Contemporary art in Tehran
Pacifist
revolutions
http://www.indexonline.org/news/102_20020222_lucie_smith.shtml
More than most non-western countries, Iran tends to confound western
expectations, says poet and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith. The earthquake
effects of a population dominated by under-21s have been well reported but
Iran still has lost more cultural surprises hidden up its buttoned-down
sleeves.
Visually, Tehran's most conspicuous features are the huge billboard-style
portraits of past and present Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khatami, and other
equally vast murals and billboards featuring 'martyrs' - the sacrificial
heroes of the bitter Iran-Iraq war - plus some more recent victims of the
fierce politics of the region, such as the members of an Iranian diplomatic
mission massacred when Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban
regime a few years ago.
Significantly, when you ask artists and intellectuals about these murals and
billboards, they seem a little embarrassed. Despite their omnipresence as
part of the urban landscape, they have clearly been blotted out by Iranians
of this group from their everyday consciousness, just as certain prominent
Iranian artists now tend to downplay the fact that they once painted
Socialist Realist-style pictures celebrating the Islamic Revolution.
Indeed, when one looks at the murals, one notes that quite a number of the
larger and more prominent examples are already starting to fade in Tehran's
fierce sunshine, as if in sympathy with the fact that people no longer pay
much attention to them.
They are not the only large-scale images that adorn Tehran's streets today.
There is increasing competition from western-style advertisements for
consumer products and billboards for films (no kissing allowed, but handsome
bearded men on one side of the design and, on the other, beautiful girls
gazing out tragically from the shadow of their headscarves).
Occasionally, too, there is a large poster for the new birth-control
campaign, with another tragic but beautiful woman adorning it. There is no
stylistic difference between the purely commercial images and the propaganda
ones. The birth-control poster is, however, a very significant addition to
Tehran's cityscape. After the losses of the Iran-Iraq war, estimated at half
a million men on each side, Iranians were encouraged to breed.
Thirteen years after the conflict's conclusion, 60% of the Iranian
population is under the age of 20. In other words, the majority had not been
born at the time of the Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah in 1979. And
very many are too young to remember much about Ayatollah Khomeini, who died
in 1989.
The political and religious authorities are beginning to feel that this huge
mass of young people is slipping from their grasp. They don't quite know
what to do about it. My two visits to Iran, within the space of six months,
were made as the guest of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
The second visit was to celebrate the publication in Farsi of one of my
books, Movements in Art since 1945. The translation was made by the director
of the museum, Dr A.R. Sami-Azar. The fact that Tehran possesses a
contemporary art museum at all comes as a surprise to most visitors. Most of
its collection was acquired immediately before the fall of the Shah, and the
collection miraculously survived the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution.
The span is from Claude Monet to Donald Judd, and there are some pretty
spectacular things - two large Picassos from the 1920s, for instance, which
any western auction house would give its eye-teeth for. The paintings, till
now, have been mostly secluded in the museum's storerooms, but are gradually
creeping back into public view, generally through the medium of theme
exhibitions.
The sculptures in the collection, however, scattered in the museum's
grounds, seem to have been continuously accessible since their acquisition.
They are easily seen from the road beside the museum. They include two huge
Henry Moore 'Reclining Figures', a Calder 'Stabile', a major Max Bill, and
works by Giacometti, Manzů and Magritte.
These too seem to have been beneficiaries of the Iranian gift for simply not
seeing things it was inconvenient to see at a particular moment. In that
sense, they and the propaganda murals have something in common.
The Museum of Contemporary Art is a significant institution in more than one
way. It is a focus for the students who throng in certain parts of Tehran,
and any event it puts on is sure of an audience. The start of my second
visit coincided with the closing day of the First Festival of Iranian
Conceptual Art.
The moment I set foot in the building I was besieged with questions. What
did I think of it? Was it like what I would expect to see in the West? These
questions came from youthful visitors, and immediately after that, more
formally, from an Iranian television crew.
The truth is, it was very much like what I might have expected to see at
Tate Modern in London but, given their context, some exhibits did have a
special edge.
The museum is built in a spiral, which screws down into the earth. At the
very end of the spiral there was an elaborate installation, featuring a
video of a woman giving birth by Caesarean section. I think this is not what
most western visitors would expect to find in one of Tehran's public spaces.
On the evening of the day I arrived, I gave a lecture on the latest
developments in contemporary art. This was packed out, with the audience
sitting in the aisles of the lecture theatre.
Later on, when I somewhat complacently remarked on this, an Iranian
acquaintance swiftly crushed me with the remark: 'Poor things! You have to
understand that our young people have so little to do with themselves here -
no rock concerts, no social occasions.' It is indeed true that a major theme
for the young inhabitants of Tehran, and of other big cities like Shiraz and
Isfahan, is not repression but boredom.
Their lives reminded me of those led by teenagers in the West during the
1940s and 1950s, only more so. After lecturing in Tehran on my second visit,
I gave another lecture at the new and very handsome art school in Shiraz.
Afterwards I went to lunch with the members of the faculty, a number of whom
had been educated at British universities.
A tall gangling student stopped me at the main gates. He wanted to form a
rock band, he said, could I give him any advice? 'The problem is,' he said,
'that while we do have popular music, they won't allow me to play the kind
of music I really like here in my country.' What he meant was 'music of the
sort they have in America'.
The relationship between contemporary Iranian culture and that of the US is
both profound and bizarre. Despite the long breach in relations between the
two countries, things which are characteristic of the US form a constant
subtext to the visitor's experience of modern Iran.
You can buy a version of Coca-Cola in the snack bar at Persepolis, in a
redesigned Islamic can. A nursery school in Tehran signals its presence with
a mural of Mickey Mouse and his pals - cheek by jowl with a wall-painting of
one of the 'martyrs'. A gift shop will offer little busts of Islamic
worthies, but will put a kitsch figurine of Tweetie Pie on the same shelf.
A small boy, walking in the park with proud parents and grandparents, was
dressed in the height of US kids' fashion - a pair of smart dungarees and a
little baseball cap. The only Iranian thing about him was the home-made
wooden Kalashnikov he was brandishing. In the window of a clothing store
there was a T-shirt with the ironic inscription 'Alcatraz Swimming Team'.
The only aspect of the US that doesn't fascinate Iranians is American
sports. The country is mad about football, European style. On the Sabbath
day, Friday, teams of young men appear in the parks, carrying miniature
goal-posts and nets. They set these up wherever there is space, and play
vigorous seven-a-side games.
Ploughing through Tehran's terrible traffic in a taxi, the driver will have
his radio tuned to the sports programme. From the fog of incomprehensible
Farsi, familiar words begin to emerge: 'Manchester United... Liverpool...
Aston Villa.'
For some reason, British Premier League teams take precedence, but the
sports programmes and the newspapers report the European results as well: it
is possible to follow the fortunes of Feynoord, Lazio or Real Madrid.
On the afternoon - another Friday - when I visited Persepolis, Iran was
playing a World Cup qualifier against Thailand. I wondered why the ruins,
normally a popular picnic spot, were almost deserted. The answer was, 'Oh,
everyone is at home, watching the match on television.'
When Iran were the victors, 1-0, there was an enormous celebration on the
streets of Tehran. A demonstration of that size, linked to events in
Afghanistan, would have made world news. Being merely about football, it
didn't.
One reason why contemporary Iran is so difficult for outsiders to read
accurately is our ignorance of the way in which a still quite traditional
society interacts with the modern world.
Growing boredom and impatience with the restrictions imposed by the mullahs
mean that members of the Tehran professional class increasingly tend to lead
double lives - what happens within doors, in people's houses, is very
different from the conventions observed outside.
A Tehran dinner party, complete with a moderate supply of liquor, can be a
very jolly occasion. Observance of the conventions is now frequently
leavened with subtle acts of defiance.
On the last night of my second visit, I attended a book signing. Sitting
unaccompanied in the audience was a very good-looking woman, perhaps in her
late thirties. She was elegantly attired in a beautifully cut version of the
requisite full-length black robe, the one touch of individuality being
intricate beading at the cuffs.
However, her headscarf was defiantly pushed back a little to reveal hennaed
hair, and she was elaborately and expertly made up. Fifteen years ago,
make-up of this kind would have invited a beating from the Islamic guards
who then roved the streets.
Now, her whole attitude told one that she was a known personality who
expected to be treated with a certain degree of deference. My conjecture as
to her status seemed to be confirmed when the press photographer who was
present pushed us together for a joint shot. Alas, we were never introduced.
At the same time one shouldn't underestimate the continuing strength of
religious feeling. In Shiraz I visited the Mausoleum of the King of the
Lamp, the tomb of a much revered Shiite saint, the brother of the even more
celebrated Imam Reza who is buried at Mashad. The building which contains
the tomb is lined with innumerable mirror-glass tiles.
Many visitors, particularly young men, kiss the doors of the shrine as they
enter, and all retire walking backwards, so as not to turn their backs on
the saint. Inside, some pilgrims sit meditating for long hours, seemingly
mesmerised by the glitter of the mirrors. The atmosphere is more genuinely
and solemnly reverent than it is in any church I have visited.
Nor should one undervalue traditional literary culture. Another place of
pilgrimage in Shiraz is the tomb of Hafez, Iran's most popular poet. Hafez's
verses often deal with wine and women, and sometimes with both together.
The following rather doggerel translation, for example, is printed in the
leaflet handed out to English-speaking visitors:
In the goblet's depth reflected, I behold my loved one's cheek,
Thou who yet ignor'st the rapture of the wine-cup which I seek.
He whose soul by love is quickened, never can to death be hurled.
Written is my life immortal in the records of the world.
The drift of this is surely plain enough, but devout Iranians often manage
to persuade themselves that Hafez's poetry is primarily mystical and
devotional.
Iranians have a great gift for having their cake and eating it. I
encountered a charming, if also rather startling, example of this faculty
when I went to the Tehran home and studio of two women artists who also run
a women's art group. They could be seen as representatives of the strong
feminist element in Iranian culture - even if the definition of feminism
often differs from our own.
Nevertheless, the tendency is real enough. When I was in Tehran, one of the
local English-language newspapers reported that a delegation of female
members of the Iranian parliament had gone to the government to demand that
it appoint a woman governor of Tehran. One can't imagine that happening in,
say, Houston or Dallas, stamping grounds of George W Bush. The two women
were also, as it happened, married to the same man.
Edward Lucie-Smith is a writer and critic. A collection of his poetry is
due from Carcanet Books early in 2002