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.     

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.     

The Emergence of Complex Metallurgy on the Iranian Plateau: Escaping the Levantine Paradigm

Models for the development of metallurgy in Southwest Asia have for a long time been focussed on research carried out in the lowland regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia. These models do not take into account the different developmental trajectories witnessed in the resource-rich highlands of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Iran. In this paper, the beginnings of the use and production of metals in Iran will be juxtaposed with a cursory overview of the lowland model (the ‘Levantine Paradigm’) in order to highlight these differences. By synthesizing data from a number of current research projects exploring the early metallurgy of the Iranian Plateau, this paper demonstrates how at least one of the highland regions of Southwest Asia was at the very forefront of technological innovation from the seventh through the second millennium BC.      

埃及学:一门近代新兴学科的诞生

埃及学是近代诞生的一门新兴学科,是研究古代埃及的语言、文字、历史、文学、艺术、宗教、建筑和科学技术的一门综合性学科。埃及学的诞生。带来了持续百年之久的考古发掘热潮;埃及象形文字的成功释读。极大地丰富了人们对古代埃及这一人类文明宝库的认识。     

The Northern Iranian Central Plateau at the End of the Pleistocene and Early Holocene: The Emergence of Domestication

Journal of World Prehistory - Until recently, the Iranian Central Plateau (ICP) was considered to have been unoccupied at the end of the Pleistocene (Marshall 2012 in ‘Missing Links: Demic...     

《寻羊冒险记》的艺术开拓——村上春树小说论

《寻羊冒险记》是村上春树青春三部曲的压轴之作,为作家带来了不可动摇的文坛地位。《且听风吟》和《1973年的弹子球》先后奠定了村上小说文本的语言风格,这部作品则在语言的叙事性与作品的故事性有机结合的领域,显示了作家的艺术开拓与创造精神。“羊”所体现的象征意义尤为读者和批评界所称道。     

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。     

The Emergence of Early Pottery in East Asia: New Discoveries and Perspectives

Journal of World Prehistory - The appearance of the oldest pottery in the world is a major focus of Early Neolithic archaeology. So far, most discoveries of early pottery have occurred in South...     

化生:《白蛇传》的古本与今相 当代艺术介入非物质文化遗产生产性保护案例

<正>当传统非遗邂逅当代艺术,如何研发出秉承传统并适应当代生活习惯与文化需求的生产性保护工作模式和项目炒"化生:《白蛇传》的古本与今相"展览进行了创新性的探索。8月的恭王府像往日一样,笑迎天下宾客。拥挤的人群中,你会发现很多穿着个性、造型迥异的年轻人,吸引这批人前来参观的便是文化部恭王府管理中心与中央美术学院联合主办的"化生:《白蛇传》的古本与今相"展览。三大板块,建构《白蛇传》"古本"与"今相"的多重关联中国皮影艺术,是我国民间工艺美术与戏曲巧妙结合而成的独特艺术品种,是中华民族艺术殿堂里不可或缺的一颗精巧的明珠。     

Regional History and Ethnic Identity in the Hub of New Guinea: the Emergence of the Min1

Recent approaches to the ethnography of Papua New Guinea stress the historicity of local cultures and their encompassment in larger fields of relations. In this paper I consider the historical and cultural background to the emergence of the ‘Min’ as a novel ethnic designation among the Mountain Ok peoples of the Fly-Sepik headwaters. While Min identity draws much of its impetus from responses to mining operations and resistance to provincial governments, it is also clear that it grows out of a complex interaction between pre-existing cultural identities, a history of colonial administration and Christian evangelism. Emerging at the intersection of local and global processes, Min identity constitutes a regionalization of ethnicity which has led to agitation for the creation of a Min province, producing a movement that may outlive its immediate political aims.