Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
Traditionalists on the Relationship between Islamic Thought and Islamic Art
7
12
FA
Amir
Maziar
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.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
Islamic Philosophy and a Challenge: Philosophy of Islamic Art
13
24
FA
Hasan
Bolkhari Ghahi
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.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
The Ethical Visuality in Contemporary Architecture: the Questioning of a Tradition
25
34
FA
Seyyed Hosein (Iraj)
Mo’eini
Problems of an ethical approach to the visual in architectural design are not unknown, and unsurprisingly so in a discipline and a cultural tradition so strongly associated with the visual. Generally speaking, one can trace two lines of inquiry in this regard:
a) What is right to be represented in design? Is it eternal values, progress, divinity, sovereignty, democracy and participation, truthfulness, or is it the abandonment of representation altogether?
b) In a discipline so much involved by its nature with the non-visual, is it right for the visual to be the main thrust for architectural design? This paper argues that whilst these two lines of inquiry are well extended into our times, ours is an age best identified with growing divergences within each one of, as well as between, them. Simply put, whilst the ever-accelerating production power of our image-making machines makes the visual increasingly non-representational, political and corporate powers still demand architecture to represent their status. In other words, today’s emerging socio-political issues, as well as environmental and humanitarian crises, add more weight to the argument against the primacy of the visual: a case otherwise made by, among others, an urge for more haptic design approaches, along with one for the primacy of the everyday over the visual in architecture.
Representation and the celebrating of change or continuity have long been modern times’ means of investing the ethical in the visual. This paper argues that although the necessity of visual ingenuity might be taken for granted in contemporary context, one finds it ever more of a challenge to have an ethical stance through representing or celebrating either side of this pair alone. The question of our time, therefore, is rather that of whether the emancipation of the visual from reprerepresentation and construction constraints will win its ethical legitimacy back or not.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
The Relationship between Ethics and Aesthetics in Schiller’s Thought
35
46
FA
Ali
Salmani
Gholamreza
Shamloo
Schiller as a Kantian philosopher establishes many of his thoughts on the basis of Kantian notions about aesthetics. His ideas about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, however, seem to be different from those of Kant. In this article we are going to discuss Schiller’s thinking about the aesthetics-ethics connection and find a resolution about the core problem of his thinking, namely, the correlation between ethics and aesthetics. It seems that the nature of this issue will become clear only when we first regard his ideal goal, the ethical education, next to his other questions in the realm.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
Heidegger and Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Art
47
54
FA
Shamsolmolook
Mostafavi
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.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
Martin Heidegger and the Great Art of Ancient Greece
55
68
FA
Behrang
Poorhoseini
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.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
The Concept of Mimesis in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory
69
82
FA
Nooshin
Shahandeh
Mimesis plays an important role in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory and permeates through the book. If only two concepts are to be figured out in the book, they will be the “content of the truth of art work” and “mimesis”. Avoiding the traditional use and understanding of the latter, Adorno tries to renew the power of mimesis in art and life. He uses mimesis to criticize the structures of suppression and hegemony in Enlightenment and modern thinking. This essay discusses the concept of mimesis in Adorno’s thoughts from three points of view: dialectical relationship between mimesis and reason mimesis as the subject-object dialectic mimesis and its connections with expression.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
Foucault with Magritte’s Eyes
83
98
FA
Arash
Iqbal
Representation in painting, which connects the image and external reality and introduces the former as lower to or narrator of external object, was challenged with the advent of modern art. In fact, artist’s mind and individuality claimed their dominance on narration while bringing in a self-sufficient independence for image. In this new episteme, different styles and techniques emerged which insisted on the creativity of artist’s mind and recognized the human role in the construction of reality. It seemed that modern art and its method of thinking proved modern subject to have influential and important role in knowing of the world. Among the artistic pioneers of modern history, Magritte was the one who attacked the external object and its connection with image from a different point of view. Instead of conveying the important role of the subject-creator, like what we find in Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and even Surrealism, he rather insisted on the self-sufficiency of the image. He puts reality in front of reality and it is language that finally reveals the rupture. The resemblances do not represent each other rather, in a world of repetitions, the classical relationship between the original object and its representation dies. Foucault describes Magritte’s paintings as: “the shifting and exchanging of similar elements, but not the reconstruction of a resemblance.” The difference between similitude and resemblance is the core issue at stake in this article. Foucault discusses representation and resemblance in their relationship with classical viewpoint and differentiates them from similitude and repetition, adding that:”resemblance serves the representation but similitude serves the repetition.” Foucault’s observations on Magritte’s paintings are based on the affirmation of this notion that in Magritte’s paintings the narrating image loses sense while language too is shown unable to narrate the image. Refusing to accept the role of narrator, the self-sustaining worlds of language and image not only don’t refer to the outer world but also, as Foucault puts it, their juxtaposition in image happens “through emptiness”. Magritte’s works, in accordance to his line of thought, ultimately turn out to be deprived of objects. His painting turns into a window opened to an empty world. As Foucault says, his paintings escape having identity.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
Iconographical Motifs in Two Baisonghori and Tahmasbi Shahnamehs
99
110
FA
Nahid
Abdi
This article first discusses one of the key concepts in Iconographical Studies, namely “knowledge of motifs”, and then applies this concept to some paintings in Baisonghori and Tahmasbi Shahnamehs. The article further suggests that the usage of literary motifs in the paintings of Tabriz’s Safavid School, comparing to that of Herat Teimouri School, is done in such a delicate and wonderful manner that the motifs have been improved and turned into symbols. The article, therefore, concludes that the artists of the era were completely aware of the motifs they were selecting.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
The Intertextual Relationship between Sa’ib’s poetical wisdom and the Paintings of Isfahan School
111
130
FA
Seyyed Rasool
Moareknejad
Most historiographers of the paintings of Safavid Isfahan School have pointed out the separation of painting from illustration and narrative poetry, indicating that these two latter genres, namely painting and poetry, wanted to act as independent artistic genres. Literary scholars have indicated also the use of painting terminology, such as figure, brush, hue, watercolors and other paintings’ paraphernalia in the poems of Isfahan School’s era. This article tries to study the interaction between poetry and painting in Isfahan School and compare their common features such as content, paradox, metaphor, ambiguity and metonymy.
Advanced Research Institute of Arts
Kimiya-ye-Honar
2251-8630
1
3
2012
8
1
:union: and Separation in Iranian Traditional Architecture
131
135
FA
Farhad
Ahmadi
This article tries to discuss the characteristics of traditional architecture across Iranian plateau from a different point of view. Accordingly, the slow tempo of time in traditional era will be argued, a tempo by means of which the actions have been followed with more separation than usual and with more patience, forbearance, and tolerance. In other words, it is articulated that the actions are actualized not in their abstract form but in the context of the rituals. Hence, the slow tempo of these actions reduces the side-effects of harsh environmental changes and leads to a balance with nature in a manner that the alterations made to it do not result in any wastage. Furthermore, the effects of separation, whether as a conceptual notion or as a practical phenomenon in residences, will be discussed and their examples, from macro (polis) to micro (building), will be mentioned.