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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 D
 efining the Framework and Developing Conceptual
Definitions

1 Challenging Points of Entry: Theorising ‘Modern’ and


‘Contemporary’ Art of Iran 13
2 Historiography of Modern and Contemporary Art of Iran 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 199


7 Artists’ Attempts to Reclaim Cultural Space versus the State’s
Cultural Prescriptions 221
vi | the art of i r a n

8 Exhibiting Essentialism: Exoticism and its Attendant Uniformity 241


9 Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping 268

General Bibliography 287


Index307
Figures

3.1 Parviz Tanavoli, A Memorial for Farhād and Mountain, 1961 97


3.2 Parviz Tanavoli, The Wall of Iran 3, 1978 98
3.3 Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Untitled, 1962 99
3.4 Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Untitled, 1972 100
3.5 Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1961 103
3.6 Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1975 103
3.7 Mansour Ghandriz, Untitled, 1963 106
3.8 Mansour Ghandriz, Untitled, 1965 106
3.9 Massoud Arabshahi, Untitled, 1975 107
3.10 Nasser Oveissi, Untitled, c.1964 109
3.11 Sadegh Tabrizi, Untitled, c.1965 110
3.12 Jazeh Tabatabai, Nobat beh estekhāreh shod, Tasbih mollā pāreh
shod, c.1970 111
3.13 Siah Armajani, Night Letter, 1957 111
3.14 Mohammad Ehsai, Untitled, 1974 112
3.15 Marcos Grigorian, Ābgousht – Dizi, 1971 123
3.16 Cover of the catalogue of the exhibition Ābi, 1975 124
4.1 Maryam Zandi, from the Revolution series, 1978–9 141
4.2 Bahman Jalali, Sāvāk, Zarrāb-khāneh Street, from the Years of
Blood and Fire series, 1979 141
4.3 Hannibal Alkhas, Revolution, 1978 142
4.4 Koorosh Shishegaran, Revolution After One Year, 1980 143
4.5 Habibollah Sadeghi, Rami Jamarāt, 1985 146
4.6 Kazem Chalipa, Self-sacrifice, 1981 147
4.7 Unknown artist, mural painting, Tehran 148
4.8 Hayedeh Salehi Lorestani, Still-Life, 1995 151
4.9 Nosratollah Moslemian, Untitled, 2003 159
viii | th e art o f i r a n

4.10 Jafar Rouhbakhsh, Untitled, 1994 160


4.11 Alireza Espahbod, Untitled, 1998 161
5.1 Ahmad Nadalian, New Life, 2006 175
5.2 Morteza Darrebaghi, Dakhil, 2002 175
5.3 Farshid Azarang, Scattered Reminiscences, 2005 183
5.4 Ghazaleh Hedayat, Hair Folder, 2008 184
5.5 Jinoos Taghizadeh, form the Rock, Paper, Scissors series, 2009 186
5.6 Mehran Mohajer, from the Things and Lines series, 2011 187
5.7 Rozita Sharafjahan, from the Sixth Sense series, 2010 187
5.8 Mohammad Ghazali, Untitled, from the Tehran Slightly
Sloping series, 2010–13 188
6.1 Barbad Golshiri, As Dad As Possible, As Dad As Beckett,
2000–13 209
6.2 Barbad Golshiri, Khāvarān, from the Curriculum Mortis
series, 2017 210
6.3 Neda Razavipour, Self-service, 2009 211
6.4 Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar, from the Bahman’s Wall series,
2009–11 213
6.5 Nazgol Ansarinia, 4 March 2012, Front Page, from the
Reflections Refractions series, 2012 214
7.1 Behrang Samadzadegan, Checkered Utopia, 2015 226
7.2 Amir Mobed, Hypocrisy, 2013 231
7.3 Parham Taghioff, from the Asymmetrical Authority 03, 2018 232
7.4 Azadeh Akhlaghi, Qasr Prison, Tehran, Mohammad Farrokhi
Yazdi 17 October 1939, 2012 233
8.1 Barbad Golshiri, Eulogy of Wearers of Black Raiments (formerly:
Bahram Doesn’t See Any Right Wing), 2020 258
8.2 Shahab Fotouhi, Security, Love and Democracy ( for Export
Only), 2006 259
8.3 Shahpour Pouyan, Projectile 6, 2012 261
9.1 Rokni Haerizadeh, Khosrow Watching Shirin Bathing, 2008 273
9.2 Nazgol Ansarinia, Rhyme and Reason, 2009 275
9.3 Iman Safaei, Sepeleshk, from the Kucheh series, 2014 278
9.4 Parastou Forouhar, from the Time of Butterflies series, 2010 280
9.5 Sohrab Kashani, The Adventures of Super Sohrab, from the
Super Sohrab series, 2013 (revised version of a 2011 iteration) 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), sup-


ported 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 particu-
lar Professor Anna Contadini and Dr Simon O’Meara for their encourage-
ment 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 com-
ments 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 contribu-
tion 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 unbal-
anced 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 analy-
sis 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 coher-
ent 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 twenty-
first 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 associ-
ated, 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 chap-
ters, 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 terminol-
ogy and definitions of modern and contemporary art of Iran. Both by con-
ceptual 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 historiogra-
phy 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 concep-
tualisation 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 genealo-
gies of modern and contemporary art movements in Iran that can be under-
stood 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 writ-


ings 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 domi-
nant 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 con-
temporaneity 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 con-
flicts 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 neo-
traditionalists 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 crea-
tion 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 honari-
ye 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 character-
istic 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, includ-
ing 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 institution-
ally (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 prac-
tise 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 con-
tend 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 pro-
cess of globalisation, namely the forces of standardisation, located within the
Iranian art scene.
Part III, ‘Art Practice and Socio-cultural Discourses’, thematically scruti-
nises 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 his-
torical 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 con-
servatism 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
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