arthur upham pope and the discourse on “persian art” 45

KISHWAR RIZVI

ART HISTORY AND THE NATION: ARTHUR UPHAM POPE AND THE DISCOURSE ON “PERSIAN ART” IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Knowledge about the artistic culture of a place and and in the Iranian Parliament, sites that were intricately the people who created that culture, particularly when connected to each other. Thus it is necessary to ana- inscribed in a book, is always an approximation. Objects lyze together the political, the economic, and, perhaps and architecture are understood through rituals of most important, the aesthetic meaning of Persian art praxis and inhabitation, through social and political in both Western and Iranian contexts. I discuss these realities, and through the aspirations of individual complex relationships through a study of select proj- artists and patrons. Descriptions, be they textual or ects sponsored by the nationalist Society for National visual, are nonetheless powerful conveyors of meaning Heritage, an institution established for the preserva- that reveal information not only about their subjects tion of the Iranian heritage. In particular, the focus but also about their authors. A vital example of the of this paper will be on two important academic and complexity inherent in the representations of Iranian cultural events, both underwritten by the Society, that culture is the subject of “Persian art” as disseminated took place in London in 1931—namely, the Interna- in the early years of the twentieth century through tional Exhibition of Persian Art at Burlington House exhibition catalogues and survey texts. and the Second International Congress for Persian Art Books on the art and architecture of Iran, which was and Archeology. These events were followed by pub- called Persia by Western nations until 1935, were pro- lication in 1938–39 of A Survey of Persian Art, edited duced primarily in Europe and the United States and by Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman.2 All were based on archaeological data as well as material three interrelated projects were central to the devel- objects popular on the art market of the time. Already opment and dissemination of what could be consid- in the nineteenth century such objects had been dis- ered the canons of not only Iranian but also Islamic played in national pavilions in European world fairs art and architecture.3 and were documented in accompanying catalogues and pamphlets.1 Thanks to important archaeologi- cal explorations of the early twentieth century, the THE NEW HISTORIOGRAPHY history of Iran was characterized by scholars as an ancient and influential one, whose artifacts were wor- The Pahlavi dynasty was established in Iran by a com- thy of study and admiration. (The Islamic history of mander of the Qajar Cossack Brigade, Riza Khan. Fol- Iran, unlike that of other regions in the Middle East lowing a strategic coup d’etat in 1921, in which he at this time, was conceived as part of a continuous became minister of war, he was appointed in 1923 to story of an indigenous “people” who had experienced the post of prime minister. By 1925 the Qajar dynasty the onslaught of multiple cultures, from the Arabs to ruled in name alone, and Riza Khan was crowned the Mongols, and yet somehow retained their unique the Shah of Iran and took the family name Pahlavi aesthetic and cultural sensibility.) Through this char- (a term designating the Middle Persian language of acterization, Persian art, with a history of more than the Sasanian rulers of Iran). With the advent of this 2,500 years, was represented as a monolithic if not “traditionalist, nationalist, and modernist” ruler,4 a immaculate whole. new political agenda for Iran was set into motion. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the dis- The artistic and architectural heritage of the country course on Persian art was situated simultaneously in was deemed a worthy indicator of the rich history and the academies and museums of Europe and America great civilization embodied by the nation and became

Book 1.indb 45 9/20/2007 9:14:09 PM 46 kishwar rizvi

Fig. 1. Vignette for the Society for National Heritage (Anjuman-i ¸s¸r-i millº), Tehran, D-759. Ink on paper. Ernst Herzfeld papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. a subject of investigation by Iranian intellectuals and of one of the historic moments for Iran…” (by which the foreign scholars they invited to Iran. Through their he meant the dawn of the Pahlavi empire).7 The mobi- interpretations, antiquity was “discovered” to cohere lizing of history as a source of national identity is a with the ideals of the new nation.5 The antiquity of common trope in the rhetoric of nation building; in Iran’s roots had already been established by Euro- the case of Iran, the language of mobilization was for- pean historians and archaeologists; what remained mulated not only internally but also in the academies was to marshal that information in a rhetoric that of Europe and the United States. would serve the nationalist goals of self-legitimacy and In 1925 the society had invited the German archae- racial identification. ologist Ernst Herzfeld to Iran to produce a survey of The Society for National Heritage (Anjuman-i ¸s¸r-i architectural and archaeological sites deemed worthy millº) was formed in 1922 to “enhance public interest of preservation.8 The logo he designed for the so ciety in ancient knowledge and crafts and to preserve antiq- (fig. 1) is a telling example of the role of architec- uities and handicrafts and their ancient techniques.”6 tural history in the formation of this cultural institu- According to such nationalists as the education min- tion. The sketch shows a scrolling lotus, the leaves of ister Muhammad Furughi and the noted statesman which enclose the facades of the Achaemenid palace {Abd al-Husayn Khan Teymourtash, who were among at Persepolis (left) and the Sasanian arch Taq-i Kisra the founders of the society, revival of the historical at Ctesiphon (right). Within the bud rising from the past was the key to envisioning Iran’s future. In a center is the form of the Seljuk Gunbad-i Qabus. For 1927 lecture, {Ali Hannibal, the founder of Tehran’s him, all three monuments marked the apogee of Per- Museum of Ethnography, captured the sentiments of sian architecture. The approbation of the cultural her- these men: “[The formation of the society] coincides itage of Iran by eminent scholars such as Herzfeld with another important event, namely the beginning was of profound interest to the nationalists who had