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This dissertation investigates Iranian painter Bahman Mohassess' (1931-2010) transition from abstract painting to figuration in the 1960s and the implications of this shift for our understanding of post-WWII art in Iran and the world. As a multifaceted artist, theater director, and translator, Mohassess made significant contributions to the cultural landscape in postwar Iran. By examining the inherent political value within the interconnected web of Mohassess' artistic endeavors, my research illuminates the complex interplay between art, culture, and politics during the transformative decade of the 1960s. This period was framed, in Iran, by the authoritarianism that followed the foreign-operated 1953 coup that deposed the democratically elected president Mohammad Mosaddegh, and the profound social and political changes that ultimately led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Through a combination of formal and social art historical analysis, and supported by extensive archival and field research conducted in Iran and Italy, my dissertation explores Mohassess' post-abstract figurative practice across three thematic chapters. The first chapter investigates Mohassess' turn to figuration in his 1965 exhibition at Iran Gallery, revealing how the negative responses to this show by the formalist-oriented Tehran art scene—broadly supported by the Pahlavi state—expose the political relevance of artistic styles in Iranian painting during the 1960s. The second chapter examines the relationship between Mohassess' painting and Western art through the lens of parody, highlighting the critical connections between Iranian and Western art while affirming the agency of Iranian artists in the face of cultural hegemony. The third chapter delves into the artist's profound inter-media engagement with works by Iranian poets, writers, and intellectuals who, like Mohassess himself, grappled with the pressing social realities of their time through allegorical works that critiqued the state's strict censorship policies.Taken together, the three chapters of this dissertation demonstrate how Mohassess' strategies as an artist challenged the hegemony of Western postwar art-making paradigms in Iran and actively engaged with the broader social and political discourse of the time. The dissertation's findings make a significant contribution to the field of Iranian contemporary art by shedding light on the considerable synergy that existed, in the 1960s, between Iranian contemporary art and its global context. Throughout, my dissertation positions Mohassess' figurative painting of the late 1960s as a site of cultural resistance and political critique that responds to the pervasive political instrumentalization of abstraction in Iran and elsewhere in the postwar era.

Reflecting on the origins and methodology of her book, The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), the author replaces her work in the context of a growing awareness to the multiple stories of art and a need to face this methodological challenge. She then discusses geopolitics as a useful model to think through the complicated historiography of postwar art, tackle the polyphony of art discourses during that period, and study the power dynamics and historiographical mechanisms that give some stories the status of history . RESUMO Em uma reflexão sobre as origens e a metodologia do seu livro The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), Catherine Dossin reposiciona seu trabalho em um contexto de crescente atenção às múltiplas histórias da arte, no qual se faz necessário confrontar tal desafio metodológico. A autora então discute a geopolítica como um modelo útil para se pensar a complexa historiografia da arte do pós-guerra, abordar a polifonia de discursos desse período e analisar as dinâmicas de poder e os mecanismos históricos que garantem a alguns de seus capítulos o estatuto de história . RESUMEN En una reflexión de los orígenes y de la metodología de su libro The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), Catherine Dossin reposiciona su trabajo en un contexto de creciente atención a las múltiples historias del arte en lo cual se hace necesario confrontar ese desafío metodológico. La autora, entonces, discute la geopolítica como un modelo provechoso para se pensar la compleja historiografía del arte de la postguerra, abordar la polifonía de discursos de ese período y analizar las dinámicas de poder y los mecanismos históricos que garanten a algunos de sus capítulos el estatuto de historia .

Reflecting on the origins and methodology of her book, The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), the author replaces her work in the context of a growing awareness to the multiple stories of art and a need to face this methodological challenge. She then discusses geopolitics as a useful model to think through the complicated historiography of postwar art, tackle the polyphony of art discourses during that period, and study the power dynamics and historiographical mechanisms that give some stories the status of history. Em uma reflexão sobre as origens e a metodologia do seu livro The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), Catherine Dossin reposiciona seu trabalho em um contexto de crescente atenção às múltiplas histórias da arte, no qual se faz necessário confrontar tal desafio metodológico. A autora então discute a geopolítica como um modelo útil para se pensar a complexa historiografia da arte do pós-guerra, abordar a polifonia de discursos desse período e analisar as dinâmicas de poder e os mecanismos históricos que garantem a alguns de seus capítulos o estatuto de história. En una reflexión de los orígenes y de la metodología de su libro The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), Catherine Dossin reposiciona su trabajo en un contexto de creciente atención a las múltiples historias del arte en lo cual se hace necesario confrontar ese desafío metodológico. La autora, entonces, discute la geopolítica como un modelo provechoso para se pensar la compleja historiografía del arte de la postguerra, abordar la polifonía de discursos de ese período y analizar las dinámicas de poder y los mecanismos históricos que garanten a algunos de sus capítulos el estatuto de historia.

From 1958 to 1966, the San Francisco artist Jay DeFeo (1929-89) worked on one artwork almost exclusively - a monumental oil-on-canvas painting titled The Rose. The painting's protracted production isolated DeFeo from the mainstream art world and encouraged contemporaries to cast her as Romanticism's lonely genius. However, during its creation, The Rose also served as an important matrix for collaboration among artists in DeFeo's bohemian community. Her neighbors - such as Wallace Berman (1926-76) and Bruce Conner (1933-2008) - appropriated the painting in their works, blurring the boundaries of individual authorship and blending production and reception into a single process of exchange. I argue that these simultaneously creative and social interactions opened up the autonomous artwork, cloistered studio, and the concept of the individualistic artist championed in Cold-War America to negotiate more complex relationships between the individual and the collective.

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Cet article s’attache à mettre au jour l’importance paradigmatique de la projection dans l’oeuvre de Dennis Oppenheim en montrant en quoi les images lumineuses flottantes conçues par l’artiste lui permettent d’opérer un travail de déplacement de la notion d’index et, plus généralement, de l’image-contact. L’idée centrale à cet égard est celle de transmission envisagée dans son rapport tant à la filiation qu’à l’émission (de lumière, d’énergie, etc.) ainsi qu’à la communication et à la théorie de l’information., This paper establishes the paradigmatic role of projection in Dennis Oppenheim’s work. I argue that Oppenheim uses projection as a way to complicate the concept of the indexical sign, and more generally to question the notion of a contact image. The theoretical pivot for this displacement is the idea of transmission understood in its relation to light and energy, the father-child relationship, and communication and information theory.