Classical Persian miniature painting, which belongs to the small-scale art of book illustration, presents a whimsically implausible and idealized world created through expert draftsmanship; rich, jewel-like colors; and carefully contrived landscape and architectural settings. As has often been noted, in Persian painting it is always a perfect day. In his disquieting work Idyllic Life, Shoja Azari builds on and plays against this precious art form. His starting point is a projected image of a vastly magnified sixteenth-century manuscript page depicting an arcadian setting of a princely palace and surrounding town. A series of video clips are inserted into the projected painting, disrupting the idyllic scene with disturbing and sometimes violent vignettes drawn from contemporary Iranian life. Born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1958, Azari began making short films as a teenager before moving to New York in 1983. Idyllic Life belongs to Azari’s solo series of "video paintings," in which he animates traditionally static paintings with contemporary video footage.

• Komaroff, Linda. In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2018.

• Komaroff, Linda. "Islamic Art Now and Then." In Islamic Art: Past, Present, Future, edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, 26-56. New Haven, New York, and London: Yale University Press, 2019.