Recognition of Several Iranian Painting Genres as Islamic Art through the Discourse of Dominant Power

 Over the last 40 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has always attempted to deepen the concept of “Islamic Art” in painting to exploit it for reinforcing its conceptual discourse. Hence, some painting genres have been categorized as Islamic art. Such genres may be remnants of previous centuries (Miniature, Illumination, Gol-o-Morgh, New Miniature and Qahvekhane’i paintings) or originate from sociopolitical events of the era with their idiosyncratic content and aesthetics. However, all of them have a similar representation in people’s minds.

This study aims to identify articulated predications that convey Islamic meaning according to the regime’s discourse.

This study employed Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis as well as qualitative content analysis to identify all discourse elements of stated genres.

The findings revealed that the genres of Iranian painting, traditional painting, revolutionary painting, and ‘holy defense’ painting respectively have the following predications: 1) revelatory, mystical, and epic; 2) moral, spiritual, and divine; 3) ideological, propagandistic, and justice-oriented; 4) idealistic, value-based, and resilience. The said predications are centered on the pivotal discourse of the dominant power, i.e., Shia Islam; therefore, all of them can be categorized as Islamic art. In different conceptual realms of historic–civil Islam, each of the said genres, theological–didactic Islam, ideological-sovereign Islam, and political-ideological Islam, has enriched other discourse predications and helped achieve different political goals.