Tag: Art History

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Journal

A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future

A special issue of the Journal of Art Historiography: A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future, No. 28, June 2023, guest edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati.

Table of Contents

  • Yuka Kadoi: ‘A Twenty-Year Retrospect on ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’: Polarising Islamic art, consolidating Persian art’
  • Nile Green: ‘The rekhta of architecture: the development of ‘Islamic’ art history in Urdu, c.1800-1950’
  • Ebba Koch: ‘Discovering Mughal painting in Vienna by Josef Strzygowski and his circle: the historiography of the Millionenzimmer’
  • Henry P. Colburn: ‘A brief historiography of Parthian art, from Winckelmann to Rostovtzeff’
  • Iván Szántó: ‘West-östlich diplomacy and connoisseurship in the late Habsburg Empire: Baron Albert Eperjesy and his dispersed collection of Persian art’ 
  • Kassiani Kagouridi: ‘Musealisation and ethno-cultural stereotypes in Persian art: the case of Baluch carpets ca. 1870s – 1930s’ 
  • Tomasz Grusiecki (Boise State University), ‘Rethinking the so-called Polish carpets’
  • Dorothy Armstrong: ‘Persophilia and technocracy: carpets in the World of Islam Festival, 1976’
  • Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp: ‘The ‘Iran’ Curtain: the historiography of Abu’l-Khairid (Shaybanid) arts of the book and the ‘Bukhara School’ during the Cold War’
  • Robert Hillenbrand: ‘Eric Schroeder: maverick polymath’
  • Andrea Luigi Corsi: ‘A matter of timing: the modern history of a ‘Sasanian’ silver plate from Rashy’
  • Johannes L. Kurz: ‘Dashi 大食 reconsidered’ 
  • Jens Kröger: ‘Kurt Erdmann (1901-1964)’
  • Jens Kröger: ‘Carl Johan Lamm (1902-1981)’
  • Joachim Gierlichs: ‘Ernst Cohn-Wiener (1882-1941) and his contribution on Islamic Art and Architecture in Central Asia’ 
Categories
Books

Gandhāran Art in its Buddhist Context

Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2023. Gandhāran art in its Buddhist context. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.

This book considers Gandhāran art in relation to its religious contexts and meanings within ancient Buddhism. Addressing the responses of patrons and worshippers at the monasteries and shrines of Gandhāra, papers seek to understand more about why Gandhāran art was made and what its iconographical repertoire meant to ancient viewers.

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Books

The Rediscovery and Reception of Gandhāran Art

Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2022. The rediscovery and reception of Gandhāran art. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.

From the archaeologists and smugglers of the Raj to the museums of post-partition Pakistan and India, from coin-forgers and contraband to modern Buddhism and contemporary art, this fourth volume of the Gandhāra Connections project presents the most recent research on the factors that mediate our encounter with Gandhāran art.

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Articles

To Be or Not to Be (Divine)

Waters, Matt. 2021. To be or not to be (divine): The Achaemenid king and essential ambiguity in image, text, and historical context. In: Karen Sonik (ed.), Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the ancient world, 159–181. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

This chapter concerns itself with ideological expressions or, better, intimations of royal divinity during the Achaemenid Period (559–330 BCE). It is a foray into not only art historical matters but also subjects that have their own well-developed methodologies beyond their application in Near Eastern studies, particularly ideology and ambiguity. It takes as its case study a series of deliberately ambiguous portrayals of the Achaemenid king, primarily from the reign of Darius I, that blur the already vague line between king and god, and it briefly considers the impetus and implications for these.

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Articles

Three Women from Elam

Rafiei-Alavi, Babak, Faranak Bahrololoumi & Sabine Klein. 2022. Three women from Elam: A revision of the Haft Tappeh metal plaque. BASOR 387, 171-180.

Top: new drawing of the metal plaque of Haft Tappeh, bottom: old drawing. (Drawings by B. Rafiei-Alavi, bottom drawing after Negahban 1991: Ill. 4)

The metal plaque of Haft Tappeh was found more than 60 years ago, and except for a few scenes on terracotta plaques and cylinder seals from both Elam and Mesopotamia with similar but not identical settings, it still has no known parallels in metal and remains a unique example of Elamite art. The present article is a study of this object from the heartland of the Elamite kingdom in the Khuzestan Plain. It revisits the scenic plaque and attempts to correct some of the misunderstandings regarding the identification of its iconography and symbology based on new photos, X-ray images, and lab analysis. The article also tries to place the plaque in its proper spatial and temporal context, using comparative methods and chemical and isotope analysis.

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Books

Afterlives of Ancient Rock-Cut Monuments in the Near East

Ben-Dov, Jonathan & Felipe Rojas (eds.). 2021. Afterlives of ancient rock-cut monuments in the Near East. Brill.

This book concerns the ancient rock-cut monuments carved throughout the Near East, paying particular attention to the fate of these monuments in the centuries after their initial production. As parts of the landscapes in which they were carved, they acquired new meanings in the cultural memory of the people living around them. The volume joins numerous recent studies on the reception of historical texts and artefacts, exploring the peculiar affordances of these long-lasting and often salient monuments. The volume gathers articles by archeologists, art historians, and philologists, covering the entire Near East, from Iran to Lebanon and from Turkey to Egypt. It also analyzes long-lasting textual traditions that aim to explain the origins and meaning of rock-cut monuments and other related carvings.

Three chapters of this volume deals specifically Ancient Iranian rock-cut monuments:

Continue reading “Afterlives of Ancient Rock-Cut Monuments in the Near East”
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Events

Persian Art

PERSIAN ART

THE SHIFTING OF OBJECTS, IMAGES AND IDEAS IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY CENTRAL EUROPE

The event “Persian Art” comprises three parts: A pre-workshop seminar (­Programme & Registration), the workshop (Programme & Registration) and an evening lecture on Alois Musil by Matthew Rampley.

Each is running in three different modes of participation (online, hybrid and in-person). As in-person participation remains limited, please contact the organiser Yuka Kadoi (yuka.kadoi@univie.ac.at) about available seats.

The event is one of the pioneering attempts to contextualise the historiographical background of Persian art in early twentieth-century Central Europe, while showcasing the scholarly tradition of non-Western art histories in Vienna and beyond.

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Books

The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East

Neumann, Kiersten & Allison Thomason (eds.). 2021. The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East. London: Routledge.

Among other interesting subjects offered in this volume, a number of contributions explicitly deal with the material from ancient Iran:

  • Kiersten Neumann: To touch upon – A tactile exploration of the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis
  • Megan Cifarelli: Dress, sensory assemblages, and identity in the early first millennium bce at Hasanlu, Iran
  • Neville McFerrin: A sense of scale – Proprioception, embodied subjectivities, and the space of kingship at Persepolis
Continue reading “The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East”
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Books

Epic Iran

Curtis, John, Ina Sarikhani Sandmann &Tim Stanley. 2021. Epic Iran: 5000 Years of culture. London: V&A Publishing.

Iran was the home of some of the greatest civilizations of both the ancient and medieval worlds, but these achievements remain poorly known and largely misunderstood outside the country. Epic Iran tells the story of Iran from pre-Islamic through modern times and provides an opportunity to see pieces from key museum and private collections. This book combines the ancient and Islamic periods and continues the narrative into the contemporary world. It shows how civilized life emerged in Iran around 3,200 BC and how a distinctive Iranian identity formed 2,500 years ago has survived until today, expressed in the Persian language and in religious affiliations.

Lavishly illustrated, some 250 images showcase pieces including goldwork, ceramics, glass, illustrated manuscripts, textiles, carpets, oil paintings, drawings, and photographs. Alongside the historical sweep are examples from contemporary artists and makers, demonstrating the rich antecedents still influencing some modern-day practitioners.

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Articles

On Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin

Overton, Keelan & Kimia Maleki. 2020. The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: A present history of a living shrine, 2018-20. Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World 1(1–2). 120–149.

The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin, a tomb-shrine located south of Tehran, is well known for supplying global museums with iconic examples of Ilkhanid-period luster tilework. After providing a historiography of the site, including its plunder in the late nineteenth century, we explore its current (2018–20) “life” in order to illuminate the many ways that it can be accessed, used, perceived, and packaged by a wide range of local, national, and global stakeholders. Merging past and present history, art history and amateur anthropology, and the academic, personal, and popular voice, this article explores the Emamzadeh Yahya’s delicate and active existence between historical monument, museum object, sacred space, and cultural heritage.

From the article’s abstract

Editors’ note: this article’s topic is slightly outside of our usual focus. However, we wish to give it a higher visibility as it highlights important issues, such as plunder and theft of sacred sites while exploring the shrine’s history ‘between historical monument, museum object, sacred space, and cultural heritage’. The article is open access. ~AZ