Naghsh Mayeh
Year:2011 | Volume:4 | Issue:8|Papers Count:10

The current paper is an effort made to primarly survey the motifs of the religious dancing on Iranian potteries. It also reveals the relation such motives could have with residuals, beliefs and traditions relevant to their own era. Besides, it tends to take a deep look at the alternation trend of such motifs from the ancient to the Islamic period. Then, there are investigations concerning the above mentioned motifs, the routine belief surrounding the dance when such motifs were being created and how they were altered during the Islamic period. What highlights the importance of the dancing motifs would be the huge attention paid to such works from the ancient period, their geographical diversity in Iran and their occasional presence on the potteries belonging to the Islamic period. This is due to the fact that (as mentioned in a number of references) ancient people believed in dance as one of the gods deeds and then they had to imitate the same deeds as the sign of their belief in the gods. The article therefore, tries to recognize the motifs and investigate the religious belief behind them. The method of the research is documented. Finally, the sources would suggest that the dance was initially regarded as an imitation of what the gods did, but it gradually descended and changed into an earthly concept.

During the different periods of the Western art, artist have applied the carpet pattern with a variety of aims and attitudes. The article tends to analyze the works by some renouned European artists (from the 16th to 20th century) in order to assess the trend of how the carpet patterns (Iranian ones in particular) have influences the periods of the Western art. It also takes the impact such patterns could have had on the history of the Western illustration. The article concentrates on the painting as the representative of the Western art and then raise its research question on how the Western artists changed their attitudes towards the carpet, during the centuries after Renaissance.The results show the artists’ point of view in using carpet patterns before 19th century, were a decorative usage. After this century, along with other fundamental developments in art, the western look at carpet motifs started to change and pass from a simple blending agent in decorative painting to the expressive element of the whole painting. Therefore, it would be possible to develop the eastern motifs into different pictorical forms belonging to the contemporary art.

Along with the widespread use of paper in painting and calligraphy, Iranian Islamic period witnessed the emergence of a specific painting style known as the miniature which holds the characteristics significant for historians, archelogists and other scientists. During the Tiymourid period, there were many illustrated manuscripts created under rulers and the princes’ support. "Shahnameh of Ferdosi" would be the most important manuscript supported by Baysongor Mirza who assigned the painters to illustrate "Shahnameh" which makes the main body of investigations of the current paper. This would be an investigative work to depict the significant role played by the miniatures created in "Shahnameh" to recognize, introduce and reconstruct the Tiymourid archeological and historical works.

Isfahan’s Qajar houses can be discussed studied from diffrent angels including the decoration used in them. These luxurious, spacious houses all belong to reputed families. Some houses were built in Safavi era and then, they have been rebuilt by the owners.The others, however, were erected in Qajar period and outnumber their Safavi counterparts. Today, the houses are destroyed, deserted or resided by their owners.Unlike the claims which were made regarding the architectural decorations in the Qajar era, they show the pinnacle of art in the decorations of the time. Colored sash windows, latticed-work windows, plaster-molding and mirror-work, elegant wall paintings, tile-work, carving, and finally the type of wonderful house architecture arouse admiration of every spectator using the field method, the study tries to introduce the overall Qajar houses of Isfahan and classify the different types of decorations used in them. It also concentrates on plaster-molding of these buildings in a comparative-analytic manner. To this end, a number of these houses with the most architectural decorations and various kinds of plaster-molding have been studied and compared.

There are many stories about Roc that have been defined in different ways. These stories at first; were not written but narrated. However, people searched things that they could not find in real world; in unknown worlds such as the mythos's one.When Iranians became hopeless of their Lords, Roc, as Truth Vigour of God and Imperial grandeur of God was like a safer for them; in another words, it was accepted as a totem in Iranian's life.Avesta; one of the oldest book embedded with mythology, defined Roc story in symbolic ways. After Avesta, this story was completed through Pahlavi's texts so that it could get a symbolic story in Epopee with a heroic and mythological world as well as the idea historical patterns. Roc was in all over the Iranian's life in past and had been noticed as an utopia. Roc in Manteghoteir, is the mere sign and symbol of the human ultimate goal and so shows him/her a way to reach that goal.This paper indicates Roc story in symbol, myth, mythos and history on Zuorest's Avesta, Ferdosi's Epopee and Attar's Manteghoteir, to find out the differences and similarities of these three old stories through the descriptive and analytic methods.

The article tries to settle a comparative analysis of rock tombs attributed to two ancient civilizations of Medes & Aurorthos. Rock tombs is referred to a stone tombs normally curved into the rocks on the mountains. Most Iranian grave wholes are attributed to the Medes period, originated from the rocky graves digged during the Aurorthos civilization settling around the Vanlake (the current Turkey).It is also necessary to be mentioned that such an architecture came to be applied later during the Achaemenids period.During the 9th century B.C, Aurorthos used to dig the mountains to build some tombs and bury their passed kings. If very - well surveyed such tombs would enable one to recognize the architecture of the first mellanium B.C. and perceive the religious belief and thoughts behind creating such stony works.

Glass painting started from the Zandiyan era with flower and bird painting and then reaches its peak in Qajar era with religious painting. Subject plays the key role in determining the type of structure on religious glass paintings. The subjects are taken from the stories - whether valid or not, popular or not, fictious or real, orally transmitted or quoted - are regarded as the major source for the painters’ inspiration.The painting, hence, would lose much of if values if there were no narrative knowledge. Thus, the realization of relationship between narrative and image is a prelude to understand the other artistic value of these paintings. The paper makes efforts to categorize the subjects in religious paintings, consider the narratives as well as the emergence and use of visual elements and review the content and structure of them. This is due to the fact the artist follows the unwritten rules for structure in terms of color, composition, form and etc in the same tableaus.

Building the tombs for the leading character is one of the Iranians ancient traditions particularly continued for the religious leader after the Islam dominance in this territory. The tendency for building an elegant construction able to attract any viewer, made such monuments as an area displaying the types of traditional and custom arts among which painting stands out, with thousand years of background. The painting would be a prominent tool in order to express the stories and the folk’s feelings.Contrary to the mosques frequently erected and repaired by the governments and their local agents, the sepulchral monuments (like the ones built for Imam’s off springs) have been constructed and decorated by locals. The current paper tend to answer the question how the relation between the wall painting and sepulchral architecture could have been formed during the Islamic era (particulary Safavid and Qajar). Such a question stems from the fact that those two types of arts are inconsistent with the fundamental Islamic thoughts and then they are much influenced by the culture and art obtained from the era prior to Islam. The approach of this study is descriptive together with revoking to some historical documents and writings. The method of collecting the information is depending on the library studies together with searching on the internet.

The Iranian engraved tombstones illustrate a significant part of thoughts and the artistic route belonging the natives of each region. They have been always in the eyes of the folks who have shown much respect and value to such artistic works.Considering the frequency of application as well as the beauty, the cypress as the Iranians’ tree of life has been given a special place among the other plant motifs. The cypress normally comes with symmetrical birds, flowers and geometrical shapes all applied to decorate Iranian tombstones. Darussalam, the only remaining cemetery of the seven ones, is located in south west of Shiraz and hosts valuable collections of engraved plant motifs on tombstones. The current research makes efforts to study the shape, meaning and historical background of those motifs so that it could find out the origin of these designs, the reason why they were frequently applied on the tombstones, and how they were influenced by the social classes to vary in size and design. Including a wide variety of cypress decorations, such motifs borrowed their meaning from the common belief and the visual effects belonging to the Achaemenids designs particularly the ones by Sasanids and contemorarily by Qajars.

Images build the inseparable part of the mankind’s existence and construct the body of his/her understanding of what happening in both the worlds in and outside. The images, then, stand for the visual texts representing the essence of the real life, emphasizing the importance of the human’s description of their own lives and playing a keyrole to interpret the human’s existence. What in some photos, in particular, attracts the audience and encourages the mood enhancement would the ability laid in those photos that remind the audiences of a living text. The photos occasionally captures the audiences through the reality they tend to depict. They reassure the audiences to believe in what they see as a piece of reality which doubtlessly took place in a read moment of time. In his last book on photography, entitled "The light Room", Roland Barthes. mentioned "Stadium and Punctum" to explain how the photos are capable of captivating the audience’s eyes. The current article is to explain and describe the attractive power those two technical terms laid in.