Rendering №2

I’ve chosen to render the article which is published on ArtNews site and headlined “The Other Modernism: Rediscovering Iran’s Avant-Garde
”.  The author of the article pays heightened attention to the fact that Overshadowed by revolution, sanctions, and outdated notions of the Modern, Iran's vibrant postwar art scene is coming into focus at the Asia Society. Back in the 20th century, everyone was talking about how New York wrested the status of modern-art capital from Paris. Nowadays, curators in the U.S. and Europe are vying to share the spotlight.
Analyzing the situation, it’s necessary to point out that Shows this season at MoMA and the Guggenheim explore Japan’s postwar avant-garde. The Rubin is doing Indian Modernism, Part 3. In Madrid, the Reina Sofía has Latin American abstraction from the ’30s to the ’70s, part of a multifaceted collaboration with the Cisneros Foundation that launched with a conference on Latin American Modernisms. And this summer in London, Tate Modern will open a retrospective of Sudan-born painter Ibrahim El-Salahi; this too is part of a larger initiative to globalize art history.  It’s very interesting to emphasize that amidst these efforts, Iran has remained the Other Other Modernism.  Though Iran was very much part of the conversation in the postwar era, when its artists studied abroad, traveled freely, and gallery-hopped at home, the Islamic Revolution moved the conversation elsewhere.  The correspondent cites  Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society Museum in New York, who describes the era as transitional, influential, and overlooked: “There was this kind of blind spot”. The journalist also adds that in September the museum hopes to change the equation with “Iran Modern,” an international loan show uniting more than 100 objects from the ’50s to the ’70s. Curated by Fereshteh Daftari and Layla Diba, it’s the most ambitious survey of Iran’s pre-Revolutionary art to be staged outside Iran.
Besides, the article reports at length that Spread over two floors of the museum, the exhibition will explore the ways these lesser-known Middle Eastern modernists forged their own version of an international style, borrowing liberally from Western-art traditions as they inventively updated their own. The writer states that earlier European modernism was a strong influence on Houshang Pezeshknia, who depicted oil workers on the island of Khark in this 1958 portrait. As the evidence of it, we see examples of paintings of different authors, which were created under the influence of Iranian culture, Houshang Pezeshknia, Khark, 1958 for instance. As a comment to this, the writes says that With their multi-hyphenated addresses; habit of changing hats as artist, curator, and art impresario; and tendency to sample from across the style spectrum, the Irani modernists might have more in common with today’s global avant-garde than the fabled New York School did. He proves it by the following example - Marcos Grigorian, for example, a Russian-born artist (and actor), studied in Rome, ran several Tehran galleries in the late ’40s and early ’50s, organized the first Tehran Biennial in 1958, and opened the Universal Galleries in Minneapolis in the early ’60s. Like most of Iran’s artists he developed a practice at once global and local. Using humble materials like sand and enamel, in common with Europeans like the arte povera artists and Tàpies, he created textured abstractions that also read as renderings of the desert. The correspondent describes the painting Marcos Grigorian, Untitled, n.d. as that The techniques and iconography of Islamic, pre-Islamic, and folk art were all fodder for Iran’s modern artists. Mirror mosaics and reverse mirror painting have been inspirations for Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who took classes at Cornell and Parsons, befriended the Abstract Expressionists, studied with Milton Avery, and collaborated with Warhol. Then, we see other examples of such kind of painting - Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Untitled, c. 1975–1976 and  Faramarz Pilaram, Untitled, 1982.
Giving appraisal to the situation, it’s necessary to point out that using grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Dedalus Foundation, among others, the Asia Society has been organizing loans from public and private collections in Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East—except, of course, Iran. Daftari, who organized “Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking” when she was a MoMA curator says that “I find it highly disconcerting that sanctions should affect the representation of Iranian modern art,” she comments, stressing that the opinion is her own. “Sanctions are hurting badly the average people in Iran and now even the representation of a historical period in a museum show?” The author show us another picture - Ardeshir Mohassess, Untitled, 1978 after the quotation.
The reporter concludes the article with his own opinion that the careers of its artists, however, were not. Several figures in the Asia Society show, who had returned from abroad to live and work in Iran, continue to exhibit around the world–including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Farmanfarmaian and Tavoli were featured last year in a small contemporary-Iranian-art installation within the new Islamic-art galleries.
That was another sign that traditional boundaries are eroding. After “Iran Modern,” we might find that these Middle Eastern modernists–now so contemporary–will enjoy a sort of Renaissance in the West.
As for me, I am impressed by the examples of paintings given by the author. Such kind of art as well as art as a whole doesn’t belong to the particular nation and usually proves its international origin. I think that this fact makes it more fascinating as it may not only please but also make us think and learn something not about the artist’s character and thoughts but also about some national peculiarities which are represented on the picture.