نشریه مطالعات تطبیقی هنر
پیاپی 22 (پاییز و زمستان 1400)

Two decades have passed since the formation of the Middle East art movement. Among the diversity of artistic styles and experiences, three movements can be recognized. First, the flow of modern art in the Middle East; A trend that is the legacy of the decades of peak modern art in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt during the 1960s to 1990s. The second movement, influenced by the post-modern paradigm, had a critical and social approach to the policies of Islamic countries in the Middle East, and with the intensification of war and oil conflicts after September 11, it peaked and became the dominant stream of Middle Eastern art. The third trend is a new trend that was formed under the trans-modern paradigm. The question is what are the fields of formation of Middle Eastern art trends and what changes has Middle Eastern art experienced in these paradigmatic developments. In order to answer this question, the present article intends to explain the transmodernist theoretical approach and in the continuation of it, the description of the Middle East art trends, to deal with the components and characteristics of the contemporary art of the Middle East in the transmodern paradigm. For this purpose, the descriptive-analytical method has been used, as well as the adaptation of the three currents mentioned with the transmodern theoretical approach. The findings of the research show that a significant part of the contemporary artists of the Middle East are trying to go beyond the postmodernist approach that has a critical and blocking view of the flow of native modernity and to form a new type of contemporary art with native and local connotations with the transmodernist approach.

The knowledge of astronomy in the Middle Ages had two major trends: Astronomy and Astrology. Each one of these two trends has its own characteristics and concepts. Many books on Astronomy and Astrology have been written in Iran. Some of these books, such Suwar Al-Kawākib, Ajayeb Al-Makhluqat, Al-Tafhim, Daghayegh Al-Haghayegh, Al-Bolahan, Al-Mavalid, horoscopes, the Zijs, have been duplicated and illustrated in various periods. Illustration for astronomy, like other scientific fields, has always been the focus of writers and copy vectors to understand difficult topics and help the audience's memory to remember the content. The main question of this research is, what are the characteristics of illustrations of books in the field of astronomy and astrology in Iranian art? The researchers of this article have adopted a descriptive-analytical method and a comparative approach, to present a general view of illustration of astronomy and astrology in Iranian painting, and furthermore to explain the characteristics, differences and similarities, topics and also the methods of implementation of illustration of astronomy knowledge books. The analysis of the related works of art has been done keeping in mind the scientific rules of astronomy. The purpose of the research is to pay attention to the characteristics of illustration in astronomy, astrological books, and also, to compare the type of illustration for the mentioned fields. The results of the research show that the requirement of painters to comply with scientific standards in order to maintain the accuracy of astronomical materials has limited them in the type, style and quality of illustrations in this field, while there were no such strictures for illustrators of astrological books. Illustration of astronomy and astrology books is a combination of realism and fantasy. Astronomy images are often realistic and astrological images are more surrealistic. But the summary of all the differences between astronomy and astrology illustration can be summed up in the fact that the illustrator of astronomy texts is required to follow the rules so as not to damage the scientific accuracy of the text. While there are no such strictures for the illustrator of astrology texts.

Although the term and metaphor of narratives are widely used in museological literature, there are still very few studies about what and how narrative is and the existing approaches, especially in cultural studies, have dealt more with critical aspects. The methodology of this research follows a descriptive-analytical approach and is situated in the framework of "narrative theory" based on the views of Gerard Genet. It addresses the question of how and by what techniques a chain of narrative units or events are presented through the formation of narrative discourse in art museums. And in this regard, by analyzing one of the main categories of literary narratology, namely the time in narrative and especially with a comparative study of the category of "order" or "anchronies" for the museum exhibition, how to achieve a way to analyze the museum narrative and its installation based on the theory of narrative?
After reviewing the previous approaches experienced in the installation of the National Gallery of London and analyzing the "Sainsbury Wing" section as a case study, it was concluded that aesthetical and practical principles in architecture and implementation of composition and visual aspects in the installation create the same narrative anachronies that we know as one of the literary tools in the narrative.
In designing the architecture of this section of the National Gallery, Robert Venturi, with a functionalist approach to provide space for a real experience of seeing paintings that goes beyond just a museum visit, has been able to present the museum chronological narrative, and by creating several windows and suspensions, through spatial relationships and through what has been identified in this study from the perspective of narratology as types of external analepsis and prolepsis, has achieved narration in this museum. Therefore, although Gerard Genet considered narrative to be more specific to literature, this study shows that the main components of narrative discourse analysis, such as time and order in his views, can be applied to exhibition narrative.

According to different religions, there are different believes about the world and the world after death, and one of these journeys in the stories of different nations is the ascension to the ultramundane arena. Although the ascension stories have different themes in different cultures have verbal and spiritual commonalities associated with it (such as apocalyptic revelational texts, teleological texts, afterlife journeys, dreams, spiritual journeys, legendary texts, ascension to the heavens, etc.) But by analyzing and examining these stories and similar narrative symbols more closely, it is possible to understand how archetypes and myths are used over time to create new meanings (overtly or covertly) in them. One of the main goals of this research is to analyze and investigate the narrative symbols in the stories and illustrations of Ilkhani's Ascension Book (762-772 AH) and Timuri's Book of Ascension (840 AH) based on the approach of Northrop Frye's Archetype Theory of Meaning, which has stages. One of the main questions of this research is that how many structures can be classified in the story and illustrations of Meraj Nameh based on the stages of Frye's archetypal theory and cognitive myth? And in which part of the paintings (hell or heaven) have they used the original mythological stories of ascension in ancient civilization (Iran) and invented new meanings in an untransformed and transformed form? so that through the principle of myth displacement in Frei's theories, we can approach the origin and narrative and pictorial background of the ascension paintings. Therefore, the results obtained in this research by using the comparative-analytical method and library sources prove that the archetypal meaning in the pictures can be classified into eight semantic structures according to Northrop Frye's theoretical model, and the mythological concepts in it can be examined in the form of untransformed (obvious) and transformed (hidden) in most of the infernal and heavenly images.

Street art is among the works of art that are exposed to everyone in public places; some artists use this method as a tool for protest, while other artists use the urban space as an opportunity to display personal works with a broad audience. In recent years, new types of street art have emerged in Iran, which are in line with the street art movements in the world, and make it necessary to study and analyze these works as a part of contemporary Iranian art. Understanding the status and trends of street art in Iran and its influence from the West requires a comparative study between local and leading global artists. Therefore, the present article uses a descriptive-analytical method to identify and match the content similarities between the works of one of the pioneers of Iranian street art with the nickname "Blackhand" and the famous English street artist "Banksy." This research, to explain the influence of the Iranian artist from his English counterpart, tries to answer the question of what meaningful commonalities bring the content of the protest works of these two artists together. The findings indicate that both artists seek social criticism and challenge the dominant discourses of society in their works; Although Blackhand has taken advantage of the same themes as Banksy's works in this joint mission, in the end, he creatively takes inspiration from these themes and adds elements and ideas related to the political and social structure of his society to the content of his works in order to create a new and localized dialogue.To achieve Hence, Blackhand's works acquire a new identity in connection with Banksy's works.

Visual representation in the media world of digital images is an emerging phenomenon in which its achievement requires the identification of the epistemological and technological system of postmodern and media art, and the developments that have emerged in the path of the transformation of subjectivity. The visual representation of the female subject on Instagram as a social network can provide a suitable perspective for examining the contemporary representation and can reveal the status of the female subject in social media by distancing itself from the modern subjectivity. Via a descriptive-analytical research method and employing Jean Baudrillard's ideas of media, the present study seeks to answer the following questions: How has the Instagram social network with its technological structure and media circulation affected the image representation of the contemporary Iranian female subject? What position can be given to the artist-subject and the image-object in the contemporary media representation? The study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of the representation of the contemporary Iranian female subject in Instagram hyperreality, relying on Baudrillard's ideas. The population consisted of the women’s published photos on Instagram, selected through a purposive sampling method. The inclusion criteria of images were based on Baudrillard’s concepts. The results revealed that the world of contemporary women’s media representation is a world without reference or hyperreality that denies the possibility of a subject’s agency in a break from reality, making her face the objects that the media and its technological structure have put forward, that is, transaesthetic and transsexual objects that become empty simulacra, seeking for their new identity and reality based on the media world.