Express
A Reply to Nasinine T.
August 7, 2009
Dear Nasinine T.:
Although I am an art historian by métier, I never quite remember dates. But I do remember signal encounters. About two years before the fall of the shah, I was chatting with a couple of architects who were preparing to go to Iran to build dazzling modern structures for—as they say—“the people” of Iran. What! I exclaimed. You will be lunching in the palace with the shah and in the basement his agents will be torturing guys just like you. But of course, they thought I was exaggerating and went away.
At the time, I had found some Iranian students, mostly at Columbia, who were trying to reveal the real situation. I marched with them down Broadway, and learned how to dodge horses and billy sticks. When the “revolution” finally came, these graduate students rushed home to participate. You know the rest, I’m sure. Of about twenty, I know of only one who escaped the zealots and went to Scandinavia. The news of their disappearance was never broadcast here, and I have always had a hollow feeling of despair about how much in my lifetime had been left unrevealed.
The rapidity of Internet news somewhat dims the significance of what really happens… Only accounts such as yours can invade the imaginations of those who are concerned. Please do not abandon the print media (whatever is left, alas) and give us more authentic reportage. An image such as the fascists painting Xs on buildings is worth a thousand emails.
Cordially,
Dore Ashton
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Chance encounters are my alibi
By Marlene DumasOCT 2019 | Critics Page
I was looking for something else when I came across this quote amongst my chaotic hills of clippings.
Arthur Simms: The Big Picture, One Halo, Sculptures and Drawings
By Hovey BrockDEC 18-JAN 19 | ArtSeen
Simms’s reputation rests on his sculptures, which typically include discarded objects. In this show we get six works from across a range of dates from 1992 to the present.
Le Modèle noir de Géricault à Matisse
By Norman L KleeblattDEC 19-JAN 20 | ArtSeen
In 1992 art historian and writer Eunice Lipton published Alias Olympia: A Woman’s Search for Manet’s Notorious Model. The book focuses on Lipton’s obsessive art historical pursuit to identify and better understand the life of Edouard Manet’s celebrated but little-known model, Victorine Meurent. It was Meurent who sat for—some might say collaborated on—his provocative masterpiece, Olympia (1863).
Existere
By JocJonJoschNOV 2018 | Critics Page
Existere is an artist book based on a living sculpture that took place on three dates in July 2011 at Testbed1 in London. In collaboration with 125 volunteers, the performance took the form of a “shelter” made of naked human bodies. The “shelter” was held together in an endured brace, before inevitably coming apart, pausing and reforming.
