TEHRAN, Iran — The artworks are distinctly American — famed pieces in vivid colors wrestling with themes of war, violence, pop culture and commercialism. What’s startling is where they’re on display: In a museum in the Iranian capital, at a time the two countries are locked in conflict.
While the city’s streets are lined with anti-American billboards and posters, Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art opened an exhibit this week of six works by three American Pop artists of the 1960s — Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and James Rosenquist – mainly chosen for their anti-war themes.
The works come from the museum’s large collection of masterpieces of American and European modern art that was acquired by the wife of the former shah in the 1970s. Most of it has been kept out of view since the Western-backed monarch was ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
After living under U.S.-Israeli bombardment for weeks, the young men and women strolling the gallery felt a resonance from the works.
Some contemplated Rosenquist’s “F-111,” a collage dating to the era of the U.S. bombardment of Vietnam that critiques America’s military-industrial complex with images of a warplane’s fuselage, a nuclear mushroom cloud and a child’s face.
Nearby was “Brattata,” one of Lichtenstein’s characteristic paintings based on a comic book panel, this one of a fighter plane pilot shooting down an enemy craft.
“American artists have always had a really interesting way of ridiculing war, and that’s always fascinated me in their work,” said Ghazaleh Jahanbin, a Tehran artist visiting the show. “Maybe part of it, I don’t know, comes from their geographical distance from war itself.”
Reza Dabirinezhad, head of the museum, said the museum wanted the exhibit, titled “Art and War,” to respond to the “events unfolding around it.” So it selected pieces “that were either shaped by the experience of war or created as reactions to wars,” he told Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency. The museum is government-run and comes under the authority of the Culture Ministry.
The museum’s collection has a storied history. The government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi built the museum and bought up treasures of Cubist, Surrealist, Impressionist, Abstract and Pop art in the 1970s, when booming oil prices were filling Iran’s coffers and the country was the closest U.S. ally in the region.
The shah’s wife, former Empress Farah Pahlavi, largely selected the works from artists ranging from Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh to Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon and David Hockney.
But just two years after the museum opened, the shah was toppled and theocratic rule by Shiite clerics was installed. The collection was packed away in the museum’s vault, untouched for decades to avoid offending Islamic values or creating the appearance of catering to Western sensibilities.
Since 2012, the museum has occasionally brought out some pieces for temporary exhibits. The collection is believed to be worth several billion dollars. Even with Iran cash-strapped under Western sanctions, museum officials have ensured that the collection is not sold off. In 1994, Iran traded a Willem de Kooning painting from the collection for a prized manuscript of the Persian epic Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, from an American foundation.
Museums and many other cultural activities have been shut down in Iran during the current war. A shaky ceasefire in place since early April has allowed a reopening, though Dabirinezhad said only a few pieces were put on display in case war resumed and the works had to be rushed back to safe storage.
For Iranian art lovers, the reopening brought an escape from the anxiety of war and a chance to reconnect with culture.
“It was a such a great thing to happen. A couple of weeks ago I was talking with my friends and everybody was talking about how much they missed visiting museums,” said Jahanbin.
Fears remain high that the war could break out again. Iran and the U.S. remain locked in a military standoff, with Iran sealing the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. blockading Iranian ports as they wrangle over negotiations for a resolution.
“This state of being undecided leaves you dazed and confused, everything is up in the air,” said Mohammad Sadegh Abbasi, one of the visitors perusing the exhibit. “I hope everything ends well soon and we get a secure and calm life.”
“Some of the works remind me of the scenes I saw (during the war),” he added.
The six works will be on display until May 10, but the director said each week new ones related to the theme will be brought out of the collection for show.
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