Words in Pictures: A Semantic Analysis of the Role of Written Signs in Contemporary Iranian Painting (from 2000 onwards)

The interrelation between words and images in creating meaning is one of the important principles of contemporary art. In contemporary art (from 1970 onwards), artists often combine words and images to create complex and multi-layered works that challenge the traditional notions of media and communication. Considering the long history of the coexistence of word and image in the visual arts of Iran and the use of writing and calligraphy in modern Iranian painting, which is known today as one of the characteristics of Iranian painting, The aim of this paper is to explain the role of written signs on the reading of visual text in contemporary Iranian painting. We are concentrated on the question that, how does the presence of words in the frame of the painting affect the meaning and conception of an images? For this purpose, the works of three contemporary Iranian painters who applied different approaches in combining written signs and pictorial signs in their paintings were studied. These painters are: Khosrow Hasanzadeh (b: 1963), Fereydoun Ave (b: 1945), and Davood Zandian (b: 1954). The method of collecting data is documentary and field study, and for semiotic-semantic analysis of selected samples the layered semiotics method was used. The studies show that the presence of written signs inside the frame of the painting in contemporary Iranian art has various functions; from one side, the written signs sometimes limit the implicit meanings of the image by relying on the expressiveness of the speech and facilitate the reading of the visual text; and one the other side, written signs may add to the perceptual dimensions of the work and rejecting the limitations of mere visual perception, they also add to the multiplicity of the semantic implications of the image. By the way, in some cases, the expressive function of writing has been abandoned in favor of the visual function, and verbal signs have turned into visual signs of identity.