Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio

(Paperback)

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Description

The art world has recently witnessed a surge of interest in contemporary Iranian art, but what is the background to Iran's vibrant art scene This is the first comprehensive book on Iranian art and visual culture since the 1979 revolution. Divided into three parts - street, studio and exile - it covers official art sponsored by the Islamic Republic, the culture of avant-garde art created in the studio and its display in galleries and museums, and the art of the Iranian diaspora within the Western art scene. Grigor argues that these different areas of artistic production cannot be fully understood independently, for it is not despite censorship and exile that we are witnessing a boom in Iranian art today, as many have argued, but because of them. Moving between subversive and daring art produced in private to propaganda art made in the public view, this book offers an artistic mirror of the socio-political turmoil that has marked Iran's recent history.

Reviews

"Grigor reports and documents the history behind Contemporary Iranian Art coherently and expertly."-- "Journal of the Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World"
"Richly illustrated and compellingly argued, Contemporary Iranian Art is a welcome addition to an emerging scholarly literature on contemporary art in non-Western and postcolonial societies. It will be of interest to students and scholars of modern and contemporary art and architecture, visual culture, Middle Eastern and Asian studies, and globalization, as well as to general readers and an art world audience of curators, critics, and artists. . . . Highly recommended"
-- "Choice"

Author Bio

Talinn Grigor is Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University in Boston and the author of Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (2009) and Identity Politics in Irano-Indian Modern Architecture (2013)