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THE CURRENT HIGH PROFILE ENJOYED INTERNATIONALLY BY ART FROM THE ARAB WORLD AND IRAN IS NOT A PASSING FAD, ARGUES ROSE ISSA, BUT THE CORRECTION OF A PAST IMBALANCE
These are exciting times for Middle Eastern art. The new Jameel Prize was inaugurated by London’s Victoria & Albert Museum last year; a Christie’s auction house has been established in Dubai, and Sotheby’s has started organising annual Middle Eastern art sales; annual art fairs have been founded in Abu Dhabi and Dubai; New York’s New Museum’s 2009 exhibition, The Generational: Younger than Jesus, featured works by Middle Eastern artists; and over in London, Charles Saatchi managed to generate acres of press for his 2009 show Unveiled: New Art From the Middle East.
The international breakthrough of Middle Eastern art was only sudden to those who had not been paying attention. Was it perhaps the events of 9/11 that made people in the West start to wonder about this previously under-exposed culture? Was it an over-saturation of their own artists, or simply a voracious fashion for the next big thing? Both Chinese and Indian art had their moment in the spotlight in the middle years of the last decade, and some other sensation had to follow, so why not Middle Eastern art?
In fact, a demand for work coming out of the Arab world has existed for a very long time, well before I began promoting contemporary visual art and film from the region – as well as Iran – from the gallery I founded and directed in London from 1986 to 1988 (the Kufa Gallery, generously funded by the Iraqi architect Dr Mohamed Makiyya). The exhibitions I put on sold out even back then, with the work being snapped up by collectors from the UK, the US and across Europe.
Some of the artists I was exhibiting some 20 years ago are the same artists who are now being ‘discovered’ by the promoters, exhibitors and investors of the wider international art community. Far from being overnight successes, these artists have been steadily working away, out of the media spotlight, for decades. Farhad Moshiri, an Iranian artist, is in his 40s. He has been producing work for 20 years and until five years ago he was selling for well below his worth. Mohammed Ehsai, another Iranian, is in his 70s and has been working as an artist for more than 40 years. That is a whole lifetime’s career. As recently as six years ago Ehsai’s work was being bought for as little as US$800; these days his pieces go for up to US$1 million.
Observing such rapid inflation, some commentators suggest that Middle Eastern art has suddenly become vastly overpriced. I would disagree. It is quite legitimate that artists who were under-appreciated and undervalued for 20 to 40 years are now having the true value of their work recognised and are able to enjoy a measure of belated financial success.
While some Middle Eastern artists have recently achieved high prices at auction, there are still galleries selling work at collectable prices. There are some magnificent pieces on the market that I consider to be priced below their true worth, including some by big-name stars such as Anglo-Palestinian conceptual artist Mona Hatoum, 86-year-old Iranian Monir Farmanfarmaian, Maliheh Afnan, who was born in Palestine of Persian parents and whose work reflects her personal history, and the Armenian-Egyptian Chant Avedissian, whose pop art representations of Arab-world icons like Gamal Abdel Nasser and Umm Kulthum are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institute and the British Museum.
Long before the international spotlight swung this way, there was a staunch tradition of patronage by those who belonged to the huge Middle Eastern diaspora. If and when the interest of a certain type of European or American collector/investor moves on from Middle Eastern art, the support of those original patrons will remain.
Good work will always remain good. Good artists with a track record will always be in demand, and whatever the hype or the fashion of the moment, collectors who enjoy the positive input of art in their daily life will always be grateful to those artists and curators who are encouraging art to step forward and say what governments do not say: we have wonderful talents that we are proud of.
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