Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture , livre ebook

Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture
Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture
Essays by Hamid Dabashi
Edited with an Introduction by Hamid Keshmirshekan
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
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© 2019 Hamid Keshmirshekan Introduction, editorial matter and selection; © 2019 Hamid Dabashi Individual Chapters
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
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without the prior written permission of both the copyright
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-919-2 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-919-9 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Hamid Keshmirshekan
Section 1 Theorizing the Frame
Chapter One
Trauma, Memory, and History
Chapter Two
Récit de l’Exil Occidental
Chapter Three
Women Without Headaches
Section 2 Visual Arts and Material Culture
Chapter Four
Artists Without Borders: On Contemporary Iranian Art
Chapter Five
The Gun and the Gaze: Shirin Neshat’s Photography
Chapter Six
Bordercrossings: Shirin Neshat’s Body of Evidence
Chapter Seven
Shirin Neshat: Transcending the Boundaries of an Imaginative Geography
Chapter Eight
Capturing the Illusion of Reality: Mapping the Visual Subconscious of a People in the Photography of Bahman Jalali
Chapter Nine
Tarek Al-Ghoussein Does Not Exist
Chapter Ten
Ardeshir Mohassess, Etcetera
Chapter Eleven
Shoja Azari: Making the Homely Unhomely
Chapter Twelve
Nicky Nodjoumi, Nahid Haghighat: Liberating Fragments against Totalizing Myths
Section 3 World Cinema and Performing Art
Chapter Thirteen
The Sublime and the Beautiful in the Time of Terror
Chapter Fourteen
Warriors of Faith
Chapter Fifteen
The “300” Stroke
Chapter Sixteen
Amir Naderi’s New York
Chapter Seventeen
A Deadly Cinematic Subconscious
General Bibliography
Index
Figures
1.1 Sharjah Art Museum, photo Lucy Rees
1.2 Azadeh Akhlaghi, Aras River, Iran – Samad Behrangi/ 3 September 1968 , 2012, digital print on photo paper, 110 × 174 cm, courtesy of the artist
2.1 Marjane Satrapi, a page from Persepolis 1 , 2002
3.1 Shirin Neshat, Speechless , 1996, RC print and ink, 118.7 × 86 cm. Copyright Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
4.1 Farhad Moshiri, Self-portrait , 2004, courtesy the artist and The Third Line
5.1 Shirin Neshat, Untitled , 1996, RC print & ink (photo taken by Larry Barns), 121.6 × 84.5 cm. Copyright Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
6.1 Shirin Neshat, Rapture series, 1999, Gelatin silver print, 111.7 × 173.35 cm. Copyright Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
7.1 Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy series, 2000, Cibachrome print, 121.9 × 152.4 cm. Copyright Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
7.2 Shirin Neshat, The Last Word , 2003, still from the video
8.1 Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination series, 2008, digital print on paper, size varied, private collection, Tehran, courtesy of Rana Javadi
8.2 Bahman Jalali, Days of Blood, Days of Fire series , 1979, analogue photo, size varied, artist’s collection, Tehran, courtesy of Rana Javadi
9.1 Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Untitled, 9 d series, 2005–6, digital print, 55 × 75 cm, courtesy of artist
9.2 Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Untitled, 10 b series, 2005–6, digital print, 55 × 75 cm, courtesy of artist
10.1 Ardeshir Mohassess, The king is always above the people, Life in Iran series, 1978, ink on paper, 46 × 60 cm
11.1 Shoja Azari, Icon #5 , 2010, still from video, video portrait, courtesy of artist
12.1 Nicky Nodjoumi, Inspector Scrutiny , 2012, oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist and Taymour Grahne
12.2 Nahid Haghighat, Shabrang , 1998, mixed media on canvas, 28 × 22 cm, courtesy of the artist
13.1 Still from Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak ( Distant ), 2002, httpsprojectedperspectives.files.wordpress.com201801mahmutwave_hires
14.1 Still from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven , 2005, https://3brothersfilm.com/blog/2012/02/medieval-as-modern-the-historical-accuracy-of-kingdom-of-heaven
15.1 Still from Zack Snyder’s 300 , 2007, http://www.cais-soas.com/ CAIS/Iran/300_movie_seperating_fact_from_fiction.htm
16.1 Still from Amir Naderi’s ABC Manhattan , 1997
16.2 Still from Amir Naderi’s Sound Barrier , 2005
17.1 Poster of Yossef (Joseph) Cedar’s Beaufort , 2007, https://www.fruugo.lu/beaufort-movie-poster-11-x-17/p-9002061-19367234
17.2 Still from Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir , 2008, https://editorial .rottentomatoes.comgallery28-best-and-worst-r-rated-animated- moviesbashir
17.3 Still from Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon , 2009, http://dennisamith.com/ wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Lebanon-2009-Samuel-Maoz
Acknowledgments
First and foremost I would like to thank Professor Hamid Dabashi for offering me this opportunity to edit this volume based on his outstanding writings on contemporary art, world cinema, and visual culture. He was also so generous with his time and constant help with providing immediate answers for my questions on the textual materials, and approaching artists for high-quality images of their works to be included in this book.
I am equally grateful to all of the eminent artists whose works I have had the privilege of using in this book. In particular I wish to thank Shirin Neshat, Nicky Nodjoumi, Amir Naderi, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Shoja Azari, Nahid Haghighat, Azadeh Akhlaghi, Farhad Moshiri, the late Bahman Jalali and the late Ardeshir Mohassess for their permission for reproduction of their works, and their respective galleries and estates for their very kind help in obtaining those pictures.
I would like to acknowledge the SOAS, University of London library for providing the online and other resources which were greatly useful in shaping this project.
I should further thank my daughter, Pegah, for providing the format for the cover design of this volume with high competency.
Last but not least I would like to thank Anthem editorial and production team, in particular Tej P. S. Sood, Publisher and Managing Director, for his attention and support, Nisha Vetrivel, the project manager in the Production Department, for her courtesy and consideration and also Abi Pandey in the Editorial Department of Anthem Press.
INTRODUCTION
Hamid Keshmirshekan
I was thrilled when Hamid Dabashi, the cultural critic and scholar of comparative literature, suggested to me if I would be willing to edit a collection of essays on visual, literary and performing arts that he had written over the last quarter of a century and adapt them in a volume. I thought it would certainly be an inspiring experience, and it was indeed in practice. For me it was also an exploratory journey, a process of entering new territorial domains with a wide range of materials and methodological approaches and interdisciplinary strategies. As an art historian whose main preoccupation has been art and material culture of modern and contemporary Iran and the Arab world, it was a process of diving into a new territory of knowledge. I realized how Dabashi’s vast knowledge in historical and contemporary intellectual and artistic practices, Iranian Islamic philosophy, Persian literature, poetry, Arab and Muslim cultural representations, as well as contemporary theories, philosophy, social and political ideologies and public affairs has enabled him to portray an unprecedented critical perspective on artistic practices and their contextual implications.
Dabashi’s pioneering scholarly writings on the subjects of cultural and intellectual history and postcolonial studies through criticism of Orientalism and imperialism are integrated assets in his writings on interpretation of artistic and cinematic materials. This book is in fact based on works of a cultural theorist who extrapolates more universal issues of concern to art criticism in general. The main objective of this volume is to open up the horizons of critical thinking about these arts in a manner that we do not have any available source except by leading European or American critics. By putting these scattered materials together in this anthology, an attempt has been made to underline their theoretical and critical logic—something quite unique and effectively nonexistent in the field. Given also the recent move within the “global” art history—the ongoing debates on the Western-centric art histories and criticism, the struggle for an alternative art historical/critical approach within the transcultural c