The color of history in contemporary Iranian art: intertextuality and its envisioned heterotopia

ABSTRACT

The desire to reference, interpret, assign value, reconstruct, and envision the past is a critical matter within any culture – especially when expressed in the arts, which always supersede the procrustean limits of linguistic constructs and transcend the iterability inherent in the semantic postulations. The shadowy references in the arts have always illuminated, after scrutiny and in-depth examinations, the contemporaneous cultural sensibilities and emotional conditions that may be harbingers of novel beliefs and perspectives. In fact, one may say with some degree of certainty that history as is selectively constituted and reflected in the arts may well portend the future course of a people. This article is an attempt to examine the intersubjective, subliminal, and conscious portrayals of history, whether as metaphors or metonyms, in contemporary Iranian art. In this essay the contemplation of history conveys a preference for the arbitrary, random, and often fantastic constructs of the past that view history as ‘his’ or ‘her-story’. This ‘Critical-Creative’ approach plays a dominant role in undermining all metaphysical absolutes and Truth-centered ideas, be they religious, political, or philosophical. The outcome of these perspectives and aesthetic perceptions may well presage new social and political structures in the future of Iran.

KEYWORDS:

• History
• intertextuality
• heterotopia
• ‘Critical-Creative’ approach
• metaphysical constructs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The ‘Monumental’ view of history aims to evoke a sense of tribal ownership, grandeur, and idealism. It proffers a transcendent and heroic vision of the past, always attuned to the ideal deed and the promise of a utopian telos. Though it may seem a platitude, the monumental view of history revives the past mostly to give us access to such concepts as heritage and identity. A few examples are such works as the 1926 ‘Shahnameh Majlis’ of Hadi Khan Tajvidi, the 1950s ‘Rustam Battling Sohrab’ by Hossein Golar Aghasi, and the 1966 ‘Sokhan Ma‘rifat az Halqeh Darvishan Pors’ by Abu Talib Moghimi Tabrizi, among many others.

2 The second type of historical envisioning is the ‘Antiquarian’. At first glance the antiquarian perspective conveys the objective and transparent state of historical perception. The works fall within the mimetic mode of conveyance as reminders of bygone days or as archeological curiosities, though their scope of the past is always limited to the survived signs and their own ontological gravitations. Initially, the historical fragments depicted and reflected in the antiquarian outlook do not offer a total or comprehensive view of the past. However, the appeal of these selected images is fully dependent upon the prevailing narratives regarding a time and a period to which the image belongs. These so-called mimetic expressions, as exemplified by the works of Antoin Sevruguin (1851–1933), Katayoun Karami (b. 1967), Najaf Shokri (b. 1980), and Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981), among many others, shall in time, depending on the hermeneutical structures applied, easily revert the mimetic aspects of their works into the romantic-monumental or the critical.

3 The ‘Critical’ view of history may be viewed as a twofold or a two-pronged phenomenon. The first, the ‘Critical-Structural’, is epistemological as exemplified by the academic historians who seek the recording and interpretation of the past as a social-science so that it may portend to the understanding of the past and even, in some cases, the prediction of future events. In the arts, the ‘Creative-Structural’ is often epistemic and is focused on discovering patterns within history to ultimately gain access to its workings and manners of unfolding. One such example is the graphic works of Koorosh Shishegaran (b. 1944) that, in spite of their artistic license, easily fit the notion of the Critical-Structural. The Critical-Creative is a postmodern phenomenon in contemporary Iranian art as discussed in this essay.

4 Metalepsis, as referred to in this essay, conveys the reversal of the hierarchy of cause and effect, by which the effect precedes the cause.

5 Retour is an amply discussed concept in modern and postmodern literature. For summaries see Aranda (2004, 351–362); McHale (1987, 57–58).

6 Without origin and originary cause there is no archaea, no meaning and no teleology.

7 Indicative signs are signs that stand for, or point to, other signs.

8 Of course, if examined outside the context of art history, any meanings read over the head of these works are born of the subjective and ontological spheres of the onlookers and are outside of the sphere of philosophical analysis.

9 Manet’s ‘Déjeuner’ symbolised the transformation of gods into common men and his models stood as transformed survivals of the ancient and Christian concepts of divinity, exemplifying a parallelism to the Nietzschean ‘Death of God’. However, Lashai’s ‘Déjeuner au Park Mellat’ is without any such archaea-models within the Iranian context.

10 I refer the reader to Daneshvari (2014) for a host of such examples.

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Notes on contributors

Abbas Daneshvari

Professor Abbas Daneshvari is the author and editor of 10 books and forty plus articles. He was educated at the California State University, East Bay; Brandeis University, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and received his PhD from UCLA. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley from whence he became the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt during 1981-82.