Connotation of Position of Nasir-al-Din Shah’s Body in the Mirror Hall of Kamal-al-Molk Based on the Theory of Yuri Lotman

In every aspect, Qajar painting opens up a new visual content to the Iranian art. In this period, art and painting change in the face of cultural, social and political events. Most of the illustrations of this period belong to the king's body, the nobles and the court. Since the main feature of Qajar painting is human centrality, and it determines a specific contract, the painting of this period is placed in restriction of physical performances. Art and painting in the age of Nasir-al-Din Shah Qajar define a new structure for iconography, and due to the rise of photography, it takes a different form. One of these new forms is the concept of the "body" that acts as a semiotic system in Qajar painting, including the position and function of the "body" in the images of the king, and "body" as an important sign system produces meaning in opposition to another. Therefore, it is important that the literature related to the cultural signs, reflected in body image in Qajar paintings, has been examined in terms of the issues and aspects related to modernity, and cultural, social and political exchanges; because the body has not been investigated as a new visual culture during the Qajar era.
Most researches related to Qajar paintings and period focus on topics like religion, reflection of tradition and modernity or the contrast between these two, identity problem, evolution of courtier iconography and integration of iconography, gaze towards women, female clothing and its representation or design and decoration in architecture, with iconographic approaches or the link between political, cultural and power studies. The Qajar era is considered as one of the most important historical periods in terms of Iranian visual art, but the "body" as a new visual culture is not investigated in any of the researches of this age. From this time onwards, "body" becomes one of the most important topics in various economic, social, political and cultural fields. One of the most renowned artists of this period is Mohammad Khan Ghaffari, known as Kamal-al-Molk and one of the most famous works of Kamal-al-Molk is the Mirror Hall (Talar-i A'ina). The Mirror Hall recounts the function of the "body" in front of another in the Qajar discourse. According to this, the main problem of research is; what is the relationship between the body of Nasir-al-Din Shah and the elements within the Mirror Hall? In other words, how is the image of Nasir-al-Din Shah's body displayed in the culture in opposition to another in the non-culture?
Non-culture is one of the basic and practical terms in Yuri Lotman's theories that is opposed to culture. The Questions have been answered using a descriptive-analytical method and Yuri Lotman's cultural semiotics approach. Therefore, the purpose of this research is semiotics and reviewing the position of the body of Nasir-al-Din Shah Qajar in the Mirror Hall painting, and using Yuri Lotman's approach to study the position of Nasir-al-Din Shah's body in proportion to the elements in the image of the Mirror Hall. One of the most important topics for Yuri Lotman is semiosphere. The semiosphere is the result and the condition for the development of culture. All elements in the semiosphere are dynamic, and the terms of its correlations are constantly changing.
 The structure of the semiosphere is asymmetrical and it is a function, a cluster of semiotic spaces and their boundaries, and the most important spots for semioticizing processes are the boundaries of the semiosphere. Boundary is a necessary part of the semiosphere because that both separates and unites, and it always belongs to both frontier cultures, to both contiguous semiospheres. Outside the semiosphere there can be no communication, and boundary is a mechanism for translating texts of an alien semiotics into familiar semiotics. It is a filtering membrane, where what is external is transformed into what is internal, and eventually external semiotics becomes part of the semiosphere's internal semiotics. The unity of the semiotic space of the semiosphere is not merely brought about by metastructural formations; the unifying factor of the boundary, which divides the internal space of the semiosphere from the external one, its inside from its outside, is even more crucial. All elements of the semiosphere are dynamic, not static. Its inside includes cosmos, culture, text, self, and body itself while outside is chaos, non- culture, non- text, and other.
Data collection in research is by library resources and according to the results, influenced by social and cultural components, the representation and nature of the body mix with pictorial elements and find a new meaning. The position of Nasir-al-Din Shah's body in the Mirror Hall of Kamal al-Molk, departs from the self and history; his action disappears and position of the body completely moves towards the body- chaos in the non- culture.