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.     

Out of The Shadow of Vasari: Towards A New Model of The ‘Artist’ in Colonial Latin America

Within shifts affecting colonial studies, a ‘life-work model’ employed in colonial art history has been left unexamined. Developed by a contemporary of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari (Italy, 1511–1574), this methodology was grounded in particular European social conditions that allowed the creation of the ‘artist’ whose ‘artwork’ was the inalienable product of a single mind and hand. Following the art historical paths laid by Vasari in the viceroyalties leads to dead ends: indigenous artists who efface their individuality; painters who exist with little social or historical context; and artworks whose conservation denies finding the traces of the hands that made them. Because artworks were and are the connective tissue of complex social networks, reconfiguring concepts of ‘artist’ and ‘artwork’ and recasting them in accordance with social practices within Latin America, gains us purchase on how colonial subjects, in their engagement with their material worlds, came to be constructed.

Resemblance to European prototypes is an essential historical reality of colonial artworks: much artwork, particularly the painting, of colonial Latin America ‘looks’ like that of early modern Europe and thus has generated a foundational expectation, laid out in purest form by Manuel Toussaint (Mexico, 1890–1955), that Latin American art history might also look like Europe's. We argue that a mismatch with Europe and its methodologies means that certain, foundational historiographic assumptions about writing art history for Latin America need to be reassessed, in particular the ‘artist’ and ‘artwork.’     

Baroque Science,Experimental Art? Jusepe de Ribera and other Neapolitan Sceptics

Current attempts by historians of science to revise the narrative of the Scientific Revolution by using the concept of the Baroque have important implications for art history. Correspondences between baroque art and baroque science gain new complexity when the rational, epistemologically optimistic image of the New Science is put in doubt. Rather than a method of objective observation, early seventeenth‐century science and art share an acceptance of the constructed nature of reality, of human epistemological limitations and of the role of passions in the observation of the world. While Caravaggio has revolutionised art precisely through his interest in questions of knowledge and sensorial perception and by his subversive transformation of Renaissance epistemological values and ideals, this article concentrates on the work of Jusepe de Ribera, who made the senses and their shortcomings a major theme of his pictorial research. Ribera's epistemology is examined in the context of contemporary Neapolitan philosophy and science. Through the confrontation of some of the Spagnoletto's paintings with the work of figures such as Giovanni Battista della Porta, Federico Cesi and particularly Colantonio Stigliola, it becomes clear that early modern Neapolitan faith in rational knowledge was more ambiguous than is sometimes assumed.     

Iranian Studies in the United Kingdom in the Twentieth Century

This essay provides a general introductory survey of Iranian and Iran-related studies in the United Kingdom in the twentieth century (including languages, literature, and the arts), with a very brief preliminary foray into earlier Iran-related scholarship and wide-ranging imaginations of Iran in Britain and Ireland, as well as some concluding remarks on contemporary knowledge production about Britain in Iran. Among other themes covered in the essay are the varied contributions of non-Britons and non-Irish to Iran-related scholarship and imaginations in the United Kingdom, underscoring the overall transnational production, dissemination, reception, and utilization of knowledge (history, geography, archaeology, cultures, ethnography and anthropology, art and architecture, Iran-related Persian-language literatures and poetry, etc.). In particular, the essay highlights the contributions made by individuals from, and institutions in, the Indian subcontinent to “British” scholarship and knowledge about Iran.     

Contemporary visual art and the construction of identity: maintenance and revision processes in older adults

This article explores how older visitors use meanings created through encounters with contemporary visual art in art galleries for identity maintenance and revision processes. The analysis is based on the results of a 28-month study of the responses of older people to contemporary visual art in art galleries in north-east England, UK. The identity processes used in this study are those defined as maintenance and revision as understood by Kroger (2002) Identity processes and contents through the years of late adulthood. Identity, 2, (1), 81-99, Kroger and Adair (2008) Symbolic meanings of valued personal objects in identity transitions of late adulthood. Identity, 8, (1), 5-24. and Marcia (2002) Identity and psychosocial development in adulthood. Identity, 2, (1), 7-28. Respondents who did not have an existing identity-defining commitment towards art and who had less ability to decode the art works used the art to make symbolic links to aspects of their identity. The meanings created were then used to help satisfy current identity needs. In contrast, those with an existing commitment to art used the experience of the visits to deepen their current knowledge. Engaging with contemporary visual art facilitated identity processes that contributed to participants’ well-being. This study contributes to studies on identity by exploring how content and identity processes interact and provides new perspectives on the role of art in identity formation for older people. It also has significance for museum, gallery and heritage policy and practice.     

An Iranian Woman's Memoir on the Iran–Iraq War: The Production and Reception of Da

Da (Mother): Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseini, as Recorded by Seyyedeh A‘zam Hoseini was published by Sureh-ye Mehr, the official publisher of the Artistic Center of the Islamic Development Organization, in 2008. According to the publishers, it became the biggest seller in the shortest period in Iranian publishing history. This article analyzes the conditions of production, distribution and reception of that work, and compares it to the canon of other contemporary Iranian war narratives. It argues that the unusually wide and varied reception of a traditional discourse of sacrifice, nationalism and revolutionary fervor was facilitated by the fashionable format of the woman's memoir, in addition to a formidable propaganda machine.     

Memory in motion: soundings from Milltown,Montana

Geographers have begun to investigate the link between creative production and cultural memory-work, exploring how art interventions frame and facilitate engagements with the past in place. This paper builds on this emerging area of enquiry to examine the transformation of an industrial river landscape in Western Montana, and the production of a sound artwork which attempted to respond to the landscape's unmaking with an interactive installation at a local museum. An interest in how cultural remembrance is practised and performed in relation to processes of material disarticulation guides the analysis. In conclusion, the paper proposes that a form of kinetic memory characterises engagement with ephemeral sites and the cultural productions they catalyse. The researcher's involvement in the installation process opens up an adjacent discussion about geographical research conducted on, and through, contemporary art practice.     

Art and Impowerment: Levinas,Nietzsche, and the Ethics of Literary Discourse

This article draws on the profound affinities between the thought of Levinas and Nietzsche to argue that aesthetics plays a major role in Levinas's ethical philosophy. As in the case of Nietzsche, who called himself “the first tragic philosopher,” aesthetics gives reference to the tragic, yet affirmative content of Levinas's ethics. For both, what Levinas calls the “alterity,” or otherness, of art and literature is located not in an ontological or conceptual “beyond”—in a “spiritual” dimension “which sets itself up as knowledge of the absolute”—but in the “interstices” of language, in the “between times” (entretemps) of its modes of temporality: which can only be accessed by way of “the tragic” in art. Alterity signifies not a privileged, interpersonal dimension freed from the problematics of modernity, but points to the complicity between the West's concept of rationality and its history of barbarism exemplified by the Holocaust. The artwork for Levinas is at once temporally diachronic and spatially diasporic, a region of impowerment that is precisely lacking in the expressive or imaginative empowerment normally attributed to the artwork, but which demonstrates a utopian, emancipatory potential in revealing the fissures and hidden pathways that run through the hegemonic structures and totalizing frameworks of modernity.     

Reading back from Experimental Painting

ABSTRACT

My book, Experimental Painting (1970), was the product of a decade of coming to terms with the history of modern art and with contemporary manifestations of the avantgarde. While at Cambridge from 1960 to 1967, I published art criticism, initially in locally published magazines, and then went on to review art exhibitions both nationally and internationally. This led to being co-editor of Form, which produced further opportunities. The term ‘experimental’ that I adopted in 1970 was intended to suggest the paradigm of scientific discovery which suited some, if not all, of the artists I studied. This article considers concepts directly imported from contemporary scientific enquiry that seemed relevant to me at the time, notably those from experimental psychology, psychoanalysis and structural linguistics. I relate them to the character of intellectual life at Cambridge in a period which saw much debate about the relationship between Sciences and Humanities as ‘Two Cultures’.     

Reading versus Seeing? Winckelmann's Excerpting Practice and the Genealogy of Art History

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book-based knowledge in his approach to ancient art.     

PREHISTORIC ROCK ART FROM PAINTED BLUFF AND THE LANDSCAPE OF NORTH ALABAMA ROCK ART

Abstract

Painted Bluff in northern Alabama is one of the richest and most elaborate open-air rock art localities in the Eastern Woodlands, rivaling some of the Southeast’s dark zone cave art sites discovered over the past several decades. Known for more than a century, the site has never seen detailed documentation until now. Painted Bluff contains motifs similar to iconography associated with Mississippian ceremonial objects, and a radiocarbon age determination (cal A.D. 1300–1440) would indicate contemporary use of the site. More than 80 images were painted on the cliffs, most using red mineral pigments but some reflecting polychromatic use of differently colored minerals. We present examples of the Painted Bluff artwork and discuss the site in the broader context of prehistoric rock art on the southern Cumberland Plateau and in northern Alabama.     

Speaking of silence,speaking of art,abortion and Ireland

Sounding the Depths a collaborative installation by Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh, 1992 reclaimed the female body appropriated by the Eight Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland and symbolically opened it up to speak and even laugh in defiance of patriarchal and heteronormative definitions of “woman”. First exhibited in 1992, the artwork was addressed to the silencing of women about abortion and other denigrated bodily experiences in a deeply repressive social and political climate. More recent artworks which challenge how women’s reproductive bodies are controlled by the state evidence the continued relevance of these themes as related to the Irish contexts, North and South. This essay considers how art and contemporary pro-choice arts activism explores ways of “saying the unsayable” when abortion is criminalised, stigmatised and largely experienced secretly and silently, to transform its symbols and discourse.     

From the Land of the Pure,in Search of the Lost Origin: An Interview with Bahram Beyzaie on Siyavush-Khani (Siyavush Recitation) and its Mythological and Literary Roots

The interview was conducted in 1997 after the publication of Beyzaie's extraordinary engagement with the legend of Siyavush in Siyavush-Khani (Siyavush Recitation). Beyzaie's experiments with Shahnameh legends are not adaptations in the strict sense of the term. This is primarily because their stories are often different from what appears in the Shahnameh, mix the narratives with other mythical sources and place them in contemporary templates with an inter-paradigmatic gaze that reflects on the meaning and the history of the present. The interview is significant in that, as it has been conducted by a leading playwright and scholar of Iranian performing arts, it enables the reader to have firsthand experience of working in Iran as a playwright and reveals some of the methods Beyzaie uses to handle his subjects.     

A Tile Pavement from the Queen's Chamber,Clarendon Palace,Dated 1250-2

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.     

Der Ort des rhetorischen Wissens Kunst und Natur bei Isokrates

This paper poses the question of the place of rhetoric as a discipline. It addresses the topical demand that nature, art, and exercise have to be combined by way of an analysis of Isocrates' Against the Sophists. Its thesis is that the call for a “combination” of art and nature solves the disciplinary problems of rhetoric, even though such a synthesis is in fact inconceivable. Rhetoric is not a science, and does not have access to a methodical correlation of rhetorical strategies and their effects upon the audience. Isocrates' criticism of those rhetoricians who assume that their art could be taught in much the same way as the art of writing is of paramount importance here. The case of Isocrates is instructive because it shows how rhetorical success depends on re-designing the institutional structure of rhetoric and on the capacity to cope with its lack of methodical knowledge. As a result of its para-scientific nature, rhetoric refers to various models and metaphors to present itself as a discipline. Of these the orator perfectus, the orator imperfectus, and the sophist model of the art of writing as criticized by Isocrates are discussed. This paper attempts a rhetorical reading of the discourse of rhetoric by exploring the implications of these metaphors. At the same time it argues for a history of science which does not shrink away from an analysis of such para-sciences as rhetoric. It is precisely the lacking scientificity of rhetoric as a discipline which warrants increased attention from the point of view of the history of science.     

POSTPOSITIVISM AND THE LOGIC OF THE AVANT‐GARDE

The purpose of this article is to explore the conditions under which the postpositivist interest in rewriting or reinterpreting history could operate legitimately from a historical point of view. The first part of the article outlines and explains some of the key thematic elements of historical postpositivism. The second proceeds to investigate how these elements can be configured and related to each other within Arthur Danto's influential account of the development of contemporary art, and especially the avant‐garde. The intention is to acquire a sense of the working dynamics of postpositivist thought, so as to better understand its possible implications for the writing of history. In the concluding section an argument is proposed to the effect that, although the postpositivist interest in the rewriting of history can in principle be admitted as entirely legitimate, its legitimacy depends on introducing some substantive constraints on content, in addition to the formal considerations that postpositivist discourse generally tends to favor. It is further suggested that this constraint should take the form of a requirement on historical literacy whose meaning is, finally, elucidated by drawing a contrast with historical common sense.     

The Dialogical Tradition of Iranian Modernity: Monazereh,Simultaneity, and the Making of Modern Iran

Iranian modernity has chiefly been examined in the context of a dialectical antagonism between “traditionalists” and “modernists”—main categories comprised of related sub-headings such as “Islamist” versus “secular,” “reactionary” versus “revolutionary,” and “regressive” versus “progressive.” Following this approach, Iranian adaptations of modernity have often been (de)historicized as a theater of national “awakening” resulting from the toils of secular intellectuals in overcoming the obstinate resistance of traditional reactionaries, a confrontation between two purportedly well-defined and mutually exclusive camps. Such reductionist dialectics has generally overwritten the dialogic narrative of Iranian modernity, a conflicted dialogue misrepresented as a conflicting dialectic. It has also silenced an important feature of Iranian modernity: the universally acknowledged premise of the simultaneity and commensurability of tradition with modernity. The monazereh (disputation or debate) is the account of the interaction between rival discourses that engaged in opposing, informing, and appropriating each other in the process of adapting modernity. Narrativizing the history of Iranian modernity as the conflict between mutually exclusive binaries overlooks its hyphenated, liminal¹1 The notion of liminality has been theorized in different capacities. The anthropologist Victor Turner first used the idea of liminality in his study of tribal and religious rituals during which an initiate experiences a liminal stage when he belongs neither to the old order nor yet accepted into his new designation. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969). Turner’s insight has been expanded to investigate the general question of status in society. See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynam, Fragmentation and Redemption (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 27–51. Bynam applies Turner’s notion of liminality to the lives of Medieval female saints, arguing that Turner’s liminal passage applies more readily to the male initiate but does not in most cases reflect the experience of female initiates in Medieval times. Jungian psychology has shifted the focus from liminality as a stage in social movement to a step in an individual’s progress in the process of individuation. Jeffrey Miller, The Transcendent Function (New York: State University of New York Press, 2004), 104. See also: Peter Homans, Jung in Context: Modernity and the Making of a Psychology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Others have used liminality to describe cultural and political change, have prescribed its application to historical analysis, or have made reference to “permanent liminality” to describe the condition in which a society is frozen in the final stage of a ritual passage. Respectively, Agnes Horvath, Bjorn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra, “Introduction: Liminality and Cultures of Change.” International Political Anthropology (2009); Agnes Horvath, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013); and Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 23. Finally, the notion of liminality has been applied to the analysis of mimetic behaviour and to the emergence of tricksters as charismatic leaders, given the association of the figure of the trickster with imitation. Respectively, Agnes Horvarth, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013), 55; and Arpad Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 155. This latter sense seems to apply to the history of Iranian modernity, for the anxiety of imitation was indeed one of its central concerns, and influential figures such as Mirza Malkum Khan (1833–1908) were sometimes perceived (though this was not universally the case) as saviours or tricksters alternatively by different people. On this issue, Fereydun Adamiyat notes how different people had different views of Malkum. The “despotic prince Zill al-Sultan” considered him to be of equal status to Plato and Aristotle. Aqa Ibrahim Badayi’ Nigar thought he was devoid of “the fineries of knowledge and literature (latīfah-i dānish va adab). Minister of Sciences and chief minister Mukhbirul Saltanah Hidayat thought “whatever Malkum wrote has been said in other ways in [Sa’di’s] Gulistan and Bustan.” Fekr-e Azadi (Tehran: Sukhan, 1340/1961), 99. Mehdi Quli Khan Hedayat’s view of Malkum Khan was summed up in these words: “This Malkum knew some things in magic and trickstery and finally did some dishonorable things and gave the dar al-fonun a bad reputation,” Khaterat va Khatarat (Tehran: Zavvar, 1389/2010), 58. Having said that, my use of the notion of liminality, though informed by the theoretical perspectives cited above, diverges from them in one important aspect: liminality as perceived by contemporary theory seems to be based on a pre-/post- understanding of non-liminal statuses accompanied by a desire on the part of the subject to emerge from the liminal state. This approach does not explain liminality as a site for the synthesis of coexisting identities. The munāzirah is precisely the account of such a process. In the context of Iranian modernity, the discourse of tradition was not perceived as prior to the discourse of modernity, as we shall amply see. In fact, European civilizational progress was deemed to have resulted from the successful implementation of Islamic principles. Therefore, while the history of Iranian modernity can still be analyzed as a liminal stage where a weakened old order meets the promise of a new order, it must be understood in terms of the encounter of simultaneous and parallel discourses. It is in this sense that liminality is employed in this study.View all notes identity—a narrative of adaptation rather than wholesale adoption, of heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, of dialogues rather than dialectics. The monazereh is the account of modern Iranian histories.     

The Istanbul Modern Art Museum: An Urban Regeneration Project?

Abstract

In the 2000s, contemporary art institutions have flourished in Istanbul. New museums (mostly private) and art galleries have been created; biennials and fairs of contemporary art have attracted a growing number of visitors. To what extent could this fostering of culture be linked with the “Bilbao effect”? To what extent are the promoters of these cultural investments betting on economic development and urban regeneration through these projects? Focusing on the Istanbul Modern Art Museum (IM), this article analyses the process of its creation and its potential impact on its environment. It argues that the development of culture investments in modern arts in Turkey is mainly due to the private initiatives of large industrial groups and the wealthiest families, most of the time with political support. More than the expected economic impact of cultural investments, the main reason for these public–private collaborations is the symbolic dimension that contemporary art provides to a country which strives to be perceived as modern, developed and European. From the IM to Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010, cultural investments are a means of strengthening an international image in the context of the “membership” negotiations between “Turkey and the European Union”.     

Race and the Aesthetics of Alterity in Mahshid Amirshahi’s Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr

Focusing on black women Qadam-Kheyr and Sorur in Mahshid Amirshahi’s novel Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr (1999), this article examines literary representations of the African-Iranian presence, and provides a critique of race and slavery in twentieth-century Iran. In light of the history of the Iranian slave trade until 1928, and the reconstruction of race and gender identities along Eurocentric lines of nationalism in Iran, the novel under scrutiny is a dynamic site of struggle between an “Iranian” literary discourse and its “non-Persian” Others. The “aesthetics of alterity” at the heart of the text is, therefore, the interplay between the repressed title-character Qadam-Kheyr and the resilient minor character Sorur, each registering Amirshahi’s artistic intervention into a forgotten corner of Iranian history.