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Illness As Political Metaphor in Modernist Arts in Iran Artl@s Bulletin Volume 9 Issue 1 “Other Modernities”: Art, Visual Culture Article 4 and Patrimony Outside the West 2020 Illness as Political Metaphor in Modernist Arts in Iran Katrin Nahidi Free University Berlin, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Nahidi, Katrin. "Illness as Political Metaphor in Modernist Arts in Iran." Artl@s Bulletin 9, no. 1 (2020): Article 4. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. “Other Modernities” Illness as Political Metaphor in Modernist Arts in Iran Katrin Nahidi * Freie Universität Berlin Abstract This article explores a political reading of Iranian modernism and analyses art works through the lens of illness as metaphor. This metaphor first emerged in the discourse of gharbzadegi (westoxification) in the 1960s, when the intellectual Jalal al-e Ahmad likened Iran's adaptation of Western modernity to being infected with a highly contagious disease. This article investigates the visual traces of illness as political metaphor in the works of Jalil Ziapour, Bahman Mohassess, Forough Farrokhzad, and Vincenzo Bianchini, while highlighting how these artists reflected one of the most substantial political discourses of their time. Résumé این مقاله یک خوانش سیاسی از تجددگرایی ایرانی اراعه میدهد و آثار هنری را از دریچهى بیماری،. همچون یك ا ستعاره تحلیل مى كند. این استعاره اول بار در گفتمان غربزدگی دههی چهل ظاهر شد هنگامى كه جﻻل آل احمد یك روشنفکر ایرانی اقتباس از تجددگراییغربی را به یك بیماری بسیار واگیرى تشبیه كرد. مقالهی حاضر نشانههای ب صری این بیماری را به عنوان یك استعارهی سیاسی در آثار هنرمندانی نظیر جلیل ضیاپور، بهمن محصص، فروغ فرخزاد و وینچنزو بیانكینى بررسی میکند و بر چگونگى بازتاب یكى از اساسىترین گفتمانهاى سیاسى عصر در آثار این هنرمندان تاكید مى كند. * Katrin Nahidi is a PhD candidate at the Free University of Berlin. In her dissertation Iranian Modernism Revisited: Exhibitions and art historiography of modern art in Iran Nahidi revisits Iran’s modernist arts and examines the sites of knowledge production about Iranian modernism, while critically reflecting the art-historical canon. 44 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. 9, Issue 1 (Winter 2020) Nahidi – Illness as Political Metaphor The study of Iranian modernism is still a newly was an immensely powerful political slogan for emerging research field. A closer look at the critique of the modernization programs and their existing art historiography reveals that the implementation by the Pahlavi government. common narrative of modernist art production in Westoxification reached new heights as an Iran has been predominately based on the expression of an anti-colonial critique in the terminology and categorization of European aftermath of the coup d’état in 1953 that overthrew modernist art history. Starting with the foundation the democratic government of Prime Minister of the Art Academy at Tehran University in 1941, Mohammad Mossadeq and led to the reinstatement various art-historiographical accounts often of Mohammad Reza Shah. The term came into full describe the emerging activity as adopting swing, after the intellectual Jalal al-e Ahmad European artistic movements such as published his eponymous essay in 1962. From that Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and abstract art, point on, gharbzadegi decisively shaped the which later formed a local modernism that merged political discourse in Iran, which eventually led to European artistic discourses with Iranian visual the Islamic Revolution in 1978/79. In his essay, al- elements. The strong focus on a stylistic division of e Ahmad likened westernization as he saw it in Iranian modernist art production led to the general Iran's adaptation of Western modernity to being assumption that the adaptation of modernist infected with a highly contagious disease. The European artistic discourses occurred only on a metaphor of illness became very influential and formal-aesthetic level as an experiment with the also left visual traces in the works of modernist visuality of Western modernity. This view of artists in Iran. This context illustrates that Iranian modernist art as mere experiments of form modernist art did not evolve in a political vacuum, was also highly welcomed by official state politics. but rather served as a critical tool to examine social During the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah (1941- conditions. This article investigates the 1979), modernist art often functioned as signifier representation of illness as political metaphor in for Iran’s successful modernization and the works of Jalil Ziapour, Bahman Mohassess, secularization. As a close ally of Western powers in Forough Farrokhzad, and Vincenzo Bianchini, while the Cold War, when European and North American highlighting how these artists reflected one of the modernist art was often deployed as cultural means most substantial political discourses of their time. to stage the West’s superiority over socialist ideologies, Iran’s cultural politics used modernist art production in order to demonstrate that Iran An outline of Iranian art historiography was on its way to becoming a westernized country. Published in Tehran in 1967 by the Ministry of Fine The crucial link between formalism and Arts and Culture, the book L’art moderne en Iran by modernism’s instrumentalization as political sign the painter and art critic Akbar Tajvidi provides one of Iran’s modernity decisively shaped the reception of the earliest scholarly overviews about the of this art production until today and locates it into historical evolution of modern art production in a political vacuum. Iran. Starting with painter Kamal ol Molk’s study To alter the prevailing perception of Iranian trip to Paris in 1898, Tajvidi describes the advent of modernist art and move it beyond mere formalism, modernism in Iran as a period of imitation and this article will explore a political reading of adaptation of European styles, which later modernism. In doing so, it analyses artistic works culminated in an Iranian version of modernist arts, through the lens of illness as metaphor. This as when he states: metaphor first emerged in Iran in the 1960s, when Si au début nos artistes subissaient passivement les illness became an important political trope in the influences venues d’occident ou par la suite discourse of gharbzadegi (westoxification). This s’inspiraient plus ou moins directement de l’art “Other Modernities” 45 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. 9, Issue 1 (Winter 2020) Nahidi – Illness as Political Metaphor traditionnel du pays sans être en mesure de lui continue to shape the reception of modernist arts donner un renouveau, ces périodes n’ont été que from Iran. According to Pakbaz, Iranian modernism très courtes et l’art moderne de notre pays s’est is an expression of belatedness, imitation and often acheminé rapidement vers son avenir.1 even “plagiarism” of Western modernisms.5 He Another important attempt to outline the evolution further states that modernist works of art depicted of modernist art in Iran came with the publication only the artists’ subjectivities and represent “a of the artist and art historian Roueen Pakbaz 1974 rejection of, and withdrawal from, the world ‘out book in English Contemporary Iranian Painting And there,’” with artistic innovation taking place “at the Sculpture.2 He dates the beginnings of modernism expense of a true maturity in content.”6 in Iran to the foundation of the Faculty of Fine Arts The assumption that Iranian modernist art refrains of Tehran University in the 1940s, when students from any socio-political content and evolved in a became familiar with European artistic discourses political vacuum became a dominant pattern in through the school’s new curriculum and graduates Iranian art historiography. In 1979, Ehsan often received scholarships to deepen their Yarshater explained that “much of Persian painting knowledge of new modernist forms of expression at today remains non-committed and removed from European art academies. Thus for Pakbaz, the the realities of social transformation” and can be development of Iranian modernist art is closely characterized as “an art devoid of any social connected to Western modernism. As he suggests: content.”7 The idea that modernist Iranian emerged This calls up the analogy of modern Western art, a from a socio-political vacuum, detached from the large, solid tree and contemporary Iranian art as conditions of its time of origin, has been adopted by only a fragile sapling in comparison. The undeniable following generations of art historians and role Western art has played in shaping our own survived until today. The art historian Combiz contemporary art explains in form, if not in content, Moussavi-Aghdam, for example, maintains that this has led our artists temporarily toward a choice “most of the painters in the 1960s and 1970s were of certain style and techniques.3 dealing with the aesthetic aspects of modern art Based on the assumption that Iranian modernism with no intellectual potential and interest to started with the adaptation of Western artistic consider socio-political
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