Modernity and revolution: a recent show of Iranian art focused on the turbulent time from 1960 to 1980, juxtaposing formally inventive works of art with politically charged photographs and posters - Art & Politics - Between Word and Image: Modern Iranian Visual Culture

Art in America, Feb, 2003 by Eleanor Heartney

Among the challenges to American complacency posed by the events of Sept. 11 has been an awareness that concepts which we consider unequivocally good--among them modernity, democracy and individual liberty--are often considered far more problematic in other parts of the world. Do people in the Middle East really "hate freedom," as our president opined, or does that "freedom" appear to many in the non-Western world as a code word for the forced imposition of the American way of life? How salutary is modernity if it is accompanied by the erasure of cultural traditions? Is free-market capitalism really the only way to participate in the global economy?

Nowhere are these questions more pertinent than in contemporary Iran. The inclusion of Iran in President Bush's "axis of evil" formulation slights the complex negotiation between secular and religious power currently under way in that country, where the hereditary religious authorities are at odds with a president popularly elected on a platform of modest reform. Nor does it acknowledge Iran's prolonged struggle to establish a place in the modern world that preserves its sense of history and identity.

These issues came inescapably to the fore in "Between Word and Image: Modern Iranian Visual Culture" at New York University's Grey Art Gallery. Curated by gallery director Lynn Gumpert and Fereshteh Daftari, assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art, it covered the crucial period from 1960 to 1980 during which various forms of modernity were explored before being swept aside by the Iranian revolution and the imposition of an Islamic state. The exhibition was divided into three distinct sections: a selection of paintings, sculptures and works on paper from the Grey's collection; a set of revolutionary posters; and a sampling of photographs taken just before and during the revolution by the Iranian-born photojournalist Abbas. The exhibition thus offered three views of this tumultuous period, each of which captured the events from a slightly different perspective.

In the excellent catalogue accompanying the show, Daftari describes Iran's relationship to the West as a series of pendulum swings. By the 19th century, the Qajar dynasty, which had ruled Iran since 1785, had become increasingly enamored of all things Western. It patronized a style of court painting deeply indebted to Western ideas of space, perspective and verisimilitude. This situation continued through the ascension of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925 and the rule of the first Pahlavi Shah, Reza Khan. In 1941 his son Mohammad Reza Khan assumed the throne. Under his rule, which lasted until the 1979 revolution, Iran underwent a program of modernization that included land reform, women's rights and the sale of state-owned enterprises to the private sector. With the rise of oil wealth, the gap between rich and poor widened, stoking the social discontent that would erupt in the revolution.

From the perspective of art, this was a time of great ferment. The old Western-based realist court style was challenged on both sides, by artists who had traveled to France in the late `40s and `50s and were inspired by the Cubist revival there, and also by proponents of a rediscovery of traditional and popular modes of art, among them Persian miniatures, popular, religion-based coffeehouse paintings, calligraphy and metalwork.

The exhibition opened with a group of artists identified with the Saqqakhaneh School. Named for a ceremonial structure, this movement was characterized by the effort to inscribe traditional motifs and themes into art that would be modern in an authentically Iranian way. The works in this section of the show were acquired during the `60s and `70s by American collector Abby Weed Grey, founder of the Grey Art Gallery. While not a complete picture of Iranian modern art in the prerevolutionary period, these selections suggested certain general tendencies while introducing some of the central figures of the time.

One of the most influential was Marcos Grigorian, an art dealer, teacher and curator as well as artist, who sought to literally ground his work in his native soil by using sand and dirt for materials. The exhibition included examples of both. The heavily textured dirt painting in particular seems related to contemporaneous work by European artists like Tapies and Dubuffet. However, its cracked dry surface evokes Iran's desert landscape in a manner that underscores Grigorian's deeply nationalistic intentions.

Hossein Zenderoudi, an important student of Grigorian's, created work that has a more obviously Iranian content. One of his most striking paintings is The Hand (ca. 1960), which resembles a page from an illuminated manuscript. A black border inscribed with whiplash lines of Persian script frames a gold ground whose geometric patterning is built up from smaller script. At the center of the work is the silhouette of a silver hand rising from a bowl. The hand, a recurring motif throughout the show, is an important Shiite symbol commemorating the severed hand of Harrat Abbas. He tried to bring water back to the martyrs in the seventh-century battle of Karbala, the conflict that divided the Muslim religion into the Shiite and Sunni sects. The traditional overtones of the image meld seamlessly with a modernist concern with abstract form.