Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. All wars come with casualties, and of
Speaker 1: course the most confronting a human But today we're looking
Speaker 1: at a potentially different casualty of the war raging in
Speaker 1: the Middle East. Some of the world's most prized works
Speaker 1: of art Picasso's van Goh's Gogans now sheltered away in
Speaker 1: secret locations and underground bomb proof vaults. Plus what happens
Speaker 1: to the artists trying to live today in the midst
Speaker 1: of conflict and oppression. Joining me today is Tim Douglas,
Speaker 1: chief Culture correspondent for The Australian.
Speaker 2: The year is nineteen forty seven. A group of teenage
Speaker 2: Bedouin shepherds discover jars in a cave by the Dead Sea.
Speaker 2: They find seven scrolls.
Speaker 1: Tim, you've been reporting on an aspect of the conflict
Speaker 1: in the Middle East that I don't think many of
Speaker 1: us had thought about. What really stuck out for me
Speaker 1: is a mention in a headline of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Speaker 2: These scrolls, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, weren't
Speaker 2: initially seen as valuable, but soon scientists and scholars recognized
Speaker 2: their significant worth.
Speaker 1: This is the most magical I suppose cultural artifact. I
Speaker 1: can think of these ancient Jewish texts that have been
Speaker 1: in climate controlled conditions in a museum in Jerusalem for
Speaker 1: the past few decades. What's happening to the Dead Sea scrolls?
Speaker 3: So on February twenty eight, when missiles began falling across
Speaker 3: the Middle East for the fourth time since the October
Speaker 3: seventh attacks, curators across the Middle East, and in Israel
Speaker 3: in particular, rush to the Israel Museum to secure these
Speaker 3: very important documents, nine hundred of them in total, most
Speaker 3: of them housed in that museum, and the most important
Speaker 3: of them is the Isaiah Scroll. Perhaps not the most important,
Speaker 3: but certainly the most well known. It's a seven meter
Speaker 3: long scroll that had just been put on exhibition, and
Speaker 3: the curators were forced to secure that very quickly as
Speaker 3: air sirens sounded around the city, as I understand, and
Speaker 3: moved to a secure location.
Speaker 1: The idea of a war breaking out is kind of
Speaker 1: a curator's worst n i'ma, isn't.
Speaker 3: It Yeah, And especially when there are artifacts in those
Speaker 3: collections that date back millennia, they are irreplaceable and people
Speaker 3: have every right to be worried about them.
Speaker 1: What about the rest of the Middle East? Of course,
Speaker 1: bombs and missiles are falling very heavily on Iran.
Speaker 3: What's happening there in Tehran is the UNESCO Heritage listed
Speaker 3: Galliston Pallace, one of one hundred and twenty sites in
Speaker 3: Iran protected by the Blue Shield, which was instituted in
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifty four Hague Convention for historical locations that
Speaker 3: require protection during wartime. This palace is very dear to
Speaker 3: the Iranian people.
Speaker 4: This palace has now reportedly sustained damage after a strike nearby.
Speaker 4: Reports also suggesting that the palace's windows, doors and mirrors
Speaker 4: were hit by reverberations from the blasts that occurred nearby.
Speaker 3: So this is its famous hall of mirrors was smashed
Speaker 3: and some of its famous mosaics also were smashed. But
Speaker 3: it's just one of many sites in Iran at the
Speaker 3: moment that are underfired. The governor of one of the
Speaker 3: particular cities that was hit a historic city, accused Israel
Speaker 3: and America of declaring war on cultural heritage.
Speaker 5: The news spread with the speed of the human shou
Speaker 5: Shah Ferrarisha day. The people cried the Shah has escaped.
Speaker 5: The only chance of death to the Shah was replaced
Speaker 5: today by a new one, death to Carter. There is
Speaker 5: still a strong sentiment against American interest in Iran.
Speaker 1: And the white Before the Iranian Revolution in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: Tehran was a center of learning and feminism and all
Speaker 1: sorts of things, although it be Shah's regime was very oppressive.
Speaker 1: What's been the situation with art in Iran since the revolution?
Speaker 3: I spoke to an artist in Sydney, Nassim Mesa about
Speaker 3: this art, as she told me, is something very dear
Speaker 3: to the Iranian people that have a culture of art
Speaker 3: that stretches back two and a half thousand years. Clearly,
Speaker 3: there are concerns about freedom of speech in that country,
Speaker 3: which has led people seem to flee to Australia, where
Speaker 3: she now has a flourishing art practice. But there are
Speaker 3: still artists on the ground making work. Whether those artists
Speaker 3: are making radical work that confronts the oppressive theocracy that
Speaker 3: prevails in that country is another matter. But certainly there
Speaker 3: is a deep connection to art. And of course one
Speaker 3: of the most interesting aspects of Iran is that it
Speaker 3: houses one of the world's most incredible and internationally lauded
Speaker 3: art collections at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
Speaker 1: It's not something I would have expected.
Speaker 3: It's not something you would have expected.
Speaker 1: Where's it all come from?
Speaker 3: During the nineteen seventies, the Shah's wife for Polavi embarked
Speaker 3: on a collecting spree. Perhaps she and married in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty nine. Her main role was to provide an heir
Speaker 3: to the regime. She did that within a year of
Speaker 3: marrying the Shah, and then she embarked on a really
Speaker 3: interesting period of development in a raad. She focused on education.
Speaker 3: She helped found the p Lavi University. She also embarked
Speaker 3: on collecting contemporary artworks during the seventies. During that time,
Speaker 3: there was a depressed market in the art industry, and
Speaker 3: she took advantage of that around the same time that
Speaker 3: gofflm in this country did and looked to find some
Speaker 3: defining works for that collection. She bought Van Goff's Gogans,
Speaker 3: a huge collection of Picasso's, Donald Judd's andy Warhols. In fact,
Speaker 3: there's a famous Andy Warhole painting of her, and there's
Speaker 3: one of her husbands too. This collection, four thousand pieces strong,
Speaker 3: it's worth three billion dollars and it has for the
Speaker 3: last forty seven years been stored away in a secret
Speaker 3: vault we understand beneath the building.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not the sort of thing that the Mullers
Speaker 1: would be spending their weekends looking at, is it.
Speaker 3: It's not. Although last year they had a Caso exhibition.
Speaker 3: They pulled out sixty six pocassos from the vault and
Speaker 3: then put that on display. That was still being advertised
Speaker 3: on its website last week. The website is now shut down.
Speaker 1: Coming up. The most valuable artwork in the world is
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, But where is it? One of
Speaker 1: the differences with this round of conflict between Iran and
Speaker 1: Israel and the United States is that the Golf States
Speaker 1: have been drawn in those monarchies on the Persian Gulf
Speaker 1: coasts that are now being attacked by Iran because they
Speaker 1: host United States military assets. That's caused absolute fury among
Speaker 1: those states from Jordan to Qatar, although they haven't yet
Speaker 1: retaliated in any kind of military sense. What else is
Speaker 1: at risk on the Golf peninsula.
Speaker 3: Iran was ahead of the curve in terms of their collecting,
Speaker 3: but since the seventies and eighties. Most of those golf
Speaker 3: states have been cognizant of the fact that natural resources
Speaker 3: on those emirates and in that region are finite, and
Speaker 3: they've been looking to diversify their interests. Now most of
Speaker 3: them over the last thirty years have looked to art.
Speaker 3: Shajah was one of the first. Qatar actually had the
Speaker 3: first museum, and since that time Abu Dhabi, Jubai, Bahrain
Speaker 3: and Saudi Arabia have all got in on the act.
Speaker 3: Those countries also have announced their intention to become art
Speaker 3: market hubs, basically a real opportunity there for their GDPs
Speaker 3: their bottom lines as an art hub. Saudi Arabia has
Speaker 3: announced a multi billion dollar plan to basically become the
Speaker 3: world's biggest art hub by twenty thirty. Art fairs have
Speaker 3: begun to proliferate in the Middle East over the last
Speaker 3: twenty years. It's held some of the world's biggest art fairs,
Speaker 3: and this year in particular, two of the most high
Speaker 3: profile art fairs in the world announced the moving into
Speaker 3: that region too well.
Speaker 1: We announced yesterday the launch of Art Basil Qatar for us,
Speaker 1: for our local partners, but also for the international art world.
Speaker 1: Extraordinarily momentous news, I'd say our audience.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: Why that's interesting is because it signals a great shift
Speaker 3: in the art market, whose traditional home has been the US.
Speaker 3: Now those art markets are finding a home and finding
Speaker 3: buyers very lucrative prices. In fact, for the international art
Speaker 3: market in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: It's all part of the kind of modernization and dare
Speaker 1: I say westernization of those Gulf states. You know, they
Speaker 1: are moving away from the very strict religious observance that
Speaker 1: Iran has been famous for. There's much less overt control,
Speaker 1: theological control of people. Do you think they've been accepted
Speaker 1: by the kind of contemporary art makers, for example, who
Speaker 1: here in Australia are at the center of controversies about
Speaker 1: whether they're including Jewish artists in programs here.
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting question. I'm not sure it keeps
Speaker 3: many people in that world awake at night. I think
Speaker 3: it's about money, money talks, and I think the most
Speaker 3: interesting aspect of all that is Saudi Arabia. Last year
Speaker 3: they had a huge art fair and rider and that
Speaker 3: comes also after the Crown Prince bought the world's most
Speaker 3: expensive painting in the Salvador Monday, which has bought four
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars a couple of years ago
Speaker 3: and which has not been seen publicly since. So I
Speaker 3: think that idea says it all really about what they
Speaker 3: think about art. The world's most expensive painting has been
Speaker 3: bought and no one's seen it since.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a trope that great art comes from suffering.
Speaker 1: So I mean this conflict will produce creative works, won't
Speaker 1: it if people can stay safe. We'll see the legacy
Speaker 1: of this incoming years.
Speaker 3: I hope that there is something that we can look
Speaker 3: back at in forty to fifty years time and think, well,
Speaker 3: at least we preserve this out of the madness, there
Speaker 3: is hope in that ironic collection to which the regime
Speaker 3: in Iran is ideologically opposed that I think there's hope
Speaker 3: that something good or something fulsome might come out of this.
Speaker 1: Tim, thank you very much, Thanks Claire. Tim Douglas is
Speaker 1: The Australian's Chief Culture correspondent. This episode of the Front
Speaker 1: was hosted by me Claire Harvey and co produced with
Speaker 1: Jasper League. Thanks for joining us on the Front this week.
Speaker 1: Our team also includes Kristen Amiot, Leats Hammerglue, Tiffany Dimack
Speaker 1: and Joshua Burton,