Congress Paper Abstract

A Comparative Overview Of Female Portraits In The Paintings Of Iranian Artists Over The Last Three Decades: A Feminist Approach

NAHID ABDI, HEAD OF TEXTILE DESIGN DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ART, TEHRAN IRAN.

The study of the portraits of women in contemporary Iranian paintings could generate new insights into their social status in the Iranian society. We can examine the portraits of women in contemporary Iranian paintings against the backdrop of the three socio-political transformations. These portraits illustrate women’s social status as the by-product of the prevalent social norms and the artists’ aspirations and beliefs over the pre- and post-revolutionary periods.

Women’s beliefs and expectations reveal major paradoxes with respect to the status of Iranian women. It can be argued that art works in general, and paintings in particular, can be used as a powerful feminist approach to unfold these divergent transformations. The female portraits represented in various artistic expressions suggest the following three temporal categorizations:

1. 1970 - 1979 marking the fall of the monarchy regime;
2. The 1980s marking the beginning of the Islamic revolution and the emergence of a new generation of revolutionary artists, or the so-called “ideologue painters;”
3. The 1990s, up to the present time, marking the emergence of the young artists on the one hand, and the morphosis of the ideologue painters on the other.

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