More Articles...
Print
A Reply to Nasinine T.
by Dore AshtonAugust 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
SURREAL ENCOUNTERS: COLLECTING THE MARVELOUS
Works from the Collections of Roland Penrose, Edward James, Gabrielle Keiller and Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch
by Mary Ann Caws
JUL-AUG 2016 | ArtSeen
An exhibition jointly organized by SNGMA, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, where it will be shown after the only United Kingdom showing in Edinburgh.
DOUGLAS CRIMP with Jarrett Earnest
OCT 2016 | Art
In October’s inaugural installment of “Close Encounters,” critic and art historian Douglas Crimp discusses his new book, Before Pictures (Dancing Foxes Press, Co-published with University of Chicago Press, 2016), a hybrid of memoir and cultural history about his life in 1970s New York.
Art Encounters Law
by Joan KeeMAR 2016 | Editor's Message
From renting studio space in which to live and work to expectations concerning the sale and reproduction of artwork, making decisions with legal implications has been increasingly entrenched in being an artist.
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.
RSS