Cultural Diversity: Aesthetic Analysis of Persian and Kashmiri Paisley Ornaments

The article focuses on the origins and evolution of the Indo-Persian decoration "Paisley," as well as the use of this flowery linear pattern on textiles such as shawls, table wraps, and carpets. Paisley has gone through many stages in its evolution, including the Iranian art period and the Indo-Subcontinent phase (Mughal era). The intrinsic nature of the decoration is shown via a comparative research technique that defines Indo-Persian motif features. This article looked at the primary ornamental elements of the paisley pattern, which are floral and geometrical in nature, and how they are used in Iran and Kashmir. Finally, this article discusses how, because of Paisley's growing and blooming character, it is often a prominent ornament in the most important works of enrichment and plays an accentuation role in the decoration of textile surfaces. Paisley, a masterpiece, is especially linked to techniques for conveying the aesthetic brilliance of the pattern used in many cultures.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF KERMAN CARPET SYMBOLS, SHAPES, AND DESIGNS

Different traditional Iranian art forms can be known as a single semantic recreation in different forms. All of them imply some shared concepts which are a mix of Persian and Islamic beliefs. These arts have a symbolic tone and the artist speaks through their art using the appropriate allegorical tools. In this field, the Kerman carpet should be known as an excellent manifestation of symbols and mysterious designs that are eloquently implemented on the carpet. The purpose of this study is the anthropological analysis of the symbols, designs, and patterns used in the Kerman carpet as well as the analysis of the Kermanian people's beliefs based on those designs and symbols. The research method used here is the Qualitative type and in the form of ethnographic, and also the information are collected using interview-participation and documents. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Clifford Geertz’s Symbolic-Interpretive Anthropology Approach theory. The findings of this study show that the Kerman carpet alongside its beauty and charm includes meaningful designs and patterns and these designs and symbols are derived from the geographical-cultural and social area and are connected with the everyday life, traditions, and beliefs of the people of their area.

To Mohassess, For the Wall

“To Mohassess, For the Wall” is an article written in 1964 by Jalal Al-e Ahmad, one of the most influential and charismatic Iranian intellectuals of the time. Three years before writing this article, Al-e Ahmad had published Weststruckness, discussing the Iranians’ cultural alienation caused by the dependence on the west. In “To Mohassess, For the Wall”, Al-e Ahmad shifts his analysis to Iranian painting, arguing that Iranian painters during the 1960s merely repeat Western cultural processes and strategies instead of constructing Iranian ones. The context for Al-e Ahmad's argument is the Pahlavi regime's radical program of rapid modernization, which in the area of the arts was systematically expanded. Critical, provocative or problematic, the article offers a crucial window into the adoption of Western-style modernism by Iranian painters during the 1960s and into how an “insider” intellectual such as Al-e Ahmad evaluated the modernization of Iranian art before the background of what he perceived as the critical neglect of Iranian traditions. The text is addressed to Bahman Mohassess, a painter whom Al-e Ahmad considered to be one of the few who had not been coopted by the cultural policies of the Shah's regime.

Introduction to Jalal AL-E Ahmad's “To Mohassess, For the Wall”

“To Mohassess, For the Wall” is an article written in 1964 by Jalal Al-e Ahmad, one of the most influential and charismatic Iranian intellectuals of the time. Three years before writing this article, Al-e Ahmad had published Weststruckness, discussing the Iranians’ cultural alienation caused by the dependence on the west. In “To Mohassess, For the Wall”, Al-e Ahmad shifts his analysis to Iranian painting, arguing that Iranian painters during the 1960s merely repeat Western cultural processes and strategies instead of constructing Iranian ones. The context for Al-e Ahmad's argument is the Pahlavi regime's radical program of rapid modernization, which in the area of the arts was systematically expanded. Critical, provocative or problematic, the article offers a crucial window into the adoption of Western-style modernism by Iranian painters during the 1960s and into how an “insider” intellectual such as Al-e Ahmad evaluated the modernization of Iranian art before the background of what he perceived as the critical neglect of Iranian traditions. The text is addressed to Bahman Mohassess, a painter whom Al-e Ahmad considered to be one of the few who had not been coopted by the cultural policies of the Shah's regime.

The Emergence of an Auction Category: Iranian Art at Christie’s Dubai, 2006–2016

The expansion of the British auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams to markets in the Middle East has played a crucial role in building an international market for art from the region. They have also been essential in providing an international platform for the sale of art from Iran, a country whose economy is otherwise isolated from global markets. In this paper, I address the growth of the market for Iranian art specifically via Christie’s auctions in Dubai. Through close analysis of auction catalogs, ethnographic data drawn from live auctions and interviews with key staff members, I document the emergence of Iranian art into the international arena and the solidification of both Iranian and Middle Eastern art as a distinct category of sales. In particular, I explore the notion of “seeing with the other eye”, a way that auction specialists nudge local collectors into the arena of “international” taste. Through analysis of the particular tropes used to narrate artist biographies in auction catalogs, I demonstrate how artists are painted as interpreters and translators of “local” and “global” aesthetic registers.

The Affective Feminism of Ghazaleh Hedayat

This article examines the works of the Iranian contemporary artist, Ghazaleh Hedayat. It argues that her turn from figural representation to nonfigural abstraction and consequently to what Laura Marks has called “haptic visuality” demonstrates a careful and systematic aesthetic strategy that attempts to confront and at times even exit representation. It shows that Hedayat's works since the early 2010s offer an affective approach to feminism in contemporary Iranian art that doesn't hinge on representational modes of expression, which are often susceptible to assimilation into identitarian narratives and inadvertently complicit in various forms of marginalization (gender, ethnic, etc.). Hedayat's affective feminism not only complicates clichéd interpretations of her work as a non-Western woman, but it also materializes a new form of knowledge more in tune with feminism. Focusing on the female body as a site of pain, friction, tension, love, maternality, and, more significantly, as a site where self and its other—both in terms of gender and ethnicity—encounter each other, Hedayat undermines visibility by way of pushing it across the borders of sight into the realms of visuality, haptic experience, and proprioception.

Surrealism and the Reliefs of the Sasanian High Priest Kartir

Kartir was the most important religious leader in early Iran at the time of the Sasanian empire. The rock reliefs and inscriptions left by him contain some important features that occur for the first time in Iranian art history. Specifically, Kartir’s rock reliefs reveal that someone who was not a king could still be influential enough to commission a monument in which he was the central figure. Kartir’s inscriptions appear next to the reliefs of the previous king, or were even inserted into the same panel. In this way, the traditional construction of these reliefs was altered, as were their respective meanings. Furthermore, Kartir describes an imaginary journey to another world in his inscriptions. The article considers the role of dreams in Kartir's art and what influence this had on this new style of composition, comparing it with what we now call ‘surrealism’.

The image of wine in the Iranian cinema and contemporary art

The proclamation of the Islamic Republic made its own adjustments to the cultural life of Iran, but despite the imposed restrictions and prohibitions, modern directors and artists continue to saturate their works with references to poetic images of wine. In cinema, the authors act quite straightforwardly, although sometimes in their films there are more inventive methods of mentioning an illegal drink (verbal ac-companiment of the visual series through reading poetic lines about wine). Representatives of the modern art scene can resort to the wine motive in a more diverse form than their colleagues in the field of cine-ma, since it is easier for them to encrypt this topic in their works. Artists turn to the leitmotif of wine, classic for Iranian miniatures, both in abstract drawings, experimenting with calligraphic patterns, and in figurative painting, creating various compositions from mystical and phantasmagoric plots to everyday realistic sketches. When examining the image of wine in historical retrospect, the connection between poetry and Iranian art is clearly visible. The poetic tradition is deeply rooted in Persian culture, an environment so deeply formed by metaphor and permeated with allegory, depicting not the literal, but the symbolic. In addition to the fact that great masters of literature are revered in Iran, poetry is an everyday language in which people communicate today. Therefore, quotes from the poems of poets of the past and present saturate the narrative in Iranian cinema and penetrate into modern fine art, thereby uniting the eras into a single cultural field.

An analytical study of the ritual ceremonies in Iranian performing arts, a case study of Travellers

Rites and myths are important parts of the identity and the culture of every nation. Iranian rites and performing arts, as a part of Iranian art and culture, which has always got attention throughout history, can help us recognize ancient Iranian culture and history. Cinema, among other interactive arts, has sometimes been able to portray ritual arts well. Travellers movie, made by Bahram Beyzai, is one of the most prominent examples of the visualization of ritual arts in Iran, because the movie consists of three parts, like the three theaters, in which the rites are portrayed as the main story of the movie, and the Persian culture and customs have been exhibited. This paper, which its research method is descriptive-analytical, examines the standing of rites and ritual arts in Travellers movie and analyzes its atmosphere regarding to performing rituals. Its scene design changes as the script process, so that the application of elements such as light and color, and their intensity and reduction in different mental conditions, from pleasure to mourning, has been considered wisely, and the atmosphere has a dramatic impact on the audience in different scenes. The lighting and the coloring of the scenes in the movie, indicates a tribute to beliefs and faith in rites and ritual arts.

Identification of pigments in artworks by inverse tangent derivative of spectrum and a new filtering method

Nowadays, employing an economical and non-destructive method for identifying pigments utilized in the artworks is vital due to their antiquity value. One of the non-destructive methods for this purpose is spectrophotometry, which is based on the selected absorption of light. Mathematical descriptive methods such as derivatives of the reflectance spectrum, the Kubelka-­Munk function and logarithm are being used to clarify the spectrophotometric data. In the present study, the mentioned mathematical descriptive methods were applied to identify the most common pigments used in Iranian artwork but were not efficient for the samples. Therefore, inverse tangent derivative equation was used on spectral data for the first time and a considerable difference in the profile of reflectance curves was found. In the next part, to have a simpler and more practical method it was suggested to use filters made up of pure pigments. By using these filters and placing them on the samples, imaging was done. Then, images of samples with and without filter were evaluated and pure pigments were distinguished. The mentioned methods were also exerted to identify pigments in a modern Iranian art painting specimen. The results confirmed that these methods provide reliable answers indicating that physical methods (alongside chemical methods) can also be effective in determining the types of pigments.