History of art(west and Iranian)-contemporary art

1. Aziz Art
July 2016
Ab
ba
s
Kia
ros
ta
mi Francis Bacon
Iran

2. Director: Aziz Anzabi
Editor and translator :
Asra Yaghoubi
Research: Zohreh Nazari
1.Abbas Kiarostami
12.Francis Bacon
21.Turkmen Sahra
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com

3. Abas Kiarostami

4. Abbas Kiarostami
22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016 was an
Iranian film director, screenwriter,
photographer and film producer.An
active film-maker from 1970,
Kiarostami had been involved in
over forty films, including shorts
and documentaries. Kiarostami
attained critical acclaim for
directing the Koker trilogy (1987–
94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of
Cherry (1997) – which was awarded
the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film
Festival that year – and The Wind
Will Carry Us (1999). In his later
works, Certified Copy (2010) and
Like Someone in Love (2012), he
filmed for the first time outside
Iran: in Italy and Japan,
respectively.
Kiarostami had worked extensively
as a screenwriter, film editor, art
director and producer and had
designed credit titles and publicity
material. He was also a poet,
photographer, painter, illustrator,
and graphic designer. He was part
of a generation of filmmakers in the
Iranian New Wave, a Persian
cinema movement that started in
the late 1960s and includes
pioneering directors such as
Masoud Kimiai, Sohrab Shahid
Saless, Dariush Mehrjui, Bahram
Beyzai, Nasser Taghvai and Parviz
Kimiavi. These filmmakers share
many common techniques
including the use of poetic dialogue
and allegorical storytelling dealing
with political and philosophical
issues.
Kiarostami had a reputation for
using child protagonists, for
documentary-style narrative films,
for stories that take place in rural
villages, and for conversations that
unfold inside cars, using stationary
mounted cameras. He is also
known for his use of contemporary
Iranian poetry in the dialogue,
titles, and themes of his films. 1

5. Early life and background
Kiarostami majored in painting and
graphic design at the University of
Tehran College of Fine Arts.
Kiarostami was born in Tehran. His
first artistic experience was
painting, which he continued into
his late teens, winning a painting
competition at the age of 18 shortly
before he left home to study at the
University of Tehran School of Fine
Arts.He majored in painting and
graphic design, and supported his
studies by working as a traffic
policeman.
As a painter, designer, and
illustrator, Kiarostami worked in
advertising in the 1960s, designing
posters and creating commercials.
Between 1962 and 1966, he shot
around 150 advertisements for
Iranian television. In the late
1960s, he began creating credit
titles for films
(including Gheysar by
Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating
children's books.
Film career
1970s
In 1969, when the Iranian New
Wave began with
Dariush Mehrjui's film Gāv,
Kiarostami helped set up a
filmmaking department at the
Institute for Intellectual
Development of Children and
Young Adults (Kanun) in Tehran. Its
debut production and Kiarostami's
first film was the twelve-minute
The Bread and Alley (1970), a neo-
realistic short film about a
schoolboy's confrontation with an
aggressive dog. Breaktime followed
in 1972. The department became
one of Iran's most noted film
studios, producing not only
Kiarostami's films, but acclaimed
Persian films such as The Runner
and Bashu, the Little Stranger.
In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an
individualistic style of film making.
When discussing his first film, he
stated:
Bread and Alley was my first
experience in cinema and I must
say a very difficult one. I had to
work with a very young child, a
dog, and an unprofessional crew
except for the cinematographer,
who was nagging and complaining
all the time. Well, the
cinematographer, in a sense, was
right because I did not follow the
conventions of film making that he
had become accustomed to.

6. Following The Experience (1973),
Kiarostami released The Traveler
(Mossafer) in 1974. The Traveler
tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a
troubled and troublesome boy
from a small Iranian city. Intent on
attending a football match in far-off
Tehran, he scams his friends and
neighbors to raise money, and
journeys to the stadium in time for
the game, only to meet with an
ironic twist of fate. In addressing
the boy's determination to reach
his goal, alongside his indifference
to the effects of his amoral actions,
the film examined human
behavior and the balance of right
and wrong. It furthered
Kiarostami's reputation for realism,
diegetic simplicity, and stylistic
complexity, as well as his
fascination with physical and
spiritual journeys.
In 1975, Kiarostami directed two
short films So Can I and Two
Solutions for One Problem. In early
1976, he released Colors, followed
by the fifty-four-minute film A
Wedding Suit, a story about three
teenagers coming
into conflict over a suit for a
wedding.
Kiarostami in 1977
Kiarostami's first feature film was
the 112-minute Report (1977). It
revolved around the life of a tax
collector accused of accepting
bribes; suicide was among its
themes. In 1979, he produced and
directed First Case, Second Case.
1980s
In the early 1980s, Kiarostami
directed several short films
including Toothache (1980), Orderly
or Disorderly (1981), and The
Chorus (1982). In 1983, he directed
Fellow Citizen. It was not until his
release of Where Is the Friend's
Home? that he began to gain
recognition outside Iran.
The film tells a simple account of a
conscientious eight-year-old
schoolboy's quest to return his
friend's notebook in a neighboring
village lest his friend be expelled
from school. The traditional beliefs
of Iranian rural people are
portrayed. The film has been noted
for its poetic use of the Iranian rural
landscape and its realism, both
important elements of Kiarostami's
work. Kiarostami made the film
from a child's point of view.

7. Where Is the Friend's Home?,
And Life Goes On (1992) (also
known as Life and Nothing More),
and Through the Olive Trees
(1994) are described by critics as
the Koker trilogy, because all three
films feature the village of Koker in
northern Iran. The films also relate
to the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar
earthquake, in which 40,000
people died. Kiarostami uses the
themes of life, death, change, and
continuity to connect the films.
The trilogy was successful in
France in the 1990s and other
Western European countries such
as the Netherlands, Sweden,
Germany and Finland. But,
Kiarostami did not consider the
three films to comprise a trilogy.
He suggested that the last two
titles plus Taste of Cherry (1997)
comprise a trilogy, given their
common theme of the
preciousness of life. In 1987,
Kiarostami was involved in the
screenwriting of The Key, which he
edited but did not direct. In 1989,
he released Homework.
1990s
Kiarostami directing a film
Kiarostami's first film of the
decade was Close-Up (1990), which
narrates the story of the real-life
trial of a man who impersonated
film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf,
conning a family into believing they
would star in his new film. The
family suspects theft as the motive
for this charade, but the
impersonator, Hossein Sabzian,
argues that his motives were more
complex. The part-documentary,
part-staged film examines Sabzian's
moral justification for usurping
Makhmalbaf's identity, questioning
his ability to sense his cultural and
artistic flair. Ranked 42 in British
Film Institute's The Top 50 Greatest
Films of All Time, Close-Up received
praise from directors such as
Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese,
Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard,
and Nanni Moretti and was
released across Europe.
In 1992, Kiarostami directed Life,
and Nothing More..., regarded by
critics as the second film of the
Koker trilogy. The film follows a
father and his young son as they
drive from Tehran to Koker in
search of two young boys who they
fear might have perished in the
1990 earthquake.

9. As the father and son travel
through the devastated landscape,
they meet earthquake survivors
forced to carry on with their lives
amid disaster.That year Kiarostami
won a Prix Roberto Rossellini, the
first professional film award of his
career, for his direction of the film.
The last film of the so-called Koker
trilogy was Through the Olive Trees
(1994), which expands a peripheral
scene from Life and Nothing More
into the central drama.Critics such
as Adrian Martin have called the
style of filmmaking in the Koker
trilogy as "diagrammatical",
linking the zig-zagging patterns in
the landscape and the geometry
of forces of life and the world.A
flashback of the zigzag path in Life
and Nothing More... (1992) in turn
triggers the spectator's memory of
the previous film, Where Is the
Friend's Home? from 1987, shot
before the earthquake. This
symbolically links to the post-
earthquake reconstruction in
Through the Olive Trees in 1994. In
1995, Miramax Films released
Through the Olive Trees in the US
theaters.
Kiarostami next wrote the
screenplays for The Journey and
The White Balloon (1995), for his
former assistant Jafar
Panahi.Between 1995 and 1996, he
was involved in the production of
Lumière and Company, a
collaboration with 40 other film
directors.
Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or
(Golden Palm) award at the Cannes
Film Festival for Taste of Cherry.It is
the drama of a man, Mr. Badii,
determined to commit suicide. The
film involved themes such as
morality, the legitimacy of the act
of suicide, and the meaning of
compassion.
Kiarostami directed The Wind Will
Carry Us in 1999, which won the
Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at the
Venice International Film Festival.
The film contrasted rural and urban
views on the dignity of labor,
addressing themes of gender
equality and the benefits of
progress, by means of a stranger's
sojourn in a remote Kurdish
village.An unusual feature of the
movie is that many of the
characters are heard but not seen;
at least thirteen to fourteen
speaking characters in the film are
never seen.

10. 2000s
In 2000, at the San Francisco Film
Festival award ceremony,
Kiarostami was awarded the Akira
Kurosawa Prize for lifetime
achievement in directing, but
surprised everyone by giving it
away to veteran Iranian actor
Behrooz Vossoughi for his
contribution to Iranian cinema.
In 2001, Kiarostami and his
assistant, Seifollah Samadian,
traveled to Kampala, Uganda
at the request of the United
Nations International Fund for
Agricultural Development,
to film a documentary about
programs assisting Ugandan
orphans. He stayed for ten days
and made ABC Africa.
The trip was originally intended
as a research in preparation
for the filming, but Kiarostami
ended up editing the entire film
from the video footage shot there.
The high number of orphans in
Uganda has resulted from the
deaths of parents in the AIDS
epidemic.
Time Out editor and National Film
Theatre chief programmer, Geoff
Andrew, said in referring to the
film: "Like his previous four
features, this film is not about
death but life-and-death: how
they're linked, and what attitude
we might adopt with regard to their
symbiotic inevitability."
The following year, Kiarostami
directed Ten, revealing an unusual
method of filmmaking and
abandoning many scriptwriting
conventions. Kiarostami focused on
the socio-political landscape of
Iran. The images are seen through
the eyes of one woman as she
drives through the streets of Tehran
over a period of several days. Her
journey is composed of ten
conversations with various
passengers, which include her
sister, a hitchhiking prostitute, and
a jilted bride and her demanding
young son. This style of filmmaking
was praised by a number of critics.
A. O. Scott in The New York Times
wrote that Kiarostami, "in addition
to being perhaps the most
internationally admired Iranian
filmmaker of the past decade, is
also among the world masters of
automotive cinema...He
understands the automobile as a
place of reflection, observation
and, above all, talk."

11. In 2003, Kiarostami directed Five,
a poetic feature with no dialogue
or characterization. It consists of
five long shots of nature which are
single-take sequences, shot with a
hand-held DV camera, along the
shores of the Caspian Sea.
Although the film lacks a clear
storyline, Geoff Andrew
argues that the film is "more than
just pretty pictures". He adds,
"Assembled in order,
they comprise a kind of abstract or
emotional narrative arc, which
moves evocatively from separation
and solitude to community, from
motion to rest, near-silence to
sound and song, light to darkness
and back to light again,
ending on a note of rebirth and
regeneration."He notes the degree
of artifice concealed behind the
apparent simplicity of the imagery.
Kiarostami produced 10 on Ten
(2004), a journal documentary that
shares ten lessons on movie-
making while he drives
through the locations of his past
films. The movie is shot on digital
video with a stationary camera
mounted inside the car, in a
manner reminiscent of Taste of
Cherry and Ten. In 2005 and 2006,
he directed The Roads of
Kiarostami, a 32-minute
documentary that reflects on the
power of landscape, combining
austere black-and-white
photographs with poetic
observations,engaging music with
political subject matter. Also in
2005, Kiarostami contributed the
central section to Tickets, a
portmanteau film set on a train
traveling through Italy. The other
segments were directed by Ken
Loach and Ermanno Olmi.
In 2008, Kiarostami directed the
feature Shirin, which features close-
ups of many notable Iranian
actresses and the French actress
Juliette Binoche as they watch a
film based on a partly mythological
Persian romance tale of Khosrow
and Shirin, with themes of female
self-sacrifice. The film has been
described as "a compelling
exploration of the relationship
between image, sound and female
spectatorship."
That summer, he directed Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart's opera Così fan
tutte conducted by Christophe
Rousset at Festival d'Aix-en-
Provence starring with William
Shimell .

12. But the following year's
performances at the English
National Opera was impossible to
direct because of refusal of
permission to travel abroad from
his country.
2010s
Kiarostami in 2015
Certified Copy (2010), again
starring Juliette Binoche, was made
in Tuscany and was Kiarostami's
first film to be shot and produced
outside Iran.The story of an
encounter between a British man
and a French woman, it was
entered in competition for the
Palme d'Or in the 2010 Cannes Film
Festival. Peter Bradshaw of The
Guardian describes the film as an
"intriguing oddity", and said,
"Certified Copy is the
deconstructed portrait of a
marriage, acted with well-
intentioned fervour by Juliette
Binoche, but persistently baffling,
contrived, and often simply bizarre
– a highbrow misfire of the most
peculiar sort." He concluded that
the film is "unmistakably an
example of Kiarostami's
compositional technique, though
not a successful example." Roger
Ebert, however, praised the film,
noting that "Kiarostami is rather
brilliant in the way he creates
offscreen spaces." Binoche won the
Best Actress Award at Cannes for
her performance in the film.
Kiarostami's final film, Like
Someone in Love, set and shot in
Japan, received mostly positive
reviews by critics.

13. Film festival work
Kiarostami was a jury member at numerous film festivals, most notably
the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, 2002 and 2005. He was also the
president of the Caméra d'Or Jury in Cannes Film Festival 2005. He was
announced as the president of the Cinéfondation and short film
sections of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Other representatives include the Venice Film Festival in 1985, the
Locarno International Film Festival in 1990, the San Sebastian
International Film Festival in 1996, the São Paulo International Film
Festival in 2004, the Capalbio Cinema Festival in 2007 (in which he was
president of the jury), and the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival in
2011.He also made regular appearances at many other film festivals
across Europe, including the Estoril Film Festival in Portugal.

15. Francis Bacon
(28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992)
was an Irish-born British figurative
painter known for his bold,
grotesque, emotionally charged
and raw imagery. His painterly
abstracted figures are typically
isolated in glass or steel
geometrical cages, set against flat,
nondescript backgrounds. Bacon
took up painting in his early 20s
but worked sporadically and
uncertainly until his mid-30s. He
drifted as a highly complex bon
vivant, homosexual, gambler and
interior decorator and designer of
furniture, rugs and bathroom tiles.
He later admitted that his artistic
career was delayed because he
spent too long looking for subject
matter that could sustain his
interest.
His breakthrough came with the
1944 triptych Three Studies for
Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion,
which in the immediate aftermath
of the Second World War, sealed
his reputation as a uniquely bleak
chronicler of the human condition.
Remarking on the cultural
significance of Three Studies, the
art critic John Russell observed
that "there was painting in England
before the Three Studies, and
painting after them, and no
one...can confuse the two."
Bacon said that he saw images "in
series", and his artistic output
typically focused on a single subject
or format for sustained periods,
often in triptych or diptych formats.
His output can be crudely described
as sequences or variations on a
single motif; beginning with the
1930s Picasso-informed Furies,
moving on to the 1940s male heads
isolated in rooms or geometric
structures, the 1950s screaming
popes, and the mid-to-late 1950s
animals and lone figures. These
were followed by his early 1960s
variations on crucifixion scenes.
From the mid-1960s he mainly
produced portraits of friends and
drinking companions, either as
single or triptych panels. Following
the 1971 suicide of his lover George
Dyer, his art became more sombre,
inward-looking and preoccupied
with the passage of time and
death.The climax of this later
period is marked by masterpieces,
including his 1982's "Study for Self-
Portrait" and Study for a Self-
Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86. 12

16. Despite his bleak existentialist
outlook, solidified in the public
mind through his articulate and
vivid series of interviews with
David Sylvester, Bacon in person
was highly engaging and
charismatic, articulate, well-read
and unapologetically gay. He was a
prolific artist, but nonetheless
spent many of the evenings of his
middle age eating, drinking and
gambling in London's Soho with
like-minded friends such as Lucian
Freud (though the two fell out in
the 1950s, for reasons neither ever
explained), John Deakin, Muriel
Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Daniel
Farson and Jeffrey Bernard. After
Dyer's suicide he largely distanced
himself from this circle, and while
his social life was still active and
his passion for gambling and
drinking continued, he settled into
a platonic and somewhat fatherly
relationship with his eventual heir,
John Edwards.
Bacon was equally reviled and
acclaimed during his lifetime. Art
critic Robert Hughes described him
as "the most implacable, lyric artist
in late 20th-century England,
perhaps in all the world"and along
with Willem de Kooning as "the
most important painter of the
disquieting human figure in the
50's of the 20th century."Francis
Bacon was the subject of two Tate
retrospectives and a major showing
in 1971 at the Grand Palais. Since
his death his reputation and market
value have grown steadily, and his
work is amongst the most
acclaimed, expensive and sought-
after. In the late 1990s a number of
major works, previously assumed
destroyed,including early 1950s
popes and 1960s portraits,
reemerged to set record prices at
auction. On 12 November 2013 his
Three Studies of Lucian Freud set
the world record as the most
expensive piece of art sold at
auction, selling for
$142,405,000,until exceeded by the
sale of a Picasso in May 2015.

17. Early life
Bacon's birthplace at 63 Lower Baggot
Street, Dublin
Francis Bacon was born in a nursing
home in the heart of old Georgian
Dublin at 63 Lower Baggot Street
,to parents of English descent. His
father, Captain Anthony Edward
Mortimer ("Eddy") Bacon was born
in Adelaide, South Australia to an
English father and an Australian
mother.Eddy was a veteran of the
Boer War, and a racehorse trainer
and his mother, Christina Winifred
"Winnie" Firth was heiress to a
Sheffield steel business and coal
mine. It is believed his father was a
direct descendant of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, elder half-brother of Sir
Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan
statesman, philosopher and
essayist. His great-great-
grandmother, Lady Charlotte
Harley, was intimately acquainted
with Lord Byron, who called her
"Ianthe", and dedicated his poem,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, to
her.When Bacon's paternal
grandfather was given the chance
to revive the title of Lord Oxford by
Queen Victoria, he refused for
financial reasons.He had an older
brother, Harley,two younger sisters,
Ianthe and Winifred, and a younger
brother, Edward. He was raised by
the family nanny, Jessie Lightfoot,
from Cornwall, known as 'Nanny
Lightfoot', and who remained close
to him until her death. Lightfoot
was a mother figure for Bacon. In
the 1940s, she aided him in keeping
gambling houses in London.
The family changed houses often,
moving back and forth between
Ireland and England several times,
leading to a feeling of displacement
remained with the artist
throughout his life. In 1911 the
family lived in Cannycourt House
near Kilcullen, County Kildare, but
later moved to Westbourne Terrace
in London, close to where Bacon's
father worked at the Territorial
Force Records Office. They returned
to Ireland after World War I. Bacon
lived with his maternal
grandmother and step-grandfather,
Winifred and Kerry Supple, at
Farmleigh, Abbeyleix, County Laois,
though the family again moved to
Straffan Lodge near Naas, County
Kildare; his mother's place of birth.
Bacon as a child was shy, and
enjoyed dressing up. This, coupled
with his effeminate manner, upset
his father.

18. A story emerged in 1992 of his
father having had Francis
horsewhipped by their groom. In
1924 his parents moved to
Gloucestershire, first to Prescott
House in Gotherington, then
Linton Hall near the border with
Herefordshire. At a fancy-dress
party at the Firth family home,
Cavendish Hall in Suffolk, Francis
dressed as a flapper with an Eton
crop, beaded dress, lipstick, high
heels, and a long cigarette holder.
In 1926, the family moved back to
Straffan Lodge. His sister, Ianthe,
twelve years his junior, recalled
that Bacon made drawings of
ladies with cloche hats and long
cigarette holders. Later that year,
Francis was thrown out of Straffan
Lodge following an incident in
which his father found him
admiring himself in front of a large
mirror draped in his mother's
underwear.
London, Berlin and Paris
Bacon spent the latter half of 1926
in London, living on an allowance
of £3 a week from his mother's
trust fund, while reading Nietzsche.
Although destitute, Bacon found
that by avoiding rent and engaging
in petty theft, he could survive. To
supplement his income, he briefly
tried his hand at domestic service,
but although he enjoyed cooking,
he became bored and resigned. He
was sacked from a telephone
answering position at a shop selling
women's clothes in Poland Street,
Soho, after writing a poison pen
letter to the owner. Bacon found
himself drifting through London's
homosexual underworld, aware
that he was able to attract a certain
type of rich man, something he was
quick to take advantage of, having
developed a taste for good food
and wine. One was a relative of
Winnie, another a breeder of
racehorses, Harcourt-Smith, who
was renowned for his manliness.
Bacon claimed his father had asked
this "uncle" to take him 'in-hand'
and 'make a man of him'. Francis
had a difficult relationship with his
father, once admitting to being
sexually attracted to him.
In 1927 Bacon moved to Berlin,
where he saw Fritz Lang's
Metropolis and Sergei Eisenstein's
Battleship Potemkin, later catalysts
of his artistic imagination.

20. Bacon spent two months in Berlin,
though Harcourt-Smith left after
one – "He soon got tired of me, of
course, and went off with a
woman ... I didn't really know
what to do, so I hung on for a
while, and then,
since I'd managed to keep a bit of
money, I decided to go to Paris."
Bacon then spent the next year
and a half in Paris. He met
Yvonne Bocquentin, pianist and
connoisseur, at the opening of an
exhibition. Aware of his own need
to learn French, Bacon lived for
three months with Madame
Bocquentin and her family at their
house near Chantilly. He travelled
into Paris to visit the city's art
galleries.At the Château de
Chantilly (Musée Condé) he saw
Nicolas Poussin's Massacre of the
Innocents, a painting which he
often referred to in his own later
work. From Chantilly, he went to
an exhibition that inspired him to
take up painting.
Return to London
Bacon returned to London late in
1928 or early 1929, and took up
work as an interior designer. He
found a studio at 17 Queensberry
Mews West, South Kensington, and
shared the upper floor with Eric
Alden – who became his first
collector – and his childhood nanny,
Jessie Lightfoot. Bacon advertised
himself as a "gentleman's
companion" in The Times, on the
front page (then reserved for
personal messages and
insertions).Among the many
answers carefully vetted by Nanny
Lightfoot was one from an elderly
cousin of Douglas Cooper, owner of
one of the finest collections of
modern art in England. The
gentleman, having paid Bacon for
his services, found him part-time
work as a telephone operator in a
London club and sought Cooper's
help in promoting Bacon's
developing skill as a designer of
furniture and interiors. Cooper
commissioned a desk from Bacon in
battleship grey around this time.
In 1929 while working at the
telephone exchange at the Bath
Club on Dover Street he met Eric
Hall who became his patron and
lover in an often torturous
relationship.

21. Bacon's first show in the winter of
1929, at Queensberry Mews, was
of his carpet rugs and furniture. It
may have included Painted screen
(ca. 1929–1930) and Watercolour
(1929) his earliest surviving
painting, which seems to have
evolved from his rug designs, in
turn influenced by the paintings
and tapestries of Jean Lurçat.
Sydney Butler (daughter of
Samuel Courtauld and wife of Rab
Butler) commissioned a glass and
steel table and a set of stools for
the dining room of her Smith
Square house. Bacon's
Queensberry Mews studio was
featured in the August 1930 issue
of
The Studio magazine, in a double
page article entitled "The 1930
Look in British Decoration". The
piece showed work including a
large round mirror, some rugs and
tubular steel and glass furniture
largely influenced by the
International Style.
Bacon left the Queensberry Mews
West studio in 1931 and had no
settled space for some years.
Bacon probably shared a studio
with Roy de Maistre, circa 1931/32,
at Carlyle Studios (just off the Kings
Road) in Chelsea. Portrait (1932)
and Portrait (ca. 1931–1932) (the
latter bought by Diana Watson)
both show a round-faced youth
with diseased skin (painted after
Bacon saw Ibsen's Ghosts), and
date from a brief stay in a studio on
the Fulham Road. In 1932, Bacon
was commissioned by Gladys
MacDermot, an Irish woman who
had lived in Australia, to redesign
much of the decoration and
furniture of her flat at 98
Ridgmount Gardens in Bloomsbury.
Bacon recalled that she was
"always filling me up with food".
Early success
Three Studies for Figures at the
Base of a Crucifixion, 1944. Oil and
pastel on Sundeala board. Tate
Britain, London
By 1946 Bacon had confidently
arrived; his "Three Studies"
summarises themes explored in
Bacon's previous paintings,
including his examination of
Picasso's biomorphs and his
interpretations of the Crucifixion
and the Greek Furies.

22. Bacon did not realise his original
intention to paint a large crucifixion
scene and place the figures at the
foot of the cross. It is generally
considered Bacon's first mature
piece; he regarded his works before
the triptych as irrelevant, and
throughout his life tried to suppress
their appearance on the art market.
When the painting was first
exhibited in 1945 it caused a
sensation and helped to establish
him as one of the foremost post-
war painters. Remarking on the
cultural significance of Three
Studies, the critic John Russell
observed in 1971 that "there was
painting in England before the
Three Studies, and painting after
them, and no one ... can confuse
the two."Painting (1946) was
shown in several group shows
including in the British section of
Exposition internationale d'art
moderne (18 November – 28
December 1946) at the Musée
National d'Art Moderne, for which
Bacon travelled to Paris. Within a
fortnight of the sale of Painting
(1946) to the Hanover Gallery
Bacon used the proceeds to
decamp from London to Monte
Carlo. After staying at a succession
of hotels and flats, including the
Hôtel de Ré, Bacon settled in a
large villa, La Frontalière, in the hills
above the town. Hall and Lightfoot
would come to stay. Bacon spent
much of the next few years in
Monte Carlo apart from short visits
to London. From Monte Carlo,
Bacon wrote to Graham Sutherland
and Erica Brausen. His letters to
Brausen show he painted there, but
no paintings are known to survive.
In 1948, Painting (1946) sold to
Alfred Barr for the Museum of
Modern Art in New York for £240.
Bacon wrote to Sutherland asking
that he apply fixative to the patches
of pastel on Painting (1946) before
it was shipped to New York.
Painting (1946) is now too fragile to
be moved from MoMA for
exhibition elsewhere. At least one
visit to Paris in 1946 brought Bacon
into more immediate contact with
French postwar painting and Left
Bank ideas such as
Existentialism.He had, by this time,
embarked on his lifelong friendship
with Isabel Rawsthorne, a painter
closely involved with Giacometti
and the Left Bank set. They shared
many interests including
ethnography and classicalliterature.

24. Turkmen Sahra that means "Plain
of Turkmens", is a region in the
northeast of Iran near the Caspian
Sea, bordering Turkmenistan, the
majority of whose inhabitants are
ethnic Turkmen. The most
important cities of Turkmen Sahra
are Gonbad, Aqqala, Kalaleh,
Maraveh Tappeh, Gomishan and
Bandar Torkaman. There were,
according to Ethnologue, over 2
million Turkmens in
Turkmen Sahra in 1997.
Society
Turkmens today in Turkmensahra
live fairly modern lifestyles,
although the effects of religion
and the Muslim way of life are
visible. The economy is based on
industry, even if agriculture still
plays a great role in some
Turkmens' life, like in other places
of Iran. The professions among
Turkmens shows the pattern of a
modern economy even if there are
still some shortcomings due to lack
of funding from the central
authorities. The economic
potential of Turkmensahra is big
since a vast amount of oil was
discovered early in the 1930. But
since there was a deal with the
Soviet Union that there would be
no oil extraction from Turkmen
Sahra, there is not an oil industry at
the moment.
Before the revolution in 1979 the
Turkmens lived an economically
richer life than people in other
areas of Iran. Though poverty
existed in small portions, most
people lived and could afford
material goods in their home. This
was unusual for some parts of Iran.
During the Shah's time the
difference between cities and
villages was great. Going from a city
like Bandar Torkaman to a nearby
village, the differences were so vast
that tourists felt like they had gone
back in time. In villages there were
no asphalt roads nor doctors. There
was no electricity either to light up
the town or the houses. People
used donkeys and horses to travel
until about 30 years ago. Buses,
taxis and private cars were found
only in bigger cities. The literacy
rate has also increased since the
revolution; it was not unusual for
older Turkmen women to be
analphabets. Girls began to study in
school after the revolution which
was unusual back in the Shah's
period.. 21

25. All these differences shared
between a city and village were
common all over Iran during the
Shah's period not excluded only to
Turkmen Sahra
Other cultural traits can
be seen as in the weddings
where Turkmens still practice
several day weddings. An ancient
tradition hailing back to the
gökturks or
even the hsiung-nu, Asian huns.
Today's Turkmens have a bride
fee – the bridegroom gives away
a fee for taking the girl's hand.
In tradition the girl's family
provides even greater economic
starting capital to the newlyweds'
life. For example the bridegroom
buys
gold for the bride to wear;
in return the bride's family buys
daily life equipment for the new
household.
The wedding itself, in times before
the revolution, lasted several days
where often all the relatives, clan
members, and in some cases the
whole village would turn up to
celebrate. Common activities were
to have races where the winner
would receive a prize, contests in
göresh traditional Turkmen
wrestling, horse races and more.
Today those traditions have
perished instead there are a
modern segment like private
weddings hold in western
countries. Even though the modern
element has been introduced some
people still have several day long
weddings. Instead of races they
now today have a private party for
the bride and relatives, the
bridegroom and one big
celebration where relatives and
friends are invited – not the whole
village as during the shah's period.
Turkmens today seem to lose their
traditions due to westernization
and persianification of the society
not excluded to Turkmens but the
whole of Iran. People tend to watch
a lot of satellite which has a great
range of variety all from political to
cultural and genuine
entertainment.
Women are getting educated in a
higher rate, even among traditional
households. Among the generation
after the revolution there are not
any who are analphabetes or
illiterate.

26. History
Turkmens came first to the region
at the time of their forefathers, the
Seljuk Turks, thought early nomads
empires has existed since the early
age of Massagets or even earlier.
According to the Avesta Afrasiyab
the legendary king of Turan hailed
from Turkmen Sahra.
Before the era of Reza Khan, later
Reza Shah, there was a landmass
from Khiva in north to Bandar gaz
in south were Turkmens inhabited
the area was called Turkmenistan.
Due to the Great Game and
famous resistance of Turkmens to
great powers as czar Russia and
England Turkmens lost their
independence and their country
was split in two lands. After the
Gökdepe battle over one million
Turkmens fled through Iran over to
Afghanistan were their descents
still live today. The first time in
history Turkmens had shown
resistance to central authority of
Iran was in early 1920 when Reza
Khan unified Iran he meet
resistance of a Turkmen group and
a leader called Anna-Geldi Ach, the
later used to deploy sneak attacks
from Turkmen Sahra and use hit
and run tactis and hide into
modern Turkmenistan before SSR
Turkmen was formed. During that
time a gurultai like the ones
Gökturks held was hold to elect a
mullah as their leader, called
Osman Akhun. It is the first
democratically modern Turkmen
assemblement ever hold. Turkmens
are considered by outsiders who
visited their area to be generous,
kind-hearted thought even having
the trait of being hot-headed.
Ahmad Shamlou, a famous Persian
writer, wrote a novel about a
Turkmen character, Amin. He also
indicated the generosity and kind-
hearted spirit of the Turkmens in
his poem about Amin.
Famous Turkmens from within
Turkmen Sahra include the spiritual
leader, national poet and unifier of
Turkmen society Magtymguly
Pyragy, who was born in a village
outside Gonbad. The central Iranian
authorities erected a mausoleum
over his grave. Other persons born
are Agha Mohammed Khan,
founder of the Qajar dynasty of
Iran. Also there are claims of Nadir
Shah being Turkmen, but that's
doubtful according to his own
campaigns and official biography.

27. The Nadir Shah's first enemies were the Turkmens of Turkmen Sahra.
Well-known visitors of the region include Ármin Vámbéry, who wrote a
book about his passage among Turkmens in Turkmen Sahra.

28. tp://www.aziz-anzabi.com