when its signs and the related rituals are understood, it
can evoke the deepest response. The solemn and ritual
character of early Iranian art is at the foundation of
its magnificent achievement in pure decoration. Decora-
tion, the main resource and goal of Iranian art, is not
merely a delight to the eye or an entertainment for the
mind, but it has a far deeper meaning. The first obscure
but intense insights were formulated in terms of orna-
ment, bringing man into closer contact with his difficult
and dangerous world. Such symbolic ornament became
a vehicle of aspiration, a source of confidence and inner
power. All this became decoration of high quality, which
had its origin in compelling experience. Because it has
been constantly refined and enlarged by this very service,
it can speak directly to the heart of man.

For these symbolic forms in order to impress the mind
and stir the soul had to adapt themselves to the ele-
mental modes of human understanding. They had to
discover a language of the emotions, not merely to devise
recognizable images of the objects and ideas which were
so vital to all, but to express them in patterns which of
themselves evoked the appropriate responses. This was
undoubtedly a slow and largely unselfconscious process,
but the earliest artists, the primitive pottery-painters,
formulated conventions of great clarity and energy which
laid a basis of design and this, to the imaginative minds
of the Persians, opened up infinite possibilities of ex-
pansion and elaboration, a process which they carried
on through thousands of years. Tenacious of the old,
guarding it with circumspection and fidelity, they con-
tinued to invent and perfect; and if this art sank with
slackening currents of national vitality, its forms helped
to conserve the ancient spirit, to provide a basis for a
renaissance.

It is no accident that art in Persia had a close depen-
dence upon poetry, as well as on religious and philo-
sophical thinking. The Persians are the most poetic of
all peoples, as a thousand years of their literature testify.
For a millennium, poetry has been a general mode of
expression in Persia, and the ability to write acceptable
verse has been assumed for all and sundry.

For this type of art we have no wholly adequate term.
"Ornament" and "decoration" both imply an ancillary
status, something subservient to the main reality and
value. We shall not be far wrong if we designate Persian
art as an art of pure form -- an art to be approached
like music or architecture. Indeed, the more serious of
the decorative arts have been frequently referred to as
"visible music," for they are concerned with the quality
of the elements and their combination into significant
and expressive entities, into designs which have validity
and emotional force, and do not so much represent ob-
jects as by their own intrinsic character awaken life-
giving, joyous responses. Such art in the hands of masters
can, like music, stir many deep and intense feelings.
Indeed the greatest examples speak with an authority
which representation can never command, seeming to
reach the very core of our personality, and not infre-
quently calling forth sheer rapture which can rise to
ecstasy, or can command a mood of serene tranquillity.

The notion that the primary purpose of art is repre-
sentation -- a tacit assumption in the nineteenth century
-- has of late years been challenged with an impatience
amounting to violence. The contrary and sound view
that art is "significant form" has, however, been pressed
with extravagance, and theoretical ignorance, with argu-
ments riddled with fallacies, which have encouraged
charlatanism amounting to delirium that has its roots
in characteristic maladies of the age.

But the protest was necessary. That art must be more
than representation if it is to be worthy of respect, that
pure form is a primal necessity of all beauty, and that
the exploration of its possibilities is one of the chief con-
cerns of the artist, this is now taken for granted in the
West. But it has always been a commonplace in Asia.
Pure form, however, is not apprehended by argument,
nor is capacity acquired by wishing for or assuming it.
Depth of experience, sincerity of feeling, a sense of
wholeness and integrity, of oneness with one's kind, wide
sympathies, an imagination schooled in a discipline as
severe as that required by music or mathematics, the
sustaining power of rich tradition, the habit of seeing
through appearances to their source and meaning, con-
scientious craftsmanship which develops the appropriate
means for the embodiment of these insights -- these are
the qualities required if an art of design or pure form
is to be adequate to its own character and possibilities.
These are the qualities which sustained the art of Persia
in all media and through many centuries.

Persian art matured slowly and developed its own
specific canons, which, tested by time, dominated
through long epochs. Lucidity is one of these ideals. The
Great God, Ahuramazda, was a god of light, and Per-
sian taste was averse not merely to the clumsy and inept,
but also to the obscure and confused. It was eminently
reasonable. Even its fantasies, whether legend, fairy
story, or the delineation of impossible monsters, always
had a lifelike and convincing air.

But this emphasis on lucidity, this finding of values in
the beauty of organization, of movement, of line and
color, by no means produced a cold and abstract art.
Admittedly, at times it could be over-calculated, self-
conscious, and fussy, but these are the failings of any
style; typically it was poised, coherent, concentrated.

In subject and manner the range of Persian art was
vast. It adored the miniature. A tiny turtle from the
second millennium B.C., from Hisar (Damghan), an
exquisite little fabrication, and the unbelievable fine
Achaemenid seals, were but forerunners of the miniature
art which had its devotees in every period. Yet Persian
art also knew the formulae for power and monumental-
ity, and never lost its hold on either. It knew and loved
simplicity, though it more often turned to excitement
and intensity. Tranquillity and decorum were also Per-
sian ideals.

Persian designers were, as those of no other culture,
adept in stimulating and controlling an intricate, com-
plex mass of motives, whose adjustments and resolution

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