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"This book assesses modern Iranian visual culture from the 1960's and 1970's and suggests that modernity in Iran was a creative, complex, and contested process. It examines the expression of Iranian modernity in a variety of media including painting and sculpture, photography, posters, and graphic arts. It highlights new modes of artistic production and the expanding scene in Iran: developments in Iranian art criticism, exhibition apparatus, education, and patronage. The contributors also address changes in the iconography of Iranian art and in the increasingly social role of the artist. This groundbreaking work demonstrates that the visual arts serve as an important archival record of a critical period in Iranian history."--Publisher description.
Since the revolution in 1979, Iran has developed an image culture projecting statesanctioned religious ideology in public spaces that serve as transit zones. Between 2011 and 2014, German artist and former freelance photographer for the New York Times Oliver Hartung produced a body of work on Iran comprised of images which, upon first glance, depict colorful street paraphernalia, posters, graffiti, murals, monuments, and war cemeteries, but upon a closer inspection reveal a much deeper psychology engineered to bolster the myth of the Islamic Republic. Hartungs unique view of the Middle Eastoften lost amid images of war and conflictcreates a portrait of a country still largely unknown to the West. Part of a long-term project exploring the contemporary cultures of the Middle East, Hartungs thoughtful monograph is packed with over 300 color images. Hartungs last publication with Spector was Syria Al-Assad.
Thematically, this book problematizes Iranian official nationalism. It reviews how every modern Iranian regime since the constitutional revolution of the 1905-06 has failed to legitimize its official identity, resulting in the fall of five different regimes. The book details how the collapse of each regime resulted in the interruption of the official meaning of being Iranian, as well as the meanings of its enemies. What remained the same was how every Iranian regime represented itself as the agent of a particular national desire defined in terms of making Iran to become sovereign, developed, democratic, and constitutional. Nonetheless, no regime was able to convince a great majority of the people that it achieved what it represented. This book makes three specific contributions. The first contribution is pedagogical. By focusing on the dynamics of regime changes, it provides a heuristic model for identifying challenges that all Iranian regimes have faced. Moreover, the book is a comprehensive review of the disruptive, oppressive, and bloody nature of the rise and fall of different regimes. The second contribution is theoretical. Rather than examining the behavior of various Iranian regimes in isolation from their international context, the book examines how each regime got to understand itself in relations to its imperial others. By examining the governmental rationality of each regime, the book offers a better theoretical framework for understanding political development not only in Iran, but also in all other Middle Eastern and South Asian states. Finally, the third contribution of this book is its critical approach to the main body of the literature on Iran, modernity, development, democracy, and constitutionalism.
-This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran, on view at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from August 26, 2017 through January 7, 2018.-
In this pioneering book, Negar Mottahedeh explores the central issues of vision and visibility in Iranian culture. She focuses on historical and literary texts to understand the use of visual culture and performance traditions in the production of the contemporary nation. Tracing the historical mediation and dissemination of ideas for national reform in the modern period of Iran, the book examines the various discourses that have constituted the image of the unpresentable “Babi” as the figure of Iran’s Other. In her exploration of gender and Iranian cinema, the author powerfully argues that this unpresentable image continues to haunt contemporary Iranian cinema’s representations of the nation. As cinema began to displace other forms of representation in Iran, Islamic culture attempted to keep the motion picture industry free from what it perceived to be the taint of foreign values and intervention. With insight and detail, Mottahedeh looks at the revealing ways in which contemporary Iranian cinema has dealt with representing an unpresentable national modernity articulated through traversals in time and space. These deeply national tropes of traversal shaped the image of the “Babi,” against which nineteenth-century Iran produced its own modernity. This highly original work, signaling a paradigmatic shift in Iranian studies and gender studies, will be an invaluable resource for scholars in cultural, Iranian, or film studies.
'Iran Modern' offers a timely exploration of the cultural diversity and production of avant-garde art in Iran after World War II and up to the revolution, from 1950 through to 1979.
This book explores the geography, history, government, economy, people, and culture of Iran. All books of the critically-acclaimed Cultures of the World® series ensure an immersive experience by offering vibrant photographs with descriptive nonfiction narratives, and interactive activities such as creating an authentic traditional dish from an easy-to-follow recipe. Copious maps and detailed timelines present the past and present of the country, while exploration of the art and architecture help your readers to understand why diversity is the spice of Life.
The state of women in Islamic societies is the subject of much interest and heated debate. Yet, these discussions and representations in the media and elsewhere rely on inadequate information and misperceptions, imagining Muslim women as oppressed victims in need of liberation by outside forces. 'Becoming Visible in Iran' disputes these widespread stereotypes, providing a vivid account of women in contemporary Iran as they go about their daily lives. Beginning at home, women are infusing dramatic change by challenging the patriarchal conceptions of their fathers, brothers, uncles and others within the intimate sphere of family and home. Empowered by education, they transport the power of their minds and being from the domestic to the public and political. Mehri Honarbin-Holliday presents the experiences of these young women who wield a key if indirect political influence on the seemingly male dominated politics of this society, as they achieve a new visibility. She shows us how women understand their place in contemporary Iranian society, and how they interrogate it, making demands for shifts in attitudes and behaviours, both at home in relation to male relatives and in the wider world. Women's daily existence weaves between the public and the private, from home to classrooms, parks, metros, cafes and taxis, negotiating socio-political limitations and the current regime's policies of female invisibility. Detailed interviews and striking narratives draw our attention to the women's reflexive and critical stance and their desires to be recognized as independent and active architects of their own personal lives, whilst also contributing to the discourses of change and a more just civil society. From this fieldwork, and focusing especially on young women, Honarbin-Holliday presents women's views on such key topics as public visibility, body presentation, and sexual curiosity, in addition to education, civil society and political and social change. Highlighting links and continuities with the history of women in Iran, from the early twentieth century to the present moment, she shows how Iranian women today strive: to be the author of one's fate, to resist narrow interpretations of religion, to conduct meaningful, rich and complex lives, to bring about change in the mindsets of male relatives, and to contribute to legal and political debates in the country. For its direct presentation of women's voices as well as its analysis and insight, this book is a vital contribution to our understanding of the lives of Muslim women and the possibilities before them today. 'Becoming Visible in Iran' is indispensable for those concerned with women in Islamic societies, gender studies, sociology, anthropology as well as Iran and the Middle East.
Unlike much of the instant analysis that appeared at the time of the Iranian revolution, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution is based upon extensive fieldwork carried out in Iran. Michael M. J. Fischer draws upon his rich experience with the mullahs and their students in the holy city of Qum, composing a picture of Iranian society from the inside—the lives of ordinary people, the way that each class interprets Islam, and the role of religion and religious education in the culture. Fischer’s book, with its new introduction updating arguments for the post-Revolutionary period, brings a dynamic view of a society undergoing metamorphosis, which remains fundamental to understanding Iranian society in the early twenty-first century.
In the first comprehensive look at Iranian art and visual culture since the 1979 revolution, Talinn Grigor investigates the official art sponsored by the Islamic Republic, the culture of avant-garde art created in the studio and its display in galleries and museums, and the art of the Iranian diaspora within Western art scenes. Divided into three parts—street, studio, and exile—the book argues that these different areas of artistic production cannot be understood independently, revealing how this art offers a mirror of the sociopolitical turmoil that has marked Iran’s recent history. Exploring the world of galleries, museums, curators, and art critics, Grigor moves between subversive and daring art produced in private to propaganda art, martyrdom paraphernalia, and museum interiors. She examines the cross-pollination of kitsch and avant-garde, the art market, state censorship, the public-private domain, the political implications of art, and artistic identity in exile. Providing an astute analysis of the workings of artistic production in relation to the institutions of power in the Islamic Republic, this beautifully illustrated book is essential reading for anyone interested in Iranian history and contemporary art.