Essays

Claude Cahun as Anti-Nazi Resistance Fighter

In 1937, feeling increasingly trapped by the political climate in Paris, Claude Cahun escaped to the Isle of Jersey. Along with Guernsey and the other British Channel Islands just off the coast of Brittany, Jersey was a popular site for vacation homes belonging to bourgeois citizens from the nearby French city of Nantes. On Jersey, […]

By Shiva Balaghi, December 2008 “People moving along Tehran’s Pahlavi Avenue (now renamed Vali-‘Asr Avenue) in 1960,” recalled Parviz Tanavoli, “would have seen a gigantic sculpture on the balcony of one of the apartments that overlooked the street. Constructed from scrap metal, this assemblage depicted a man embracing a deer. The deer’s antlers were made […]

By Shiva Balaghi, December 2008 A textured black background merges into two abstract spheres—one layered in cold hues of blue and white, the other in warm hues of ochre and brown—evoking a night sky that contains within it the celestial bodies. Closer inspection of the surface of Siah Armajani’s painting Prayer for the Sun (1962) reveals […]

How did a self-described “dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner” residing in St. Paul, Minnesota, come to donate over two hundred works of modern Iranian art to New York University (NYU)? Indeed, this group of works—part of The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at the Grey Art Gallery—constitutes the largest public holding of […]

A Brief History of 20th-Century Iran

By Shiva Balaghi Colonialism and Constitutionalism: Iran at the Turn of the Century At the outset of the 20th century, Iran was embroiled in a bifurcated struggle. On the one hand, Iranians struggled to maintain their national independence in the face of growing colonial pressures. Iran’s geopolitical importance made it a central focus of the […]

by Edward J. Sullivan Mexican artist Nahum B. Zenil has said: “I have always felt the need for self-analysis in my work in order to accept myself and the way I live. I have always felt marginalized in my life and have experienced a great sense of solitude. In my art I’ve tried to effect […]

Performing in Larry Miller’s Flux-Tour at the Grey

Having always considered myself an introvert, I never thought that I would “perform” at an art event.  However, on November 11, 2011, at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, I performed in front of fifty people as part of Larry Miller’s famous Flux-Tour. Even harder to believe, Larry Miller led the tour – the Larry Miller, who […]