Renowned art historian Hamid Keshmirshekan explores contemporary art in Iran and considers the relationship between its cultural past, modernism, and the issue of contemporaneity with regard to cultural specificity.

Using over three hundred color illustrations, Keshmirshekan contends that the twentieth century is a crucial period in the culture and art of Iran--when the legacies of tradition and modernism were being critically reviewed and the artistic concerns were indivisible from ideological ones.

Hamid Keshmirshekan is an art historian, critic, visiting fellow at the faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, and editor-in-chief of the bilingual quarterly Art Tomorrow.