Express
A Reply to Nasinine T.
August 7, 2009
Dear Nasinine T.:
Although I am an art historian by métier, I never quite remember dates. But I do remember signal encounters. About two years before the fall of the shah, I was chatting with a couple of architects who were preparing to go to Iran to build dazzling modern structures for—as they say—“the people” of Iran. What! I exclaimed. You will be lunching in the palace with the shah and in the basement his agents will be torturing guys just like you. But of course, they thought I was exaggerating and went away.
At the time, I had found some Iranian students, mostly at Columbia, who were trying to reveal the real situation. I marched with them down Broadway, and learned how to dodge horses and billy sticks. When the “revolution” finally came, these graduate students rushed home to participate. You know the rest, I’m sure. Of about twenty, I know of only one who escaped the zealots and went to Scandinavia. The news of their disappearance was never broadcast here, and I have always had a hollow feeling of despair about how much in my lifetime had been left unrevealed.
The rapidity of Internet news somewhat dims the significance of what really happens… Only accounts such as yours can invade the imaginations of those who are concerned. Please do not abandon the print media (whatever is left, alas) and give us more authentic reportage. An image such as the fascists painting Xs on buildings is worth a thousand emails.
Cordially,
Dore Ashton
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Bruce Naumans Spatial Encounters
By Charlie M. SchultzDEC 21-JAN 22 | Art Books
A work of art is what it is, obviously, but it is also what it could be. In other words, it is more than itself, but how much more? And through what means does an audience recognize the multifariousness of its being? This is the question that gives gravity to the astute essays of Constance M. Lewallen, Dore Bowen, and Ted Mann in the remarkable book Bruce Nauman: Spatial Encounters.

Interspecies Efforts at Close Reading
By Kameelah Janan RasheedMAY 2022 | Critics Page
In 2021, while being interviewed for a story in Art in America, the writer mentioned a paper by Jane Gallop entitled The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters (2000). After the interview, I printed the essay from my home Xerox machine and set it aside. A few days later, while going through my weekly readings, I noticed a smashed bug! It seems that it crawled into my printer and became part of the text itself. A new composition emerged: a smashed bug whose expelled bits and wildly distributed printer toner obscure the original text. With this highly textured new text, we are reminded that a text is never finished. The substrate, the paper, can hold annotations, emendations, evolving textures, and glitches.
Francis M. Naumann’s Mentors: The Making of an Art Historian
By Robert R. ShaneFEB 2020 | Art Books
An art historians memoir looks at the role of academic and artistic mentors through the lens of Duchamps readymade, exploring the ways in which we chose to adopt the characteristics and ideas of our influencers.
Jim Osman: Walnut: Second Series
By Tom McGlynnAPRIL 2022 | ArtSeen
One encounters Jim Osmans sculptural assemblages as maquettes of the possible. His works potentiality is made manifest via his canny juggling of organic materials, tectonic engineering, and solid colortogether with how those disparate materials cohere in highly animated theaters of ensemble character.