RELIGIONS AND FIGURATVE REPRESENTATION

The practice of Persian miniature never ceased even when the people came under Sunni rule between the fall of the Zoroastrian Sassanid under Yazgerd III^[1] (642) and the instauration of the Shia Safavid dynasty by Shah Ismail^[2] (1501). It is a traditional form, which has experienced a change of direction in the 20th century upon coming into contact with European artists, and against the background of the internationalisation of the art market. Iranian painters sought recognition without conceding on the specificities of their heritage. In Iran, “artistic modernity” refers to a new framework set up in the 40s. One of its distinctive features is the rupture of the link hitherto established by painters between reality and representation. Works vastly different in their execution offer the same objective: spiritual growth, inner perfection along the lines of Shia religious teachings.

The debate about “sacred art” and “religious art” that agitated Christian Europe in the first half of 20th century has, on the basis of different terms of reference resulted here in a clear distinction. According to theory, “religious art” calls upon the mastery of formal aesthetic principles and some figurative talent whereas “sacred art” demands a spiritual approach, and an inner purification that excludes the possibility for the work to reflect the artist's ego rather than a fragment of infinite beauty (al-jamâl), a manifestation of the attributes of God's in Islam. However the artistic landscape cannot be reduced to these elements as is shown the tension between neo-traditional painting and the modern paintings of the Saqqa-Khaneh School.

The Imam Ali Art Museum, opened in the spring of 2005 in Tehran, ran an important exhibition on contemporary Persian miniature. Farah Ossouli^[3] figured among the artists featured. In her piece Exile from Paradise, the artist seeks to convey aspects of God drawing on the theme of beauty she finds in the Quranic text. For instance when the sky and the stars are evoked in the Suras As-Saffat 37: 6 and Fussilat 41:12, the beauty of creation is echoed with attributes of God in Islam – latif (gentle), alim (all-knowing) to underscore the ultimate source of this beauty. Here, beauty's diverse manifestations thus have no inherent value beyond their role as pointers (not embodiment) to the divine, hints, rather, through the use of the colour blue, which represent night and day, the cypress' buds, symbols of a proud future and a new promise in God.

In another piece, The creation of Man, from the collection “Commemoration” she draws on Michael Angelo's fresco. The goddess (Izad Banou) and the small fairies who surround her in this painting initiate human life on earth. In the Iranian tradition, women are symbol of life, abundance, fertility, and wisdom, for they always give birth to man. A majority of religions that have been practiced in Iran have absorbed customs and concepts that would compensate the great lack of essential mother figure – or female element – in their sacred writings. Even Zoroaster^[4] took a compensatory measure with regard to the mix of angels. The cypress in this painting is a symbol of a proud future and the everlasting youth of a man who is given a new life by a woman. Buds depict birth and his renewed conception. Similar to earth, the woman is a symbol of blessings and acceptance. Just as she gives life to man, she embraces him again when he is no longer alive. The painting refers to the age of goddesses and archetypes of old. The clouds surrounding the goddess symbolize fertility. There are also birds transmitting different messages. Through its composition, the painting shows night-time with stars and day-time with the sun.

The most noted Iranian artists on the international art scene are often those who have made it on the contemporary Middle Eastern Art market, notably in Dubai. One of the artists riding high, since 2001 is Khosrow Hassanzadeh^[6] who has exhibited at the Barbican Centre, as well as at Boulogne Billancourt, Freiburg, London, Dubai. At the end of the 90s, his stylised paintings of martyrs, victims of the Iran-Iraq war, brought him to public notice. He showed them on the roof of his block of flats near Imam Hussein Square in busy central-eastern old Teheran. Negating formalism, he painted Ashura, in which forms seem void. Like its colours, they outstrip the artist's individuality and partake of a spiritual figuration that transcends him. Some knowledge of the symbols harnessed is required, as well as – like for all religious works – a degree of refinement of the soul or of sentiment. Inspired by religious votive art, he sets his holy figures against a calligraphy background. In a documentary about him, Paint! No Matter What, a short film realised by Maziar Bahari in 1999, the artist seeks in so many words to distance himself from Tehran's official art networks. He takes his stand as a non-conformist outsider, consistent with his modest origins anchored in traditional society. His image as a self-taught artist appeals to the art markets' trendsetters whose leanings are met by his sophisticated techniques and occasionally provoking subjects.

At the beginning of the 21st century, and no matter which confession an artist belongs to, religious art or sacred art are faced with a threefold challenge: the merchandising of the works, the deculturation of the beholders and the secularization of some social strata. Their work may, in such cases, be reduced to the status of mere object, unconnected to the meaning the devout artist sought to pass on. To overcome this challenge artists of faith insist that the essential aim of their work is to contribute to human spiritual education. They stress the notion of spiritual beauty closely connected to love and desire as a way to nurture and revive faith. One conviction held by many is that the better the artist knows God, the more his heart overflows with love and the purer his art, taking him closer to reflecting the divine.

The figures and symbols wielded by Christian and Muslim artists are not the same and the relation between artist and work may be conceptualised in a different way. Still, modern pictorial art comes across as an exceptional mean of intercultural and interfaith dialogue.