Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
MA of Art Research, Faculty of Art, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran.
2
Assistant Professor, Department of Art Research, Faculty of Arts, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran,Corresponding Author.
10.22051/pgr.2024.46160.1239
Abstract
Coffee house painting is one of the few remaining folk arts in Iran, the origin of which is the national and religious attitudes of the people in the Qajar era, and imagination forms the basis of the images of the paintings, and national and religious myths are also the basis of the content of these paintings. Transferring the concepts of these narratives to the audience is on the shoulders of the warriors of these paintings; warriors who, like the myth, evoke the concept of epic and heroic acts; a great effort to the extent of sacrificing their own life to achieve great and ideal goals. Such a character, in the opinion of mythologists such as Gilbert Doran, represents the symbols of human endurance, who stand against death and mortality with all their material and spiritual powers. Analysing the content of the warrior characters of Ali Akbar Sadeghi's paintings, to find their differences with the warriors of the religious coffee house paintings, based on the opinions of Gilbert Duran and contrary to their formal similarities, is the aim of this research. Also, the causes of these differences in Sadeghi's paintings are analysed and investigated.
Referring to the origin of human imagination, Gilbert Duran proves that the products of imagination have an inherent meaning that determines our representation of the surrounding world. According to him, the core of human thinking is formed from imagination. Gilbert Doran's method of understanding the imagination of an author is based on recovering the imaginary poles and finding the relationship between these poles. He also classifies them at the end. Gilbert Duran categorises all images and divides this category into daily and nightly systems. The daily system itself is classified into two groups of symbols that contrast the images: the images of the first group that spread the meaning of the great fear of time. The images of the second group wish to win and overcome the anxiety of time ascension and immortality. Human thoughts in this structure are the same as primitive human thoughts. Based on this thinking, man divides the world into two poles, good and bad.
The images of this system are divided into two opposing groups: the first group is images of time and shows the dominance of darkness over light. The symbols of this category try to show the concepts of decay and anxiety by depicting death and darkness. In general, these are images with a negative meaning. These images express the fear of animals, darkness, and falling. The second category of images of the daily system are symbols of separation, illumination, and ascension. In this system, images with a positive meaning are contrasted with negative images. In the nightly system, instead of the images representing confrontation and conflict, the images soften the worry and fear of time. In other words, in the night system, negative images are displayed gently.
The method of this descriptive research was content analysis with a comparative approach.
Based on the available documents, the peak period of the coffee house painting style can be considered to be the same time as Iran's constitutional movement, in the late Qajar period and the early Pahlavi period. Coffee house painting reached its peak of prosperity with artists such as Hossein Qollar Agassi and Mohammad Modbar and had an impact on contemporary art as well. These artists trained students such as Fathullah Qollar, Hossein Hamedani, Hassan Ismailzadeh (Chalipa), and Abbas Bloukifar, who continued in their footsteps. The painting of a coffee house reflects national hopes and interests, religious beliefs, and the spirit of the special culture of the middle layers of the urban society. The stories of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and Nizami’s Khamsa, the events of Karbala, Quranic stories, and folk tales are the main themes of this type of painting. The painter painted these themes according to the description he heard from the narrators and religious speakers, and as they existed in the minds of the city's people. The coffee house painter's effort in representing the scene and portraying the external and internal characteristics of the characters is always influenced by his favouring the forces of good. With this moral and ideological motive and according to the narrative logic of his works, he observed certain conventions in the way of drawing bodies and clothes, colour selection, and composition.
In the meantime, some artists in the past years have also tried to imitate coffee house paintings, one of the obvious examples of which is Ali Akbar Sadeghi. This contemporary painter has widely used the formal elements of coffee house paintings to draw the warrior characters of his paintings, as acknowledged by many researchers and critics of visual arts. For this reason, there are obvious similarities between his paintings and the religious paintings of the coffee house in terms of form. At the same time, it seems that the actions of warrior characters in Ali Akbar Sadeghi's paintings have deep differences from the actions and epic and religious content of warriors in coffee house paintings.
Sadeghi officially started his artistic activity in 1948 by entering the Faculty of Fine Arts of Tehran University. He also learned the technique of watercolor painting under the supervision of Avak Hayraptian. Since 1959, he achieved a special style of stained glass art in which Iranian identity was visible. One of the most obvious characteristics of Sadeghi is his multifaceted capabilities in creating works of art in such a way his artistic career includes making films, animations, advertising graphics, and illustrating children's books. He has won many awards from domestic and foreign festivals in each department. Now, the main focus of his work in the last two decades has been solely on painting. In examining his works, the influence of Iranian painting and coffee house painting is evident.
In the present research, the warrior characters in Sadeghi's paintings in comparison with religious coffee house paintings, based on the theory of daily and nightly systems of Gilbert Doran, are analysed. In Gilbert Doran's daily system, the symbols with negative valuation are presented in three categories: 1. Symbols of the animal form 2. Symbols of the dark form 3. Symbols of the fallen form. In opposition to negative symbols, there were symbols with positive values, which are as follows: 1. Separating symbols 2. Illumination symbols 3. Ascension symbols. Also, in the nightly system, we put the harmonising symbols and the symbols that create interaction between two positive and negative poles as the basis of content analysis and the adaptation of warlike characters and their warlike actions in the selected works.
According to the comparative tables presented in the research, it is clear that the actions of the warriors in Sadeghi's paintings had significant differences from the actions of the warriors in the paintings of the coffee house. When we use Gilbert Duran's theory of daily and nightly systems as the basis for analysing the content of these characters and their actions, the absence of opposition between the two forces of good and evil can be seen in Sadeghi's works. This unipolarity and bewilderment of the warriors, who are mostly drawn in a fallen state and with dark symbols, has been in deep conflict with Gilbert Duran's mythological approach. An approach that considered the conflict between the two poles of good and evil as the result of human mental confrontation with death and fear. The warriors of Sadeghi's paintings are, more than anything else, tired and as if they are only fighting with themselves, no glimmer of hope can be seen in their behavior, look, action, and even their fighting atmosphere. Only in some of his works, warriors are accompanied by one or more stylized symbols. According to Doran's approach in his daily and nightly systems, the warriors of the coffee house religious paintings are classified into two separate poles and forces; Positive forces and negative forces, just the opposite of what happens in Sadeghi's paintings. Each of these two forces of good and evil also pursue a goal for themselves. According to Gilbert Doran, the force of evil is the force of the passage of time and human fear of death. The forces of good represent humans' confrontation with this fear that the dark-hearted warriors and the good-thinking and benevolent warriors become examples of these mental concepts of man and artist.
The findings of this research show that in religious coffee house paintings, the warriors of both good and evil forces were present and the painter took the side of the good forces and in this way, showed the national and religious epics of a nation, but on the other hand, Ali Akbar Sadeghi's warrior-oriented paintings are completely unipolar and evaluated negatively. This is the reason why Ali Akbar Sadeghi's style can be considered to be inclined to the nightly System. A collection in which there is no mention of heroic and epic confrontation.
Based on this, in the coffee house religious paintings, warriors of both good and evil forces were present, and the painter sided with the good forces, in this way, he showed the religious epics of a nation. But in contrast and a comparative evaluation, Ali Akbar Sadeghi's paintings are completely unipolar and all warriors are members of the same group. Also, according to the categories of Gilber Doran's daily and nightly systems, in most of Sadeghi's paintings, warriors represent only negative forces, and some of them have stylized symbols that can implicitly represent Gilbert Doran's nightly system. Therefore, it is possible to consider Sadeghi's style in depicting warriors, which was derived from surrealist fantasy, only to a small extent inclined to the imagination-oriented ideas of Gilbert Duran, and it can be evaluated completely in contrast with the religious paintings of coffee houses.
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