FW: Iranian Art Under Multiple Guises
Goudarz
Cultures
By Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune
LONDON - Cultural historians may wonder in the future what made it so
difficult for the West to look at Iranian art as an entity. Of the three
oldest Asian civilizations that are alive - China, Iran and India - Iran has
had the longest continuous history under its own name. It has been used in
that very form since about the second century B.C., and in earlier forms,
long before.
But as the sales here of ''Islamic art'' last week showed, its art is
diluted under a variety of denominations. It was essentially Iranian art
that climbed through the roof, but an outsider would hardly have known it.
On April 11, at Christie's, the cover lot was an Iranian manuscript copied
in 1563-1564 and illuminated with 19 paintings of high quality. The
catalogue entry gave it to ''Safavid Persia'' - the Ancient Roman name for
Iran adopted by Medieval Europe and retained by Britain. The manuscript, a
new discovery, ended up sold for a huge pounds 441,500 (dollars 697,500).
For other illuminated books from Iran, no country was mentioned, only the
presumed city of origin - ''Shiraz,'' ''Isfahan,'' etc.
For objets d'art, characterizations were more confusing. A superb, albeit
damaged, calligraphic bowl came up under the banner of ''Samarqand'' with
the precision ''Transoxiana, 10th century.'' Yet as Christie's catalogue
observed, the bowl is ''very similar'' to one in the Tehran National Museum.
The maxim in the outer calligraphic band, the entry specifies, is identical
to that on the Tehran bowl. And, one might add, so is the maxim in the inner
calligraphic band.
Above all, the Tehran piece and Christie's bowl share a feature that
Christie's cataloguer mistook for a spelling error - a letter, sin (''s''),
is written in a peculiar way with its long horizontal bar partly running
over that of a letter with which it is linked. This highly idiosyncratic
peculiarity shows that the two bowls have inscriptions from the same hand
and therefore originate from the same place in Eastern Iran. The bowl went
for a gigantic pounds 58,700.
Later in the sale, a bronze ewer dubbed ''Umayyad, eighth century''
(describing the Arab caliphate based in Damascus) was a typical Khorasan
piece of the eighth or ninth century. Dozens of ewers of that shape have
come out in the last two decades. The suggestion at the end of the entry
about ''the treatment of Sasanian motifs in the Umayyad art of Syria'' is
misleading. Whether it made a difference to the price, an astronomical
pounds 47,000, is a moot question. A unique piece soon followed. A brass
basin once inlaid with gold and silver belongs to the 14th-century Fars
school in central Iran, but Christie's caption simply said ''Fars.'' The
elaborate scenes seething with characters, and beautiful animal figures
engraved and inlaid on the inside of the walls have no known equivalent.
Christie's hoped it might fetch pounds 15,000 to pounds 20,000. It brought
pounds 146,750.
Mysteriously, the next basin from Fars, although inscribed to a sultan,
Jamal ad-Din Abu Eshaq, interested no one; neither did a silver inlaid
''jug'' (more precisely, a wine tankard), attributed to ''Western Iran or
Mesopotamia, 13th century,'' but in fact typical of Western Iran.
Buyers in this field apparently proceed at random. This could be verified on
April 12 at Bonhams. While the financial outcome made it a great success,
the auction went through incomprehensible ups and downs.
A beautiful, intact blue glass dish from the Eastern Iranian areas with a
geometric pattern suggesting a ninth- or 10th-century date went
fantastically well, tripling its high estimate at more than pounds 37,000.
Then, one of the rarities of the week, a marvered glass bowl from Syria
probably dating from the 12th or 13th century, also did brilliantly, helped
by its extraordinary beauty. It exceeded pounds 60,000 despite visible
breaks. But when very fine silver inlaid metalwork from Khorasan came up,
the best pieces fell unsold. Perhaps there had just been too much of it for
too few buyers.
In the afternoon, by contrast, wild enthusiasm greeted a spinel from Mogul
India. Inscribed in Persian to the name of Emperor Jahangir and possibly
dated 1015 (i.e. A.D. 1606), it was the only major jewel that week and
triggered a furious contest between two Arab collectors who sent it soaring
over pounds 145,000. These fits of frenetic bidding culminated on April 12
at Sotheby's.
Five prizes stood out. One was a volume of the collected poems of Hafez, the
14th-century poet. Copied by the Iranian calligrapher Abd al-Rahim of Herat,
known as Anbarin Qalam (Amber Pen), it was illuminated with more than 800
birds in small square panels painted by a great if anonymous master from
Hindustan, and posed a riddle. A date ''995'' (A.D. 1587) at the end of the
manuscript was accepted at face value by the cataloguer. Yet, the birds,
typical of the reign of Jahangir, could not be as early as the 1580s. On
closer inspection, the numerals are seen to have been strengthened in later
times. Almost certainly, they were modified in the process.
The catalogue suggestion that the opening Arabic formula enclosed in a
rosette, ''Allah Akbar,'' ''God is the greatest,'' may also be understood to
mean ''God is Akbar'' was untenable. That formula, uttered by Muslims all
over the world, is found in manuscripts owned by Jahangir - one could be
seen at Christie's that same week.
The manuscript is a major revelation. The price, more than pounds 1.1
million, reflected the surprise it caused.
Then there was the greatest sensation of the month, a hitherto unrecorded
painting of birds ''attributed to Abd al-Hayy.'' The 14th-century painter is
famous in Iranian history but his name is almost all that is known.
In the painting, the name is faintly legible. The end of the word naqqash,
''painter-designer,'' following it is also visible. Could this be a
signature rather than just an ''attribution''? Special photography might
settle the matter. The discovery of an Abd al-Hayy is as significant to the
history of Iranian painting as an unknown Leonardo would be to Renaissance
art. Despite the cropping that has reduced the image, it exceeded all hopes
at pounds 993,550, setting, Marcus Fraser of Sotheby's noted, the record for
a ''Persian (i.e. Iranian) painting.''
Then came three folios from the Shah-Nameh (''Book of Kings'') manuscript
executed for Shah Tahmasp (1524-1576) between 1524 and the late 1530s. It
remained intact until 1959, when it was ripped apart after being bought for
dollars 360,000 by Arthur A. Houghton Jr. The folios sold for pounds
729,500, pounds 740,500 and pounds 784,500. These are enormous figures given
that, in the longer term, public opinion will increasingly push for
reuniting the dispersed pages with the fragmentary manuscript now in Tehran.
It was a kind of bitter triumph for Iranian art. Ambiguously described at
auction and never displayed under its own identity in most Western
institutions, it remains the terra incognita of Asian art.