مجله مبانی نظری هنرهای تجسمی
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، بهار و تابستان 1396)

Illustrating numerous political, religious, cultural, and literary themes, Persian-Islamic miniatures are regarded as the visual translation of culture and thought of a chequered history, which has been influenced by various events and developments. One of such miniature works is ‘Martyrs of Mena disaster’ painting created by Reza Badrossama. Here the artist has portrayed the deadliest incident in the history of Tamattu' Hajj, i.e. the death of Hajj pilgrims performing the Stoning of the Devil ritual in 2015; An incident that the artist claims to have inflicted a terrible pain upon his soul, thus making him spend a whole year to create this piece of miniature hoping to keep the memory of the incident alive in the minds of future generations. According to Islamic aesthetics, an artwork is not just created to astonish or surprise the audience but to convey a moral truth. Regardless of how sublime a conceptual value is manifest in a work of art, the artist's objective is not realized until the audience grasps the meaning of his or her mental message and visual expression. Conducted through a descriptive-analytical method based on reliable library sources, including visual and electronic data, as well as findings of field studies, this paper examines ‘The Martyrs of Mena disaster’ miniature. The study aims to determine which visual elements were employed by the artist to portray the aftermaths of this great disaster. It is of course assumed that the artist has utilized numerous visual elements so as to convey multiple messages embedded in the work through Persian-Islamic patterns and motifs. Therefore, to reject or confirm such a hypothesis, a literature review was conducted. However, no independent study has been made to read and understand this work of art since Sept. 19, 2016, when it was unveiled in Isfahan Museum of Contemporary Arts. The results of the study indicate that although the artist could have created this work through the use of symbolic and conventional visual elements; nevertheless, he has consciously used unique visual elements to influence the audience’s perspective and express the implications of the Mena disaster from different aspects. Therefore, the element of dot- containing the concept of scream and re-birth- has been used to convey the feeling of martyrdom and rebirth of the spirit of the Hajj pilgrims. Curved lines have been employed repeatedly to emphasize the element of spirituality in this reproduction. Besides horizontal and vertical lines used as the frame, the artist has used vertical lines in portraying Kaaba in the center of the painting to represent the concepts of power, uprightness, strength, persistence, balance, and stability that are symbolic characteristics of Kaaba in line with the patience and endurance of the pilgrims performing the Stoning of the Devil ritual. Regardless of the symbolic meaning of Tawaf (circumambulation), the gentle curve and the circular form of this line expresses the delicacy of ascent of the spirits of the pilgrims. Some of the artistic elements incorporated in the painting include circular surfaces, giving dimensions to Kaaba, soft texture of the angels’ wings, rhythm of patterns of the deceased and stacked bodies of pilgrims, Tazhib (illumination) and calligraphy of Quranic verses in the margines, and the balanced composition of the miniature using spiral patterns. Warm colors have been used both in central part of the paining and the Tazhib around it so as to evoke a sense of warmness on the day of the incident, thirst of the pilgrims, and concepts of Khauf and Raja (fear and hope) resulting from the disaster. Moreover, the color gold is used in different parts of the painting to portray the beams of mercy and forgiving bestowed upon the lifeless bodies of the Hajj pilgrims. Although in reality all Hajj pilgrims wear the white Ihram garb, some of the clothes are painted white to represent the purity of the martyrs whereas others are painted in light green and blue garbs to lessen the anguish portrayed in the painting. The color vermilion has been used in the illumination in order to both strike a balance between warm and cold colors and to symbolize the love and martyrdom of the pilgrims. Therefore, all these elements give meaning to concepts of circumambulation and martyrdom, patience and endurance, spirituality and grace of ascension of the spirits, peace, abstraction, and perfectionism, while conveying the intensions of the artwork such as incompetence of the House of Saud and the wrong that they have done to the pilgrims of Masjid al-Harām, conspiracy of these rulers, the hidden layers of their heretical animosity toward Muslims, salvation and ascension of these martyred pilgrims.

War and devastation are recurrent subjects of the artworks created by artists of different ages and geography. Since ancient times to date, great literary works and masterpieces of music, film and theater have been created on the theme of war. Basically, art of war is a special genre full of conflicts and contradictions between good and evil. It is the expression of the concept of warfare and defending homeland, identity and belief in different doctrines and records the visual aspects of war to show human’s pain and grief.The aftermaths of the eight years of armed conflict left a profound and lasting effect on the Iranian people’s hearts and souls. The occupation of their soil by aggressive forces, the extensive use of chemical weapons and rockets and deliberate attacks on civilian targets had lots of casualties. A large number of people were martyred or displaced and many cities were ruined. Moreover, many sacrifices were made by hundreds of thousands of Iranian youth and veterans who struggled to defend their homeland and its independence and triumphed to repel the enemy out of their country, all leading the war artists to register these unfortunate events. The young artists depicting scenes of the eight-year, Iran-Iraq war and sacred defense consider it their duty to create artworks which express their revolutionary beliefs. As observers of the war devastations who had not suffered its trauma, these artists create artworks that exhibit idealist features. These pieces of art are of an ideal and mystical nature rather than a realist, violent and militant one. These emotionally created pieces are typically slogan works, devoid of strong artistic structure. Furthermore, they are largely based on Islamic beliefs and strive to reflect the Iranian society’s feelings and sentiments. On the other hand, there are the paintings of World War I, snapshots of which are expressionist in style offering a realistic account of people’s agony and suffering because its artists had direct association with war and warfare as soldiers. Conducted through desk study of library resources and the examining the respective images in war museums, the article aims to make a comparative analysis of the works created by two different streams of thought and belief systems of Iran-Iraq and the World War I in two periods of militancy to defense. The paper seeks to answer these very questions that what are the commonalities and differences in the contents, style and structure of artworks of these two periods? Via analyzing and reviewing the data gathered from war museums and comparing them, it was hypothesized that within the common themes of the artworks of these two different eras, there are structural differences in their contents and concepts which are rooted in two perspectives on war and defense. The paper comes to this conclusion that although the majority of the revolutionary artists of that era were young people who lacked sufficient experience in art and were often unknown in the artistic community, but they endeavored to create a new style of painting in the history of Iranian art. The revolutionary and defensive outlook of war artists was stronger than their artistic knowledge and style. Consequently, artists were more concerned about the message their works conveyed and less about their structure and credibility. On the contrary, artists of the World War I, who had fought in war trenches and frontlines, created realistic paintings reflecting the actual trauma of war.

Since the beginning of human life and his first creative movements, nature has always been considered a proper context for expressing intellectual, philosophical and religious concerns in the form of artworks. Perhaps what is called Environmental Art today, on one hand, attempts to connect with ancient myths and forms of expression of mankind and on the other, through a novel expression, it endeavors to stabilize itself backed by the twentieth century's modern art movements. Moreover, it tries to respond to ongoing global problems brought about by modernity and unbridled development of technology and deal with contemporary concerns such as culture, society, and environmental issues and offer practical solutions. Environmental art maintains a profound affiliation with its surroundings and taking into account the position such affiliation holds in terms of form and meaning, it strikes a balance between the audience, artwork and the environment. It also deals with ecological concerns; however, this is not its only remarkable feature as this type of art has a range of diverse, varying definitions. Since the very first days of the coinage of this word, when the artist’s creative ideas were typically taken into account, to the present day, when preserving the environment is its main concern, such variety of descriptions have existed. Environmental, social, cultural, educational issues can easily be transmitted through works of environmental art. In spite of considerable efforts made in Iran in recent years, unfortunately, this type of art doesn’t enjoy a deserving place. Besides, no comprehensive approach exists for broad and systematic formation of festivals and supporting institutions of this type of art, although, it has always been rich in terms of both the required conditions and availability of young artists.Devising a plan of action to transmit environmental concepts to people, change their viewpoint towards the environment as a source of energy for mere economic purposes to an extremely risky, vulnerable, biological entity requiring special attention as well as determining the message to be conveyed through a work of art are the main objectives of the present research.In order to find the cognitive method of exchange between the nature and human beings and discover the way the meanings are transmitted, first, the theoretical foundations existing on the nature of landscape and the environment have been analyzed to extract a set of categories that will be used afterwards as the basis for how Iranian artists approach the issue and how their works are evaluated. Next, the works of these artists created in the area of environmental art have been analyzed, through which we come to know that in dealing with the environment, which artists have paid attention to which categories in the theory of landscape and which aspects have been considered so that the requirements are determined. On the other hand, relying on the perception of landscape and environment as well as the visual experiences derived from the works presented, the study attempts to decide which approaches dominate the minds of the artists of the field and analyze the features of these works. The research methodology is descriptive-analytic which has been conducted through desk study of library resources as well as the outcomes of the findings of fieldstudies through interviewing the artists.The results indicate that from a critical viewpoint, the formal aesthetic aspects are of concern to many Iranian artists. When expressing, many of them try to realize their own aesthetic ideals on a material platform. Their attention towards the natural landscape as compared to their focus on human environment is very insignificant. Of course, part of such negligence goes back to the non-existence of systemized structure for recording the artists’ experiences of environmental art in Iran which has hindered the artists from making extensive use of the landscape. However, as far as the environment is concerned, the Iranian artists have been the most active, creating artworks that illustrating a kind of historical document to show how do humans affect the environment. This is why their works predominantly portray ethnic and religious roots in connecting with the nature and human-landscape interaction. Consequently, a systematic outlook towards nature where environmental issues are defined with human-landscape interaction in the contemporary era, has been less appreciated and instead, has been replaced by artifacts that mostly intend to depict a thematic thought. Moreover, philosophical and aesthetic ideas are more prevalent than others in these works besides a kind of feminist approach, popular among female artists, which is itself divided into psychological and sociological approaches. As far as the works are concerned, except for a few works presented to festivals, the artists had no opportunity of involving the audience in creating the artworks. Therefore, most of them are mere pictorial representations not finding their way into the actual urban environment.

Visual appearance has always dominated the focus of scholars in the study of Persian paintings, which has led to – at times totally – neglecting their content. Few studies that have so far addressed the content of Persian paintings are mostly subjective with un-systematic approaches that are, in the best instances, based on methodologies that are formulated with reference to European art and cultural history. In this article, Iconology is discussed as one of the methodologies that has been frequently applied to Persian paintings unconditionally – by employing the method exactly as it is applied to European paintings during the past years. This article deals with the limits and shortcomings of the Iconological approach in analyzing the content of Persian painting – particularly pre-modern ones. In case we intend to examine the content of paintings from an Iconological point of view, then a primary question is how to define and delimit the unit of meaning generation. As a tentative delimitation for practical purposes, this paper shall define an icon, the carrier of meaning and the object of Iconological study, as a presented object which transfers a concept or a notion or suggests a person or a thing. Obviously, in this definition, the unit of meaning is not necessarily singular and could be formed by various associations among presented objects to form clusters. Also, given the referential element implied in the definition, it should be clear that the presented object is examined in terms of previous representations of the same topic with regards to the culture it was created in: as such, an icon gains significance from outside of the painting and carries an established meaning that helps identification in other contexts.With this understanding of a unit of meaning in the Iconological approach, the analysis of the method shall be developed with reference to Panofsky’s tripartite phases of understanding, which are also fundamental to the approaches proposed after him: the pre-iconographical, the iconographical and the iconological stages of interpretation. The three levels of Iconological meaning detailed are intended to describe how the method is a step forward from the descriptive approach in analyzing paintings, but they cannot be turned into a pre-established grid to be imposed on various paintings. They explain potential layers of meaning, but they do not imply that the actual processes of mind are being described.This could be highlighted by the fact that the formation of a visual tradition in Persian painting underwent a transformation in its history which challenges tradition as such. Books of poetry were frequently illustrated and calligraphed under the patronage of kings, making royal book illustration a tradition. At the same time, the subjects of royal books were mostly the canons of Persian literature. Due to constant repetition of the same wellknown subjects and their visual conventions, the formation of a presentational tradition was facilitated and Iconological study of illustrations seems to be justified. From the sixteenth century onwards, Persian kings gradually decreased their commissions on royal books and support of the royal libraries for various reasons. This put an end to the collective artistic work and led to the production and proliferation of other forms. One results was the emergence of other art patrons and subsequently new subjects, characters, narratives, concepts, etc. in Persian paintings. This put and end to a continuous artistic and visual tradition not only because unprecedented subjects were introduced, but also because the collective memory that sustained the tradition disappeared. Since Iranian culture was fundamentally orally oriented, it is not hard to imagine that some stories or themes were illustrated but were not documented, one way or another, fully or partially, thus making them currently unidentifiable. At the same time, since the subjects of paintings become more varied, hardly any non-royal subjects were portrayed more than a few times. This decreased the possibility of the formation of visual conventions by relying on former presentations of the same subject by its repetition for recognition. Besides, the aesthetic of visual representation in itself, emerging in the relationships that are thus produced, are excluded from Iconological analysis. Moreover, what we know about a specific period’s culture is sometimes very limited and practically unhelpful in Iconological analysis. Due to lack of sufficient social and cultural data that would lead to recognition of the symbolic value of presented objects, the Iconological study of paintings encounters difficulties. As a result, the three levels of Iconological meaning cannot be turned into a pre-established grid to be imposed on all the pre-modern Persian Paintings. Hopefully, this way the necessity of introducing systematic methodologies for the study of the content of Persian Painting, based on culture and history of Persian art, will be felt by scholars who are studying Persian art.

During the modern period, art has undergone remarkable developments, the most important of which is a change of audience's standing from that of a passive consumer to an effective force that shapes the artworks and gives them meaning. In other words, the ability to create a work of art has gradually moved beyond the realm of the elites and into a more public sphere. Such a change of approach is mostly evident in the contemporary collaborative and interactive arts; the ones that basically come to existence through the participation of non-artists. It seems that we are facing a new definition of art, which, like other social concepts that are mainly called 'intersubjective', defines itself in terms of exchange, interaction, and collaboration. Inter-subjectivity is a quality that results from freeing the awareness from the bounds of a subjective mind and making it face cognitive understandings of other minds, so as to reach a common meaning, where the world of 'I' transforms into the world of 'we'. Interactive art binds the creation of the artwork to the subjective and practical collaboration of the audience, by removing the process of artistic creation from the monopoly of the subjectivity and creation of artists. Thus, this study intends to respond to this question: how does the intersubjective horizon of artists and the audience is established in the contemporary interactive art? It is assumed that beyond mere presentation of empathetic and shared content, the interactive art is the common characteristic of 'being' artist, i.e. it portrays the ability to create a work of art, and the 'creativity' in an intersubjective horizon. Interactive art, which benefits from the mediation of technology, limits the direct intervention of the artist, and removes the artwork from the artist’s monopoly to some extent. Now, interactive art engages 'others' in the process of artistic creation and guides the artist from a solipsistic egocentrism toward an intersubjective interaction. The ability of 'creation of an artwork' can no longer be regarded as an exclusive gift for the artists. The public must be offered the opportunity of artistic creation, even if under the guidance of the artists. Moreover, interactive art is an 'experience-driven' action, meaning that the aesthetic perception is rooted within the 'process' of the creation, and the action of the participant and the aesthetic experience resulting from interaction with the system are considered important. This study aims to explain the various aspects of intersubjective communications of the artist and the audience in the contemporary interactive art. To this end, George Poonkhin Khut's interactive project called 'The Heart Library' has been selected for case study. As the theoretical basis of this interactive artwork, 'intimate aesthetics' uses a phenomenological approach to the experience of body, focusing on the confrontation of the audience with the 'body', and reflecting on it as the subject and object of contemplation. In this context, intimacy means introspection and maintaining of a close relationship with the body as the intermediary between awareness and existence; an attempt to soften the rigid boundaries of mind and body, and to reach a deep, new, and different understanding of the self; a contemplative return to the 'body', similar to what first appeared before us. The Heart Library holds 'body' and the possibility of changing the physical perception as the essence of an aesthetic experience. In this project, the artist has created an operational framework, and accompanies and guides the audience throughout their inward journey to create a new experience. In order to prove his conscious and dynamic self, the interacting audience, that stands before his own visualization, chooses a position, focuses on it closely, gives existence to the interactive artwork and determine its final form through the visible change that he produces in the artwork's form (visualization of body). In this study, data were collected through documentary research, and examined through a descriptive-analytical method. In conclusion, the interacting audience of this work stands on a par with the artist in determining and influencing the creation of the artwork, through the visible change that they can consciously produce in the visualization of the body, and final form of the artwork. In other words, the result of this interactive experience belongs to both the artist and the audience: the artist's proposal for the creation of a new awareness (awareness of the body) and its materialization by the audience; a shared meaning and content that the audience contributes to its creation along with the artist. In the interactive work 'The Heart Library', the creation and visualization of the bodily awareness has been shaped in the intersubjective horizon of the artist and the participating audience: in other words, the experience of the self and the body results from an intersubjective phenomenology. Not only 'creation' turns into a shared, intersubjective achievement, but also, the sharing of experience through the designing of body maps and dialogue with the artist and the visitors, places personal perceptions of the experience of the 'body' at an intersubjective level, and expands and enriches the resulting awareness.

The system of education at the beginning of the rule of Qajar dynasty was informal, organized in old-fashioned school buildings called ‘Maktab Khaneh’. It was during the late Qajar sway that formal education became popular and around 1910, elementary education for seven-year old students became mandatory. Later at the time of Pahlavids, Persian language and literature textbooks became unified in terms of form and content for the first time. In the middle of Fath Ali Shah of Qajar’s reign, publication of Persian language books began. At this point, mainly scribes were in charge of textbook writing generally using Naskh and Nastaliq scripts. With the advent of the printing industry (lithography and typography), Naskh and Nastaliq scripts were modified to adapt to the novel printing technology. With the spread of this technology, different font types fit for printing were developed.The readability of fonts is the first element to be considered when designing letters to be followed by beauty. In fact, being proportionate to text is one of the fundamental aspects of letter design. Fonts are created to serve diverse objectives, subjects, age ranges, audience psychological states and characters, gender, … Letter design is one of the fundamental and practical branches of graphic design with various applications. With the establishment of the ministries of ‘Culture’ and then ‘Education and Training’, educational policies were embarked and the process is still being practiced today. One of such policies was content development and publication of books for various educational levels such as first grade of elementary school. Farsi book designed for this grade is the oldest one available and the first one with which the students get acquainted when formally entering the educational program. Letters, words and their shapes are essential to learning development. No Farsi book is as important for the development of linguistics skills, educating beginners and providing rudimentary education as Farsi book of the first grade of elementary schools. The most demanding part of education, is teaching alphabets to the first-graders of primary schools. Writing is the most complex skill of language learning. With its several prerequisites, the skill directly affects the process of personality building and self-confidence development in children whose inability in the skill will lead to the emergence of mental and psychological disorders. At the moment, Farsi book of the first grade of primary school has been designed to promote reading and writing skills, exercise mind and strengthen linguistic abilities. It is the only book learning which significantly influences the study of other books and the level of literacy. Writing is very important at this stage, so letters and words must be designed in a way that fits the students’ physical and mental abilities. As a result, several scripts have been used in its content development. By means of a descriptive-analytical and qualitative method of research and desk study of library resources, the paper seeks to examine the process of evolution of the aforesaid book’s fonts during 1921 to 2016 and answer these questions that what modifications have been made in the lettering of the Farsi book of the first grade of elementary school since the arrival of the printing industry in Iran? And what are the causes and effects of such changes? The statistical population comprises of 10 volumes of Farsi books of the first grade of elementary schools. The results achieved indicate that Nastaliq and Naskh scripts were the predominant fonts used in this textbook in 1921. Between the years 1958 to 1963, the necessity for the introduction of letters fit for printing led to the development of new fonts. Since Naskh was capable of modification and conversion into print letters, this script was used for publication. Since 1962, the use of Nastaliq script in textbooks lost its popularity. In 1991s, horizontal, vertical, diagonal and curve lines were added to Farsi textbooks to facilitate the practice of writing. But since 2001 onwards, three types of scripts including cursive, Naskh and Nastaliq have been used in Farsi books of first grade of elementary schools which has created problems for the students. Meanwhile, no proper font has been designed for this purpose so far.

Fine Art is an artistic genre that employs aesthetic traditions to define foundations of new objects. This type of art intends to express a sense of aesthetics, establish communication or encourage thinking and further aims to address aesthetic goals, rather than using it for practical purposes. Fine art photography means the creation of impossibles through personification of imaginary and fanciful objects in the form of images with the help of skills and tools (mainly Photoshop) and of course creativity. Photography is one of the most significant mediums of communication reproduced in number more than other forms of creations and as an artistic-cultural work, influences the taste and visual identity of the audiences. As an outlet of mass media, photography could thus communicate and interact with dissimilar classes of audiences. That is why in order to successfully create pieces of art using this medium; one must identify the audience and appraise their taste more than any other art discipline. Since the audiences of cultural works, as recipients and consumers, play key roles in the development and reception of an artwork, understanding their taste is fundamental for the production process. In this respect, the study of the act of photography and understanding what a photograph is provides unique prospects of applying novel approaches to entirely appreciate the rules of behavior and the individual’s experiences of such behavior. The paper at hand is an analysis of the works of realistic and interactive socialist photography with the aim of studying the impact of media on the aesthetic perception and the way of presenting art in contemporary era. It investigates the relationship between the cultural capital of the audiences and their aesthetic taste in the field of photography. The research is theoretically based on the definition of the Pierre Bourdieu's institutionalized cultural capital. This research intends to rebuild and establish the ratios of symbolic (cultural, economic, and social) capitals in different strata of contemporary Iranian society and answer the following questions:What role does the individuals’ cultural capital play in the artistic taste and selection process of the audiences of the artworks? What position does beauty hold in the process of audiences’ decision making and selection? Recording these ratios based on the accurate statistical information obtained from field studies and corroborated statistical analysis, provides the basis for conducting all-encompassing researches.Having examined the features of Fine Art as a novel art style and photography as an artistic medium, the present study seeks to make an aesthetical analysis and identify audiences’ taste and further inspect how these two art categories are associated with the cultural capital of the members of the society. To assess the visual taste of the audiences with their cultural and economic capital, a visual questionnaire, comprising of comparative questions, was prepared. The questions include 4 sample images with similar subjects yet different employment approaches. Having consulted with the relevant professors of the field in order to authenticate the research evaluation methods, the qualitative indexes for samples’ selection have been determined based on the level of genuine and folk aesthetic works. Collected from the internet, the set of photos presented have been shot by well-known local photographers in different contexts. Likewise, having evaluated the audiences’ tastes based on their cultural capital, the necessity of achieving important parameters in the field of photography from the audiences’ perspective has been examined. In this regard, questions with spectral and multiple choice responses have been set up in order to get the audiences acquainted with the topic of the Fine Art photography, encourage them to participate as a dynamic art audience, record audience expectations and opinions about the current conditions governing the production and representation of photographs. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach and desk study of library resources, the study examines the audience's approach towards the artisticmedium of photography and analyzes the features affecting the differences in comprehension of the message of the art of photography. The research findings suggest that most audiences, regardless of their diverse cultural backgrounds, select photos that fit into the criteria of genuine aesthetic as top priority. The theoretical framework provided by intellectuals in the field of social sciences, such as Bourdieu, provides an appropriate framework for examining the relationships between art producer and consumer. It is suggested that scholars apply Bourdieu's theory to other areas of studies of art in future.