The Saqqakhaneh School of painting was central in the historical artistic transition to Modernism after the Constitutional Revolution in Iran. This school of art emerged under the Pahlavi regime and was extensively supported by Iranian nation-state. The modernizing state used this school of art as a unique form of propaganda to represent Iranian cultural heritage in its desire for modernization and its aesthetic orientation towards the West in the global stage.
The Saqqakhaneh School continued to influence postrevolutionary visual arts exposing a plurality of artistic tastes as well as an ambivalent and contradictory artistic practice. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological approach to the study of art, this article offers a critical and impartial assessment of this school by locating it within the Iranian artistic field of power while valuing the social character of the artists in the production, circulation and
consumption of this school of art.