Semiotic Analysis of Vahed Khakdan’s Paintings On the Basis of Post-Structuralism Views of Roland Barthes

 
With regard to this important fact that speech brings the art to live, the analysis of works of art and their reference to means including language is inevitable. In the visual arts, language, as a factor in explaining the meanings of what is inside or outside of these works, is needed. Analysis of visual works is necessary, as its purpose is to know and discover the mechanism of these works for better understanding. Here it seems necessary to state that the purpose of analyzing works of art is not to translate them all at once, but to analyze the works, to create meanings or - as critics say - to take meaning by the viewer. Viewers take meanings from the work or in other words, discover them, based on their visual literacy. The works of art are subject to analysis so that the reader can better communicate with the work by discovering more meanings; otherwise they are inherently free from criticism and unraveling and they alone reveal what is needed. In other words, work of art has the best and most complete expression, Nevertheless, throughout history, works of art have always been on the faced with criticism and analysis. This trend indicates that the viewer is not satisfied with the role of the elements of the work merely to express itself and has always sought to discover its broader meanings with the unique look of the viewer. In fact, the reader, by analyzing the works or taking meaning, reads the work and not makes it meaningful.Now, based on what has been said and also the importance of analysis to understand more meanings in the work and considering the significant position of Vahed Khakdan’s works as a contemporary surrealist artist of Iran, whose works have not been read properly; there is an opportunity to enter the semantic process by reading these works and based on that, study some of the goals of these works. Khakdan chooses Common and everyday topics and artistically creates realistic works with unique techniques the analytical path of his works is determined by his point of view, the stages of acting on the works and also the type of thematic selection and all these factors make viewers interested in reading them. In reading these works, which also have a great reading capacity, theories of some twentieth century thinker can be studied. One of the best of them is the views of the French thinker and philosopher, Roland Barthes. During his professional life, he has analyzed many works with various approaches he notes that, the analysis of the work is only with the intention of creating meaning and not taking meaning. Poststructuralist approach is one of his theories which are also one of his fundamental and controversial theories in the field of analysis. This study intends to read the works of Vahed Khakdan based on the concepts in Roland Barthes poststructuralist approach. The approach is also studied and examined this research consists of several parts. First, it explains Barthes's poststructuralist approach and how this approach was reached, as well as the concepts on which the reading is based. Then, in the other part of the research, a contemporary Surrealist of Iran, Vahed Khakdan, and his way of thinking about the creation of his works is introduced and by introducing works from his current age -as a statistical population- a reading with poststructuralist concepts is presented. Assuming that visual language and images of Vahed Khakdan’s works have a semiotic function and required reading with a poststructuralist approach, it could be asked that what the capabilities of poststructuralist semiotic interpretation are in the visual language of his paintings.
The purpose of this study is to try to answer this question by reading the post-structuralism of Khakdan's works and trying to discover more meanings and understanding the mechanism of his works. This research is fundamental in terms of purpose and with regard to the manner is descriptive-analytical method with a comparative approach. Library is the method of data collecting in this research. Since there is a significant and complete correspondence between the role-playing elements in Khakdan's works and Roland's approach, and also because this approach can be meaningful, the works of this artist can be properly read with the concepts expressed in this approach.