Friday, October 18, 2013
Iran Modern
This exhibit, called "Iran Modern," at the Asia Society in New York City this fall, features modern art from Iran, which is to say art from the three decades prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Guardian's review of October 17 gives some good insights into the art in the exhibit. One piece, called "Standing Tall," by Nicky Nodjoumi:
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I think it’s really interesting to compare the meaning behind this Iranian modern art, and modern art in America during this same time period. I’m taking an art history class that has to do with mostly American art between 1940 and 1970 and the motives and meaning behind the art really differs from that of the Iranian art. In the 1950’s, high art was considered abstract expressionism. Artists like Jackson Pollock attempted to create art that was all about the action of painting and nothing else. As the years went on, as most people know, movements like neo-Dadaism as well as pop art came about. In this time period, artists wanted to question the idea of what high art was and wanted to instead involve art with the real world and commercial culture. Completely contrary to this, it seems like modern Iranian art is extremely involved with the revolution, which can be seen in the piece by Nodjoumi. It almost puts things into perspective a bit more because art is constantly reflective of the society in which it is made into. Americans were obsessed with commercial culture and the Iranians were mostly focused on how the society around them seemed to be becoming more oppressive. I would also be interested to know if art during this time period was censored in Iran (we can see in Persepolis that they were not allowed to draw nudes).
ReplyDeleteThis blog from the Washington Post has some interesting information about internet censorship in Iran (which applies the art back into the idea of human rights):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/15/heres-how-iran-censors-the-internet/