نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
موضوعات
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
By examining the development of the painting production field in contemporary Iran, this study focuses on the artistic life and works of Jalil Ziapour and Bahman Mohasses. The main goal of the study is to explain the development of the pure aesthetic approach in Iranian painting, during the Second Pahlavi period. This goal has been pursued by examining the position and habitus of two prominent artists of the modernist painting movement and by mapping the homology of their positions in the field of Iranian painting production with the works created by them. The method of this research is the genetic structuralism of Pierre Bourdieu, emphasizing relationality and historicity. Bourdieu’s genetic structuralism is based on the study of the development of social structures of artistic fields as well as the development of habitus of the same agents who themselves are deeply rooted in these structures. Therefore, the social and historical conditions of the fields of artistic production are considered. In this approach, neither the will of the artists is reduced to social structures, nor is the agency of the artists disregarded in favor of the social structure. This research is descriptive-analytical and is classified as exploratory research. The analysis of artists’ works is qualitative, and the collection of information is based on documentary studies and archival inquiry.
Bourdieu’s sociological approach is anti-essentialist, which makes it possible to provide a comprehensive explanation of how autonomous painting became possible at a specific period in Iranian history. In this regard, this study is going to analyze the conditions of the development of the production field of the Iranian modernist painting and the historical course of its consolidation in the Second Pahlavi era. By using the “historical sociology of art,” the development of modernism in Iranian painting is examined. Using Bourdieu’s genetic structuralism approach, the production and consumption of artistic works are explained based on processes of socialization and differentiation in order to elucidate the development of modern art in Iran in an immanent manner. In this study, the general concepts of “habitus” and “field” have been used to explain Iranian modernity in painting in its particularity.
The theoretical framework of this research is also derived from Bourdieu’s thought system. According to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, the development of the field of painting production in Iran during the Second Pahlavi era was divided into two periods: formation and stabilization. From the mid-1940s to 1958 (the year of the first Tehran Biennial), it was called the formation period, and from 1958 to 1978, it was referred to as the stabilization period. During the formation period, the modernist movement was not recognized by government institutions, and its audience was not considerable. Not pursuing an art with guaranteed economic success, the first graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts, who emerged from the new middle class in Iran, were able to speak of the idea of autonomy in painting by acquiring cultural capital through their academic studies in Iran and abroad. The formation of the new middle class in Iran has also contributed to the formation of the field of painting production and the consolidation of its structure in another way. This class would serve as a potential audience for the modernist movement, visiting galleries and museums, the number of which increased in the coming years, to demonstrate their distinct taste from the lower classes of society. Jalil Ziapour has been selected as the prominent figure of the first generation of the modernist movement in painting during this period. In 1953, with the holding of a governmental exhibition at the Mehregan Club, the barrier of official indifference was broken and a new era in the history of Iranian painting began.
During the 1950s, cultural policymakers and the media gradually paid more attention to modernist painting, increasing the number of institutions related to modernist painting, both governmental and private. Finally, with the holding of the first Biennale in 1953, the modernist movement in painting officially came under governmental patronage. Governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Culture and Art or the Special Office, along with events such as the Tehran Biennales, as well as formal educational institutions and publications, played a significant role in stabilizing the field and establishing the visual arts market in Iran. Factors such as the high price of oil in the 1960s, the flourishing government treasury, and Farah Diba’s personal interest in arts were significant in the formation of the newly emerging art market in Iran. This period, in which the modernist movement found its supporters in the field of power and the market for visual works was formed, was called the period of stabilization, and Bahman Mohasses was studied as the avant-garde artist of this period.
The findings of the study indicate that by choosing Cubism as the main model for his painting, Ziapour established a distance from prevailing traditions of painting and illustration in Iran at that time, namely the naturalism of the Kamal-ol-Molk school. Ziapour’s transition from the dominant naturalistic-realistic model gives a modern aspect to his painting practice. Ziapour took a step forward towards the independence of the painting production field in Iran, but it was Mohasses who pushed it to its ultimate limit and became an avant-garde modernist artist. While for Ziapour, a modernist form like Cubism required content that he found in Iran’s cultural heritage, Mohasses, through the deconstruction of the figure, avoidance of identity politics, and refusal to conform to the prevalent and conventional returns of his time, became a prominent representative of the period of consolidation of Iranian modernist art.
Although artists like Mohasses and Ziaipour ultimately bear part of the process of modernizing the Iranian human and his experience of modernity, they have differences that, more than being related to the historical period of their activity, stem from a continuity in boundary-breaking and avant-gardism. Perhaps this is more related to their family background and economic status than to their psychological and individual characteristics. The economic capital that Ziapour inherited from his family was less compared to Mohasses. He even acquired the cultural capital to continue his studies in France through a scholarship from the French government. But Mohasses came from a wealthy family. The family members were all officials. Mohasses even abandoned his studies at the Iran Academy and, thanks to his family’s financial means, was able to go to Italy for art education. One of the conditions that allows for the transition to independent art is this inherited capital, so that independent and self-sufficient artists, according to Bourdieu, are “poor relatives” of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy.
Ziapour’s artistic modernism stands somewhere between Kamal-ol-Molk’s naturalism and Bahman Mohasses’ avant-gardism: a moderate or middle position. That is, when Ziapour left the position of an avant-garde artist in the field and became a conservative artist, Bahman Mohasses entered the field as a new avant-garde with the new aesthetics. By turning away from the concern for identity, Mohasses marked a break with the prevailing trends in the art of that time in Iran. This break, in Bourdieu’s language, was formed in the field of painting in Iran in an exchange amongst multiple forces. By deconstructing the figure, not falling into the trap of identity politics, and avoiding the common and conventional returns of his time, Mohasses became a prominent representative of the period of consolidation of Iranian modern art; an artist who turned the medium of painting itself into the subject of his artwork and created a new language in the Iranian visual culture. The figures of Mohasses are placeless and timeless. Applying a universal language, Mohasses has been able not to fall into the trap of “identity politics.”
For Mohasses, the main issue was to confront modernity directly in the sense of “expanding the boundaries of modernity itself.” To determine the limits or boundaries of modernity was Mohasses’ everyday practice. In order to succeed in this path, he had to stand on the threshold of modernity. It was precisely in this threshold situation that Mohasses looked into the abyss of modernity, determined its boundaries, and ultimately transcended it. In this sense, Mohasses is avant-garde in the true sense of the word. For him, there is nothing in tradition. Mohasses turns towards the future, not the past. In Bourdieu’s literature, Mohasses is modern in the sense of expanding the boundaries of the field. To expand the field, he first rebels against it, stands outside its boundaries, or rather on its threshold, and finally defines it in a new sense. In this way, Mohasses becomes one of the most important forces determining the rupture that we refer to as artistic modernism in the history of Iranian art.
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