Mythological Themes in Iranian Culture and Art: Traditional and Contemporary Perspectives

In Iran, ancient mythical elements are very much alive in the present as a part of the fabric of ordinary people's lives and worldview. This paper explores the relationship between culture, myth, and artistic production in contemporary Iran, using the specific examples of symbols and mythological themes evoked in the work of painter/writer Aydin Aghdashloo and photographer/video artist Shirin Neshat. The paintings of Aghdashloo, in which he deliberately damages beautifully-executed classical style Persian miniatures, convey a sense that the angelic forces have failed and that the world is succumbing to the destructive and degenerative activities of the demonic. The photographs, videos and installations of Neshat likewise draw heavily on cultic forms inherited from ancient Iranian tradition. It is important to note that in none of these cases does the artist use mythological themes and symbols to express their original cultural meaning; rather, they appropriate well-known elements of ancient Iranian culture and imbue them with new meanings relevant to contemporary issues and understandings. What these examples do illustrate is the persistent resonance of ancient Iranian culture among Iranians up to the present day. Iranian artists have demonstrated the effectiveness of evoking their target audience's deep sense of cultural identity to convey contemporary messages using ancient cultural concepts, sometimes on a subconscious level.     

Contemporary Iranian Art: The Emergence of New Artistic Discourses1

This article deals with the emerging discourses and concerns that have dominated the Iranian art community mainly since 1997. It discusses the existing, or rather conflicting, views of the current situation of the visual arts in Iran as expressed in recent artistic events, productions, and exhibitions as well as in critical reviews.² It does not fully discuss the variety of artistic genres in Iran, but examines the dominant ideas from the main opposing factions of cultural and artistic thought. It also aims at identifying the structural changes in Iranian art as well as the prevailing artistic policy of recent years.     

Iranian Art and Archaeology

Abstract

Examination of the synthetic aperture radar imagery and of the hydraulic characteristics of Maya lowland swamps has led Kevin O. Pope and Bruce H. Dahlin (“AncientMaya Wetland Agriculture: New Insights from Ecological and Remote Sensing Research,” Journal of Field Archaeology 16 [1989] 87–106) to conclude that there is no connection between lattice patterns in the imagery and raised fields in the swamps. They further conclude that there are no significant numbers of raised fields in periodic swamps. We examine the arguments and points raised and find them tenuous at best, and disingenuous at worst. We conclude that the SAR imagery does indeed indicate raised field and canal systems and that they exist in the large periodic swamps of the Maya lowlands.     

The Unveiled Apple: Ethnicity,Gender, and the Limits of Inter-discursive Interpretation of Iranian Contemporary Art

In the past two decades, Iranian contemporary art has been eagerly embraced by international art venues. The transportation of artworks from Tehran to mostly western European and North American cultural centers entails inter-discursive translations that will render them legible for their reception in a new context. This paper argues that bound up in these translations are performative acts of language that label these artworks as markers of ethnic alterity, unexplored localities and most of the time associates them with issues of gender and femininity (and therefore limited to the vocabulary of “veil,” “plight of women” and “sexual inequality”). Looking at a seven-minute piece of video-art by Ghazaleh Hedayat entitled Eve's Apple (2006), the article examines this predicament and the possibilities for the artists to circumvent it. It argues that Hedayat's video enables an observation of the performative dominance of Western discourses of art history that mark the limits of inter-discursive interpretation in disciplines such as art history and art criticism.     

Peripherality and Humor in the Iranian Art Film

This paper examines a range of post-revolutionary Iranian art films, mostly those watched primarily outside the country via festival screenings, in the context of the relationship between the tropes of peripherality and humor. It argues for the significance and complexity of both terms in the context of this cinema and of the global image of Iran and its peoples. Having examined a kind of humor based on the geographic periphery, specifically derived from relationships between technology, car, and camera, it concludes by reflecting on the advent of new technologies, and social constraints and opportunities in the Iranian art cinema today.     

当代艺术语境中的敦煌艺术刍议

历史上的异质文化输入对艺术的发展都有促进作用,敦煌艺术正是异质文化和本土文化碰撞融合的结果。在当代艺术语境中,敦煌艺术具有文化融合的典范作用和对传统文化冈子继承的双重身份。敦煌学研究的日益深入和多学科交叉研究的日趋成熟,为敦煌艺术研究的转型搭建了一个有益的平台。存中同当代艺术发展的进程中,西方现代主义艺术思潮之后的本土文化回归是目前面临的主要问题。敦煌艺术作为中国中世纪的一部美术史,深入研究其不同文化的相互借鉴和兴衰发展中隐含的艺术规律,对于重构中国传统文化精神,突出中吲当代艺术的民族性、时代性,都具有十分重要的现实意义。     

日本当代女作家隔岸观

战后先后活跃在日本文坛上的女作家几近百人之多。日本有四百多种文学奖,据有关资料统计,仅1970年至1994年的24年中,勇摘日本文学第一大奖芥川奖的女新人就达19名,占同期总获奖者54人中的35．19％,颇可见巾帼不让须眉之势。     

Islam,Human Rights and Interfaith Relations: Some Contemporary Egyptian Perspectives

Abstract

This paper explores current discussions and debates on Islam, human rights and interfaith relations in Egypt through an analysis of the public statements and writings of various religious scholars and spiritual teachers and the textbooks used to teach Islam in public secondary schools. It is well known that Islamist perspectives have become mainstream in Egypt, a largely devout and socially conservative country that is also the source of most of the major Islamic trends and political ideologies that have impacted the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, there is a broad tendency in government-issued textbooks on Islam and in the population at large to equate Islam with democracy and human rights, despite the authoritarianism of the state and the contradictions between traditional interpretations of Islam and international human rights norms. The rhetoric of democracy and human rights is linked to the threat of terrorism, which is labeled un-Islamic. Among ordinary Egyptian Muslims, even those who support Islamist politics, there seems to be a new concern to eradicate Islamic extremism and more openness to unconventional Muslim approaches. The most liberal example of this is an association that teaches the unity of all religions from a somewhat Sufi perspective, promotes interfaith dialogue, and advocates reinterpreting the Shari'a to promote gender equality and equal human rights for all Egyptians.     

Poverty in Depth: New International Perspectives

This volume on the archaeology of urban poverty arises from a three-day symposium hosted by York Archaeological Trust and the University of York in July 2009 to establish the wider intellectual framework for the investigation of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology of the Hungate neighborhood of York. In this opening article, the trajectory of medieval and post-medieval archaeology in Britain is contrasted with historical archaeology in the United States and Australia, and the influence of the pre-modern history of the Hungate neighborhood on its development since 1800 is explored.