‘A historiographical inquiry into the falsification of Persian art’, in Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference of Iranian Studies, Volume 2: Studies on Iran and the Persianate World after Islam, ed. Olga M. Yastrebova, St. Petersburg: State Hermitage Museum, 2020, pp. 122-30. (original) (raw)
Related papers
he 400 years and more between the Arab conquest of Iran in 637 CE and the coming of the Saljuqs in 1055 is a quite remarkably dark age in Iranian art. In part, the grand political movements of this era were responsible. The centre of gravity in the Islamic world was never Iran in this period. It was Syria under the Umayyads, Iraq under the 'Abbasids, and then Egypt and the lands to the west under the Fatimids. And the arts seem to tell the same story, notwithstanding the peerless epigraphic wares of Khorasan and the figural pottery of Nishapur. Part of the problem is that too little survives to permit a consistent pattern of production, style and iconography to emerge. Every new important piece that turns up is a surprise, and each one changes the picture. Particularly in the case of precious metalwork 1 and textiles, 2 the problems of patchy survival are exacerbated by disputed provenance, date and — thanks to illegal excavations — authenticity. Yet it is highly unlikely that such a sparse and dubious picture of this key period of almost half a millennium is correct. 3 The papers published in this book have demonstrated, in many different ways, the strength of Iranian national sentiment 4 and sense of corporate identity in this seemingly dark age. The Shhnma underlines the rooted affection for Iran's ancient heritage, not least that of the Sasanians. Nor were those feelings confined to eastern Iran. 5 Indeed, it could be argued, at least on the basis of surviving monuments, that, especially in Parthian and Sasanian times, western Iran was culturally some way ahead of eastern Iran. 6 The impact of Buddhism also gave eastern Iran a cultural colouring not replicated to the west. 7 It was only from later Umayyad times, when Khorasan became the focus for disaffection with Syrian Arab rule, and indeed the seed-bed for the Abbasid revolution, that the ethnic, political and to some degree even religious opposition to the Islamic polity that had developed far to the west took shape. 8 Under the Samanids in particular, and specifically between the late ninth and the early twelfth centuries, a new Perso-Islamic culture took shape in the east; in the visual arts this process can most easily be traced in architecture. 9 Its other expressions are sufficiently well known, such as the growth of Persian national T
Iran. Five Millennia of Art and Culture
Iran. Five Millennia of Art and Culture. Exhibition Catalogue, ed. by U. Franke, I. Sarikhani Sandmann and S. Weber, 2021
The exhibition “Iran. Five Millennia of Art and Culture” was presented in the James-Simon Gallery in Berlin in 2021. Jointly organised by the Museum of Islamic Art, National Museums of Berlin, and the Sarikhani Collection. 360 exquisite works of art from the time of the first advanced civilisations during the late fourth and the third millennium BCE until the early eighteenth century illustrated the outstanding significance of Iran as an initiator and centre of intercultural exchange. The great pre-Islamic empires of the Achaemenids and the Sasanians, the establishment of a Persian-Islamic culture, the supreme artistic achievements of the ninth to the fifteenth centuries and the Golden Age of the Safavids are just some of the highlights of this journey through five millennia of Iranian art and culture. The catalogue, edited by the organisers, available in English and German, contains contributions by 26 re-known scholars and is richly illustrated (520 images). Here, the editorial data and table of contents are available.
National Library of Iran, 2016
Leila Tabatabaei Yazdi (2017), “History of Art or History of Politics, a Critique of the Dominant Approaches in Persian Art Historiography”, Proceedings of National Conference on Theoretical Roots of Visual Arts, Tehran, Ketab-e-sabz and Eco Publications, ISBN: 978-600-98123-5-6, pp. 423-440 (FA) دوره‌بندی تاریخی هنرها در ایران، منطبق با دوره‌بندی تاریخ سیاسی ایران است. فهرست فصل‌های مختلف کتاب‌های تاریخ هنر غالباً منطبق بر فهرست کتاب‌های تاریخ عمومی یا سیاسی ایران است. این شیوه‌ی دوره‌بندی تنها منحصر به مقطعی خاص از تاریخ هنر ایران نیست و در مورد تمامی ادوار آن صدق می‌کند: از دوره‌ببندی رایج هنر ِ ماد، هنر هخامنشی، هنر ساسانی گرفته تا هنر غزنوی و سلجوقی و تیموری و صفوی و قاجار. از سوی دیگر، این مسأله تنها منحصر به تاریخنگاری هنر ایران نیست؛ دوره‌بندی هنر جوامعی چون جوامع آسیایی نیز از همین قاعده پیروی کرده‌است. تاریخنگاری که عوماً توسط مورخین و باستان‌شناسان اروپایی صورت گرفته‌است