July 2016

Ab ba s Kia ros ta Francis mi

Aziz Art July 2016

Iran

Bacon

1.Abbas Kiarostami 12.Francis Bacon 21.Turkmen Sahra

Director: Aziz Anzabi Editor and translator : Asra Yaghoubi Research: Zohreh Nazari

http://www.aziz-anzabi.com

Abas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami Kiarostami had worked extensively 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016 was an as a screenwriter, film editor, art Iranian film director, screenwriter, director and producer and had photographer and film producer.An designed credit titles and publicity active film-maker from 1970, material. He was also a poet, Kiarostami had been involved in photographer, painter, illustrator, over forty films, including shorts and graphic designer. He was part and documentaries. Kiarostami of a generation of filmmakers in the attained critical acclaim for Iranian New Wave, a Persian directing the Koker trilogy (1987– cinema movement that started in 94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of the late 1960s and includes Cherry (1997) – which was awarded pioneering directors such as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Masoud Kimiai, Sohrab Shahid Festival that year – and The Wind Saless, Dariush Mehrjui, Bahram Will Carry Us (1999). In his later Beyzai, Nasser Taghvai and Parviz works, Certified Copy (2010) and Kimiavi. These filmmakers share Like Someone in Love (2012), he many common techniques filmed for the first time outside including the use of poetic dialogue Iran: in Italy and Japan, and allegorical storytelling dealing respectively. with political and philosophical issues.

Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary-style narrative films, for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of contemporary Iranian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films. 1

Early life and background filmmaking department at the Kiarostami majored in painting and Institute for Intellectual graphic design at the University of Development of Children and Tehran College of Fine Arts.

Young Adults (Kanun) in Tehran. Its Kiarostami was born in Tehran. His debut production and Kiarostami's first artistic experience was first film was the twelve-minute painting, which he continued into The Bread and Alley (1970), a neohis late teens, winning a painting realistic short film about a competition at the age of 18 shortlyschoolboy's confrontation with an before he left home to study at the aggressive dog. Breaktime followed University of Tehran School of Fine in 1972. The department became Arts.He majored in painting and one of Iran's most noted film graphic design, and supported his studios, producing not only studies by working as a traffic Kiarostami's films, but acclaimed policeman.

Persian films such as The Runner As a painter, designer, and and Bashu, the Little Stranger. illustrator, Kiarostami worked in In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an advertising in the 1960s, designing individualistic style of film making. posters and creating commercials. When discussing his first film, he Between 1962 and 1966, he shot stated: around 150 advertisements for Bread and Alley was my first Iranian television. In the late experience in cinema and I must 1960s, he began creating credit say a very difficult one. I had to titles for films work with a very young child, a (including Gheysar by dog, and an unprofessional crew Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating except for the cinematographer, children's books. who was nagging and complaining Film career all the time. Well, the 1970s cinematographer, in a sense, was In 1969, when the Iranian New right because I did not follow the Wave began with conventions of film making that he Dariush Mehrjui's film GÄ v, had become accustomed to.

Kiarostami helped set up a

Following The Experience (1973), Kiarostami in 1977 Kiarostami released The Traveler Kiarostami's first feature film was (Mossafer) in 1974. The Traveler the 112-minute Report (1977). It tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a revolved around the life of a tax troubled and troublesome boy collector accused of accepting from a small Iranian city. Intent on bribes; suicide was among its attending a football match in far-off themes. In 1979, he produced and Tehran, he scams his friends and directed First Case, Second Case. neighbors to raise money, and 1980s journeys to the stadium in time for In the early 1980s, Kiarostami the game, only to meet with an directed several short films ironic twist of fate. In addressing including Toothache (1980), Orderly the boy's determination to reach or Disorderly (1981), and The his goal, alongside his indifference Chorus (1982). In 1983, he directed to the effects of his amoral actions, Fellow Citizen. It was not until his the film examined human release of Where Is the Friend's behavior and the balance of right Home? that he began to gain and wrong. It furthered recognition outside Iran.

Kiarostami's reputation for realism, The film tells a simple account of a diegetic simplicity, and stylistic conscientious eight-year-old complexity, as well as his schoolboy's quest to return his fascination with physical and friend's notebook in a neighboring spiritual journeys. village lest his friend be expelled In 1975, Kiarostami directed two from school. The traditional beliefs short films So Can I and Two of Iranian rural people are Solutions for One Problem. In early portrayed. The film has been noted 1976, he released Colors, followed for its poetic use of the Iranian rural by the fifty-four-minute film A landscape and its realism, both Wedding Suit, a story about three important elements of Kiarostami's teenagers coming work. Kiarostami made the film into conflict over a suit for a from a child's point of view. wedding.

Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On (1992) (also known as Life and Nothing More), and Through the Olive Trees (1994) are described by critics as the Koker trilogy, because all three films feature the village of Koker in northern Iran. The films also relate to the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake, in which 40,000 people died. Kiarostami uses the themes of life, death, change, and continuity to connect the films.

The trilogy was successful in France in the 1990s and other Western European countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Finland. But, Kiarostami did not consider the three films to comprise a trilogy.

He suggested that the last two titles plus Taste of Cherry (1997) comprise a trilogy, given their common theme of the preciousness of life. In 1987, Kiarostami was involved in the screenwriting of The Key, which he edited but did not direct. In 1989, he released Homework.

1990s Kiarostami directing a film Kiarostami's first film of the

decade was Close-Up (1990), which narrates the story of the real-life trial of a man who impersonated film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, conning a family into believing they would star in his new film. The family suspects theft as the motive for this charade, but the impersonator, Hossein Sabzian, argues that his motives were more complex. The part-documentary, part-staged film examines Sabzian's moral justification for usurping Makhmalbaf's identity, questioning his ability to sense his cultural and artistic flair. Ranked 42 in British Film Institute's The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, Close-Up received praise from directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nanni Moretti and was released across Europe.

In 1992, Kiarostami directed Life, and Nothing More..., regarded by critics as the second film of the Koker trilogy. The film follows a father and his young son as they drive from Tehran to Koker in search of two young boys who they fear might have perished in the 1990 earthquake.

As the father and son travel through the devastated landscape, they meet earthquake survivors forced to carry on with their lives amid disaster.That year Kiarostami won a Prix Roberto Rossellini, the first professional film award of his career, for his direction of the film.

The last film of the so-called Koker trilogy was Through the Olive Trees (1994), which expands a peripheral scene from Life and Nothing More into the central drama.Critics such as Adrian Martin have called the style of filmmaking in the Koker trilogy as "diagrammatical", linking the zig-zagging patterns in the landscape and the geometry of forces of life and the world.A flashback of the zigzag path in Life and Nothing More... (1992) in turn triggers the spectator's memory of the previous film, Where Is the Friend's Home? from 1987, shot before the earthquake. This symbolically links to the postearthquake reconstruction in Through the Olive Trees in 1994. In 1995, Miramax Films released Through the Olive Trees in the US theaters.

Kiarostami next wrote the screenplays for The Journey and

The White Balloon (1995), for his former assistant Jafar Panahi.Between 1995 and 1996, he was involved in the production of Lumière and Company, a collaboration with 40 other film directors.

Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry.It is the drama of a man, Mr. Badii, determined to commit suicide. The film involved themes such as morality, the legitimacy of the act of suicide, and the meaning of compassion.

Kiarostami directed The Wind Will Carry Us in 1999, which won the Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at the Venice International Film Festival.

The film contrasted rural and urban views on the dignity of labor, addressing themes of gender equality and the benefits of progress, by means of a stranger's sojourn in a remote Kurdish village.An unusual feature of the movie is that many of the characters are heard but not seen; at least thirteen to fourteen speaking characters in the film are never seen.

2000s In 2000, at the San Francisco Film Festival award ceremony, Kiarostami was awarded the Akira Kurosawa Prize for lifetime achievement in directing, but surprised everyone by giving it away to veteran Iranian actor Behrooz Vossoughi for his contribution to Iranian cinema.

In 2001, Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, traveled to Kampala, Uganda at the request of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development, to film a documentary about programs assisting Ugandan orphans. He stayed for ten days and made ABC Africa.

The trip was originally intended as a research in preparation for the filming, but Kiarostami ended up editing the entire film from the video footage shot there.

The high number of orphans in Uganda has resulted from the deaths of parents in the AIDS epidemic.

Time Out editor and National Film Theatre chief programmer, Geoff Andrew, said in referring to the film: "Like his previous four

features, this film is not about death but life-and-death: how they're linked, and what attitude we might adopt with regard to their symbiotic inevitability."

The following year, Kiarostami directed Ten, revealing an unusual method of filmmaking and abandoning many scriptwriting conventions. Kiarostami focused on the socio-political landscape of Iran. The images are seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is composed of ten conversations with various passengers, which include her sister, a hitchhiking prostitute, and a jilted bride and her demanding young son. This style of filmmaking was praised by a number of critics.

A. O. Scott in The New York Times wrote that Kiarostami, "in addition to being perhaps the most internationally admired Iranian filmmaker of the past decade, is also among the world masters of automotive cinema...He understands the automobile as a place of reflection, observation and, above all, talk."

In 2003, Kiarostami directed Five, a poetic feature with no dialogue or characterization. It consists of five long shots of nature which are single-take sequences, shot with a hand-held DV camera, along the shores of the Caspian Sea. Although the film lacks a clear storyline, Geoff Andrew argues that the film is "more than just pretty pictures". He adds, "Assembled in order, they comprise a kind of abstract or emotional narrative arc, which moves evocatively from separation and solitude to community, from motion to rest, near-silence to sound and song, light to darkness and back to light again, ending on a note of rebirth and regeneration."He notes the degree of artifice concealed behind the apparent simplicity of the imagery.

Kiarostami produced 10 on Ten (2004), a journal documentary that shares ten lessons on moviemaking while he drives through the locations of his past films. The movie is shot on digital video with a stationary camera mounted inside the car, in a manner reminiscent of Taste of Cherry and Ten. In 2005 and 2006,

he directed The Roads of Kiarostami, a 32-minute documentary that reflects on the power of landscape, combining austere black-and-white photographs with poetic observations,engaging music with political subject matter. Also in 2005, Kiarostami contributed the central section to Tickets, a portmanteau film set on a train traveling through Italy. The other segments were directed by Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi.

In 2008, Kiarostami directed the feature Shirin, which features closeups of many notable Iranian actresses and the French actress Juliette Binoche as they watch a film based on a partly mythological Persian romance tale of Khosrow and Shirin, with themes of female self-sacrifice. The film has been described as "a compelling exploration of the relationship between image, sound and female spectatorship."

That summer, he directed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera CosĂŹ fan tutte conducted by Christophe Rousset at Festival d'Aix-enProvence starring with William Shimell .

But the following year's performances at the English National Opera was impossible to direct because of refusal of permission to travel abroad from his country.

2010s Kiarostami in 2015 Certified Copy (2010), again starring Juliette Binoche, was made in Tuscany and was Kiarostami's first film to be shot and produced outside Iran.The story of an deconstructed portrait of a encounter between a British man marriage, acted with welland a French woman, it was intentioned fervour by Juliette entered in competition for the Binoche, but persistently baffling, Palme d'Or in the 2010 Cannes Film contrived, and often simply bizarre Festival. Peter Bradshaw of The – a highbrow misfire of the most Guardian describes the film as an peculiar sort." He concluded that "intriguing oddity", and said, the film is "unmistakably an "Certified Copy is the example of Kiarostami's compositional technique, though not a successful example." Roger Ebert, however, praised the film, noting that "Kiarostami is rather brilliant in the way he creates offscreen spaces." Binoche won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in the film.

Kiarostami's final film, Like Someone in Love, set and shot in Japan, received mostly positive reviews by critics.

Film festival work Kiarostami was a jury member at numerous film festivals, most notably the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, 2002 and 2005. He was also the president of the Caméra d'Or Jury in Cannes Film Festival 2005. He was announced as the president of the Cinéfondation and short film sections of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

Other representatives include the Venice Film Festival in 1985, the Locarno International Film Festival in 1990, the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1996, the São Paulo International Film Festival in 2004, the Capalbio Cinema Festival in 2007 (in which he was president of the jury), and the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival in 2011.He also made regular appearances at many other film festivals across Europe, including the Estoril Film Festival in Portugal.

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, grotesque, emotionally charged and raw imagery. His painterly abstracted figures are typically isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages, set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon took up painting in his early 20s but worked sporadically and uncertainly until his mid-30s. He drifted as a highly complex bon vivant, homosexual, gambler and interior decorator and designer of furniture, rugs and bathroom tiles.

He later admitted that his artistic career was delayed because he spent too long looking for subject matter that could sustain his interest.

His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition.

Remarking on the cultural significance of Three Studies, the art critic John Russell observed that "there was painting in England

before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one...can confuse the two."

Bacon said that he saw images "in series", and his artistic output typically focused on a single subject or format for sustained periods, often in triptych or diptych formats.

His output can be crudely described as sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1930s Picasso-informed Furies, moving on to the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s screaming popes, and the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures. These were followed by his early 1960s variations on crucifixion scenes.

From the mid-1960s he mainly produced portraits of friends and drinking companions, either as single or triptych panels. Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, his art became more sombre, inward-looking and preoccupied with the passage of time and death.The climax of this later period is marked by masterpieces, including his 1982's "Study for SelfPortrait" and Study for a SelfPortrait—Triptych, 1985–86. 12

Despite his bleak existentialist outlook, solidified in the public mind through his articulate and vivid series of interviews with David Sylvester, Bacon in person was highly engaging and charismatic, articulate, well-read and unapologetically gay. He was a prolific artist, but nonetheless spent many of the evenings of his middle age eating, drinking and gambling in London's Soho with like-minded friends such as Lucian Freud (though the two fell out in the 1950s, for reasons neither ever explained), John Deakin, Muriel Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Daniel Farson and Jeffrey Bernard. After Dyer's suicide he largely distanced himself from this circle, and while his social life was still active and his passion for gambling and drinking continued, he settled into a platonic and somewhat fatherly relationship with his eventual heir, John Edwards.

Bacon was equally reviled and acclaimed during his lifetime. Art critic Robert Hughes described him as "the most implacable, lyric artist in late 20th-century England, perhaps in all the world"and along with Willem de Kooning as "the

most important painter of the disquieting human figure in the 50's of the 20th century."Francis Bacon was the subject of two Tate retrospectives and a major showing in 1971 at the Grand Palais. Since his death his reputation and market value have grown steadily, and his work is amongst the most acclaimed, expensive and soughtafter. In the late 1990s a number of major works, previously assumed destroyed,including early 1950s popes and 1960s portraits, reemerged to set record prices at auction. On 12 November 2013 his Three Studies of Lucian Freud set the world record as the most expensive piece of art sold at auction, selling for $142,405,000,until exceeded by the sale of a Picasso in May 2015.

Early life

Ianthe and Winifred, and a younger Bacon's birthplace at 63 Lower Baggot brother, Edward. He was raised by Street, Dublin the family nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, Francis Bacon was born in a nursing from Cornwall, known as 'Nanny home in the heart of old Georgian Lightfoot', and who remained close Dublin at 63 Lower Baggot Street to him until her death. Lightfoot ,to parents of English descent. His was a mother figure for Bacon. In father, Captain Anthony Edward the 1940s, she aided him in keeping Mortimer ("Eddy") Bacon was born gambling houses in London. in Adelaide, South Australia to an The family changed houses often, English father and an Australian moving back and forth between mother.Eddy was a veteran of the Ireland and England several times, Boer War, and a racehorse trainer leading to a feeling of displacement and his mother, Christina Winifred remained with the artist "Winnie" Firth was heiress to a throughout his life. In 1911 the Sheffield steel business and coal family lived in Cannycourt House mine. It is believed his father was a near Kilcullen, County Kildare, but direct descendant of Sir Nicholas later moved to Westbourne Terrace Bacon, elder half-brother of Sir in London, close to where Bacon's Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan father worked at the Territorial statesman, philosopher and Force Records Office. They returned essayist. His great-greatto Ireland after World War I. Bacon grandmother, Lady Charlotte lived with his maternal Harley, was intimately acquainted grandmother and step-grandfather, with Lord Byron, who called her Winifred and Kerry Supple, at "Ianthe", and dedicated his poem, Farmleigh, Abbeyleix, County Laois, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, to though the family again moved to her.When Bacon's paternal Straffan Lodge near Naas, County grandfather was given the chance Kildare; his mother's place of birth. to revive the title of Lord Oxford by Bacon as a child was shy, and Queen Victoria, he refused for enjoyed dressing up. This, coupled financial reasons.He had an older with his effeminate manner, upset brother, Harley,two younger sisters, his father.

A story emerged in 1992 of his in petty theft, he could survive. To father having had Francis supplement his income, he briefly horsewhipped by their groom. In tried his hand at domestic service, 1924 his parents moved to but although he enjoyed cooking, Gloucestershire, first to Prescott he became bored and resigned. He House in Gotherington, then was sacked from a telephone Linton Hall near the border with answering position at a shop selling Herefordshire. At a fancy-dress women's clothes in Poland Street, party at the Firth family home, Soho, after writing a poison pen Cavendish Hall in Suffolk, Francis letter to the owner. Bacon found dressed as a flapper with an Eton himself drifting through London's crop, beaded dress, lipstick, high homosexual underworld, aware heels, and a long cigarette holder. that he was able to attract a certain In 1926, the family moved back to type of rich man, something he was Straffan Lodge. His sister, Ianthe, quick to take advantage of, having twelve years his junior, recalled developed a taste for good food that Bacon made drawings of and wine. One was a relative of ladies with cloche hats and long Winnie, another a breeder of cigarette holders. Later that year, racehorses, Harcourt-Smith, who Francis was thrown out of Straffan was renowned for his manliness.

Lodge following an incident in Bacon claimed his father had asked which his father found him this "uncle" to take him 'in-hand' admiring himself in front of a large and 'make a man of him'. Francis mirror draped in his mother's had a difficult relationship with his underwear. father, once admitting to being London, Berlin and Paris sexually attracted to him.

Bacon spent the latter half of 1926 In 1927 Bacon moved to Berlin, in London, living on an allowance where he saw Fritz Lang's of ÂŁ3 a week from his mother's Metropolis and Sergei Eisenstein's trust fund, while reading Nietzsche. Battleship Potemkin, later catalysts Although destitute, Bacon found of his artistic imagination. that by avoiding rent and engaging

Bacon spent two months in Berlin, though Harcourt-Smith left after one – "He soon got tired of me, of course, and went off with a woman ... I didn't really know what to do, so I hung on for a while, and then, since I'd managed to keep a bit of money, I decided to go to Paris."

Bacon then spent the next year and a half in Paris. He met Yvonne Bocquentin, pianist and connoisseur, at the opening of an exhibition. Aware of his own need to learn French, Bacon lived for three months with Madame Bocquentin and her family at their house near Chantilly. He travelled into Paris to visit the city's art galleries.At the Château de Chantilly (Musée Condé) he saw Nicolas Poussin's Massacre of the Innocents, a painting which he often referred to in his own later work. From Chantilly, he went to an exhibition that inspired him to take up painting.

Return to London Bacon returned to London late in 1928 or early 1929, and took up work as an interior designer. He

found a studio at 17 Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington, and shared the upper floor with Eric Alden – who became his first collector – and his childhood nanny, Jessie Lightfoot. Bacon advertised himself as a "gentleman's companion" in The Times, on the front page (then reserved for personal messages and insertions).Among the many answers carefully vetted by Nanny Lightfoot was one from an elderly cousin of Douglas Cooper, owner of one of the finest collections of modern art in England. The gentleman, having paid Bacon for his services, found him part-time work as a telephone operator in a London club and sought Cooper's help in promoting Bacon's developing skill as a designer of furniture and interiors. Cooper commissioned a desk from Bacon in battleship grey around this time.

In 1929 while working at the telephone exchange at the Bath Club on Dover Street he met Eric Hall who became his patron and lover in an often torturous relationship.

Bacon's first show in the winter of at Carlyle Studios (just off the Kings 1929, at Queensberry Mews, was Road) in Chelsea. Portrait (1932) of his carpet rugs and furniture. It and Portrait (ca. 1931–1932) (the may have included Painted screen latter bought by Diana Watson) (ca. 1929–1930) and Watercolour both show a round-faced youth (1929) his earliest surviving with diseased skin (painted after painting, which seems to have Bacon saw Ibsen's Ghosts), and evolved from his rug designs, in date from a brief stay in a studio on turn influenced by the paintings the Fulham Road. In 1932, Bacon and tapestries of Jean Lurçat. was commissioned by Gladys Sydney Butler (daughter of MacDermot, an Irish woman who Samuel Courtauld and wife of Rab had lived in Australia, to redesign Butler) commissioned a glass and much of the decoration and steel table and a set of stools for furniture of her flat at 98 the dining room of her Smith Ridgmount Gardens in Bloomsbury.

Square house. Bacon's Bacon recalled that she was Queensberry Mews studio was "always filling me up with food". featured in the August 1930 issue of Early success The Studio magazine, in a double Three Studies for Figures at the page article entitled "The 1930 Base of a Crucifixion, 1944. Oil and Look in British Decoration". The pastel on Sundeala board. Tate piece showed work including a Britain, London large round mirror, some rugs and By 1946 Bacon had confidently tubular steel and glass furniture arrived; his "Three Studies" largely influenced by the summarises themes explored in International Style.

Bacon's previous paintings, Bacon left the Queensberry Mews including his examination of West studio in 1931 and had no Picasso's biomorphs and his settled space for some years. interpretations of the Crucifixion Bacon probably shared a studio and the Greek Furies. with Roy de Maistre, circa 1931/32,

Bacon did not realise his original of hotels and flats, including the intention to paint a large crucifixion Hôtel de Ré, Bacon settled in a scene and place the figures at the large villa, La Frontalière, in the hills foot of the cross. It is generally above the town. Hall and Lightfoot considered Bacon's first mature would come to stay. Bacon spent piece; he regarded his works before much of the next few years in the triptych as irrelevant, and Monte Carlo apart from short visits throughout his life tried to suppress to London. From Monte Carlo, their appearance on the art market. Bacon wrote to Graham Sutherland When the painting was first and Erica Brausen. His letters to exhibited in 1945 it caused a Brausen show he painted there, but sensation and helped to establish no paintings are known to survive. him as one of the foremost post- In 1948, Painting (1946) sold to war painters. Remarking on the Alfred Barr for the Museum of cultural significance of Three Modern Art in New York for £240.

Studies, the critic John Russell Bacon wrote to Sutherland asking observed in 1971 that "there was that he apply fixative to the patches painting in England before the of pastel on Painting (1946) before Three Studies, and painting after it was shipped to New York. them, and no one ... can confuse Painting (1946) is now too fragile to the two."Painting (1946) was be moved from MoMA for shown in several group shows exhibition elsewhere. At least one including in the British section of visit to Paris in 1946 brought Bacon Exposition internationale d'art into more immediate contact with moderne (18 November – 28 French postwar painting and Left December 1946) at the Musée Bank ideas such as National d'Art Moderne, for which Existentialism.He had, by this time, Bacon travelled to Paris. Within a embarked on his lifelong friendship fortnight of the sale of Painting with Isabel Rawsthorne, a painter (1946) to the Hanover Gallery closely involved with Giacometti Bacon used the proceeds to and the Left Bank set. They shared decamp from London to Monte many interests including Carlo. After staying at a succession ethnography and classicalliterature.

Turkmen Sahra that means "Plain of Turkmens", is a region in the northeast of Iran near the Caspian Sea, bordering Turkmenistan, the majority of whose inhabitants are ethnic Turkmen. The most important cities of Turkmen Sahra are Gonbad, Aqqala, Kalaleh, Maraveh Tappeh, Gomishan and Bandar Torkaman. There were, according to Ethnologue, over 2 million Turkmens in Turkmen Sahra in 1997.

Society Turkmens today in Turkmensahra live fairly modern lifestyles, although the effects of religion and the Muslim way of life are visible. The economy is based on industry, even if agriculture still plays a great role in some Turkmens' life, like in other places of Iran. The professions among Turkmens shows the pattern of a modern economy even if there are still some shortcomings due to lack of funding from the central authorities. The economic potential of Turkmensahra is big since a vast amount of oil was discovered early in the 1930. But since there was a deal with the

Soviet Union that there would be no oil extraction from Turkmen Sahra, there is not an oil industry at the moment.

Before the revolution in 1979 the Turkmens lived an economically richer life than people in other areas of Iran. Though poverty existed in small portions, most people lived and could afford material goods in their home. This was unusual for some parts of Iran.

During the Shah's time the difference between cities and villages was great. Going from a city like Bandar Torkaman to a nearby village, the differences were so vast that tourists felt like they had gone back in time. In villages there were no asphalt roads nor doctors. There was no electricity either to light up the town or the houses. People used donkeys and horses to travel until about 30 years ago. Buses, taxis and private cars were found only in bigger cities. The literacy rate has also increased since the revolution; it was not unusual for older Turkmen women to be analphabets. Girls began to study in school after the revolution which was unusual back in the Shah's 21 period..

All these differences shared between a city and village were common all over Iran during the Shah's period not excluded only to Turkmen Sahra Other cultural traits can be seen as in the weddings where Turkmens still practice several day weddings. An ancient tradition hailing back to the gökturks or even the hsiung-nu, Asian huns.

Today's Turkmens have a bride fee – the bridegroom gives away a fee for taking the girl's hand.

In tradition the girl's family provides even greater economic starting capital to the newlyweds' life. For example the bridegroom buys gold for the bride to wear; in return the bride's family buys daily life equipment for the new household.

The wedding itself, in times before the revolution, lasted several days where often all the relatives, clan members, and in some cases the whole village would turn up to celebrate. Common activities were to have races where the winner would receive a prize, contests in

göresh traditional Turkmen wrestling, horse races and more.

Today those traditions have perished instead there are a modern segment like private weddings hold in western countries. Even though the modern element has been introduced some people still have several day long weddings. Instead of races they now today have a private party for the bride and relatives, the bridegroom and one big celebration where relatives and friends are invited – not the whole village as during the shah's period.

Turkmens today seem to lose their traditions due to westernization and persianification of the society not excluded to Turkmens but the whole of Iran. People tend to watch a lot of satellite which has a great range of variety all from political to cultural and genuine entertainment.

Women are getting educated in a higher rate, even among traditional households. Among the generation after the revolution there are not any who are analphabetes or illiterate.

History Turkmens came first to the region at the time of their forefathers, the Seljuk Turks, thought early nomads empires has existed since the early age of Massagets or even earlier.

According to the Avesta Afrasiyab the legendary king of Turan hailed from Turkmen Sahra.

Before the era of Reza Khan, later Reza Shah, there was a landmass from Khiva in north to Bandar gaz in south were Turkmens inhabited the area was called Turkmenistan.

Due to the Great Game and famous resistance of Turkmens to great powers as czar Russia and England Turkmens lost their independence and their country was split in two lands. After the Gรถkdepe battle over one million Turkmens fled through Iran over to Afghanistan were their descents still live today. The first time in history Turkmens had shown resistance to central authority of Iran was in early 1920 when Reza Khan unified Iran he meet resistance of a Turkmen group and a leader called Anna-Geldi Ach, the later used to deploy sneak attacks from Turkmen Sahra and use hit and run tactis and hide into

modern Turkmenistan before SSR Turkmen was formed. During that time a gurultai like the ones Gรถkturks held was hold to elect a mullah as their leader, called Osman Akhun. It is the first democratically modern Turkmen assemblement ever hold. Turkmens are considered by outsiders who visited their area to be generous, kind-hearted thought even having the trait of being hot-headed.

Ahmad Shamlou, a famous Persian writer, wrote a novel about a Turkmen character, Amin. He also indicated the generosity and kindhearted spirit of the Turkmens in his poem about Amin.

Famous Turkmens from within Turkmen Sahra include the spiritual leader, national poet and unifier of Turkmen society Magtymguly Pyragy, who was born in a village outside Gonbad. The central Iranian authorities erected a mausoleum over his grave. Other persons born are Agha Mohammed Khan, founder of the Qajar dynasty of Iran. Also there are claims of Nadir Shah being Turkmen, but that's doubtful according to his own campaigns and official biography.

The Nadir Shah's first enemies were the Turkmens of Turkmen Sahra.

Well-known visitors of the region include Ármin Vámbéry, who wrote a book about his passage among Turkmens in Turkmen Sahra.

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