Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting a research-oriented exhibition of protest art that examines the events of 1353-1363 and their impact on the transformation of contemporary art.
In the 40s (1960s AD) the society was seeing some amount of stability. But, in the decade that followed the Iranian society went through drastic developments and changes, and the power of this wave and its widespread impact on the society made it the subject of the work of significant and prominent artists of that period. Those artists’ method in creating their works is more expressionist and figurative.
One of the researches believes that another important feature of this exhibition is that many of the works on display will be available to the public for the first time in four decades, among which the works of Hannibal Al-Khas have salient characteristics. After the Revolution of 1357, in Farvardin 1358, this artist, in collaboration with artists such as Niloufar Ghaderi Nejad, exhibited works at the Ferdows Garden. After that, later in the same year, the museum of Contemporary Art, the only place to display works with this scale of importance and which could reflect the arts’ trend after the 1979 revolution, hosted these works and since then they have not been displayed elsewhere.
After the 1358 (1979) exhibition these works became national and private art treasures. Therefore, this exhibition will hold this important event in close connection with private art collectors.
“Mirror inside mirror” is a method for understand and interpreting the society’s developments and events by arranging the artistic works that have been impacted by these events, like putting pieces of a puzzle together. During his visit of the exhibition and regarding the connection between art and social developments, Mohammad Reza Moridi, a professor and faculty member of the University of Arts said that it could not be precisely determined whether art affects society or that the artist is affected and creates art about the events in society.
Moridi considers the division of works of art according to their subject as the result of research that has been done in the years after the creation of the work. Our interpretation of artists’ works results from studies of chronology or history and the study of social developments that the artist has faced. Putting the name “art of protest” on a series of works that have been created at a certain point in time does not mean that the artist has created this work with the same motive and purpose. It is better to say that these works are a mirror of social events that have coincided with the artist’s life.
Moridi believes that to think that artists in the post-revolutionary decades no longer create works reflecting social events as similar to pre-revolutionary period, is a mis-judgement because the artist’s mind can change like any other person, over time. There may not even be a change of mindset in the artist. The critical question is whether the artist today, like the previous generations before the revolution, is active about the events and happenings of the society or not ?!
Sohrab Hadi, a veteran artist and a student of Faramarz Pilaram, a prominent artist of the Saqakhaneh art movement in Iran, considers pre-revolutionary art to be the position of artists vanguards who show the first reaction to social events. Hadi Abshkhor considers works of art that created and evoked the protest of the society before the revolution as Marxist currents. He mentions Firooz Shirvanloo, one of the cultural directors in the second Pahlavi period. Hadi says that Shirvanloo gained important positions with the coalition he was able to form with the court, but later, along with learning the waves of protest and revolution, he was accompanied by changes and transformations in the society. Sohrab Hadi describes the artistic movement in the Pahlavi period as a utopia that sought to create intellectual and social currents through art and philosophy that would define the imperial structure among the people and different strata of society.
Hadi considers the artists of the pre-revolutionary currents, especially Hannibal al-Khas, to be followers of the Marxist currents in which Shirvanloo had the most outstanding share in promoting it. Shirvanloo, who joined Franklin Publications, later played an important role in developing the Children and Adolescents Intellectual Development Center and named the Niavaran Cultural Center after the Niavaran Cultural Complex. During the events of 1979, this cultural center published a statement to support the protests and revolution of the society.
Kiannoush Motaghedi, Art Researcher
Sohrab Hadi, Painter and Art Researcher
Dr. Mohammadreza Moridi, Faculty member of the University of Arts
Photos by Majid Niknafs
