Strategic Studies of Art

Strategic Studies of Art

Prominent Themes of Western Studies on Iran's Post-Revolutionary Visual Arts

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Zahra Abdollah
PhD in Comparative and Analytic History of Islamic Art, Department of Islamic Art, Faculty of Arts, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran.
10.22083/ssa.2023.367108.1000
Abstract
Iranian art has always fascinated Western researchers, and the Islamic revolution attracted growing attention due to its distinct cultural attitudes. This article investigates major themes in post-revolutionary Iranian visual art studies from the United State of America, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. There is no comprehensive research in this direction as the existing literature mainly concentrates on historical trends in contemporary art studies. The methodology of this research is descriptive-analytic, in which 50 selected texts (including book chapters, articles, and doctoral or master theses) are analyzed using meta-synthesis to see whether there are dominant themes in these texts. Though inductive researches have no presumption, as current art studies address the challenges of living in the modern world, themes of these studies are expected to be linked to complications of contemporary art practice. The findings of this research confirmed this assumption and revealed that the studies are focused on four major themes including identity, contemporaneity, ideology, and gender. Due to the crucial role of cross-cultural exchanges in the delineation of strategic functions of art and the exigency of recognition of western views to track these exchanges, the results of this research are significant for the art community as well as policymakers in the artistic arena. In particular, in the context of continuous and constructive communication between domestic artists and researchers of contemporary Iranian art abroad, it may be possible to use the resources of Iranian-Islamic culture to answer the questions arising from the identity crisis in the contemporary world, and while ensuring the contemporaneity of Iranian artists, avoid relying on the desired stereotypes of the colonial system.
Keywords
Keywords: Iranian Visual Art
Post-revolutionary Art
Research in Art
Western Studies
Thematology

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