Historiography of Iranian art carried out by the West

Experts at the meeting “Writing the History of Art in Iran” stressed the point that a great part of the Iranian art history was written by the Western scholars.

2015-11-23

According to IBNA correspondent, the meeting “Writing the History of Art in Iran” was held on Sunday, November 12, 2015 at the Cinematheque of Iran’s Academy of Arts with Ali Asghar Mirzai Mehr, Javad Ali Mohammadi and Mohammad Hassan Hamedi in attendance
In this meeting, Ali Mohammadi said: “Writing the history of art in the West belonged to the nineteenth century which, of course, was itself the legacy of the eighteenth century. Historiography of art in Iran is also carried out with the same pattern and unfortunately the output of these handwritten notes with this backward pattern is neither interesting nor valuable.”
Ali Mohammadi added that artwork is a reflection of social changes and unfortunately we have not paid any attention to these developments and that this has trapped the new generation in a vicious circle.
“Our other problem is the “Historical Apartheid”. Writing the history of art of a country is not something to be done single handed; it needs a circle of philosophers, sociologist and artists and this is what we lack,” he suggested.