performative nature of identities as a theoretical premise means that more than ever one needs to question how identities continue to be produced, embodied and performed with social and political consequences.26 It is then stated that identity is the effect of performance and not vice versa.27 Viewing identity as performative, then, means that identities are constructed by the ‘very “expressions” that are said to be (their) results’.28 This notion of performativity has encouraged many Iranian cultural activists and artists to ponder the constitutive moments and modes of identity more seriously. This understanding of identity is clearly in contrast with that of the Iranian state. The emphasis on the becoming quality, rather than a framed concept, of identity and construction rather than institutionalisation is the main issue here. One can detect new interpretations of national culture and counter-narratives of the state’s hegemonic narrative, particularly in artistic representations. These new interpretations show strategies of representation to be reformulated in a society in which, in the words of Homi Bhabha, ‘despite shared histories of deprivation and discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities may not always be collaborative and dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonist, conflictual and even incommensurable’.29 This claim shows why, like many other similar cases elsewhere, in Iranian society  the  very concepts of homogeneous national culture, the consensual or contiguous transmission of historical traditions or ‘“organic” ethnic ­communities – as the grounds of cultural comparativism – are in a profound process of redefinition’.30 The Islamic Republic has based its cultural policies on the formulated interests that clearly promote particular values as a resistance against the secular cultural norms of cultural globalisation, or as the authorities put it, ‘Westernisation’. This general cultural attitude explains why it has been perfectly clear in official cultural and artistic events that encouragement is given to taking refuge in clichés of cultural authenticity, historical specificities and traditional values, particularly Islamic or the so-called Iranian-(Shiite)-Islamic culture, as an integral part of the ‘authentic’ culture. It has then been clear

228 | the art o f i r a n that any other kinds of approaches against this framework would formally be sentenced to marginalisation. However, the sense of being marginalised or threatened, through which identity-based political positions consolidate themselves, naturally pulls in contrary directions. In ‘The Subject and Power’ (1982), Foucault chooses the forms of resistance as his starting point and maintains that one can identify the power relations through resistance and strategic challenge.31 He suggests that resistance is implicit in all power relations and this allows the possibility of change. This is the situation which Iranian cultural activists and artists have faced and in turn acted upon. Therefore, the artists’ positions against the state’s prioritisation of certain cultural values by enforcing laws on the individuals would normally be requesting their own cultural spaces and alternatives. Artists and cultural activists concerned with the new dialectics of global culture in contemporary Iran are compelled to employ novel strategies to avoid conforming to the prescribed ideology. They attempt to shift the dominant paradigm away from the defined vision of identity that characterises it as an essential entity. One of the common practices for criticising the hegemonic definition, in more recent times, has been depicted through the emergence of a paradigm in which the past began to be practised as a form of often barely masked political and social commentary. Alternative visions of cultural particularities and collective identity have emerged as new themes for contemporary artists. Since the turn of the century, a number of young artists have developed their work as an important facet of the kaleidoscope of contemporary Iranian cultural life, contributing a diverse yet distinct vocabulary formed by their artistic, cultural and social commentary. In this new paradigm, represented in works of art and practised by different means and media, traditions and cultural standards are referenced in a critical way signifying confrontations and questioning of any kind of defined or pre-existing collective identity. Hence, the formulated collective has received less of a response than the more prominent notion of the subjective voice. This practice for the committed artists of this period seems to be an intellectual and enlightened project; it is a response to the long-standing concerns in Iranian literature and art. This set of critical practices showcases the possibilities of an activist art that operates in what has been characterised as a sort of contemporary art. In their own ways, these artists seek to challenge questions of identity

ar t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cul t ur a l s pa ce  | 229 and how to reconcile these issues in the present. They insist on distinguishing between an art that claims ‘authenticity’ and one that is produced for and engaged with the immediate local context. Although a large number of artists in this group denies any references to a pre-defined collective, their work coheres around an ironic approach to the purportedly documentary desires of the recent past.32 Through the deconstruction of the essential collective values, they recreate a variety of individual identities. Reflection of Political Subjectivity in the Works of Artists Artists variously create political connotations particularly through presentations of the human body as a cultural medium in their artistic practices, which make them ideological and political in an Iranian context. Hence, addressing critically the complications and issues in society becomes an approach for artists to rebel against the state’s ideological goals and as a pathway to alternative narratives. Here artworks act as sites of political contention and showcases of the societal constraints under which they operate. The satirical mockeries on the ideologisation of culture and moral standards of the state have become a common method to react metaphorically against supposedly united values defined by the state.33 These artists have celebrated negotiable identities and self-definitions, which rise to the foreground, while hegemonic identities recede into the background. The foundational importance of the body, which introduces it as a site of exchange between the self and the world, has attracted many artists who are acting against cultural limitations and formulated stereotypes. Here artistic portrayal of the body conveys a message of political, individual, religious or female emancipation. Questions of prominence of the female body, gender and agency are also depicted in the works of contemporary artists in Iran. In this sense, the body acts as a site across which artists and interpreters engage each other in acts of making meaning.34 In light of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theories of embodiment, which scrutinise the specificity of the body’s relationship to the mind or self and to other objects in the world, one could also observe the obsession of how artists engage with images of body, either in portraits or figures in their works. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is never simply an object but ‘a grouping of lived-through meanings’.35 He contends that the body is never simply a sign either, maintaining that ‘the body

230 | th e art o f i r a n does not constantly express the modalities of existence in the way that stripes indicate rank, or a house-number a house: the sign here does not only convey its significance, it is filed with it’.36 Along these lines, one realises that it is through the body that one challenges representations, and the artists’ reclaims of cultural space reveal themselves. The body as a site of intellectual, physical and psychological expression is a consistent aspect of the work of Amir Mobed (b. 1974; living and working in Tehran). His work incorporates the use of subversion as an artistic strategy – a strategy that can be performed through the body. References to socio-political challenges in Iran, such as issues related to power and control, collective and individual responsibility and apathy are the dominant themes of his work. The artist pursues his objective of challenging norms through the use of various unconventional materials, but in particular in his controversial performance projects. Using his own body, the artist puts himself in the position of a victim of torture; the audience typically either plays an active role in his torture or remains an indifferent observer. Mobed’s shocking performances question social and political violence, both domestic and institutional, as well as human pain, suffering and tyranny. His 2011 work, 50% Off, was a self-immolation performance that challenged both the artist himself and the audience, as well as the art market. In this performance he tied himself to a column for hours to test his powers of endurance, and at the same time had his body parts (moulded and gilded) hung on the walls of the gallery for sale. The work was an intellectual critique and documentation focused on social and political violence in the Iranian context. Mobed challenged structured tyranny and totalitarianism as well as the potential cruelty or indifference of the market system against what could potentially be referred to as ethical issues. His other performance, Hypocrisy, at the Azad Gallery in 2013, revolved around similar issues. Once again, he pushed his body to its physical limits by giving his blood, using it to make a statement about the tensions, pressures and hypocrisy in politics and culture. Through this re-enactment of the hospital scene in a gallery space, and by sprinkling his own blood on a canvas hung on the wall where the already hidden words ‘It is a Right Price’ (referring to a term in the art market) are revealed, the artist lays bare the level of violence and fraud that have been taken for granted in their normative occurrence (Figure 7.2).

a r t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cult ur a l s pa ce  | 231

Figure 7.2 Amir Mobed, Hypocrisy, 2013, performance at the Azad Gallery Tehran, photo: Zarvan Rouhbakhshan.

The works of Parham Taghioff (b. 1978; living and working in Tehran) challenge historiographical narrations, in particular on Iran’s recent history, collective memory and key events, including the revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, political struggles, and so on, told through official voices. The subject of history and its relation to the concepts of truth, knowledge and perception are the main themes with which he has been grappling in his projects. In his recent series Asymmetrical Authority (2018), Taghioff contests the seemingly ‘standard’ account of Iran’s official history, interrogating the representation of the ‘truth’. He has chosen familiar historical scenes depicted in actual documentary photographs all consisting of human bodies through crowd and political figures, however, distracting and interfering with the key visual and historiographical elements by covering the perceptible parts of these captures (Figure 7.3). These photographic collages adapt the black and white ‘documented’ photographic depiction of definitive political events such as the revolution and the war through the act of reproduction. Taghioff conceals the identity of events and protagonists in these photographs by deforming and folding the images, cutting some parts, covering such strategic features of bodies as heads in photographs by sticking coloured papers of blue, red, yellow, pink, and so on on them or by the use of digital touches – referencing the act of censorship, the common practice by the Ministry of Culture

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Figure 7.3 Parham Taghioff, from the Asymmetrical Authority 03, 2018, photographs, HD inkjet print on Archival Acid Free paper, 50 × 50 cm.

and Islamic Guidance when covering female bodies in art historical books and magazines. Here the absence of those figures, bodies or elements generates as much meaning as their presence. By de-familiarisation of the scenes, the artist becomes involved in a subversive action, so as to challenge the hegemonic narratives through these documentary photographs. The familiar viewer with these typical scenes is automatically challenged by these manipulated images that are re-­conceptualised and re-contextualised versions of mainstream narratives of history. These ‘(de)constructed’ histories invite the viewers to imagine their own accounts in order to make new narrations out of them. In these playful, but at times shocking images, figures and human (mainly masculine) bodies create (mis)informed narrations and de-objectify recognisable events, locations and times of the recent past and their documentary nature. In others, he even takes the actual images apart and re-makes them through geometrical patterns. They create confusion, ambiguity and occasionally frustration. As Milad Odabaei convincingly puts it, ‘Taghioff ’s photography shifts the locus of image-making from the familiar to strange, from actuality to potentiality, and from representation to critique’.37

ar tist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cul t ur a l s pa ce  | 233 Interrogating recent Iranian history and collective memory has been the subject of photographic projects by Azadeh Akhlaghi (b. 1978; living and working in Tehran). Her stage photography project By an Eye Witness (2009–12) is a series in which she re-examines history of Iranian intellectuals in the twentieth century by re-constructing the death scenes of seventeen iconic figures including journalists, activists, filmmakers, poets and politicians in addition to her own presence as an ‘eyewitness’ (Figure 7.4). What integrates the protagonists of these images is their active involvement, intellectually or politically, against the ruling elites and authorities of their time, mostly related to the period before the 1979 Revolution. Addressing the ever-existing troublesome and tragic destinies of intellectuals in the modern history of Iran, the By an Eye Witness series indirectly tests the interrelated parallels under the Islamic Republic. While the artist seeks the ‘truth’ in following the narratives of eyewitnesses and information derived from archives, it touches upon key questions concerning national and personal histories, visual memory and the issue of documentation.

Figure 7.4 Azade Akhlaghi, Qasr Prison, Tehran, Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi 17 October 1939, 2012, digital print on photo paper, 110 × 209 cm.

234 | th e art o f i r a n Akhlaghi’s initial inspiration for reconstruction of the death scenes in this series came from the tragic scene of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death during the post-controversial election protests in Tehran in 2009. She was shot in the chest by a Basiji (plain-clothes revolutionary). The scene became the symbol of Iranian protest and the so-called Green Movement all around the world. There were indeed many other hidden scenes of deaths in Iranian history without any pictorial documentation. By visualisation of events that were never documented, these large-scale photographs in candid detail perform these significant moments through unification of fiction and performative reality. Akhlaghi portrays herself as an eyewitness in all of these scenes, wearing a red scarf and a black dress, the accepted state’s dress code for women in public. By adding her own presence in all of these scenes, the artist questions the visibility of the female body and its agency in this history. Depicting these ‘mysterious’ deaths of intellectuals and activists together with her own image, Akhlaghi also performs the role of a witness to the turmoil of Iran’s modern history. This very presence moreover fuses past and present, fiction and reality. Each of the figures signifies a moment of violence, while the witnesses are typically depicted fearful and surprised. Although extracts from eyewitness memoirs along with each image answer some of the puzzling questions, there still seems to be uncertainty at the heart of the trauma and distorted memories. Akhlaghi’s photographs do not aim at depicting the ‘actual’ history, but rather re-telling and re-presenting a history, based often on contradictory accounts. She accentuates this fact by becoming a bystander herself in the scenes of events which she watches. These images are simultaneously a record of national anguish and an attempt to unmask an often-masked version of Iranian history. Conclusion The emphasis on ‘authentic’ religious (Shiite-Islamic) and revolutionary identity is indeed still prioritised by the state’s officials. In particular, they are concerned about Western cultural aggression, ‘empowering the cultural power of the revolution and activating the Iranian-Islamic authentic culture and art against this aggression, supporting committed art to the Islamic aspirations and preservation of cultural environment from ideological and political

ar t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cul t ur a l s pa ce  | 235 pollutions and  falls’.38 For many artists of this generation, however, these are  not attractive  subjects any  more. While experiencing profound yet contradictory changes in the social and cultural spheres and when religious ideology and revolutionary fervour remain the doctrine of the state, this younger ­generation  – the majority of the Iranian population – appear neither very enthusiastically revolutionary nor very ideological in a sense. They seem to be inventing a new politics of identity for the twentieth-first century; new cultural practices that have taken centre stage amongst many Iranians themselves. Many contemporary artists in Iran believe that the continued ways by which they are stereotyped and the persistent elisions of power relations that produce such stereotypes deny these artists’ artistic personhoods. Parallel to the state’s insistence on the formulation of a specific cultural life, another challenge in general is with the so-called ‘given identity’ connoted by foreign expectations. Incidentally, this expectation, the subject of following chapters, is not on many occasions widely dissimilar from the state’s formulations.39 Under the existing state of affairs, the major mania for artists is that they have never considered what is ‘Islamic’ or even predominantly ‘Iranian’ in their artwork, in the sense that these have been formulated or labelled, even if these artists deal with those issues in their work. In other words, disapproval of the idea of stereotyping arises when the immediate aim of the artist is to respond to the formulated demands rather than tracing the lived-experience and self-expression in any way possible, whether or not those features are indicated. As political scientist Farideh Farhi rightly addresses, it seems that efforts to forge, almost mechanically, a formulated indigenous identity, similarly by the state and foreign agencies, as children of both Cyrus the Great and the Prophet Mohammad, had already seen more platitudes than possibilities to the new generation.40 Among artists mainly from the new generation (born from the 1980s onward) – precisely at the juncture when it goes outside the institution of art – and art critics active in the art scene, some have been wary of this Islamic or Iranian stereotypical label, alleging that it may perpetuate clichés about Iranian cultural production in particular. The younger generation is socially constructed of individuals who are affected by the failures of a revolutionary Islamic utopia. This experience has led them to a uniquely critical view of the collective.41

236 | th e art o f i r a n As a result, a paradigm shift has occurred through interpretation and occasionally deconstruction of the past. This interpretation is no longer merely based on romanticisation of the past and a return to the glorified traditions, but is now seen collectively as a constructive reality. To many artists, art cannot simply be translated or interpreted formulaically, since that would contradict the artists’ perceptions of their own autonomy. Conceptualising the notion of citizenship paralleled with being an artist in contemporary times, this position has enabled them to depict social reactions to an internal and external stimulus and its subsequent consequences on the political and social trajectory of Iran’s contemporary culture. Their main aim is to create a self-governing art society, occasionally by boycotting official events and exhibitions, to challenge the dominant reductive and dogmatic structures governed by either the Iranian state or the art market, pushing new boundaries against both the official and foreign expectations. One can currently detect a variety of voices that are accompanied and valued in contrast to the existing models introduced by the state, in which the social arena is dominated by a single worldview. Many artists have explored traditions and the changing modes of social life as expressed in the visual culture of the country or the depth of personal expression. Through their artistic representations, artists play with the contradictory sacred and commercial imaginary, often symbolised by a combination of local cultural elements with global contemporary resonance. This variety in contemporary art of Iran reflects the diversity and complexity of Iranian society, its multiple and varied facets, its expressions and outward manifestations and its nuanced responses to political repressions, instabilities and pervasive crises among ­artists in particular. Notes  1. See Shireen T. Hunter, Iran After Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1992), 92. For an account of art practices and the state’s cultural policy in the early postrevolutionary period, see Chapter 4. Also, for an examination of body and its political semiotics in the works of artists from Iran and the Arab world, see Youssef Cherem, ‘The Absent Subversion, the Silent Transgression: The Voice and the Silence of the Body in Some Contemporary Iranian and Arab Artists’, Journal of Art History, vol. 85, no. 4 (2016): 299–326.

ar t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cul t ur a l s pa ce  |  237  2. See Azadeh Pourzand, ‘When Censorship Turns Against Itself: The Story of Artistic Resistance in Iran’, http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/03/06/whencensorship-turns-against-itself-the-story-of-artisticresidence-in-iran/. There have been a number of other writings on the topic of censorship and Iran’s contemporary art. For example, Kirstie Frances Imber has written an insightful PhD thesis on ‘Unveiling the Voice: Gender, Identity and Embodiment in Contemporary Iranian Women’s Art Practices’ at the Birkbeck College, University of London in 2016.  3. Mostafa Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1993), 199.  4. According to Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi, Islamic political culture derived its legitimacy from thirteen centuries of Shiite history and tradition with its affinity for political protest and oppositional values (Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi, Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, eds Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi (London: Routledge, 1992), 9).  5. Farsoun and Mashayekhi, Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, 9.  6. Hunter, Iran After Khomeini, 94–5.  7. Ibid., 21.  8. Farsoun and Mashayekhi, Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, 4.  9. The Deputy of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Artistic Affairs, Mahmoud Salari, in an interview with Etemad Online (1 Shahrivar 1401/23 August 2022) emphasised that ‘I am the Islamic Republic’s representative, not artists’ representative, and must materialise its aims and objectives. [It means that] the Deputy of the Ministry is not to support an artist who acts against the Islamic Republic. It is not going to happen. We are supposed to implement the Islamic Republic of Iran’s policies which is built on human and Islamic concepts in different artistic fields. If an artist was interested in these policies and thoughts, meaning dissemination of moral principles, we would be at his service. … Why should it be necessary to support someone who wishes to insult the Islamic Republic? … Our support only covers art movements that are in line with the Islamic Republic’s Charter of Art that was introduced by Imam Khomeini. Whoever is a part of these movements will definitely be supported.’ https://www.etemadonline.com (accessed 27 August 2022). 10. For examination of these genres, see Chapters 5 and 8. 11. See also Chapter 6 on ‘The Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran’. 12. Since the revolution all artistic products including music, film, theatre and public art exhibitions have been obliged to receive license from the Ministry, meaning

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13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

all the featured pieces need to be examined and approved before exhibiting to the public. At times, those works that are found either religiously offensive or politically problematic, meaning they are critical of the system or show the ‘dark side’ of society are not allowed to be released. See Rasool Najafi, ‘Education and the Culture of Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, eds Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi (London: Routledge, 1992), 161. Ramin Jahanbegloo, ‘Introduction’, in Iran Between Tradition and Modernity, ed. Ramin Jahanbegloo (New York: Lexington Books, 2004), xx. Ibid., xxii. See for example, William H. Sewell Jr, ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation’, American Journal of Sociology, no. 98 (July 1992): 1–29. Suman Gupta, Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 8. Also see for example, Linda Martín Alcoff and Satya P. Mohanty, ‘Introduction’, Identity Politics Reconsidered, eds Linda Martín Alcoff et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 3. Gupta, Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies, 7. As Gupta argues, the practice of politics in regard to specific group identities – such as national, ethnic, religious, class, race and gender – obviously precede their being brought together under the umbrella term ‘identity politics’ (Ibid.). Gupta, Social Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies, 12. Moya moreover states that subjectivity also implies one’s various acts of selfidentification and thus necessarily incorporates one’s understanding of oneself in relation to others. Paula M. L. Moya, ‘What’s Identity Got to Do with It?’ in Identity Politics Reconsidered, eds Linda Martín Alcoff et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 98. Anne-Marie Fortier, ‘Re-Membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s)’, in Performativity and Belonging, ed. Vikki Bell (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 41. Stuart Hall, ‘Who needs identity?’ in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 4. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 3, 4. Ibid., 4. See Vikki Bell, ed. Performativity and Belonging (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 2. Ibid., 3.

a r t ist s’ a ttem p ts to recl aim cult ur a l s pa ce  | 239 28. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (London: Routledge, 1993), 45. See also Fortier, ‘Re-Membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s)’, 43. 29. Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Introduction’, Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1994), 1–2. 30. Ibid., 5. 31. Michel Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 8, no. 4 (summer 1982): 777–95. In Foucault’s view, knowledge that could include art discourse is inseparably connected to power. Drawn from Foucault’s idea of power and discourse, as defined by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, knowledge refers to a form of power that circulates in the social field and can attach to strategies of domination along with those of resistance. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, eds, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 185. Foucault’s focus is placed on the question of how some discourses have shaped and created systems of meaning that have gained the status and currency of ‘truth’, and govern how one defines and organises both oneself and one’s social world, while alternative discourses are marginalised and subjugated, yet potentially offer sites where hegemonic practices can be contested, challenged and resisted. The campaign that Foucault remarks on is a campaign against becoming subjects, which would be shaped differently in each society and historical period, hence generating various forms of resistance. 32. It is worthwhile noting that a similar approach could be traced in the works a few artists from the earlier generation such as Ardeshir Mohasses (1938–2008) and Kaveh Golestan (1950–2003) in which they criticised the status quo during the Pahlavi period. See for example, Golestan’s series Az Div o Dad (1976) and Mohassess, The Fire, Which Was Sudden, Burned and Overturned Everything, from the Life in Iran series (1978). 33. For full elaboration of the application of humorous language of art in contemporary Iran, see Chapter 9. 34. See Amelia Jones, ‘Body’, in Critical Terms for Art History, eds Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 255. 35. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Nature: Notes – Cours au Collège de France (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1995), 153. 36. Ibid., 161. 37. Milad Odabaei, https://www.taghioff.com/2019/12/26/a-note-on-asymmetrical-authority-historical-kaleidoscope-series-by-milad-odabaei/ (accessed 5 September 2021). See also Hamidreza Karami, brochure of the exhibition

240 | the art o f i r a n

38.

39. 40. 41.

Parham Taghiof Asymmetrical Authority & Historical Kaleidoscope (2020), Etemad Gallery, Tehran. Ali Janati, the former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance in 2014, after a critical speech by Khamenei about the cultural affairs being practised at the time, issued a letter addressing his full obedience to the Supreme Leaders’ statements. See Anon., ‘Bayāniyyeh-ye vazir-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi dar labbeyk beh bayānāt-e rahbar-e mo‘azzam-e enqelāb’, 15 Esfand 1392 (6 March 2014), https://www.isna.ir/news/92121510201/ (accessed 24 September 2021). For a full exploration of the global exhibition system and the consequential essentialism, see Chapter 8. See Farideh Farhi, ‘Crafting a National Identity: Amidst Contentious Politics in Contemporary Iran’, Iranian Studies, vol. 38, no. 1 (2005): 8. See Fatemeh Sadeghi, ‘Negotiating with Modernity: Young Women and Sexuality in Iran’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, vol. 28, no. 2 (2008): 259.

8 Exhibiting Essentialism: Exoticism and its Attendant Uniformity

T

his chapter provides a critical account of the politics of identity and examines issues of reception and the politics of representation within the international (Euro-American) exhibition system. I will discuss how the majority of the artistic events relating to the contemporary art of Iran in Europe and America have tended to rely upon ethno-cultural categories and political identity markers.1 I argue that the main objective of the majority of these events is to frame essentialised cultural views and a fixed image of ethnicity that tends to reduce the works of artists to geopolitical or ethnic concepts. While these reductive framing devices do offer useful marketing tools for artists who work outside the Euro-American mainstream, they also contribute to blurring the complexities of each individual’s art practice. The problem is directly related to the politics of visuality, since it is the exhibition system that determines standards of visibility. The fact is that there seem to be certain criteria within the global exhibition system, such as ‘originality’, which have been used to determine whether or not a work of art is ‘valued’ and worthy of consideration and ultimately decide whether it could be included in the canon. Moreover, the problematic notion of ‘authenticity’ as a way of assessing non-Western artistic productions has played a key role in shaping mechanisms of choice in the global contemporary art scene. The process that I will describe here is somewhat reminiscent of the old question of how the ‘Orientalist gaze’ becomes aestheticised, as first described in Edward Said’s Orientalism.2 My aim is to explore the tensions that arise when artworks created in a specific socio-cultural context are viewed in a different cultural environment. I explore what is emerging and how different subject-positions are being transformed

242 | th e art o f i r a n or produced in the course of unfolding new dialectics of global culture in the contemporary art circuit. The strategies of artists – both residents and expatriates – who react vis-à-vis the standardised and essentialised value system embraced by Western museums and galleries are the central issue of this chapter. I will then deal with these practices and the discursive strategies which challenge this standardisation and essentialisation. Exhibitionary Order and Contemporary Practices In the 1990s, the so-called ‘global’ and ‘curatorial’ turns marked an important transformation in which the ‘excluded’ artists and artwork from geographically ‘remote contexts’ were re-inscribed in cultural institutions and aesthetic practices through the deployment of newly devised inclusive narratives. The post-1990s proliferation of art museums, biennials and exhibitions in cities such as New Delhi and Beijing generated a compelling contrapuntal pressure that required a self-reflexive framework for realising the trajectories of contemporary art as they unfolded across space and time. Although it appeared to be primarily taking up the postmodern pursuit of eradicating ‘Grand Narratives’, in practice it failed to deconstruct overall structures in charge of defining the system of truth. An increasing number of art institutions and museums, curators and scholars began paying more attention to art from regions that lay beyond the mainstream narratives of contemporary art. This increasing inclusion of artwork by artists from the ‘Global South’ concurred with the rise of the notion of postmodernism and postcolonialism, both advocating ‘an end to white male domination and hegemony in politics and in art’.3 From the Western institutional point of view, and that of the potential sponsors of such events, however, these types of shows – some well received on the international circuit – were conceived as a way of broadening the canonical art historical narratives by including art productions that hitherto had been marginalised and largely excluded from the focus of the Euro-American art world.4 This process was linked to and stimulated by emerging debates that engaged the issue of the multicultural perspective and the increasing visibility of non-Western contemporary art in the new international exhibition circle. The imbalanced power relations (Western institutions versus non-Western artists) have resulted mostly in categorical preconceptions with the artworks that could have potentially proposed the viewer a conduit towards understanding

e xhibiting essential is m  | 243 different cultures; what is not often realised. The majority of these exhibitions depicted a selected country or group of countries, according to regional themes that were highlighted through widespread media resuming, by some means, the stereotypes deployed by Orientalist and neo-Orientalist practices. Since neo-Orientalism is monolithic, totalising and reliant on a binary logic, based on an assumption of moral and cultural superiority over the Oriental ‘Other’, it ‘should be understood as a supplement to enduring modes of Orientalist representation’.5 They both offer a method of truth that is essential to the adaptation of the paradigm of ‘authenticity’. With that said, whereas Orientalism was based on how the West constructs the East, this neo-Orientalism is grounded on how the cultural East comes to terms with an Orientalised East.6 Here the notion of the ‘exhibitionary order’, as suggested by the political scientist Timothy Mitchell in the essay ‘Orientalism and Exhibitionary Order’, is useful for tracing the current picture. Mitchell’s exhibitionary order refers to a system in which the ‘Other’ is displayed, resulting in the exotic commodification of native artefacts or traditions for the hegemonic gaze. Mitchell contends that: Three features define this Orientalist reality: it is understood as the product of unchanging racial or cultural essences; these essential characteristics are in each case the polar opposite of the West (passive rather than active, static rather than mobile, emotional rather than rational, chaotic rather than ordered); and the Oriental opposite or Other is, therefore, marked by a series of fundamental absences (of movement, reason, order, meaning, and so on). In terms of [the] three features – essentialism, otherness, and absence – the colonial world can be mastered, and colonial mastery will, in turn, reinscribe and reinforce these defining features.7

Focusing particularly on the ‘world exhibitions’ in nineteenth-century Europe, Mitchell reminds us that the ‘new apparatus of representation gave central place to the representation of the non-Western world’, together with ‘construction of otherness’ and the ‘manufacture of national identity and imperial purpose’.8 During the process of the construction of otherness, directly related to the colonial project, the subject is transformed into an object. Mitchell further maintains that during the period that Europe was consolidating its colonial power, non-Europeans found themselves repeatedly ‘being placed on exhibit or made the careful object of European curiosity’.9 This process is

244 | th e art o f i r a n related to the forming of an exhibit, to a ‘particularly European concern with rendering the world up to be viewed’.10 What would integrate Said’s study of Orientalism and that of Mitchell’s exhibitionary order is the representation of the Orient as an irrational, weak and feminised Other, leaving it to the choice and gaze of the masculine and dominant Occident. The concept of exhibitionary order and commodification of ethnicity or cultural identity can be exemplified through the practice of contemporary non-Western art exhibitions. Various European and North American institutional settings are still involved in the pervasive practice of exhibiting fashionable or marketable ethnic markers through continuous reproduction of the binary of the Occident and the Orient.11 Consequently, they cannot offer escape from the idea of otherness. Here titling the exhibitions is a key issue for examination. This task is often taken by the exhibition curators who are assigned the role of the ‘master narrators’ of these projects and in charge of the task of choosing stimulating titles in order to highlight artists’ voices. It is expected that the titles should encapsulate a general but necessarily coherent image of the whole exhibition by reflecting regional or national features common to the art production of the particular locale. The marketing appeal of ethnic labelling as an element in boosting the exhibition’s visitors is a typical response. In other words, in order to market contemporary art from ‘elsewhere’ to wonder-seeking Western audiences, or as Mitchell put it ‘curious crowds of onlookers’, exhibition titles often accentuate the ‘Otherness’ of the participants by grouping them in relation to their regional or national affiliation. Examples of this approach are exhibitions such as Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East (2009) at the Saatchi Gallery, Iran Inside Out (2009) at the Chelsea Art Museum, or Light from the Middle East, New Photography (2012) at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Such unification encourages preexisting reading of cultural clichés and specifically post-September 11, contributed to a renewed curiosity and interest in this region in general. However, these techniques of simplification comply with, rather than challenge, the audiences’ pre-existing cultural assumptions and reinforce essentialised readings of ‘Iranian’ or more broadly ‘Middle Eastern’ art. Moreover, by grouping exhibitions according to assumed national or regional characteristics, curators encourage readings of art that invariably conform to, rather than question, widespread media representations of

e xh ibiting essential is m  |  245 contemporary Iran. Such practices are occasionally liable to impose misleading interpretations of the works of individual artists in such regionally or nationally arranged exhibitions. A number of artists might find themselves compromising their artistic integrity when compelled to be unwilling cultural representatives of the ‘elsewhere’ to which they are affiliated – in other words, to entities that, according to Hal Foster, have been identified as subalterns, sub-culturals and social others.12 Here this pre-existing hierarchy into which these artists are inserted has been identified as a pivotal element of the neo-Orientalist project. Mitchell also conceivably argues that the aim of Orientalists was not to make a true picture of the East, but to set up the East as a ‘picture’. The problem, he contends, was to create a distance between oneself and the world and hence establish it as something ‘picture-like’ – as an object on exhibit. ‘This required what was now called a “point of view”, a position set apart and outside.’13 This notion seems to have still deeply affected the dominant perception and practices in the global exhibition system, including Euro-American museums, galleries and art institutions. It has determined the relation between art productions from non-Western artists and the Western art system, including its market, aesthetic and critical values. However, as the art critic Jean Fisher rightly puts it, in this system ‘the greater the work’s visibility in terms of racial or ethnic context, the less it is able to speak as an individual utterance’.14 The galleries and museums have responded to the demand of ending cultural marginality basically by exhibiting more non-Euro-American artists, albeit on a selective and representative basis, provided that they reveal appropriate signs of cultural difference. This is what Fisher believes is to exoticise. She emphasises the fact that more recently travelling has become a prevalent curatorial act that has resulted in ‘geo-ethnic entertainment’ that upholds the unequal intellectual hierarchies between the Western and non-Western art practices. Fisher contends that For the West to frame and evaluate all cultural productions through its own criteria and stereotypes of otherness is to reduce them to a spectacle of essentialist racial or ethnic typology and to ignore their individual insights and human values – a treatment not meted out to the work of white European artists.15

246 | the art o f i r a n I agree with Fisher’s elaboration on the reasons why non-Euro-American artists have had to comply with this system. She argues that for reasons of artistic and economic survival, non-Euro-American artists have had to agree with ‘promotion through the commodified signs of ethnicity’, which renders them complicit with the Western desire for the ‘exotic other’, against which it can measure its own superiority. The ‘exoticised’ artist is marked not as a ‘thinking subject’ and individual innovator in his own right, but as a bearer of prescribed and homogenised cultural signs and meanings.16 Fisher also maintains that to be locked into the frame of ethnicity is also to be locked out of a rigorous philosophical and historical debate that risks crippling the work’s intellectual development and excluding it from the global circuit of ideas where it is possible to speak and to be heard without compromising one’s life experience whatever its source(s).17

Furthermore, non-Euro-American, here Iranian, artists’ anxiety of invisibility might rather cause a contrary attitude that re-conceptualises cultural marginality by their compliance with the system for the sake of visibility. With that said, cultural marginality seems not to be a problem of invisibility any longer but one of an extreme visibility in terms of a reading of cultural difference that is too easily merchantable. This also relates to the tendency in colonial thought to determine what is visually verifiable with ‘truth’.18 The fact that Iranian artists are still expected to produce either ethnic or political art, whilst other positions are implicitly ignored, suggests that visibility alone has not been adequate to provide the conditions for independent speaking subjects. Artists are often exhibited in groupings that are defined by a shared aesthetic or ethno-political context. The institutions or curators delimit and control the parameters of these homogenised categories conveying certain signifiers as ‘the Signified’19 to the viewers and inevitably promoting their own perspectives and conceptual agendas. These systems suggest a set of criteria for success by commanding its own standards. Various kinds of explicit social and political representations, such as generic gender-related issues in the patriarchal societies that prevail in many countries in the Middle East, among other genres, are repeatedly highlighted by this process. This homogenisation deprives viewers of the opportunity to familiarise themselves with truly other

exhibiting essential is m  | 247 modes of thinking and viewing that are fundamentally different from their own lived experiences. Thus, the art in question is transformed from artefact into fetish; it functions not as a genuine alternative point of access to contemplation of alterity, but as a symbolic device that acts as a representation of the ‘Other’. This fetishisation of cultural otherness runs the danger of endorsing the authority of the assimilationist paradigms such as the homogenisation of ‘Middle Eastern’ art, that some works even seemingly attempt to challenge. In this way, established forms and attitudes are maintained when geographic, ethnic, cultural or political certainty are assigned to them.20 Here the major challenge is this constructed identity that is generated by external definitions. Additionally, art institutions rely on a narrow range of category formulations that are typically constructed from stereotypes, in response to the institution’s need to differentiate between canonical Western art and art of the other lands based on visual or thematic difference. This notion often typifies ‘exotic artefacts’, and exhibitions that validate them exemplify aspects of the current political situation in the region or country from which the artwork originates. It is also usually expected that the work is wrapped in expected aesthetics that would make it digestible for the ‘international audiences’. There have been an increasing number of Euro-American modern and contemporary art museums, formerly focused exclusively on Western art, that are now beginning to ‘discover’ the rest of the world as places of interest. Within this structure, typically, an attempt is made to discover and uncover the parallels to their ‘own’ culture, history and art movements, while ignoring the fact of what alienation the ‘alien’ could elicit with his/her own voices. Since comprehension is inevitably far from certain when following the pathway of the alien, and according to what the culture industry has propounded, it often results in comparisons, rather than an openness towards other cultures. It is, however, not surprising that many of the non-Western artworks are still collected and exhibited in historical and ethnographic museums. The interest in difference and exoticism and the resulting struggle with the notion of authenticity has developed within these institutions. Although not allinclusive, contemporary art from Asia and Africa are typically landed in these museums since such productions do not ‘fit the criteria employed in contemporary art discourse’.21 Interestingly, these institutions have particularly contributed to generating the notion of otherness through actively classifying the

248 | th e art o f i r a n Other;22 also reflected in their collections. For example, non-Euro-­American contemporary art productions, which do not characterise a prolongation of classical ‘Islamic arts’, are not normally attracted to these museums since they lack ‘craftsmanship, originality and exoticism’ or something specifically ‘exceptional’ in them.23 The inevitability of the existence of a link between the contemporary and the traditional is repeatedly left unquestioned. The notion of the artist’s ‘own traditions’ and their presence, which authenticate the works, is exemplified for example in the use of Arabic/Persian script as both a contemporary art form that also refers to the artist’s ‘cultural identity’. As Mirjam Shatanawi, the former curator at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (originally an ethnographic museum) maintains: [E]thnographic museums have never really represented ‘other cultures’ in the first place; they represent Western culture and its particular view of the world. … Essentialism is woven into the present-day structure of the Tropenmuseum because the museum deals with its subject by way of a division into distinct geographical regions, each with its own curator, permanent exhibition space and collection.24

A similar system of belief is functioning when exhibiting these artworks within the global exhibition structure. It is becoming more obvious that, the same as any other demanding consumer, the West does not only act as an onlooker of globalised cultural currents, but rather vigorously determines the supply. This condition demonstrates the hegemonic structures of the current exhibition order, what the curator Tirdad Zolghadr calls ‘Ethnic Marketing’.25 Curator and art critic Gerardo Mosquera, in his essay ‘The Marco Polo Syndrome’, also frames the critique of Eurocentrism within the problematic of intercultural communication. Mosquera argues that the contemporary conception of art that is produced within Western culture continuously presents non-Western artists with a dilemma: having to choose between ‘derivative’ production (never measured as decent as the European model) or a display of one’s otherness.26 In a similar vein, in order to achieve some degree of originality, artists from Iran are usually expected to represent their given identities as safe havens in their art. This has now developed into a discourse. This dilemma is a major challenge relating not only to the politics of identity, but also to the politics of visuality, which focuses on the way that certain identities become

e xh ibiting essential is m  | 249 visible. The cultural aesthetician Khaled Ramadan interestingly frames this concept through definition of ‘cultural difference’ by maintaining that [T]he strategy of ‘cultural difference’ corresponds almost literally to the problem of the ‘representational’ role of non-Western artists. As for the dominant discourse, it is so obsessed with cultural difference and identity [that] it too is suffering from an intellectual blockage. In addition, the obsession with cultural difference is now being institutionally legitimized through the construction of the ‘postcolonial other’ that is allowed to express itself only as long as it speaks of its own Otherness.27

This leads us to the conclusion that the ‘global’ exhibition system reflects an interpretation of cultural difference that is excessively merchandisable and consistently identifies art object’s superficial characteristics, rather than its deeper truth. Since artists are implicitly expected to conform to the generic trends that are associated with ethno-political art with little regard to their status as independent entities, the mere fact of their ‘visibility’ does nothing to counter the imbalances and biases that are inherent in the hierarchical system. The artist Hassan Khan (b. 1975; living and working in Cairo), on the position of non-Western art within contemporary art as a site of knowledge production rightly remarks, if contemporary art is an ‘absolutist term’, which it is, then there are no ‘other places’ to begin with. Doing so, it means to ‘exclude them from the actual production of knowledge’.28 However, as already mentioned, this hierarchical system requires the exposure of essentialised signs and symbols including traditional iconic markers, heritage, and more recently, overtly political and gendered-feminist representations. These themes and forms generally fit well with the common Western preconceptions about ‘other’ cultures. For instance, while the works presented in some Iranian-related exhibitions have been produced by artists for whom veiled women are neither alien nor exotic, these artists cannot escape the fact that the veil, regardless of its reformulation by artists, will be perceived via a given set of norms that differs from those with which they are familiar. Ironically since this construction persistently enforces its norms, the stereotyping, in the case of Iranian photo-art-based works for example, persists even when artists deliberately abandon their treatment of such clichéd subjects; that is, by shifting their focus to themes such as female agency, secular activities (café-culture, private lives), and so on.

250 | th e art o f i r a n While one cannot doubt the visibility that many artists from Iran gained through these new platforms, the question which remains is: what impact does this hierarchical structure have upon contemporary art from Iran? It is directly related to the politics of presentation and re-presentation. Those exhibitions with foreseeable content are typically rearranging stereotypes, and thus are incapable of challenging the domination of cultural clichés, even if they loyally contextualise the themes. The main criticism relates to the political context that has conditioned the reading and definition of the meaning of this presented art. One needs to recognise the fact that cultural ideologies which describe vision and cultural notions, determine, either intentionally or not, what the normative narratives and subjects are.29 Artistic Responses to Stereotypical Structures For the most part, the aforementioned strategy often goes unchallenged by practising artists, who wish to be part of the international system and therefore ensure that their works comply with the exotic status assigned to them. They are quite comfortable with the idea of using mainstream Euro-American expectations to their own advantage. A group of Iranian artists have been internationally successful because of their submission to this ideological and cultural setting. In response to this setting, it is as if the artist consciously or unconsciously perpetuates this dominant image in direct ways by application of symbols and signs to present cultural codes or icons. This eventually empowers the exotic quality of his/her work within the specified themes such as ‘contemporary Iranian art’. It seems that their identities appear to be built for the needs of the world-culture exhibition industry or as a means to win the sympathy of outsiders. Those approaches are described as ‘self-exoticisation’ or ‘self-Orientalisation’. These critical terms usually refer to the situation in which an artist deliberately exposes exotic markers to feed the cultural commodification; something that does not normally need to be experienced by Euro-American artists. These arguments are precisely the central themes of postcolonial aesthetics and representational practices. Here we should recall the postcolonial literary theorist Graham Huggan’s argument about postcolonial writers. He maintains that in negotiating their conditions, and turning it to their own advantage, postcolonial writers have become skilled at manipulating the commercial codes of the international open market. They recognise that

exh ibiting essential is m  | 251 the value of their writing as an international commodity significantly depends on the exotic appeal it holds to an unfamiliar metropolitan audience. In The Postcolonial Exotic, Marketing the Margins (2001), Huggan defines a ‘global alterity industry’ in which cultural difference is processed through exoticism, ‘a mode of aesthetic perception – one which renders people, objects and places strange even as it domesticates them, and which effectively manufactures otherness even as it claims to surrender its immanent mystery’.30 He further defines postcolonial exotic and its position versus the hegemonic structure of world cultural system, arguing that: [T]he postcolonial exotic … is a dilemma that is very much central to the postcolonial field … And the dilemma might be posed as follows: Is it possible to account for cultural difference without at the same time mystifying it? To locate and praise the other without also privileging the self? To promote the cultural margins without ministering to the needs of the mainstream? To construct an object of study that resists, and possibly forestalls, its own commodification?31

For Huggan, the most perceptible feature of writers such as Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) is the way in which they balance their supposedly anti-colonial politics with their commercial feasibility as internationally successful postcolonial novelists, a balance that suggests their work is designed as much as to challenge as to profit from consumer needs.32 The same argument could be applied to explain the practices of those artists whose main desire is to take part in the larger international contemporary art world, which has already provided a ground for this approach. Reflections of cultural specificity have appeared in the works of both Iranian diasporic artists and those who live and work in Iran. Both groups are typically associated with the similar trend-setting schemes as a guaranteed prescription to gain success in that scene. There is open criticism of this situation at home in Iran, arguing that this is based on exoticism and a neo-Orientalist stereotyping. Most of the familiar semiotic markers of exoticism are cliché-ridden themes such as cultural heritage, Islamic religious icons and traditional stereotypes, social-political trauma, revolutionary propaganda and media-oriented views of issues of gender, femininity, sexual inequality and censorship. An example is the exposure of political trauma in the country, in particular the post-2009 controversial presidential election and the associated

252 | the art o f i r a n Green Movement, when the picture of Iran dominated headlines and pointed the attention of the world to Iranian politics and society, and accordingly to its art. This period saw the growing emergence of contemporary art associated with Iran internationally in museum exhibitions, galleries and the market itself.33 Unprecedented attention was also paid to political issues by curators, serving high demands from an international audience for documentary material from within Iran. Among other visual references, a common example of objectification is the image of women covered by black chadors that through the process of aesthetical reproduction came to stand as a representation of post-revolutionary Iran. Associated with an ambivalent attitude towards Iranian society and culture, it is explained by its connection to the deeper issues related to an essentialist conceptualisation of Islamic societies. It is directly related to the process of exoticisation, which represents ideological materials by highlighting selected segments of a culture that are presented to the consumers who desire to underpin their common identities, as Mitchell has already explained it, by exaggerating the ‘Otherness’ of different cultures. Exoticism remains integral, nonetheless, to the reading of artworks. Here cultural differences become the stuff of tourist spectacle.34 Acceding to the literary critic, Tzvetan Todorov, Knowledge is incompatible with exoticism, but lack of knowledge is in turn irreconcilable with praise of others; yet praise without knowledge is precisely what exoticism aspires to be. This is its constitutive paradox.35

Therefore, exoticisation is seen, at best, as patronising. Only when the exotic appears as different, strange or odd, is it able to offer up its difference for the spectator’s gaze. In the same book (The Postcolonial Exotic), Huggan defines exoticism, [as an] unstable system of containment: its assimilation of the other to the same can never be definitive or exhaustive, since the ‘collision between ego’s culture and alien cultures’36 is continually refashioned, and the effects that collision produces may unsettle as much as reassure, remove authority as much as reconfirm it.37

Huggan advocates a ‘strategic exoticism’ a strategy that works from within exoticist codes of representation, either managing to subvert those codes or

exh ibiting essential is m  | 253 succeeding in redeploying them for the purposes of uncovering differential relations of power.38 Although he suggests strategic exoticism as an option, it is not necessarily a solution to the problem. Indeed, ‘the self-conscious use of exoticist techniques and modalities of cultural representation might be considered less as a response to the phenomenon of the postcolonial exotic than as a further symptom of it’.39 Moreover, there is no guarantee that it subverts cultural expectations and conventions from the destination context. For example, artworks that portrayed the pictorial history of Iran in sarcastic ways40 are received as exotic, even though the strategic exoticism has already been deployed. Therefore, on occasions there is a resistance in opposition to this exotic scheme. The resistance on the part of artists is to taking part in such a process – and, in particular, to being categorised according to primary, all-encompassing labels such as ‘Islamic’ or ‘Middle Eastern’. The potential reaction by these artists is similar to what Huggan addresses about postcolonial thinkers’ response to the postcolonial exotic. He maintains that some of them try to suggest alternative epistemologies and strategies of cultural presentation, while others hope to challenge the courses of ‘commodification and institutionalisation’ that have perhaps facilitated creation of a ‘new canon of representative’ postcolonial cultural productions. Nevertheless, there are others who have preferred to work within this institutional structure and prevailing systems of representation, whereas seeking to question them. These thinkers, Huggan contends, are aware of their involvement in ‘exoticist aesthetics’ while trying to influence the conventions of the exotic to their own advantage.41 Perhaps the works of Shirin Neshat (b. 1957; living and working in New York) have been one of the most controversial cases in this regard. Understandably, it has been argued that by providing her Western audience with the over-Orientalised version of their imagined truth, she has provocatively fulfilled Western institutional expectations. However, the cultural critic and scholar Hamid Dabashi contends that these kinds of criticisms are misleading and are based on an invalid ‘identitarian politics’ that tries to portray ‘a static world to the East and a creative world to the West of Neshat’s logistics’.42 Dabashi blames Western critics for their use of fixed and reductive terms to diminish the semiotic and visual aspects of Neshat’s work. He calls this framing of essentialism ‘arrested verbal vocabulary’. The use of notions and terms such as ‘traditional societies’ and their ‘female private’ spaces, he

254 | the art o f i r a n argues, is categorically false and historically erroneous and hence only addresses ‘Orientalised delusions’. This is to find their way into an arrested vocabulary.43 There is no doubt, however, that Neshat has opened up a pathway to international success which many artists from Iran or the wider MENA region (those who work with photo-based art in particular) have followed, namely direct references to the themes that are readily evident by means of reduction of symbols to direct signifiers such as ‘Muslim’ female body, veil and textual elements. The works of Farhad Moshiri (b. 1965; living and working in Tehran), an iconic figure in the Middle East art market, is a good example for the latter approach defined above by Huggan. Moshiri is well known for his ironic interpretations of hybrids between traditional Iranian forms and those of the consumerist and globalised popular culture now widespread in Iran. These include his painted jars in the early 2000s (re-worked again in the 2010s), bursting with popular foods, drinks and desserts with words from popular songs written on the body of the large jars in calligraphic fashion. In his later period, he has experimented with different approaches such as using gold and other craft-made materials in kitschy ways. Moshiri manipulates vernacular expressions such as traditional embroidery and fashionable ornaments made of Swarovski crystals and glitter, mostly in contradictory ways, depicting irony and visual narratives. Similarly, other artists such as Khosrow Hassanzadeh (b. 1963; living and working in Tehran) paid attention to the aesthetics of Pop Art and depiction of popular culture such as elements of commercialism within an Iranian context. Deploying images from advertisements, news and commerce, his work typically addresses popular political and social subjects such as Islamic terrorism (Terrorist series, 2004), religious imagery and artefacts (Yā ‘Ali Madad, 2008–9) and traditional forms, for example calligraphy, mostly through ‘kitschification’ of forms and colours. In light of the recent fashion trends among young Iranian women to adopt the Western ideal of beauty, the works of Shirin Aliabadi (1973–2018), in particular her Miss Hybrid series (2006–9), are aimed at capturing the aesthetic nuances that shape, reshape and reinvent the identity of the postrevolutionary generations in Iran within new sub-cultures affected by cultural globalisation. Through depiction of these young women’s ‘Western’ appearance, Aliabadi suggests a categorical version of ‘hybrid’ identity.

exhibiting essential is m  | 255 These explicit social commentaries, however, would not allow the subject of the criticism to challenge the stereotypical reading of contemporary culture in Iran. None of these artists’ work would propose alternative strategies of cultural presentation or challenge the process of institutionalisation that created canonical expectations. They have preferred to work within this institutional structure and prevailing systems of representation by creating art about politics, rather than critical art, that would automatically comply with the market values and exoticism. Even when this group of artists try to apply the so-called postmodern visual vocabularies, their predictable approach would not allow any challenge of the dominant Orientalised narratives formulated by the existing institutional norms. There have, however, been reproaches by other groups of Iranian artists which have based their criticism on the issues of cultural commodification, canonical West, cultural formulation, and also the stereotypes rooted in the preference and interest of the market. The main criticism is of the deliberate and conscious choices of self-Orientalisation or self-exoticisation that merely confirm those stereotyped perceptions of ‘contemporary Iranian art’. These artworks are particularly criticised when the artists are not expressing their own personal concerns, but rather creating stereotypes in favour of foreign expectations. Within this context, issues such as cultural confrontations, social restrictions and modern–traditional conflicts have been formed on a subjective exotic view of what is expected to be shown as ‘Iranian’ and as ‘contemporary’. No doubt some of these themes might have been rooted in part in realities and practices that are found in contemporary Iran, themes such as gender relations and the troubled situation of women in society, but they have become stereotypes, especially when exhibited through iconography of the exoticised feminist elements of (veiled or unveiled) Muslim woman. In other words, rather than originating from cultural and artistic truthful need, these themes and forms are superficially injected into the artist’s works. Therefore, the cultural and artistic disapproval has been based on the relationship between the demonstration of aesthetically identified works – being the aesthetic potentials of pictorial traditions or more recently social implications, cultural codes, political or social particularities – and the strong sense of exoticism. This exoticism does not allow artistic subjectivity for the artists themselves, and only directs

256 | th e art o f i r a n the work’s internal rationale and what even governs the aesthetic choices of an artist towards a derivative product which has been shaped purely for the interests of the ‘others’. This disapproval is based on the logic that a work of art should be meaningful in the first place in response to the artist’s own context and this particular time. It could eventually be meaningful elsewhere, although this would not be a priority.44 Therefore, the critical artists aim for their work to become a repository of historical and social commentary, often based on the personal experiences and explorations of the artists themselves. Through various forms of self-representation, some works represent a commentary of recent social and political change with a focus on political paradoxes in post-revolutionary Iran. Artists deliberately negotiate, criticise and deconstruct otherness by accentuating self-criticism, re-inscriptions in the past and socio-political engagement. However, these works move beyond stereotypical responses and critique the narrowly ethnocentric view that projects stereotyping. Through self-representations, artists evade pre-established notions of an ‘ethnic other’. They strategically remove any explicit symbol of their belonging (cultural and political) that would differentiate them easily from other identities aiming to become involved in a wider dialogue within contemporary art, while also participating in their own social and political negotiations.45 By critically reassessing binary oppositions such as authentic versus appropriated, sacred versus secular, and local versus global, artists suggest alternative potentials. These artistic practices claim to reconsider these dichotomous concepts, which are coupled with hegemony and ideology. By using various media and grappling with different conceptual approaches, artists question their current conditions and their appropriate presence in time. They are involved in critical self-reflexivity, intending to be critically aware of the contextual conditions of art production and display.46 This paradigm signifies how globalisation and its attendant cultural transformations, increased global mobility of both artworks and artists and, in recent years, alternative visions of cultural specificity and essentialist identity, have emerged as new themes for artists. The artist and art critic Barbad Golshiri (b. 1982; living and working in Tehran), who is critical of those stereotypical demonstrations of contemporary art from Iran in the international art scene, maintains:

e xh ibiting essential is m  | 257 Western ambience often wants you to be exotic and show them arabesque motives, ‘nice’ carpets or recently, women in chador. In other words, Iranian art exports merchandise; purchasable items such as collages of mystique, religious texts, chador, ‘poorography’ and more recently nuclear related issues because of their Tourism and Exoticism … When I use narration from Descartes or the Bible, I write in English which is to me a kind of self-denial. I am against the unity of the self and a fixed identity. I am talking about hybrid, schizophrenic identity, and one which is lost in inter-textuality.47

Aligned with other of Golshiri’s practices, one of his early works, Bahram Doesn’t See Any Right Wing (2002), involves an intense system of reference, emulation, quotation, critical disproof, and so on, in which all texts (or images) have their existence. Persian-Islamic religious and literarymystic texts have been put together with other images, some taken from his own past works – mainly a frame taken from his video What Has Befallen Us, Barbad? (2002) – and others, from classical Persian miniatures to the Pink Floyd emblem, to render an intertextual image referencing different semiotic significations (Figure 8.1). While commenting on political concerns, the most important signified implication of the work is the impossibility of the unified and fixed identical meaning through the network of signifiers. The title of the work is drawn from the mixture of two different philosophical and literary Persian sources: the twelfth-century works of Shahab al-Din Sohrevardi’s48 famous book Āvāz-e par-e Jabre‘il (The Sound of Gabriel’s Wing) and Nizami Ganjavi’s Haft Peykar (Seven Beauties).49 In his treatise, Sohrevardi maintains that all the fortunate things in the world are the consequences of the song of Gabriel’s right wing, which is radiant. On the other hand, he believes that all bad and evil things in the world are the consequences of the song of Gabriel’s left wing. This wing is also shiny, but has a black stain on it. Golshiri’s angel in this work has just the latter wing. In Nizami Ganjavi’s Haft Peykar, for Bahrām-e Gur (the legendary Sasanian king), when he was still a prince, to achieve felicity/fortune, he must wear clothes of a particular colour each day, sit in a pavilion of the same colour, and make love with a princess wearing the same colour clothes. This famous story has been illustrated in several manuscripts. Golshiri has based the composition of his work on the scene of the prince in a black pavilion

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Figure 8.1 Barbad Golshiri, Eulogy of Wearers of Black Raiments (formerly: Bahram Doesn’t See Any Right Wing, 2002. TMoCA acquired the piece, then according to the artist either destroyed it or disposed of it. Golshiri recreated a variation of it in 2020 with a new title), 2020, Expo UV ink on plexiglass, LED light, wooden frame, acid free cardboard, 153 × 89 cm.

with an Indian princess, signifying darkness and mourning. In fact the structure of this work is patterned after the 1489 manuscript illustrated in Shiraz as another intertextual reference to traditional imagery. In this multi-layered work, the artist has paradoxically included the iconic image of the Pink Floyd emblem composed of a white triangular outline (the prism) positioned on a black background, a rainbow coming into it from the left and a thin white line on the right: opposite sides to the actual logo. None of the texts or images accurately follow the ‘original’ paths, from either traditional materials or contemporary Western imagery. Juxtaposing all these, characteristically contradictory and controversial, signs and elements together posits a serious challenge to the concepts of fixity and originality.

exh ibiting essential is m  | 259

Figure 8.2 Shahab Fotouhi, Security, Love and Democracy (for Export Only), 2006, installation at the Azad Gallery, Tehran.

The installation, Security, Love and Democracy (for Export Only), by Shahab Fotouhi (b. 1980; living and working in Tehran) was exhibited in the Azad Gallery as part of the exhibition project Ethnic Marketing, curated by Tirdad Zolghadr, in 2006 (Figure 8.2). The works included in the exhibition each critically addressed the existing hegemonic structure in global culture and the treatment of non-Western art. In this work, to criticise exoticism, Fotouhi used materials including tiles and mirrors traditionally associated with ‘estimable’ elements in Iranian culture, and also neon lights and toys representing worthless and makeshift materials. Those fragments in the work, albeit from various and sometimes opposing origins, are supposed to be seen together as a whole. One of the key features that this work is reflecting is the embodiment of existing imbalanced cultural and political relations between the Global North and the Global South in the contemporary world. In particular, the material used in the installation and even its title refer to the issues of export and import. Fotouhi maintains,

260 | th e art o f i r a n Democracy is believed to be a Western product which should be imported to the rest of the world (here associated with toys and neon lights). It is also supposed that our traditional products such as craft and oil are the only items and resources that we can export to the West (here associated with the tiles and mirrors).50

This work is one of the best examples of the artist’s strategic use of exotic imagery in order to subvert the hegemonic global exoticised mechanism and its related expectations by ironically addressing unforeseen interpretations of those aesthetically familiar materials. Likewise, drawing variously on concepts such as theology and propaganda, the works of Shahpour Pouyan (b. 1979; living and working in New York) explore languages of power, domination and possession. In his Projectiles series (2011–13), he proposes a subversive demonstration of traditional forms and rituals through references to religious practices and political culture (Figure 8.3). The refined form and structure of these sculptures are drawn from ‘original’ cultural heritage such as meticulously decorated (with calligraphic and floral elements) metalwork, armour, military helmets and chainmail, all transformed into modern projectiles/missiles. Referring to the traditional religious passion play Ta‘ziyeh, performed in commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hossein (the third Shiite imam) in the month of Muharram in Iran, these elements, however, do not perform solely the role of formal exotic elements of cultural and ethnic Other. Pouyan’s projectiles, in fact, deconstruct this system of belief, in preference to complying with it, by critically addressing power relations and political agendas. Akin to Golshiri and Fotouhi’s examples, by paradoxically restructuring coded traditional materials and contemporary symbols of war, violence and militaristic power, these sculptors create sites of resistance to cultural essentialisation and fetishisation. These engagements, which constitute a leading part of the critical contemporary art today – a deep investment in artistic practice as an intellectual and activist engagement – challenge the stultifying standardisation of artistic globalisation and the reductive readings of artworks. Here Gayatri Spivak’s conceptualisation of the term worlding, originally coined by Martin Heidegger, is useful.51 Spivak’s account of this concept refers to a process of violence that

e xhibiting essential is m  | 261

Figure 8.3 Shahpour Pouyan, Projectile 6, 2012, brass, iron and steel, 200 × 90 × 90 cm.

emerges during imperialism in which the colonised territories are considered as worlded once they are colonised.52 Artists who challenge this situation try to de-world themselves so that they may free themselves from the earlier colonised (self-othering) position and choose to be re-worlded within the postcolonial context with their own sense of agency and renewed connection with the world at large.53 To break out of the bind, they suggest rejecting the West’s demands for ‘authenticity’ and ‘purity’ in favour of decentralisation. This view notably reminds us of the discourse of Orientalism in reverse,54 which is used by ‘Oriental’ intellectuals and political elites to lay claim to a self-appropriation which is almost invariably presented as a counter-knowledge to Europe’s central narrative. Questioning the notion of objectifying the Other, artists codify

262 | the art o f i r a n works in which they challenge self-Orientalisation and criticise the hegemonic structure of cultural homogenisation. Conclusion As was discussed, for a group of contemporary artists in Iran artistic practice seems to be a highly intellectual project. These critical presentations reflect the potential of an engaged art characterised by representation of contemporaneousness in their context. The past decade has seen a large number of visual artists who conceivably for the first time in the post-revolutionary period felt responsible to contribute to the most controversial situation of their country, differentiating this, however, from identified ‘political art’, while being highly political. Highlighting through individual approaches, artists engage with the issue of how to bring together their questions and concerns within the broader setting of the contemporary. They elucidate the idea that art cannot be seen as solely a linear story in which a local perspective is introduced to a global platform, as ‘contemporary art (for better or worse) currently represents a field of exchange that cuts across any single cultural or historical precedent, forcing the articulation of alternative affinities and differences’.55 Therefore, as Dabashi proposes, contemporary art should be read through ‘bifocal lenses’, meaning local and global, native and universal, emotional and memorial layers should be seen together. He rightly states that contemporaneity unfolds its meaning only when this reading of art is established.56 Concentrating on their self-generating art, these artists reject an essentialised paradigm associating local, national and regional signifiers and codes with authenticity and identity.57 When exhibiting their works in international art circles, their attempt is to negotiate global concerns by means of their creative appropriation of the concepts and themes aligned with their lived-practices. Through this process they occasionally apply a deconstructive approach when representing essential identity markers and challenging self-exoticisation. They are aware of the risk of losing potential international opportunities and sympathies, but this way they take part in a project of defying the preconceived notions and of resistance against the formulation imposed by neo-Orientalist discourses. If the experience of the contemporary is shared and therefore universal, it is simultaneously specific and particular. To the most engaged Iranian

exhibiting essential is m  | 263 artists, contemporary takes on a specific meaning, pertaining not only to the  work’s  aesthetic qualities as viewed in its own particular existence, but  also with equal significance, to terms connoting certain politically subversive qualities. This approach has provided artists with an opportunity to take a position where they can offer individual social and cultural commentaries and react against external expectations and consequential formulations. The best examples of such works incorporate the dynamics of their lived context into the art works which they create. The work of these artists offers the international viewer the opportunity to live in disjunctive temporal landscapes that may lead them to restructure their cultural and political preconceptions. They also address a newly shaped intellectual trend that questions the political and cultural forces driving the global cultural industry. Notes  1. Here I do not deal with the new developments undertaken in the art scene in the Middle East region, with a growing number of museums, art fairs, biennials and auction houses (particularly in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates as well as Qatar) and their relations to this essay’s question, as it requires a separate study itself.  2. For the most comprehensive account of this subject, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).  3. Staci Gem Scheiwiller, ‘(Neo)Orientalism: Alive and Well in American Academia: A Case Study of Contemporary Iranian Art’, in Middle East Studies after September 11, Neo-Orientalism, American Hegemony and Academia, ed. Tugrul Keskin (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 201.  4. A successful example of this trend was epitomised in the exhibition projects by the French curator Catherine David. David organised the exhibition and publication series Tamass: Contemporary Arab Representations in Beirut in 2002. She also organised iterations of her project in Cairo in 2003, the Venice Biennale in 2003 and the exhibition Unedited History: Iran 1960–2014 in 2014, all important contributions to unfolding aspects of contemporary art of the MENA region within the global context.  5. Ali Behdad and Juliet Williams, ‘Neo-Orientalism’, in Globalizing American Studies, eds Brian T. Edwards and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 284.

264 | the art o f i r a n  6. See the author’s article, ‘The Question of Identity vis-à-vis Exoticism in Contemporary Iranian Art’, Iranian Studies, vol. 43, no. 4 (September 2010): 489–512.  7. Timothy Mitchell, ‘Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order’, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, eds Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (London: Routledge, 2004), 289.  8. Mitchell, ‘Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order’, 290.  9. Ibid., 290. 10. Ibid., 292. 11. See Scheiwiller, ‘(Neo)Orientalism’, 195. 12. See Hal Foster, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’ in The Traffic in Culture, Refuging Art and Anthropology, eds George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 302–9. 13. Mitchell, ‘Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order’, 305. 14. Jean Fisher, ‘The Syncretic Turn, Cross-cultural Practices in the Age of Multiculturalism’, in Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, eds Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 234. 15. Ibid., 234–5. 16. Ibid., 235. 17. Ibid., 235. 18. See Jean Fisher, ‘Some Thought on Contaminations’, https://www.jeanfisher. com/thoughts-contaminations-incorporating-parts-syncretic-turn/ (accessed 10 October 2021). 19. See Barbad Golshiri, ‘For They Know What They Do Know’, E-Flux, Journal  #08, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/08/61377/for-they-know-whatthey-do-know/ (accessed 23 May 2017). 20. Ibid. 21. Mirjam Shatanawi, ‘Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Museums, Decon­ structing the Dichotomy’, in The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets, and Museums, eds Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009), 368. 22. It is worth mentioning that as Shatanawi remarks, the current practice in a number of ethnographic museums, is shifting to ‘cultural history’ museums. This shift will result in increasing multiple perspectives drawn from personal stories and individual interpretations. Contemporary art pieces are allocated within this practice. (Shatanawi, ’Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Museums’, 370.) 23. Ibid., 372–3.

exh ibiting essential is m  | 265 24. Ibid., 369. See also James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture, Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 25. Tirdad Zolghadr, ‘Ethnic Marketing: An Introduction’, in Ethnic Marketing, ed. Tirdad Zolghadr (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2006), 12. Zolghadr curated an exhibition with the same title, Ethnic Marketing, held in the Azad and Ave Galleries in Tehran in 2006. 26. Gerardo Mosquera, ‘The Marco Polo Syndrome, Some Problems Around Art and Eurocentrism’, in Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, eds Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 219. 27. Khaled D. Ramadan, ‘The Edge of the WC’, in Peripheral Insider: Perspectives on Contemporary Internationalism in Visual Culture, ed. Khaled D. Ramadan (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2007), 27. 28. ‘Actually I don’t think of myself as the Colin Powell of the art world: A discussion with Akram Zaatari, Hassan Khan and Tirdad Zolghadr’, in Zolghadr, Ethnic Marketing, 89–90. 29. See Valerie Behiery, ‘The Veiled Muslim Woman as Subject in Contemporary Art: The Role of Location, Autobiography, and the Documentary Image’, Implicit Religion, vol. 16, no. 4 (2013): 420. 30. Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (London: Routledge, 2001), 13. 31. Ibid., 31–2. 32. Graham Huggan, ‘The Postcolonial Exotic, Salman Rushdie and the Booker of Bookers’, Transition, no. 64 (1994): 27. 33. Examples of these exhibitions are Iran Inside Out (2009), the Chelsea Art Museum, New York; Made in Iran (2009), Asia House, London; and Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East (2009), the Saatchi Gallery, London in which most of the exhibiting artists were from Iran. 34. Huggan, ‘The Postcolonial Exotic’, 27. 35. Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 265. 36. Peter Mason, ‘On Producing the (American) Exotic’, Anthropos, no. 91 (1996): 147. 37. Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, 32–3. 38. Ibid., 32–3. See also Steed Vernyl Davidson, ‘“Exoticizing the Otter”, The Curious Case of the Rechabites in Jeremiah’, in Prophecy and Power: Jeremiah in Feminist and Postcolonial Perspective, eds Christl M. Maier and Carolyn J.

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39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

Sharp (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 190. Also, my essay ‘Cultural Essentialism in the Context of Neo-Orientalism: The Exposure of Contemporary Art Practices from the Middle East’, Kunst und kirche, no. 3 (2019): 34–41 examines this concept and its manifestation in the contemporary art of the Middle East. Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, 33. See Chapter 9, ‘Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping’. Huggan, ‘The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, 32. Hamid Dabashi, ‘Bordercrossings: Shirin Neshat’s Body of Evidence’, in Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture, Essays by Hamid Dabashi, ed. with an introduction by Hamid Keshmirshekan (London: Anthem Press, 2018), 151. Dabashi, ‘Shirin Neshat: Transcending the Boundaries of an Imaginative Geography’, in Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture, 178. The author’s interview with Iranian artists, journalists and critics 2006–8. See Foad Torshizi, ‘The Unveiled Apple: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Limits of Inter-discursive Interpretation of Iranian Contemporary Art’, Iranian Studies, vol. 45, no. 4 (2012): 549–69, 18. Also see Chapter 6, ‘The Politics of Art Practice in Contemporary Iran’. See Boris Buden, ‘Criticism without Crisis: Crisis without Criticism’, in Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, eds Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (London: MayFly Books, 2009), 33. Interview with the author, 2005. Sohrevardi (1154–91), also known as Sheykh-e Eshrāq, was a noted Iranian and Islamic philosopher in the sixth ah/twelfth century and the founder of the School of Eshrāq (Illuminations) in philosophy. Sohrevardi was unique in his deep insight into the origins of Iranian and Greek philosophy as well as Islamic teachings. The book, consisting of about 5,000 rhyming couplets, recounts the life of the Sasanian ruler, Bahrām-e Gur, who led the Sasanian empire from 421 to 439. Interview with the author, 2006. For Heidegger, worlding meant the opening of new ways of being in the world, of being in time and history. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1 (1985): 235–61. Ibid., 235–61.

exhibiting essential is m  | 267 54. See Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996): 11–12. 55. Anneka Lenssen and Sarah A. Rogers, ‘Articulating the Contemporary’, 3. 56. Dabashi, ‘Women Without Headaches’, in Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture, 92. 57. One may discern that art informed by national or collective identity is still an underlying precept among a group of artists in Iran, mainly belonging to earlier generations. Over the past decades, however, this tendency has become much less pronounced.

9 Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping

F

ollowing the earlier chapters addressing discourses on art practices in Iran and the socio-political mechanisms (both domestic and global) which tend to impose cultural fixity or political proscriptions, in this chapter I examine strategies deployed by artists connected to Iran – living either in or outside the country – against those forces, particularly through the language of humour, irony and satire. I will argue that deploying irony and addressing contradictions via humorous subversion of cultural expectations and standardisation are the key strategies in artistic practices in Iran. Here art acts as agency criticising the status quo, self-exoticisation or categories constructed only on foreign values or formulation by domestic authorities. Facing censorship and political constraints, in order to convey their critical account, contemporary artists of Iran – particularly those living in the country – often apply the language of humour through parodic forms and concepts. For artists residing in Iran, parody serves a normative critical function specifically when certain contemporary art forms allow artists to offer parodic references to art of the past. This critical approach takes on yet another dimension when it is aimed at clichéd collective memories by means of humorous commentary on cultural standards. At times, this humorous critique is taken from national or regional specificities – often depicted through stereotypical forms or subjects – to address the artist’s dissatisfaction with formulations constructed by local political forces or the metropolitan art system.

hum orous art p ractice s  | 269 Contextualisation It would be no overstatement to say that, akin to other non-Euro-American artists today, contemporary artists from Iran who wish to participate in the global art scene typically have to challenge reception and expectation vis-àvis the ‘global’ art system. Moreover, at times these artists have to face the challenge of meeting standards formulated by domestic authorities, in accordance with the state’s cultural-political agendas and values. Both the global and local mechanisms tend to frame essentialised cultural views.1 While the global system produces inert images of regionality and encourages standardisation, the local states chiefly establish political proscriptions. What they share is a reductive reading of artworks that commonly diminishes them to geopolitical objects. The practice of critical reference to the cultural past associated with political implications is the artistic response to the state’s standardised paradigms and  norms  for cultural activities in post-revolutionary Iran.2 As was fully explored in the earlier chapters, many artists, particularly from the new ­generation – born after the revolution, now comprising a large portion of Iranian society – challenge such a compulsory setting that aims to direct and dominate systems of belief and actions. As I argued in Chapter 7 and would like to reiterate it here, these artists try to repossess and redefine individuality by generating discursive strategies through which they can critically approach their cultural practices and the state’s politically formulated religiosity. Applying humour and mocking the values introduced by the state via parodic and satirical language are two of the main strategies used to question indirectly the myths of religiosity, moral prescription, and the state’s political agenda. Here works of art seem to become reflections of the very aspects of the social fabric. In the interim, during the past few decades, there has been a growing interest in Europe and North America in exhibiting art ‘excluded’ from the Western canon, including art from contemporary Iran. As was shown in Chapter 8, the mainstream approach in these exhibitions is to showcase the selected country or region along with ‘regional’ themes such as generic gender-related issues in the patriarchal societies in the Islamic world, which are extensively covered in mainstream media. For many Western art spaces, museums, galleries and

270 | the art o f i r a n their curators, these exhibitions indicate a departure from the predominant mainstream accounts of art history because they favour engagement with art outside of the Western European and North American canons. Particularly since the 1990s and the so-called ‘curatorial’ shifts, there has been an imperative appetite to include the ‘excluded’ artists in cultural institutions through the formation of inclusive narratives. The most satisfying topics framing ‘Iran’ for the interests of foreign art markets and exhibitors typically include clichédridden themes or forms such as religious/Islamic fundamentalism, political unrest, censorship, the image of the veil, and the so-called local Islamic motifs such as ornament and calligraphy, inter alia. The focus on such clichéd topics clearly is an instance of exoticism, with its representation and production of ideological commodities that at best only signify parts of these cultures for consumption by those consumers who wish to reinforce their collective identities by way of overstating difference.3 Within this process, the artworks turn into a symbol whose only function is to represent the ‘Other’. By subverting the identical marks through a humorous reconstruction, artists challenge this fetishising process that has overdetermined artworks with exotic marks and signs as subjects of desired consumption. Marked by postmodern irony and the deconstructionist approach, the works of these artists have moved beyond those conventional responses to the exotic scheme and criticise the uniform ethnocentric vision that reflects labelling. The idea of self-criticism is a crucial concern in the recent works of these artists; however, this self-critique is consistently merged with political and social implications. In particular, parodic appropriation and criticism of originality are familiar strategies that are used for dealing with this topic. Common objects, including kitschy forms, are in many of such instances wittily presented as sacred.4 Drawing on Simon Dentith, Mahadev Apte, Avner Ziv, Henri Bergson and Linda Hutcheon’s theories of humour and parody, I will scrutinise the abovementioned themes through the study of works of five artists who have applied the language of humour in their works in different media. The case studies include Rokni Haerizadeh (b. 1978), Nazgol Ansarinia (b. 1979), Iman Safaei (b. 1981), Parastou Forouhar (b. 1962) and Sohrab Kashani (b. 1989). They either live and work in Iran or have adapted themselves to diasporic conditions. Reflecting political conflicts and restrictions, ethnic and religious

hum orous art p ractic e s  | 271 violence, the cases represent how humour, through political irony, addresses recognisable forms of cultural representation in contemporary Iran. Representation of Critical Humour in the Works of Artists Artists mainly deploy humour through parodic appropriations of past and present icons and cultural representations – what literary scholar Simon Dentith calls ‘parodic cultural forms’.5 Dentith argues that parody embraces any cultural practice that offers a somewhat controversial referential simulation of another cultural practice.6 Exploring the cultural politics of parody as in essence a subversive approach, he examines the ways that parody critically positions various forms in cultural exchange – from ancient times to the ­present.7 Through subversive possibilities, parody can challenge authoritarianism or the dominant discourse and offer a witty riposte to challenge authority and subvert power relations.8 In the context of Iran, there are social circumstances in which parody can become a channel for crucial cultural and political statements. Parody is, moreover, one of the forms of intertextual reference out of which texts are made. Intertextuality signifies the countless deliberate ways in which texts (or images) are referred to or quoted in other texts. It denotes multiple webs of reference from which individual texts are created. Hence, parody constructs a part of a range of cultural practices which refer to precursor texts/ images with a conscious appraising accent. In his study of humour, anthropologist Mahadev Apte states that culture constitutes the contextual, textual and technical foundations of humour.9 He considers humour as linking individual and collective cultural perceptions of falsehood, oddness, bias, or as combining any unfamiliar mixtures of cultural elements in everyday events. Apte further traces the way that the oddness of humour often involves the restructuring of socio-cultural elements. This could be a restructuring that is generated through aberrant readings of established patterns and social relations. Therefore, as Apte maintains, humour turns out to be a ‘major conceptual and methodological tool for gaining insights into cultural systems’.10 The work of Rokni Haerizadeh (b. 1978; living and working in Dubai) is a good example that traces social relations and cultural systems. He criticises the horror that he finds in the hypocritical practices, paradoxes, cultural

272 | the art o f i r a n schizophrenia and social disorder in Iranian society and its political system, and in human behaviour at large. In a series of paintings created in the 2000s when he was still residing in Iran, he was inspired by old Persian literature and painting, such as manuscript illustrations from Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh (The Book of Kings, 1010)11 and Nizami Ganjavi’s Khosrow and Shirin (c. 1180) – all glorified symbols of Iranian culture – incorporating them, however, into satirical and subversive patterns. As Dentith maintains, most parodies employ the authority of precursor texts to satirise, attack, or just playfully refer to features of the contemporary world. The critical direction of parody can then employ indirect imitation to attack not only the precursor text, but some new situation as well.12 Haerizadeh too subversively references those precursor cultural sources to critique the cultural formulations of the post-revolutionary Iranian state, in particular the Islamicisation of Iran’s cultural life and the ever-existing patriarchal viewpoint concerning the issue of sexuality. In Haerizadeh’s large-scale paintings – the majority being displayed outside Iran – parody acts in a satirical rather than a playful way. In Khosrow Watching Shirin Bathing (2008), an iconic scene in the illustrated Persian manuscripts drawn from Nizami’s poem Khosrow and Shirin, he rendered the scene with a grotesque panache (Figure 9.1). Nizami’s fabled poem tells a highly elaborated fictional version of the story of the love of the Sasanian king Khosrow for the Armenian princess Shirin, who later becomes queen of Persia. It has been the subject of numerous artworks, including renowned illustrated manuscripts, and tales written by different Iranian authors over the centuries. In this particular famous scene, in their first encounter Khosrow happens upon Shirin while she is bathing naked and washing her hair in a stream. In Haerizadeh’s image, both of the main characters are refashioned within an imaginary surreal ancient-modern world: in the foreground next to her mouse-like horse, half-naked Shirin is bathing in a garden and in the background Khosrow, also half-naked, is sitting on a horse-car creature’s back. All formal elements of the story are now relocated in a bizarre contemporary unknown location, although the familiar elements of the scene somehow signify the cityscape of modern Iranian cities, Tehran in particular. Psychologist Avner Ziv maintains that expressing feelings against oppressive cultural and political situations by means of humour may offer release, and

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Figure 9.1 Rokni Haerizadeh, Khosrow Watching Shirin Bathing, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 150 × 200 cm.

argues that humour can accomplish this role via the arts and various means of mass communication.13 According to Ziv, ‘Satire … focuses on situations specific to a given society and period. To understand political satire, the spectator must know something about the political relations and economic background of the society in question.’14 In this regard, the satirical language in much of Haerizadeh’s art tends to have various culturally specific critical implications, related to both traditional and contemporary signifiers in Iranian poetry, visual culture and politics. Haerizadeh’s conscious use of parody also means the hypertext (his painting which performs its parodic transformation) directly transforms the hypotext (the original pictures: the pages of Persian manuscript painting). Accordingly, the socio-cultural connotations of parody can only be realised in the density of the intertextual relations in which it mediates.15 Haerizadeh’s Khosrow Watching Shirin Bathing offers a self-critical account of collective cultural perceptions of past and present. It simultaneously references allegories and fundamental gender relations in the story of Khosrow and Shirin and

274 | the art o f i r a n its continual presence in contemporary Iran. His imagery and intertextual approach to a meaningful storyline is a valued example of critical parody. Here parody criticises the patriarchal attitude towards sexuality, sexual harassment appearing in old Persian literature – signifying cultural past – as well as in contemporary political culture in Iran. Haerizadeh’s satirical image moreover exposes what he takes to be hypocrisy and prurience within the Iranian political system and society in general. An example of parody which works by applying the notion of ‘the sacred’ to a common object is found in the work of Nazgol Ansarinia (b. 1979; living and working in Tehran). Her work portrays everyday events, experiences, objects, and their relationship to the wider social context in Iran, thereby positioning her work as a mild critical commentary. Whether it is her personal choice or the matter of political constraints in Iran, this critical commentary usually represents multilayered ambiguity and leaves room for interpretations. She usually takes visual and material elements of her chosen subjects apart and then re-joins them in a way that reveals unobserved concepts about those subjects themselves. Ansarinia explains this approach in terms of de-constructing and re-constructing ‘the torn apart elements that show something new about something so banal that has gone unnoticed’.16 Her works interrogate and adapt everyday objects and events to discover their relation to contemporary Iran, especially to the capital Tehran, where social class differences and paradoxes of traditional life and ultramodern styles coexist in each corner of the city. In Rhyme and Reason (2009), she references a traditional Iranian product: handwoven carpets (Figure 9.2). Like her other works, this carpet emphasises an engagement with physicality and materiality. Using handwoven carpets as her medium, she deconstructs the traditional Persian carpet patterns and replaces them with contemporary witty figurative motifs. For example, a group of elderly women is gathered in concentric circles to emulate a dense central floral medallion, or rows of people are composed on arabesque spirals. The playfulness comes out when the viewer tries to identify the visual elements, here ordinary working-class people in contemporary Iran, which have inhabited Ansarinia’s carpet. These structures subvert the familiar Persian carpet’s abstraction – typically free from any social denotations – and create a new intriguing but paradoxical canvas inhabited by actual people who make up the fabric of Iranian society.

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Figure 9.2 Nazgol Ansarinia, Rhyme and Reason, 2009, handwoven wool, silk and cotton, 360 × 252 cm.

276 | the art o f i r a n Rhyme and Reason’s humorous language reveals the ever-present dichotomy between traditional practices and practical modernism in Iranian culture and social life. The replacement of stylised abstract forms with contemporary everyday figures moreover implies the increasingly important problem of geographic dislocation, caused by rapid urbanisation in post-revolutionary Iran and the consequential population dislocation and migration trends that have reinforced social inequalities. In this work, Ansarinia reveals the inner workings of the Iranian social system by taking apart its components before reassembling them to uncover collective assumptions and their underlying rules of engagement.17 Rhyme and Reason in fact explores the challenging space between tradition and modernity, a binary that constitutes the social disorder in the artist’s contemporary culture. Because of the close similarity of Rhyme and Reason to the original format of a Persian carpet, at first glance this unexpected fusion of the binary between the traditional and the contemporary in repetitive and complex forms is not immediately perceivable. However, a closer look reveals these paradoxes. Here again the hypotext is the traditional conventional carpet which has been transformed to the hypertext (Ansarinia’s work) in a playful fashion. This approach, moreover, reveals the ‘strategic exoticism’, that was explored in Chapter 8. In Rhyme and Reason, patterns of Persian carpets with their clichéd signification are meant to address complicated layers of social life in Iran, beyond their sole formal re-appropriation. Here, it is this parodic adaptation of a classical form that subverts the Orientalist expectation and criticises its exoticism. The work of Iman Safaei (b. 1982; living and working in Tehran) presents parodies of sublime traditions of calligraphy and Persian classical poetry. His play with language, mainly involves the use of colloquial language of everyday life in Tehran, rather than classical literature or poetry. His series of works entitled Kucheh (Alley, 2014–17) exhibited in the Shirin Gallery, Tehran (2017), consists of writings, flags, gravures, zinc plates and other ready-made objects mixed and juxtaposed with bizarre writings, which are not aimed to be easily readable. This series is a part of his continuous quest within linguistic paradigms, including reinterpretations of folk poetry, proverbs, phrases, even local obscenities, signifying social collective memory by recreating them. Through the texts from Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick’s book Cultural Theory:

hum orous art p ractice s  | 277 The Key Concepts (1999), the captions on the walls of the gallery addressed such concepts as knowledge, irony, subjectivity and commodity fetishism. Providing social commentary, the works speak about folklore, traditions and existing contradictions in the artist’s surroundings. For example, the Persian words and their complex structures within geometrical networks signify the contradictory elements that appeared in recent urban developments in the city of Tehran that have oddly overshadowed the past cultural heritage and architectural landscape of the city. Through tales and proverbs, Safaei addresses the notion of language and its crucial role in Iranian society, in the old literature, art and sacred texts and their deformed parodic witty version in contemporary Iran. The Kucheh series criticises contemporary elitist literary works with their abstract and complex language, mostly unknown to the ordinary reader, partly influenced by the increasing number of poorly translated texts. More importantly, through the parodic writings, the series deconstructs and subverts the highly respected art of Persian calligraphy and its classical contents. For example, in the calligraphic sculpture, entitled Sepeleshk (colloquial Persian expression for ‘bad luck’), Safaei tries to deconstruct the linguistic construction by transforming the textual semiotics to visual semiotics devoid of their old clichéd connotations (Figure 9.3). The artist’s playful conceptual and formal intervention in this phrase and expression drawn from folk and popular culture, together with its repetitive and complex porous structure, prevent it from carrying any pre-existing meaning. Through his particular attention to pop culture, Safaei’s interpretation represents ‘vulgarity’, ‘eccentricity’ tracing vividly in the contemporary political culture of Iran. Thus, this work reflects a written phrase that has been emptied of its semantic signification while at the same time suggesting new semantic significations. Through intertextual interpretation of this work, one can find parallels in such traditional sources as Persian literature and poetry and even religious texts which are usually considered estimable. Safaei’s parody suggests a mild polemic against the didactic nature of the parodied texts. In this parodic calligraphic sculpture, the hypertext (Sepeleshk, a colloquial word with witticism) directly transforms the hypotext (old honourable/sacred texts) in a playful way. This shows the possibility of a work of art taking a deconstructionist position in connection with traditions within which they are operating. In other words,

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Figure 9.3 Iman Safaei, Sepeleshk, from the Kucheh series, 2014, sculpture, iron, 187.5 × 48 × 117.5 × 51.5 cm.

by setting traditionality and contemporaneity into opposition, Sepeleshk suggests the possibility of generating different meanings from illegible texts, proposing connotations which suggest critical ideas about the Iranian state’s cultural formulation. Henri Bergson’s emphasis on the educational function of humour, and the corrective characteristic of humour that has the capacity to reform particular facets of social life could also be useful in reading this work. Bergson argues that humour, by acting as a safety regulator for the release of frustration and tensions, serves as a social corrective.18 In this, by addressing hidden facets of contemporary culture and political life in Iran, Sepeleshk could act as a social corrective. According to Dentith, parody is seen as essentially subversive, and it ­unsettles the certainties which sustain the social order and places all accepted  truths in doubt.19 Using ironic and parodic imagery, Safaei, in Sepeleshk, questions the mechanism that produces the contradictory ‘truth’ and essentialisation of culture. This work represents another form of ‘strategic  exoticism’. The constructed structures from linguistic epigraphy of

hum orous art p ractic e s  | 279 Iranian culture impose their implications to those unfamiliar with the ironic and humorous language applied in the work. Safaei deliberately negotiates, criticises and deconstructs otherness with his ironic-parodic approach towards the political nature of constructed truth through hegemonic narratives. The work of Parastou Forouhar (b. 1962; living and working in Frankfurt) deals mainly with complicated political issues in the contemporary world, in particular relating to political exercises in Iran. Her main concern is to explore the complex relationship between the visual arts, politics and trauma. By means of humour and irony, her work depicts social situations based on personal experiences with cultural alienation. With the application of visual irony in her works, including photography, installations and d ­ igital-generated prints, Forouhar reveals the existence of social and structured political mechanisms of power, abuse and violence in contemporary Iran. The Time of Butterflies series (2011–), consisting of digital prints and wallpaper, and working with the use of parodic forms drawn from ornament as a signifier of familiar aesthetic paradigms of Persian painting including formal beauty, stylised forms, repetition, harmony and congruity, the playful images in fact are to address concealed layers of hostile realities (Figure 9.4). In these digital drawings and prints oscillating between fantasy and reality, the present thorny reality of systematic tyranny – being practised within the Iranian political system – is portrayed through self-referential enquiries. Intensely personal, even the title of these works refer to the name of Forouhar’s mother, Parvaneh, the Persian word for butterfly, who was assassinated together with her husband Dariush Forouhar, Parsatou’s father, a secular politician, by agents of the Iranian state in 1998 in Iran.20 According to the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon, parody is one of the key forms of modern self-reflexivity, which marks the connection between invention and critique and offers an important approach which aims to reconcile the discourses of the past.21 She maintains that by playing with manifold conventions, parody associates creative expression with critical commentary.22 The Time of Butterflies series plainly represents this aspect of parody. The works in this series, identical to all Forouhar’s art projects, demonstrate how brutality can be framed as beauty in a rather ironic way. With

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Figure 9.4 Parastou Forouhar, from the Time of Butterflies series, 2010, digital print on photo paper, each frame 100 × 100 cm.

hum orous art p ractice s  | 281 a closer look at these butterflies, the immediate aesthetic attractions and delicate forms of butterfly wings are converted to imagery models by which inhumane conduct, cruelty and murder are depicted. The masked scenes of torture, wounded and silenced human figures replace the abstract motifs of beauty in patterns of butterfly’s wings. Through the explosion of colours and forms, these works portray macrocosms in which the main victims are women and concurrently evoke the brutality of the political system.23 The harmless beauty of the ornament with complex patterns, the rhythmic designs, their kaleidoscopic forms, their symmetries and harmonious order are disrupted once we identify tortured female bodies, instruments of torture and tyrannical behaviours. The immediate visual pleasure created by ornamental patterns is challenged by the polemic of how much pain and suffering the tranquil frontages of these forms truly cover. This series is a good case to examine the way an artwork with culturally specific meaning might be perceived incorrectly out of context. For those who are not familiar with the intertextual meanings and contextual ­background – in this case Iranian political culture and the related ideological implications, the main points of reference – a totally false reading might occur. The Time of Butterflies series suggests how humorous art can comment on a political context by de-contextualising harmless traditions of ornamental arts and decoration. The strategic application of immediate playful forms – made up of parodic elements drawn from visual characteristics of ornament – yet conveying serious and bitter commentaries against ­totalitarianism, subvert and challenge any Orientalist gaze and exotic narratives. Another good example of the application of humour through parody is the Super Sohrab series by Sohrab Kashani (b. 1989; living and working in Tehran). This series depicts Super Sohrab as Kashani’s alter-ego, an ineffective part-time superhero who uses mockery in his attempts to resolve local and even global socio-political complications. It demonstrates a sarcastic parodic representation of iconic superheroes produced by Hollywood cinema (Superman in particular) and their idealised masculine figure embodying the superiority of white-male/Western power. Kashani’s Super Sohrab subverts this perception through humorous depiction of his alterego comic character (Figure 9.5). Unlike its American counterpart who typically with his incredible superpower saves not only his own country, but

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Figure 9.5 Sohrab Kashani, The Adventures of Super Sohrab, from the Super Sohrab series, 2013 (revised version of a 2011 iteration), digital comic image.

also the whole world and the planet, Super Sohrab’s mundane and widely accessible character only addresses the randomly chosen issues and problems that happen to Iranians (and more recently global citizens) individually and collectively. In reality, Super Sohrab does not perform any impressive acts: he does all the ordinary jobs such as washing the dishes, cooking, laundering, checking his Facebook profile, and so on.24 In all these, the bizarre protagonist’s acts mirror the artist’s own misfortunate life stories. While focusing on some of his life events and failures, such as his UK visa application and his experience of the effects of US sanctions on currency fluctuations and international travel, the process of Super Sohrab’s life is documented through performative interventions presented in photographs, film, video, comic strips and text, as well as other formats such as interviews. In an act of irony and humour, the Super Sohrab website also offers a platform for

hum orous art p ractic e s  | 283 those who need help from him, although in most, if not all, cases he fails to perform any serious action. Super Sohrab appeared in 2009 as a response to the collective depression after the controversial election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, which erupted in protest against the fraud in the election and formation of the socalled Green Movement. With the failure of the movement resulting in an epidemic of depression in Iranian society, in particular affecting intellectual circles, Kashani started recording and documenting what he was experiencing as an Iranian artist and as a reflection of the post-election milieu at large. He chose the language of humour as a way to break out of this dilemma. Super Sohrab then became a platform with which he created a voice and a stand to address critical topics affecting Iranians.25 Super Sohrab is moreover a response to macho culture and Iranian patriarchal society. His sarcastically weak masculine character, which is supposed to represent a male superhero, rather creates the feeling of masculine weaknesses and lack of machismo. Herein, his sarcastic, somehow amusing and humorous acts generate commentaries on Iran’s political culture. Kashani formulates this critical perspective through several layers of portrayal. Addressing socio-political commentaries, Super Sohrab represents the way that the humorous approach could act as an illustrative tactic to criticise cultural perceptions. Conclusion The study of the semiotics of humour tells us how humorous signifiers function in a specific context by signifying certain meanings via cultural codes and practices. Challenging domestic censorship together with constant political unrest and social conflicts in Iran, these significations may well be effective only when the observer is aware of these experiences and thus capable of decoding these messages. It is in this context that the political reaction to authoritarianism, imposed cultural stereotypes – either internally or externally – and the artists’ subversive approach via humour are perceivable. When these artists create and disseminate work within local and international art circles, they seem to re-appropriate global concepts with reference to local significations. Their work shares an ironic and humorous approach to the cultural past and complex layers of social life in a critical

284 | th e art o f i r a n manner. Accordingly, specificity of local culture and political context is indeed important in appreciation of these works. Through the deconstruction of what is usually called a solid ‘collective identity’, artists challenge the Orientalist construct of the ‘other’ and counter the self-exoticism. This means that they resist the imposition of culturally coded stereotypes, which serve the wishes of the political agenda introduced by the ‘official culture’ domestically, or demanded by the international market. By resisting the agendas that are in charge of the reinforcement of objectification and exoticism, artists acknowledge their awareness of their ‘subjectpositions’. Nevertheless, in the current global exhibition scheme, as yet governed by Euro-American canons and their curatorial preferences, it seems, sadly, that in practice there is no guarantee that this humorous approach is essentially capable of subverting cultural expectations and conventions in the global art world. The artworks examined above, which draw from the visual history of Iran in parodic or ironic ways, have largely been received as exotic, even if strategic exoticism and subversive language – as seen in the works of Safaei and Ansarinia – are deliberately applied. In other words, although the self-conscious use of exoticist techniques and methods of cultural representation can be considered a response to the phenomenon of postcolonial otherness,26 it is not essentially a way out of the dilemma. This is the result of existing power relations, confirming that cultural ideologies determine both vision and visual representation. However, whether or not the artists are able to shift the dominant paradigm, this position indeed enables them to independently demonstrate discursive reactions to internal and external impulses and their consequences on the artistic trajectory of contemporary Iran. Notes  1. For further elaboration of these two forces and their impact on artistic productions in Iran, see Chapters 7 and 8. See also the author’s article, ‘Standardisation and the Question of Identity: On the Dominant Discourses on Contemporary Iranian Art’, Kimia-ye Honar Quarterly, no. 11 (2015): 110–27.  2. See Chapter 7 and the author’s article, ‘Reclaiming Cultural Space: Artist’s Performativity versus State’s Expectations in Contemporary Iran’, in Performing the Iranian State: Cultural Representations of Identity and Nation, ed. Staci Gem Scheiwiller (London: Anthem, 2013), 145–55.

hum orous art p ractice s  | 285  3. This is the very critical subject that Edward Said has articulated in Orientalism. For further study of this theme, see Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).  4. There are parallel art practices in the MENA region, including, for example, the works of the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (b. 1971) and the Moroccan Hassan Hajjaj (b. 1961).  5. Simon Dentith, Parody (London: Routledge, 2002), 19.  6. Ibid., 9.  7. Ibid., 9. It is useful to mention that, as Dentith argues, ‘parody is to be distinguished from travesty because the textual transformation which it performs is done in a playful rather than a satirical manner. Pastiche, on the other hand, is similarly playful, but works by imitation rather than direct transformation’ (Dentith, Parody, 11).  8. Ibid., 10, 20.  9. Mahadev Apte, Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 263. 10. Ibid., 16. 11. Other artists such as Siamak Filizadeh (b. 1970) have worked on revisiting Shāhnāmeh in the contemporary context of Iran. Filizadeh’s photographic series of Rostam (2009) and Underground (2014) are good examples of application of humour and parody in addressing the turbulent history of social, moral and political issues through a critical lens. 12. See Dentith, Parody, 9. 13. Avner Ziv, ‘Humor as a Social Corrective’, in Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, eds Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen (Glenview: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1988); https://msu.edu/~jdowell/ziv.html/ (accessed 11 August 2019). 14. Ibid. 15. Dentith, Parody, 37. 16. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/nazgol-ansarinia-on-tehran-neighbourhoods-arechanging-so-fast (accessed 3 August 2019). 17. http://www.gagallery.com/artists/nazgol-ansarinia/biography (accessed 5 August 2019) 18. See Avner Ziv, ‘The Social Function of Humor in Interpersonal Relationships’, Society, vol. 47, no. 1 (January 2010): 16. 19. Dentith, Parody, 20. 20. They were two of Iran’s most high-profile political activists when they were stabbed to death in their home on 22 November 1998.

286 | the art o f i r a n 21. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 1. 22. Ibid., 2. 23. See https://www.parastou-forouhar.de/portfolio/the-time-of-butterflies/ (acc­essed 17 September 2021). 24. https://www.ibraaz.org/interviews/186/ (accessed 17 September 2021). 25. Ibid. 26. See Davidson, ‘“Exoticizing the Otter”’, 424.

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Index

Aali, Abolfazl, 144 Aali, Ahmad, 65, 140 activism, 7, 221 Afjai, Nasrollah, 112 Afsarian, Iman, 180 Aghdashloo, Aydin, 161 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 85, 185, 203, 283 Akhlaghi, Azadeh, 7, 233, 234 Qasr Prison, Tehran, Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi 17 October 1939 (2012), 233 Alavi, Bozorg, 53–4 Al-e Ahmad, Jalal, 54–5, 114, 180; see also Gharb-zadegi; gharb-zadegi Ali, Wijdan, 19 Aliabadi, Shirin, 254 Alkhas, Hannibal, 54, 77n, 142 Revolution (1978), 142 alternative modernities, 25, 27 Alvandi, Roham, 115 Amin-Nazar, Ahmad, 158 Amirebrahimi, Samila, 143, 161 Ammamehpich, Ya‘qub, 162, 167n Ansarinia, Nazgol, 7, 8, 212–14, 270, 274–6, 284 4 March 2012, Front Page, from the Reflections Refractions series, (2012), 214 Rhyme and Reason (2009), 275 anti-colonialism, 150 anti-imperialism, 113, 137, 143 anti-Orientalism, 31, 193n

anti-Westernism, 114, 115, 150 Āpādanā Gallery, 50, 66, 74n Āpādānā Gallery club, 50 see also Javadipour, Mahmoud Apte, Mahadev, 270, 271 Arab world, 9, 19, 32, 43n, 75n, 129n Arabshahi, Massoud, 61, 93, 105, 107, 123, 131n Untitled (1975), 107 Armajani, Siah, 71, 110 Night Letter (1957), 111 art discourse(s), 3, 9, 64, 87, 169, 170, 171, 201 art for art’s sake, 119, 145 art historical conceptualisation, 3, 14 art market, 6, 14, 17, 64, 71, 119, 205, 207, 230, 236 Art of Destruction (Honar-e takhrib), 177 Artistic Centre of Islamic Propaganda Organisation (Howzeh-ye honari-ye sāzmān-e tablighāt-e eslāmi), 5, 59, 144 artistic identity, 4, 87, 153, 155, 202, 224 artists of the revolution (honarmandān-e enqelāb), 142, 145; see also revolutionary artists; revolutionary art; post-revolutionary art Asadi, Morteza, 144 Asia Society, New York, 70 Asian Art Biennial, 173 asr-e eslāhāt, 171, 223; see also Reform period Atelier Kaboud, 92, 127n

308 | th e art o f i r a n Attar, Abbas, 140 authentic discourse, 114, 124 authenticity, 4, 18, 21, 22, 26–8, 33, 48, 114, 206, 215, 229, 241, 243, 247, 261, 262 cultural authenticity, 4, 88, 115, 152, 153, 201, 227 avant-garde (pishrow), 23, 28, 30, 50, 52, 69, 89, 100, 104, 117, 118, 139, 174 neo-avant-garde, 23 Ayatollah Khomeini, 145, 147 Azad Gallery, 209, 259 Azadi Cultural Centre, 152 Azarang, Farshid, 6, 182 Scattered Reminiscences (2005), 183 Baghdad Group for Modern Art, 89 Bakhshi Moakhar, Mahmoud, 7, 212–13 Bahman’s Wall series (2009–11), 213 Balaghi, Shiva, 66 Behshahr Industrial Group (Goruh-e san‘ati-ye behshahr), 79n, 119 Behzad, Hossein, 54 Beijing International Art Biennial, 173 Bergson, Henri, 8, 270, 278 Bhabha, Homi, 227 Blair, Sheila and Bloom, Johnathan, 16, 17, 18, 19 Borojeni, Bahman, 143 Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, 114, 162 calligraphic patterns, 157, 178 canonical contemporary art, 33 Centre of Islamic Propaganda Organisation (Sāzmān-e tablighāt-e eslāmi), 5, 59, 144 Centre of Islamic Thought and Art (Howzeh-ye andisheh va honar-e eslāmi), 144 Centre of Visual Arts (Markaz-e honar-hā-ye tajassomi), 190n Chalipa, Kazem, 142, 144 Self-sacrifice (1981), 147 Chelkowsky, Peter, 140

Clark, John, 89 Clifford, James, 21 Cold War, 113 College of Decorative Arts (Honarkadeh-ye honar-hā-ye taz‘ini), 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 102, 104, 105, 108; see also Faculty of Decorative Arts Conceptual Art, 155, 173, 174, 176, 179, 180 constructed identity, 8, 247 constructive identities, 226 contemporaneity, 4, 6, 19, 31, 32–4, 36, 64, 67, 70, 169, 179, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 199, 200, 215, 262, 278; see also specificity contemporary art (honar-e mo‘āser), 72 Contemporary Art Workshop (Kārgāh-e āzād-e honar-e mo‘āser), 177 contemporary Islamic art, 14, 19, 20 contextual conditions, 2, 35, 256 coup d’état (1953), 52 Cubism, 28, 30, 51, 56, 58 cultural aggression (tahājom-e farhangi), 5, 150, 156, 177, 234 cultural essentialism, 6, 7, 26, 221 cultural identity, 52, 88, 152, 156, 169, 176, 178, 222, 226, 244, 248 cultural marginality, 245, 246 Cultural Revolution, 148 cultural stereotypes, 6, 283 Dabashi, Hamid, 24, 140, 253, 262 Dabiri, Bahram, 143, 161 Daftari, Fereshteh, 19, 20, 29, 69, 70, 71 Daneshvar, Simin, 54 Daneshvari, Abbas, 68, 82n Darrebaghi, Morteza Dakhil (2002), 175 Daryabeygi, Abdolreza, 123 David, Catherine, 82n, 263n De Certeau, Michel, 224 deconstruction, 33, 229, 236, 284 defamiliarisation, 33

index | 309 Delzendeh, Siamak, 66 Dentith, Simon, 270, 271, 272, 278 derivativeness, 26, 33; see also authenticity Dialogue of Civilisations, 171 diasporic artists, 3, 69, 251 Diba, Kamran, 94, 116, 127n Diba, Layla S., 69 Ehsai, Mohammad, 112 Untitled (1974), 112 Elkins, James, 23, 24 Emami, Karim, 56, 57, 58, 62, 78n, 90, 91, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102 Keyhan International, 56, 128n Emami, Ziaodin, 160 Emdadian, Ayoub, 143 Enwezor, Okwui, 32 Ershad Assembly (Hoseyniyyeh-ye Ershād), 144; see also revolutionary art; revolutionary artists Esfandiari, Ahmad, 74n Eskandari, Iraj, 144 Espahbod, Alireza, 161 Untitled (1998), 161 essentialisation, 8, 242, 260, 279 Etemadi, Parvaneh, 161 Ethnic Marketing, 248, 259 ethno-cultural categories, 8, 241 ethno-cultural identity markers, 199, 201 Ettinghausen, Richard, 16, 17, 56, 57 Euro-American narratives, 35 Euro-American paradigms, 1 exhibitionary order, 7, 67, 242–4 exoticism, 6, 7, 241, 247, 248, 251–3, 255, 257, 259, 270, 276; see also selfexoticisation; strategic exoticism Experience of 98 (Tajrobeh-ye 77), 177 Faculty of Decorative Arts (Dāneshkadeh-ye Honar-hā-ye taz‘ini), 126n, 144; see also College of Decorative Arts Faculty of Fine Arts (Dāneshkadeh-ye honarhā-ye zibā), 28, 49, 53, 109, 142, 144

Fajr Festival of Visual Arts (  Jashnvāreh-ye honr-hā-ye tajassomi-ye fajr), 203 Fardid, Ahmad, 114 Farhi, Farideh, 235 Fayyazi, Bita, 177 Ferdowsi, 158, 272 Shāhnāmeh (The Book of Kings), 158, 167n, 272 Festival of Iranian Art, 155 Festival of Youth Visual Arts (  Janshnvāreh-ye honr-hā-ye tajassomi-ye javānānn), 203 fetishisation, 247, 260 First International Art Exhibition of Tehran, 120 First Iranian Painting Biennial, 152 First Visual Arts Conference, 153 Fisher, Jean, 245, 246 Fiske, John, 224 Flood, Finbarr Barry, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21 formal aesthetics, 90, 104, 154 Forouhar, Parastou, 8, 270, 279 Time of Butterflies series (2010), 280 Foster, Hal, 216n, 245 Fotouhi, Shahab, 8, 259 Security, Love and Democracy (for Export Only) (2006), 259 Foucault, Michel, 25, 149, 224, 228, 239n Fry, Roger, 21 Ganji, Pariyoush, 162 Gem Scheiwiller, Staci, 71 General Administration of Fine Arts (Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye zibā-ye keshvar), 52, 76n, 117, 119, 120 geopolitical reflections, 7, 199 Ghaderinejad, Niloufar, 143 Ghadirian, Abdolhamid, 144 Ghadirian, Shadi, 182 Ghandriz, Mansour, 65, 93, 104, 105, 122 Untitled (1963), 106 Untitled (1965), 106 gharb-zadegi, 31, 55, 113–15, 119; see also Westoxification; Al-Ahmad, Jalal

310 | th e art o f i r a n Gharb-zadegi, 114; see also Al-Ahmad, Jalal Ghazali, Mohammad Untitled, from the Tehran Slightly Sloping series (2010–13), 188 global art history, 13, 14, 22, 23 global art system, 201, 269 global exhibition system, 242, 245, 249 global standards, 24 Global North, 3, 14, 260 Global South, 13, 35, 180, 242, 259 globalisation, 4, 6, 23, 31, 67, 114, 169, 181, 227, 254, 256, 260 Godfrey, Mark, 32 Golestan, Hengameh, 140 Golestan, Kaveh, 140, 239n Golpayegani, Behzad, 65 Golshiri, Barbad, 7, 208, 256, 260 As Dad As Possible, As Dad As Beckett (2000–13), 209 Eulogy of Wearers of Black Raiments (2020), 258 Khāvarān, from the Curriculum Mortis series (2017), 210, 211 Goudarzi, Morteza, 60 Goudarzi, Mostafa, 144 Grabar, Oleg, 16, 17 grand narratives, 32, 242 Green Movement, 210, 234, 252, 283 Grey, Abby Weed, 134n Grey Art Gallery, 67 Griffin, Tim, 33 Grigor, Talinn, 69, 83n Grigorian, Marcos, 55,123, 132n, 136n, 176 Ābgousht – Dizi (1971) 123 Gumpert, Lynn, 66 Gupta, Suman, 24, 225 Habibi, Shahla, 161 Haerizadeh, Rokni, 8, 270–2 Khosrow Watching Shirin Bathing (2008), 273 Haghighat Shenas, Jamshid, 158 Hall, Stuart, 225, 226

Hamidi, Javad, 54 Hashemi Rafsanjani, Akbar, 69, 80n Hassan Al-Said, Shakir, 89 Hassanzadeh, Khosrow, 8, 177, 254 Hedayat, Ghazaleh, 6, 183, 184 Hair Folder (2008), 184 Hedayat, Sadegh, 50 Held, David, 180 historiography, 1, 3, 15, 35, 48, 51, 65, 70, 72 Hobsbawm, Eric invented traditions, 125n Homayoun, Darioush, 76n, 117; see also Jām-e Jam Arts Society honar-e mardomi (demotic popular art), 139 honar-e now (new art/modern art), 28, 48, 49, 51, 72 Hosseini Rad, Abdolmajid, 144 Hosseini, Mehdi, 161 Huggan, Graham, 250, 251–4; see also strategic exoticism humour, 8, 268, 269–73, 278, 279, 281, 283 humorous subversion, 8, 268 Hunter, Shireen, 222 Hurufiyya, 129n Hutcheon, Linda, 8, 270, 279 hypertext, 273, 276, 278 hypotext, 273, 276, 278 identity markers, 8, 199, 201, 225, 241, 262 Imposed War (jang-e tahmili), 147; see also Iran–Iraq War; Sacred Defence (defā‘-e moqaddas) Independent Artists Group (Goruh-e āzād-e honarmandān), 123 Independent Group of Painters and Sculptors (Goruh-e āzād-e naqqāshān va mojassameh-sāzān), 104, 108, 122, 176 Cover of the catalogue of the exhibition Ābi (1975), 124 Intertextuality, 271

index | 311 Iranian Academy of Arts (Farhangestān-e honar), 72; see also Mousavi, Mir Hossein Iranian and Islamic self, 152 Iranian art scene, 6, 34, 49, 51, 55–7, 96, 119, 169, 177, 183, 205 Iranian intellectuals, 31, 113, 114, 150, 224, 233 Iranian-(Shiite)-Islamic culture, 227 Iran–Iraq War, 5, 59, 69, 137, 147, 158, 162, 231; see also Imposed War (jang-e tahmili); Sacred Defence (defā‘-e moqaddas) irony, 8, 33, 254, 268, 270, 271, 277, 279, 283 Islamic (Shiite) cultural values, 150 Islamic art history, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21 Islamic mysticism, 115 Islamic world, 2, 17–21, 62, 153, 177, 178, 269 Islamo-Iranian culture and identity, 222 Issa, Rose, 173 Jahanbegloo, Ramin, 224 Jalali, Bahman, 140, 162 Sāvāk, Zarrāb-khāneh Street (1979), 141 Jām-e Jam Arts Society, 76n, 117; see also Homayoun, Darioush Jām-e Jam, 53 Javadi, Rana, 140 Javadipour, Mahmoud, 50, 65; see also Āpādānā Gallery Jorjani, Reza, 53, 54 Jowdat, Mohammad Reza, 122 Kalari, Mahmoud, 140 Kamal al-Molk (Ghaffari, Mohammad), 29, 30, 44n, 50, 53, 56, 58, 60, 70 Karimi, Pamela, 71 Karimkhan Zand, Iraj, 161 Kashani, Sohrab, 8, 270, 281, 283 Super Sohrab series (2013), 282 Kazemi, Hossein, 50, 54, 61

Kazemi, Houshang, 92 Keddie, Nikki, 146 Khan, Hassan, 249 Khatami, Seyyed Mohammad, 69, 140, 162, 171 Khorus-jangi, 50; see also Ziapour, Jalil Anjoman-e Khorus-jangi (Fighting Rooster Society), 50, 66 Khorus-jangi magazine, 4, 75n Khosrowjerdi, Hossein, 144 Kiarostami, Abbas, 174 Lashaei, Farideh, 161 Lenssen, Anneka, 32, 125n Lettrisme, 100, 130n Lettristes revolutionary manifesto of, 102 Lhote, André, 50 Mafi, Reza, 112 Mahdavi, Nahid, 94 market demands, 6 market interest(s), 5, 88, 205 Martyr and Veterans Affair Foundation (Bonyād-e shahid va jānbāzān), 147 McGrew, Anthony, 181 Mehrjoui, Daryoush, 174 Melkonian, Sirak, 123, 127n MENA region, 1, 9, 14, 20, 25, 27, 28, 87, 129n, 178, 254 Middle East and North Africa, 1, 14 Middle Eastern art, 202, 244, 247 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 229 middle-class, 152, 172 Ministry of Culture and Arts (Vezārat-e farhang va honar), 52, 56, 58, 76n, 91, 117, 119, Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Vezārat-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi), 59–61, 150, 152, 203, 223, 231 Mirsepassi, Ali, 113, 114 Mitchell, Timothy, 8, 27, 65, 243–5, 252; see also exhibitionary order

312 | the art o f i r a n Mobed, Amir, 7, 230 Hypocrisy (2013), 231 modern art (honar-e now), 28, 48, 72; see also honar-e now modern values and norms (arzesh-hā va hanjār-hā-ye tajaddod), 27 modernisation (Nowsāzi), 30 modernists (now-gerāyān), 28 Moghaddam, Mohsen, 54 Mohajer, Mehran Things and Lines series (2011), 187 Mohasses, Ardeshir, 72, 239n Mohasses, Bahman, 43n, 50, 54 Mojabi, Javad, 55, 62 Momayez, Morteza, 122, 123, 136n, 176 MOP CAP, 205, 217–18n Moshiri, Farhad, 8, 254 Moslemian, Nosratollah, 143, 158 Untitled (2003), 159 Mosquera, Gerardo, 248 mota‘ahhed art, 139, 145, 152 mota‘ahhed artists, 150 Mousavi, Mir Hossein, 80–1n, 177, 210; see also Iranian Academy of Arts Mousavizadeh, Shahab, 143 Moxey, Keith, 22 Moya, Paula M. L., 225 multiculturalism, 24 multiple modernities concept of, 26 Nadalian, Ahmad New Life (2006), 175 Nami, Gholamhossein, 123, 136n Naqqāshi-khatt (calligraphic-painting), 112, 154 Natel Khanlari, Parviz, 55, 76n national art, 5, 24, 52, 53, 55, 59, 88, 104, 116, 117, 122, 162, 205 national school of art, 118, 155 nationalism, 67, 110, 113, 115, 117, 118, 139, 149 nativism, 67, 114, 115, 137

Necipoğlu, Gülru, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21 Negārgari, 150, 154 neo-traditionalism, 4, 97, 154, 157, 162, 204; see also Saqqā-khāneh movement neo-traditional art, 4, 87, 115, 157 neo-Orientalism, 114, 243 neo-Orientalist perceptions, 35 neo-Orientalist practices, 8, 243 Neshat, Shirin, 8, 71, 72, 182, 253, 254 New Art (honar-e jadid), 6, 173, 174, 175–7, 179–82, 185, 188 New Art History, 17, 35 Niavaran Cultural Centre, 108, 152 Nizami Ganjavi Haft Peykar, 257 Khosrow and Shirin, 272 non-Western artists, 171, 242, 245, 248, 249 non-Western modern and contemporary art, 1, 13, 25 official culture, 5, 88, 120, 121, 124, 203, 284 Orientalism, 7, 19, 25, 63, 243, 244 Orientalism, 65, 241; see also Said, Edward Orientalism in reverse, 261 anti-Orientalism, 31, 114 Orientalist paradigm, 121 Orientalist structure, 21 originality, 18, 89, 99, 180, 187, 241, 248, 258, 270 Ossouli, Farah, 161 otherness, 8, 124, 202, 243–5, 247–9, 251, 252, 256, 279, 284 Oveissi, Nasser, 93, 95, 96, 108 Untitled (c.1964), 109 Pahlavi era, 69, 121, 222 Pahlavi monarchy, 138 Pahlavi modernisation, 114 Pahlavi period, 49, 65, 66, 69, 70, 124 Pahlavi political system, 138

index | 313 Pahlavi regime, 121, 138, 139, 142, 224 Pahlavi state, 72, 124, 138 Pakbaz, Ruyin, 57, 61, 65, 104, 122, 156 Encyclopaedia of Art (Dā‘eratolm‘āref-e honar), 65 Palangi, Nasser, 144 parody, 8, 99, 185, 268, 270–4, 277–9, 281 Persbook, 205, 218n Persian art, 21, 120, 121 Persian painting, 58, 60, 89, 95, 104, 108, 109, 110, 157, 161 Pesyani, Atila, 174 Pezeshknia, Houshang, 61, 65 pictorial heritage, 4, 88, 95 Pilaram, Faramarz, 91, 93, 95, 102, 104, 108, 112, 122, 123 Untitled (1961), 103 Untitled (1975), 103 politics of identity, 7, 235, 241, 248 postcolonial Middle East, 4, 88 post-Constitution period, 113 post-revolutionary art, 4, 5, 34, 137, 138, 145, 148, 150, 172 post-revolutionary modernism, 31, 67, 149, 161, 248 post-revolutionary modernists, 157 Pouyan, Shahpour, 8, 260 Projectile 6 (2012), 261 pre-Islamic Persia, 105, 113 pre-Islamic Persian arts, 154 presidential election (1997), 5, 137, 162; see also Reform period private galleries, 50, 172, 205 Project 92 (porojeh-ye 71), 177 Qahveh-khāneh (coffeehouse) paintings, 60, 98, 108, 109, 154, 155 Qajar art, 89, 159 Qajar large-scale paintings, 108 Qajar paintings, 95 Qajar portraits, 108, 109 Qajar era, 70 Qajar Iran, 18

Qajar odalisque, 182 Queen Farah, 115, 120; see also Secretariat of the Empress Farah Pahlavi Raisi, Ebrahim, 223 Ram, Haggai, 138, 149 Ramadan, Khaled, 249 Razavipour, Neda, 7, 209 Self-service (2009), 211 Reconstruction period, 5, 80n, 149, 150, 162 Reform period (1997–2005), 6, 61, 67, 169, 185, 189, 203, 204, 223; see also asr-e eslāhāt; presidential election (1997) Revolution (1979), 5, 7, 20, 31, 58, 59, 65, 66, 68–70, 124, 137, 149, 202, 233 revolutionary art, 5, 67, 137, 144, 145 revolutionary artists, 60, 142, 147, 153 see also post-revolutionary art; artists of the revolution revolutionary Islamic universalist tendency, 150 pan-Islamism, 149 revolutionary radicalism, 5, 151 Riazi, Shokouh, 74n Rizvi, Kishwar, 21 Rogers, Sarah, 32 Rouhani, Hassan, 204, 223 Rouhbakhsh, Jafar, 159, 160 Untitled (1994), 160 Rushdie, Salman, 251 Sabā Cultural and Artistic Centre, 177–8; see also Iranian Academy of Arts Sacred Defence (defā‘-e moqaddas), 147; see also Imposed War (jang-e tahmili); Iran–Iraq War Sadedin, Masoud, 143 Sadeghi, Ali Akbar, 65, 161 Sadeghi, Habibollah, 144 Rami Jamarāt (1985), 146 Sadr, Behjat, 43n Safaei, Iman, 8, 270, 276, 277, 279, 284 Sepeleshk (2014), 278

314 | th e art o f i r a n Safarzadeh, Manouchehr, 143 Said, Edward, 25, 65, 241; see also Orientalism Salehi Lorestani, Hayedeh Still-Life (1995), 151 Salim, Jawad, 89 Salimi, Homayoun, 160 Samadian, Seifollah, 174 Samadzadegan, Behrang Checkered Utopia (2015), 226 Sami Azar, Alireza, 172, 174, 175 Saqqā-khāneh movement, 31, 88–95, 97, 104, 110, 115, 116, 118, 121, 122, 125, 152; see also neo-Orientalism Saqqā-khāneh artists, 89, 90, 92, 95, 100, 107, 110, 112, 116, 118, 120, 154, 157, 202 Saqqā-khāneh genre, 97, 102, 105, 115, 118 Saqqā-khāneh tendency, 4, 120, 121, 123 satire, 8, 268, 273 Sayyah, Fatemeh, 53, 54 Second Iranian Painting Biennial, 154 Secretariat of the Empress Farah Pahlavi (Daftar-e makhsus-e Shahbānu Farah Pahlavi), 58, 117, 119 self-criticism, 34, 186, 189, 256, 270 self-exoticisation, 8, 255, 262, 268; see also exoticism self-Orientalisation, 250, 255, 262 Sepehri, Sohrab, 50, 61, 117 Shahab al-Din Sohrevardi Āvāz-e par-e Jabre‘il (The Sound of Gabriel’s Wing), 257 Shahlapour, Saeed, 162 Shahroodi Farmanfarmaian, Monir, 71 Sharafjahan, Rozita Sixth Sense series (2010), 187 Shariati, Ali, 143, 180, 193n Sharjah Art Biennial, 173 Shaw, Wendy, 15 Shayegan, Dariush, 115, 156 Sheybani, Manuchehr, 50, 117

Shiddel, Mohammad Hassan, 143 (Shiite) Islam, 20, 222 Shiite iconography, 93, 98, 99, 102, 145, 147 Shiite pictorial folk culture, 115 Shiraz Arts Festival (  Jashn-e honar-e Shiraz), 5, 58, 66, 118, 119, 133n Shishegaran brothers (Koorosh, Behzad and Esmail), 143 Shishegaran, Koorosh, 65, 143, 161 Revolution After One Year (1980), 143 Skocpol, Theda, 150 Smith, Terry, 32, 33, 179 socio-cultural paradigms, 68 socio-cultural practices, 4, 88 socio-political context, 67, 89, 116 Soviet Cultural Society (VOKS), 53 specificity, 6, 162, 169, 173, 176, 178, 182, 183, 189, 202, 229, 256, 284; see also contemporaneity Spiritual Pop Art, 116 Spivak, Gayatri, 260 standardisation, 6, 8, 24, 169, 206, 242, 260, 268, 269 state’s hegemonic narrative, 7, 227 strategic exoticism, 252, 253, 276, 279, 284; see also Huggan, Graham Tabatabai, Jazeh, 93, 95, 96, 108, 109 Nobat beh estekhāreh shod, Tasbih mollā pāreh shod (c.1970), 111 Tabrizi, Sadegh, 92, 93, 95, 108, 109 Untitled (c.1965), 110 Tadjvidi, Akbar, 55, 56–8 Taghioff, Parham, 7, 231, 232 Asymmetrical Authority 03 (2018), 232 Taghizadeh, Jinoos Rock, Paper, Scissors series (2009), 186 Tālār-e Iran, 57, 58, 79n, 104, 122 Tālār-e Ghandriz, 57, 58, 79n, 122 Tanavoli, Parviz, 61, 65, 71, 90–3, 95, 96, 97, 102, 116, 127n Heech series, 97

index | 315 A Memorial for Farhād and Mountain (1961), 97 The Wall of Iran 3 (1978), 98 Taqipur, Leili, 74n Taraghijah, Mohammad Ali, 161 Teer Art, 205 Tehran annual auction, 205 Tehran biennials, 5, 54, 56, 105, 116–19, 152 Tehran Fine Art School for Boys, 96, 97, 105 Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA), 5, 61, 93, 94, 119, 145, 191 Third Generation, 6, 172 Third Worldism, 113, 115 Third Worldist discourse, 114 Third-Wordlist notions, 27 Third Worldist notion of Otherness, 124 Tirafkan, Sadegh, 177 Todorov, Tzvetan, 252 Upham Pope, Arthur, 121 utopianism, 28, 146 Vahdat, Farzin, 149, 152 Vaziri Moghaddam, Mohsen, 61, 71n Vaziri, Mostafa, 222 Vazirian, Ali, 144 Venice Biennale, 118, 173

vernacular materials, 28 Vishkai, Mehdi, 54 Vista Contemporary Art Prize, 205 Visual Arts Administration (Edāreh-ye koll-e honar-hā-ye tajassomi), 152, 172, 191n War Propaganda Army-Staff (Setād-e tablighāt-e jang), 147 Westoxification, 31, 55, 67, 113, 150; see also gharb-zadegi Winegar, Jessica, 27 Yarshater, Ehsan, 55, 57, 58, 90, 119 Yektai, Manoucher, 30, 71 Yooshij, Nima, 44n, 50 Zandi, Maryam, 140 Revolution series (1978–9), 141 Zenderoudi, Charles Hossein, 54, 55, 61, 90–3, 95, 97–100, 102, 107, 110, 112, 120 Untitled (1962), 99 Untitled (1972), 100 Who Is This Hossein the World Is Crazy About?, 5, 98 Ziapour, Jalil, 30, 49, 50, 52, 54, 58; see also Anjoman-e Khorus-jangi Ziv, Avner, 8, 270, 272, 273 Zolghadr, Tirdad, 248, 259