Analysis of Qajar era Religious Murals with Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutic Approach (With Emphasis on the Holy Shrines of Gilan and Isfahan)

The art of religious murals with themes of Ashura, narrations of prophets and Shiite imams, is a part of Qajar visual arts, which has adorned the space of holy places such as mausoleums, Takyehs and Hoseyniyehs. This art reflects the characteristics of popular culture such as religious beliefs, values, interests and social aspects in the Qajar era. During this era, due to the social changes which took place in it, art was extended to different layers of society and became a means of expressing the national and religious beliefs of the people. Mural painting grew a lot among the ordinary people and they entered the art scene with their own tastes. Large paintings on the walls or canvases with the themes of Shiite martyrs appeared, and in fact were the results of about eleven centuries of gradual development and evolution of Shiite mourning rituals. The phenomenon of religious murals in this era was created by preserving the logical values ​​of religious art, based on people's beliefs, needs and desires, because the Qajar era was the culmination of public Shiite religious ceremonies, which in turn was reflected in the visual arts. The epic themes of the murals show the support of the people of the liberation movements of this era. To evaluate the Qajar paintings, one must compare them with the versions of Ta'zieh, because as soon as the Ta'zieh was accepted by the common people, a number of believers performed the role of martyrs and sinners, and this was a step towards accepting the painting. Considering Iran’s cultural developments in the mentioned era and the emergence of new contexts for presenting paintings, it is necessary to study the impact of these developments on Qajar painters. The study and analysis of the factors affecting the creation of murals and their stylistic features have been the subject of numerous researches in recent decades. But, it seems that pondering on this subject, using philosophical approaches such as Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics, which includes concepts such as tradition, conversation, semantic horizon and horizon fusion, can pave the way for achieving the neglected aspects of this art and hence the necessity of applying this approach becomes clear. The purpose of present research is to interpret and study the influence of the semantic horizon and horizon fusion in religious artworks by artists of Gilan and Isfahan in the Qajar era. The studied questions are: 1- What are the effects of horizon fusion in the works of artists in Gilan and Isfahan? 2- What are the commonalities and differences between their works? The research method was descriptive-analytical with philosophical hermeneutic approach of Gadamer. In this method, understanding occurs through the blending of horizons, which is dialectical, between preconceptions and information sources. What is needed here is understanding the context in which the text or dialogue has taken shape and given rise to different interpretations. These interpretations are created through the mixing of the text, its context and the horizons of the participants. The method of collecting information was using library resources as well as field study of mural works by taking photos of them. The statistical population was the murals of Gilan province and Isfahan city. Eight murals were introduced from the works of one Gilani artist (Aghajan Gilani) and two Isfahani artists (Seyed Abbas Aghamiri and the painter of the Khansari tomb); four of which had been analyzed. Sampling was done by judgmental method and based on the relationship between the works and the concepts under discussion. The method of analysis was qualitative and in order to measure the purpose of the research, first the concepts related to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics were described, then the regions, artists and their selected works were introduced and finally, the murals were analyzed dialectically based on understanding by merging horizons. The results of the research showed that the artist of murals, with the prejudices that belonged to the semantic horizon of his time, conversed with the past tradition and established a constructive interaction between the present and the past; in the sense that under the influence of the semantic horizon of the past, the context, its socio-cultural context, began to create works that were a new interpretation of tradition. At the same time, fusion of horizons has had a different effect on the artists of the two selected regions, and Gilani artist, due to the context of his residence, has been less influenced by the contemporary trends of painting than the Isfahani artist and has remained more loyal to the Iranian tradition.