Seeking the secret of the Islamic Republic's art. No doubt there are downsides, but whenever I meet Iranian artists I sort of wish I was one. No one does bohemian chic quite like them. Even correcting for the skewed evidence of gallery crowds per se, it appears that a Persian extraction entails good hair, snappy dress sense and an elegant sense of humour. Compare the English birthrights of pasty skin, neurotic class sensitivity and teeth that don't deserve the name, and you see the attraction.
To pile enormity on enormity, the other department in which Iranians are infuriatingly blessed is their art itself. They justly dominate the Gulf scene, as a random sampling of Dubai galleries will show. The biggest names pack an increasing clout in the West, too: witness the preponderance of Haerizadehs and Fakhims at the recent Saatchi show in London. The latest opportunity to foam with jealousy at the glamour and accomplishment of the Iranian people took place at the Emirates Towers and B_asement Gallery earlier this week, when the competition for Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize came to town. The prize, which suffers the quaint-sounding acronym MOPCAP, employs a nail-biting tournament format with multiple juries and eliminations. A corps of international gallerists and collectors had been invited Dubai to view the work of the seven emerging artists who made the shortlist. Among the best were macabre flour-baby figures from the painter Vahid Chamani, documentary photography from Newsha Tavakolian, and a sort of electric blender in which the blade was replaced by the emblem from the Iranian flag, made by Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar. All seven artists will be shown at the Royal College of Art in London.
The shortlist seemed to meet the approval of the crowd at B_asement. Dana Yarger, from the Californian gallery group Breton Fine Art Associates, praised the accessibility of the chosen works, and there was moral support from an impressive contingent of established artists: Einoddin Sadeghzadeh, Sedaghat Jabbari and others. Many of those same artists were providing financial support, too. On April 11, The Emirates Towers staged an auction of works donated by their creators to Magic of Persia. The benefactors represented a cross-section of Iran's artistic aristocracy: among them were Shirin Neshat, Kamhan Khavarani and Monir Farmanfarmaian. Happily, the sale managed in some degree to escape the gravity of the art market at large. Over Dh2 million were raised, with art by Shirin Neshat inevitably pulling in the lion's share: one of the images from her Women of Allah series fetched around Dh129,000. As MOPCAP's chief executive Shirley Elghanian remarked, the sale was "very instrumental in bringing everybody's morale up... it can be done, pieces can go for the right price and good art will always remain as good art".
The proceeds from the sale will go to endow the prize itself, as well as to fund several charity projects. Magic of Persia runs 25 children's workshops at the British Museum each year, to educate school pupils about Persian history and Iranian culture. It also supports the Abu Dhabi Future Centre, an organisation caring for children with special needs, and the Omid E Mehr women's shelter in Tehran.
In an effort to find out why so much impressive work emanates from Iran, I put the question to the young photo-artist Behrouz Rae, who was one of the breakout successes at last year's auction. He explained with mock vehemence that Iranian artists hated one another and were motivated solely by bitter rivalry. The Iranian art market was propped up on the vanity of people who strived to outdo one another's collections. Finally, Tehran (where he lived) was hell - "But," he conceded, "I like hell."
I returned to Shirley Elghanian to present Rae's theory. Nonsense, she said firmly. The generosity of the donating artists "really was an indication of how much they love each other" - after all, the auction was held to benefit the next generation of talents. But she seemed to half agree, if in less colourful terms, with Rae's characterisation of Tehran. The engine of Iranian artists' creativity, she said, was "the censorship that has been imposed on them".
"We all know that every action has a reaction, and what goes up must come down," she said. "And this is just a reaction to their experiences in Iran, trying to break through them through their art." * Ed Lake