The Role of the Minstrel and the Quote of the Painter: Interaction of Performative Elements, Visual Elements and the Creation of Multi-field Space in the Field Pardeh-Khani

In pre-Islamic Iran, narration (Naqqali) was considered as one of the varieties of storytelling, sometime accompanied by music. After Islam's dominance in Iran, narration was one of the few artistic and performative genres that were left out of religious restrictions, and as the only performance form for which ban there was no reason, it managed to combine all playing methods of its time. Picture narration is in the category of traditional plays and is a combination of various arts such as play, poetry-literature, music, singing and painting. This art was performed in two ways: a closed courtyard (coffee house, in banquet narration: mansions); the method by which the screen was hanged or installed on the wall, and open air (squares, passages, fields, etc.) in which scroll screen opened up to the audience slowly, or the second screen of the so-called covering was removed from the preinstalled screen. The images presented in most of these works are imaginary and poetic spatial visualization. This state gives mysterious expression to the natural elements of an image. Although the natural elements in these images are not always symbolic, the depth of these works cannot be realized without familiarizing with literary setting, as well as paying attention to the ancient traditions of the image in Iranian painting. Given the performance’s function, these images have their own effects, not a narrative-related component that has the task of facilitating the comprehension of the text for the audience, but the narration’s subject has been a means for the artist to speak with the linguistic image to the audience. The painter always tries to reveal objects in accordance with his sense of imagination and draws loyal to the original style of dimension processing in Iranian art. In most of these images, the perspective has been created in accordance with the importance and dignity of the individuals; in such a way that the painter, regardless of the temporal and spatial dimension may create events. In the field picture narration, the visual environment and the physical environment are consistent; picture narrator chooses the physical environment according to the environment, hence the two spaces become indivisible. The picture narrator, by masking some of the imprinted forms on the screen, and by placing himself as one of the visual forms against the central narrative forms, changes the proportion of the visual elements of the screen according to his narration. Thus, the spectator's viewing angles, escaping point and horizon line are challenged, and the visual quality of the spectator interacts with the infinite moving objects in the constant screen. Picture narrator combines the role of the profile on the screen with the actual image of the environment in an improvised manner. In this way of narration, the screen is no longer merely the screen of the original painting, but a visionary screen in which perspective, that screen, narrator and spectator are included. This paper examines the action and interaction of the visual and performative elements of field picture narrating, which covers all visual and performative elements, the environment, and in particular, the audience as a perspective, and creates an integrated universe in the making of a world. This space separates the environmental elements from their everyday function and interacts with the visual elements of the screen as well as the performative elements. The creation of this multidimensional space is not merely based on a naturalistic illusion about the actual distances between the represented elements, but it also depends on the dimension, the role (image), the scale of the narration and the performance’s dimension in the environment, and a large number of linkages which place the spectator as the other dimension in it. In this way, this method brings brilliant results and has created a unique way of performing the picture narrating. This article seeks to answer the following questions: what relationship exists between the narrator and the audience with the painting’s screen? how is the screen's relationship with the environment and how can the pre-painted screen be different in each performance? Therefore, using the descriptive-analytical method and with library sources and documentary information gathering techniques, we will study the samples. The result of the research shows that the narrator, with skill in improvisation, identifies the role of the profile on the screen with the actual image in the environment. This is not a mere scroll of the original painting, but his screen is a perspective that includes the screen, the narrator and the spectator.