The role of intellectual movements and government interests in nationalistic approaches of Iranian modern painting during the Pahlavi era

Intellectual developments, political movements and cultural policies of government during the Pahlavi era, played a significant role in formation and developing of important tendencies of Iranian modern painting. The present article, based on the analytic approaches, investigates the influence of the leftist, nationalistic and Islamist movements on art, and simultaneously studies the role of governmental interests in artistic movements. These social tendencies as the dominated paradigms of social institutes, especially political and cultural institutes, from 1932 to 1979, had great influences on Iranian modern painting. These Influences in different periods and situations, from the beginning to the end of the Pahlavi era, dependent on the special position of governmental artistic strategies and their interaction with intellectual and cultural attitudes of Iranian elites, and also regarding the pressure of modernity, caused different shapes of modern artistic trends in theory and practise, from leftist and social theories of art to the local and national tendencies. During the Pahlavi era the modernization program gathered momentum and the social structure of Iran changed quite radically. After the 1953 coup, in an attempt to show that it was going to be modernized in all social aspects, the government aimed to present a state of the art and modern look in artistic fields. In the 1960s and 1970s drastic governmental measures were taken towards modernization with emphasis on nationalism. Simultaneously a great number of painters tended to use certain elements of common culture and the traditional art of Iran and synthesize them in a modern artistic expression. Nationalistic and “orientalistic” interpretation of these tendencies and trends led to an artistic movement called “Saqqa- khaneh”. Another important characteristic of the 1960 and 1970 decade was the development of some theories emphasizing Islamic-Iranian identity and criticizing the loss of Iranian cultural identity through the adoption of western culture named “westoxification” ( West-struck-ness). This increased the artistic tendencies towards the common and past culture of Iran. On the other hand emphasizing the relationship between art and the local populace became one of the important subject-matters in the intellectual and cultural society. In the last years of the Pahlavi era there was widespread criticism against the cultural situation of the Iranian society from many intellectuals with different tendencies; however, the spiritual and religious interpretation of Iranian culture emphasizing Shiite principles of belief was the major trend. After the collapse of the Pahlavi government any institute related to modern art and culture was regarded as an anti religion and westernized phenomenon and its activity was halted for some years. Despite the other researches about Iranian modern painting, which they usually emphasise the inter textual developments based on the modern tendencies of painters in the contrary with the traditional approaches and the naturalistic style of “Kamal ol Molk’s School”, this article lays special emphasis on the outer factors and analyzes the impact of the social changes such as political and intellectual developments on the general movements of the Iranian modern painting which had especially a nationalistic tendency.