This chapter reviews the historiography of Iranian art during the period from the late 1940s to the 2010s, including their ideological premises, sources and discourses, the historical models they are based in, their temporal perspective, as well as their linguistic and terminological choices. By exploring writings, consisting of periodical (magazines and newspapers) articles and critical writings on exhibitions and biennials, personal reflections from artists, attitudes reflected in various types of press and books, both in Persian and English, it examines the development of art criticism and writing on art during the aforementioned period. I will show how negotiation of cultural and political associations, debates on common encounters with modernism, discussions about the values of modern and contemporary artistic practice, questions of authenticity, the constant fluctuation between past and present and their attribution to the nature of Iranian culture have reflected in those primary sources. Indeed, publications and critical writings and the establishment of art institutions – both public and private – significantly increased during the 1960s and 1970s and after a decade gap re-emerged in the post-revolutionary period in the 1990s and 2000s. Arranged in a generally chronological order, this chapter examines these developments in order to gain a wider picture of how modern and contemporary art have been perceived throughout this time. I argue that in many examples, largely exhibition reviews (naqd-e nemāyeshgāh), general texts on modern art (honar-e now) and art-ists’ interviews appearing in periodicals, one can see hesitancy, admiration, wonder, sarcasm, humiliation and constant intellectual conflict of the writers with modern art practices. These texts reveal how socio-political spirits of the time affected art and artistic engagements. Therefore, I put particular emphasis on how these writings reflect artistic events, movements and their discursive challenges.

Reflections on the Modern Art of Iran

The development of modernism in the art of Iran was fuelled by the rapid modernisation processes occurring in other areas of Iranian life, specifically the country's socio-political culture during the 1940s. The modernisation of the Pahlavi period (1925–79) undertook a form of modernism in adaptation of certain Western developments and institutions. Most of the coun-try's political, economic and even social apparatus were overhauled based on these patterns.