Abstract
The art scene and its spaces in Tehran enjoy various degrees of recognition from official, permitted, registered models to unofficial practices. Artistic practices experience a blurred division between the official and the unofficial, and between visibility and invisibility. The complex and multifold conditions in which alternative and non-market-driven artists work leave them striving for survival strategies among which spatial and architectural tactics play a key role. Whether deliberately or not, the working strategies of alternative artistic practices in Tehran employ architecture as one of their main instruments of liberation.
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Notes
- 1.
For more information, also see previous chapters.
- 2.
For example the 1979 Revolution, Iran-Iraq war and the 2009 Green Movement, etc.
- 3.
In Ayatollah Khomeini’s book Kashf al-Asrar (1942), private property and the middle class were looked up to and encouraged to preserve. He had noted that he would respect and privilege private property, and the privacy of the domestic space.
- 4.
For example, Javadipour freelanced as a graphic designer and was also working in the National Bank of Iran’s printing lab, as mentioned in his interview with an Iranian periodical Aftab-e Yazd, re-published on his website: The Iranian Academy of Arts, Graphic Design in Iran Has Had a Grandfather. too [online] available at: http://javadipour.honar.ac.ir/index.aspx?fkeyid=&siteid=13&pageid=611&newsview=4166 [accessed 28 Sep. 2016].
- 5.
It was located on a corner in the intersection of Bahar Street and Shahreza Avenue (now Enghelab Avenue).
- 6.
There was a membership system in which the members would pay a monthly membership fee, contributing to the ordinary expenses of Apadana.
- 7.
The ticket sales for these events further sustain the space.
- 8.
At a further point, Reza Jorjani, professor in literature, proposed a series of talks on essays he had been translating; it was one of the last series of events that took place in Apadana, for during one of these sessions the audience witnessed him faint and eventually pass away. The space was closed in condolence while the collective decided to move the gallery.
- 9.
Galerie Esthétique was the second gallery which opened in Tehran a few years after Apadana in 1954, by Marcos Grigorian (Kiaras 2010: 16–17).
- 10.
Café Ferdowsi (1943) was a hangout place attracting a large number of writers and intellectuals for years. For more, see the chapter on cafés.
- 11.
When asked to sell an artist’s work, the collective came up with the idea to put his works on the sidewalk right out the door of the club, which turned out very successful. The event was followed in a weekly ritual later on. To hear more, see Global Art Forum (2010), Tehran in the 1970s. [video] available at: https://vimeo.com/14117810 [accessed 28 Sep. 2016].
- 12.
It created an alternative economic model to the existing one of the galleries or institutions. Later in 1967, the first art auction in Tehran was held in Rasht 29 showing contemporary Iranian art, which was a completely unofficial event, yet attended by royal guests such as the queen Farah Diba and the then prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda . The well-received auction was a rare opportunity at the time, for the artists to expose their work to new and more extensive markets (Diba 2016).
- 13.
So the idea of the space started as a gathering place for the guild of artists, and in this sense, it officially kept a specific level of limit and privacy. There was someone at the door to filter who to enter. However, after a while when the club gained more popularity, became known to non-artists and the bourgeois of Tehran as a popular space whose membership indicated a certain social or cultural status; this went to an extent that tourists and backpackers would stop by on their way there. A membership system was reintroduced, to filter the crowd and maintain a certain kind of audience. The events were of a variety of natures beyond simply showing the works of artists: there was also serving meals, bringing street musicians, poem readings, etc. In fact, in a way, the club was reaching out to events that were already happening in town and arranged more of them in the particular way of Rasht 29 events.
- 14.
Young artists would go to him asking to show their work in this unofficial exposition space; meanwhile he also personally became more and more interested to buy artists’ work to financially support these practices. For instance, listen to Shahab Fotouhi’s words at ibid.
- 15.
According to Ave himself, a space to look at artists’ works became a necessity as 13 Vanak Street Gallery was becoming more and more of a known exposition space. For more, see Global Art Forum 2010.
- 16.
In there, he also held so-called Masterclasses, in which there were discussions and talks for the artists’ community.
- 17.
In fact, Dubai has lately been operating as the space working with and connecting Iran to the West and the rest of the world.
- 18.
In a personal interview with Grigor (2014: 139).
- 19.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, president during 1989–1997. His policies were generally to enable a process of recovering the damages of the Iran-Iraq war on the country.
- 20.
For instance the cars would be parked outside in the street during the shows, and would be brought back in their plots after the show.
- 21.
In fact, as Kahsani has mentioned (2016) despite the busy schedule of Sazmanab and the significant flow of crowd during the events, the neighbours had no clue about the art space that was within, and imagined that there are just friendly gatherings.
- 22.
For example the Centre for Side Effects, a series of discussion sessions organised by Barbad Golshiri, Shahab Fotouhi, Hamed Yousefi and Saharnaz Samaeinejad, that worked for six months, among others.
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Moeini, S.H.I., Arefian, M., Kashani, B., Abbasi, G. (2018). A Genealogy of Tehran’s Art Galleries: A History of the (Home-) Studio. In: Urban Culture in Tehran. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65500-0_4
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