Reflections on Qajar Art and Its Significance

Extract

It is with some reluctance that I agreed to contribute a few remarks to conclude a learned and fruitful colloquium and to react, once again, to a wonderful exhibition on Qajar art. My reluctance is simple to explain and to justify. Such professional competencies as I have are those of a medievalist who begins to feel slightly uneasy by the middle of the fourteenth century. But, then, as a historian of the visual arts and as an individual curious about the lessons to be drawn from the making and uses of works of art everywhere and at any time, I became fascinated by the exhibition and many questions came to mind which may not be of immediate significance for the history and culture of Iran, but which have a lot to do with the arts in general.

For these reasons, I shall not comment directly on the papers published in this volume, which are, for the most part, beyond my competencies, except to make two observations.