by An article by Jalil Ziapour, titled “Fighting Cock (Khorus Jangi) Magazine, the Means of Interpellation of Dr. Eqbal”, published in Ettela’at Newspaper, Issue 9615, 24 April 1949
One of the very interesting events in the year 1949 for the founders of Fighting Cock was the interpellation in the National Consultative Assembly, where they had deemed this publication to be among the publications of the Tudeh’is, and Ettela’at Newspaper had written: “The text of the response to the interpellation of Dr. Eqbal, Minister of the Interior, to the statements of Dr. Baqa’i in the National Consultative Assembly.”
The speaker, Dr. Eqbal, directing his remarks toward the activities of the Tudeh’is, stated as follows: “The Tudeh’is initially turned their attention to the working class and made them their tool. But this time they were unable to satisfy the workers. Having despaired of the workers, they changed direction and turned their attention to the intellectuals, and began to infiltrate the Ministry of Culture. It was not long before they gained influence from elementary school to university and misled the youth. They prepared booklets named ‘Fighting Cock’ which, of course, the gentlemen have seen, and placed them within the reach of elementary school students from the fourth grade and above.”
This ignorance, in presenting Fighting Cock magazine as a publication of the Tudeh’is, must have been the work of opponents (what connection could the Tudeh’is—who wanted the level of art to be such that even the orange-seller and the mousetrap-seller would be satisfied with art—have had with the high-level discourse of Fighting Cock’s artistic thought)!
One day we obtained an appointment and arrived in the presence of Dr. Eqbal, and placed a copy of the article on surrealism from Fighting Cock magazine before him, introduced ourselves, and requested that he flip through it and read a couple of lines on each page. He read with composure and said: “This magazine is not political, is it?” I said: “Your Excellency has ordered that it not be printed; furthermore, that an administrative trial be convened for me!”
He realized the flaw in the matter and said with a smile to publish it under another name. (We too published “Kavir”) and Fighting Cock had by then been banned.
But regarding the administrative trial, Dr. Sharif Razi, along with a few others, was assigned to conduct my administrative trial. (1)
On the top floor of the southern building of the Ministry of Culture, they grilled me. Has anyone commissioned you to propagate Cubism? Why have you chosen this field? What does Cubism mean in essence? And questions of this sort, from which it seemed to me that the gentlemen did not know the meaning of Cubism and a mistake had occurred. Therefore, I found an opportunity to convey the basis of the new artistic thought, and after detailed explanations, as they gradually became aware of their mistake, I made it clear that what is meant by Cubism is (geometric form) and geometric painting (like the carpet under our feet, or the geometric paintings on the tiles of our old buildings and mosques). Suddenly they sank into thought and chose silence. Then they apologized and said: “We had imagined that Cubism meant Communism”!!
It was not long before, upon being invited to work in the Department of Fine Arts, I was transferred from the Ministry of Culture to the country’s General Department of Fine Arts.
1- At this time, I had been employed by the Ministry of Culture (the current Ministry of Education) for a period of one year.
