READING GROUP GUIDE. Introduction

Transcription

1 READING GROUP GUIDE The Artist, The Censor, and The Nude: A Tale of Morality and Appropriation By Glenn Harcourt; Foreword by Francis M. Naumann Artwork by Pamela Joseph Introduction This hybrid book examines the art and politics of The Nude in various cultural contexts, featuring books of canonical western art censored in Iran. Glenn Harcourtʼs rigorous, culturally-measured and art historical approach complements artist Pamela Josephʼs appropriation of these images as feminist critique. Harcourtʼs discussion of Iranian contemporary artists focuses on censorship tropes in portraiture, including works by Aydin Aghdashloo, Gohar Dashti, Simin Karamati, Katayoun Karami, Daryoush Qarezad, Manijeh Sehhi, and others. From the Foreword by Francis M. Naumann Censorship in the arts differs from culture to culture and, in most cases, only causes the audience these censors are attempting to protect to wonder exactly what is being kept from them and why, resulting in a thought process that can often be more stimulating than a view of the unaltered work. Pamela Joseph provides a biting and severely critical, while at the same time uniquely humorous commentary on the futility of censorship in the arts, no matter in what form it is practiced. "Pamela Joseph understands the power of image. By manipulating such icons as Magritte, Rousseau, Courbet, Dali, and Duchamp, the new adaptations are not only outrageous and humorous, but laced with absurdist dark humor." BOMB

2 READING GROUP QUESTIONS 1. The book begins with the assertion that the human body has traditionally been seen as a site of conflict regarding both personal and cultural issues. Do you think that this is a correct assessment, and if so, why do you think that it should be the case? In short, whatʼs so special about the body? 2. The Iranian governmentʼs hand-censoring of Robert Cummingʼs Eyewitness Companion to Art did enormous damage to the intended format of the book. (Itʼs hard to be an eyewitness to something that you canʼt see.) In what ways is the censoring of a reproduction (like the marking up of the illustrations in Cummings book) different from the destruction of actual works of art? Are there any ways in which they are similar activities? 3. How does Pamela Josephʼs Censored Large Reclining Nude by Matisse (2013) set up a dialog between western culture (broadly defined) and the cultural norms of Iranʼs current clerical government? How does it respond to the place of the female nude within the cultural tradition of the west? What conflicts in thought processes does the painting evoke between feminist views, historically patriarchal ideas, and those of religious conservatives? 4. What is Westoxication"? Why is it that the Iranian government sees parts of the west as toxic? Which part of culture are they? And how are these toxins spread in Iranian culture? Do you think that there are particular groups that might be more susceptible to Westoxication"? 5. Pamela Josephʼs Study for Les Femmes dʼalger (Version O) Fox News Blurred Picasso (2015) draws our attention to an instance of censorship on American TV. Why do you think the artist might have been attracted to this as a subject? What is she trying to tell us about the ways American culture works? 6. Pamela Joseph adopts subjects within her CENSORED series from pirated editions of books originally published under the imprint of the German publisher Taschen. What exactly is a pirate edition? Describe and compare the different results in the methods of the Iranian pirates who edited the Taschen knock-off and the censor who used the black marker. 7. Why do you think the Iranian Taschen editors found it necessary to censor the image of Marcel Duchampʼs famous Dada sculpture Fountain? Could it be interpreted as an image of the human body? Why or why not?

3 8. In what way is Pamela Josephʼs Censored Olympia by Manet different from all of the other works in the "CENSORED" series? How is that difference related to ideas about the personal presence of the model in the picture? And how is it related to Manetʼs approach to painting his model? 9. According to the author in Part One of the book, what does Pamela Joseph's artwork reveal about the practice of censorship in contemporary Iran? And what does she reveal about the position of the female nude within the history of western art? 10. Finally, what about images of the naked bodies of men? How do they figure into Pamela Josephʼs artworks? How does the artist see or present them to us in ways that are the same as or different from the bodies of women? 11. Artists like the filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) and the author Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) have gained freedom for their work by leaving Iran. Do you think they have lost anything? Does creative freedom come at a price? Why do you think the artist Houman Morsavi says the opposite, that he would rather live and work in Iran? 12. Shadi Ghadirianʼs photo Nil #1 (2008) presents a powerful image of gender roles. How is that work specific to Iran? To a specific Iranian generation? How does it represent a general condition across the world? What does the title of the series Nil add to this understanding? 13. In what way(s) is Ghadarianʼs Nil series similar to or different from Gohar Dashtiʼs series Todayʼs Love and War (2008)? Is either Ghadirian or Dashti making a case about the place of women within Iranian society? If you think so, how would you describe it? And does it have anything to do with the concept of being mojarad (single or self-sufficient)? 14. Aydin Aghdashloo is an older artist who has stressed the importance of an Iranian identity. How is his search for personal and national identity embodied in his two series of paintings Occidentals and Orientals?

4 15. Aghdashloo also says of his paintings of crumpled Persian miniatures that they speak of a bitterness with respect to a younger generation of artists, who, rather than learning and choosing with patience, had become used to quickly crumpling and throwing away. What do you think he might have meant by that criticism? Can you think of any way in which quickly crumpling and throwing away might be a good thing? 16. How are clothes and the rules surrounding appropriate dress figured in the work of the artists in Part Two of the book; for example, in Daryoush Qarezadʼs 2006 Girl with Red Scarf or the portrait of a young woman in full niqab from Tanya Habjouqaʼs series Women of Gaza (2009)? 17. Many of the artists in Part Two represent bodies wearing the hijab or head-scarf. In the artworks, what meanings does the hijab can signify? If you wear a hijab, what does it mean for you? If not, is there anything about your own daily dress that might be equivalent to wearing a hijab? 18. In some cases, an artistʼs approach to clothes takes a documentary feel; for example, in Gohar Dashtiʼs Me, She and the Others (2009). What does this work tell us about the state of veiling in contemporary Iran? Does Dashti present an opinion about it? 19. What do you think Dashti means when she says Despite being obliged to adjust their appearance in certain environments, women remain an influential presence in Iranʼs culture? Letʼs rewrite Dashtiʼs observation by changing one word: Despite being obliged to adjust their appearance in certain environments, women remain an influential presence in Americaʼs culture. Discuss the different truths this statement makes. 20. Newsha Tavakolianʼs When I Was Twenty Years Old (for Maral Afsharian) from 2010 shows a young woman in a chador and standing against a backdrop city-scape of Tehran. Her hands hang at her side, yet she is wearing a pair of bright red boxing gloves. How does this apparent dichotomy help define the complicated place that artists like Tavakolian hold within contemporary Iranian culture?

5 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Glenn Harcourt is a widely published critic based in Southern California who writes about the history of art and visual culture. He has advanced degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Yale. Harcourt has also been shortlisted twice for the prestigious Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant. He is currently working on several projects related to the status of the body as an object of medical inquiry. Pamela Joseph is a multi-media artist based in Aspen, Colorado. Her work has been described as "wellexecuted, powerful and edgy" by the Colorado Council on the Arts, who awarded Joseph a Visual Arts Fellowship in Her work has been shown internationally and in numerous U.S. museums. She was also the subject of an award-winning short documentary, which focused on her long running art carnival, The Sideshow of the Absurd. Francis M. Naumann is a scholar, curator, and art dealer in New York, specializing in the art of the Dada movement and the Surrealist periods. Over his long career he has lectured at Parsons School of Design and contributed essays to dozens of art journals. Naumann is known for several books, including Marcel Duchamp, Artist of the Century and The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp.

6 DOPPELHOUSE PRESS is an independent publishing company with a focus on architecture, design, and art, as well as histories of immigration and exile. Our mission is to bring together a plurality of voices relating to architecture and the arts, as well as stories of exile and displacement of creative peoples, giving shape to little-known histories through personal testimony and critical reflection in the form of memoirs and biographies, monographs, critical texts, and select fiction. DoppelHouse Press is based in Los Angeles, a home to many exiles and immigrants from all over the world, which makes us further able to reflect on global conditions, cultures, politics, and crises that disperse creative people to new homelands, where they often flourish, transform local vernaculars, and influence future generations. Contact: Publisher@DoppelHousePress.com T: (424) F: (323) The Artist, The Censor, and The Nude: A Tale of Morality and Appropriation By Glenn Harcourt; Foreword by Francis M. Naumann Artwork by Pamela Joseph August pp. with 75 illustrations; trim size 8" x 10" Hardcover (hc) US $34.95 Electronic galleys available through Edelweiss