The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture

Talinn Grigor

Published by Penn State University Press 2021

The Persian Revival

The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture

Talinn Grigor

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271089706

Overview
Contents

About this book

One of the most heated scholarly controversies of the early twentieth century, the Orient-or-Rome debate turned on whether art historians should trace the origin of all Western—and especially Gothic—architecture to Roman ingenuity or to the Indo-Germanic Geist. Focusing on the discourses around this debate, Talinn Grigor considers the Persian Revival movement in light of imperial strategies of power and identity in British India and in Qajar-Pahlavi Iran.

The Persian Revival examines Europe’s discovery of ancient Iran, first in literature and then in art history. Tracing Western visual discourse about ancient Iran from 1699 on, Grigor parses the invention and use of a revivalist architectural style from the Afsharid and Zand successors to the Safavid throne and the rise of the Parsi industrialists as cosmopolitan subjects of British India. Drawing on a wide range of Persian revival narratives bound to architectural history, Grigor foregrounds the complexities and magnitude of artistic appropriations of Western art history in order to grapple with colonial ambivalence and imperial aspirations. She argues that while Western imperialism was instrumental in shaping high art as mercantile-bourgeois ethos, it was also a project that destabilized the hegemony of a Eurocentric historiography of taste.

An important reconsideration of the Persian Revival, this book will be of vital interest to art and architectural historians and intellectual historians, particularly those working in the areas of international modernism, Iranian studies, and historiography.

Author / Editor information

Grigor Talinn :

Talinn Grigor is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage Under the Pahlavi Monarchs and Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio.

Reviews

“The Persian Revival is a finely wrought, insightful, and successful contribution to the study of the reception of ancient Iran in the modern world. Entirely original, it draws observations from archives and from a wide range of literature and material evidence.”
—Christina Maranci, author of Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation

“The Persian Revival is an original study that builds a strong case for the transmission and deployment of knowledge across regions and cultural realms. It does so for a hitherto uncharted period and region—one that has not received adequate scholarly attention—and makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on global art and architectural histories of the long nineteenth century.”
—Madhuri Desai, author of Banaras Reconstructed: Architecture and Sacred Space in a Hindu Holy City

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Prologue: Fallacy of Origins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Ancient Iran in Western Art Historiography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
2. The Persepolitan Style in British India Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
3. The Persian Revival as Iranian Modernity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Epilogue: Copy’s Imperialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 75
- Images: 75
- Other: 75 illustrations
Keywords: Persian Revival; Iranian architecture; Parsi architecture; Parsi; Iran; Persia; Zand; Qajar; Pahlavi; Reza Shah; Naser al-Din Shah; Strzygowski; Orient-or-Rome debate; fire temple; revivalism; Gothic Revival; copy; style; travelogues to Iran; British India; colonialism; imperialism; nationalism; Aryan; Indo-European

eBook

Published: July 15, 2021
ISBN: 9780271089706