The impact of postmodernism on the construction of dominant behavioral patterns in Iranian contemporary art

Introduction: "Contemporary art" has dominated the art world with new visual practices since the 1960s. In the meantime, "postmodernism" as a paradigm assumed the task of shaping contemporary artistic practice and its defining institutions. Postmodernism achieved this through legislative institutions and experts, defining and determining normative behaviors in the form of educational instruction, thus expanding its desired art world. The present study addresses this question: How has the structure of the art world and the thought of postmodernism, as a dominant paradigm, affected the construction of contemporary art and the spiritual system that governs it over the past few decades? To answer this question, the contemporary art world, its institutions and agents must be studied. The present study seeks to build a framework for understanding this issue by using Max Weber's "Sociology of Religion." There, Weber refers to the role of religious forces and the relationship between religious ideas and aspects of human behavior in the construction of society. The institution of the church and its priesthood are very close to the institutions of the contemporary art world and the special work of the critic-historian. To this end, we analyze in a case study the impact of the special work of the critic-historian (Hamid Kashmirshekan) on Iranian contemporary art.
Problem Statement: Since the early 1990s, new developments have occurred in modern Iranian art. In these years, some artists, influenced by the new atmosphere and imposed isolation, found an opportunity to reflect on the variety of art that they had been rapidly and excitedly involved in years before. This coincided with changes, albeit relative, in the socio-cultural atmosphere of this period. Outside Iran, since the mid-1990s, the cultural approach and macro-politics of Western art in dealing with non-Western art had changed. Issues of sexual, ethnic, linguistic identity, etc., underwent fundamental changes, and contemporary art, claiming plurality, freedom, and equal opportunity, transformed itself into the dominant model. These factors caused another era of art to begin in Iran in the early 2000s and the birth of Iranian contemporary art. In fact, "Iranian contemporary art" as part of the new realm of contemporary art should be considered under the claim of postmodern pluralism and the creation of a new geography of art. "Postmodernism" as a dominant paradigm assumed the task of dominantly configuring contemporary artistic practice, its defining institutions, and the concepts and patterns that governed it. This new art was based on reflection and criticism of identity, especially new and contemporary identity. Although this "identity" and its problems and how to deal with it were defined in a way that the dominant paradigm defined, in any case, this new paradigm also influenced the work of young artists over the next decade.
Background: The issue of the present research is the influence of agents and experts on the [contemporary] art world. Paul Crowther (2002), in his article “Against Curatorial Imperialism,” speaks of postmodernism and its rules as external factors that influence contemporary art. Crowther refers in particular to the special work of the curator. Pierre Bourdieu (1993), in his article “The Market for Symbolic Commodities,” studies the art world, addresses the issue of the art market and agents and experts in art, and draws some connections with the sociology of religion by Weber.
In the field of studying contemporary art institutions in Iran, Mehdi Qadernezhad (2018) in his doctoral dissertation “The Possibility of Autonomy of Contemporary Art: The Role of Postmodern Culture in the Formation of Contemporary Art Commodities” seeks to analyze how the dominant pattern of the era is constructed in contemporary art by comparing the two worlds of religion and art and its factors and agents. Hamid Kashmirshekan (2017) also deals in detail with contemporary Iranian art and how it began, expanded, and developed, and in doing so, he engages in a kind of theorizing of contemporary Iranian art. The present study, looking at all past research, specifically focuses on the role of the critic-historian in the development of contemporary Iranian art practices.
Methods: We take the theoretical framework and analytical tools of this article from Max Weber's sociology of religion.
Results: Postmodernism seeks to create a world in its own image. For this existence/emergence, it needs to gain legitimacy. The emergence of the commodity of identity and its use for commodity art is the solution to postmodernism and its spiritual apparatus to gain legitimacy in contemporary art. Here, identity is a tool for expanding the idea of ​​the commodification of art, and of course, it is one of the existing tools-solutions. The goal of authority-power is always to construct normative and formatted behaviors and rules. Behaviors that are necessary for the construction of a specific and defined commodity. Identity and identity tools are one of the easiest ways to construct a commodity of contemporary art, and in the narratives proposed of contemporary Iranian art, and especially in Kashmirshekan, this issue is introduced and theorized in the form of identity discourses. Kashmirshekan’s project and the new art system thus seeks to construct the concept of “Iranian contemporary art” that has a specific framework and reflects certain rules-behavior, a behavior that leads to the construction of something like a “commodity.” For example, in contemporary art, concepts from power to difference, from writing to the will to know, from sexual identity to local-ethnicity, etc., that is, what is called the “theory-oriented” movement, are normalizing identity-oriented determinations that are presented in the form of a commodity and help the artist-subject in a simplified creative action and regulatory/normative visual behavior. Together, these help to form dominant and specific behavioral patterns in contemporary Iranian art. Patterns that can easily be seen in today’s art. Needless to say, the artists that Kashmirshekan refers to in this book are themselves the best students of this new order and correctly implement the signs and rules.