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This essay is another phenomenological response to the old and familiar question of “what is art”. What is the origin of art and what mechanisms are engaged in its creation? To answer these questions we first trace the unconscious forms and reveal the structural connection between art, myth and dream only to finally find what ails the new and modern art.

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The most important manifestations of architecture in Islamic world are mosques, through which Iranians have played a special role in depicting splendor, glory, and the beauties of the sacred heaven. The Khorasan School of Architecture, according to which Char Ivan mosque was built in Khorasan, gradually spread out across the Islamic countries and entered Indian subcontinent and Pakistan. During the Mongol dynasty in India, which has the summit of this school in Shahjahan era and is contemporary to the Isfahan School in Iran, a mosque construction is built and entitled Wazirkhan which historians name it Khorasan Tomb. In this article we survey the mosque’s historical characteristics and features, using library studies and local sources along with fieldwork study, to show that in this architectural style there is a combination of the Khorasan School and decoration of the Isfahan School. This mosque is also a combination of “mosque-school”, and bazaar and a comprehensive imitation of Imam Reza’s Tomb Complex, Goharshad Mosque, religious schools and their attached bazaar. Regarding all this we’ll find out that this mosque is a symbol of Iranian cultural and artistic influence in Lahore, Pakistan.

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Perhaps, the main common aspect in three fundamental perspectives, namely that of art work, artist and audience, is their united convergence in expressing this general axiom: “The Art is Expression”. This essential “Expressive” dignity in many ages and in various cultures can be diverted to “Expressionism”. For example, Opera Music was the conscious representation of reality, or Romantic Music in the 19th century, was generally a transparent explanation of composer’s emotions. According to many thinkers, Expressionism in music occurs when the music is entitled with optional name or accompanied with poems or images. This abstracted meaning of Expression (Expressionism) is related with General meaning of Expression. This Paper, will first present the ontological study of “Expression” and “Expressionism” foundation in music based on descriptive approach. Then, the mentioned descriptive variables are being described in visual Arts. For earning a more exact study, two new terms of “Subjective Expression” and “Objective Expression” are generated by the author and possible interaction between these two terms in fine arts is being argued. Moreover, the subject of transition of expression will be described in music and the author will offer new survey about “Satisfying Parity” in musical cognitions. Consequently, it is concluded that the music is more talented than other arts in transforming and devolving the “objective expression” and “subjective expression” to each other. This might be concluded that, due to volatile- synchronic essence of music, it is different from other visual art.

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One of the most important eras in the Pre-Islamic Iran is Sasanian, so in the art history studies their artistic works should be taken into account with subtlety. Metalwork could be considered as one of the most important artistic branches in this era. The Sasanian metalwork could be divided on the basis of the form of vessels or the scenes depicted on them. This research is focused on the metal vesels with the images of “dancing girls”, “musicians”, and “the scenes of festivals”. So far the 5 scholars have interpreted these images with different approaches and manners but this article would undertake to study the vessels and their depicted images from another view with descriptive and analytic approach. Although we could never reach a definite interpretation of the ancient artistic works, the present research aims to introduce another idea about these vessels for further studies.

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As the last Roman philosopher and Christian thinker in early medieval period, Boethius played a significant role in the transmission of logical, philosophical and scientific ideas of ancient Greece by translating their works into Latin and through writing commentaries on them. Boethius’ views on beauty and art are drawn upon the Platonic and Pythagorean basics. Although in his original works there is no independent writing on art and aesthetics in its modern sense, his ideas about aesthetics and art are permeated through one of his treatises called De institutione musica. In this paper, I’ll reconstruct and explain Boethius’ view on beauty and art. First, with an overview on his philosophical and theological ideas, I’ll investigate his role in developing the medieval theories of art and beauty and then by remarking specific characteristics of his thoughts on art and beauty, I’ll analyze them. Influenced by Pythagorean mathematical and geometric thinking, Boethius considered the concepts of harmony and proportion in the form as beauty criteria and took the concept of beauty in relation with appearance and phenomenon. He supposes the music as the real art or the liberal art -in his own words - and by expansion of the music concept talks about the cosmic music, the human [spirit] music and the instrumental music. From a Platonic view he recognizes the real (or liberal) artist or musician, one who with an intellectual insight is able to understand the harmony and coordination in the cosmic spheres and human spirit.

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Arthur Upham Pope and his wife Phyllis Ackerman are both among the most wellknown recent researchers who have published various books and articles about Persian art and architecture. One of their most famous and significant works is their 16 volume encyclopedia titled “A Survey of Persian Art: From Prehistoric Times to the Present” and published in 1977. This book has been used by researchers around the world as one of the basic references for studying history of Persian art and architecture. The book has been translated into Farsi in 2008. The last part of the third volume of the book contains an article named “Gardens” in which the authors have considered various aspects of historical gardens of Iran in a rather compact text. The text does not have any detailed sub-headings and includes just two drawings, so the reader should refer to other volumes to view the pictures and plates. Since the authors have a broad research background on the history of Persian art and architecture, it is worth having a more detailed look at the article here which could be useful for those researchers and scholars in the field who may not be familiar with the article or may not have access to it. The article discusses several related issues on Persian gardens such as their history, aim and such objectives of creation as their space, their critical role in people’s life in the region, their properties, design layout and their elements such as ponds, water canals, trees, flowers, animals and decorations. The article also provides a vast and complete list of original and historical references on Persian gardens.

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Focusing on āšūrāī flags, this article studies the issue of garden yearning (Hasrat-e Bagh) or desire for paradise (Tamannay-e Maynoo) as a main incentive in abstract art of Iran. For this purpose, a comparative and analytic comparison is made between āšūrāī flags and Iranian landscape architecture (or Iranian garden) on the basis of two main factors, i.e. climatic conditions of Iran – land and manifestation of beliefs. The reference to and reflection of this desire in different Iranian – Islamic arts including illumination and painting are demonstrated and then evident similarities of these two cases are studied showing that the common spirit among all these arts is that of garden yearning/desire for paradise. In summary, regarding climatic and ideological considerations in the unconscious mind of Iranian artist, the presence of an ideal image or pleasant paradise has always been effective on his artifacts and hence all of his arts pertain somehow to this yearning, thirst and desire for returning and eternal residence in 7 that evergreen garden. Meanwhile, symbols applied in āšūrāī flags are affected by specifications of Iranian garden and that’s because of their relationship with religious beliefs and the embodied nostalgic image of that eternal and pleasant home which reflects the nature of this nostalgic desire more clearly than other Iranian art varieties.

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In the following article, the concept of “simulacrum” and its development and evolution through history is surveyed. This concept is coined by the French thinker, sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard who, with the beginning of the postmodern era and in the 1960s, delivered his ideas with his own style through essays and lectures using such terms as “simulacrum”, “simulation”, “hyper-reality” and “implosion”. Baudrillard starts with a leftist view and criticizes Marx’s theories and then summarizes the results of this collation in this idea: all existing actions are for increasing the consumption and passivity of the subject. This notion which is substituted for Marx’s key term “Production” conducts the whole existing areas in the postmodern phase and proves through the concept of simulacrum that the whole existing areas, including politics, arts and religion, are irreferential codes that devote their efforts to the will of a perhaps political or economic ideology. These codes are a set of chained, repetitive, intentional and drained-of-significance codes to the extent that Baudrillard claims that, apparently, the best plan to reach the economic- political goal is not to have a plan at all, namely the strategy of insignificance. The drained consciousness is the ultimate goal of the existing condition and the consequent amazement and silence of the non-conscious and non-revolutionary subject is the best result and answer to this scheming in the postmodern condition. It is in this situation that the subject loses the choice of action and any kind of desire for sublimity from this condition is negated for another kind of life, a process through which the truth of contemporary or postmodern art assures itelf that regarding this situation it has carried out its task.

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The problem of Islamic Art to Islamic Thought relationship is one of the axial questions for understanding the Islamic Art one that may clear what the adjective “Islamic” signifies to in “Islamic Art”. To the present day, there have been different answers to this question. This article discusses the various answers hence given by the traditionalists to this inquiry. Traditionalists, with their specific definition of tradition and its relation to aspects of life, particularly art, in traditional societies, offer a special point of view. Here we first define the term “tradition” from a traditionalist point of view and then discuss its relationship with art. This relationship is the basis for what we further articulate to be the relationship between Islamic Art and Islamic Thought. Finally, some criticism will be directed at traditionalist viewpoints.

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The relation between Islamic philosophy and art, on the one hand, is the most important and fundamental problem, and on the other hand one of the most complex issues in the realm of philosophy of art in Iran. In past 20 years, several books of art thinkers in Western philosophy have been translated into Persian and made passion for research and study on art philosophy. But after a while, an important question in the design of the courses has become evident: are Western theories to be used for expressing non-Western philosophies of art? Put otherwise, can Islamic art be discussed and analyzed using Western theories? Some has had doubts about this, and for this reason, discussions on the subject of Islamic philosophy toward art have commenced. Since then, traditionalists’ opinions on Islamic art have been widely and seriously criticized, especially by some professors at Harvard University. Hence, this paper tries to tackle the following questions: What is the viewpoint of Islamic philosophy toward art? And, what thoughts, if any, have Muslim philosophers had to offer on art in the course of the history of Islamic philosophy.

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In the phenomenological analysis of art two main streams can be recognized: subjective phenomenology and non-subjective phenomenology. In order to do an aesthetic analysis, while believing that aesthetics is a science, the subjective phenomenologist of art corresponds to Husserl method of exploring meaning and essence in the realm of conscience but for a hermeneutic phenomenologist, what is at stake is the essence of art and its relation to truth Among these phenomenologist groups Heidegger is granted a special status. He, on the one hand, connects hermeneutics with ontology, believing that it is through understanding that objects appear and the existence shows up itself on the other hand, he relates phenomenology to “disclosure” which for him equals to being hence, his phenomenology finds a hermeneutical dimension. This is the viewpoint of Heidegger in his famous book, The Origin of the Work of Art, by means of which he analyses the work of art. He criticizes scientific aesthetics in which the art is reduced to senses and the pleasures of sensation contrary to this notion, Heidegger believed that it is through art that we can establish an ontological relationship with the past and would be able to understand the universe of a historical nation. On the whole, Heidegger recognizes art as the place for the event or happening of truth. This article tries to show how Heidegger, using hermeneutic phenomenology, analyses the artwork and, while opening new window to understanding of authentic relationship between art and truth, introduces the artwork as the place where the openness of being happens to human.

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Art, and especially the art of ancient Greece, plays an important role in Martin Heidegger’s later works. The first work in which he separately discusses the requirements of his philosophical thinking about art is The Origin of the Work of Art. His analysis of Greek art- referred to by him often as the “great art”- is one of the most brilliant and influential examples of the philosophical thinking on art nonetheless, and instead of being an image of the Greek art, his interpretations tend to show how Heidegger traced his philosophical concerns in that art. Indeed, one could regard Heidegger’s interpretation of Greek art to be another version of authentic art. In this article, on the basis of what Heidegger offers in The Origin of the Work of Art especially about Greek art and through searching his other works, the characteristics of this sort of art are discussed by classifying them into 5 basic categories: namely, the connection with disclosure of being and the artwork as the truth of being the struggle between earth and world in the artwork establishment of the world and the artwork as the establishers or constituents of a nation or a community the reception and common conservation of the artwork the pre-aesthetical or anti-aesthetical condition of the artwork.

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Danto’s philosophical approach determines his methodical and theoretical discipline in philosophy of art and aesthetics. To start understanding his theories and philosophical thoughts, it is better first to ask what his understanding of philosophy is and what method he offers for philosophical investigation. Since Danto has written independent works in the realm, understanding his philosophical concerns about art involves the explanation of his general philosophical ideas. If his philosophy of art bears any innovation and unique treatment of art and representation, then it’s inevitable to fully understand his basic and rudimentary concepts on which his whole philosophy is constructed. Furthermore, and through investigating his basic concepts, one can find Danto’s general approach and conceptions. Contemporary art after the decline of modern art challenges Danto’s thoughts. As Danto puts it, contemporary art is nowadays connected to consciousness more than any other time. Danto puts forward a new approach in philosophy of art and art criticism based on his method of philosophical investigation. His specific methodology and philosophy of art will be discussed here in this article and their differences will be clarified. Meanwhile, it is discussed that, according to Danto, examining the condition of contemporary art and its status in history of art is one of the dominant issues in philosophy of art and art criticism.

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The climax of this view is represented in Neo-Platonism that if the world is beautiful it is because it reflects the image of Soul. Neo-Platonists don’t regard themselves as establishers of a new philosophy (though they establish one), but they believe themselves as the redeemers of Plato’s philosophy from those aberrations burden over it during the time. Plotinus, as the last major philosopher of ancient epoch, historically stands at a timeline which separates ancient world from middle ages. His contemplations on the realm of philosophy and art, especially those on the concept of beauty, have been among the most influential views. In this article, according to what Plotinus has proposed, the semantic roots of “form” and “content” would be explored next to their relationship and importance. The author tries to find the answers to these questions: what is Plotinus basic world view and what basic principles could be found in it? How does he define beauty, art and artwork and what is their status in his world view? After exploring his idea, it will be found that in Plotinus’s view, being means beauty and beauty means being form means beauty and beauty means form God means beauty, good means beauty, love means beauty and beauty means love. According to this definition, Plotinus regarded everything and every concept in this world to be filled with form (beauty/love). Form, as the basic element of being and existence, is an “image of content” and artist, as the creator of the form, produces his work not by imitating secondhand versions of this worldly paradigms, but by copying the original one (ideas). Another conclusion that could be taken from this article is that form has relationship with abstraction and abstraction painting has relationship with the world of ideas.

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According to the interpretation which is based on Being and Truth derived from Heidegger’s narration of history of Aesthetics, for the Greek, Art was a way to generate, to disclose, the beings therefore, it was a way for the establishment of the truth. So the status of art was well-defined and the need to it was inevitable. In Plato’s thought – by his own conception of art and generation [poiesis] on the basis of the theory of Idea – art lost his early relation to truth, and then it was to decide on its status in the human life. This characterizes the beginning of Aesthetics. Moreover, Plato’s thought as the origin of Aesthetics has the elements characterized as the basic elements of Aesthetics it means the entrance of Beauty to the definition of art and divergence among beauty and truth. During modern age and the emergence of subjectivism the divergence among the beautiful, the true, and the good had been completed and the artwork turned to an object of aisthesis. Therefore, art as the role of creating the beautiful and the aesthetic pleasure couldn’t have essential role in human life. This is the event characterized as the end of art in Hegel’s Aesthetics. However, The last phases of the history of Aesthetics is characterized by Nietzsche and Wagner’s attempts in order to make restitution for art’s necessity, though, Heidegger believes, these attempts couldn’t be successful.

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In this article it would be tried to elaborate Alain Badiou’s novel view to the relationship between art and philosophy and furthermore to illustrate the role that “interpretation” plays in his novel view. Badiou believes his point of view toward this relationship to be the opposite of three visions which, to his eyes, have been the dominant views across western history of philosophy: didacticism, romanticism, and classicism. He thinks that in none of these three views the relationship between art and truth has ever been regarded as “singular” and “immanent”, that is to say, art has never been honored as the producer of a truth of its own. Badiou renders art such a status of having its own truth next to that of science, politics and love. This new relationship between art and truth brings about a new relationship between art and philosophy. In this new relationship, philosophy is neither art’s master nor its servant it does not impose meaning on art from outside and its task is not to interpret or express the truths that art has reached to. According to Badiou, since artistic truth is restricted to art itself and since the truth is basically something contrary to extant meanings, therefore, philosophy cannot share or express through interpretation and illustration the truth that art produces. What philosophy does in relation to art is to draw a distinction between truths and doxas or “common beliefs”, and hence to declare the artistic truths.

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This article would expose a close re-reading of two classical concepts in art history. Using indeterminate color dialectic, contemporary critic and artist Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe tries to provide an artistic testimony in favor of the challenging strangeness of the beauty. On the other hand, while calling into question the thinking of philosophers like Kant and Lyotard he wants to shed new lights on the task of abstract art and the potentiality of this art for illustrating the sublime. Rolfe believes in the return to the beauty and insists on the concept of beauty as something frivolous, pictorial and concrete. He also mentions the sublime presence of androgyny which, according to him, pertains to a passive-aggressive aspect and entails the beauty. Therefore, contemporary sublime finds a pictorial dimension in the very nature of transformation. By the means of the blankness and the non-written, contemporary sublime liberates itself from the autonomy of the concept of reason and turns the absence of the un-displayable into a simultaneously tangible and intangible presence.

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Every work of art is perceived and understood in a particular spatial-temporal bed. Although the interpreter has a concrete and tangible experience of facing a work, his understanding of work's connotation and denotation is predicated on his beliefs, presupposition and concepts regarding that specific artwork. The main question in this article is whether that the influence of such beliefs and presupposition should be let in for interpreting an artwork or they may result in some kind of totalitarianism and dogmatism.

To answer the above question some presuppositions and beliefs are studied that have been used for interpretation. One of these is the Pythagorean belief in the cosmic music the influence of which can be seen in the interpretation of many thinkers and prominent figures like Plato, Zarathustra, Rumi and others. The other one is Philosophical doctrines and mystical interpretations such pantheism which is also among the most important presupposition used to interpret an artwork.

It will be argued after studying the above presuppositions that interpreter's attachments, beliefs and presupposition not only don't make a bed for dogmatism but also provide a condition in which other criticisms and interpretations will be read again and reinterpreted. It will follow that such a condition leads to new understandings and novel interpretive findings.

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Victor Burgin is a famous British artist, renowned for his photographs and theories on art. Introducing his prominent theory through collected essays in a book titled The End of Art Theory he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1986, in addition to exhibiting his works in Institute of Contemporary Arts and Kettle's Yard Gallery in Cambridge (1984). In this book, he exposes "the end of art theory" contrary to other theories with similar subject the most renowned one belongs to Arthur Danto. Influenced by such thinkers as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan, Burgin’s writings mainly cover the fields of conceptual art, criticism, and art theory. His recent book, Parallel Texts is a collection of his essays, interviews and theoretical writings. According to Burgin, “art theory”, understood as those interdependent forms of art history, aesthetics and criticism which began during the Enlightenment and culminated in the recent period of “high modernism” is now at the end. Nonetheless, since every theoretical argument about art may be considered essentially a kind of theory, it seems paradoxical that Burgin as an artist simultaneously is theorizing about art and critic. No need to say that applying a kind of theory in deliberating about an artwork is inevitable. This article discusses the Burgin’s idea on conceptual art which is predicated upon Freudian psychology and is mostly focused on artist’s character as the fruit of natural structure of human psyche through a social process. He not only expresses the art theory in a continuum of art history, criticism and aesthetics but also defines it in the cycle of economy and politics. From his point of view, artwork is nothing but the product of this interwoven system. For him, a conceptual artwork is theoretically expressive. In other words, nowadays the art has transferred into theory and criticism it follows that art theory has reached to an end and now it is declared through artworks. To conclude, the author would argue that in the world of art today, there is no need to separate professions as artists, critics and theorists anymore since all of them are compacted in one: an artist own self!

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Merlaeu-Ponty was an existentialist and phenomenologist philosopher who sought a new way for describing human’s experience of the world. In order to avoid the problems that rationalists and experimentalists had encountered in explaining human experience he chose phenomenological method. Hence, instead of insisting on ideas, Merleau-Ponty seeks to apply phenomenology to human perception and its different aspects containing body, arts, speech and other scientific issues. According to him, the method of perception is an achievement not only of philosophy but also of modern art. He believes that artists, and among them painters especially, do the same as phenomenologists. Merleau-Ponty finds these phenomenological aspects in Cezanne works more than anywhere else aspects which Cezanne lacked theoretical means for conveying them and therefore presented them via his works. These aspects would be discussed in this article by comparing Merleau-Ponty’s views with those of Cezanne.