Traditional arts are indeed applied arts
that have been and still are being made in
the course of time, from past to present,
in accordance with collective taste and
aesthetic sense and on the basis of some
regular, rooted and logical rules. Artistic
creation in this territory has been affected
by visual and contextual traditions and
has been used as the transmitter of rituals,
myth, and general interests and tastes
of traditional society. These kinds of arts,
notwithstanding their diversity and distribution,
have common aspects both in
form and in meaning. In response to the
basic question that what elements bind
and link these arts together in spite of
their geographical and cultural diversity,
a hypothesis is proposed here according to
which, “centralism” should be regarded as
the most striking joint feature of these arts
and their common intersection as well.
Not necessarily a physical location, this
center is indeed a pervasive and intrinsic
essence which bears relation to dominant
attitudes and prevailing thoughts in traditional
society. This research would conclude
that the unity and integrity of traditional
arts are indebted to a center which
is, though sometimes visible and sometimes
invisible, always dynamic. In this
framework any artwork is evaluated and
esteemed according to its closeness to or
distance from that center. This closeness
or remoteness can be considered as a factor
in the evaluation of artworks.
By dint of an analytical and descriptive
approach, this article pays attention
to three important elements of centralism,
symmetry, and repetition in the traditional
arts in terms of form and meaning.