The Critique of the artist-mystic concept from the perspective of traditionalists based on studies of social history

For years, the Traditionalist approach to reading traditional works of art has become a major paradigm in Iran's academic studies of arts. Traditionalists believe that traditional arts, including those related to Kitab Araei, especially painting, reflect the world of ideals, and the images used in them are not merely representations of the real world.This view has led many of them to place the painter beyond the ordinary artist, as a mystic, the artist, with an intuitive understanding of ideas forms, has ability to represent idealistic forms in his work. In this article, based on credible historical reports, the social and moral life of famous Iranian artists in the Timurid and Safavid eras is studied, in order to To examine the claims of traditionalists about the mystical life of the artist.The research findings show that what has been quoted from the lives of prominent Iranian artists in historical texts, is more about ordinary people than a mystics or mystical behavior of them. It narrates ordinary but capable and creative human beings that in some cases, they behaved contrary to religious and customary morals and rules. As a result, contrary to popular belief, it can be said that assigning a mystic-artist status to Iranian painters is based solely on a subjective attitude. And this claim of traditionalists about the mystical status of artists is not only inconclusive with historical findings, but in many cases faces serious challenges in studying the lives of artists of that time.