Interpretation of the Image of Body in a number of Bahman Mohasses’ Works, According to Marleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Embodiment

In Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach, the relationship between the body and the world is so intertwined that their separation is not possible. Human’s perception is possible through her/his body. Painter as a researcher discovers the complex connection of the subject and object or human and the world because the painter can reveal it by focusing on the relationship between man and the world and by bracketing (epoche) the obscure aspects of phenomena. Mohassess’ works seem to be a kind of description and interpretation of the relationship between man and the world, away from an objective representation focused on similarity. As Merleau-Ponty’s attempts to resolve the issue between the subject and the object through his own approach, Mohassess also works with the production of the painting effect to solve this duality. Mohasses’ some of works have an ability for new reading according to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. As a phenomenologist, Mohasses focuses on the human position in the world and takes away from similarity which was dominant in classical aesthetics. The body in his painting is not a representation of the appearance of man but it represents a concept about human position. He attempts to make visible with his hands, brush and mind for the audience on painting canvas everything that is hidden from eyes. In this way in his paintings, subject and object are intertwined and they have equally important, also there is a dialectical relationship between them. Accordingly, Mohasses takes into account the form and the content that incorporates modern humans into the industrial world. He tries to bring the audience closer to the aesthetic pleasure through understanding the new meanings. According to Merleau-Ponty’s method, the well-known phenomenologist technique has been created to lighten up and clarify the relationship between man and the world, that is, epoch or suspend. Therefore, it is impossible to describe Mohassess as a formalist or conceptual artist. By revealing how to achieve personal style, the creation of characters, the role of ambiguity and suspension in the creation of meaning, the place of color in the creation of meaning and the perception between the artist and the audience, it was revealed to us that, in the view of Mohassess, as well as the language of Merleau-Ponty is. It is noteworthy in his representations on the one hand, represent Descartes, and on the other hand, to Merleauy-Ponty’s approach to apparent appearances, the most important of which is how faces appear and how they can be understood. In this research, we describe and analyze the derived data from library study of Merleau-Ponty’s theory and we compare Mohasses’ selected works with embodiment theory in order to extend our aesthetic experience from his paintings.