Intertextual reading of popular culture traditions in Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang paintings emphasizing the painting "Father's advice to his son about love"

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Professor at the Art Faculty of Alazahra University. Tehran, Tehran Province.

2 Art Faculty. Alzahra University of Tehran

10.22070/negareh.2023.17669.3218

Abstract

Introduction: Culture, the common way of life, thought and action of people in a society and popular culture, includes customs and beliefs that have been formed in different periods and is the origin of art, literature, and in a word, the identity of a nation. Therefore, it is necessary to receive, understand and introduce the popular culture in each period and examine its reflection in the artworks left behind. What is called cross-cultural reading also seeks to discover the meaning of the intra-cultural or extra-cultural pretexts of a text, and in fact, what cultural aspects does that text reflect, and in this sense, which pretexts is it indebted to. Intertextuality, which was first used by Kristeva, was then focused on the audience's reading and reception by theorists such as Roland Barthes, Michael Riffaterre, and others, and since every text is intertextual and has a pretext in the reader's mind, a new way in He created studies especially in art to analyze a kind of two-way interaction based on the mental pre-texts of the reader of the text and not the author, and in this sense, he studied a new dimension of interactions between the audience and the text in interdisciplinary studies and important themes such as culture. Aims: In this study, we aim to recognize the popular culture of the people of Khorasan in the era of Safavid Prince Ibrahim Mirzai in the paintings of Ibrahim Mirza’s Haft Awrang and the possible visual pretexts of the interculturality of these features. Since it is not possible to check all the pictures due to the large amount of information obtained from the intertextual reading, the picture "andarze pedar be fazand darbare eshgh" (Advice from a father to a child about love) was selected and studied from this version. Main Question: The main questions of the research are 1- In the initial reading of the selected painting, what features of the popular culture and the way of life of the people of that time are evident? 2- What are the possible pre-texts of intercultural images of popular culture aspects reflected in this painting? Method: The method of study is comparative-analytical and the method of collecting data is library-documentary. The data analysis is based on the theories of the first and second generation of intertextuality, Roland Barthes and Michael Riffaterre, we explained the intra-cultural and extra-cultural pre-texts of Mashhad school artworks. According to the opinions of these two theorists of intertextuality, Roland Barthes and Michael Riffaterre, it can be said that in the intertextuality of reading, what we are considering in the current research, the main role is the responsibility of the audience, and it is his mental pre-texts that provide a new reading of the text as if the text has been reproduced. But these pre-texts cannot be identified in the initial reading of the work and show some kind of irregularities that can be identified in the re-reading of the text and with their help the original meaning of the text will be revealed. According to these thinkers, these meanings are true in all symbolic systems and have been studied and studied by them in art as well. In the first reading, we will deal with the primary analysis and reading of the visible cultural elements in the apparent and phenomenal layer of the text (phenomenon) and examine the definite pretexts, and in the second reading, while examining the concept and dealing with the underlying layers (genometext), the cultural system and possible pretexts within Culturally and extra-culturally, we analyze and read it more carefully. Findings: The findings of the research show that many traditions of popular culture of Khorasan people in the era of Ibrahim Mirza Safavi are shown in this picture; Among them: acceptance of the Shia religion, which is shown by wearing a Qazlbash hat in the painting, the traditional clothes of men and women, including the white headscarf for women and the white turban for men, which are used according to the hot and dry weather of Khorasan. Also, examining the internal and external cultural pretexts of the objects mentioned in the selected painting shows that the visual and verbal pretexts of many of these objects have precedents in the cultural past of Iranians, and in other words, many of these objects of popular culture have intracultural visual and verbal pretexts. We conclude that the primary reading of the selected painting reveals many aspects of the popular culture of the people of Khorasan in the era of Ibrahim Mirza Safavi in the form of material, behavioral and speech traditions, which can be said by examining the possible visual and verbal pretexts of each in the secondary reading of the text, most of them are intra-cultural and derived from the popular culture of the people of Khorasan in this period.

Keywords

Main Subjects



Articles in Press, Corrected Proof
Available Online from 05 September 2023
  • Receive Date: 11 May 2023
  • Revise Date: 17 June 2023
  • Accept Date: 04 July 2023