https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/ Journal of Fine Arts: Visual Arts en daily 1 Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0330 Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0330 https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108254.html The philosophy and theory of art have always oscillated between the abstract reflections of philosophers and the lived experience of artists. Throughout the history of Western thought, art theory has generally been presented as the product of philosophers who themselves lacked direct experience in artistic creation. Historical evidence, however, suggests that many of the most significant theoretical developments in art originated from the minds and creative practices of artists themselves.The Renaissance marks a decisive turning point in this transformation. During this period, the artist was elevated from the status of a skilled craftsman (techne) to that of an intellectual, a theorist, and a creative thinker. Through a close reading of Leonardo da Vinci's Paragone, this essay seeks to demonstrate how Leonardo, perhaps for the first time, presented painting not merely as a manual craft but as a rational discipline possessing its own independent theoretical foundations—a discipline capable of generating the internal philosophy of art from within artistic practice itself.A. Leonardo da Vinci and the Birth of an Internal Philosophy of ArtLeonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is widely regarded as the archetypal "Renaissance Man." Beyond being one of history's greatest painters, he was an accomplished architect, sculptor, mathematician, engineer, and natural philosopher. In Art Through the Ages, Helen Gardner (1926) describes him in these words:"His mind and personality seem superhuman, while he himself remains an elusive and mysterious figure."An equally remarkable testimony comes from Giorgio Vasari (d. 1574), whose Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects constitutes the first comprehensive history of Western art—roughly contemporaneous, in its own cultural context, with Qāḍī Aḥmad Munshī's Golestān-e Honar in Safavid Iran. Vasari writes:"The greatest gifts are often seen, in the course of nature, to be showered by celestial influences upon human beings; and sometimes, in a manner surpassing nature itself, beauty, grace, and talent are united beyond measure in one single person. Whatever such a person turns his attention to becomes so divine that it clearly reveals itself as a gift bestowed by God rather than something acquired through human effort or art. All people recognized this truth in Leonardo da Vinci, who, besides his extraordinary physical beauty, possessed infinite grace in all his actions, and whose genius enabled him to solve the most difficult problems with effortless ease." (Vasari, 1912/1401 SH)Vasari's testimony carries particular significance because he was Leonardo's near contemporary and thus provides a firsthand account of the artist's extraordinary reputation. Yet one of the most remarkable aspects of Leonardo's legacy lies elsewhere. At a time when artists were generally regarded as practitioners of manual skill rather than authors of theoretical discourse, Leonardo produced an extraordinary body of writings devoted to the theory of art.These manuscripts announce the emergence of a philosophy arising from within artistic practice itself. They embody a rare harmony between artistic creation and theoretical reflection, revealing the unity of practice and thought within the intellectual world of this great Renaissance master. For this reason, Leonardo's writings may be regarded as among the earliest attempts in Western art history to formulate a philosophy of art originating not outside artistic practice but from the very experience of artistic creation—a philosophy born from the artist's own reflection upon the nature of art rather than from the speculations of philosophers alone.It is precisely for this reason that Lionello Venturi, in History of Art Criticism (1936), objects to the tendency of histories of aesthetics to overlook figures such as Alberti and Leonardo while searching exclusively among philosophers for the foundations of aesthetic thought:"Alberti and Leonardo produced the most important artistic theories of the Renaissance, yet histories of aesthetics and philosophy assign them only a negligible place."Venturi—whose assessment is echoed by Władysław Tatarkiewicz in History of Aesthetics, where Leonardo is likewise recognized as a major theorist of art—continues:"The originality of Alberti's and Leonardo's aesthetics lies in the new definition they offered of art—a definition fundamentally different from both Aristotle's conception of art as imitation of nature and Plotinus' understanding of art as divine illumination. For them, the artist does not dissolve into God; rather, he becomes a creator who understands nature according to the principles of the human mind instead of merely imitating it. Through painting, the artist demonstrates his knowledge of nature by means of manual activity. Art therefore claims both the task of scientific knowledge and the status of an intellectual enterprise. Since nature has replaced God as the object of art, the human mind likewise replaces God as the source of art. No comparable theory can be found in Renaissance poetry, for poetry was never assigned the same scientific function as painting."I share Venturi's conviction that a substantial part of the philosophy of art resides in the thought and creative practice of artists themselves. This mode of reflection deserves to be articulated, for it provides the most authentic mirror of artistic creation. Such an approach undoubtedly comes closer to the truth of art than theories formulated by philosophers who remain detached from the lived reality of artistic practice.B. Paragone: Painting as a ScienceParagone, one of the most important theoretical texts of the Renaissance, is the title of the opening chapter of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting, although it has also been published independently. A Persian translation of the text appeared under the title Paragone: A Comparison of the Arts (1817/1398 SH). The central concern of this work is Leonardo's effort to demonstrate the scientific status of painting—or, more precisely, its rational and intellectual character. As he famously declares, "Painting is a mental thing (cosa mentale) and an intellectual activity." Michelangelo expressed a remarkably similar view when he stated: "One paints with the mind, not with the hands."The Italian word Paragone originally referred to the touchstone used to test the purity of gold. Like many technical and scholarly terms of Renaissance Europe, its deeper linguistic roots may be traced to Greek. While the Renaissance usage primarily conveys the idea of "comparison," it also preserves the older metaphor of a criterion or touchstone by which value is assessed. This dual meaning is particularly appropriate in Leonardo's text, for his purpose is not merely to compare the arts but to present painting itself as the criterion by which the true excellence of the other arts may be measured. It is therefore plausible that nineteenth-century editors, including Guglielmo Manzi, deliberately retained the title Paragone in order to evoke both meanings simultaneously: comparison and touchstone.In its present form, Paragone consists of twenty-eight brief notes, all directed toward a single objective: demonstrating that painting is a genuine science. Leonardo opens the work with the fundamental question: "Is painting a science or not?" He immediately answers this question by constructing a concise yet profound argument based upon the geometrical principles of point, line, and plane:"The first principle of the science of painting is the point; the second, the line; the third, the surface; and the fourth, the body clothed by that surface."This seemingly elementary sequence reveals Leonardo's conviction that painting rests upon demonstrable rational principles rather than manual dexterity alone. His profound mastery of geometry, mathematics, optics, and the science of vision—including theories concerning visual rays and the processes of perception—enabled him to establish painting upon scientific foundations. His conception of pictorial knowledge is inseparable from the mathematical ordering of visible reality.Leonardo's scientific outlook becomes even clearer in the second note, where he compares poetry and painting:"The relation between imagination and reality is like that between shadow and substance; such is also the relation between poetry and painting. Poetry employs words to evoke things within the imagination, whereas painting presents things directly to the eye, so that they appear almost as if they were truly present."Here Leonardo advances an epistemological argument rather than merely an aesthetic preference. Painting enjoys superiority because vision provides a more immediate and reliable mode of knowledge than verbal description. Images communicate through direct perception, whereas poetry depends upon the mediation of language and the constructive power of imagination.Leonardo's encyclopedic command of the sciences of his age is particularly evident in the sixth note, devoted to the scope of painting as a science—a theme that recurs throughout Paragone. He writes:"The science of painting embraces all the colours of surfaces, the forms of bodies clothed by those surfaces, and the varying degrees of diminution corresponding to the increasing distance of objects. This science is the mother of perspective, that is, of the science of visual lines. Perspective itself consists of three parts..."These remarks demonstrate that, already in the late fifteenth century, Leonardo regarded painting as a comprehensive scientific discipline grounded in mathematics, optics, geometry, and the laws governing visual perception. Perspective is therefore not merely a technical device but the rational structure that makes pictorial knowledge possible.Leonardo continues this argument in the seventh note, entitled "The Most Useful of the Sciences." Here he invokes the Aristotelian concept of common sense (sensus communis), one of the central notions of De Anima. More importantly, he characterizes painting as a noble science whose highest utility lies in making the sacred present before human beings. He writes:"When the veil covering a sacred image is drawn aside, the multitude gathered there immediately falls to the ground in reverence before the painting. They pray before the one represented in it, asking for the restoration of their health and for eternal salvation, as though the divine figure were truly living and present before their eyes."For Leonardo, therefore, painting is not merely an instrument of representation. It possesses the extraordinary capacity to render absent realities present. Through the painted image, what is physically absent acquires an experiential presence capable of transforming the viewer's consciousness.Leonardo's observation inevitably recalls Martin Heidegger's celebrated discussion of the work of art in The Origin of the Work of Art. Heidegger writes:"It is by virtue of the temple that the god is present in the temple... In the work, a bringing-forth occurs through which beings emerge from concealedness into presence. For this reason, the Greek word techne signifies not mere craftsmanship but a mode of revealing."Whether Heidegger was directly influenced by Leonardo's Paragone cannot be established; no documentary evidence supports such a claim. Nevertheless, the affinity between Leonardo's understanding of painting as making the sacred present and Heidegger's conception of the artwork as a site of unconcealment (aletheia) is striking. Both thinkers understand the work of art not as a passive representation but as an event through which reality manifests itself. This intellectual convergence, even in the absence of demonstrable historical influence, offers a promising avenue for future research in the philosophy of art.C. Concluding RemarksThe opening editorial of an academic journal should awaken the reader's curiosity and inspire further inquiry. For this reason, I shall conclude this introductory reflection here and invite readers to engage directly with Leonardo da Vinci's Paragone.The purpose of this brief essay has been not only to introduce one of the Renaissance's most significant theoretical texts, but also to emphasize a broader intellectual point: Paragone is far more than a treatise defending the superiority of painting. It represents one of the earliest and most ambitious attempts to establish an internal philosophy of art—a philosophy that emerges from the lived experience of artistic creation rather than from external philosophical speculation.Leonardo's central achievement lies in redefining painting as a mode of knowledge. He rejects the view that painting is merely a manual craft or technical skill and instead presents it as a rational, scientific, and cognitive discipline grounded in mathematics, geometry, optics, and the laws of visual perception. In Leonardo's thought, artistic practice and intellectual inquiry become inseparable; the painter is not simply an artisan but an investigator of nature whose work constitutes a genuine form of knowledge.From this perspective, Leonardo da Vinci deserves to be regarded not only as one of history's greatest artists but also as one of the earliest modern theorists of the philosophy of art—even if, as Lionello Venturi lamented, the history of aesthetics has largely neglected his contribution. His writings demonstrate that art theory need not originate exclusively from philosophers; it can arise from the artist's own reflective engagement with the creative process.In the next issue of this journal, I shall continue this discussion by examining Leonardo's comparison of painting with music and sculpture, again drawing upon Paragone, in order to further illuminate his understanding of the hierarchy and distinctive capacities of the arts. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_103910.html More than two decades have passed since the formation of the contemporary art movement of the Middle East. Due to the dispersion and lack of uniformity in the art of this region, each researcher has used a special title for it in their works in various periods and according to the paradigms dominant in Muslim societies. Titles such as; Muslim art, Islamic art, Arab art and finally Middle Eastern art have been applied to it, which has been as controversial as the Middle East itself. Middle Eastern art continued to exist under two factors: 1. The entry of Western colonialism and modernity into Muslim countries 2. The departure of famous artists to learn, or their permanence in the West, due to the conditions after September 11 in these countries. Sylvia Neff (2003), for the purpose of historical research, divides modern and contemporary Arab art into three periods: 1. Acceptance 2. Adaptation and 3. Globalization (Naef, 3003), which can also be generalized to Iranian artists. During the period of introduction and familiarity with Western art, Muslim artists tried to imitate the realist style and behavior of the West. In Iran, the acceptance of these ideas began with Mohammad Zaman, then ended with Mahmoud Saba, Kamal al-Molk, and finally his students. In the period of adaptation, artists who had gone abroad tried to create a modern art by preserving the cultural heritage and national background. In Iran, artists such as Jalil Ziapour and Hossein Zanderudi, with the Saqakhaneh movement and the adaptation of traditional art and its combination with modern art, led to the "Calligraphy" style, and in the suburbs of Arab artists, such as Madiha Omar, Kamal Balata, and... to the "Hurufiya Movement". However, in the period of globalization, after the September 11 attacks and during the two decades that followed, due to the migration of young Middle Eastern artists to the West, two streams of their experiences in new lands emerged. The former created hybrid works through traumatic experiences, critical art, and postmodernism, but the latter seeks a complete narrative of "selfhood" that has grown and emerged after emerging from the shadow of "otherness," which has created a trammel reflection with transmodernist art.This research aims, while explaining Middle Eastern art, emphasizing the theoretical approach of transmodern art, to reinterpret the forms found in the works of transmodern artists, among whom four well-known artists from four different country areas were selected and analyzed and examined based on Feldman's four-stage model. To achieve this goal, several basic questions are considered; What identity aspects do the forms found in Islamic transmodern art in the works of Middle Eastern artists have? What experiences are these forms the result of? And finally, by answering the questions in question, a question that is not the subject of this article is raised and remains unanswered: Is Middle Eastern art repeating its past experiences, emerging with a new approach, and is this considered a loss or progress? https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107379.html Some of Contemporary museums are undergoing a profound transformation by integrating emerging digital technologies to enhance visitor experiences, preserve cultural heritage, and redefine their social roles. This convergence represents a fundamental change in how museums conceptualize, present, and interpret contemporary art. However, despite growing scholarly interest in digital museology, comprehensive research remains limited on how multiple technologies—particularly robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI)—simultaneously affect museum practices and the emergence of new forms of contemporary art. This study addresses that gap through three questions: 1) How have these technologies transformed the exhibition and interpretation of contemporary art? 2) How has the convergence of technology and art reshaped the audience’s role in artistic experience? 3) What are the applications, benefits, and challenges of each technology in contemporary museums? This applied-developmental, descriptive-analytical research adopted a qualitative approach. Data were collected through a comprehensive literature review. The search strategy included Google Scholar, specialized museum journals, institutional reports, and related scholarly sources. The findings indicate that AI-based personalization algorithms enable museums to tailor content and visitor journeys according to individual preferences, prior knowledge, and behavioral patterns. Virtual reality and augmented reality facilitate immersive, multilayered interpretation and allow visitors to experience artworks beyond physical constraints, including entering a painter’s perspective or visualizing creative processes. Robotics, particularly interactive guide robots, introduces new forms of physical interaction, especially in performance and movement-based art. Collectively, these technologies transform audiences from passive observers into active participants, co-creators of meaning, and, in some contexts, temporary artists. IoT-based intelligent monitoring systems equipped with distributed sensor networks continuously track temperature, humidity, light levels, and airborne pollutants, providing real-time alerts for preventive conservation. Such systems help protect collections from biological threats, including insects and fungi, as well as chemical degradation. Advanced AI security systems further integrate facial recognition, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics to safeguard collections against theft, vandalism, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. In museum education, emerging technologies have transformed teaching by enabling experiential, situated, and multimedia learning beyond traditional educational models. VR supports immersive programs in which learners explore reconstructed historical contexts and artistic processes from first-person perspectives. AR overlays supplementary information, including artists’ biographies, technical details, and critical interpretations, directly onto displayed works through mobile devices or smart glasses. Remote-visit technologies, accelerated by pandemic-era adaptations, allow global audiences to access collections despite geographic limitations, thereby expanding inclusive cultural engagement. Most importantly, digital technologies have become generative forces in contemporary art rather than merely presentation tools. AI algorithms can generate artworks, collaborate with human artists, and transform existing themes. VR and AR also enable virtual reconstructions of damaged or destroyed works, including self-destructive art associated with Gustav Metzger, thereby reviving ephemeral artistic forms in immersive environments. Comparative analysis shows that AI is the only technology with an active presence across all major areas of museology—audience engagement, conservation, education, access, and creativity—and across diverse branches of contemporary art, from performance to self-destructive practices. The study concludes that each technology offers distinct value: robotics enables physical interaction; IoT supports intelligent monitoring and sustainable management; AR enriches contextual and immersive experiences; VR expands experiential interpretation; and AI provides integrated intelligence capable of personalizing, predicting, and creating. Their convergence is not merely additive but synergistic. AI combined with IoT enables predictive preservation, AI with VR produces responsive immersive environments, and robotics with AR facilitates interactive physical–virtual arrangements. Together, these technologies support multilayered interpretation, contextual enrichment, and the reconstruction of damaged or ephemeral works. The audience’s role has consequently shifted from passive receiver to active agent, participant in meaning-making, and co-creator of artistic significance. Nevertheless, important challenges remain, including implementation costs, the digital divide, technological obsolescence, privacy and ethical concerns, and the risk that authentic museum experiences may be reduced to entertainment. This research contributes a comprehensive framework for understanding technology-driven changes in museology and their implications for contemporary art production, exhibition, curation, and reception. Future research should examine longitudinal effects on visitor behavior, institutional readiness, ethical governance, accessibility, and changing patterns of authorship. Comparative studies across cultural contexts may further identify sustainable models for technologically mediated artistic engagement and participation. These developments also challenge established assumptions about curatorial authority, authenticity, and the boundaries between artwork, interface, and institutional infrastructure. As digital systems increasingly mediate encounters with collections, curators must consider how algorithmic selection, personalization, and automated interpretation influence what visitors see and how they understand it. Consequently, technological integration should not be evaluated solely in terms of efficiency or novelty, but also according to its cultural, ethical, and aesthetic implications. Museums need interdisciplinary strategies that bring together curators, artists, conservators, educators, designers, and technology specialists. Such collaboration can ensure that innovation remains aligned with institutional missions while preserving critical reflection, accessibility, and meaningful human participation across museum contexts. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_104631.html The Ramayana, together with the Mahabharata and the Puranas, forms one of the foundational texts of India's religious and cultural heritage. Beyond its literary importance, it has played a central role in shaping the visual, religious, and artistic traditions of South Asia. During the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar (1556–1605), the Persian translation and illustration of the Ramayana became part of a broader cultural policy that promoted dialogue among the diverse religious and ethnic communities of the empire. By encouraging the translation of Sanskrit texts into Persian and commissioning their illustration in the imperial workshops, Akbar created an artistic environment in which Muslim and Hindu painters worked together, exchanged visual traditions, and developed new forms of artistic expression. The resulting Persian illustrated Ramayana manuscripts provide valuable evidence of cultural interaction between Hindu and Persian-Islamic traditions. Among these manuscripts, the Freer Ramayana, commissioned by ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān with Akbar's approval and now preserved in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., occupies a special place. One of its most remarkable illustrations depicts the Sacred Messenger of the Sacrificial Ritual, a supernatural figure emerging from the sacrificial fire while presenting a golden vessel containing the divine offering for King Daśaratha and his queens. In comparison with both the Sanskrit narrative and other Mughal illustrated versions of the Ramayana, this image displays notable visual and iconographic differences. These distinctive features make it an appropriate case for examining the transformation of religious imagery within a multicultural artistic environment. Previous studies have mainly focused on the stylistic characteristics, narrative structure, and artistic development of Persian illustrated Ramayana manuscripts. Although the Freer manuscript has been discussed within broader studies of Mughal painting, the iconography of the Sacred Messenger has not been examined independently through Panofsky's iconographic method. This study therefore seeks to analyze the figure's visual characteristics—including skin color, costume, ornaments, and symbolic attributes—and to explain how these features reflect cultural interaction between Hindu and Persian-Islamic artistic traditions during the Mughal period. The research adopts a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach based on documentary and library sources. Its theoretical framework is Erwin Panofsky's three-stage model of iconographic analysis. At the pre-iconographical level, the visual elements of the selected painting are carefully described. At the iconographical level, these elements are compared with the Sanskrit Ramayana and two contemporary Persian illustrated manuscripts: the Jaipur Royal manuscript and the Hamida Banu manuscript. Finally, the iconological stage interprets the cultural and religious significance of the observed visual changes within the intellectual and multicultural context of Akbar's court. Although the Freer manuscript constitutes the principal case study, the Jaipur and Hamida Banu manuscripts are employed as comparative examples to clarify the process of iconographic transformation. The analysis demonstrates that the representation of the Sacred Messenger in the Freer manuscript underwent significant formal and symbolic transformation. The most striking change concerns the figure's skin color, which is described as black in the Sanskrit text and represented accordingly in the Jaipur manuscript, but appears as saffron-orange in the Freer version. Other differences include modifications in the depiction of the golden vessel, the number of queens attending the ritual, and several compositional details. Comparative examination indicates that the Jaipur manuscript remains closest to the Sanskrit narrative, whereas the Hamida Banu manuscript introduces moderate changes and the Freer manuscript presents the most extensive reinterpretation. These findings suggest that the Muslim painters did not simply reproduce Hindu iconographic conventions but actively reshaped them through their own visual language and artistic experience. The iconological interpretation further indicates that these transformations should not be regarded merely as mistakes or evidence of unfamiliarity with Hindu mythology. Rather, they reflect a conscious process of cultural reinterpretation within the Mughal artistic environment. The use of saffron for the Sacred Messenger's skin is especially meaningful. In Hindu tradition, saffron symbolizes sacred fire, purity, asceticism, wisdom, and spiritual authority, while within Persian-Islamic visual culture similar chromatic associations evoke sanctity, divine light, and spiritual illumination. The altered appearance of the Sacred Messenger therefore represents a deliberate visual translation through which Hindu sacred imagery was reinterpreted using the symbolic vocabulary of Persian-Islamic painting. The comparative analysis also suggests that the extent of iconographic transformation depended on several interconnected factors, including the artists' familiarity with Hindu religious concepts, the symbolic interpretation of color, the cultural environment of the Mughal atelier, and the painters' individual artistic choices. While the Jaipur manuscript preserves a closer relationship with the Sanskrit narrative through the participation of Hindu artists and closer imperial supervision, the Hamida Banu and especially the Freer manuscript reveal greater interpretative freedom. In the Freer manuscript, the painter Nadim reconstructed the Sacred Messenger through a visual language that mediated between Hindu symbolism and Persian-Islamic artistic conventions, creating a distinct iconographic identity for the figure. In conclusion, the Sacred Messenger in the Freer Ramayana should be understood not simply as the illustration of a mythological episode but as visual evidence of cultural negotiation and artistic adaptation during the Mughal period. Its iconographic transformation reflects the emergence of a shared pictorial language in which sacred concepts were creatively reinterpreted rather than mechanically transferred across cultures. By applying Panofsky's iconographic methodology to a previously understudied image, this study demonstrates that the visual changes observed in the Freer manuscript represent a meaningful expression of intercultural dialogue. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of Mughal painting, Persian illustrated manuscripts, and the broader processes of iconographic transformation and cultural exchange in early modern South Asia. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_103682.html During the Timurid and Turkmen periods, Yazd province witnessed unique examples of tile decorations called Parapets. So that these Parapets have common characteristics in terms of the patterns and motifs used in their center/background and borders,which emphasizes the uniqueness of the named decoration in this region of the country during the mentioned periods. For this reason, it is possible to identify and classify this category of decorations and also to understand the local style in the Yazd region during the period under study.Therefore, the purpose of this article is to introduce and classify the tile Parapets used in the buildings of the mentioned period in Yazd province based on their geometric Pattern and Motif in order to achieve a local/regional style.During the review of the motifs found in tilework,the execution technique, colors, etc. are also briefly mentioned. Therefore, the main research question can be posed as follows: What are the most common geometric Patterns and Motifs of the tile Parapets of buildings from the Timurid and Turkmen periods in Yazd province? The present study is based on a method of interpretive-historical research and a qualitative data analysis and interpretation method.The research methodology of gathering information and data is documentary and based on extensive field observations,including visiting buildings, taking pictures of tile Parapets, and drawing some samples with various software such as CorelDraw, Photoshop, etc.The statistical population of this study includes all tile Parapets from the Timurid and Turkmen periods in Yazd province, which include ten buildings. Therefore, first the findings are presented and then the introduction and classification of the tile Parapets of the buildings of this time period in Yazd province are discussed.Sometimes a local style is implemented in a specific and specific region, and sometimes it encompasses a wider geographical area. For example, the existence of tile Parapets during a specific period, as well as some geometric Motifs that have been repeated many times, all belong to the same region. This indicates that the mentioned region had a local style and probably created works with special characteristics at the request of local founders and artists. The most prominent of these features is the extensive use of geometric motifs, including the »regular hexagonal« knot in the center/background and the »Six and Triangle« on the edges of the tile's Parapets.Based on the available evidence mentioned in the text of the article, the tile Parapets of the Timurid and Turkmen periods in Yazd province are unique to this region, and no similar examples have been found in other parts of the country.Although there are unique tile decorations in the eastern part of Iran and other regions of the country during the aforementioned periods, none of them have tile Parapets, and if they do exist, they do not have tile decorations.This type of decoration is seen in buildings in the Yazd region and has been a common pattern in some of the decorations of buildings in this region. Its absence in other parts of the Timurid and Turkmen territories in Iran could be evidence of the local style of this type of decoration, which is located in the same time period and region. In addition, the limitation of this category of decorations to a specific region (Yazd province) can indicate common decorative patterns and methods that have usually been of interest and attention to creators, founders, and commissioners of works of art in each historical period and in a specific area. The results of this research indicate that examining the existing examples of tile Parapets from the Timurid and Turkmen periods in Yazd province, it was determined that only geometric motifs were used in their center/background and borders.The tile Parapets of the mentioned eras of Yazd province can be classified into two major groups, »regular hexagonal« and »Six and roundel Jointed Toranj« in terms of the geometric motifs of the center/background.The borders are designed with geometric patterns and motifs, such as simple border without motif, »quatrefoil and ellipse« and »Six and Triangle« knot.The »regular hexagonal« knot is the most common geometric motif used in the center/background of the Parapets. The aforementioned knot is worked with turquoise cut tiles in the center/background of the Parapets of 10 buildings in the province. The borders in most of the Parapets are made with the »Six and Triangle« knot. In a limited number of cases, the borders of some Parapets consist of geometric designs consisting of the repetition of two simple geometric motifs, such as »quatrefoil and ellipse« or a simple, narrow border without motifs.Therefore,the buildings of Yazd province can be indicative of a local style, from one side, in terms of having Parapets and on the other hand, due to the use of common geometric motifs in them.A style whose works and evidence can only be traced in this province during the period under study. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_94797.html Subalterns have a small share in the images and what is generally pictured of them is associated with political orientations. Documentary photography often has an institutional approach, carries social signs in producing images of subalterns which play an important role in the construction of these groups. Having social semiotics theory in mind, the aim of this essay is to analyze a part of Iranian  social documentary photography during 2010s. This works as visual texts have a significant contribution in inducing social concepts. For this purpose and as case study, two photo collection of this decade – “Qar Square” and “Cast out of Heaven” have been selected.The case studies were analyzed at three levels of social semiotics, which includes the representational level, interactive level and interpretive level. At these levels, visual texts – photo collections – were studied in terms of the elements in the images, the action of each audience and participant, the composition, angle of view, distance and so on, and the interpretation of these elements and their effectiveness as well.In the “Qar Square” series at the level of social semiotics, it can be seen that the images follow a conceptual model in order to induce specific concepts. No action is formed neither by the participants nor audiences of the image, which ultimately leads to creation of social distance. The close-up view and the use of wide-angle lens in depicting the dangerous face of the addicts are used to express the abhorrence of audiences in the facing of the participants. The square and closed frame has confined the person. Creating visual appeal is formed by the high contrast black and white photos of this series. The background space has the least amount of information, which leaves the person in an isolation that finally causes to reject the subaltern into the invisibility at nowhere. Almost the same approach occurred in the “Cast Out of Heaven” series. This time the large distance between the camera and the subject, made an emphatic feeling of social distance in audience. Conceptual model prevails in these images and the participants have no action. Most reason is that subalterns are removed from most of the frames. Instead of humans, the focus is on the visual appeal of landscape. On the other hand, the audience has a sense of social distance in countering with the longshot images of subalterns. Due to the photographer desire to be present in the global art market, these photos also show a tendency towards orientalism that made the subaltern as an exotic object. In general, this series represented subaltern as ineffective and unproductive.The results have revealed the photographic images of the subaltern in the 2010s carry prominent social signs. In the field of neoliberal commodification of this decade, the figure of subaltern is constructed as an inefficient, unproductive and harmful object for society. The image of subaltern is foregrounded in grotesque, mutilated and exotic bodies which reduced to commodifed object in the global Art markets.   https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_103539.html Iranian gemstone art holds considerable potential for development both domestically and internationally, owing to its diversity, originality, high quality, and reasonable prices. One of the essential requirements for realising this potential is designing products that align with the preferences, tastes, and needs of consumers. The present study is an applied, descriptive-correlational investigation that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. It seeks to identify the preferences of Iranian buyers of gemstone products using the Kansei engineering method – a human-centred approach that translates consumers’ emotional and subjective responses into measurable design parameters. To determine customers’ desired features, a library study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 experts and key informants from the gemstone industry (including master cutters, renowned sellers, and veteran artisans) were conducted, and Kansei vocabulary in the field of gemstones was analysed, extracted, and refined. The initial pool of 54 word-pairs was reduced to 28 core words after removing duplicates and low-frequency items, and finally to 14 key Kansei word-pairs through a pilot test. These final pairs covered both visual attributes (e.g., colour, size, transparency, cut) and emotional-experiential qualities (e.g., authenticity, healing properties, uniqueness). The selected terms were presented to buyers in the form of a Kansei questionnaire employing a seven-point semantic differential scale – a widely validated instrument for measuring affective responses. The survey was administered physically and in the field to 440 buyers who had participated in several gemstone exhibitions in Tehran during the winter of 2023, including both a specialised gemstone fair and major retail galleries. The sample size was determined using Cochran’s formula for an infinite population (95% confidence level, 5% margin of error), and the final valid responses numbered 440. The data were analysed with SPSS 26 software, using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient to examine relationships between demographic variables, purchase history, Kansei words, and product choices. The results showed that buyers were mostly looking for the beauty and uniqueness of products such as rings and women’s pendant sets. Among the Kansei words, authenticity (i.e., non-counterfeit gemstones), transparency, place-of-origin authenticity, natural design, and healing properties of the gemstone were of greater importance. Interestingly, while treated or enhanced stones were less valued, natural inclusions and internal patterns were often perceived as positive markers of genuineness. The younger generation was more likely to seek out uncut or raw gemstones such as rough diamonds, emeralds, and amethysts, indicating a growing appreciation for natural, unpolished aesthetics. The correlation analysis further revealed that with increasing age, buyers attached significantly more importance to warm colours (red, orange, yellow), traditional designs, natural patterns, and religious recommendations, whereas cool colours became less relevant. Higher educational levels were positively associated with preferences for authenticity, larger stone size, faceted (regular) cuts, and transparency. Economic status showed a positive correlation with previous purchases of rings and bracelets (99% confidence), and a moderate correlation with symbolic stones. In current purchases, higher income was moderately related to earrings and prayer beads (90% confidence). No significant correlation was found between age or education and current purchase behaviour, except that education correlated with agate and emerald preferences, while age correlated with turquoise, topaz, agate, and tiger’s eye. Additionally, strong positive correlations existed between prior and future purchases of rings, bracelets, pendants, and necklaces, suggesting habitual buying patterns. Most customers choose gemstones for personal use and as gifts for friends. Therefore, designers should consider age, education, and income variables alongside visual factors (colour, form, size, brilliance) and emotional factors (authenticity, uniqueness, perceived value) when designing products. It seems that customers in the gemstone products sector, despite being able to purchase precious metals such as gold and silver as an investment source, tend to choose gemstone products instead of precious metals, given the uniqueness of gemstone products and the unrepeatability of some of them among all products in this sector. Beauty is the most important purchasing priority for gemstone customers, so designers are advised to consider the principles of aesthetics (formal transparency and simplicity) and the personality of buyers in gemstone products. Moreover, products such as rough stones, brooches, carvings, and symbolic shapes (e.g., figures and fruits) remain relatively unknown to many enthusiasts, indicating a clear opportunity for market expansion through targeted design and education. Considering that this research has not been conducted in Iran, this research provides new insights to activists and people working in this industry to design and produce gemstone products in this sector according to the wishes, needs, and preferences of customers. The findings also underscore the need for systematic R&D in design, better branding for origin-specific gems (e.g., Neyshabur turquoise, Kerman demantoid), and the development of certification systems to reinforce authenticity. Finally, while the study was geographically limited to Tehran and used non-random purposive sampling in its qualitative phase, its outcomes offer a solid foundation for further research in other regions and for comparative cross-cultural studies on gemstone consumer behaviour. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_103540.html Banna’i, also known as Square Kufic or Ma’qili, is a form of Islamic calligraphy used in the inscriptions of religious places, which have been implemented with different designs and dimensions. The earliest surviving example observed so far of the Banna’i Script is the wooden window of the tomb of one of the Imamzadehs (Shrines) in Iran dated 363 A.H. However, the Kufi script evolved in the 5th and 6th centuries A.H due to the flourishing of bricklaying and tile-making, and during the era of Ilkhani, Timurid and Safavid eras, it experienced its peak of prosperity and its use in decorating religious monuments can still be seen today. Although the majority of researchers believe that the Banna’i Script is seen in architectural decorations, including the inscriptions on the internal and external surfaces of religious buildings and is rarely seen in manuscripts, many examples of the squared (Banna’i or Ma’qili) script arranged in decorative patterns on paper, have been seen in the manuscripts of the Timurid, Safavid and especially Ottoman period. In a way, the harmony of this script with the form of brick has made it one of the frequent arrays in the decorations of holy architectural buildings, which always reminds of divine themes and remembrances. The design of Banna’i inscriptions has patterns and rules that are used for proper visual structure and readability. However, studies on the principles of designing Banna’i inscriptions remain limited and scattered. The famous phrase "Wa La Hawl" or "Hawqalah" is also one of the motifs of Banna’i inscriptions; for which various definitions and applications have been mentioned in different sources. Various designs of " Hawqalah" masonry inscriptions from the 10th century A.H can be seen in the existing examples of the architectural decorations of Iranian buildings. By examining the " Hawqalah" architectural inscriptions during the aforementioned period, six cases belonging to the Isfahan region were identified as existing and studyable examples. They were observed in the Hakim Mosque, the Jame Mosque, the Imam Jafar Sadiq (AS) School, the Nim Avard School, and the Sayyid Mosque. However, it seems that in some cases, including examples designed in the present era, these rules are not properly followed and the letters of the alphabet and Banna’i inscriptions are drawn incorrectly and with an incorrect pattern. One reason could be the lack of certain patterns and principles for the design of Kufic script and related inscriptions. The aim of this research is to analyze the rules and methods of designing "Hawqalah" architectural inscriptions and understand how they are networked in the form of Banna’i Calligraphy, so that by achieving a correct and practical pattern, designs appropriate for religious buildings can be recreated based on previous patterns. The research method in the study is descriptive with an analytical approach, and in terms of its objective, it is fundamental. Information was collected through library and field observation and the results were presented qualitatively. Different stages of analysis and design have been conducted using "Corel Draw" design software. In this process, while identifying historical examples of this inscription in architectural decorations; Its design patterns were examined and the networks used in their types were analyzed, and based on the principles of beauty and readability, in addition to criticizing some of the modern examples, several cases were presented. The analysis focuses particularly on the relationship between geometric structure, visual balance, legibility, and the functional requirements of inscriptions within architectural contexts and their adaptation to historical architectural surfaces and contemporary restoration practices. The findings show that the design of the "Hawqalah" architectural inscriptions is based on three types of geometric grids with line angles of 90, 45 and 50 degrees and observing the space of literacy and bayaz. By examining the ratio of literacy to bayaz in the samples, it was determined that in most of them, the literacy and bayaz units have the same dimensions, which has led to visual order. However, in the example of "Sayyid Mosque", the units, especially in the bayaz section, have been reduced to smaller scales, namely half a unit or a quarter of a unit; which has led to diversity in design, accuracy in composition and adaptation to the infrastructure. Also, in this study, four general layouts for designing "Hawqalah" in the form of a building line were identified. This process can be used in the restoration of architectural decorations of historical sites or the implementation of new and proposed inscriptions in contemporary buildings, by obtaining patterns for arranging the words of this phrase in a design that is both accurate and beautiful. The completeness of the selected phrase and the perfection of the alphabet in the text, as well as the modularity of the drawing, were considered by historical designers, and this issue should also be considered in the restoration of inscriptions and new architectural designs. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_103918.html During the final decades of the twentieth century, the Middle East was the stage of large-scale military conflicts, notably the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, that reshaped regional geopolitics and visual-media production. War posters, as instruments of visual communication circulating within distinct cultural settings, played a central role in shaping the collective experience of war and constructing ideologically charged narratives that went far beyond simple propaganda. Rather than mere devices for information or mobilization, these visual texts organized subjectivities and drew boundaries between self and other. Comparative studies of representational strategies across neighboring yet ideologically distinct Middle Eastern cultures remain scarce, and Persian-language scholarship has paid limited attention to this intersection of image and ideology. Deeply addressing this gap, the present study undertakes a comparative visual analysis of three war posters produced in the 1980s: an Iranian poster from the Iran-Iraq War, an Afghan poster from the anti-Soviet resistance, and an Iraqi poster from the Ba'athist propaganda campaign against Iran. The central question asks how the politics of representation is organized across images from three distinct cultures sharing a common timeframe. To answer this question, the study applies the social semiotic framework developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, examining each poster through its representational, interactive, and compositional metafunctions, along with the related notion of visual modality. Methodologically, the research follows a qualitative, library-based, document-driven design. Three posters were purposively selected from digital and physical archives and war-related collections based on thematic, geographical, temporal, and perspectival diversity, all produced within a shared historical window (the 1980s to early 1990s) by state-affiliated or partisan media. Supporting textual materials, including scholarly articles and historical records, were gathered to contextualize each image's background and inform the semiotic reading. No fieldwork, interviews, or questionnaires were employed; the analysis relies on visual and documentary evidence, examining participants, actions, gaze, angle, framing, color, and composition in each poster. The findings show that although all three posters mobilize religious motifs, heroic figures, and national scripts to construct narratives of struggle, resistance, and legitimacy, their representational logic and structure diverge, reflecting each country's cultural-ideological context. The Iranian poster foregrounds collective participation through a multi-actor composition—a soldier, a cleric, a barefoot youth, and a veiled woman holding a child and a red flower—arranged in a circular structure that fuses religious symbolism with popular mobilization; the enemy remains visually absent, invoked only through the trilingual inscription "Sacred Defense Week" and the implicit presence of arms. An eye-level angle and moderate modality invite the viewer into a shared plane of identification rather than distant observation. The Afghan poster centers a lone mujahid rendered in flat, high-contrast color and simplified line, standing before a defeated red bear symbolizing the Soviet Union, with the Quran in one hand and a raised Kalashnikov in the other; a slightly low angle magnifies his stature, the absent gaze produces an offer-type image meant for admiration rather than address, and the slogan "Allahu Akbar" beside the Latin-script word AFGHANISTAN fuses religious legitimacy with an internationally legible national identity. The Iraqi poster glorifies Arab supremacy through a mounted warrior in dynamic, diagonal motion, enveloped by dense Arabic calligraphy functioning as both aesthetic ground and marker of an all-encompassing Arab identity; the Persian enemy is never depicted, appearing only through the derogatory reference "al-'Aduw al-Farisi" and the historically loaded title "Saddam's Qadisiyyah," reactivating the seventh-century Arab-Sasanian battle to naturalize enmity toward Iran as ancient and inevitable. Across all three cases, the enemy is erased, diminished, or reduced to text rather than depicted, an omission that concentrates attention on the heroism and legitimacy of the self. The discussion further shows that each poster mobilizes distinct interactive and compositional resources—gaze, social distance, framing, color—to position the viewer ideologically, and that the line between passive representation and discursive agency blurs: rather than reflecting war, these images construct realities viewers are invited to inhabit, join, or resist. The Iranian poster invites participatory identification, the Afghan poster delivers an unambiguous, slogan-like message, and the Iraqi poster performs myth-making that persuades through symbolic authority rather than dialogue. This approach highlights how visual form transforms historical memory into persuasive political narratives within wartime communication. The study finally concludes that representation strategies are shaped by each nation's historical and socio-political configuration, particularly the religion-state relationship in producing legitimacy, the degree of individual versus collective focus in resistance, and the role of gender and ethnicity in addressing the audience. While the findings, grounded in three symbolic cases, cannot be unconditionally generalized, the extracted patterns—enemy erasure, identity-forming symbols, and viewing-angle strategies—offer a substantive contribution to understanding how images function as active instruments of meaning-making, legitimacy, and emotional-political structuring in wartime, and call for further cross-cultural research into how meaning, identity, and ideology are negotiated through imagery in conflict zones https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_106788.html This study investigates descriptive temporality in Nezami Ganjavi’s Haft-Peykar through a comparative analysis of poetic text and pictorial representation in Persian manuscript painting. Although Haft-Peykar has been widely examined from literary, iconographic, and stylistic perspectives, the temporal organization of description and its visual reconstruction have received comparatively limited attention. Within structuralist narratology, Philippe Hamon’s account of descriptive discourse explains how description interrupts narrative progression, expands semantic organization, and transforms the reader’s experience of time. Rather than treating Hamon’s reflections as a fixed model directly applicable to visual representation, this study reconstructs a descriptive temporal framework inspired by his conceptualization of descriptive discourse. The framework is organized around three interrelated dimensions—pause, semantic density, and repetition—which serve as operational categories for examining the temporal organization of poetic language and pictorial composition. The study focuses on two illustrated manuscripts of Nezami’s Khamsa, dated 938 AH and 997 AH, preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Analysis is limited to the seven dome narratives of Haft-Peykar, where descriptive passages provide a principal mechanism connecting poetic expression with visual representation. Employing a descriptive-comparative methodology, relevant poetic passages were first classified according to their dominant descriptive or narrative functions. Corresponding illustrations were then examined through the proposed framework, with pause, semantic density, and repetition analyzed in relation to compositional stability, figural stasis, chromatic organization, spatial enclosure, ornamental accumulation, motif recurrence, and directional movement. The purpose was not merely to identify iconographic correspondences between text and image, but to determine how each medium reorganizes narrative time through descriptive structures and produces distinctive modes of temporal perception. The findings demonstrate that descriptive temporality constitutes a shared organizational principle in both literary and visual dimensions of Haft-Peykar, although each medium realizes it through different formal mechanisms. In the poem, descriptive pause emerges through relative suspension of action, lexical accumulation, metaphorical elaboration, and chromatic vocabulary, slowing narrative progression and encouraging contemplative reading. In the paintings, pause is reconstructed through compositional balance, restrained bodily movement, symmetrical arrangements, and spatial stability that prolong engagement with the pictorial surface. Semantic density likewise operates differently across the two media. In the poem, it results from accumulated descriptive vocabulary, symbolic references, and layered metaphors. In the paintings, it is generated through architectural articulation, ornamental elaboration, chromatic richness, and the coexistence of multiple symbolic motifs within a single visual field, inviting prolonged perceptual exploration. Repetition forms the third dimension of descriptive temporality. Recurrent lexical structures and descriptive patterns correspond to recurring motifs, geometric rhythms, ornamental sequences, and repeated visual configurations. Rather than functioning merely as decoration, repetition establishes continuity, reinforces symbolic meaning, and reorganizes temporal perception beyond linear narrative succession. The comparison also reveals significant differences between the two manuscripts. The 938 AH manuscript constructs descriptive temporality through visual abundance, employing numerous figures, decorative motifs, architectural complexity, and chromatic variation to extend the duration of visual observation. By contrast, the 997 AH manuscript produces a more concentrated descriptive temporality through compositional restraint, reduced ornamentation, and condensation of symbolic meaning within a controlled pictorial structure. These contrasting strategies demonstrate that descriptive temporality does not depend on visual complexity alone but may be achieved through different modes of pictorial organization. In both manuscripts, temporal experience is shaped less by sequential narration than by sustained acts of perception that repeatedly redirect attention from narrative action toward symbolic contemplation. The study therefore argues that these visual configurations can be understood as a pictorial reconstruction of the descriptive temporal pattern conceptualized by Hamon rather than as a direct application of his literary theory. The proposed framework distinguishes Hamon’s theoretical reflections on descriptive discourse from the operational model developed for interpreting Persian manuscript painting. Within this reconstructed model, pause, semantic density, and repetition function as interconnected dimensions through which descriptive temporality becomes visually intelligible. Ritual repetition is additionally introduced as a complementary interpretive category for explaining forms of symbolic continuity emerging from the cultural and visual logic of Persian manuscript illustration, without attributing this category to Hamon’s original formulation. This approach also highlights the importance of medium-specific transformation: textual description unfolds through linguistic succession, whereas pictorial description operates through simultaneous visual relations. Consequently, the viewer’s temporal experience is not simply equivalent to the reader’s experience, but is produced through a different configuration of attention, duration, and symbolic association. The framework therefore provides a basis for comparing literary and visual temporality without reducing one medium to the other in detail. Overall, the study demonstrates that the miniatures of Haft-Peykar should not be regarded merely as visual translations of literary narration, but as autonomous descriptive systems that reconstruct temporal experience through specifically pictorial means. By comparatively applying a theoretically grounded framework to poetic and visual narratives, the research offers a transferable methodology for investigating descriptive temporality in Persian manuscript painting and contributes to dialogue among narratology, visual semiotics, and Islamic art history. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_104127.html This study aims to design and develop an innovative hybrid model based on Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to model the creativity training process in industrial design education. The research seeks to identify the key components influencing creativity training and provide a predictive framework to enhance curriculum quality in this field.To achieve this, a combined SEM-ANN approach was implemented. Initially, Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the causal relationships between the four main components of Torrance’s creativity model: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. SEM helped identify the critical variables within these components that have the strongest effect on creativity development. These significant factors were subsequently used as inputs for an Artificial Neural Network employing a multilayer perceptron (MLP) architecture, with the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm applied for training the network. The study’s population consisted of 528 industrial design students from multiple universities across Iran. Data collection was carried out through a questionnaire specifically designed by the researchers for this purpose.SEM analysis revealed that three components—generating numerous ideas (β=0.449, p<0.05), producing diverse ideas (β=0.303, p<0.01), and generating original ideas (β=0.181, p<0.05)—had the most significant influence on creativity training. The ANN demonstrated considerable accuracy in predicting the impact of curricular elements on each component, with two models achieving a mean squared error (MSE) of 0.30 and a correlation coefficient (R) of 0.90, and a third model with MSE of 0.38 and R of 0.78. Comparative analysis showed that project-based courses played the most prominent role in fostering creativity, whereas technical courses had the least impact.This research is groundbreaking in that it introduces the first domain-specific model in the field of industrial design education that integrates the interpretative capabilities of SEM with the predictive power of ANN. By combining these two methodologies, the hybrid model overcomes the individual limitations of each technique and offers a flexible, adaptive learning framework capable of dynamic updates as more data become available.The findings emphasize the necessity of focusing industrial design curricula on improving ideational fluency, diversity, and innovation. The proposed model can serve as a practical tool for curriculum review and forecasting the effectiveness of educational interventions. This study opens a new avenue for applying artificial intelligence to optimize creativity-oriented education and shows that combining statistical methods with machine learning can effectively influence the creativity training process and help develop higher-quality curricula.This innovative model is particularly valuable for students and instructors in industrial design, as it helps identify strengths and weaknesses in educational programs and focus on targeted improvements.In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into the creative training process within industrial design education and offers a robust predictive model that educators and curriculum developers can utilize to enhance learning outcomes. The combination of advanced statistical modeling with machine learning represents a significant step forward in the application of technology to education, enabling more effective cultivation of creativity and innovation in future design professionals. This research also opens promising opportunities for further exploration of AI-driven educational tools across various disciplines focused on creative skill development. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_104426.html This paper explores the concept of problem-solution co-evolution and its application across various levels of problem complexity. It aims to provide a clearer understanding of the role of co-evolution in problem-solving, thereby assisting designers in selecting more appropriate strategies when facing design challenges. To achieve this, the concept of problem-solution co-evolution was expanded upon through the analysis of relevant scholarly literature. Furthermore, the “Cynifin’” model is introduced to organize the study’s findings and facilitate a more effective understanding of the role of co-evolution in addressing complex problems.This qualitative study, employing a descriptive-analytical approach, examines the role and application of problem-solution co-evolution across different levels of design problems. The research methodology involved a mixed-methods approach, incorporating a qualitative content analysis of selected scholarly texts to explore the theoretical underpinnings of co-evolution, and semi-structured interviews with six expert designers to gather empirical data. The designers were purposefully selected to ensure diverse perspectives from various design backgrounds and experiences. Thematic analysis was employed to identify patterns and key themes within the interview data. Data triangulation, using multiple data sources, was utilized to enhance the credibility and validity of the research, ensuring the robustness of the findings.The research findings suggest that problem-solution co-evolution is a promising approach for tackling complex issues. While this approach facilitates the creative direction of the problem-solving process at simple and pseudo-complex levels, it becomes the primary strategy for addressing more complex challenges. However, our knowledge regarding the role and function of this mechanism in chaotic situations remains insufficient.The study aligns with previous research and concludes that problem-solution co-evolution is an effective approach for solving complex problems. The study also indicates that while co-evolution facilitates achieving a result in simple and complex-seeming problems, in complex situations, there is no escape from the co-evolution process, and in practice, the problem-solving strategy at this level passes only through problem-solution co-evolution.The findings also indicate that designers’ ability to navigate complex and ambiguous problems is a critical skill. Our categorization equips designers with the means to select the right strategy to deal with the problem. The implications of this research extend to informing design education, emphasizing the importance of teaching adaptive problem-solving skills, and to professional practice, encouraging designers to embrace iterative and co-evolutionary approaches when tackling complex and ill-defined problems. Future research should focus on developing specific strategies for navigating chaotic design scenarios, which remain poorly understood. A deeper exploration into the underlying mechanisms driving co-evolutionary processes is also warranted, potentially through longitudinal studies or computational modeling to simulate the dynamic interplay between problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, investigating how non-designers might leverage insights from problem-solution co-evolution could broaden the applicability of these findings beyond the design domain, fostering more adaptive and resilient problem-solving approaches in various fields.This study acknowledges limitations inherent in its qualitative design, particularly the small sample size of expert designers, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. However, the depth of insights gained from these interviews provides a rich understanding of the co-evolutionary process. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_104729.html If we consider the artistic approach of the latter half of the twentieth century as characterized by the vibrant struggles of people of color and feminists against racial and gender discrimination, advocating for equality and social justice, the artistic approach of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries can be understood as an intricate interplay of political and social issues with environmental challenges and climate change within societies. This approach seeks to comprehend social realities by aligning public opinion to foster social awareness. Georg Lukács, in his Marxist aesthetics, previously demonstrated the linkage between art and social reality, illustrating that art can effectively engage with social events and that artworks should respond to social and political issues. Lukács’s aesthetic theories are grounded in aesthetic forms that reflect social reality and employ a dialectical method in art and literature. In contemporary art, the representation of social reality through public art installations constitutes a form of social intervention. Consequently, the present study’s necessity lies in an interdisciplinary exploration of the reflection of social reality in Lukács’s sociological perspectives, which regard the aesthetic experience of understanding reality as a qualitative experience, and in contemporary public art, analyzed through content analysis.Given that the foundation of this aesthetic theory in art emphasizes critical reflection, it is posited that contemporary environmentally oriented installation art, within the framework of public art, offers a reconceptualization of committed art. This art form reproduces social and historical realities, providing a platform for audience experience that evolves from Lukács’s reflection theory. Accordingly, this research endeavors to examine, through an interdisciplinary approach and reliance on Lukács’s reflection theory, how public installation art represents social realities related to climate change. It aims to demonstrate how contemporary committed art transcends mere aesthetics to function as a tool for understanding, critiquing, and transforming social conditions. Consistent with Lukács’s views, which consider the relationship between form and content (manifestation and essence) in artistic experience as dialectical, it can be asserted that contemporary public environmental installations, beyond mere aesthetics, can serve as instruments for understanding, critiquing, and altering existing conditions. By converging sensory perception (subjectivity) and social reality (objectivity), these installations address the urgency of social issues related to climate change in audience awareness, demonstrating art’s capacity as a means of understanding social events and as a form of social praxis (conscious action to transform social reality).This alignment is manifested in art’s role as a reflection of social reality, the dialectical interplay of objective reality through form and content, the aesthetic experience facilitated by direct audience interaction with the artwork, the critical role of art in evoking emotions and critical thinking as a social act, and art’s contribution to social change. Thus, this study of reflection theory and concrete audience experiences in contemporary environmental installations, using content analysis, elucidates Lukács’s reflection theory and articulates social commitment in art. It aligns with the “Ice Watch” installation as an example of contemporary public art that reflects social realities in the environmental crisis, focusing on interaction and collective art production within societal contexts. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_104960.html The weekly “Nabard Mellat” (Battle of the Nation) was one of the most important publications affiliated with the “Fadaeian Islam Community” from 1950 to 1952. With its Islamic-semi-nationalist content, this publication contributed to the Islamic-militant discourse of the Fadaeian Islam in its conflict with rival discourses (Nationalist, Leftist, Pro-government, Non-Aligned Islamist) and the struggle against foreign colonialism. This publication had detailed and attractive graphics and a visual expression that was relatively in harmony with the discourse of the Fadaeian Islam: Coherent in structure and layout, energetic and high-contrast in the form and space of the illustrations, fierce and aggressive in visual expression and treatment of topics, Insolent, careless and reckless in descriptions, similes and visual-reading metaphors. The aim of this article is to study the reflection of the political conflicts of the Fadaeian Islam in the illustrations of “Babard Mellat”. This research seeks to answer the question of how the illustrations of the weekly “Babard Mellat” until the end of 1952 embodied the discursive-political conflicts of the Fadaeian Islam community with rival movements? The research method is descriptive-analytical and relies on the components of political discourse analysis of Laclau and Mouffe (articulation, conflict, provocation and displacement, othering, highlighting, marginalization, chain of equivalence and the myth of a unified subject). Information was collected through a library-documentary method and also through observation and selection of images related to the research topic; the present study purposefully selected and categorized 37 illustrations from issues 1950 to 1952 of the weekly “Babard Mellat” and concluded its qualitative analysis process by relying on the “visual expression of the illustrations” and its relationship with the “temporal-spatial conditions (social changes) of the researched territory” and the “confrontational actions (linguistic-non-linguistic) of the Fadaeian Islam community”. Some of the results of the present study indicate that the socio-political illustrations of “Nabard Mellat”, in order to attract the audience, had a clear resemblance to nationalist and box office publications (influenced by Western arrangements) in terms of appearance and execution technique, but in terms of tone and expression, they were sharp and reckless, like the discursive actions of the Fadaeian Islam. Also, in order to marginalize rival discourses, the illustrations of this publication usually used visual metaphors to humiliate and ridicule the subjects and personalities of non-aligned currents -especially the two governments of Razm Ara and Mossadegh, and foreign colonialists; in contrast, in line with the othering, highlighting, and construction of the myth of the united subject, it presented the individuals and effective actions of the Fadaeian Islam community as national, ideal and sacred. The discursive order and identity of the Fadaeian Islam was never changed or provoked or displaced in the course of the conflict with rival discourses. However, whenever the Fadaeian Islam discourse was threatened by the government with rejection or elimination (discourse provocation), the publication “Nabard Mellat” showed greater sympathy and support for nationalist publications and in its illustrations, highlighted some of the main signifiers of the nationalist discourse, such as “National Independence”, “Support for Freedom of Expression” and “Confronting social problems such as Poverty” (sectional displacement of discourse). https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_104987.html War imagery has historically functioned as a potent instrument within historical painting, employed to glorify conflict, consolidate national identity, and legitimize militaristic ideologies. Traditional battle scenes often depicted war in idealized terms—heroic soldiers, commanding leaders, and orderly combat—presenting warfare as noble and purposeful. However, the catastrophic scale of World War I fundamentally altered both the reality of war and its artistic representation. This study examines the transformation of war imagery in German painting between 1871 and 1933, tracing the shift from the Wilhelmine Empire’s celebratory militarism to the Weimar Republic’s critical, often brutal depictions of conflict. It also investigates the socio-political forces behind this evolution, revealing how art both reflects and challenges dominant power structures. The study addresses two key questions: How did post-WWI German paintings differ from pre-war depictions of war and militarism? and What historical and social factors drove these changes? To answer these, it analyzes a selection of German paintings across three themes—military leadership, the soldier-hero, and battle scenes—comparing works from the Wilhelmine Empire (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). Methodologically, it combines aesthetic analysis (examining composition, color, and symbolism) with Foucault’s discourse analysis, exploring how power and ideology shape visual narratives. The findings reveal a stark contrast between the two periods. Wilhelmine-era paintings, such as those by Anton von Werner, employed symmetrical compositions, warm colors, and idealized figures, presenting war as heroic and morally justified. These works served as propaganda, reinforcing Prussia’s military triumphs and fostering nationalist sentiment. In contrast, Weimar-era artists like Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Max Beckmann rejected glorification, instead using fragmented forms, grotesque realism, and brutal imagery to expose war’s horrors. Their works depicted disfigured soldiers, ruined landscapes, and chaotic violence, directly challenging pre-war myths. Three major factors influenced this transformation: 1. Postwar Societal Trauma: The collective experience of Germany’s defeat, subsequent economic ruin, political instability, and widespread mourning fostered a deep cultural disillusionment. Artistic production naturally shifted from a mode of celebration to one of sharp critique, mirroring the public’s prevailing anger, despair, and skepticism toward former authorities. 2. Artists’ Direct War Experiences: Many Weimar painters served as combatants in World War I, witnessing its unprecedented devastation. Consequently, their art transformed into a vehicle for processing profound personal and collective trauma, consciously rejecting nationalist heroics in favor of an unflinching, accusatory realism. Ultimately, this study demonstrates the constitutive power of visual art to both shape and vigorously contest national identity and historical memory. Where Wilhelmine paintings functioned to reinforce state-sanctioned militarism, Weimar art served as a formidable instrument of subversion, harnessing visual culture to mourn, to protest, and to provoke critical consciousness. By tracing this definitive evolution, the research underscores that war imagery does not merely passively mirror historical change but actively mediates public perception and influences the terms of cultural discourse. The decisive shift from heroic idealism to brutal realism in German war painting thus underscores the profound impact of catastrophic historical events on artistic expression—and affirms art’s enduring role as a vital force for social critique, ethical remembrance, and potential transformation. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_105013.html The "Spiritual Art Exhibition," held in 2005, marks one of the earliest official endeavors to redefine spirituality within the context of contemporary Iranian art. Recognizing that written texts in art exhibitions reflect the foundational ideas underpinning the artworks, their analysis provides a pathway to a deeper understanding of the events shaping this artistic landscape. This research, employing Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), aims to identify the discourses that construct the concept of spirituality in contemporary Iranian art through the linguistic, contextual, and ideological analysis of selected texts. The central questions guiding this study are: 1. What concepts and linguistic-semantic features encompass "spirituality" in the texts of the "Spiritual Art Exhibition"? 2. How are power, ideology, and cultural identity reflected through the utilization of the concept of spirituality in the exhibition's texts? The research corpus comprises three pivotal texts authored by Imani, Fadavi, and Kafshchian-Moghaddam, published in the exhibition's catalog. A descriptive-analytical methodology, grounded in a qualitative approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, was employed for the study. The analysis of Imani's text reveals a dominant discourse of religious spirituality firmly rooted in the framework of Islam. The author employs positive evaluative language, powerful metaphors, and an emphasis on the innate nature of spirituality to promote this perspective. Fadavi's text foregrounds a discourse of religious- mystical spirituality, positioning the artist as a mystic and artistic creation as a mystical journey. This viewpoint is legitimized through mystical vocabulary, metaphors, and a contrast with non-spiritual art. Kafshchian-Moghaddam's text presents a discourse of individual and Gnostic spirituality, emphasizing the artist's intuition as the primary source of meaning and spirituality. This alternative discourse is established through diverse vocabulary, metaphors, and semantic oppositions. The study further demonstrates the intricate interplay of power, ideology, and cultural identity within these discourses. Institutional power is evident in Imani's text through the presentation of an official viewpoint aligned with the dominant cultural-religious system. Fadavi's text delineates discursive boundaries, while Kafshchian-Moghaddam's text highlights the agency of the individual artist. Diverse ideologies, ranging from established religious spirituality to mystical and individualistic interpretations, are reflected in the texts, each seeking to promote its specific understanding. Implicitly, Iranian cultural identity is engaged in all three texts, with references to Islamic heritage, mystical traditions, and the evolving landscape of religious experience in Iran. In conclusion, the "Spiritual Art Exhibition" and its accompanying texts served as a platform for competing discourses on the relationship between art and spirituality in contemporary Iran. These texts illustrate that the concept of spirituality in Iranian art is a dynamic entity, continually being reshaped and redefined under the influence of power dynamics, ideological frameworks, and cultural shifts. The diverse authors, drawing upon their unique intellectual and linguistic resources, strive to articulate and establish their particular understanding of this relationship. This research underscores the efficacy of Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis in unveiling the underlying ideological layers and power relations within these texts, thereby fostering a deeper comprehension of the evolving conceptualizations of spirituality in contemporary Iranian art. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_105231.html Technological advancements have significantly transformed human experience, particularly in communication, labor, and art. These developments have created unprecedented opportunities for participation and efficiency but also pose serious ethical and philosophical challenges—especially in how they reshape social and artistic structures. In response, contemporary philosophers have turned attention to the implications of digital culture. Jean Baudrillard, a prominent postmodern thinker, provides a compelling lens for analyzing these shifts, especially through his theories of simulacra and hyperreality. In today’s digital art market, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) represent a key technological development. As blockchain-based tools, they allow artists to register ownership of digital works. Yet, they also raise a paradox: How can one claim unique ownership in a medium that allows infinite reproduction? This paradox challenges traditional notions of authenticity, value, and presence. From Baudrillard’s perspective, NFTs are not mere tools but signs operating within systems of simulation and symbolic value—where reality is replaced by representation. This article critically investigates how NFTs redefine artistic ownership and authenticity through the lens of Baudrillard's theory. Baudrillard argues that postmodern society increasingly consumes signs rather than real experiences. In the NFT space, ownership becomes detached from the physical or creative presence of the artist, instead functioning as a symbolic code validated by blockchain technologies. These tokens reflect what Baudrillard calls a simulacrum—a copy with no original—where meaning is produced through repetition and consensus, not through reality or creative labor. The study uses a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach and focuses on case studies of NFT artworks drawn from platforms like OpenSea, SuperRare, and digital art archives. Through semiotic analysis, it examines the internal sign structures of NFTs and their disconnection from real referents. This analysis is informed by a structuralist–poststructuralist reading of signs, highlighting the dominance of signifiers over signifieds, the self-referentiality of value, and the erosion of presence in the digital economy. NFTs often claim value through features like scarcity, cryptographic registration, or market hype rather than through artistic content or aesthetic experience. As such, they illustrate the condition of hyperreality: reality replaced by signs that claim authenticity without grounding. Baudrillard’s critique becomes particularly relevant when NFT ownership is celebrated not for its creative merit but for its speculative worth. In this context, artistic authorship is reduced to a digitally encoded transaction, and art becomes a token in a symbolic economy. However, the study also identifies rare NFT artworks that challenge the logic of simulation. For instance, Right-Click and Save As Guy critiques the absurdity of digital ownership by drawing attention to the gap between image and value. Such works disrupt the typical NFT structure by exposing the performative and seductive nature of digital art valuation. The article concludes that NFTs, in most cases, represent a new form of commodification in which ownership is determined not by artistic presence but by “sign-making”. They often reflect the triumph of simulation over authenticity, where symbolic capital replaces lived aesthetic experience. Yet, when used critically, NFTs can reveal their own conditions of value, thereby creating new forms of philosophical and artistic engagement. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_105383.html From the late fourteenth century until the rise of the Safavids, Kashan was ruled by different Muzaffarid, Timurid, Qara-Quyunlu, and Aq-Quyunlu rulers. Not many monuments from that turbulent period have survived in Kashan, among which eight epitaphs can be mentioned. These works, produced between 1455 and 1498, include two government decrees, five large tombstones, and one small tombstone. The signed examples show that a calligrapher and a stonemason collaborated in the production of each work. Four of them were carved by Mubarak Shah and written by Muhammad al-Mahallati. Three stones were carved by the master Khwaja Jan, one of which bears the calligrapher’s name (Nur-Allah ibn ‘Ala al-Din Hussayn al-Murshidi). This article seeks to analyze the form and content of the inscriptions, and also tries to identify religious approaches in pre-Safavid Kashan. The two government decrees were issued by the Aq-Quyunlu rulers: the first regarding tax exemption for residents of the Shiite village of Mashhad-i Ardahal, in which Shahrukh is mentioned with respect, and the second, regarding the adjustment of agricultural product prices, issued by Jahanshah (r. 1438-1476) and his wife and was installed at the entrance of the city’s most important mosque. The works of Mubarak Shah and Mahallati have major differences from the works of Khwaja Jan, both in terms of aesthetics and religious approaches. The tombstones of the Mubarak Shah and Mahallati are simpler, with more formal inscriptions, and are almost devoid of any Shiite tinge. The only exception is the phrase “O Ali” on the tomb of Mir Shams al-Din, which may have a Sufi aspect. The works of Mubarak Shah and Mahallati consist of simple geometric surfaces, and the most important religious inscription in them is Ayat al-Kursi, which appears on the walls of the tombstones in a bold thuluth script. On the other hand, in the works of Khwaja Jan, a new element has appeared on the tombstones of Kashan, namely the inscription of salawat-i kabira (i.e. blessing to the fourteen infallibles) and the Shiite prayer of Nad-i ‘Ali, as well as the motifs of cypress and vases. They have reduced the importance of Ayat al-Kursi and moved it to marginal frieze of the upper surface of the stone, and instead, they have dedicated the bold thuluth inscription of the walls to the salawat-i kabira. They left no empty space on the surface of one of the tombstones, and in addition to the name of the deceased and a curse to the buyer and the seller of the stone, they carved the entire Quranic sura of Al-Insan, the salawat-i kabira, the Nad-i ‘Ali prayer, and the phrase “Everything will perish except His Face.” The most important work left by them should be considered the tombstone of Mir ‘Imad and his wife, because the influence of the form and content of these works can be seen in the Safavid and Qajar tombstones of the Kashan region. The most frequent religious inscription in the Safavid and Qajar tombs of Kashan is salawat-i kabira, and the most frequent decoration is the motif of a cypress and vase. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_105384.html The grotesque emerges when incompatible elements coexist paradoxically, creating a dissonant space that reflects an altered reality. The fusion of elements in the grotesque reveals two contrasting approaches: the terrifying perspective of Kaiser and the liberating view of Bakhtin. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, by analyzing this dichotomy, explores the role of culture and myth in the formation of the grotesque while emphasizing its capacity to combine incongruous elements. This process, by breaking away from established structures, enables a new understanding of identity and transformation, marked by the phenomenon of co-presence —the simultaneous existence of disparate elements.Persian miniature painting contains complex themes and concepts, many of which have not yet been systematically studied. Among these are the "figure-within-figure" compositions from the Safavid era, where a central, dominant figure is surrounded or partially filled with smaller, subsidiary figures that coexist in a shared space. These subsidiary figures encompass a diverse range of subjects, including animals, humans (both black and white, old and young), lovers, Galandars (wandering dervishes), and mythical creatures such as demons and angels. The origin of such artworks generally dates back to the 10th century Hijri (16th century CE) and belongs to various schools of Safavid painting, including those of Mashhad, Qazvin, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Bukhara. One of the most famous examples is the Man with a Falcon miniature. This research aims to " Reading the phenomenon of co-presence in the painting of the man with the falcon in his hand based on Harpham's grotesque theory," employing a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach through library research. The study seeks to answer: How is the grotesque manifested in the Man with a Falcon miniature? and How can Harpham’s grotesque theory explain the co-presence in this artwork?Findings indicate that images of severed heads alongside scenes of romance or homoeroticism, combined with various animals and birds alongside mythical creatures like demons or catfish, create a unique and chaotic world. In this world, incongruous elements coexist without logical connection, resulting in a disorienting space filled with bewilderment that compels the viewer toward a deeper understanding of existential complexities. This artwork employs unstable and unconventional forms, placing the viewer in a state of confusion and shock, In this artwork, the grotesque—as an artistic and literary concept—depicts a chaotic, discordant world where opposing elements such as beauty and ugliness, life and death, norm and anomaly coexist, creating a paradoxical structure. By blending mythological elements with modern reality, this world presents a distinct and often unsettling perception of existence.Demons, severed heads, hybrid creatures, hunting scenes, enslaved figures, amorous encounters, and pederasty all form part of this grotesque universe, defying logical and natural laws while challenging the boundaries of perception.thereby guiding them toward a deeper understanding of life's complexities. Ultimately, the grotesque in The Man with the Hawk is not merely an artistic style but a tool for resisting oversimplification and false certainties, as it reveals the contradictions of the surrounding world and invites us to embrace ambiguity and polyphony. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_105765.html The woven crafts of Yazd Province are indigenous products, produced in close harmony with the environment and grounded in local knowledge. A clear manifestation of this principle of sufficiency can be observed in the badbezan-e hasiri (wicker fan) of Bafq, crafted through the purposeful use of discarded parts of the date palm. Despite the geographical distance separating Meybod and Bafq, zilu and badbezan-e hasiri share elements of co-presence, including geometric motifs, inscriptions, and an underlying chromatic order. The shared intellectual foundations and the similarity of worldview among artisans, particularly weavers, within the common ecological and cultural setting of Yazd Province have given rise to a process of convergence and a dialogic relationship between the zilu of Meybod and the badbezan-e hasiri of Bafq. It appears that zilu, as an endowed floor covering widely used in sacred spaces, functioned as a rich visual text, from which wicker weavers drew inspiration. The question thus arises as to what kinds of intertextual relationships can be discerned in the co-presence of visual elements found in the Meybod zilu and the badbezan-e hasiri of Bafq. The aim of this intertextual study is to identify and interpret instances of co-presence based on shared visual characteristics.. Field data were obtained through direct observation and semi-structured interviews with nine active wicker weavers in Bafq and one zilu weaver in Meybod. The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured format over the period from April 2024 to May 2025. Based on three modes of intertextual relation, quotation, reference, and allusion, the visual elements of zilu and the badbezan-e hasiri are understood as co-present. In other words, geometric motifs appear on the “Noqli” badbezan-e hasiri (wicker fans) of Bafq as direct quotations from the zilu of Meybod. Reference is likewise manifested in the color system of both “Esmi” and “Noqli” fans, which is structured around the combination of white (the natural, un-dyed palm fibers) and blue. As a visual sign, this chromatic palette directly refers to the dominant white-blue bichromatic system characteristic of Meybod zilu. Allusion, as the most implicit form of co-presence, emerges in the written weaving (inscriptive texture) of the “Esmi” fan from Bafq. This practice of inscriptive weaving evokes the presence of inscriptions and written motifs traditionally found on the zilu of Meybod. The most explicit level of intertextuality, manifested in the form of quotation, becomes evident in the geometric motifs of the noqli wicker fan of Bafq, which directly echo those of the zilu of Meybod. Another mode of intertextual relation, namely reference, is realized in the chromatic system of the esmi and noqli wicker fans, a system grounded in the juxtaposition of white, derived from the natural, uncolored fibers of the date palm, and blue. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that the badbezan-e hasiri of Bafq is not merely a utilitarian object; rather, it constitutes a rich text embedded with multiple forms of intertextual co-presence, through which its geometric motifs (quotation), the two-color system (reference), and the woven inscriptional texture (allusion) collectively substantiate its cultural and aesthetic affinity with the reference text, namely the zilu of Meybod. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_105942.html Art and craftsmanship in Islamic civilization have always been inextricably linked with wisdom and ethical conduct. Practical wisdom, centered on social ethics and the regulation of behavior in social activities, is regarded by thinkers such as Khwaja Nasir al-Din al-Tusi as an inseparable component of human social life. In this context, the treatise Maalim al-Qurba fi Aḥkam al-Ḥisba, as a document emerging from Islamic civilization, reveals the concern of past societies to actualize practical wisdom within the framework of trades and industries.This work, focusing on the institution of Hisba, articulates ethical guidelines and regulatory obligations for widely practiced crafts such as textile production and garment manufacturing, taking a thoroughly practical and case-based approach to institutionalizing wisdom. The Hisba was considered one of the fundamental pillars for ensuring justice, social order and adherence to religious regulations in Islamic cities. The muḥtasib, as the overseer of the proper conduct of social, economic, and ethical affairs within the community, played a key role in achieving these objectives. The content of the aforementioned book is based on Islamic legal rulings and is presented in a practical and tangible manner through examples from various crafts and professions. The analysis of such texts is significant because it enables the identification of the jurisprudential and ethical principles governing each profession.This study seeks to answer the following question: Based on Maalim al-Qurba, how did practical wisdom manifest in the ethical framework of the textile industry in the 7th century AH and according to what criteria?. Grounded in the aforementioned text, this study analyzes the manifestations of practical wisdom and the criteria of social ethics in textile-related occupations, categorized as part of the traditional Islamic arts.This research is a developmental study. Data were gathered through documentary methods and analyzed using descriptive-analytical techniques. The primary focus of this study is the content analysis of the Persian-translated version of the source text, published under the title "The Regulations of City Governance in the Seventh Century AH" Furthermore, as the research is framed within the theoretical paradigm of Islamic practical wisdom, Akhlaq-i Naṣeri by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi has been utilized as the main philosophical source for conceptual analysis.The findings reveal that practical wisdom within textile-related professions is manifested through four main dimensions: product, people, supervision, and business environment. Each of these dimensions encompasses key elements of professional ethics that must be monitored and upheld by supervisory institutions. Ensuring product quality and adherence to professional standards, protecting public rights by preventing various forms of injustice, the ethical functioning of regulatory bodies, and the preservation of dignity and integrity in business interactions all constitute central components of practical wisdom in the textile trades. According to these indicators, the structural dissemination of practical wisdom in professions is based on the interconnection of three elements: ethics, specialization, and social order. Within this conceptual framework, none of these components are viewed as merely individual obligations; rather, they are considered social responsibilities and structural necessities for maintaining the integrity of the Islamic economic system. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_106039.html The Shahnameh of Tahmaspi, one of the most prominent illustrated manuscripts of Persian literature, is the culmination of the fusion of literature, painting, and decorative arts in Iran in the 10th century AH. This exquisite manuscript is known not only for the authenticity and value of its illustrations, but also for its subtle and purposeful use of visual elements, which creates a unique spatial structure in the visual narratives of Ferdowsi's stories. Two prominent elements of Iranian decorative arts are wooden gerehchini(lattice work) and inlay. In many of the illustrations in this edition, spaces such as porches, doorways, windows, and railings are depicted with geometric patterns that have their roots in ancient Iranian-Islamic artistic traditions.In this article, the role of these two elements in creating the space of the illustrations of this edition, has been examined. The present study was conducted with a descriptive-analytical approach and in a library manner and seeks to answer the question: How were the decorative motifs of knotting and inlaying implemented in the visual space of the illustrations of Shahnameh Tahmasbi? What functions do these motifs have in terms of semantic, narrative, and aesthetic in the context of the image? Can these elements be interpreted as signs derived from the architecture and visual culture of the Safavid period? Therefore, the objectives of this article are stated as follows: Identifying gerehchini and inlay patterns in the paintings, analyzing the function of these elements in organizing space, explaining the relationship between decorative structures and the social status of the characters, and finally examining how these components convey meaning. In this path, the images related to the stories of the Kiani kings were observed and analyzed from the beginning to the end of this section, and decorative motifs of wood knotting and inlay work were extracted. Then, the type of knot, structural materials, color, construction method, and their symbolic reference (if symbolic) are analyzed, and finally, a comparison is made between similar decorative forms and functions in the wooden architecture of that period (including windows, doors, railings, and porches).By utilizing gerehchini forms and patterns (such as hexagonal and composite knots and multi-pointed stars) as well as geometric motifs common in inlay work, the artists who illustrated Tahmasbi's Shahnameh have succeeded in recreating architectural spaces with semantic, aristocratic, and courtly dimensions. The findings suggest that these decorative structures, in addition to conveying aesthetic values, functioned as a “visual language” and produced semantic connotations. The presence of these motifs in the vicinity of kings, princes, gilded porches or doorways carries signs of the social class of the figures. The symmetry and complexity of the patterns around the figures point to their power and legitimacy. On the other hand, the gerehchini fences, as a symbolic barrier between the sacred and the mundane, create a boundary that the audience can understand even without the text. In other words, these motifs are a type of visual code that, through shape, order, color, and placement, convey information about the roles of the characters, their level of power, and the spatial structure of the narrative. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_106709.html In seventeenth century France, during the reign of Louis XIV, men’s court dress transcended its decorative and ceremonial functions, becoming a strategic visual instrument for representing political authority. Within the theatrical culture of the Baroque court, clothing functioned as a medium through which hierarchy, legitimacy, and ideological power were communicated and reinforced. Although Baroque culture is associated with spectacle, opulence, and magnificence, the use of its aesthetic components in men’s court attire as a mechanism for legitimizing political authority has received limited scholarly attention. This study examines how the aesthetic language of Baroque fashion operated as a visual apparatus for representing and stabilizing power within seventeenth century French court culture.The study examines a coherent corpus of portraits by Hyacinthe Rigaud, one of the leading portrait painters of the French court, with particular emphasis on his renowned portrait of Louis XIV (1701) as the central case study. Employing a qualitative, descriptive analytical approach, the research analyzes visual elements of clothing through three analytical levels descriptive, connotative, and ideological. Within this framework, garments, fabrics, colors, ornaments, and insignia are interpreted as meaningful visual signs operating within a broader discourse of power.The findings show that court attire in Rigaud’s portraits functions as a structured semiotic system rather than mere decoration. Luxurious textiles and rich ornamentation signify wealth and aristocratic status, while royal insignia convey dynastic legitimacy. Through the interaction of costume, posture, and composition, these elements ultimately naturalize royal authority by aligning the king’s political body with a divinely sanctioned order.Comparison of Louis XIV’s portrait with other portraits of members of the Bourbon dynasty and prominent court figures reveals a three‑layered model for the representation of power in court dress. The performative layer highlights magnificence through the visual richness of fabrics, colors, and decorative details. The symbolic layer conveys dynastic legitimacy through heraldic markers and royal insignia. The ideological layer emerges from the interaction between these visual signs and the compositional structure of the portrait, through which royal authority is stabilized and naturalized.Comparative analysis further demonstrates that this visual model extends beyond royal imagery and functions as a normative visual language within the broader hierarchy of the court. Portraits of royal family members emphasize hereditary legitimacy, while those of courtiers and cultural elites articulate forms of acquired prestige and social distinction. This diversity reveals the flexibility of Rigaud’s visual language in representing different manifestations of authority across different ranks.Methodologically, the study contributes by combining Panofskian iconographic analysis with a systematic examination of costume elements within a unified corpus of works by a single painter. This approach makes it possible to trace both the continuity and gradual transformation of visual strategies of power across four decades. Consequently, Rigaud’s portraits can be understood not merely as depictions of individuals but also as significant visual documents of France’s political culture and ideological hegemony in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Within these works, clothing operates as an effective visual medium through which hierarchical power is articulated, differentiated, and reproduced within the representational system of the absolutist court. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_106965.html In recent years, the importance of hydration has garnered increasing attention from health professionals, underscoring the necessity of drinking adequate water daily. However, this essential habit intersects with significant environmental challenges, particularly concerning the excessive use of plastic bottles. In light of these concerns, the design of portable water bottles emerges as a critical area of research. This study focuses on creating a water bottle that not only addresses environmental issues but also resonates with the cultural values of Iranian society.The research employs the principles of the Kansei Engineering approach, which aims to bridge the gap between the emotional needs of users and the functional aspects of product design. By utilizing scientific findings and a thorough understanding of user needs, the study seeks to propose innovative design recommendations that align with the preferences and expectations of university students, a crucial demographic in this context.To achieve its objectives, the research follows a structured process involving several stages of the Kansei Engineering methodology. Initially, a comprehensive questionnaire was designed and distributed among a diverse group of participants, allowing for the collection of valuable data regarding user preferences and emotional responses related to water bottle design. The data was then subjected to rigorous statistical analyses, including factor analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA). These analyses revealed critical insights into the underlying factors that shape user perceptions and preferences.Through the identification of these factors, the study established a design framework that considers both functional requirements—such as durability, usability, and portability—and the emotional and aesthetic desires of users. The research goes beyond conventional design methods by integrating cultural considerations into the design process. By exploring various cultural design methods, additional frameworks were identified, further refining the approach to creating an effective and appealing water bottle.The culmination of this study is the creation of a comprehensive roadmap for designing a water bottle that meets the identified user needs. This roadmap not only addresses the functional aspects of the product but also incorporates emotional and cultural dimensions, ensuring that the final design is not only practical but also resonates with the identity and values of its users. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the significance of sustainable design practices in the context of the increasing environmental concerns surrounding plastic waste. By advocating for the use of eco-friendly materials and innovative design solutions, it aims to provide a framework that not only satisfies user desires but also contributes to environmental preservation.In conclusion, the integration of Kansei Engineering with cultural design principles offers a promising pathway for developing portable water bottles that are both environmentally friendly and culturally relevant. This research highlights the potential for designers to create products that not only meet functional needs but also resonate on an emotional level, ultimately leading to a more sustainable and meaningful interaction between the user and their hydration solutions. The findings from this study can serve as a foundational step for future research and development in the field of sustainable product design. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_106979.html The Buyid dynasty, which emerged in the fourth century AH, represents a significant and transformative period in the history of Iran and the broader Islamic world, marked by political consolidation, cultural flourishing, and artistic innovation. This study examines the extent to which the internal political strategies of the Buyid rulers influenced the development of a distinct cultural and artistic identity. The central research question addresses how the internal policies of the Buyids—including strategies of political legitimacy, scholarly patronage, and religious tolerance—shaped the production, dissemination, and visual representation of knowledge, culture, and art.Secondary questions focus on the material and architectural manifestations of these strategies, as well as their impact on urban planning, handicrafts, and aesthetic standards. The primary objective of this research is to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the interrelationship between governance, intellectual activity, and artistic creation, while investigating the mechanisms through which political authority contributed to cultural and artistic development.The research methodology is descriptive-analytical, combining historical textual analysis, literary sources, and the examination of material culture, including coins, medals, metalwork, textiles, and architecture. Primary sources include the works of Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Miskawayh, Ibn al-Athir, and other contemporary historians, while secondary sources consist of modern scholarship on the political, cultural, and artistic history of the Buyid period. This interdisciplinary approach enables a detailed exploration of both the symbolic and practical dimensions of political power and its central role in shaping art, knowledge, and scientific activity.Findings indicate that the Buyid rulers implemented three interrelated strategies to consolidate authority and promote cultural development. First, political legitimacy was reinforced through the revival of Sasanian symbols, titles, and ceremonial practices, including the use of the prestigious title Shahanshah and the adoption of Sasanian royal attire, thereby establishing a symbolic link to Iran’s pre-Islamic past and representing authority in artistic and architectural works. Second, scholarly legitimacy was enhanced through the establishment of libraries, educational centers, and the patronage of scholars, poets, and philosophers. Prominent examples include the libraries of ‘Adud al-Dawla in Shiraz and Ibn ‘Amid in Rayy, which became influential centers for the collection, preservation, and production of knowledge. Such patronage facilitated the integration of geometric, mathematical, and aesthetic principles into architecture and urban planning, exemplified by the Grand Mosque of Neyriz. Third, religious tolerance fostered an inclusive environment for Shi‘a and Sunni Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, promoting cultural exchange, social coexistence, and intellectual diversity across the realm.Overall, the internal policies of the Buyid dynasty ensured both political stability and remarkable cultural and artistic development. By integrating political, scholarly, and religious strategies, the dynasty established a unique cultural identity that effectively fused Sasanian heritage with Islamic knowledge, resulting in a dynamic, pluralistic, and intellectually vibrant society. The artistic and architectural works of this period demonstrate a conscious application of scientific knowledge to proportion, geometric design, and aesthetic harmony in both practical and symbolic dimensions. This study thus highlights the role of internal governance strategies as a crucial catalyst for cultural and artistic flourishing, illuminating the intricate interplay of power, knowledge, and creativity in historical societies. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107110.html The subject of women in contemporary Iranian miniature has been of interest to contemporary painters, and the social discourse of Muslim women has influenced its depiction. Comparing the themes of contemporary Iranian miniature with the social roles of women in contemporary Iranian history shows that there were joint concepts in the social role of women in Islamic culture and the point of view of painters. The spiritual journey of women, women and the family (the role of mother and nurturer of the human race, fertility and childbearing, and the role of spouse), women's hejab in society, the role of women in Islamic Jahad, and the scientific role of women are topics that have been shaped under the influence of the social discourse of Muslim women in miniature. This article aims to describe and semiotically analyze the transformations in the depiction of women's social action in contemporary Iranian miniature, and to answer this question: What were the effects of the social discourse of Muslim women on the visual transformations of contemporary Iranian miniature, and how did it emerge? This research first explains the social discourse of Muslim women in Iran. Then, it describes the visual elements of contemporary Iranian miniature with the theme of women's social role, then analyzes it semiotically, and finally determines the signifiers of each of these signs or visual elements. In studying the influence of social discourses on miniature works, the form and content of these works are examined, and the quality of their Transformations is analyzed with the semiotic approach in creating symbolic and cryptic visual elements as representations of Iranian society. This research is an explanation of the social discourse of Muslim women's role in the Transformations of contemporary Iranian miniature. This discourse has its roots in Islamic culture, and has been influenced by Shiite culture in Iran, and has been influential in various cultural fields, including contemporary Iranian miniature. The purpose of this research is to introduce this discourse and analyze the Transformations in contemporary Iranian miniature under the influence of the aforesaid discourse. Since it is impossible to fully understand the Transformations in contemporary miniature and even the tradition of Iranian miniature without paying attention to this issue, conducting such research seems necessary. The research method in this article is semiotics, a set of qualitative methods with a discourse-critical semiotic approach, and library studies and image reading to collect information. The results of this article show that the social discourse of Muslim women as a social factor has caused contemporary Iranian miniature to use visual elements on the subject of women's social action, which represent the values of Islamic and Shiite culture regarding women. These visual elements evoke the divine essence of women in Islamic society, the values of women in the role of mothers, the scientific role of women, and their role in Islamic jihad. The focal point of the effects of the social discourse of Muslim women on contemporary Iranian miniature is the introduction of the high status of women in Iranian Islamic culture. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107378.html Nowadays, addressing environmental issues is a high priority in the design process, especially in the fashion industry, which faces increasing pressure to reduce its environmental impact. As consumers’ awareness of the ecological impact of this sector increases, the demand for environmentally friendly fashion is rising, and some brands are choosing greenwashing strategies to win in this competitive field and present a sustainable image of themselves. Greenwashing, characterized by misleading green claims, creates confusion and distrust among consumers, ultimately hindering the sustainability process. At the same time, as the demand for sustainable raw materials such as leather increases in the fashion industry, greenwashing trends are also emerging more and more. One often overlooked aspect is the sustainability of natural materials like leather. It is frequently argued that leather is more environmentally friendly because it is a natural product. In contrast, its synthetic alternatives are made of polyester or acrylic. Unaware that certain processes such as leather tanning require the use of toxic chemicals that infiltrate the ecosystem and pollute it. Although synthetic leather has a quarter of the environmental impact of cowhide due to the absence of animal husbandry and traditional tanning processes, making it environmentally friendly, it uses hazardous chemicals derived from fossil fuels in the production process, which are not biodegradable. It is claimed that the gap from this type of greenwashing can be closed by utilizing the knowledge of nature as defined through biomimicry. All natural processes operate through sustainable cycles. Incorporating circular processes into human-made systems is essential for bridging the sustainability gap across all sectors. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine how the biomimicry approach works in sustainable fashion design without greenwashing, which was followed by choosing the leading designer in this field, Stella McCartney, and purposefully choosing a product derived from the biomimicry in her portfolio under the title of Mylo leather. To explore how the biomimicry approach functions in sustainable fashion design without leading to greenwashing, a descriptive-analytical method was implemented, and research data was gathered through library studies, including books, scientific articles, and reputable websites. The findings suggest that a competitor in the leather market, utilizing fungal biomass, leverages bio-pattern knowledge. This approach offers a promising, cost-effective, socially responsible, and bio-sustainable alternative to cowhide and synthetic leather. This bio leather is an innovation derived from the biomimicry approach and offers many sustainable benefits compared to natural and synthetic leather, which can help reduce greenwashing trends. Designers in the fashion industry who engage in the early stages of product development can incorporate sustainability features into the currently unsustainable fashion cycle by supporting and investing in innovations inspired by nature. Nature, which has always had a stable cyclical process in its evolution, can be the best model for transforming the linear flow of fashion into a circular one and marginalizing greenwashing. Although Mylo leather still has some obstacles as a green solution in the fashion world, improving it can promise green days without greenwashing and leave a bright spot for the future. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107562.html Four parts out of a fourteen-parts Qurʼān, which were copied and dedicated to the shrine of Imam ʿalī ibn Mūsa al-Riḍā (AS), in Mashhad, by Abu al-Ḥasan Muhammad ibn ʿalī al-Irāqī, are currently preserved in Astan Quds Razavi Library. The round script of this manuscript does not adhere to the well-known six scripts and exhibits significant differences in letter forms and calligraphic principles. The precise date of the copying and dedication remains unknown. However, in his book "Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī," Abu al-Faḍl Bayhaqī, the scribe and historian of the Ghaznavids, refers multiple times to a person named Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī, who served as a secretary and advisor to Masʿūd Ghaznavī (reigned 421-431 AH). Bayhaqi recounts Abu al-Ḥasan's charitable deeds, such as constructing a caravanserai and restoring a qanat in Mashhad, as well as his interment in a mosque adjacent to the shrine of Imam Reza in the year 429 AH. This leads to the analysis of the artistic traits of this manuscript represents a unique instance of a distinctive script from the early fifth century AH, with a primary focus on understanding the historical significance of the dedicator and calligrapher, Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī. To this end, this manuscript is first examined in terms of its general characteristics, including dimensions, page count, and the content of the dedication inscription. Following this, the circumstances surrounding Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī during the reign of Mas'ud Ghaznavid between 421 and 429 AH are scrutinized. Subsequently, a descriptive (case study) and qualitative analysis was conducted on the materials used in the copying of the Qurʼān, the calligraphy, and the features of the Qurʼān's cover. The research findings strongly suggest that the scribe and donor of this Qurʼān is likely the same Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī mentioned in Bayhaqi's book. It also appears that Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī had close connections with the Sādūki family in Qum and his role in the court of Mas'ud Ghaznavī held significant sway over the reputation of this family. Notably, it is revealed that Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī, besides his secretarial duties, was also a poet, with one of his quatrains cited in the Tarjumān al-Balāgha. Moreover, taking into account the timeline of Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī's political engagements and presence in Khurasan, it is deduced that this Qurʼān was transcribed and dedicated between the years 421-429 AH. Additionally, the presence of the Surah al-Tawḥid (Qurʼān: 112) intricately depicted in small circles on the cover of this Qurʼān, reminiscent of the intricate bindings produced in Ghazni, indicates that the cover of this Qurʼān was likely made in Khurasan. Furthermore, the script utilized in this manuscript, blending Eastern Kufic and circular scripts, is a distinctive local script of the fifth century of Hijra, necessitating its classification as a unique addition to the existing roster of circular scripts. On another note, given Abu al-Ḥasan Irāqī's role as the secretary of the Buyid dynasty prior to 421 AH, it can be speculated that this script might have been fashioned by Buyid secretaries in Rayy specifically for Qurʼānic transcriptions. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107563.html The manuscript of the selection of Saʿdī's Dīwān, dated 706 AH and preserved in the Berlin State Library under the catalog number Ms. or. oct. 3451, is one of the earliest extant copies of Saʿdī's works known to have been produced in Shiraz. This present study seeks to analyze the handwriting rules and identify the distinctive features of calligraphy in this manuscript. The necessity of performing this research is extracting the handwriting rules in the aforementioned manuscript in order to simplify the reading of its text for the contemporary reader. Additionally, identifying the specific calligraphic features and distinguishing elements that set this Naskh script apart from more commonly used Naskh of the same period. This research represents a small but meaningful step toward completing and refining the historical narrative of Persian calligraphy. The study is centered around two main questions: 1. What types of handwriting rules appear in the manuscript of Saʿdī’s Dīwān? 2. What are the unique characteristics of the calligraphic rules used in this manuscript?This research is conducted using descriptive, analytical, and comparative methods. In order to answer questions, first the handwriting rules were categorized into four groups according to modern handwriting. In the second part, five manuscripts dating between 678 and 699 AH were selected for comparative analysis as samples of the current Naskh script of the time. The features of the calligraphy in Berlin’s Saʿdī’s Dīwān were examined in relation to these examples, focusing on letterforms, structural composition, and proportional relationshipsThe orthography and calligraphy of this manuscript exhibit distinctive stylistic rules. A thorough examination of the text revealed several recurrent orthographic features, including: the attachment of the preposition be (“به”) to the following word, the continuous writing of the plural suffix -hā ("ها"), connected writing of the progressive prefix mi- ("می"); separation of the verbal prefixes be- and na- in the verb didan (“to see”), Continuous writing of specific words, the disjunctive use of verbal prefixes be- and na- (ب‍ - ن‍) in didan (“to see”), the use of tāʾ marbūṭa (ة) in words such as ḥayāt (“life”) and ṣūrat (“form”) and the manuscript lacks a consistent system for dotting Persian letters, sometimes showing variant forms.The calligraphic features of the manuscript are as folloes: The different diacritics of the Naskh script, such as the inverted circles with a sharp edge, the sloping head, and the bowls of the “ج” group, the continuous writing of all the letters of a word, and the “ک” group’s small are unique belonging to the script of the Saʿdī’s Dīwān. Similarities can be seen in both the Signs and the proportions with the last sample of number 5 dated 699 AH. Also, the rule of the baseline is fully observed in it, despite the small dimensions of the Divan of Saadi. The calligraphy of the Saʿdī’s Dīwān contains signs and proportions that distinguish it from the current Naskh script. The manuscript demonstrates a general alignment with the stylistic norms of 8th-century AH Persian handwriting, yet it retains several older features. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107564.html In the contemporary era of the Experience Economy, the value proposition of luxury jewelry has shifted significantly from the mere possession of precious materials to the consumption of meaningful emotional experiences. While Positive Design frameworks emphasize the role of products in fostering subjective well-being, there remains a paucity of empirical research investigating how specific design languages translate into distinct emotional responses within the high jewelry sector. This study addresses this gap by conducting a comparative analysis of two divergent design paradigms: the structural, geometric approach of Cartier versus the organic, narrative-driven approach of Van Cleef & Arpels. The primary objective was to deconstruct the emotional profiles of these brands to understand how physical attributes such as symmetry, line fluidity, and thematic inspiration influence the spectrum of positive emotions experienced by experts.The research employed a quantitative, descriptive-analytical design with a within-subject approach. To ensure high validity, the study utilized an Expert Evaluation Panel comprising 35 professional jewelry designers and academic specialists, selected via purposive sampling. The data collection instrument was a standardized questionnaire based on Desmet’s (2012) 25 Positive Emotions framework, validated with a Cronbach’s alpha greater than 0.70. To control for confounding variables such as vintage value or fashion trends, two contemporaneous high jewelry collections released in 2021-2022 were selected as visual stimuli: Cartier’s "Sixième Sens" (representing the abstract/geometric paradigm) and VCA’s "Sous les étoiles" (representing the cosmic/organic paradigm). Participants evaluated five representative pieces from each collection. Data were analyzed using SPSS software (v.26). Given the strong internal correlation between the scores assigned to both brands (r=0.802, p<.001), a Paired Samples t-test was utilized to determine statistical significance.The statistical analysis revealed a highly significant difference in the emotional impact of the two design languages (t(34)=−4.65, p<.001). Van Cleef & Arpels achieved a significantly higher mean emotional arousal score (M=5.39, SD=0.86) compared to Cartier (M=4.97, SD=0.84). Beyond the aggregate scores, the qualitative analysis of the emotional profiles highlighted a fundamental dichotomy in user experience. VCA, through its use of asymmetrical balance, fluid lines, and deep color gradients, predominantly activated self-transcendent and dynamic emotions. The top-ranking emotions for VCA included Energetic, Inspired, and Dreamy, suggesting that its narrative design strategy transports the viewer to a state of wonder and vitality. Conversely, Cartier’s reliance on high contrast, explicit symmetry, and architectural forms primarily elicited ego-focused emotions such as Confidence, Pride, and Courage. An unexpected finding was that VCA also scored highest on Confidence (M=6.07), suggesting that for a specialized audience, artistic uniqueness and technical complexity may serve as a more potent source of assurance than traditional symbols of power.This study empirically confirms that design aesthetics serve as a semiotic code that directs the user's emotional journey. The findings suggest a dualism in jewelry design: Geometry translates to Authority, while Organic Narrative translates to Vitality. These results offer strategic insights for designers and brand managers, particularly in developing markets, demonstrating that moving beyond formal imitation to emotional engineering can significantly enhance the perceived value and psychological resonance of luxury products. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107894.html AbstractThis article examines the visual language of Reza Abbasi’s paintings through the interpretive lens of Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology, with particular emphasis on persona, shadow, and individuation. The central problem is how the transformation of Reza Abbasi’s imagery across three artistic periods can be read as a meaningful relation between visual form and the layered dynamics of the psyche, in which shifting modes of depiction reflect shifting configurations of selfhood and otherness.The purpose of the study is to clarify how changes in the visual organization of Reza Abbasi’s paintings correspond to changes in the representation of the human figure, lived subjectivity, and the cultural imagination embedded in the pictorial field. The article therefore attends not only to iconographic content but also to the formal and affective qualities through which meaning is produced, including linear refinement, bodily posture, compositional economy, spatial restraint, the treatment of emptiness, chromatic nuance, and the emotional tonality of the depicted figures. Methodologically, the research is developmental in orientation and qualitative in nature, employing a descriptive–analytical approach. It is grounded in Jungian analytical psychology and uses concepts such as the collective unconscious, archetype, persona, shadow, and individuation as interpretive tools. By combining these concepts with visual analysis and art-historical insights into Safavid painting, the study adopts an interdisciplinary framework for interpreting Reza Abbasi’s works.The findings suggest that the first phase of Reza Abbasi’s production is marked by the predominance of persona. In these works, elegantly composed courtly figures, idealized physiognomies, harmonious color relations, and highly controlled visual structures construct a public and socially codified image of identity. The refinement of contour, the balance of ornamental detail, and the restraint of gesture all contribute to a visual regime aligned with the representational logic of the Safavid court. In the second phase, however, this ordered surface gives way to a more inward and unstable mode of representation. The increasing presence of dervishes, solitary men, ordinary subjects, and emotionally charged figures points to an expanded pictorial attention to marginality, vulnerability, and psychic depth. From a Jungian perspective, this phase may be interpreted through the emergence of the shadow, insofar as the image begins to register dimensions of experience that lie outside official and idealized identity and unsettle the earlier coherence of the visual persona.In the third phase, the paintings disclose a relative reconciliation of these opposing tendencies. The courtly and the non-courtly, the composed and the affective, the external and the inward are brought into a more integrated visual relationship. This integration may be understood as analogous to individuation, not as a literal psychological biography of the artist, but as an interpretive model for reading the increasing complexity of visual form, spatial organization, and human presence in the works. Accordingly, Reza Abbasi’s paintings may be seen as a site where the tensions between conscious cultural identity and deeper collective psychic layers are made visible, negotiated, and aesthetically elaborated within the visual language of Safavid painting. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_107963.html The painting of Māhān Kūshyār is a folio from the Haft Paykar section of an illustrated manuscript of the Timurid Khamsah (846 AH / 1442 AD, British Library, MS 25900). This painting is considered a visual allegory of Ibn Sīnā’s ʿālam-i mithālī (the imaginal world). In the tale of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, Ibn Sīnā describes the Oriental Realm as a transcendent realm and a liminal space between the material and intellective realms—a realm where spiritual realities manifest in sensible forms. Furthermore, by choosing the merchant’s name (Māhān Kūshyār), Niẓāmī Ganjavī makes a deliberate and double-edged reference to Kūshyār-i Munajjim (Kushyar the Astronomer) in order to establish the āfāqī dimension of the concept of the Oriental Realm as a setting for the protagonist’s anfusī journey. Hence, the objective of this study is to decode the symbolic and metaphorical structure of the Māhān Kūshyār painting from Niẓāmī’s Haft Paykar (846 AH / 1442 AD, British Library, MS 25900) by drawing upon the concepts of Sīnavī philosophy (the Oriental Realm and the Imaginal World).The problem of this research is the lack of a deep and structural analysis of the Māhān Kūshyār painting that could reveal its hidden philosophical-mystical layers. This research gap persists despite the fact that only a single descriptive-historical study of this painting has been conducted by Barbara Brend (2022), leaving its mystical dimensions completely unexamined. The question is: how does the symbolic structure of the Māhān Kūshyār painting encode the concepts of Sīnavī philosophy (the Oriental Realm), and how can its systematic analysis explain the link between the āfāqī and anfusī systems as well as the key ambiguities of the painting (such as the seven-headed horse)?Using a descriptive-analytical method and a comparative approach, this study analyzes the symbolic elements of the painting within the āfāqī and anfusī systems. The statistical population consists of all paintings depicting the story of Māhān Kūshyār. Only two paintings have been found: the first is housed in the British Library with the shelfmark MS 25900, f. 188r, dating to 846 AH / 1442 AD from the Timurid period; the second is in the Harvard University Library with the accession number 9.2015.224, dating to 894 AH / 1489 AD from the Āq Qoyūnlū period. The sample studied is the work preserved in the British Library. The reason for selecting this work is the abundance of details and a manner of expression that closely resembles Ibn Sīnā's description in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and the visualization of the liminality of the Oriental Realm. The tale of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān was chosen because it describes the stages of the anfusī journey, the faculties of the soul (quwā-yi nafs), and the position of the Active Intellect (ʿaql-i faʿʿāl) in such a precise manner that ultimately allows for a direct correspondence with the visual elements and the spiritual path of Māhān Kūshyār in the painting. The allusion Ibn Sīnā makes to the Orient represents the very first step toward the awakening of the seeker, and it can be understood as the primordial Oriental Realm. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108018.html An Intertextual Analysis of National Symbols in the Armorial Pictorial CarpetPictorial carpets woven in Kerman during the Qajar period (1789–1925), emerged from a complex interaction of political, economic, and cultural forces. The prosperity of carpet production in Kerman was closely associated with political stability, expanding commercial networks, and the patronage of influential governors, particularly Abdolhossein Mirza Farmanfarma, whose support enabled royal commissions and encouraged artistic innovation. These carpets should therefore be understood not merely as luxury textiles but as visual documents that reflect the intellectual, cultural, and political climate of nineteenth-century Iran.Although pictorial carpets have attracted considerable scholarly attention, the Armorial Carpet examined in this study has remained largely unexplored. The present research originated from the author's observation of several examples of this carpet during an exhibition held in Kerman in March 2024. The exhibited pieces included both inscribed and non-inscribed versions displaying only minor compositional variations. Informal discussions with manufacturers and local experts produced inconsistent and undocumented interpretations, most notably the claim that the central emblem represented the legendary Derafsh-e Kaviani. The absence of reliable scholarly evidence surrounding these interpretations revealed a significant research gap and provided the principal motivation for undertaking the present investigation.This study employs a descriptive-analytical methodology. Primary visual data were collected through field observation and photographic documentation of the carpet, while historical and theoretical materials were compiled from library resources and digital archives. The analytical framework is based on Gérard Genette's theory of transtextuality, particularly his concept of hypertextuality, because the Armorial Carpet demonstrates multiple relationships with preceding visual and cultural texts. Within this framework, imitation is understood as the reproduction of an existing structural model, whereas transformation refers to the reinterpretation and recontextualization of inherited symbolic elements to generate new meanings. These concepts provide an appropriate methodological foundation for investigating the multilayered visual references embedded in the carpet. Accordingly, the central research question asks: Which visual elements and symbolic components represented in the Armorial Carpet derive from earlier textual, artistic, and cultural traditions? The study aims to identify the carpet's intertextual and hypertextual relationships and to demonstrate how the reproduction and reinterpretation of historical symbols contributed to constructing a visual discourse of Iranian national identity while simultaneously reflecting the international cultural interactions of the Qajar period.The transtextual analysis demonstrates that the Armorial Carpet functions as a hypertext whose visual composition is generated through simultaneous processes of imitation and transformation. The overall heraldic arrangement—including the symmetrical composition, central shield, supporters, crest, and hierarchical organization of visual elements—reveals a clear process of imitation derived from European armorial traditions. However, the semantic content of this imported structure is fundamentally transformed through the incorporation of Iranian historical, royal, religious, and mythological imagery. Rather than reproducing European heraldry, the designer appropriated its compositional system as a visual framework for expressing indigenous cultural meanings. Consequently, the carpet should be interpreted as a creative reinterpretation of a foreign visual model rather than as a direct copy.From the perspective of Genette's theory, the carpet's hypertextual construction operates primarily through three mechanisms: pastiche, forgery, and transposition. Pastiche is evident in the respectful imitation of royal and heraldic conventions without satirical or critical intention. The artist faithfully reproduces formal characteristics associated with political authority while adapting them to the medium of carpet weaving. This process represents an act of cultural continuity rather than parody or ideological criticism.The second mechanism, forgery, functions through the re-creation of authentic royal and national symbols within a new artistic medium. Detached from their original political and ceremonial contexts, these symbols acquire renewed significance as woven images. Their relocation into textile art does not diminish their authority; instead, it establishes an alternative visual context in which historical legitimacy is reconstructed through artistic representation. The carpet therefore serves as an independent semiotic system that redefines inherited symbols while preserving their cultural authority.The third mechanism, transposition, involves transferring both the meanings and functions of political iconography into the broader sphere of cultural memory. Symbols originally associated with monarchy, dynastic legitimacy, or military authority are reinterpreted as visual expressions of collective identity and historical continuity. Through this process, political emblems transcend their original administrative functions and become enduring cultural signs capable of communicating national values across different historical periods.In conclusion, the Armorial Carpet exemplifies the dynamic processes through which visual cultures appropriate, reinterpret, and transform external artistic models without abandoning indigenous traditions. The study demonstrates that Qajar pictorial carpets functioned not only as luxury textiles but also as powerful cultural media capable of preserving historical memory, negotiating national identity, and communicating political and religious concepts. By applying Genette's theory of transtextuality to Persian carpet studies, this research contributes a new methodological perspective for understanding the relationship between visual form, cultural symbolism, and historical meaning in Iranian textile art. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108256.html This essay introduces the notion of the system as developed through an interpretation of Dominic McIver Lopes’s theories and presents its different manifestations. Accordingly, this notion is not Lopes’s own explicitly formulated view, but rather the authors’ interpretation and part of a broader project to determine the place of the image in his writings. The research literature shows that previous approaches have mainly addressed systems of representation and the domains of art and non-art. The authors’ focus on the views of a contemporary philosopher working in analytic philosophy, together with their particular emphasis on the notion of system, therefore constitutes a novel approach and opens new horizons for the discussion. The data are drawn from several works by Lopes and from selected thinkers within the same intellectual tradition. The research method is analytical, and data were collected through library research. The central question is: What are the systematic manifestations of Lopes’s views, and how can they be characterized? The hypotheses are, first, that some manifestations center on the image, whereas others extend beyond the domain of the image while remaining applicable to it; and second, that they operate at two levels, classical and progressive. The findings identify the following manifestations: systems of recognition; systemic instructiveness and efficacy; artistic forms as systems; genre and style as systems; systemic pictorial value; system-oriented perception; the transmission of human agents’ judgments on the basis of system-oriented perception realized within a social system; and systems of theorizing. These manifestations can further be understood through a classical conception of system centered on the audience and a progressive conception centered on agency, which encompasses the audience and extends beyond it. This essay examines how the term system can be defined when the focus is on the place of the image in Lopes’s approach. Lopes himself does not provide an explicit definition of system, nor does he clearly state that he is developing such a notion. Rather, the notion of system emerges from the authors’ interpretation of his published writings as a whole. Its different aspects and manifestations, as well as its fundamental character, are therefore interpretive constructions derived from the authors’ reading of Lopes. By system, the authors mean a set of elements that, through the relations among them, can be identified as a structured whole. This deliberately broad conception is adopted because various understandings of system can be extracted from Lopes’s views. The first section shows how pictorial representation exists within a systemic framework. The second explains how images can be instructive within such a framework. The third, divided into three subsections, focuses on artistic form: the first describes artistic form as a perceptual kind; the second clarifies its systemic relations; and the third examines the interrelation between artistic form and genre. The fourth section shows that value and evaluation are realized within a systemic context. The fifth presents perception as a relational act. The sixth focuses on aesthetic judgment as an experiential phenomenon realized and transmitted within a system. The seventh shows how Lopes’s framework for theorizing entails movement between different levels of systems. Finally, the last section explains how the notion of system itself, together with its manifestations discussed throughout the essay, can be understood at two levels. The study is based on an interpretation and analysis of Lopes’s views, with the aim of explicating the notion of system in his research. Its structure emphasizes his theories of images while demonstrating that some of these theories concern images specifically, whereas others, although addressing broader matters, can also be applied to images. Although the essay is informed by the place of the image in Lopes’s long-term approach, it does not attempt to explain that place as a whole. Instead, the pictorial domain serves as the basis for explicating the notion of system. The sources include a number of Lopes’s books and articles, together with selected major thinkers generally associated with analytic philosophy. The overall procedure consisted of studying Lopes’s published writings, interpreting and extracting the different aspects that determine the place of the image in his work, and finally classifying and articulating the manifestations of system as one dimension through which that place can be understood. Thus, the methodology rests on a key claim: the notion of system presented here is the result of the authors’ study, interpretation, and analysis of Lopes’s work, rather than a notion explicitly defined or presented by Lopes himself. This distinction is methodologically important because it prevents the essay from attributing to Lopes a terminology or theoretical architecture that he does not endorse. The argument instead reconstructs a systematic pattern across his writings and uses that reconstruction as an interpretive framework for examining images, perception, value, artistic practice, agency, and theorizing. In this sense, system functions as a concept introduced by the authors rather than as a quotation from Lopes. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108257.html This study examines the latent geometric principles that organize the calligraphic paintings of Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, a seminal figure associated with the Saqqakhaneh movement and contemporary Iranian calligraphic painting. Although his pictorial fields appear improvisational, expressive, and optically intricate, formal scrutiny reveals that their apparent spontaneity is regulated by a coherent geometric syntax and a calibrated compositional order. Accordingly, the aim of this research is to determine how visual density, spatial articulation, serial repetition, negative space, proportional relations, and rhythmic sequencing construct the internal architecture of Zenderoudi’s works. The study also investigates how the artist disengages Persian script from its linguistic, semantic, and communicative functions and reconstitutes letters, numerals, words, and scriptural fragments as autonomous plastic elements. Through this transformation, calligraphy becomes not merely an inscriptional medium but an independent visual language capable of generating structure, movement, hierarchy, and perceptual tension within the pictorial plane. The inquiry therefore addresses the formal mechanisms of compositions and their significance within Iranian modernism. The research employs a rigorous descriptive-analytical and comparative methodology, supplemented by computational visual analysis. A selection of works is examined according to the spatial distribution of calligraphic units, focal concentrations, recurrent motifs, directional vectors, proportional correspondences, and the interaction between occupied and unoccupied zones. Attention is given to chromatic and graphic density, visual nuclei, and movement produced through compression, expansion, clustering, and dispersal. Density maps, frequency diagrams, and spatial distribution models are applied to identify regions of visual condensation and rarefaction often overlooked through conventional stylistic or iconographic analysis alone. These instruments enable a precise assessment of the correlation between localized density and the global organization of each composition, while clarifying how repeated marks generate continuity across discontinuous fields. The resulting observations are interpreted through formal analysis and situated in relation to the canons of Persian calligraphy, the strategies of modern abstraction, and the spiritual concerns that characterize the Saqqakhaneh movement. The findings demonstrate that Zenderoudi’s compositions are sustained by a systematic and measurable geometric logic. Their coherence is not founded primarily on bilateral symmetry, axial stability, or a centralized focus. Instead, equilibrium emerges through the calculated distribution of saturated and sparse zones throughout the pictorial surface. Accumulated calligraphic masses function as visual anchors or gravitational nodes, whereas attenuated passages and negative intervals establish pauses, transitions, breathing spaces, and directional routes. The opposition between compression and openness guides the viewer’s gaze, activates the surface, and produces a rhythm oscillating between concentration and release. Repetition likewise exceeds an ornamental function. Through seriality, modulation, scaling, rotation, and variation, recurring signs become structural agents that coordinate optical movement, articulate temporal continuity, and bind fragmented sectors of the canvas. In decentralized compositions, related graphic modules establish correspondences among distant zones and preserve formal integrity. Thus, local imbalance is compensated by relational balance across the field, allowing asymmetry to operate as an organizing principle rather than as a disruption of order. The pictorial space behaves as an interconnected system in which every cluster, interval, and directional shift contributes to an underlying spatial matrix. The analysis establishes that negative space performs a function in constructing visual order. Vacant areas are not neutral backgrounds or residual surfaces; instead, they mediate relations among calligraphic constellations, control perceptual tempo, isolate motifs, and strengthen graphic hierarchy. By regulating adjacency, separation, and visual respiration, emptiness becomes as structurally consequential as inscription. Its interaction with articulated zones generates a concealed geometry that remains adaptable, nonaxial, and asymmetrical while maintaining unity. This geometry is not imposed as a rigid grid but emerges through relational intervals, shifting centers, and proportional tensions. Consequently, Zenderoudi’s paintings reconcile gestural immediacy and improvisation with internal control, revealing a dialectic between freedom and discipline, excess and restraint, opacity and legibility. The study concludes that Zenderoudi reconfigures the inherited tradition of Iranian calligraphy as a modern architectural and visual language. By approaching letters, words, numerals, and calligraphic traces as spatial modules rather than linguistic signs, he constructs a synthesis of cultural memory, visual heritage, and modernist abstraction grounded in concealed geometric relations. In this system, script acquires material presence: it can accumulate, expand, rotate, collide, dissolve, and establish spatial thresholds across the canvas. His works demonstrate that abstraction in contemporary Iranian art is not necessarily intuitive or formless, but may possess a precise, quantifiable, and organized internal structure. The research indicates that computational procedures can complement art historical interpretation by rendering subtle patterns of density and distribution analytically visible. On this basis, the study proposes an interdisciplinary model for investigating calligraphic painting and related manifestations of Iranian art through the integrated examination of visual density, spatial balance, negative space, repetition, rhythm, hierarchy, and latent geometry. This model provides a replicable framework for comparing works, identifying compositional tendencies, and articulating the formal intelligence through which traditional signs become modern pictorial structures. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108667.html Industrial design is an inherently interdisciplinary field that integrates art, technology, and human-centered thinking to develop products. The professional identity of a designer evolves over time through formal learning, hands-on experience, and engagement in real-world projects. Success in this developmental process depends not only on technical skills but also on the designer’s inherent and acquired personality traits, which guide decision-making, creativity, planning, and problem-solving. The relationship between personality and professional identity in industrial designers is dynamic, evolving from formal education through professional practice.Despite extensive research on personality in general, relatively few studies have explored personality characteristics specifically within design practice. Understanding this relationship is critical because personality traits can influence not only creativity and idea generation but also career progression, job satisfaction, and alignment between individual preferences and professional roles. The present study investigates the association between MBTI personality types and career trajectories in industrial design. Applying this typology helps designers and students better understand their individual approaches to design challenges.Personality is a relatively stable yet flexible structure that guides an individual’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns across situations. Research indicates that environmental factors—including upbringing, educational experiences, cultural backgrounds, and professional contexts—also play key roles in shaping personality. In the MBTI model, each personality type is represented by a four-letter code resulting from four dichotomous dimensions.The energy-orientation dimension, comprising Extraversion (E) and Introversion (I), reflects the primary source of an individual’s psychological energy. Extraverts tend to be socially active and oriented toward immediate action, whereas introverts are more reflective, cautious, and require time for internal processing. In industrial design, this distinction may influence how individuals approach problem-solving and idea generation.The information-gathering dimension, consisting of Sensing (S) and Intuition (N), describes how people prefer to collect and interpret environmental information. Sensing individuals rely on concrete facts and direct experience, while intuitive individuals focus on patterns, implicit meanings, and future possibilities. In industrial design, sensing types may excel in practical, implementation-oriented design stages, whereas intuitive types may be more effective in free ideation, future-oriented design, and innovative solution-finding.The decision-making dimension, with Thinking (T) and Feeling (F) preferences, concerns how individuals evaluate information. Thinking-oriented individuals rely on objective analysis and consistent principles, while feeling-oriented individuals prioritize personal values, empathy, and the interpersonal impact of decisions. In industrial design, thinking-type designers may be more inclined toward technical analysis and product-efficiency optimization, while feeling-type designers may emphasize users’ emotional experience, empathetic aesthetics, and meaningful design.The lifestyle dimension, encompassing Judging (J) and Perceiving (P) tendencies, refers to how individuals organize their relationship with the external world. Judging individuals prefer structure, planning, and clear organization, while perceiving individuals are more flexible, open to new experiences, and inclined to keep decisions open. In industrial design, judging types may perform better in organizing design processes, managing project phases, and establishing design standards. Perceiving types may be more effective in discovering innovative solutions, adapting design directions, and responding to changing user needs.The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the MBTI questionnaire was administered to 385 participants, including current students and graduates of industrial design programs. In the second phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a subset of participants actively employed in industrial design. These interviews explored the nature and extent of participants’ engagement in design activities, their preferred stages in the design process, and the types of projects they found most interesting. The goal was to identify relationships between MBTI personality types, specific design roles, and areas of professional engagement.Comparative analysis revealed notable differences in personality type distributions between the student sample and practicing designers. Among students, creative-oriented types such as ENFP, INFP, and INFJ were dominant, characterized by strong tendencies toward ideation, intuition, abstract thinking, and flexibility. However, among employed designers, INTJ and ISTJ types were more prevalent, prioritizing planning, structure, organization, analytical thinking, and logical decision-making.This shift suggests that while creative personality types—particularly those with intuitive (N) and feeling (F) preferences—have high potential for innovation and idea generation, the realities of professional practice often conflict with their natural preferences. Rigid organizational structures, stringent deadlines, and industrial constraints may create a mismatch between these individuals’ tendencies and the demands of the workplace. Consequently, many highly creative individuals may remain underrepresented in the industrial design labor market despite their considerable potential.These findings underscore the need for further investigation into the causes of this gap. Future research should employ larger samples, more rigorous mixed-method designs, and examine mediating variables such as organizational culture, work environment, and design education systems. Furthermore, the results highlight the importance of revising industrial design curricula and fostering more flexible, supportive work environments. Promoting cognitive and behavioral diversity among designers can enhance innovation, improve the quality of design thinking, and ultimately lead to the development of more user-centered products. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108668.html Research in product design has traditionally relied on qualitative and mixed research methods, including interviews, ethnographic observation, protocol analysis, and theoretical interpretations of design thinking. These approaches have contributed substantially to understanding designers’ intentions, cognitive strategies, and decision-making processes. Nevertheless, they primarily depend on retrospective accounts or analyses of completed products, while the documentary traces generated during the design process itself have received comparatively limited methodological attention. Consequently, the complex, iterative, and often non-linear evolution of product design remains only partially accessible through conventional research methods. At the same time, design activity continuously produces a rich body of documentary evidence, including sketches, diagrams, written notes, technical drawings, digital models, prototypes, rejected alternatives, material experiments, and successive versions of design solutions. These documents provide material evidence of how design decisions emerge, develop, and are revised throughout the creative process.Genetic criticism, originally established in literary studies, offers a systematic methodology for investigating such documentary evidence. Within this approach, documents associated with the creation of a work are treated as avant-textes and constitute the principal corpus for analysis. Rather than interpreting the finished artifact as an isolated object, genetic criticism reconstructs the genesis of a work by examining successive transformations reflected in its documentary traces. Over recent decades, the method has expanded beyond literary manuscripts to fields such as visual arts, architecture, cinema, and other creative disciplines, demonstrating its flexibility in analyzing creative processes through material evidence. However, despite the documentary richness of product design, a comprehensive methodological framework for adapting genetic criticism to the distinctive characteristics of design processes and their diverse documents remains underdeveloped.This study therefore investigates the applicability of genetic criticism as a methodological framework for product design research. The principal research question examines how product development can be systematically analyzed by integrating established design research methods with genetic criticism. Rather than replacing conventional qualitative methods, the proposed framework complements them by introducing documentary evidence as a primary analytical source and providing a structured approach for reconstructing the evolution of design ideas.To achieve this objective, influential elements of the design process are organized into three analytical categories adapted from selected concepts within Genette’s transtextuality: paratext, metatext, and hypotext. Paratexts include contextual, organizational, technical, and environmental factors surrounding design activity. Metatexts encompass reflective, explanatory, evaluative, and communicative materials produced throughout the design process. Hypotexts consist of underlying conceptual, technological, historical, cultural, and formal references that inform design thinking. These categories are analyzed in relation to the evolving corpus of avant-textes to identify the mechanisms through which design ideas are progressively transformed into a completed product. Particular attention is devoted to successive modifications, revisions, combinations, substitutions, adaptations, and other developmental changes that characterize the creative process.Based on this analytical framework, the study develops an operational model of genetic criticism specifically adapted to product design. To demonstrate its applicability, the model is illustratively applied to a product design case, not as comprehensive empirical validation but as an example of its analytical capacity. The application draws on an extensive documentary archive generated during an industrial product’s development. The materials include preliminary sketches, design notes, technical drawings, digital models, prototypes, revision records, and supporting documents. Together, these materials form a coherent corpus of avant-textes through which the framework reconstructs successive design stages and identifies relationships between documentary evidence and creative decision-making. The application demonstrates how documentary evidence can be systematically organized and interpreted to reconstruct a design project’s developmental trajectory and the relationships among contextual influences, design decisions, and successive transformations.The findings indicate that integrating documentary analysis with conventional design research methods provides a more comprehensive understanding of product genesis than approaches focusing exclusively on designers’ verbal accounts or final products. The proposed framework enables researchers to reconstruct design development systematically while preserving the temporal sequence and material evidence of creative decisions. It also provides a structured methodology for organizing heterogeneous documents generated throughout product development and examining their interrelationships within a coherent analytical model. The model is intended for research situations in which sufficient documentary evidence of design development is available; it is not proposed as a universal replacement for other qualitative approaches.Beyond its methodological contribution to product design research, the study also extends the theoretical scope of genetic criticism. The diversity, multimodality, and technical specificity of product design documents broaden the traditional concept of the avant-texte and demonstrate the adaptability of genetic criticism beyond its literary origins. The model is limited by the availability, completeness, and reliability of design documentation. Further studies involving additional cases and empirical validation are therefore required to assess and refine its explanatory capacity. By establishing an operational framework for analyzing design documentation, this research opens new perspectives for investigating creativity as a document-based and traceable process and contributes to future studies in design methodology, creativity research, and interdisciplinary applications of genetic criticism. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108669.html Creativity in the traditional arts of Iran is fundamentally conceptualized not as an arbitrary departure from inherited conventions or unrestricted novelty, but rather as disciplined innovation and rediscovery occurring within an established framework of proportional rules, formal geometries, and sacred cultural meanings. In this paradigm, the traditional master is not a disruptive innovator, but an explorer who unveils profound layers of meaning through technical virtuosity, active imagination, and intuitive insight. Despite the centrality of this phenomenon, research in the field has long suffered from the absence of a unified, objective framework capable of simultaneously capturing adherence to tradition, material craftsmanship, semantic depth, and constrained original invention. To overcome the static limitations and reductionist risks of existing linear models, this study designed and empirically validated a dynamic, multidimensional evaluation framework tailored to Iranian traditional arts.The investigation utilized an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design. During the qualitative phase, interpretive thematic analysis was conducted across twelve classical and contemporary theoretical sources, twenty canonical masterworks spanning diverse historical epochs and media (including calligraphy, Persian miniature, lusterware ceramics, architectural plasterwork, and textile arts), and semi-structured interviews with seven prominent master practitioners and academic scholars possessing twenty to thirty years of professional experience. High inter-coder reliability was confirmed with a Krippendorff's alpha of 0.86. This qualitative synthesis yielded four interconnected analytical layers: aesthetic-traditional alignment, structural-geometric mastery, semantic-interpretive depth, and computational-quantitative measurability. Each layer was operationalized into three distinct indicators, establishing a comprehensive set of twelve measurable metrics covering proportional fidelity, constrained innovation, visual harmony, geometric density, technical execution, structural novelty, symbolic stratification, associative power, interpretive authenticity, algorithmic modelability, computational rarity, and organized information entropy.To accurately represent the temporal evolution of artistic mastery—from foundational apprenticeship to transcendent improvisation—the systemic interactions across these four dimensions were formalized through a discrete-time difference equation: X(t+1)=X(t)+αWX(t)+βϵ(t). In this state-space formulation, the vector X(t) denotes the four-dimensional profile of the artwork, W represents a normalized directed-connectivity matrix derived from empirical network analysis, α controls the gradual rate of adaptation, and βϵ(t) introduces a normally distributed stochastic disturbance term (μ=0,σ=0.05). This stochastic component serves as the mathematical representation of artistic intuition, unpredictable emergence, and spontaneous creative insight, effectively preventing the reduction of traditional craftsmanship to a deterministic algebraic mechanism.Rigorous quantitative evaluation procedures demonstrated the structural integrity, internal consistency, and predictive power of the proposed model. The empirical corpus comprised thirty authentic artworks evaluated by experts, alongside one thousand synthetic agents simulated over fifty iterative steps to examine convergence within the dynamic state space. Confirmatory factor analysis verified the four-factor latent structure, yielding standardized factor loadings above 0.72 (p<.001) and robust model fit indices (χ 2 /df=1.52, CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.042). Internal-consistency testing established excellent reliability across all four dimensions, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.87 for the aesthetic layer, 0.91 for the structural layer, 0.85 for the semantic layer, and 0.89 for the computational layer. Furthermore, network stability tests confirmed that the empirical interaction weights remained highly consistent after expanding the sample size (r=0.94, p<.001, with a mean absolute difference of only 0.03).Stepwise linear regression analysis identified the dynamic interaction between structural-geometric mastery and semantic-interpretive depth (X Geo ×X Sem) as the single most influential predictor of overall artistic creativity, with a standardized beta coefficient of 0.89 (p<.001). The aesthetic-traditional and computational-quantitative layers also made statistically significant contributions, with coefficients of 0.21 and 0.09, respectively. These results substantiate the theoretical principle that technical discipline and profound geometric knowledge do not restrict creative expression, but rather serve as the indispensable structural engine that propels authentic semantic discovery and spiritual meaning in Iranian art. Ten-fold cross-validation conducted on a broader testing set of fifty-five masterworks achieved an explanatory coefficient of determination of R 2 =0.84 and a mean absolute percentage error of only 8.3% (SD = 1.2%), confirming that the model accounts for over 91% of variance in human expert consensus.Subsequent expert-informed cultural calibration incorporated two essential qualitative safeguards: an aesthetic gatekeeper threshold, which applies a penalty multiplier of 0.80 to overall creativity scores if adherence to traditional rules falls below 0.50, and the explicit preservation of the stochastic intuition term to maintain the living character of artistic judgment. Comparative contextualization demonstrated that while the overarching four-layer architecture is structurally transferable to other Asian traditions, interaction trajectories differ significantly; for instance, Chinese art prioritizes intuitive spontaneity over rigid mechanics, Indian traditions subordinate geometric structures entirely to cosmological symbolism, and Ottoman arts impose stricter aesthetic boundaries on innovation. In conclusion, the proposed framework successfully bridges mathematical modeling, data-driven analytics, and cultural connoisseurship, providing an objective, transparent, and culturally grounded diagnostic instrument for academic research, festival curation, educational curriculum design, and the institutional preservation of Iranian artistic heritage. Consequently, this dynamic approach effectively bridges ancient artistic wisdom with modern computational evaluation methods. https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108841.html The presentation and re-creation of ancient Iranian stories through new platforms and formats adapted to children’s needs is an important topic in cultural and toy design. Iranian ancient literature, particularly its mythological and epic narratives, contains valuable cultural, ethical, social, and identity-related themes. However, much of this literary heritage continues to be presented in traditional formats and has received less attention in the form of interactive and creative products suited to children’s cognitive and behavioral characteristics.Transforming ancient Iranian stories into play-based products can therefore provide an effective connection between literature,culture, education, and entertainmentIn this context, the story of“Haftvad”from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh has considerable potential for transformation into an interactive toy because of its narrative structure, diverse characters, imaginative elements, and symbolic concepts. In addition to its literary and historical significance, the story contains visual and dramatic elements that can be transformed into game components, characters, settings, and narrative features during the product design process. Accordingly, this study proposes a model for designing an interactive children’s toy based on storytelling and shadow theatre. The model aims to utilize the potential of the Haftvad narrative while strengthening children’s connection with Iranian literature and culture through a participatory and play-based experience.A key feature of the proposed design is the use of shadow theatre as a storytelling method. In this study, shadow theatre is not considered merely a theatrical tool but an integral part of the child’s interaction with the toy. The ability to establish meaningful interaction between children and toys is a fundamental requirement in the design of games and play products. Engaging multiple senses during play can make the experience more attractive, enjoyable, and meaningful. Children generally respond more positively to activities that allow them to touch, observe, manipulate, and directly experience objects than to situations based solely on observation.The proposed design prototype is developed accordingly. Children can participate in constructing the narrative by moving characters, objects, and scene elements. By manipulating light and shadow, they can experience the story in a creative and alternative manner. Thus, the child shifts from being a passive recipient of the narrative to an active participant in the storytelling process.This qualitative study is descriptive-analytical and applied in nature. Data were collected through library research and user behavioral observation. Existing toys and products related to books, storytelling, and shadow theatre were examined. The study population consisted of examples suitable for children aged 7–11 years that could be used independently without parental assistance. Selected examples were evaluated in terms of usability, functionality, aesthetics, and innovation to identify the criteria influencing the design of the final product.The findings indicate that integrating traditional storytelling methods, particularly storytelling and shadow theatre, with contemporary toy design approaches can provide an appropriate basis for developing interactive cultural products. This combination preserves the literary and identity-related values of Iranian narratives while creating an engaging and participatory experience suited to children’s characteristics. The proposed model can therefore offer an innovative approach to designing toys based on Iranian literature and culture and can contribute to introducing traditional and mythological Iranian stories to children through formats extending beyond conventional storybooks.The main characteristics of the proposed interactive, story- and myth-based shadow puppet theatre include:Simple and relatively easy performance by children;Easy access to the materials and tools required for the performance;Integration of several artistic disciplines within a child-appropriate product;Facilitating interaction and communication among children and promoting a “child-to-child” model;Strengthening cooperation, participation, and teamwork.The proposed model also has potential for technology-oriented development in future studies. For example, QR codes could provide access to audio versions of the story, narration, or naqqali, the traditional Persian storytelling practice. Technologies such as accessible augmented reality, extended reality, and generative artificial intelligence could further create new, multifunctional, and innovative experiences and expand children’s interaction with narrative content and toys.The study also offers implications for parents, educators, and game and toy designers by emphasizing the underexplored potential of interactive and multisensory toys. Applying design thinking to toy development can lead to products that, beyond entertainment, provide educational, cognitive, creative, and social opportunities for children.In the book illustrations, relief motifs and representations of real places were used to emphasize the historical aspects of the story. This approach can strengthen the relationship between children, the mythological narrative, and its historical context, while introducing them to aspects of Iran’s cultural and historical heritageFinally, it is recommended that the designed toy prototype be empirically evaluated among children aged 7–11 years to assess interaction, engagement, ease of use, and the quality of their multisensory experience. Such evaluation could identify the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed model and support its refinement based on end-user feedback. Due to the temporal and methodological limitations of the present study, this stage could not be conducted within the current research and is therefore proposed as a direction for future studies https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_108879.html Collage, introduced in the early twentieth century by Picasso and Georges Braque, has long been recognized as a foundational technique in modern art for its ability to disrupt conventional boundaries between art and everyday life. Emerging from Cubism and later expanded by Dadaists and Surrealists, collage evolved into a critical artistic strategy that combined heterogeneous materials, juxtaposed contradictory elements, and generated multilayered meanings. This study situates collage within the broader trajectory of postmodernism, emphasizing its philosophical and aesthetic dimensions, and investigates how its structural features have been appropriated and transformed in Iranian postmodern graphic design, particularly in poster art from the 1990s onward. The research adopts a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach, drawing on library-based sources and a theoretical framework informed by postmodern discourse. The analytical model integrates two domains (1) aesthetic components of collage, displacement, layering, juxtaposition of opposites, narrative rupture, and openness of the artwork; and (2) postmodern features in graphic design eclecticism, simulacra, contradiction, typographic fragmentation, and critique of grand narratives. The corpus comprises ten Iranian posters produced between 2010 and 2025, selected through purposive sampling based on explicit use of collage, presence of at least three postmodern features, thematic diversity, generational variety among designers, and availability of high-quality reproductions. Findings reveal that in Iranian poster design, collage enables the creation of polyphonic visual spaces that resist modernist ideals of unity, purity, and order. By layering disparate materials photographs, traditional motifs, digital fragments, and textual elements designers construct works that embody multiplicity and cultural hybridity. The juxtaposition of contradictory elements not only destabilizes conventional aesthetic expectations but also fosters critical engagement with socio-political realities, reflecting the postmodern emphasis on pluralism and resistance to dominant narratives. Historically, Iranian graphic design after the 1979 Revolution underwent complex transformations, with the 1990s and 2000s marking a period of experimentation influenced by global postmodern currents. Collage, both in manual and digital forms, became a key strategy for negotiating tensions between tradition and modernity, local identity and global visual culture. Posters for cultural events, theater productions, and social campaigns exemplify how collage facilitated the articulation of critical discourses, enabling designers to challenge aesthetic norms and engage audiences in interpretive processes. The study contributes to three levels of significance. Theoretically, it expands knowledge of how artistic techniques embody and reinforce cultural discourses, demonstrating collage as more than a formal device but as a philosophical method of questioning representation and meaning. Historically, it documents and analyzes contemporary Iranian visual heritage, preserving the role of collage in shaping the aesthetics of postmodern poster design. Practically, it offers insights for designers, educators, and students on how collage can be strategically employed to enrich visual communication and generate layered, critical messages. In conclusion, the structural analysis underscores that collage, through its openness, heterogeneity, and capacity for contradiction, has become a vital instrument in Iranian postmodern graphic design. It not only reflects the global legacy of collage as a critical art form but also adapts it to local contexts, thereby reinforcing postmodernism’s pluralistic and critical ethos within Iran’s visual culture. This intellectual movement influenced all areas of art, including graphic design. Postmodern graphic designers were able to create a polyphonic, critical, and dynamic space using collage techniques that contradicted the modernist principles of order, unity, and purity of form. Graphic design in Iran has followed a complex path since the Islamic Revolution (1978). In the 1990s and 2000s, Iranian designers, influenced by global trends in postmodern art, experimented with new techniques, including digital collage and the combination of traditional and contemporary elements. Cultural and social posters from this period are prominent examples of the reflection of postmodern elements. This research seeks to answer the main question of how the structural features of the collage technique have been reflected in postmodern graphic design in Iran and have helped to strengthen the components of postmodernism. During the research, it will also answer the sub-questions: which structural features of collage can be identified in Iranian postmodern graphic works? And what is the relationship between collage techniques and postmodern components (eclecticism, pluralism, pretense, etc.)? And finally, how have Iranian graphic designers used collage to express critical and cultural discourses? Therefore, the main goal of the research is to conduct a structural and comparative analysis of collage techniques in Iranian postmodern graphic works and discover their common patterns and semantic functions. This article first examines the research background in detail, then explains the theoretical foundations of the collage technique and the components of postmodernism. In the methodology section, the analytical framework and research samples are introduced. The findings section deals with a detailed analysis of selected works, and finally, in the discussion and conclusion section, answers to the research questions are provided.The findings of this study can be useful for graphic designers, professors and students of art and design fields and provide guidance for the intelligent use of collage techniques in creating works https://jfava.ut.ac.ir/article_109263.html One of the persistent shortcomings in the historiography of Iranian arts across various periods is the lack of attention to accurately documenting the lived experiences of artists. This oversight has resulted in a scarcity of reliable information regarding the personal and professional lives of artists from past centuries—even those of the highest stature—leaving many aspects of their biographies obscure. Therefore, a critical requirement in contemporary research on Iranian art is to identify and elucidate the various dimensions of the lives of artists from past centuries. One such figure is Mohammad-Kazem Naqqāshbāshi Isfahani, a celebrated lacquer painter and enamellist of the Qajar era and the son of NajafʿAli Naqqāshbāshi. Despite the significance of his and his family’s contributions to Qajar art, limited data about him are currently available. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to uncover new information regarding the personal and artistic life of this artist, based on historical documents. The primary research question concerns the key phases of his life and career, as well as the foundations of his artistic production. This study, categorized as fundamental and qualitative research, employs a descriptive-analytical method with a historical approach. Data were collected through library research, fieldwork, and the examination of historical documents, and analyzed inductively.Based on newly identified documents presented here for the first time, this study reveals significant, previously unknown information about the artist. Mohammad-Kazem Naqqāshbāshi, born in 1233 AH (1817/1818 CE) in Isfahan, began his artistic training under his father around 1245 AH (1829/1830 CE) and commenced his independent career circa 1270 AH (1853/1854 CE). During the 1280s AH, his most significant artistic undertaking was the supervision and management of the restoration and renovation of Isfahan’s royal palaces. Given that the Safavid-era royal structures had deteriorated over time due to natural wear and historical events, local authorities deemed it essential to initiate extensive repairs. Entrusted with this project, Mohammad-Kazem restored several royal palaces over a period of several years, most notably the Chehel Sotoun Palace; traces of these Qajar-era renovations remain visible in these structures today. The successful completion of this mission significantly enhanced his prestige and elevated his standing among both the reigning monarch and the local rulers of Isfahan. In recognition of his significant artistic and social contributions, he was appointed by Naser al-Din Shah Qajar as the ‘Chief Painter of Isfahan’ in 1287 AH (1870/1871 CE), succeeding his father. He remained active in various fields, including lacquer painting, Persian miniature, enameling, calligraphy, oil painting, and textile painting, until approximately 1312 AH (1894/1895 CE). Meanwhile, his primary field of work was lacquer painting (including pen boxes and book bindings), which constitutes the majority of his surviving works. Furthermore, Mohammad-Kazem was one of the last major masters of enameling art in the Qajar period, following whose era this art declined in Iran. An examination of his extant artworks reveals his high level of proficiency in both Persian and European painting styles. A particularly significant finding of this study regarding his artistic activities pertains to the locations of his workshops. Mohammad-Kazem maintained at least two studios throughout his career; his primary workshop was situated in the Isfahan Bazaar, the precise location of which has been identified in this article, and remained in operation by his descendants for years after his death. His second studio was located within one of the chambers of the Chehel Sotoun Palace. The use of such a prestigious location underscores his elevated social standing among the local authorities in Isfahan at the time; his presence at the palace appears to coincide with the years during which he oversaw the restoration of Isfahan’s royal palaces. Furthermore, throughout his life, he enjoyed the patronage of royal and local authorities, including Nāser al-Dīn Shāh Qājār, Masʿūd Mīrzā Ẓell al-Solṭān, and Fatḥ-Alī Ṣāḥeb-Dīvān, with many of his works executed on commission for these notable figures. Mohammad-Kazem was also highly regarded by his contemporaries, including fellow artists and various social groups.Furthermore, this study presents significant information regarding Mohammad-Kazem’s personal life and the continuation of artistic activities among his children and descendants, which will play a crucial role in gaining a deeper understanding of this artist. In particular, it elucidates the genealogical and kinship ties between Mohammad-Kazem and several renowned Iranian artists in the late Qajar and subsequent Pahlavi eras. Regarding his personal life, historical documents indicate that he married Fāṭemeh-Solṭān in 1262 AH (1845/1846 CE) and had four sons and one daughter. His eldest son, Mirzā ʿAbd al-Ḥossein Ṣaniʿ-Homāyoun—himself a well-known painter of the late Qajar period—became his artistic successor. In contemporary times, Master Shokrollah Saniʿzadeh, the most famous master of contemporary Iranian enameling art, is a descendant of Ṣaniʿ-Homāyoun. Mohammad-Kazem passed away in 1314 AH (1896/1897 CE) and was buried in the portico of the Darb-e Emām shrine in Isfahan.