Friday 27 April, 2001
Iranian Art Flourishes
An Iranian woman water-skiing, dressed in a black chador, is an image that stays with you. Her face is veiled. Her hands grasp on to the skiing rope. Her chador robe whips around her. Clearly, this is not an appropriate outfit for water sports. But what does this image say about contemporary Iranian society on the eve of its presidential elections?
The water-skier is featured in a video, now showing at an exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London.
Arts in Action visits Iranian Contemporary Art to find out what artists have to say about life in Iran.
The exhibition features work that has come to Europe for the very first time. It is small but significant. Spanning the last four decades, it offers paintings, installations, photographs and videos by artists who live in Iran and elsewhere.
Some of the artwork has only been seen by viewers in Iran. A few works, such as the video of the water-skier, are too controversial and cannot be shown at home.
Western Values: A Threat
Contemporary art appears to be flourishing in Iran. There is a growing number of young and talented artists. Many of the artists are women.
Ghazel, the water-skier, is showing three videos - all self-portraits - practicing other sports. In all, she is dressed in her chador. She dances, does aerobics and plays squash, an impossibility, as the flowing fabric traps both ball and racquet. Tellingly, Ghazel is not her real name. She has chosen to hide her identity.
In her photographic portraits, Shadi Ghadirian explores life for a young woman caught between traditional Islamic values and modernisation. The woman faces the camera. Veiled and unveiled, she holds objects which represent Western values, such as a can of Pepsi and an Explorer mountain bike. In one photograph, she reads a newspaper.
Restricted Freedom
In 1997, President Khatami was elected on a platform of peaceful reform, which included increased freedom of the press. But tensions between hardliners within the regime and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme religious and political leader, have undermined his efforts.
In recent years, Iranians have witnessed the closure or temporary suspension of several newspapers, among them Salam, which supported Reformist President Muhammad Khatami; Hoveyat-e-Khish, banned because of its criticism on hardliners; and Zan, suspended after it published a message by Farah Diba, the widow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
The press is seen as dangerous and in need of controls. In 1999, Conservative parliamentary speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri said:
| 'The press is a gateway for cultural invasion.' | |
This 'cultural invasion' has been curbed to a degree through the banning of satellite dishes and discos, and the imposition of a clothing code for women.
War
Sport and the media are not the only subjects depicted in the exhibition. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 is represented in Khosrow Hassanzadeh's paintings of soldiers returning home in light-coloured linen body bags.
Recently, Ayatollah Khamenei urged the country's artists to depict the war which lasted eight years and cost more than a million lives. Khamenei said it was time for the “army of artists” to do their job. Soldiers, he said, had already done theirs. Murals depicting the martyrs of the war now cover the streets of Iran.
In the 1970s
During the 1970s, the petrol industry boomed and resources were channelled into arts. Gallery spaces were established. Iranian artists were able to experiment with the latest Western artistic trends and developments. Artists combined modern features with elements taken from Iran's 5,000 year-old cultural heritage. A complex artistic legacy, it spanned a history in the making of textiles, metalwork, ceramics, poetry, calligraphy, painting and architecture.
In 1977, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art was created. It was founded by the Shah's wife Diba and her cousin Kamran Diba; together they began to amass a large collection of Western art, which included Picasso's, Giacometti's, Bacon's and Warhol's, among other painters. Most of it was consigned to storage when the mullahs took over in 1979, as many of the works were deemed offensive.
The Islamic revolution brought this period of modernisation to a halt and the regime immersed the country into isolation. Now, it seems Iran's artistic scene is starting to thrive again.
Iran Today
Bita Fayyazi, an artist who is showing a display of 1.000 cockroaches modelled in clay, believes despite the political and social tensions, artists are increasingly able to produce art.
| 'The art market is burgeoning. It's starting really slowly, but so much is happening. The atmosphere has been much more relaxed these last three years…I don't consider myself a female artist working in Iran, but as an artist working in Iran.' | |
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| Lost Treasures |
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In 1994, Woman III, an abstract nude by painter Willem de Kooning, was exchanged for the Shahnameh, an ancient Persian manuscript - on the tarmac of Vienna Airport.
Both works of art had been lost to public viewing.
Since the Revolution in 1979, Woman III had been locked up in the vaults of Tehran's Contemporary Art Museum along with an outstanding collection of modern art.
For decades, Iran had tried to establish the whereabouts of its manuscript. Bound together in a book, it contained a series of miniature illustrations inspired by the epic Persian poem The King's Book of Kings.
In 1959, Iran learnt that American millionaire Arthur A Houghton Jr owned the book, and had chosen to separate the sheets and sell them individually.
Decades later, his son Arthur Houghton III decided to stop the sale of the sheets and offered to exchange the manuscript for a Western painting. The Iranian government accepted the deal. Houghton III chose Woman III.
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