An Analysis of the Social Conditions Leading to Materiality of Contemporary Realist Painting in Iran during 1997 and 2009

we have been witnessing a realistic approach in figurative painting in Iran, between art student and graduate in the recent years. This approach has a tendency towards representing and applying old master skills. This type of painting uses a representational language method, which can simplify connection with addressee of art, and is serving expression of social, individual and internal concepts which introduces new lines of thoughts to Iranian society. Also it seems this movement is in opposition to both current educational systems in the field of art and to dominant modernism. This is taking place through collegiate and intellectuals in artistic cliques.
Although this group of painters is completely familiar with modern art and its concepts, but prefers a different manner of working art. Thus, perhaps the main property of this artistic trend is its contextuality because that is obviously related to community and social context of its production.
This study examines the rise of contemporary realist painting in Iran during the period of 1997 to 2010. There are certain questions involved here as follows: What were the historical context that promoted this new approach in Iran and created the necessary social background and resources for production and development of it? What factors determined its form and content? To identify and analyze the key aspects of the historical contexts in which this new painting was formed, this research applies an inter-disciplinary approach, by constructing an analytical model based on abstract theories developed in sociology of culture and art, cultural studies, and discourse analysis.
This essay will address its questions about effective factors that form contemporary realistic painting in Iran, and will introduce the general predisposal factors for artistic and cultural turn in aforesaid period. We will use the frame of cultural sociology and the theories of Robert Wuthnow as an overall view to address how impressible is the emergence of this artistic trend. This trend, the paper claims, has resulted from changes within government structures and politics, economy, class attitudes, educational system and cultural institutions, and the dominant discourses in social and political spaces and in mental bases, value system and in moral order of Iranian society.
We intend to specify the circumstances and quality of effecting units of community in overall scale and manner of these influences. This will help us to analyze human interaction, discursive arguments, content of cultural and artistic productions and here art works as text in detailed scale. And finally this will help us to understand theirs dialectic relationship with structures in overall scale. This essay uses Norman Fairclough's, Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's discourse analysis methodological model. Thereby it astutely studies social and cultural conditions and changes in this period.
This analysis will suggest a theoretical model while uncertain in discourse order, the availability of resources and chains of interaction are important, the form and content of the artworks are determined by factors such as its “social horizon” and the “existing discursive context” and “discourse contestation in the field of painting”. Through considering artworks produced in this artistic approach, this study analyzes discursive context of society and its relation with current discourses in the field of painting. Therefore it explains the ways, methods and mechanism through which the mentioned social condition will offer possibility for creation and production of art during 1997-2010 in Iran. In the end, this paper discusses the dialectic relationship between art and social structure.