1970s-2011 Works from the Artist ’s Collection Parviz Tanavoli Poet in Love Austin / Desmond Fine Art Pied Bull Yard 68/69 Great Russell St Bloomsbury London WC1B 3BN Telephone: + 44 (0)20 7242 4443 Email: gallery @austindesmond .com Web : ww w.austindesmond .com 1 The Global Vision of Parviz Tanavoli Dr David Galloway Thirty-five years have passed since my first encounter with Parviz Tanavoli in Iran: years of creation and achievement, of revolution and heartache, of exile and return. More than a friend, he was also a mentor who taught me to decipher (and cherish) some of the rich visual codes of Persian culture. Furthermore, he did so not by leading me pedantically through museums and archeological sites but simply by welcoming me to his atelier, where the language of the past was being transmuted into a vivid contemporary idiom. This vital synthesis is, without doubt, the greatest achievement of the greatest sculptor to emerge from the modern Islamic world. For decades, gifted artists from Iran or Iraq, Egypt or Morocco had studied in famous Western art centers and returned home to shoulder the burden of a seemingly irresolvable dilemma. Either they could apply their skills to the traditional arts or propagate the styles and techniques acquired in their journeyman years – at the risk of being labeled epigones. It was, of course, not merely Islamic artists who faced such a dilemma, but more generally those whose vision had initially been fostered by a powerful traditional aesthetic and were subsequently exposed to a contemporary Western form language. (The extraordinarily rich visual heritage of Iran, on the other hand, lent the choice particular urgency.) Tanavoli resolved the dilemma by embracing the arts and handicrafts of his own culture but also by literally reinventing them, passing them through the filter of his own exposure to Western movements. In this regard, his greatest early influence was undoubtedly that of Marino Marini, with whom Tanavoli studied at the Accademia di Bella Arte di Brera in Milan, graduating in 1959. Like his precocious student, Marini was deeply influenced by the art of the past – particularly that of the Etruscans, which inspired his recurrent equestrian motifs. “Here in Tuscany,” Marini once remarked, “the past is an essential aspect of our life. We live daily in the midst of artworks from previous times.” The teacher thus offered a prime example of the fact that the past can be an enrichment rather than a burden in the evolution of an individual style. Central to Tanavoli’s development was the fact that he engaged himself far less with the rigidly stylized courtly art of illuminated manuscripts and intricate ornamentation than with the popular arts and everyday handicrafts of Iran, as well as posters and calligraphy. For him such utilitarian objects as locks and ewers, birdcages and ladders and simple tools bore witness to an innocent, indigenous sense of the beautiful that could be found in the simplest of households. He thus embraced what he once described as “the collective actions of the average people on the street to produce and market their wares, to make a living and even to rejoice during happy occasions and mourn during sorrowful ones.” When I departed Iran in 1978, Parviz Tanavoli, Minneapolis Studio 1961 2 Tanavoli and I were collaborating on an exhibition for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art to be 3 entitled “Useful Objects,” for which we had begun to acquire artifacts at the bazaars in Tehran, Shiraz right hand cut off. The saqqakhaneh itself thus bears historic and religious connotations but represents, and Isfahan. These would have been presented like artworks on pedestals and in showcases, above all, the universal, life-giving properties of water itself. underscoring their inherent beauty and encouraging pride in such vernacular objects, which were increasingly threatened by anonymous, mass-manufactured goods. This commonplace location is at once fountain, altar and symbolic tomb, where visitors attach talismans, locks and strips of cloth to make fast their vows and petitions. The grill, akin to that protecting the tombs Such was the sensibility that informed the course taken by Parviz Tanavoli, who returned to Iran in of holy men but also a common feature of desert architecture, provides a powerful graphic element that 1959 with the praise of Marino Marini and Henry Moore still ringing in his years. In rapid succession he frequently appears in Tanavoli’s paintings and prints, as well as his sculptures. This complex but deeply established his own Atelier Kaboud on Pahlavi Avenue, which became a vital meeting place for young poetic metaphor, in itself a kind of manifesto, was central to the indigenous movement that was artists and the scene of groundbreaking exhibitions; began to teach sculpture at the new College of germinated at the Atelier Kaboud. It is illuminating to know something about the religious and cultural Decorative Arts, of which he was a founding member; represented Iran at the Venice Biennial; background of this first contemporary art movement in the Islamic world, which drew on sources that may established the influential movement known as the Saqqakhaneh School; and made the acquaintance of well seem exotic to the Western viewer. In this context, it is also instructive to explore the sources for the courageous American collector Abby Grey, who would introduce him to an American audience. Tanavoli’s recurrent use of the caged bird, the fallen man, the wall or the ubiquitous figure known as Meanwhile, he was increasingly working in metal and would ultimately create the sole foundry in the heech, since all are firmly rooted in an ancient culture of great beauty. On the other hand, such detailed Middle East for the production of art and train assistants in the craft. Like Marini, however, his knowledge is by no means essential to an appreciation of the work itself, which is rich in information but engagement as a sculptor did not dim his enthusiasm for painting. As though his duties as teacher, artist free of all didacticism. Tanavoli’s idiom moves far beyond the anthropological or folkloristic to assert what and sometime-gallerist were not enough, Tanavoli was becoming increasingly active as a collector (of I described in an earlier essay as “the universal particular.” rugs and locks, for example) and author. It was this extraordinarily rich and multifaceted world into which he graciously invited me in 1976, and where my own Iranian apprenticeship would begin. It is a fundamental irony of art that the work that is most local and particular, the most firmly rooted in a particular place and time, may also be the most universal. (In the great classic of modern art theory, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility, Walter Benjamin argued that “The uniqueness Saqqakhaneh of a work of art is identical to its embeddedness in the context of tradition.”) Furthermore, the grill of the saqqakhaneh, festooned with talismans, has its Western equivalents in the secret rag-trees of Celtic Literally speaking, the saqqakhaneh or “house of the water bearer” is a public fountain, typically fed by cultures – usually located close to wells or springs - or in the padlocks fastened to a protective grill on a cistern set into a wall and protected by a metal grill. Such sources not only provided drinking water Cologne’s Hohenzollern Bridge by young lovers who throw the keys into the Rhine. Thought to have for passersby but also functioned as neighborhood meeting places. In more elaborate versions, the originated in China, the tradition has sparked love-lock movements from Prague to Moscow, Florence to water was contained in a large, Tel Aviv. In Montevideo locks are attached, as in the ancient Persian tradition, to a fountain. Plainly, then, cylindrical brass tank, often the particular customs evoked by the saqqakhaneh touch on issues of yearning, devotion and fidelity that elaborately decorated and with know no boundaries. While reflecting in detail on a Persian heritage, they simultaneously strike a universal three domes on top – the central chord that emanates from the execution of an artist’s vision and not, simply, from his sources. and largest of them crowned by an upraised hand of flat brass, perforated with a calligraphic Farhad the Mountain Carver design. The symbolism alludes to the Battle of Karbala, in which In addition to the existential issues affecting all artists who were trained in the West and then returned to Abbas, the brother of Husayn, the traditional cultures, Parviz Tanavoli was confronted by the absence of a sculptural legacy. Or so it seemed third Shiite Imam, attempts to at first glance. Even taking into consideration the Acaemenian bas-reliefs and statues left behind in the bring water to his thirsty people by remains of Zoroastrian temples, there are no surviving sculptural relics comparable to those of China or breaching the enemy lines to reach India. Furthermore, with the advent of Islam, sculptors had disappeared as a guild in Persia. It was his a nearby river. Determined to fill a fascination with popular arts and crafts that eventually showed Tanavoli a way out of this seeming vacuum, waterskin for the thirsty women for what might be thought of as the essence of sculpture had indeed found rich expression in the and children and the wounded articulated brickwork of mosques, in pottery and metalworking, in ornamental gratings, birdcages, jewelry Husayn, he is detected and his and Luristan bronzes. And there were convenient ruses, as well. As Tanavoli reflects today, “…in the guise Cage and Locks 1964 , Wood, iron, oil on paper and glass, 100 x 98 cm , Museum of Parviz Tanavoli, Tehran of handles, artisans attached human and animal forms to the vessels they made.” The locks that fascinated 4 5 Tanavoli even as a child and that were attached to the grills of shrines and fountains were often crafted Heech in the form of animals.