Abstract
Art made during the reign of the Qajar dynasty in 19th-century Iran has been disparaged in most art historical scholarship while more recent attempts to assess it have become embroiled in problematic and limited notions of modernity. Qajar artists freely embraced new technologies of the mass produced image, including lithography and photography, which were often remediated through historically antecedent mediums including watercolor painting and lacquerwares. The lecture examines the complex processes of inter-medium exchange and the fluidity and mobility of images in an era before the development of the concept of medium specificity and as ideas about the distinction between art and craft were still forming. Emerging notions about aesthetic and artistic norms adversely affected the European reception of Qajar art in the 1800s which has shadowed art history until the present day.
