Application of Genetic Criticism in Painting; A Case Study of a Painting by Henri Matisse

The process of creation of a work and the study of its evolution is a subject that has been the concern of researchers in art studies. The nature of criticism methods is so that researchers make their concentrations on the final text. Genetic criticism focuses on the development process of the text and pays attention to the attitude based on the creative matter in the process of producing the work. The present article tries to study the development process of a Matisse painting by using the methodical model of genetic criticism. Genetic criticism is one of the methods of new criticism which appeared for the first time in the second half of the 20th century and in the 70s, with the invention of the word pretext by Jean Bellman Noel, in France. By focusing on the process of text creation, he expanded this view; every work that is produced by creative method is the result of a process. The use of this method in the arts has received less attention from researchers in this field of criticism. An important number of researches that have been done with this method of criticism are focused on written texts. It seems that genetic criticism in Iran is somewhat unknown to authors, artists and researchers in the field of criticism. This issue shows that there is still a lack of use of theory-based criticism in the study of paintings in Iran. Lack of familiarity with genetic criticism and its nature in Iran, has caused to mistakenly consider this criticism to be the same as Goldman's constructivist criticism in many cases by them. On the one hand, since artists often consider the process of creation and the material documentation of their works to be a confidential matter, it minimizes the possibility of access to the stages of creation of artists' artworks by Iranian researchers. The only book available in Persian language is the book of Genetic Criticism in Art and Literature, written by Bahman Namvar Motlagh and Allah Shokr Asadolahi. In the book possibility of using this criticism in the study of literary and artistic works has been discussed. Another book that briefly introduces this criticism in the tenth chapter is the book Literary Criticism in the 20th Century written by Jadie, Jean Yves and translated by Mahshid Nonahali in 1999. In an article titled Guernica genetic criticism, Manijeh Kangrani has discussed the process of genetic in an article titled Guernica formative criticism. Using genetic criticism and creation, she has discussed the process of formation and creation of Guernica painting by Picasso. Sajjad Baghban Maher, in an article entitled "Genetic Criticism of Contemporary Persian Painting", analyzed a painting by Saeed Moirizadeh called "Paper Clothes" based on the model of genetic criticism. By examining paratextual, metatextual and pretextual elements, Baghban Maher comes to the conclusion that the main pretext of this work is the preliminary designs that are influenced by the painting of the seated female figure from the Isfahan school. Criticism of genealogy is one of the new methods of criticism in the seventies. Despite the novelty of this critique, valuable studies have been conducted in other countries in this field; most of these studies are in French. Since 1992, the Institute of Modern Texts and Manuscripts (ITEM) has been organizing lectures, seminars and researches with a focus on genetic criticism every year. It appeared officially due to the use of the term pretext by Jean Bellman-Noel and the first case of its exact term was published in 1979 on the cover of a book by Flamarion Publications as Attempts at Genetic Criticism. The emergence of this critique, like other modern critiques such as hermeneutic critique and formalist critique, is literature, due to its methodical model, it also found its way to visual arts. The subject of this critique is the question about the act of creation and manner of formation of text, and studies the work or text while it is in the stage of birth and emergence. In this method, in order to achieve a detailed study of the creation process of a text or work, the researcher of genetic criticism must collect all the documents and information related to its process of creation, as well as the factors and elements affecting pre-textual transformations. Research on this topic is done in three areas: Para-text, Meta-text and Hypo-text. Then, the collected documents are arranged based on their chronological order, So that not only the credibility of the documents will increase, but also the reconstruction of the stages of the creation of the work will be possible. The next step is based on the number and type of documentation remaining from the text or work and Para-textual, Meta-textual information and the quantity of Hypo-textual and Pre-textual documents. The transformations and evolutions that took place in the path of artistic or literary creation are shaped by the researcher. This article intends to explain how this method of critique is used in painting by studying a painting by Matisse as a visual text based on the pattern of genetic criticism. In this method of critique, instead of dealing with the final text, the developmental stages of the text are examined. Therefore, by following the elements and documents of the pre-text and examining the relationships between them with the surrounding texts, including the para-text, meta-text and hypo-text, in addition to identifying the causes and factors of transformation of the pre-text of a text, the process of its creation is reconstructed. In this research, in addition to providing a practical model of genetic criticism in the study of paintings, these questions have been answered; What is the process of genesis of the painting of Henri Matisse? Which extra-textual and intra-textual elements have been influential in the process of its formation? In order to answer these questions, after explaining the method of genetic criticism approach, a painting by Matisse was analyzed based on the methodical model of genetic criticism and these results were obtained; genetic criticism, due to its methodical pattern and the similarities with the nature of creation in painting, is also effective in painting by studying the material documents left over from the developmental stages that are appropriate for each distinctive semiotic system. Also in artistic texts as well as written texts, material documents of the stages of development remain, which, by studying these documents, the method of genetic criticism is performed. By describing the relationships between the elements of para-text, meta-text, hypo-text and pre-text, as well as the genetic behavior of the painter, it was found that in the development and shaping of this painting, in addition to the pre-text extratextual, which includes the design, it also left the pre-text intertextual. In addition, the para-text of this text includes model, copy of the works of painting masters, Cézanne with regard to the spatial organization of the work, Cubism and failure to pay attention to the details and the whole appearance of the figure, Gauguin in the use of visual symbols, and the view of eastern painting is on the self-sufficiency of color and at the same time its non-descriptiveness. This research is fundamental in terms of purpose and in terms of method, it is descriptive-analytical, the data of which have been collected through documentary methods.