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This hybrid book examines the art and politics of “The Nude” in various cultural contexts, featuring books of canonical western art pirated and either digitally- or hand-censored in Iran by anonymous government workers.
Author Glenn Harcourt uses several case studies brought to the fore by American painter Pamela Joseph in her recent “Censored” series. Harcourt’s rigorous, culturally-measured and art historical approach complements Joseph’s appropriation of these censored images as feminist critique. Harcourt argues that her work serves as a window toward larger questions in art. These include an examination of the evolution of abstraction; the role of women in western society, as seen through the history of painting the body; the effects of western art on cultures outside the west (sometimes referred to in Iran as “west-toxication”); and how artists in non-western countries, specifically those in Iran living under rules of censorship that specifically prohibit representation of the body, engage with the history of western art found in the censored books.
Harcourt’s discussion of Iranian contemporary artists focuses on censorship tropes in portraiture, including works by Aydin Aghdashloo, Gohar Dashti, Katayoun Karami, Daryoush Qarezad, Manijeh Sehhi, Newsha Tavakolian, and others. Issues of privacy and security prevent some Iranian artist insiders from being named, but studio images as well as recipes for removal of the censored marks along with testimony from artists who are now living outside Iran provide reference for many English-speaking readers who don’t otherwise have knowledge of the country’s strict policies.
Image reproductions ranging from the pages of the censored books themselves, to Joseph’s paintings, to artwork by contemporary Iranian artists, make the book visually intriguing, timely, and visually fascinating reading.
– Molly Tambor, Associate Professor of History, Long Island University
Glenn Harcourt: Glenn Harcourt writes about the history of art and visual culture. He has advanced degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Yale. A contributor to various Los Angeles-based arts journals, as well as "Representations," the "Archive Journal," and other publications, 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, including a collaborative graphic novel on the sixteenth-century anatomist Andreas Vesalius. His most recent study, "Pathological Anatomy and Self-Portraiture" appeared in the Spanish history of science journal Dynamis.
Francis M. Naumann: Francis M. Naumann is a scholar, curator, and art dealer, 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, who is a scholar of Duchamp and the ready-made for over the last forty-years, is known for several books, including "Marcel Duchamp, Artist of the Century" (MIT Press, 1989), which he coedited with Rudolf E. Kuenzli; a book on Man Ray, and an edition of Duchamp's collected letters. His collection of essays about Duchamp "The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp" (2010) has been praised by, among others, Calvin Tomkins, art critic for The New Yorker: "Naumann's consistently fresh approaches to Duchamp’s work and Duchamp’s life, set down in agile and jargon-free prose, make these collected essays the single most informative book you will find on the endlessly fascinating artist."
PART ONE
Pamela Joseph’s “CENSORED” Series: Appropriation and Cultural Politics
1. Matisse and the Censored Nude
2. “Breastiness” and “Westoxication”
3. Picasso: Three Women and the Demoiselles
4. The Desecration of Manet's Olympia
5. Heroic Nudity and Male Sexuality
6. Consenting Adults
7. Censorship and Appropriation
PART TWO
Post-modernism and the Construction of Culture:
Considering art, photography and films by Aydin Aghdashloo (Iran), Boushra Almutawakel (Yemen), Ana Lily Amirpour (Great Britain/USA), Gohar Dashti (Iran), Daryoush Gharahzad (Iran), Shadi Ghadirian (Iran), Bahman Ghobadi (Iranian Kurdistan), Tanya Habjouqa (Jordan), Katayoun Karami (Iran), Hoda Katebi (USA), Simin Keramati (Iran/Canada), Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iran/Great Britain), Shohreh Mehran (Iran), Houman Mortazavi (Iran), Manijeh Sehhi (Iran), and Newsha Tavakolian (Iran/USA)
PART THREE: Censored Books: An Exercise in Looking
Introduction
Plates
Afterword by Pamela Joseph
Acknowledgments