A comparative study on Iranian and Turkish art in the modern social transformation context

Iran and Turkey involved in profound transformations in every aspect of social life according to the modernization and westernization programs enforced by Reza Shah and Ataturk in the 1920s and 1930s. The modern states superseded former Ottoman and Qajar reigns which previously had influenced by the wave of modernization and thus the condition of development of modernization which disposed in the 19th century, heightened in the 20th. The Study of artistic changes under the influence of modernization seems to be necessary, as the impact of the process analyzed in various social and political aspects. The establishment of new western-style cultural institutions such as academies and museums profoundly affected the artistic transformation in these countries. In 1882 Osman Hamdi founded the Academy of Fine Arts and in 1911 Kamal al-Mulk relatively established early western-style art school in Iran. These changes had brought massive transformations in art of Iran and Turkey and then artists become enthusiast of western-style of arts and tried to imitate the modern art. This paper focused primarily on the art of painting in these countries between the beginnings of 20th century to 1960s. The objective of the research is to compare transformation of painting in the mentioned cutting edge in Iran and Turkey. So, for the sake of outlining the common tendencies in the modern painting, the comparative form was applied to study the changes in the art of painting in the context of modernization process of the countries. The approach relies on the modernization as mainstream which could have been lead in common experience in other fields like art of painting. The Peripheral-central situation is one of the key concepts in this theoretical approach. According to the concept, European developed countries have regarded as the central countries and the others, such as colonized and third world countries have regarded as the peripheral. The only way to development for peripheral countries, in this ideology, was becoming westernized. This peripheral situation specifies common condition of the countries in the beginning decades of the twentieth century, and formation of modern states of Ataturk and Reza Shah is outcome of this process. Is, According to the main question of the research, there any common process in the painting of Iran and Turkey at the mentioned period? If so, why the artists of the two countries experienced similar tendencies in their painting artworks? The method which used for this article is descriptive-analytic and its data collection have been done by library researches and processed by qualitative method. The analysis of research data reveals three major tendencies in Iranian and Turkish modern painting. The first, naturalism in academic style, on the genres of portraiture, landscape and still life; the second, modern painting under the influence of the European modern art's circles and the movements such as expressionism and cubism with the folklore accent; and the third, return to historical identity by restoration of formal elements of traditional arts in abstract forms and in modern expression. Accordingly, the modernization brought a common artistic process in the painting of Iran and Turkey, as like as the common structure in the politics.