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

In the context of this show, Armajani's ongoing concern with architectural form and his reliance on text as both message and ornament took on a new, Persian ambience. Indeed, as the title of the exhibition suggests, his early preoccupation with writing reflects a central aspect of Iranian culture. In contrast to the Western tendency to see text as a transparent means of communication, Persian calligraphy carries multiple associations that spill over into art, literature, religion and daily life. A character's interpretation depends as much on its abstract form, its beauty and its sacred significance as on its literal meaning. This contrast with Western assumptions, along with the problematic status of figuration from an Islamic point of view, may explain why calligraphy continued to play a central role in Iranian modernism.

The works here also suggested how frequently religious motifs, whether in the form of the references to mosques and Shiite symbols in the works of Zenderoudi and Pilaram, or in Tanavoli's recourse to ritual objects and sculptures of pre-Islamic Persia, became a way for midcentury Iranian artists to return to a more authentic Iranian identity. In the years leading up to the revolution, religious and secular consciousness could coexist, and it appears from the history laid out in the catalogue that these artists were perfectly at home in the Shah's Iran. in fact, the government was supportive of their efforts, finding a place for their work alongside that of Western artists in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened its doors in October 1977 [see A.i.A., Oct. `81]. But the political winds were shifting, and by 1979 it was no longer possible to separate nationalism from Islamicism in Iran.

The second section of the exhibition consisted of an assortment of revolutionary posters chronicling that change. But again, things were more complex than they might appear at first glance. As Middle East Studies professor Haggai Ram notes in an informative catalogue essay, it would be a mistake to view the posters, and the revolution in which they played a central part, as a purely Islamic matter. While these often anonymous posters use many symbols drawn from the Shiite version of Islam practiced in Iran, they also employ a visual language familiar from revolutionary struggles around the globe.

Sometimes these converge, as in the recurring motif of the hand that is at once the hand of Harrat Abbas and the upraised fist of proletariat revolution. Some posters contain echoes of the rhetorical geometry of the Russian Constructivists, as in one anonymous poster depicting a red arrow smashing a series of black pedestals topped with symbols of the Shah and the United States. Others bring to mind Pop art. This is especially the case with a poster of the Ayatollah Khomeini in which the mullah's overexposed black-and-white face appears against a Warholian rainbow backdrop.

Particularly compelling are posters with images of women in the black chadors which have become synonymous in the Western mind with Islamic fundamentalism's oppression of women. The images here remind us that many Iranian women initially took up the veil as a symbol of solidarity with the revolution. One poster that emphasizes this presents a white silhouette of a veiled figure raising her fist in a gesture of defiance. Within her silhouette, the anonymous artist has depicted a sea of black-garbed women with upraised fists. Alongside is a line of veiled figures on camels stretching toward a distant architectural structure. The poster makes the connection between these modern Iranian revolutionaries and a legendary Islamic woman named Zeinab, who rallied the Shiite survivors of the battle of Karbala. Thus it underscores the vital supporting role played by women in the early days of the revolution as well as in certain periods of Islamic history.