THE POPULARIZATION OF ART IN LATE QAJAR IRAN: THE IMPORTANCE OF CLASS AND GENDER

Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 Anna Vanzan THE POPULARIZATION OF ART IN LATE QAJAR IRAN: THE IMPORTANCE OF CLASS AND GENDER Abstract In Iran, l'epoca Qajar (fine XVII secolo-1925) è contrassegnata da cambiamenti radicali, molti dei quali riflessi nelle arti visive che in questo periodo ricevettero un grande impulso. Oltre all'arte ufficiale ed encomiastica, si affermò un'arte popolare che ben riflette l'emergere delle nuove classi sociali. In quest'arte occupa un posto cruciale la figura femminile, i cui canoni estetici – pur stilati quasi due secoli fa – continuano a perdurare nell'Iran contemporaneo. V isual art flourished during the Qajar dynasty (1796-1925). After a long period of neglect, it came to the fore in the late 1990s, when a major exhibit was organized in New York and London. The event triggered a number of excellent publications on the topic (i.e., Diba & Ekhtiar, 1999; Iranian Studies, 2001). I begin with some considerations about the relation between visual art and literature in 19th century Persia and with a reflection on folklore as a link between the two. By "folklore" I mean a system of beliefs, of ways of thinking and living that encompasses various manifestations of popular culture, including religion. It is in the arena of popular religion, for instance, that we find one of the best examples of the influence of literature on the visual arts: in fact, the ta'ziyes, the religious dramas that represent the apotheosis of religious literature in Qajar Iran, found their figurative expression in the large canvases that primarily illustrate the Shiite martyrology. [Fig. 1] As for a more secular literary genre, i.e., 137 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. the tradition of popular romance, this continued and was even reinforced in Qajar Iran, as is testified by the creation of the tale Amir Arslan, written by one of Naser ad-Din Shah's storytellers.1 Popular romances, which contained numerous motifs common to folklore and popular religion, contributed to the birth of the little folk prints that began to appear in the 1840s thanks to the introduction of the lithography process. Fig. 1 - Abbas Al-Musavi, Karbala Battle, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum. These folk prints, that come in the form of slender booklets, are the descendants of the earlier folk-books in manuscript form, whose themes were suggested by polite literature, i.e., epics (especially the Shahnameh)2 or by novel-like stories such as those in the Thousand and one nights. Of course, the established motifs from the traditionally illustrated episodes of the Shahnameh and the romantic classics (Shirin va Farhad, Leila va Majnun)3 remained in vogue and even became more "popular" in the sense that, thanks to their new and cheap print form, these works enjoyed a wider diffusion. In the realm of illustrated books they constitute a group of their own. [Fig. 2] 1 2 3 Naser ad-Din Shah reigned from 1848 to 1896. The Shahnameh, the Iranian epic poem par excellance, was written by Ferdousi in the early 11th century. The love stories between Shirin and Farhad and between Leila and Majnun are very popular in the Muslim world and celebrated by many poets and artists. 138 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 Similarly, elements of popular religion, not only episodes connected to the tragedy of Karbala,4 but also episodes of the prophets' lives intertwined with fantastic elements found their place among the folkprints; they constitute a second group. Fig. 2 - Leila and Majnun, ceramic tile, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. The third and most represented category of folk prints is that related to popular literature whose illustrations are described by Basil Robinson as often crude and incompetent, though not without a disarming naiveté and charm (Basil, 1979: 353). The illustrations belonging to this category reveal a persistence of popular traditions and exhibit everyday life and customs: as such, they have attracted the attention of the great French ethnographer Henri Massé who examined a series of them kept in the library of the Ecoles des Langues Orientales (Paris). Massé was intrigued by the correspondence between the fantastic and demoniac creatures that populate Persian oral folklore and 4 The place of imam Hoseyn’s martyrdom. 139 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. their pictorial rendition in the folk prints. He was also surprised by the virtual lack of "normal" animals in these illustrations, taking into consideration the importance of animal tales in Iran (Massé 1960, 176). In other words, Massé considered these folk prints as the natural visual companions to folk literature. Another element that Massé underlined was the realism of some of these illustrations: by realism, Massé meant an authentic representation of customs and manners, and under this tag he classified the illustration of a teacher encircled by his pupils (which accompanies a text on children's education printed in 1876) and a group of illustrations showing everyday life, in particular women's life: women in the hammam, episodes of did o bazdid 5 and shopping scenes. All of them are dated around 1866. [Fig. 3] Fig. 3 - From Varka e Golshah, Ecoles des Langues Orientales, Paris. (Massé, 1960) Massé underlined the documentary interest of these illustrations, as precious [sources] for the history of [Persian] customs of which they are faithful reproductions (ibid, passim). What Massé did not point out is the relation between the characters of the stories and the drawings that illustrate them: the protagonists are recruited mostly from the middle or lower classes, i.e., they are merchants, qadis (judges), artisans or other town folks. The subjects are 5 i.e., exchanging visits among ladies, a very common practice in both past and present Iran. 140 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 mostly taken from everyday life, the life within the towns. Therefore these folk prints appear to be the explicit expression of a set of ideals and values emanating from and characteristic of the urban dwellers. This was also the natural consequence of the fact that printing was becoming a prerogative of the middle classes, of the bourgeoisie (in its etymological meaning of townsmen), i.e., of those people who were not necessarily connected with the court and whose social and political ideas eventually led to the Constitutional revolution. Folk prints had an impact on the illiterate villagers in the country mainly thanks to the naqqals (storytellers): many storytellers stopped using the manuscript ketabches and began to use the folk prints to aid their memory and as a storehouse for their repertory (Cejpejk, 1968: 671). I have chosen two samples in order to document this trend: it is not sheer coincidence that both books belong to the didactic genre, a very popular one among folk-prints. This is a further example of Qajar culture popularization: in this case it is an ancient Persian tradition that of the "mirrors for princes" - that is adapted to the new social reality. The texts are the Tadib al-atfal (Children's Education) and the more famous Tadib al-nisvan (The Training of Women). The first text is dated 1883 and testifies to the attention paid to education in late 19th century Iran. Here the subject of education is not longer the prince, but his subjects, who are taught not only how to pursue their intellectual development (mainly by reading the Qur’an or by memorizing Hafez, the Persian poet par exellence), but also how to behave in a society. These twenty-three images are meant to enforce the written messages and portray boys either in the classroom or in street while showing their upright manners; sharing something with friends, refusing the temptation to drop the homework and go to play, sacrificing a personal belonging in favor of a crying friend. Women are portrayed in scenarios more consonant to their female conditions: they show their abilities as dancers or as instruments players in female congregations, such as in marriages; they confirm their need of a chivalrous male hand; they are intent in organizing social gathering or in buying textiles; they teach their daughters about the choice of jewelry; they check a brawl between their daughters; or they admonish the daughter on the necessity or washing her hair and changing her clothes. Therefore, pen or books do not seem necessary for the training 141 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. of girls, who should rather apprehend the rule of social and domestic behavior. [Fig. 4] Fig. 4 - From Tadib al-atfal, British Museum Library. The majority of these images are cast in niches which still remind one of the frames of classic miniatures, though the spirit is completely new: the illustrator is interested in representing actual situations, almost identically matched by photographs and he inserts as many details as possible to reinforce his realistic representations. The interior decorations, the clothes, the utensils, the ways in which the personages are disposed (with the most important person seated in the highest part of the room) are typically Persian, with only the occasional concession to the European fashion, such as the chairs which were introduced in Iran in the late 19th century. It is the reality of the new social class that reveals its way of living and affirms its own taste and models. 142 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 Simplification and popularization does not necessarily mean vulgarization: the illustrations that accompany the Tadib al-nisvan clearly prove it. The content of the book is known: it is a satirical book of advice to men on how to teach their daughters so that they would become good wives. Statements referring to women’s “natural” stupidity or recommendation to wives to take their husbands’ offences upon themselves abound in the ten chapters of the book. One should expect a set of rude drawings to accompany such an unsympathetic and often misogynous text published in the early 1880s. Instead, the seven pictures that illustrate this edition of the Tadib alnisvan are carefully composed and in contrast with the rather brutal and simplistic sentiments of the text. They show women at school and women conversing peacefully with their husbands, whereas the text they refer to speaks of wives who owe passive obedience to their lords and whose sole worth lies in their love for their husbands. One image shows a girl in a posture rarely found in Persian paintings, but a very natural and animated, that is with her arms folded (probably fuming with anger). Very natural also is the last picture, showing a bridal scene. It accompanies the ninth chapter devoted to what a wife should and should not do in bed. The image is natural not only for its general explicitness, but also for its showing a woman with her hair uncovered, as happens in reality, while usually women were (and still are) shown even in intimate situations with their head covered. [Fig. 5] Fig. 5 - From Tadib al- nisvan, British Museum Library. 143 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. Realistic hints and inspiration from everyday life were translated into a new style. Certainly both the genre of these books and the technical means with which their illustrations were executed (i.e., lithography) helped the process of simplification and popularization. However, the phenomenon of the "popularization" of literature and visual art is not confined to lithography and folk-print. The whole world of the arts in Qajar Iran gives the impression that popular elements and folklore, kept at bay for centuries, have found their way into a refined, courtly culture to recreate new canons and patterns. From folk prints to post cards The State Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi holds an interesting group of Persian miniatures: a hunter with his dog, a luti (jester) with his monkey, a woman with her spinning wheel, another woman with her child upon her shoulders and a spindle in her hands. [Fig. 6] They are Fig. 6 - A luti with his monkey, miniature, Tiflis Museum. 144 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 miniatures, therefore their execution and technique is much superior to the lithographs we examined before, but they respond to the same need of realism and to the necessity of introducing new symbols in the Persian allegory formerly populated by either fantastic creatures or by members of the aristocracy. As we know, side by side with folktales full of princes and princesses produced to entertain the aristocracy, Persian tradition abounds with folktales representing the lower classes’ point of view, though it does not necessarily mean that they created these stories. In this kind of folk tale, the main characters are for the most part peasants, craftsmen and working people enacting their daily life, as we see here. And, just as the language of popular literature is far from the convoluted prose of polite literature, the technique and the chromatic details that characterize these miniatures are plain, almost naive, although the drawing is neat and precise. In the same group of these miniatures we also find some female figures: at first sight, they could be classified in that class of miniature paintings which Basil Robinson compares to the “Company painting” in India and the "rice-paper paintings" of Canton... In all these groups genuine native styles of painting are simplified and modified to make them acceptable to European purchasers, constituting a sort of superior tourist art (Robinson 1979: 357). Basil Robinson goes on to quote Sir William Ouseley who, in the journal of his travels to Persia in 1823 divided this kind of miniatures into three groups according to their different subject matter: famous personages, then illustrations of Persian manners and customs, and finally erotic or pornographic subjects. Therefore, Basil Robinson suggests that these miniatures are conventional reproductions molded according to European taste for the foreign market (ibid: 358-359). In reality, however, these miniatures do not conform to European taste, as they do not fulfill the Western quest for exoticism, nor do they respond to the prevalent Qajar canons of taste, for they lack the decoration, rich costumes, jewelry and textiles essential to this art. They do not even follow Qajar standards of feminine beauty. Nevertheless, the character and inspiration of these miniatures are perfectly in line with the Qajar school's trends: but they are somewhat inferior copies of the more elaborate samples of paintings commissioned by the court, 145 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. inferior because of the ability of their executor and of the materials used. [Fig. 7] Fig. 7 - A woman with her child, miniature, Tiflis Museum. To remain in the realm of female representations, we note that in the Qajar artistic production there is a stereotypization of women's postures: they are mostly represented while coquettishly handling an object of beauty (such as a mirror) or of pleasure, such as a cup or a decanter of wine, objects that, needless to say, are also visual equivalents for some of the most frequent metaphors in Persian poetry. Also, women are depicted while dancing, playing musical instruments, and performing acrobatic feats such as tumbling and standing upside down on their hands. Be they the work of eminent painters or the poor lithographed image of a folk print, they seem to be the offspring of a process which aims to combine traditional symbols, court fashion and popular inspiration. [Fig. 8] 146 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 Fig. 8 - Woman playing a guitar, oil on calico, Victoria & Albert Museum. The Popular evolution of the Qajar society Therefore, it becomes clear that "popular" in Qajar art is not the opposite of "cultivated" (as it often is in Western arts), because in Iran most artistic expressions developed on a common ground made up by cultural traditions which were well rooted in all the strata of the population. As such, Persian arts in general show a relative cohesion throughout Iranian history. We can rather talk of one common artistic sensibility, which assumed different forms according to its aim, and to the different audience whom it addressed. The overall impression is that the real distinction was between the works commissioned by the court, which had to be commemorative and had to offer an official and 147 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. dignified image of their clients, and the works not executed under the royal patronage, which did not have binding constrictions and therefore were closer to the people's taste: and not only to the "common" people. The final product has sometimes been labeled as "rough" and "naive": an Italian scholar, G. Scarcia, wrote that his general impression of 19th century Persian painting was that the Qajar rulers had summoned at court the most unrefined and coarsest tavern decorators. I would not say that the common roots of the Qajar imagery lie in the meykhanes (taverns), but rather in the qahvekhanes (coffeehouses) and that the main sources of inspiration for the painters were the folktales and the legends disseminated by the naqqals (storytellers). Moreover: the presence of the tamasha (performers), a category of people who frequently appear in Qajar painting, reveals that both the story-tellers and the painters found inspiration by observing street performers, such as lutis, acrobats, musicians, dancers and clowns. The narration of events of daily life made the folk tales realistic and immediate and the painters transformed the performers' gestures and costumes into the thick blocks of colors typical of Qajar painting. This literature is the explicit expression of the ideals and values of the people who were far from the power structure: the paintings represent those class and social strata from which the artist himself came and which he knew best. The painters who were not affiliated to the court or to the academies probably felt themselves to be the interpreters of the popular culture, to which they belonged, of its myths, of its fictions, of its faith. In this sense, they were the interpreters of Persian collective imagination, whose dreams and aspirations they dressed in colors. If royal Qajar painting shows foreign (i.e., European) influences, its popular counterpart is the result of that cultural syncretism of which Persians are the masters. Only, in this case, this typically Persian vocation cast autochthonous spirit and aspiration not in alien frameworks, but in its folklore. In this sense, we can also speak of an original movement: through the folklore, Qajar art reinvented itself and affirmed its stylistic forms by assuming precise characteristics. After inventing new forms and artistic inspiration, the Qajar artists, in conformity with the process of repetition and continuity typical of Islamic art, continued to repeat those forms using different media: from 148 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 oil painting to tiles decoration passing through the lithographs, Qajar forms and motives asserted their own framework of archetypes. Folklore and women I would also like to stress the prominent presence of female figures in Qajar paintings as a possible consequence of its folkloristic inspiration. In folk literature women very often play important roles; they may be heroines or evil beings, but in either form, they are influential protagonists. Similarly, whether portrayed while working in her andarun (harem) or coquettishly smiling at the mirror, the female dominates Qajar figurative painting: of all the surviving Qajar oil paintings, those of women are the most numerous and many are recorded by 19th century European travelers who saw them in situ (Robinson, 1964:101) Naturally, folk literature cannot be considered as the exact description of daily life, but it often reflects the ways of life of a society, though filtered through a sort of censorious prism. In the traditional male-dominated society of Islamic Iran, the folk tale has kept alive an older tradition of feminine independence, wrote L.P. Elwell-Sutton. (1969: 37). He also goes on saying that though some of these stories are paralleled in other countries' folklore, nevertheless the Iranian forms are distinctive, with their own characteristic coloring and development (ibid.) We cannot say that women altered folktales, as the naqqals' world (i.e., the qahvekhane) was a predominantly male dominion. However, we know of the existence of female tellers of tales as well: for example, Elwell Sutton has dedicated an article to a certain Mashdi Galin Khanum, who practiced her profession in Tehran in the early 1940s, when she was already seventy years old, and who had been active in the late 19th century. Elwell-Sutton also underlined the fact that the narrator's role was more creative then one might suppose: she was not just repeating a fixed and accepted text that she had learnt by heart [but] She was rather retailing an account of […] real events […] and she clothed them in her own words (Elwell-Sutton, 1980: 201-208).6 6 Sometimes even the passage from oral to written tradition was performed by a woman, as in the case of the aforementioned Amir Arslan, narrated by Naser od149 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. One could also say that folktales represent the reverse of reality, as a sort of distorting mirror that reflects the society people would like to live in. In this respect, it is remarkable that one of the most common female representations in Qajar painting portrays women upside down on their hands and poised on a knife, thus offering a disconcerting and unusual image of women. It can be interpreted as an inversion of social order, as the one that often appears in folk narrative; whatever the explanation is, both pictorial and literary representations counters traditional stereotypes of Iranian women as passive victims of their society. Last but not least, we can also add that Qajar society sometimes fulfilled folk tale myths, as many people of modest birth were able to climb the social ladder. Social mobility became possible in Qajar Iran: at the beginning of the 19th century Hajji Mohammad Hosein Khan, a grocer of Isfahan, became first governor of his town and then the head of finance at Fath 'Ali Shah's court. And the father of Mirza Taqi Khan, one of Naser ad-Din Shah's prime ministers, had been a cook and steward. The lack of value accorded genealogy and the practice of mobility are well represented in Qajar literature by the adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan, the illiterate barber who became a counselor of kings. One might object that the story was made up by a British, but it reflected Qajar society so well that for a long time it was considered a piece of Persian literature even by Iranians. To remain in the female realm, we may say that the 19th century was the epoch of Cinderella's dreams come true: among the girls of humble origins who managed to marry a king, it is enough to mention here Anis ad-Dawla, the daughter of a poor peasant who became Naser ad-Din Shah's favorite wife and the de facto queen of Iran. Final remarks Under the Qajars, popular traditions took predominance over the refined culture of the court and established a new style. We may note that Realism and Verism movements both in literature and in the visual arts are two phenomena that simultaneously developed in Europe as well and that the discipline of folklore itself was born in Europe in the Din Shah's chief story-teller, Mohammad 'Ali Naqib al-Mamalek, but written by the shah's daughter, Fakhr ad-Dawla who was literate and a painter as well. 150 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 same period. It is not a mere coincidence that the Russian, or rather, the Soviet scholars were among the first ones who "discovered" Qajar arts. They first brought different literary genres of Persian folklore in the main course of Iranian studies and then turned their attention to visual arts. In the early 1930s Bertel's spoke of a Persian lubochnaya (popular) literature (Bertel's 1988), in which folk, didactic, formal, legendary and symbolic elements interplayed and later other Soviet scholars took up again Bertel's' definition to designate one of the main features of Qajar painting, i.e., its process of popularization through the utilization of folklore. Undoubtedly, the Soviet scholars' interest reflected primarily the Marxist ideology that stressed folklore research in general: folklore was and still is a highly ideological discipline. But it is significant that they turned to the Qajar period because it was an example of the interrelationship between literature and visual art as influenced by folklore. Though the fact of being, in many respects, in the mainstream of European fashions certainly played an important role in the innovative process of Qajar art, Iran had many original elements in the core of its own cultural heritage and the European wind only reinforced Persian artistic trends which now affirmed themselves as a precise, distinctive local style unparalleled in other Islamic countries. This becomes evident if we take into consideration the 19th century Ottoman Empire artists, who were so fascinated by their European colleagues that eventually their works became virtually indistinguishable from their western counterparts. Iranians, instead, cast their taste in the new artistic framework: their love for colors and decorations, their canons of feminine beauty, their traditional accessories (such as musical instruments), even their typical food. By transferring the old into the new (this being the main creative process of folklore), Qajar art created an original "national" art whose features are neatly discernible for their "Iranian-ness". Nurtured by its folklore, Qajar art blended traditional symbols, European suggestions and popular spontaneity and found its stylistic forms that G. Scarcia named "plebeian" (Scarcia: 1963) and other scholars labeled as the triumph of bad taste (Wilber, 1979). Though Qajar art (like Qajar subjects in general) has been revalued in the last 151 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. twenty years, many historians of Islamic art still consider the Qajar period an epoch of crisis and decadence of the arts, and regard its syncretism in a negative sense. One of the consequences is that most books on Islamic art still end the chapter on Persia with the Safavid period. By the same token, histories of Persian literature have a slender chapter on the last century, which is considered to be the century of imitation from Western literature. However, there is no doubt that the style matured in Qajar Iran was in accordance with people's artistic and aesthetic sense. As such, it enjoyed great and lasting popularity and it is still a source of inspiration for current artists. In this respect, the production of Hojatollah Shakiba, one of the most prominent contemporary miniaturists in Iran who represents young women dressed in Qajar costumes, is quite telling. 7 7 Cfr. A. Vanzan (2014) ”Ciador art: neorientalismo e repressione”, in Mondi Migranti, 1/2014, forthcoming. 152 Quaderni Asiatici 106 – giugno 2014 References • • • • • • • • • • • • • Bertel's Ye.E. (1988), “Persiskaia 'lubochnaia' literatura”, in Istoria Literatura I kultura irana, Nauka, Mosca, pp. 333-342. Cejpejk J. (1968)."Iranian Folk Literature", in J. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, Reidel, Dordrecht. Diba L.- Ekhtiyar M. (1999) Royal Persian Paintings. The Qajar Epoch 1779-1924. I.B. Tauris, London. Elwell-Sutton L. P. (1969). "The Unfortunate Heroine in Persian Folk Literature", in Yadname-ye Irani-ye Minorsky, Tehran, 1969, pp. 37-50. _____ (1980). "A Narrator of Tales from Tehran", Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore, 36, pp. 201-208. Iranian Studies (2001), 34, 1-4. Massé H (1960). "L'imagerie populaire de l'Iran", Arts Asiatique, VII, pp. 163-178. Mahmud ibn Yusuf (1883). Tadib al-atfal. n.p. Robinson, W. B. (1979). "Persian Painting in the Qajar Period", in E. Yarshater (ed), Highlights of Persian Art, Westview Press, 1979, pp. 331-361. _____ (1964). "The court Painters of Fath Alì Shâh", Eretz Israel, 7, pp. 94-105. Scarcia, G.R. (1963) “Qâğâr, Scuola”, Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte, Roma, XI vol. , pp. 213-221. Tadib al-nisvan ( n.d.), n.p. Wilber D. (1979), “The Triumph of Bad Taste: Persian Pictorial Rugs”, Hali,3,2, pp. 192-197. 153 Anna Vanzan The popularization of art in late Qajar Iran: the importance of class and gender. L'Autore Anna Vanzan iranista e islamologa, PhD in Near Eastern Studies alla New York University, si occupa principalmente di storia delle donne e genere nelle società islamiche. Fra le sue ultime pubblicazioni "Family Law in Post Revolutionary Iran. Closing the doors of jtehad?”, in E. Giunchi (a cura di) Adjudicating Family Law in Muslim Courts, Routledge, London, 2014, pp. 136-147 e Primavere rosa. Rivoluzioni e donne in Medio Oriente. Milano, Libraccio, 2013. Insegna Cultura Araba all'Università degli Studi di Milano e Gender and Islam al Master MIM dell'Università Ca' Foscari-Venezia. 154