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iran
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Iran’s “Narration of Gordafarid” by Hadi Afarideh will go on screen at the From East to East Documentary Film Festival in Paris.
The documentary, previously named “As Old as Rey,” tells the story of the last generation of narrators of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The film is narrated by Iran’s only female narrator of Shahnameh, Fatemeh Habibizad, who is also known as Gordafarid.
The festival will be held from June 11 to 13 at the Paris Diderot University.
University of Tehran to honor director Farhadi
TEHRAN -- Iranian director Asghar Farhadi will be honored during a ceremony at the University of Tehran on June 1.
Scholars Farindokht Zahedi, Naghmeh Samini, Fereydun Aliyari and Iranian actor Hamid Farrokhnejad will make speeches about this director at the ceremony.
His “About Elly” recently won the top prize at the Tribeca Film Festival which was held in April in Manhattan. It also captured a Silver Bear for director Farhadi at the 59th Berlin film festival in February.
The ceremony will be held at the university’s Farabi Hall which is located at the Faculty of Fine Arts.
Iranian paintings to go on display in Paris
TEHRAN -- An exhibition of paintings by contemporary Iranian artists will be held at Iranian cultural attaché’s office starting May 29.
Artworks created by Iraj Eskandari, Nima Petgar, Ahmad Vakili, Firuzeh Saberi and Yadollah Derakhshani will go on display at the event.
Iran to hold intl. seminar on ritual theater
TEHRAN -- Ritual theater is slated for discussion during a colloquium to be held at Tehran’s City Theater Complex from August 1 to 10.
Scholars from 12 countries including Afghanistan, Italy, the United States, Germany, Singapore, Japan and Sweden have been invited to the International Ritual Theater Seminar.
Iranian artist’s photos on display in Dubai gallery
TEHRAN -- Photos by Iranian artist Mohammadreza Mirzaii are currently on display at the Empty Quarter gallery in Dubai.
Mirzaii has previously showcased his photos in Britain, Australia, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine.
The exhibit will run until June 15 at the gallery located at the Dubai International Financial Center.
Iranian ensemble to perform in Australia
TEHRAN -- The Sufi ensemble will give performances in four states of Australia from June 10 to 20.
Conducted by Arash Zanganeh, virtuosos from Iran, India, England and Australia will accompany the band.
They will perform music that is a combination of Persian mystical music blended with electronic music.
Iran to hold Gaza World Awards
TEHRAN -- Iran will hold the Gaza World Awards on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip in late December 2009.
The award will be presented in various fields including photo, cartoon, painting, drama and music.
Deputy Culture Minister for Artistic Affairs Mohammad-Hossein Imani-Khoshkhu has appointed Khosro Zeinalpur as the secretary of the gala..Comment
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As Michael Wang, one of Asia’s top collectors, stood watching bidders at a Hong Kong sale compete to pay millions of dollars for paintings by Zao Wou-ki and Sanyu this week, he said he knew the art-market slump was over.
“There’s a hunger to buy, especially from mainland China,” said Wang, chief executive of My Humble House Art Space, in a telephone interview. “Nowhere else, except in Asia, do I see such a clear recovery in art buying.”
Christie’s International’s four-day sale of 1,600 paintings, gems and antiques tallied HK$1.07 billion ($138 million), beating its presale estimate of HK$750 million. The London-based company had cut estimates and the number of lots to draw buyers. In the comparable sale last year, held at the peak of Asia’s art market, Christie’s had offered 2,400 items for a record HK$2.4 billion. Its biannual auctions in the city, along with rival Sotheby’s, are the Asian art market’s bellwethers.
Hong Kong is Christie’s third-biggest market after New York and London and its hub for the sale of Chinese antiquities, with revenue of more than HK$1 billion last year. The auction was Christie’s first in China since the company’s Feb. 25 auction of looted Qing bronzes in Paris, which sparked outrage in Beijing. The Chinese government protested the sale by imposing controls on Christie’s mainland activities.
In the eight months following the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which triggered a global credit crisis, Christie’s and Sotheby’s had missed targets in Hong Kong by as much as half.
‘Surprise Strength’
“We were surprised at the strength of this market,” Andrew Foster, Christie’s Asia president, said in an interview. He said buyers paid an average 30 percent more per lot than at Christie’s November auction, two months after Lehman’s collapse.
Foster said it had been a challenge to persuade art owners to auction their treasures in the past few months because they were unsure if there would be buyers.
“For sellers who wonder if this is the right time to sell, we now have the answer,” said Foster. Prices for categories such as artworks and gems are back to pre-credit-crisis levels, he said.
Mainland Chinese bought the top lots in nearly every category.
“The Chinese economy has been relatively unscathed by the global credit crisis,” said John Berwald, founder of New York- based dealership Berwald Oriental Art.
China’s economy grew 6.1 percent in the first quarter of this year. While that’s the country’s slowest growth in almost a decade, most major developed economies shrank in that period.
Chinese Masters
As with Sotheby’s auction a month ago, works by Chinese masters fetched the highest prices. The four most expensive were paintings by China-born, Paris-based artist Zao (born in 1921) and Sanyu (1901-1966), whose 1950s work “Cat and Birds” fetched HK$42.1 million, a record price at auction for a work by the painter.
Zao’s brown-and-black themed painting “Nous Deux” was the second-priciest lot, fetching HK$35.4 million, against a presale top estimate of HK$15 million.
“Old paintings are better stores of value,” said Tian Kai, a Beijing-based art dealer, who attended the auction.
Chinese contemporary art, Asia’s auction darling before the credit crisis, sold for less money
Cai Guoqiang’s “Rebuilding the Berlin Wall: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 7,” a 2-meter by 5.95-meter gunpowder and Chinese ink on Japanese paper made in 1990, sold for HK$8.4 million, the most-expensive contemporary piece, against a presale top estimate of HK$8 million.
Patek Philippe
At yesterday’s auction, a Patek Philippe platinum automatic minute repeating wristwatch fetched HK$28.4 million, more than 10 times the item’s high estimate.
Earlier in the day, the ceramics sale totaled HK$322.9 million with two-thirds sold. At that auction, a pair of imperial gilt-bronze bells fetched HK$45.4 million, the most expensive sold at auction.
Littleton & Hennessy Asian Art Ltd., a London-based company which advises clients on art purchases, bought the bells and the second-priciest item, a blue-and-white dragon vase, for HK$30.9 million.
Mainland Chinese were the second-largest group of buyers in the ceramics sale, accounting for more than a third of the top lots, Christie’s said.
“It’s a matter of time before more mainland Chinese buyers offer top dollar for the best ceramics,” said Berwald.
My Humble House’s Wang said Christie’s results may encourage more galleries and auction houses to offer their best pieces, even of Western art, in Asia.
“If this is where the money is, the finest artworks will be finding their way here,” he said.
iran
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In Chelsea, Art Intersects With Reality of Iranian Conflict
It takes very little time to get a sense of the spirit animating an ambitious show of Iranian and Iranian-American artists that opened on Friday at the Chelsea Art Museum. As you walk in, the first room you see is sardonically titled “In Search of the Axis of Evil.” And in another section not far away, a bright, Photoshopped self-portrait of the young Tehran artist Vahid Sharifian shows him, with a big Afro and ’70s sideburns, in alarmingly intimate contact with a bored-looking lion.
(The lion was one of the emblems of the Iranian monarchy before the Islamic Revolution.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/ar...27chelsea.html
iran
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Given the concern about Iran’s possible nuclear proliferation, talk about Israeli or American action, as well as the recent media attention due to the “false” election and resulting demonstrations, it makes sense to be more knowledgeable about the country’s artistic culture. Iran (Persia until 1935) actually has one of the richest art heritages in the world and a cultural tradition and identity dating back to 4,000 BC.
Local artist, art collector, and art dealer Farideh Dowlatdad, represents a fantastic Iranian artist named Col. M. Sarram. Born in Isfahan in 1929 and recently deceased, Sarram was a watercolorist who depicted ancient monuments, mosques and churches. In the past, Farideh exhibited and sold his masterful paintings in Washington, D.C., New York, and Oregon.
On the website www.persianfineart.com one can view the paintings of current renowned artists. Though Sarram is not on this website, Abbas Poursafah is a landscape painter whose exquisitely painted mosques and Iranian street scenes reminded me of Sarram’s work. Architecture is perhaps Persia’s greatest gift to the world, and both Sarram and Poursafah depict the magnificent structures.
Like Farideh, Professor Nassar D Khalili , www.khalili.org, is a collector of Islamic art. In fact, the London resident may have one of the best collections in the world. As one of the founders of the Iran Heritage Foundation established in 1995 to promote and preserve the cultural heritage of Iran, he is committed to encouraging peace and understanding between Jews and Muslims. In the midst of fears about terrorism and ignorance of Islam, one can hope through the appreciation of art, our better nature will prevail.
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