To Study the Place of Imagination and Myth in Coffee House Painting (Gillbert Durand Method)

Coffee house painting that is among few remained folk arts in Iran was originated from the public national and religious attitudes in Qajar era. These paintings are supported by the imagination and the myth, which are rooted in the intellectual talent and the collective spirit. The imagination constitutes the formal motif of the paintings as well as national and religious myths constitute the content motifs of the works, which are rooted in the Iranian rich culture and collective spirit. Coffee house painting that was founded by the artists who didn’t go to the school was according to the imagination and myth-oriented bases somehow the painters called this style as imagination-drawing and stated that its relationship with the imagination was the source of creating their works. Myth-oriented (drawing the national and religious myths) is also considered as one of the important elements of this art and the confrontation between the good and evil forces forms its main concept; these contrasting manifestations are hidden in the unconscious ego of the artist who didn’t go to the school and can be decoded by Gillbert Durand’s nocturnal regime and diurnal regime theory. Gillbert Durand knows that these conflicting manifestations are related to the unconscious ego of the human and his fear of the unknown death universe that is imposed by the time on the human; this case can be examined about the artists who were drawing the pictures in terms of their imagination and were painting their imagination without education spontaneously. This is a research based on the descriptive and analytical studies of the imagination and myth manifestations in the coffee shop painting; this was started by introducing the scope of the imagination, myth and Gilbert Durand’s theory and this important research has been conducted by the library studies, collecting the books and the articles and translating the essays. This paper tries to investigate the place of the imagination and the myth as well as the effective roles of the imagination and myth-making elements in the coffee house painting according to Gillbert Durand’s nocturnal regime and diurnal regime theory and by a documentary and library method. The results of this research indicate that the artists with the coffee house style drew the personal fear (fear of death) and the collective unconscious egos of their compatriots with the help of the imagination and its creativity power as well as with the assistance of myth-making and drew the contrasting elements against the fear simultaneously.