Iranian Art Transcends Politics
From ancient times, to thousands of years of monarchy, to today's Islamic Republic, Iranians have pursued spiritual progression, writes Roshanak Taghavi. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's contemporary Iranian art collection in New York conveys this pursuit through time, fusing historical and contemporary subjects spanning the realms of philosophy, politics and poetry.
For a mystic like ancient Sufi poet and philosopher Jalal al-din Rumi, the progression toward “nothingness” — known in Persian as “heech”— is spiritual. No matter what one’s external circumstances may be, self-awareness is an art to be realized personally, deep within oneself.
“Since you are more than tongue can tell, behold how eloquent I am without a tongue,” he wrote almost eight centuries ago. “Like the moon, without legs, I race through nothingness.”
