Application of the Discourse of Commitment and the Problem of Autonomy in the Iranian Paintings of 1960s and 1970s

The present research is about the pragmatics of the discourse of commitment and the problem of autonomy in the paintings of 1960s and 1970s in Iran, particularly the institutes that produced such a discourse. The method of research is qualitative content analysis. We answer the following main question: How did the discourse of commitment from the perspectives from the viewpoints of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Norman Fairclough affect the visual language of Iranian painting in 1960s and 1970s? The findings indicate the factors the contributed to the formation of this discourse of commitment in the paintings of those decades. According to the discourse of commitment that was prevalent then, the main visual elements of a committed autonomous painting is as follows: the paintings were often figurative (formalist) and narrative (content-centered); the content and form were visible separately; formalistic innovation was not accepted in the forms of the paintings; they were easy to understand by laypeople; masses of people were encouraged to cut off the hands of the corrupt regime and imperialism, particularly America, from the public wealth of the country, which was accompanied by communication of concepts such as fight against injustice, pursuit of justice, pursuit of Islam, return to oneself, autonomy, nativism, etc.; all those concepts were against the Pahlavi regime, and the central node for religious groups was Islamism, and for leftist groups was populism