Login
Not a CAA member?
Read about the benefits.
August 16, 2007
Fereshteh Daftari, ed. Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking Exh. cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005. 112 pp.; 98 color ills. Cloth $65.00 (0870700855)

Exhibition schedule: Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 26–May 22, 2006

Venetia Porter, ed. Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East Exh. cat. London: British Museum Press, 2005. 144 pp.; 204 color ills. Cloth (0714111635)

Exhibition schedule: British Museum, London, May 18–September 2, 2006

 
CrossRef DOI: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2007.66

Large
Kutlug Ataman. Beautiful (no. 1) (2003). Video installation: DVD, DVD player, LCD flat-panel wall-mounted monitor. 17 x 19 in. (43 x 48 cm). Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York. © Kutlug Ataman. Photograph courtesy Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.

Sign In or become a member to see the full review

Contemporary art from the Middle East has only begun to emerge from obscurity in the past decade. Its struggle for recognition by the mainstream art world stems from an indefinable hesitation, lack of understanding, and the absence of established standards by which to evaluate it. A handful of major museums have started to collect this art seriously, while others continue to resist such acquisitions, often dismissing them as derivative and of questionable quality. Two recent...