Iran-Occident Relationships in the Realm of Paintings
Negar Habibi
What makes a non-Occidental painting an Occidentalized one? How should one define Occidentalizing art? How does the early-modern Iranian painting recount the Otherness? These are some of the questions that this paper asks, however, without offering any precise answers. I will nevertheless try to discuss some paintings that present a conceptual or technical transformations from traditional Iranian paintings, especially the ones from Heart, Tabriz and Shiraz.
By reviewing some paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, this paper seeks to find the diverse layers of Iran-Occident relationships. In relation to this, it also maps the extents in which the European art consecutively “inspired” and “influenced” the Iranian painting. By analyzing these paintings, we notice that the Occidentals who were given little significance during the Safavid era (1502-1736), became the center of the world for the Qājārs (1794-1925). With this shift, their behaviors and judgments became social values to be acquired to become a great nation. By discussing the societal contexts in which these paintings were created, I delve into the raison d’êtreof these paintings in the Safavid and Qājār politics towards the Occidentals. We examine indeed the idea of whether one may take these paintings as the mirror of their societies, since they do confirm the historical and literary sources revealing the Iranian gaze to the Occidentals.