The Iranian Paintings' Status in the Cultural Sphere of First Pahlavi Era

With the collapse of the Qajar dynasty and the rise of the Pahlavi government, Iran underwent many changes. The main thing that Pahlavi paid too much attention to was naming Iran as a country which has an independent identity in the whole world. Since the concept of "identity" is always hidden in the content of a "culture", the culture of any country or nation represents the identity of that country and that nation.  The ideals of the Pahlavi government were all those things that were mostly planned with constitutionalism and continued under the shadow of the intellectuals' support and the authority of Reza Shah, in the form of an imperative modernism. Based on this, the cultural policymakers of the first Pahlavi era, in order to build a desired "national identity", formed a discourse space so that they could advance their ideology.  A secular policy that tried to weaken the role of religion as much as possible compared to the culture and civilization of ancient Iran.  Therefore, a cultural sphere was formed on the basis and core of the Iranian identity. The desire of the Pahlavi statesmen to modernize Iran in line with global developments required that modernity, secularism and Westernism be part of the transparent layers of this cultural sphere, and they were other components compared to the two layers of nationalism and antiquarianism. Totally, these components formed a sphere that legitimized the cultural discourses of the first Pahlavi and gave meaning to all kinds of signs within it with the denotation system it produced and made them its own.  As Lutman pointed out, everything outside of this sphere was a chaotic world of zeal and unculture that had to be crossed to enter this sphere. Crossing the border meant harmonizing with the components inside the sphere.  Here, every traditional matter, if it wanted to enter this sphere, had to be coordinated with the discourses emerging from this cultural sphere, but the traditional arts, specifically painting, were able to continue within the cultural sphere of the Pahlavi period because it is one of the components of the second layer.  The transparency of this concept was "nationalism", traditional arts were considered a part of Iran's ancient history, which could include cultural and historical credit for Iran. As a result, focusing on traditional arts could both emphasize the values ​​of Iran's cultural history and be in line with the goals of cultural propaganda which Pahlavi used; As a result, organizations such as the National Works Association were established in an attempt to institutionalize and systematize traditional arts.  Reza Shah himself emphasized that he should be recognized as a person who has brought about the revival of Iranian national arts.  In the meantime, painting gained special importance and was able to find a special place in the discourse of Iranian art after about three centuries.  The attention of the academic and artistic circles of the world to Iranian arts, especially painting, the compatibility of painting with aspects of nationalism and its historical function, highlighted the place of this art in the cultural sphere of this period.  The establishment of museums and the participation of painters in world exhibitions and the establishment of art conservatories were some of the steps that made the painting of this period the beginning of a new trend in traditional Iranian painting, and as it was analyzed, the harmony with the components of the cultural sphere of the first Pahlavi period played an important role in the expansion of this art in this era; So during the Pahlavi period, painting flourished again, and many artists of the Qajar school, who worked on lacquer works, also turned to painting.  Among their prominent examples were Haj Mosavar-ul-Molki and Hossein Behzad.
 Now, according to the rule of the discourse of modernism, painting should have certain characteristics so that it can gain legitimacy by crossing the border of the cultural sphere of this period.  We have already seen that the core of the first Pahlavi cultural sphere with the centrality of Iranian identity was surrounded by many layers, especially modernism and nationalism.  But instead, nationalism first of all required the consolidation of historical and national values; therefore, the duality of "modernity" and "authenticity" were placed against each other.  Reza Shah's cultural policy needed both of these in order to consolidate his soft power, as much as modernism was able to redefine culture in line with Pahlavi policies, at the same time it was able to marginalize some foundations of traditional culture, including artistic types, from the cultural field.  This was if the government needed to keep some traditions alive to instill a sense of patriotism and a sense of rootedness in Iranians.  This is where the need to selectively revive some traditions became important.  An example of this policy can be seen in Reza Shah's speech to students sent abroad: "I don't want to turn Iranians into a bad European version.  This is not necessary because there are strong traditions behind them. These traditions helped to form a fusion between different historical periods as well as among the many ethnic groups of Iran. In first Pahlavi’s art, there is a companionship between tradition and modernism; in order to have a correct way of applying this combination to art, first of all it should be brought in to the system of education, that is, establishing institutions for teaching, researching and preserving the heritage of traditional arts, which led to the establishment of institutions such as "Association of National Artifacts" or " It became the "Higher Academy of Iranian Arts".  The Association of National Artifacts became the base of elites who tried to make the Iranian nationalistic trend public from the heart of its cultural history and traditions.  As it was described, a set of policies was formed in the field of culture, which led to a cultural sphere, which, according to Yuri Lutman's theory, was made of the core of Iranian identity and the transparent layers of modernity, nationalism, archaism, secularism, and Westernism.  According to this approach, any kind of cultural event that occurs during the Pahlavi era must be adapted to the components within it by crossing the border of this cultural sphere so that it can be accepted in this cultural system.  Based on this, the problem of this research is the status and position of painting within the cultural sphere of the Pahlavi era.  The research method is also the description of the cultural conditions of the first Pahlavi period and its analysis based on Lutman's symbolic sphere theory, with the aim of obtaining a more detailed understanding of the relationship between the cultural policies of that era and painting.  The findings show that the desire of the first Pahlavi government to build a new national identity made the historical components the most important pillar of the ideology of nationalism in this era, which led to the support of traditional arts and painting, which was revived in the wake of nationalist currents. Global attention to Iranian art, especially book design, was another factor in the prosperity of painting in this era.