Analysis of the Painting Safinat al-Najat by Mohammad Ali Rajabi Based on Gerard Genette's Theory of Transtextuality

The studies on Persian miniature have been mostly on old and traditional paintings and there has been less attention to the contemporary miniature. The study of paintings based on new theories is very novel and there is still much work to be done. Gerard Genette's theory of transtextuality, although not primarily related to the field of art and only concerned with literature and linguistics, is one of the theories that can be used to analyze and read visual works more carefully. It examines the influences that texts can have on each other to create a new text.Expanding intertextual studies conducted initially by Kristeva, Genette presented a more systematic and practical theory that is called transtextuality which covers all kinds of relations between texts. He divided the types of relations between texts into five categories, including intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, architextuality, and hypertextuality. Each of the categories is based on a specific intertextual relation. Intertextuality is based on co-presence relations, paratextuality on advertising relations, metatextuality on critical or interpretive relations, architextuality on stylistic relations, and hypertextuality on derivative relations. One can use transtextuality to analyze different types of literary and artistic works to achieve a more accurate reading of the works.Among the contemporary painters, Master Mohammad Ali Rajabi is one of the painters who expresses his opinions and views as an original and creative artist without harming the coherence of the artwork while using various pre-texts.Therefore, in the present research, the painting "Safinat al-Najat", Mohammad Ali Rajabi's work created in 2009, has been analyzed based on Gerard Genette's theory of transtextuality to examine the painting more carefully, discover the hidden layers of meanings, and find out the types of intertextual relations and pre-texts the artist has used in the painting. The present research has been conducted using the descriptive method of content analysis and a comparative approach, and can be considered as qualitative research. Data have been collected using the library research and observation.The findings of the research show that the painting includes all five types of transtextual relations, although it does not include all the subcategories of the types of transtextual relations. In addition to using various pre-texts such as the Quran, Hadith, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, etc., the artist has added some items to his work to enrich meanings. While using written pre-texts, he has also used visual pre-texts, the most important of which is the painting of "The Words in the Praise of the Prophet" in the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasb. Besides traditional painting methods, he has also employed the painting techniques of Master Farshchian, indicating the artist's mastery of traditional and contemporary painting that has made him able to display the power of the brush and skill in this way and transform the work from a narrative image to a new hypertext that is faithful to the previous texts while having a message beyond them for the present era.