The present study aims to analyze and reinterpret the role of writing and Shia elements in Iranian visual arts during the Pahlavi era. Using Foucault’s archaeological framework and its four main categories (objects, enunciative modalities, concepts, and strategies), the research reveals that writing and Shia elements possessed several multilayered and shifting significations and functions. The analysis at the level of objects shows that during the first Pahlavi period, religion and its related elements were primarily treated as subjects of restriction and limitation across all discursive levels. However, after a twelve-year rupture, an opportunity emerged for previously excluded elements to reenter discourse. In the Second Pahlavi Period, these elements were redefined in relation to national identity and modern art. From an enunciative perspective, the first Pahlavi era promoted modernism unilaterally through associations with Western and ancient Iranian elements. In the second Pahlavi period, however, attention to popular and religious culture, as well as the rise of independent artistic movements, created the possibility for a multifaceted presence of writing. The current research studies draw on Michel Foucault’s method of archaeology, which is engaged with discourse analysis in its precise theoretical sense—a framework that, instead of seeking origins or hidden meanings, focuses on the conditions of possibility for the emergence of discourses. According to Foucault, the history of thought and knowledge is not grounded in linear continuity or progress but also unfolds through ruptures, discontinuities, and differences.
To support on this idea, in his later reflections Foucault moves from discourse analysis toward an examination of power relations, regimes of truth, and processes of subject formation. He demonstrates that power, through the production of knowledge and discursive practices, shapes and subjugates subjects; while at the same time, the subject always retains the potential for resistance and self-redefinition. Thus, in Foucault’s view, the identity of the subject is neither intrinsic nor fixed. In fact, it is the outcome of the interplay between historical forces, discourses, and the mechanisms of power and resistance.
Within this framework, the present study separate itself from the chronological divisions of Foucault’s intellectual phases and synthesizes his archaeological and genealogical concepts to analyze the mechanisms of power, meaning, and identity in the artistic discourses of the Pahlavi period. To this end, four fundamental categories of Foucault’s archaeological method are employed: objects, enunciative modalities, concepts, and formation of strategies.
At the level of objects, Foucault inquiries into the historical and institutional conditions that make certain topics speakable and examines how these objects do not persist through time but are instead transformed and ruptured. At the level of enunciative modalities, the focus is on the position and legitimacy of the speaker—who is authorized to speak, from which locus, and in what way forms of subjectivity in discourse will be historically determined. The level of concepts addresses the internal organization of statements and reveals how conceptual frameworks work whit in mechanisms of exclusion and delaminate certain meanings while stabilizing others. Finally, at the level of formation of strategies, Foucault analyzes how discursive possibilities are distributed throughout history and how a set of choices, oppositions, and latent potentials constitutes the specific situation in which discourse operates.
Accordingly, Foucault’s discourse analysis method in this study serves as an analytical tool to uncover the power relations embedded in the production of meaning, identity, and knowledge which enables the researchers to move beyond the surface of texts and images and to grasp the historical and ideological dynamics underlying artistic discourses during the Pahlavi era.
At the conceptual level, the first Pahlavi period is characterized by the dominance of secular and nationalist meanings that stand in opposition to religious symbols. However, an examination of artworks from the second Pahlavi era reveals that calligraphy and writing beyond conveying indigenous culture have been merged with modern concepts and nationalism through movements such as the Saqqakhaneh School. From the perspective of strategies, the first Pahlavi era had focused on a grand project of modernity aimed at eliminating religious culture. However, during the second Pahlavi period, while religious symbols were instrumentally employed to legitimize the monarchy, new possibilities have emerged for artists to redefine national identity and to express forms of resistance.
The findings of the study indicate that during the second Pahlavi period, writing was supposed to play three simultaneous roles: as an instrument of compliance and legitimation for the monarchy; as a tool of resistance for artists who critiqued the established order and sought to reconstruct religious identity; and finally, as a means of personal expression in movements such as the Saqqakhaneh School and calligraphic painting, which transformed writing into a personal and aesthetic language. Therefore, writing and Shia elements in the visual arts of the Pahlavi era should not be regarded as static phenomena but as the product of interactions among multiple discourses, forces, and artistic strategies, which provided artists with the capacity for domination, resistance, and individual creation.
A study of the history of the contemporary Iranian art particularly, during the first and second Pahlavi periods reveals that the political, social, and cultural transformations of this era had a profound impact on the formation of artistic discourses and the creative approaches of modern artists. One of the significant elements that emerged within this context was “writing” in the visual arts, an element which stands for both a tool of representation and also as in the visual as a discourse sign that acquired a distinctive place in the trajectory of Iran’s cultural and identity transformations. Analyzing the emergence and consolidation of this element requires an approach that uncovers the interconnections among power, knowledge, subjectivity, and culture. Michel Foucault’s theories of archaeology and genealogy provide an effective framework for examining the ruptures, discontinuities, and discursive strategies of this historical period.
The significance of the present study lies in its focus on the discursive ruptures between the first and second Pahlavi periods and its examination of the conditions under which writing emerged and evolved in the visual arts in relation to national identity, religion, popular culture, and the cultural policies of the state. This research is to answered in the question of how the cultural policies of the first Pahlavi era, through the elimination of religious and ethnic elements, constructed a discourse centered on archaism, the Persian language, and national unity. This research also answers how the previously excluded elements, including Shi’a religion and popular culture, have regained the opportunity for the expression by using the modern art. These transformations created a context in which writing, as one of the components of Shi’a culture, became period a means of resistance, personal expression, and reconstruction of identity in the second Pahlavi.
In light of Foucault’s theoretical framework and through the study of artworks in this period, it can be concluded that writing was influence by Shia elements in the visual arts of the second Pahlavi. It was to mention that writing was not regarded as static phenomenon and it was regarded as product of discursive ruptures, interactions among multiple discourses, and diverse forces. These forces which operate within contexts of domination, resistance, and individual creativity, have enabled the artists to detach writing and religious elements from their original contexts and to transform them into a personal, formal, and aesthetic language.