Recognize of Iranian performative place and spaces in Persian paintings

Based on reflective approach in sociology of art, which presents the influence of art from environmental conditions and their reflections, we can use Persian paintings as an important reference to recognize Iranian performative spaces, because these paintings illustrate Iranian literature raised from culture. However, Iranian painters selected their subject with special thoughts and careful insight. Furthermore, there are few references and resources about the subjects and points in these paintings, maybe because of historical condition of Iran. In the other words, Iranian artists have been learnt in hard situations to conceal the meaning of their artwork using symbols and codes. Performance is one of the Iranian arts that have been limited at various times. Despite, literature and culture of Iran is full of dramatic moments. Anecdotes such as “Siavash passing on fire”, “Shirin and Farhad romance” and “the seven beauties (Haft Pykar)” are full of dramatic features and they are the most important subjects in paintings. The Iranian cultural landscape is rich in pondering places and communal spaces for different ceremonies and rituals. But in the documents there are less evidences about essence and state of performance spaces. While in many paintings, images of real locations of Iranian cultural landscapes which a theatrical event is taking place, have been depicted. Therefore, features of Iranian theater spaces could be recognize from these paintings. In this paper, the state of “cultural landscape” is used instead of architecture, urban or landscape. Because, cultural landscape represents a long and intimate relationship between man and nature; as well as it expresses the mentality and culture of the communities in built environments at the context of nature. Various characters related to the taste, smell, touch, motion, visual and hearing are cultural aspects. Performance as one of the cultural aspects is highly dependent on time and place so, it can be one of the function of the built environment or inversely be affected from environment. Selected painting in this study, have two points: first, their subjects are in agreement with drama and second, the painted places points to the real places that the performative occurrences have been played there. The main questions are: what place has been chosen for an occurrence in a performance, what have been the characteristics of performative space in this place, and how was the relationship between the audiences and actors? Our results in this study show that performative occurrences are one of cultural aspect of Iranian literature and society. As a consequence, the Iranian nature or city landscapes, as receptacles for life, provide bases for performative occurrences. These multifunctional and centripetal places have hierarchy space, perceptional boundary and different layers of view and perspective. Moreover, natural or artificial elements have been used for walls and stages, as well as, the light and accessories are in agreement with spatial and temporal conditions. Therefore, we aimed to study some aspects of Iranian performative space using methods such as historical research, content analysis and hermeneutics to investigate performative places and spaces in selective Persian paintings.