Analyzing the Thematic and Visual Signs in Khayyam’s Quatrains and Hossein Behzad’s Miniatures

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD student in Islamic Art, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. (Corresponding Author).

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Art, Faculty of Arts, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Persian painting throughout its history, has always been influenced by Persian literature, and various magnificent works by the themes of epic, lyrical, mystical, moral, etc. In other words, Persian painting owes much of its ideal examples and allegorical themes to literature. The continuous development of Persian painting, rather than the style of visual painting schools in several centuries, has always been remarkable in its relationship with the literature and use of aesthetic basis and poetic themes. This trend continues till today, and contemporary artists are trying to create works that while having relation with literary tradition, reflect the problems of the contemporary world. In the dialogue with Khayyam's poetry, Hossein Behzad, a contemporary painter, seems to be the first person that illustrated Khayyam's quatrains. Due to the problems and sufferings he endured during his miserable life and the bitter events he faced, he felt closer to Khayyam's quatrains and portrayed the works of this poet in visual language. But what is unprecedented in these historical relations and distinguishes Behzad's works from other paintings is their subject-affinity with Khayyam's philosophical ideas. Despite Khayyam's questionable ideas that show specific approach to the world and human beings, the painter had nevertheless portrayed them in such a way that his works were direct interpretations of Khayyam's poems. What can be said about the necessity and importance of this study is that while Behzad referring to the past tradition of literary interaction with painting and showing his perception of literary ability in the visual structure of his paintings, the other artists of his period, separate from traditional literature due to social and cultural conditions of their time, prevalence of re-evaluated thought and the reflection of Western culture and art, in order to create the works in confrontation between tradition and modernity. For this reason, such a case study not only contributes to the visual deepening of the paintings, but also leads to an aesthetic understanding of the conceptual signs and poetic elements involved in those works. Therefore, this research raises the following question: by using which visual signs and in what way has Behzad been able to recreate the hidden thematic of Khayyam's poems by visual language? In order to answer the question of research, first it is tried to explain and interpret the themes and meanings that express the poet's philosophical thought and point of view. Then the visual and symbolic elements used by the painter in illustrating the poems have been analyzed, and finally the thematic signs of the quatrains and the visual signs of the paintings are compared in order to clarify how a literary text can be represented in visual text. Relying on the critique approach, this study tries to put together two literary and visual texts by discovering thematic and visual signs, and then analyzes the quality of representing Khayyam's quatrains in Behzad's paintings. Accordingly, the present study is a descriptive-analytical method based on credible electronic-librarian resources to understand about the quality of representing the themes and meanings of Khayyam's poems in Behzad's works. So investigating the thematic signs and their effects on the paintings in the form of visual signs will lead to a more accurate critic and attractive reading of both poetic and visual texts.
The findings show that however that Khayyam's quatrains are philosophical and reflect existential issues such as astonishing of creation, looking for the mysteries of creation, attending to the unreliability of the world, viewing the world wisely, thinking about death and the enjoyment of life, Hossein Behzad has used two types of signs in his visual works in dialogue with Khayyam’s quatrains:
1. Thematic and symbolic signs that illustrate in the paintings in the form of pottery, potter, pottery workshop, soil, water and greenery, old narrator, genius elders, kings, birds, trees, earth mounds Candles, colorful costumes, angels and tormentors, as well as colors such as blue, red, green, black and brown in their special meaning.
2. Visual signs with special visual representations such as point rhythm, color contrast or the dominance of one color on the space, different narration in the background and background in relation to each other in one work and creating different sensual states in faces and figures. The sum of these signs has led the painter to have tremendous innovations and make possible understanding of the themes and concepts of Khayyam's quatrains in his paintings.
 

Keywords

References

 
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