“The Clarity of Meaning”
Subtitle: Contemporary Iranian Art and the Cosmopolitan Ethics of Reading in Art History
By: Foad Torshizi
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2017
Place of publication: [New York, N.Y.?]
Language: eng
Description: This dissertation traces the substantial expansion of Western interest in contemporary Iranian art over the past two decades. In reading Iranian artifacts, it argues that Western disciplinary frames, most specifically art history and criticism, circumscribe the heterogeneity of Iranian contemporary art. Submitted to Western frames of legibility, the multivalent aesthetic properties of contemporary Iranian art is reduced to readily consumable social, political, and ethical messages. Burdened by the need to speak for Iranian society as a whole, the diverse aesthetic economies of Iranian artifacts are curtailed and reconfigured so that they align with Euro–American understandings of meaning, value, aspiration, and desire.
Notes: Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.

Thesis advisor: Hamid Dabashi.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2017.