'EPIC IRAN' at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London

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Qaran Unhorses Barman, from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp
 

'Epic Iran explores 5,000 years of Iranian art, design and culture, bringing together over 300 objects from ancient, Islamic and contemporary Iran'. So runs a text on the V&A's dedicated exhibition website. Having seen the exhibition (which, Covid oblige, opened three months late) the other day, I wondered how many (or few) other countries could be the object of a show spanning 5,000 years of artistic production.

The concept is ambitious, to say the least. While the press - or at least, the numerous online articles I've managed to find - has been unanimously enthusiastic, I'd be interested to know what impact this show has had on people with little or no prior knowledge or experience of Iran and its culture (or more accurately, cultures, with an 's'), its history and its present, including its buzzing contemporary art scene. I personally found the pre-Islamic sections, displaying some magnificent objects (what Edina, in Absolutely Fabulous, called 'little gorgeous things'), more successful than the rest. It would have been more obvious, and possibly simpler for everyone, if all 10 sections of the show had just been chronological, in blocks of dynasties, rather than switching, as it does, from pre-Islamic dynasties to Islamic-era themes ('Literary Excellence', 'Royal Patronage', and so on).

The Achaemenid section made a brave attempt, using videos, projections and stunning reliefs, to give some sense of the scale and volumes (and now-vanished colours) of Persepolis and Susa. However, unless I missed it, before that there wasn't one photo of the gigantic and astonishingly well-preserved ziggurat at Choqa Zanbil to give architectural context to items representing the little-known Elamites. And while the Islamic-era artefacts and fragments on display were often wonderful in themselves, they might have given a more vivid impression of the overall magnificence of Iran's heritage if placed more obviously in context, e.g. by featuring photos or videos (or, if money were no object, models) of, say, Safavid Isfahan, or the mosques the V&A's painted patterns and simulated dome were intended to evoke.

I'm not a great fan of Iranian postwar, pre-revolutionary art, but the contemporary room that followed (where I'd probably have put Munir Farmanfarmaian) was nicely curated. The best work there, I thought, was Tala Madani's little painting, Making Faces. Incidentally, not present in the exhibition but with a print on sale at the gift shop is Homa Delvaray, currently appearing in Alternating Currents at Parallel Circuit in Tehran, about whom I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago.

People who've fallen under Iran's spell (and there are many: basically, more or less anybody who's ever been there) joke that 'once you go Persian, there's no other version'. As Iran-groupies go, I'm a hopeless case. So I suppose my expectations were unreasonably high. What I enjoyed most was seeing 'in the flesh' those 'little gorgeous things' in the first few rooms: the ancient animal and human figurines, the gold and silver rhytons, the Oxus armlet... Also, the pages of 'negargari' painting (the word ‘miniatures’ gives Iranian art historians conniptions), especially the one I posted a detail of at the top of this post, from Shah Tahmasp's Shahnameh - though nobody, I think, would have guessed, from the humdrum way it was displayed alongside others in a case, just how much it was worth: ten years ago, a single page from the same manuscript sold for £7.4 million.

The rest left me, sadly, disappointed, which is why it would be so interesting to know how people who don't know Iran felt as they emerged. The visit did, however, remind me how lucky I've been to travel so widely in the country and see so many of its treasures in situ.

This link is to the V&A's extensive exhibition website, with descriptions and a selection of pictures. The catalogue, which I ordered and read in advance, is a useful and beautifully-illustrated survey of Iranian history and art.

This link is to an article in the Financial Times centred on an interview with Tala Madani, and this one is to The Guardian's review. Googling will throw up plenty more.






Tala Madani, Making Faces


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