Outlaw Art

Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Miro, Kandinsky, Warhol, Van Gogh and a self portrait by Edvard Munch. One of the best of Jackson Pollock. A leading  museum of fine art in Europe or America?  How about the basement of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran? 

Earlier this year I posted an article by Indian journalist Manoj Joshi in which he recorded his impressions of today's Tehran. Among other things, he observed: 

Iran’s modern art collection, housed in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, is the best outside of Europe and the US. But when I searched the galleries for Monet, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Diego Rivera, Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Munch and a score of other world-famous artists it is reputed to have, I found nothing: only painting after painting depicting the Islamic Revolution and a few pieces of brilliant Iranian modern art.

I asked a curator where the other paintings were and his response was: “They have been locked away since the Revolution and are displayed only once a year for a period of a month.”

Iran, awash in oil money in the 1970s, acquired some of the finest specimens of western art. The works saw the light of day for just a few short years. Soon after the acquisition, the Shah of Iran was deposed and Khomeini's Islamic Revolution swept over the cultural landscape of Iran. Western art came to be looked upon as anti-Islamic, tasteless and even subversive. Consequently, the extravagant cache of masterpieces was banished to the basement of the museum - rarely put on public display. Joshi didn't get to see the hidden art treasure of Tehran.  But Kim Murphy, a writer for the Los Angeles Times managed to get a glimpse.  (If the L.A. Times link gives you trouble, see the same story here)

Habibollah Sadeghi looks vaguely irritated to see me: not surprised, seeing as he has spent the last 10 days evading my phone calls, letters and polite appeals delivered through intermediaries. He knows I want to see his Picassos. He doesn't want to show them to me.

But Iranian hospitality being what it is, Sadeghi is forced to invite me into his office for tea. "I got your letter," he says. "Frankly, I was somewhat offended that you seem to think our paintings are like some big nuclear secret. They are not a secret at all."

"I know," I reply. "That's why I came to see them."

We are not talking about the paintings on the wall at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which Sadeghi directs. Those are, at the moment, a stylish if bland collection of Iranian textile and costume design for the fashion-conscious and appropriately modest Iranian woman.

No, we're talking about the outlaw paintings in the basement, locked in the museum's vault. Not just the Picassos -- the Kandinskys, the Miros, the Warhols. The Monet, the Pissarro, the Toulouse-Lautrec, the Van Gogh. Possibly the best Jackson Pollock outside the U.S.

Ruled by one of the most vehemently anti-Western governments in the world, Iran is, by many assessments, home to the most extensive collection of late 19th and 20th century Western art outside the West. It is a treasure trove of masters that is all but forgotten outside knowledgeable art circles because, for all but a few of the last 30 years, it has been virtually unseen.

"You can't find any collection of this comprehension outside the Western world," said [Ali-Reza] Samiazar, (Sadeghi's predecessor as director of the museum) who now teaches at a Tehran art institute. "In Tokyo, you may find important works by Impressionist artists. But in terms of a comprehensive collection covering all the major movements, no. Nowhere. Not in the East European countries, not in Scandinavia, not in South America or Asia. Not anywhere. It's one of the most important cultural assets of this country."

Which has brought me to Sadeghi's office, and my exercise in dignified begging.

Sadeghi says there are plans afoot to build a major national gallery in Tehran to put the paintings on permanent display, along with the museum's extensive collection of Iranian contemporary art, and acquire new works -- a Cezanne, perhaps -- to fill in the holes in the Tehran collection.

"This collection is near to our soul. It is a precious thing for us, we keep it like the apple of our eye. But we also believe the collection of the vault belongs to the whole of humanity."

"All the more reason to see it," I say.

"You will see it," he says.

Comments

[Indigo Serpent]

Thank you so much for sharing. I can not wait to see these collection sometime...

[Lester Hunt]

"Sadeghi says there are plans afoot to build a major national gallery in Tehran to put the paintings on permanent display...." Here's hoping these plans come to fruition!