New Art, New Markets by Iain Robertson

Author:Iain Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
Published: 2018-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

Iranians, Moshiri observes, are always quoting verses from the past without necessarily knowing their origins or their authors. The inscription on another of his jars carries the words of the poet Hafez, which were inspired by the song of the nightingale.

Neither Persepolis nor Pasargadae, Holland explains, were cosmopolitan cities in the Babylonian sense; they were not home to the teeming mass of humanity but rather exhibited Persian might in the manner of Hadrian’s Rome.11 Indeed, Elliot suggests that they may have been ceremonial cities. Iran’s imperial authority could instead be seen in the pronounced use of precious materials from the lands of subject peoples that went into the construction of its major metropolises. The metaphor was extended even to minerals and elements: after Darius conquered the Punjab, a gigantic jar filled with the waters of the Indus was presented to the king by his victorious armies, to lie in his treasury with the waters of other great rivers from vanquished lands. This fact may have occurred to Moshiri when he set to work on his series of paintings depicting jars.

The internationalism of Aryana, which was later maintained under the Parthians12 and Sassanians (224–651), was expressed more subtly in the trilingual texts carved into relief rock sculptures of Darius and the subjugated kings at Bisitun (northwestern Iran).13 Here, it is tempting to think, may lie the metaphoric inspiration for Tanavoli’s The Wall (Oh, Persepolis) or, indeed, his equally statuesque and throne-like Oh Persepolis II (1975–2008). Soft power was expressed in the quality of mercy. It was Cyrus who banished the defeated Median king, Astyages, rather than putting him to death, and it was this mightiest of monarchs who, after victory over Lydia, allowed King Croesus and his fabulous treasury to remain in Sardis. In so doing, he offered a partnership to the conquered. The multilingual texts that were either buried in the foundations of Persian buildings or marked on columns and cliff faces were, according to Mathew Stolper, intended for posterity and representative of a diverse and complex society that, because of this inclusive approach to communication, failed ‘to spread Iranian languages in Western Asia in the way that Hellenistic rule spread Ancient Greek or Roman rule spread Latin’ (Stolper 2005, p.24).

Zoroastrianism – a religion that took root in Iran around the time of Cyrus II in 590 BCE, although some scholars believe that it could have emerged as early as 1200 BCE (Nabarz 2005) – divided the world into a battlefield between the forces of light and dark and, in the later form of Mithraism, permeated much of the Roman Empire. In the early stage of the development of this religion, it is often referred to as Mazdaism (after central deity, Ahura Mazda) – with other deities incorporated into its structure. Mithra, for example, became the sun god. In Moshiri’s diptych of ceramic bowls in silver and gold with alternating backgrounds (2006), gold representing Mithra, the sun and friend, and silver the darkness beyond allude to the struggle between good and evil that is at the core of Zoroastrianism.

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