JOURNAL OF VISUAL AND APPLIED ARTS
Year:2019 | Volume:12 | Issue:24|Papers Count:6

In Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach, the relationship between the body and the world is so intertwined that their separation is not possible. Human’ s perception is possible through her/his body. Painter as a researcher discovers the complex connection of the subject and object or human and the world because the painter can reveal it by focusing on the relationship between man and the world and by bracketing (epoche) the obscure aspects of phenomena. Mohassess’ works seem to be a kind of description and interpretation of the relationship between man and the world, away from an objective representation focused on similarity. As Merleau-Ponty’ s attempts to resolve the issue between the subject and the object through his own approach, Mohassess also works with the production of the painting effect to solve this duality. Mohasses’ some of works have an ability for new reading according to Merleau-Ponty’ s philosophy. As a phenomenologist, Mohasses focuses on the human position in the world and takes away from similarity which was dominant in classical aesthetics. The body in his painting is not a representation of the appearance of man but it represents a concept about human position. He attempts to make visible with his hands, brush and mind for the audience on painting canvas everything that is hidden from eyes. In this way in his paintings, subject and object are intertwined and they have equally important, also there is a dialectical relationship between them. Accordingly, Mohasses takes into account the form and the content that incorporates modern humans into the industrial world. He tries to bring the audience closer to the aesthetic pleasure through understanding the new meanings. According to Merleau-Ponty’ s method, the well-known phenomenologist technique has been created to lighten up and clarify the relationship between man and the world, that is, epoch or suspend. Therefore, it is impossible to describe Mohassess as a formalist or conceptual artist. By revealing how to achieve personal style, the creation of characters, the role of ambiguity and suspension in the creation of meaning, the place of color in the creation of meaning and the perception between the artist and the audience, it was revealed to us that, in the view of Mohassess, as well as the language of Merleau-Ponty is. It is noteworthy in his representations on the one hand, represent Descartes, and on the other hand, to Merleauy-Ponty’ s approach to apparent appearances, the most important of which is how faces appear and how they can be understood. In this research, we describe and analyze the derived data from library study of Merleau-Ponty’ s theory and we compare Mohasses’ selected works with embodiment theory in order to extend our aesthetic experience from his paintings.

The present paper looks upon one of the most influential periods in the history of the world and especially the United States; the revolutionary 60’ s. It is most probable that among all the artists whose names are tied to this decade, Diane Arbus has the most ambiguous relation with the political atmosphere surrounding her. She never pointed her camera at the protests and the major figures during those years and instead devoted herself to shooting photographs of people who were marginalized by the society due to their physical or psychological characteristics. The present paper aims at this very ambiguous state of the relation between Arbus’ works and the sixties as well as an endeavor to reduce the intensity of this ambiguity or at least present some appropriate questions regarding it. For the purposes of this paper, library findings about Arbus’ works and the political atmosphere of the sixties were investigated using a critical method. The results demonstrated that there is agreement between Arbus and the protests during the sixties regarding how both of them turned away from the society dominating its outcasts. However, unlike the 60’ s revolutionaries who considered this tendency as a chance to make a fundamental change, Arbus found it as a surrender and feeling of frustration in making changes.

The people’ s interest in reading books is conjectured to be decreased in future with the decrease in the mean study rates countrywide and considering the descending trend of study time as a result of which the publication industry would encounter a new challenge. The diversity of the audiovisual media and weakness in study culture are the other reasons having given rise to the decline in book sales. One way of creating attractiveness for enhancing the study is creation of changes in the appearance of the books, especially in those published for children and adolescent, that might bring about visual fascination hence preventing visual dishabituation. The present study investigates the factors influencing the selection of pictorial book volumes for children and adolescents as viewed by the publishers based on applied research methodology. Then, the information is collected based on library research and field studies through note-taking and questionnaire. Fuzzy Delphi technique has been the method of choice for constructing a validity-standard questionnaire so that the variables influencing the selection of pictorial book volumes for children and adolescents could be obtained. To examine the variables and find important topics related to pictorial book volumes, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and independent one-sample t-test and Friedman test were employed. The study results indicated that the indicators influential on the selection of children-specific book volumes from the perspective of the publishers respectively are use duration, appearance, lightness, production costs, story space, number of pages and subject. In the production of adolescent-specific books, such indices as use duration, color and design, application, subject, production costs and number of pages were pinpointed as most superior.

Children’ s products should be designed according to their age characteristics and culture and provide them with the opportunities to learn, explore and experiment. These products should also enhance children’ s creativity, imagination, manual and mental dexterity. Regarding to the important role of products in elevating children’ s life quality, industrial designers could take an active role in child-related industry if they were educated in this field of design and learned how to design for children based on requirements and standards. Child-oriented design is one of the different fields in industrial design that can be taught at universities. This paper Studies the importance of child-oriented design education at universities (industrial design faculties). In this research the data were collected from four different sources. First, the title of all dissertations submitted in industrial design faculties during the last 6 years, were checked. Second, a total of 20 toy sellers were interviewed and their opinions about children’ s product were recorded. Third, the questionnaires were sent to 24 managers or top executives in children’ s product design companies and the rest of data were gathered through web-based questionnaires from industrial design professors. The research findings showed that a significant number of industrial design students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, are interested in designing for children. According to the survey of dissertation titles, 22 percent of undergraduate students and 24 percent of master students have chosen child-oriented design titles among the various field of industrial design without any prior education. Moreover, all toy sellers interviewed expressed that children and their parents prefer to buy imported products due to their variation and also their qualities. The sellers also said they are not eager to sell Iranian products as they cannot attract their consumers. In addition, the industry survey revealed that more than 95 percent of managers are not familiar with design process as their majors are not related to design or even some of them do not have university education. 20 percent of these companies do not have design sectors and 64 percent of the rest do not have design experts in their design sectors. Although about 55 percent of managers claimed that their products have been fully designed in their companies, there are some examples of products that have been fully or partly copied the concept of some other products. On the whole, there are severe shortcomings in child-related industries, mostly because of the absence of child-oriented design experts. Findings also indicated that industrial design professors believe that child-oriented education can bring significant benefits to child-related industries and flourish Iran’ s local market. They think that our products cannot be successful in local market firstly because of their bad qualities and secondly due to their low quantities. They also argued that inaugurating a new elective course with the title of designing for children in undergraduate industrial design program is the first step to start child-oriented design education according to the current condition of universities in Iran.

This article has tried to look at the political representation of mythical creatures in the Achaemenid architecture to find the semantic roots of them, in the art of ancient Iran and adjacent civilizations, by the method of Jakobson’ s six communication functions. By researching their myths and beliefs, and looking at the motifs of their artifacts, we want to shine a flash on relationship between these cultures, and perusing the migration of these symbols. Roman Jakobson defined six functions of a communication act; Sender (with the emotive or affective function), Reciever (with the conative function), Context (with the referential function), Channel (with the phatic function), Code (with the reflexive function) and Message (with the poetic function). In this issue, sender is supposed to be Achaemenid court. Recievers are the political representatives of the Achaemenid states. Context is an intelligent combination of various cultures and religious credences of ancient east’ s inhabitants. Channel is the art of stone carving, observed by the court. Code is a selective collection of prevalent mythical beliefs in the states of the kingdom. However, the most important function is the message: imperial art is transnational. We reviewed nine archetypal symbols in the Achaemenid architecture. First, a bas-relief in Pasargadae, most likely a resemblance of Cyrus himself, possessing four wings shown in an Assyrian style, dressed in Elamite traditional clothing, with the Egyptian Hemhem crown. A fish-man on the walls of palace “ S” in Pasargadae may refer to an Apkallu, one of the seven Mesopotamian sages or demigods who are said to have been created by the god Enki. Beside that, we can find a Bull-Man, maybe Kusarikku, an ancient Mesopotamian mythological demon. Winged Bulls on the walls of Apadana palace in Susa are maybe symbols of Tishtar (god of rain) in his battle with Apush (demon of drouth), or just mighty protectors of the palace. Achaemenid winged globes are derived from an Egyptian origin, placed above the entrances to all the temples in order to commemorate the victory won by Horus over Set. This pattern turned to the symbol of god Assur in the Assyrian art. The battle between a king and a beast in the entrance of Tachara palace is presumably connected with a bas-relief from the Ninurta temple in Nimrud, that Ninurta with his thunderbolts pursues Anzu (Imdugud). Gopat (winged bull or lion with human face with a great emphasis in the Avestan literature) and Shirdal (eagle-head lion) have used in all the ancient eastern arts. Man, eagle, lion and bull each have their magical power and territory. When they combine, the result would be an unconquerable guardian for shrines. The mythical creature found on the walls of Tomb-e Ajori must be muš ḫ uš š u, the sacred animal of Marduk and his son Nabu depicted on the Ishtar Gate of the city of Babylon. Achaemenid diplomacy was based on political, cultural and religious tolerance; therefore, it’ s not unexpected for their art to be combined and transnational.

Iran was always vulnerable to foreign attacks due to the strategic and geometrical features of the country. Therefore, having a powerful army was vital for rulers since their stability or decline relied heavily on the power of the forces and the way they utilized their military tools. During the Islamic era, the weapons industry thrived thank to the stability and peace brought by the Safavid government. Time period studied in this research is the Qajar period; Qajar kings ruled over Iran after the Zand dynasty from 1925 to 1794 A. D. In Qajar period, despite the increasing use of fire arms and the more appropriate use of them, past combat weapons were still produced in limited quantity. During this period, various kinds of cold weapons were used in battlefields, such as bladed weapons, knockers and pounders, throwing weapons, and some tools for capturing castles. The subject matter of the research is examining and classification of swords in this period. Sword is one of the most important and most effective arm of cold weapons during the historical and Islamic era, which was used in various forms and decorations with different motifs and techniques in wars and official celebrations. The purpose of this article is introduction and classification of Qajar’ s swords; studying their motifs, themes and their decorative techniques; studying distinction aspects of war and ceremonial swords; and use of paintings and photos of this period in comparative studies. In this regard, these questions were considered that are included: How is the typology of the Qajar’ s swords in term of form? What decorative motifs, themes and techniques were used for beautification of Qajar’ s swords? What kinds of the functions were for swords and what differences are between the war and the ceremonial swords of this period? How the remained paintings and photos help us in recognizing the swords? This research was conducted by a historical-descriptive and comparative approach; and by combining the method of studying library resources and field studies on 50 distinctive samples of the swords, which are mainly held in interior museums and some museums and collections abroad. Based on the findings of the research, blade of the swords in term of curvature contains curved, semi-curved, straight and almost straight with low curvature. Circular and conical shapes were common forms of quillon; and almond shape were common form of scabbard fittings. The swords are decorated with vegetal-geometrical, human-animal and inscriptive motifs with various themes, and often decorated by gilded working, engraving and etching techniques. The expensive decorative techniques (for examples: inlaying and enameling) of some swords show their use at official ceremonies as ceremonial weapons that in this context, paintings and photos can help us to increase information.