Some of the world’s most prized works of contemporary Western art have been unveiled for the first time in decades — in Tehran.
Two women visit a 19th and 20th-century American and European minimalist and conceptual masterpieces show at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. . Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric, rails against the influence of the West. Authorities have lashed out at “deviant” artists for “attacking Iran’s revolutionary culture.
They gazed at a rare 4-meter untitled sculpture by American minimalist pioneer Donald Judd and one of Sol Lewitt's best-known serial pieces, “Open Cube," among other important works. The Judd sculpture, consisting of a horizontal array of lacquered brass and aluminum panels, is likely worth millions of dollars.
But just two years later, in 1979, Shiite clerics ousted the shah and packed away the art in the museum’s vault. Some paintings — cubist, surrealist, impressionist, even pop art — sat untouched for decades to avoid offending Islamic values and catering to Western sensibilities. Curator Behrang Samadzadegan credits a recent renewed interest in conceptual art, which first shocked audiences in the 1960s by drawing on political themes and taking art out of traditional galleries and into the wider world.
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