leon bakst ... when i was younger i never really looked at leon bakst's work ... it had always been popular, i didn't dislike it ... maybe his women weren't my kind of wimmin ... but today, whilst listening to the firebird for the third time this month, i started to page my way through his artwork on google image search, and found a treasure trove ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Bakst

in no particular order ...

a russian fillum short about bakst on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExuPTtK_RV4

leon bakst and margaret barnard overlap ...

bakst's terror antiqus, c.1907

margaret barnard's hekate at the crossroads, c.1935

shirin neshat isn't unknown ... but i'd never properly encountered her work ... until today it had been in the back of my mind, "on the agenda", so to speak ... i'll just try to make some kind of sequence of her work because i'm interested in people who work with texts, even when i don't understand the texts ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirin_Neshat

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/shirin-neshat

http://www.artbook.com/catalog--art--monographs--neshat--shirin.html



it might take a couple of days to lick this into shape ...

first by identifying her major works and studying them a little

then by describing the trajectory of her endeavours to the present time

i think it safe to say that her main theme is the repression of wimmin under islamic theocracy in iran
that isn't to say there aren't other themes ...


from the 1993 project called UNVEILING

the SHORT film TURBULENT, dating from 1998 ...
twin videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2DNMG2s_O0



RAPTURE, 1999 ...
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/184206/rapture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hagl4ibp86Q



a long article in the guardian ...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2000/jul/22/weekend.suziemackenzie



the photo at the top of the page is from shirin neshat's WOMEN OF ALLAH collaboration
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-contemporary/a/neshat-rebellious



ZARIN, a film .... a very short YouTube clip ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wNz9jK82U0



from the 12 minute video collage called PASSAGE
made in 2001

video and still photographs combined with text from a poem by Shelley
overlayed with an aria from Purcell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjPJrgnraAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reZpY4VK9xY





















LOGIC OF THE BIRDS, 2001-2002 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhaxUpPtnUc



another excellent article ...
https://interartive.org/2014/02/shirin-neshat


ferdowsi'e SHANAMEH, the great classic of ancient Persian poetry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh


here is an example of the modern poetry that is important in this context ...
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2015/march/reborn-forugh-farrokhzad


shirin neshat's 2010 TED Talk ...
https://www.ted.com/speakers/shirin_neshat


possibly/probably my interest in shirin neshat was jolted after reading gary younge's article about the self-inflicted plight of the UK citizen who ran away from school to join ISIS, shemima begum ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/21/shemima-begum-right-british-citizenship