Iran is sitting on a modern-art goldmine

The Guardian

The art world's Persian moment is long forgotten now. The critic Robert Hughes wrote disdainfully, back in the day, of "one of the odder aspects of the late Shah's regime". To prove their liberalism to the west – as that trenchant observer of Tehran's 1970s art splurge saw it, watching from New York – the autocratic rulers of what is now the Islamic Republic of Iran went overboard for modern art. Clever dealers jumped in at a time when the art market was flat (there was a recession) and Andy Warhol even went to Tehran in person, turning it into a glamorous art scene by his silvery presence.

Then boom, the revolution happened, and after that the Shah's modern art collection disappeared into a basement, condemned as decadent and sacrilegious. Only now, it seems, have the rulers of today's Iran realised that they, in turn, might look a bit more liberal and enlightened if they put some pop art on show. Perhaps they might also be starting to notice that modern abstract art has a lot in common with Iran's older treasures, like the mosques of Isfahan.

We need to look at the resurrection of Iran's modern art collection, surely, with a bit of that sardonic realism with which Hughes saw its original acquisition. It will be lovely if all those extremely fine works by Pollock and Picasso and practically everyone else of significance in art history from the 1880s to 1970s are released from the dark. Iran has the makings of an extremely fine museum of modern art, if it chooses to display these treasures to the full within the building created for them. But why now?

Tensions with Israel and the US could not be higher. This is clearly a good moment for Iran to show a liberal, cultured face. Nothing makes the west go weak at the cultural knees more effectively than modern art, so why should Tehran not share in the kudos that a contemporary art spree has recently brought Dubai?

The modern art treasures this collection boasts are splendid and well-chosen. Works by Mary Cassatt and Degas, by Francis Bacon and Roy Lichtenstein, give it real quality and depth. Tate Modern would be delighted to have some of these works. Jackson Pollock's Mural on Indian Red Ground was painted in 1950 at a critical moment in his breakthrough from a stumbling imitator of Picasso to a dizzying lassoist of curling colour. Magritte's Therapist is a bronze version of one of this surrealist metaphysician's most haunting images.

Iran is therefore on to a very good thing. It is sitting on a goldmine of modern art. It will win universal acclaim if it puts it on view. It is surprising how far a Warhol on the wall can go in changing perceptions of a state and its policies.