A Comparative Study of the Visual Signs of Persian Mirror work and the OP [Optical] Art Painting

The mirror work is a Persian traditional art that has been mainly used in indoor decorations of historical buildings, particularly religious ones. This art has always been exercised to realize the spiritual quality of building and portray the world of ideas in the thought of the mystics and Persian artists. It has also bridged the sacred and human zones. In this field of art, the mirror worker creates a structure of interlocking geometrical designs by cutting the mirrors into various shapes. These shapes are formed through calculation and mathematical relations and create an independent visual space. This way of envisaging space, helps to create a vast visual space, so that the changes and styles of modern art, particularly OP Art painting, are comparable visually to this art. This article seeks to answer whether the aesthetic signs in Persian mirror work and Op Art painting are of equal position? Therefore we will study some of the common aspects of these genres through the use of the analytic-descriptive method, drawing on published material and field research. The results indicate that: 1-The Persian mirror work has discovered a well calculated organization of visual layers and arrangement of spatial relations which is presented logically via pieces of mirror. 2-The visual signs in Persian mirror work and OP Art painting, apart from the circumstances of time and place, have been applied similarly. 3-The visual signs like visual illusion, optical quality, color contrast, have been manifested in the art of Persian mirror work prior to their appearance in the modern painting aesthetic system.