Arab and Iranian art sales hit Paris

The latest from Artinfo.com :

>>On Oct. 24 the house will signal "its commitment to this part of the world," auctioneer François Tajan says, by holding its first sale of Iranian and Arab modern and contemporary art in Paris.<<

Meantime, Sotheby's London is a step ahead - they've been doing those sales for a few years already, and are now planning to incorporate Arab and Iranian art into their other contemporary art sales later this month: an acknowledgement, as it were, that these artists, and the glorious art that they produce, has become a part of the global art scene.  More on the Sotheby's sale to come.

Iranian Contemporary Art - Book Review in Wallpaper

Worth reading - with a summary of the history of Iranian contemporary art (newer than you'd imagine):

>>The Islamic Republic, which took power in 1979, immediately rejected all modern art as decadent, excluding any discourse. It didn’t help that most forward-thinking artists immediately fled the country for Europe and the US. What replaced the vacuum was reminiscent of Socialist Realism, an art form dominated by the large propaganda murals that for years decorated the urban landscape. This so called ‘Irano-Islamic’ art also included the return of calligraphy, albeit using only religious texts.

Contemporary Iranian art was born at the close of the 20th century under the reformist president Mohammad Khatami. He actively encouraged an external dialogue with western artists as well as with the large Iranian diaspora, for example inviting New York-based artist Shirin Neshat to exhibit in Iran. The internet opened the window for Iranian artists to join the global debate. A new generation of artists, many of them women, emerged and began expressing themselves through other mediums such as video installation and art photography.<<

Me, I'm ordering the book.

Kandinsky, the Spiritual in Art, and Islamic Contemporary

Something extraordinary happened in the middle of the Kandinsky show, now up at the Guggenheim Museum: I saw contemporary Islamic art.  

In this Russian-born painter's  patterns and curves and iconography, calligraphy emerged, and story, and the power of line and form -- the way calligraphy converges language and line and form and color --  and "the spiritual in art," as Kandinsky called it, pressed out from the canvases and into the marbled light of the museum.  

It is this, I realized, which draws me to contemporary Islamic painting, as well.  It is here, too, this spiritual in art, this symphony of riches.

Iranian Election Uprisings Interfere With Los Angeles Exhibition

A planned exhibition of Iranian street art in Los Angeles faces problems that result from the June elections and the mass demonstrations that followed them, according to the LA Times:

>>Weeks ago the artist, who goes by the name ICY, tried to send the work to Shahbazi, along with about two dozen other pieces. But a postal employee in Tabriz, Iran, opened the package, inspected the work and deemed it unsuitable for shipping to the U.S.

"He told me we can't send these . . . works because they have green color," ICY wrote in an e-mail.<<

Full story is here.

Hala El Koussy wins Abraaj Capital Art Prize

Hala El Koussy, a photographer originally from Cairo, has been named the winner of the 2009 Abraaj Capital Art prize, along with Jelle Bouwhuis, director of the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum's Bureau Amsterdam.   El Koussy, who has been working in the Netherlands for the past few years, is known for  photographs that focus on Cairo culture, and on the tensions between reality and the photographic scene (In one project, for instance, she created a photo album of an Egyptian "family" that did not really exist; the portraits in the photos were of people who had no real relationship with one another.)    The $200,000 prize, created by a private-equity firm based in Dubai, will fund an upcoming project to be produced for exhibition at the 2010 Art Dubai. 

The Times Goes On...

Funny thing: about two years ago, I offered a story to the NY Times' Arts & Leisure section on the importance of the art coming out of the Middle East, and of exhibiting contemporary Middle Eastern art in the West while Western art was appearing in the Middle East. Apparently, I was too soon. Now, Jori Finkel, a fantastic writer/reporter and my former editor at Art & Auction, takes on the subject in the Times' latest coverage on "The American Qur'an."

With my own book on Islam in the West due for publication in a few months, I found the following particularly interesting:

>>The first exhibitions of Mr. Birk’s “American Qur’an,” a work-on-paper series that is roughly a third complete, is about to open: 30 hand-painted pages at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco starting on Thursday and another 30 at Koplin Del Rio gallery in Culver City starting Friday. (A New York exhibition slated for this fall at the P.P.O.W. Gallery was rescheduled for winter 2010 after a gallery fire.)

“We’re very concerned about repercussions from the Muslim community,” said the Culver City gallery owner, Eleana Del Rio. “But it’s important to know that Sandow did this with the best intentions, no irony or satire intended.”<<

 Ms. Del Rio is clearly aware of something many Americans are not: the dangers associated with presenting the Koran in anything but the most reverential context, even here in the West. Other artists, after all, have taken on similar risks -- like Sooreh Hera, for instance, whose photographs of gay men dressed as Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali led to death threats against her and warnings to the museum where they were scheduled to be shown (until a certain lily-livered museum director gave in). I commend Del Rio and the other gallery owners for their courage and their principles.

I am also, if I may say so frankly, rather proud to have been at the forefront of this - and look forward to more exciting events and projects (my own among them) ahead. Stay tuned.

LTMH Gallery

The Times story is here. Meantime my colleague and I visited the space today, which proved a pleasant excursion, though not quite the magnificent experience I'd hoped for - many of the works on view are less than the artists' best, and some of the best artists were tucked away into corners and hard to find - perhaps because their prices don't quite meet the level of some of the others. What also struck me was how haphazard the installation seemed to be; I found no rhyme nor reason for the works' placement, no relationships to speak of among adjacent pieces, with the exception, perhaps, of the multi-media works which, for expedience sake, were placed together in one room. (But then, why were so many other works also in that room - works that had no relationship to the multi-media ones beyond the national origin of their makers?)

Nonetheless, I'd encourage New Yorkers interested in art of the region to visit the space at 39 East 78th Street, where they will in any case receive a quick overview of contemporary Iranian art and the major stars, if not the major works.