2025 – Tehran – Kasra Publications
In the early to mid-20th century, Iran stood at a threshold of transformation. Its cultural and intellectual landscapes were opening to change. It was in this moment of encounter with the “new world” that André Godard arrived—bringing not only a European gaze, but a distinct way of seeing, thinking, and speaking about art and architecture.
This text walks alongside Godard: from Chaumont to the East, from Baghdad and Samarra to Cairo and finally to Tehran. Across five distinct periods of presence in Iran, Godard’s activity unfolds—not only as an architect and archaeologist, but as a speaker in a new discourse. His writings and actions helped shape a fresh way of naming and knowing “Iranian art.” But this gaze was not neutral. It made certain things visible—and simultaneously concealed others.
The book traces how Godard’s position, his metaphors, and the intellectual structures of his time opened a specific window onto Iranian heritage. This window, though illuminating, also filtered and framed. The narrative thus moves from biography to discourse analysis: investigating not just what Godard did, but how he thought, the words he used, the concepts he repeated—“the past,” “civilization,” “the nation,” “art”—and how these shaped a new path of recognition for Iranian architecture.
Through critical attention to texts, speeches, and institutional practices, the book seeks not merely to recount Godard’s role, but to grasp the conditions that made such a role possible—and to gesture toward what, within this framing, remained unsaid.