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DOI Artikel:Kleiber, Katarzyna: The images of Ayatollah Khomeini: a confrontation and reconciliation of Iranian and Western art forms
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29069#0198
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KATARZYNA KLEIBER
showing the last shah etc.). As a result, they could properly recognize
only these themes which they had seen and which have been explained
earlier. In practice, in the years between 1979 andl988, for an average
Iranian not trained as an art professional, only the subject matters draw-
ing from local religion, mythology and history were very fully compre-
hendible.ss
Another substantial difference between the Euramerican way of
thinking about art and the Iranian conception of artistic creation regards
an approach to originality. In Persian art, before its contact with con-
temporary Western artistic movements and their theoretical basis, an
innovation was not a deciding factor of the value of artworks. Similar
indifference characterized Iranians' attitude towards ownership of copy-
right on pictures. Thus, copying someone else's works, even without any
modifications and indicating the origin of the prototype, was a common
practice in those days in Iran.36
For abovementioned reason, from the Iranian point of view there
were no strict boundaries between indigenous and foreign artistic lan-
guages. The contradictions between Iranian and Western art, so appar-
ent for European or American art historians, in all likelihood were not
felt by the Iranian artists and their audience in the time given. Deprived
of their historical and geographical dimensions as well as their original
socio-political context, the Iranian Western-like pictures were able to
convey any message, even so distant from and contradictory to Eurame-
rican ideology, such as Islamie revolutionary ideas.
Additionally, if we forget for a moment what we know about the his-
tory of Western painting, it is possible to list a lot of parallels between
traditional Persian art and contemporary art transferred to Iran from
the West. From this perspective, surrealism, featuring unexpected, in-
congruous juxtapositions of objects and lacking causality in pictorial nar-
ration, expressed itself in the same way as the Persian miniaturę and
coffeehouse painting, which sometimes also presented a sequence of
events with no respect to their chronology and rendered people and
things scattered on the surface of the picture without regard tor the rules
of Western scientific perspective. When considered separately from its
socio-political background (e.g. the Western mass culture), pop art rnani-
fests the same visual qualities as traditional Iranian painting (e.g. fond-
ss Amongst the visual representations of Khomeini there are also some posters which
belong to this group. For example the picture showing Khomeini within the tradition of
the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad into heaven in classical Persian miniaturę paint-
ing. For morę examples see P. Chelkowski, H. Dabashi, op.cit., pp. 32-65.
ss Ibid., W. Hanaway, op.cit., pp. 31-50.
KATARZYNA KLEIBER
showing the last shah etc.). As a result, they could properly recognize
only these themes which they had seen and which have been explained
earlier. In practice, in the years between 1979 andl988, for an average
Iranian not trained as an art professional, only the subject matters draw-
ing from local religion, mythology and history were very fully compre-
hendible.ss
Another substantial difference between the Euramerican way of
thinking about art and the Iranian conception of artistic creation regards
an approach to originality. In Persian art, before its contact with con-
temporary Western artistic movements and their theoretical basis, an
innovation was not a deciding factor of the value of artworks. Similar
indifference characterized Iranians' attitude towards ownership of copy-
right on pictures. Thus, copying someone else's works, even without any
modifications and indicating the origin of the prototype, was a common
practice in those days in Iran.36
For abovementioned reason, from the Iranian point of view there
were no strict boundaries between indigenous and foreign artistic lan-
guages. The contradictions between Iranian and Western art, so appar-
ent for European or American art historians, in all likelihood were not
felt by the Iranian artists and their audience in the time given. Deprived
of their historical and geographical dimensions as well as their original
socio-political context, the Iranian Western-like pictures were able to
convey any message, even so distant from and contradictory to Eurame-
rican ideology, such as Islamie revolutionary ideas.
Additionally, if we forget for a moment what we know about the his-
tory of Western painting, it is possible to list a lot of parallels between
traditional Persian art and contemporary art transferred to Iran from
the West. From this perspective, surrealism, featuring unexpected, in-
congruous juxtapositions of objects and lacking causality in pictorial nar-
ration, expressed itself in the same way as the Persian miniaturę and
coffeehouse painting, which sometimes also presented a sequence of
events with no respect to their chronology and rendered people and
things scattered on the surface of the picture without regard tor the rules
of Western scientific perspective. When considered separately from its
socio-political background (e.g. the Western mass culture), pop art rnani-
fests the same visual qualities as traditional Iranian painting (e.g. fond-
ss Amongst the visual representations of Khomeini there are also some posters which
belong to this group. For example the picture showing Khomeini within the tradition of
the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad into heaven in classical Persian miniaturę paint-
ing. For morę examples see P. Chelkowski, H. Dabashi, op.cit., pp. 32-65.
ss Ibid., W. Hanaway, op.cit., pp. 31-50.