Iranian Contemporary Art and Architecture: Political and Economic Challenges

IRANIAN CONTEMPORARY ART AND ARCHITECTURE: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

This article is written in response to a presupposition: the as- sumption that Iranian contemporary art has come to the centre of attention and has had several international achievements. It is expected that by accepting this apparently self-evident fact, we only need to explain the reasons behind the attention to Iranian contemporary art and not engage in refuting or proving that obvi- ous assumption. However, when we look at the statistical achievements of Iranian contemporary art from a social viewpoint, the initial as- sumption breaks down and we are confronted with contradictory data that refute the initial self-evident assumption. In general, the social approach to art is different from that of art criticism. The social approach does not consider the politi- cal and economic functions of the artwork inferior to its cultural function in any of its appearances. In such an approach, one can evaluate the achievements of Iranian contemporary art in its different appearances from the viewpoint of politics and economy and come to different results. One must consider that the social structure creates one homogenous whole and a part of it cannot be studied independent from the other parts: the artwork is the product of the culture production field. The culture production field is very active and new fields are constantly created from the interference of different social fields. The relation between the artist and the culture production field is an unbreakable one. The artwork is the product of the interaction of an artist, the social field and the context. Without considering the quality of the relations between them, an analysis of the artwork would lack referable factors. Hence, a critique of an artwork that does not consider the social context of the work, falls into a blatant cogni- tive mistake. It is due to such quality that an artwork deeply reflects its social context. Hence, if we reread architecture within the cat- egories of art, then most of social representation have always appeared in architecture and music respectively. Attention to the typology of space in architecture and defining its different types including residential, work, transport, holy/secu- lar, recreation, etc. all show the importance of this art in reflecting the social system. With this introduction, in order to approach Iranian art we need to dig into the past and also study the paths of the social history of art. In the past century, Iranian society has been one of the most turbulent contemporary societies and art and culture have had an amazing dynamism and diversity. From the estab- lishment of a national government in Iran after the Constitutional Revolution until the Revolution of 1979 and the war that followed, the change in governmental attitude and the emergence of very different economic and political governmental approaches, art has always followed different fields of culture production. Such passivity is more visible in architecture than in other arts, such that the basis for nearly all historical periodisation of Iranian con- temporary architecture has been different political periods of the Iranian society. This is why governmental buildings provide the most remarkable pattern for evaluating the macro approaches in architecture in different countries.

In other arts too, such categorisation is possible. In visual arts, from the beginning of the past century, new and old tenden- cies have constantly confronted each other. This challenge has also been present between tradition and modernity on a larger scale in Iranian society. However, the challenge was over with Tehran’s first biennial in the 50s and with the modernists emerg- ing as the winners for two decades. Thus began the new era of Iranian modern art. In the years that followed, the cultural policy- makers of the country (who were mostly connected to the royal court and educated in Europe and particularly in France in the field of art and culture), prepared more than ever, through their acquaintance with modern art, the grounds for supporting and consolidating the modernist current and the Iranian contemporary art. The process continued until the 70s. With the establishment of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, Iran entered a new era. In the year the museum was inaugurated, Iranian contempo- rary art had its first experience of economic competition and the tumult of the art/commodity market with its presence in the Swiss art fair. However, in less than a year the social changes following the revolution ended in the absolute dominance of the traditional art and the economic function of art gave its place to political functions and dragged Iranian modern art into a two-decades- long interregnum. Yet, it did not take long until the governmental attitude changed. The economic developments of the Middle East and the emergence of new financial markets for art econo- my drew the attention of investors, banks and small and large- scale capitalists to the economic potentials of contemporary Iran. Hence, economic interests replaces revolutionary tendencies. The situation was more complicated in the case of architec- ture. The Qajar hybrid architecture and the key role that archi- tecture played in creating a regime of signs for the establishment of the national government at the time of Reza Shah show the scope of changes and the establishment of a new cultural and political regime in the Iranian society and its political system of power. A full-fledged hosting of the modern architectural heritage in the Second Pahlavi period and a search for patterns that could respond to the idea of ‘returning to oneself’ (from the 60s until the last years of the Pahlavi regime) reveal the economic devel- opment, the political self-confidence and a recapturing of the cultural identity at this time. Revolutionary approaches to urban- ism and architecture, attention to the decorative elements of the Islamic-Iranian architecture and finally the dominance of mercan- tilism in construction also show the cultural and social qualities of the time and are all functions of factors external to art and architecture. Thus, it is possible to compare and identify various approaches in art of different periods. For instance, ‘romantic na- tionalism’ with a tendency towards ‘returning to oneself’ appears in remarkable works that are regarded today as the heritage of Iranian contemporary architecture. However, if we consider the kind of regionalism reflected in combining modern patterns appearing in the second Pahlavi period to result from the idea of returning to oneself and the self-confidence resulting from the oil wealth of Iran in the 60s and 70s, then its counterpart in the past recent decades would be the ways in which architectural tenden-

cies known as Iranian-Islamic were largely reproduced in Iran, particularly in the development of religious places and buildings related to religious institutions. However, Iranian Revolution was not a point of rupture for Iranian contemporary art disconnecting it from modernism. The cultural strategies of the Special Office (of the Queen) aimed at a kind of exotic neo-traditionalism which was revived after the revolution in a revolutionary form. It just lost its exotic quality. In other words, artists who promoted ‘exotic neo-traditionalism’ in the last years of the Pahlavi era left aside seeing ‘themselves’ as the ‘other’ and started creating artworks with true traditional essence and as representatives of tradition. A clear example is the presence of calligraphy and miniature paint- ing on both sides of that historical development. However, haste and revolutionary reactions soon destroyed the chances for a conscious realisation of neo-traditionalism in Iranian art which was soon to be replaced by socialist slogans or hybrid Islamic art tendencies. The emergence of calligraphy/painting is one of the distinc- tive outcomes of these hybrid tendencies. Although the use of ‘calligraphy’ in painting dates back to the 60s and the Saqqa- khaneh Movement in visual arts, yet there calligraphy, as a visual element, avoided representing concepts related to the ‘word’. It used form as the decorative element of the Iranian culture in order to show its resistance to the omnipresent and ordered modernisation in an unconscious, artistic reaction. Yet, after the revolution, calligraphy in painting was inspired from the hybridisation of the Islamic tradition with a socialist idea that found it necessary for the artistic expression to be understand- able to millions among the masses and used letters and words to directly convey meaning. The words carried the meaning thus the message of the artwork showed itself in the apparent form of the ‘word’. Such formal similarities is also present in the architecture of both periods. Postmodern architecture and referencing post- Islamic architecture which had gained momentum after the 60s was in line with revolutionary principles and served as a solution for the crisis of structure in architecture in the first decade after the revolution. But the demand for housing on the one hand and revolutionary tendencies on the other eliminated the chances for implementing rational policies or architectural thought in urban and architectural development and was replaced with the revolu- tionary prescriptions for mass-production and provision of basic housing. The house as a shelter responding to the basic needs of the immigrant community was one of the political approaches to housing and urbanism in the first years of revolution as well as the years following the war. Such political reading of architecture was reproduced in the last government with Maskan-e Mehr scheme. In the capital, the integration of more than fifty surrounding villages in the main body of the city together with appointing non- specialist revolutionaries to urban management positions in the early years of revolution added to the complexity of the cultural, artistic and architectural affairs. The rural thought also appeared in literature. Cultural region- alism (understood as deriving inspiration from the culture of the lower class as the main heirs of the revolution) turned its atten- tion to the language and culture of the rural society of Iran. This tendency was in line with the leftists’ reading of social realism in art and literature and was supported by leftist intellectuals. The committed revolutionary art drew inspiration on the one hand from the popular art of the Soviet Union and on the other from the street art of Latin American’s political movements. However, the idea of Islamic art in painting came at this time to young religious artists and was more officially organised after the establishment of Hozeh Honari (=The Art Section in Organization of Islamic Propaganda). Social realism in art which was repro- duced through revolutionary posters and murals developed paral- lel to the Hozeh Honari movement in painting. The same social realism also appeared in music and architecture. The idea of ‘art for people’ put forward by political approach to art was reflected in different art movements. The idea forced Tehran Symphonic

Orchestra to perform at squares, public places and nursing homes or promoted the application of Iranian classical music for producing revolutionary music. In architecture too, through rely- ing on the slogan of ‘affordable housing for the poor’ it blocked the path to defending artistic values. The vast media propaganda, which in the early years of the revolution was partly in the hands of the leftist currents and the Tudeh Party, promised giving affordable land in the capital and other large cities to the lower classes of the society through the large headlines of revolutionary newspapers. This approach of the media was in line with the policies of revolutionary institutions such as the Islamic Revolution Housing Foundation which con- sidered its duty to ‘provide housing for the poorer layers of the society’, or the ‘Office for Providing Housing for the Poor’ which in the early days of revolution encouraged villagers to immigrate to cities and occupy empty houses or urban land lots. The trans- fer of the ownership of small pieces of suburb lands (which hap- pened in the committees established for this purpose), the chaos in the management of parallel foundations dealing with urban land and finally the increasing wave of immigration completely disrupted the balance of population in the cities. In retrospective, it is not so hard to realise that in the past decades too we have reproduced in Iran all post-revolution cultural policies. Encourag- ing villagers (as the main inheritors of the revolution) to immi- grate to cities and housing the poor in the houses of the rich or hotels were the first solution. Later transferring the ownership of suburb lands and basic constructions providing housing in a rural manner and finally preparing a scheme such as Maskan-e Mehr for mass production of housing, all in all distanced Iranian con- temporary architecture from its cultural functions and added to its political function. To all these attempts should also be added that of the removal of history and historical narratives from the collective memory in relations between the identity of space and place as well as the decentralisation of cities and disrupting the symbolic order of development which was based on the essence of the centre. Also, the authoritative role of the government in this respect put attending to the needs of the lower classes on top of the list of the priorities of housing and urbanism policies. In other arts too, insistence on popular art was advertised in dominant cultural policies, and in fact, paved the way for producing a third kind of art called governmental art. The paradox of popularis- ing art through governmental policies is also worthy of attention, since governmental art could not be popular by nature…. Immediately after the end of the war, the increasing wave of immigration from villages to the cities continued. Together with the increase in urban population, the post-revolution policies for increasing the population of the Iranian society which through removing all measures on population control created a popula- tion boom and brought the urban population of Iran to its highest rate in history. However, in a vast reversal and with the emergence of the neo-liberal economy of the 90s onwards, political functions were replaced with economic functions. Unbridled constructions pursuing speculative interests now found a space to appear in architecture. Speculative mentality spread to other fields of art in less than a decade and even infested traditional arts. Mass production began in Iranian handicrafts. Classical Iranian music tended towards popular music. Increase in population on the one hand and neo-liberal economy of the 90s on the other expanded the spaces for cultural consumption of the Iranian society. With their new demands and a historical experience different to that of the previous generations, the younger generation became the new consumers of culture in Iranian society. However, the major crisis of economic mercantilism was the one awaiting the visual arts. One should consider that in the past decades the global factors of paying attention to art has changed and the commodification of art has attracted the attention of global financial and monetary transactions. The global market of art economy had become interested in oriental arts, particularly that of the Middle East. Here the Turk, Arab and Iranian artists were celebrated more than others. Such conditions coincided with the

regional economic relations and global approaches to art. The financial systems of the region and the oil capital of the Persian Gulf countries prepared the grounds for the presence of great economic cartels of art such as the Christie’s auction house, at a time when the Arab habitants of the Persian Gulf were inclined to acquire cultural capital and invest in the arts. This was to such an extent that that after four rounds of auctions the highest prices in history were materialised for Iranian artists. From the 20 million dollars revenue of the recent auction in Dubai, the share of Ira- nian artists was more than 12 million. This new economic system created a series of new factors in the art production in Iran which was not in line with any of the previous ones. Before the revolution, the main market for art consumption was that of the classes related with the regime or the institu- tions directly connected to the government. After two decades of interregnum, the changes in economic relations and the appear- ance of new classes, especially the neo-capitalism of the past decade, created a new consumption market for culture and art in Iran. The market was a function of financial and credit systems and promised a quick cultural capital gain. Moreover, art as a commodity, and the artwork as an economic possession, found a function similar to investing in construction in specific parts of large cities as witnessed in the past decade. On the one hand, the ever increasing urban population, the increase in the average level of education and the existence of a young population were among the reasons behind the increase in cultural consumption and the change in contemporary Iranian lifestyle in general. The relation between oil, the special geopolitics of Iran and its strategic position in the region has played an important role in forming the recent culture industry and cultural consump- tion. Hence, determining it can elucidate many changes in the cultural taste and social behaviour of the art community in the recent years. In architecture, the financial system resulting from an unbridled cash flow has led to the initiation of a great number of huge architectural projects fundamentally transforming the roles of pricing as well as the economic values of architecture. Economic mercantilism on the one hand and a demand for cul- tural capital on the other attracted much attention to the surplus value of design and concept and to designers and architects for the first time after the revolution. In a way, if the great cash flows resulting from an incompetent economy became the main force behind construction in a time of severe stagnation of housing, it needed the added value of paying attention to architectural fac- tors and created some (though scarce) chances for architectural experiences. However, the incompetent economy and centralisa- tion of Iranian capital in the housing sector gave a retrograding quality to the economic approach to architecture and the leprosy of uneven urban development rapidly deformed the face of large Iranian cities. To all these, one should add the problem of the corruption caused by economic rents. Both buildings and artworks are a good sites for burying the cash flow and the money laundering resulting from it. Yet, the absence of controllable mechanisms in Iranian contemporary art and particularly the art society caused the systems for money laundering and macro-economic mer- cantilism to turn their backs to Iranian contemporary art and lean towards mass construction. The collapse of the economic value of Iranian visual artworks in comparison to Dubai’s famous auc- tion proves this. Hence construction overtook artworks. As such, the common reasons behind the shared attention that visual arts and architecture have received lies in the specu- lative mentality and the sick economy of contemporary Iranian society which itself follows the regional financial and economic relations. Speculative relations within the art production and consump- tion cycle threatens the surplus value of Iranian artworks every day. However, a set of other factors has aggravated the precari- ous situation of art economy in Iran: The fake increase in price of artworks by the artists of the middle generation, the unfamiliarity of clients and investors, the insufficient knowledge of dealers and middlemen, the limitation of distinct artworks, forgeries, lack of

valuable artworks and imitation of economically successful works in the so-called ‘visual market’ are all among the threats against the cultural function of visual artworks in Iran today. On the one hand, in the third phase of the post-revolution contemporary art a new generation of artists has emerged who neither belong to the ideologies of the left or right, nor had a reliable lived experience of that historical past. The boom in population and the expansion of educational spaces including art schools, universities and faculties of art and architecture added to the population of the art community in Iran, not only as produc- ers but also as the consumers of culture. Hundreds of art galler- ies opened and consuming cultural spaces and weekly visits to galleries, cultural and art centres turned into common habits of urban life in the capital at this time. The distinct characteristic of this new generation was their instant presence as artists in the present moment and their reflection of their condition as con- temporary Iranian humans. However, this current was heavily influenced by economic mercantilism in art in the past years and quickly lost its originality. Although the expansion of media, open global relations and exchange of ideas were positive signs for dynamism of art, yet when combined with mercantilism they resulted in unexpected outcomes. Thus, personal expression in art was replaced with imitation and influences received from the art market. Popularisa- tion and imitation from journals and internet resources and com- puter architecture was the counterpart of the same situation in ar- chitecture. Great many works are created without any reference to their surrounding environment or through obvious imitation, or are products of computer software or new industrial technologies, or designed according to the taste of the nouveau riche. To generalise, one can say Iranian contemporary art of the past decades has been more influenced by political and eco- nomic relations than the intention of serving cultural functions. In other words, one can name the first two decades after the revolu- tion as the era of political art and the current era as the time of dominance of mercantilism in art. Political art or commodification of art can both be inter- preted forms of ‘symbolic violence’ in art which happens through imposing a set of signs and organising a system of significance acceptable to the dominating structure. It is in such conditions that actors in the field of art production and consumption (includ- ing artists and addressees unaware of the process of imposing signs) could be categorised into large-scale political and social currents, within the historical transition. Here the political back- ground plays a key role as the decisive factor in the structure of other contexts. Here we can cite Pierre Bourdieu, the distinguished contem- porary philanthropist, and produce some hope. In his view, social structures guide social action. In other words, structures struc- ture. Yet, social actions are also influential in shaping the struc- ture. To put it differently, structures are structured too. As such, the subjects of art can perform, as social subjects, a serious role in forming the social structure of contemporary art. To passing difficult turning points of history seen as deep political, cultural and social abysses resulting from consequent changes which, like storms of events, have thrown the contem- porary Iranian around: the experience of passing through an ancient history: the end of the era of Iranian kingdom and empire and the beginning of a new era based on religious grounds and its integration in the republic, the experience of a true war: the longest classic war of the 20th century and the experience of passing from a socialist viewpoint to unbridled capitalism and much more… All these in an extremely short time span and with- in the professional lifetime of an artist, painter, poet or writer… How could this not be a unique experience? Threats and ruptures as such could suddenly turn into an exceptional chance and, like a glimmer in a dark desert, show the path to a city or promise a bright day. For those who have made deeply creative chances out of such huge experiences, the Iranian thought can reach a special and distinguished status not only in art and architecture but also in any other fields.