Hermeneutical Analysis of Master Jazizade's Painting through Hirsch Approach

As a type of text and informational document enjoying an ancient history, the Iranian painting provides the researchers with sufficient information on the history, culture and social etiquettes of the Iranians; so conducting a scientific study of such text is considered fundamental in today’s artistic researches. Encountering with a work of art to achieve logical, accurate results through systematic research has ever been observed by theorists. Hermeneutical approach was introduced to interpret the concept of texts but a fundamental difference has always existed on the quiddity of meaning. Some believe that the meaning of text depends on the audience while others are of the opinion that it is related to the author which leads to the creation of a single or plural meaning in a given text. Objectivists consider the text’s meaning unchanging and reachable while subjectivists consider it broad, unreachable and definite but everyone can understand it based on his previous knowledge of text. Eric Hirsch, the American intellectual, properly elaborated upon the setbacks of each of the theories and opened up a fresh way for conducting research studies within texts and works. Focusing on Hirsch’s approach, this essay seeks the meaning of the artwork in its author. Hirsch basically believes that the author’s objective of the creation of the artwork constructs the meaning of the piece. ‘The comprehension process’, he terms the mental processes involved in the method of presentation of a piece of art and during the ‘interpretation process’, the artist takes up the pen to share the meaning gained with others. If the researcher takes the process backwards, he can access the meaning of the text and approach it significantly. Depending on time and science, secondary information appear during the study of text which Hirsch calls ‘implication’; therefore, every text contains just one, single meaning and that is the author’s objective of creating artistic works. To find out the meaning of a painting, the researcher should approach the artist through the study of the historical, social and cultural circumstances at the time of creating the text, study the artist’s biography, and if possible, asking for the author’s assistance. This research seeks answers for this one question: how can an artwork be examined from the perspective of its creator? The study aims to find a method to analyze the Iranian miniature. The Iranian miniature can be divided in to two general types: one in which the miniaturist was free to choose his subject and the other, a painting created under specific conditions of the time and the customer’s taste. To this end, the miniature paintings of Master ‘Amir Houshang Jazizadeh’ - the contemporary painter chosen as the ‘Eternal Figure’ of Isfahan who has studied and taught the discipline for many years and is fortunately alive – were selected for analysis. The research has been performed through desk study of library resources and conducting interviews as well as description and analysis of the works of the author with the effective participation of the author himself and tests the accuracy of this method via a comprehensive study of one of 200 paintings available at the gallery chosen by the artist himself and a general study of other paintings.The results indicated that the Hermeneutical approach of Hirsch is a suitable method for analyzing and study the Iranian miniature paintings. Holding the meaning of the artworks, the subjects of the paintings are always constant and prominently associated with the miniaturist’s thoughts and beliefs. In comprehension process, the miniaturist tries to present the meaning from a new perspective and in portraying them, he employs different techniques of interpretation and sharing of their meaning. Ultimately, the study reveals that the processes of comprehending and interpretation of the artworks are variables and the modification of the artwork by the author after some elapse of time, displays alternation in the process of comprehension and interpretation while the subject of the miniature painting (artist’s intention) or the meaning remains the same.