جستاری در صورت و محتوای نقاشی اجتماعی-انتقادی دهه 90 ایران

The social function of visual arts has always been considered of importance as it can influence the individuals or societies, but the term "social art" is a concept related to contemporary art which is rooted in Critical Theory advanced by the Frankfurt School theorists in the late 20th century. The basis of critical theory is to reveal the power relations behind seemingly natural phenomena. From this point of View, one of the most important components of contemporary art, which distinguishes it from modern art, is getting out of the monopoly of a certain social class and dealing with minorities and subcultures that had not been visible before. It was based on this approach that the critique of social inequalities was also brought to the field of arts and it took the name of social art.
Development of social art in Iranian contemporary history rotted in the consequences of Constitutional Movement in the Qajar Era, and manifested mostly in literature. In the post-Cold War years, the widespread presence of leftist tendencies led to the formation of criticism among writers and artists, which resulted in the emergence of critical art with regard to issues such as anti-imperialism, alienation, and the oppression of the lower working class. during the Islamic Republic Revolution, contemporary Iranian painting achieved significant success in accompanying social movements and proved its ability to disturb the order of spectacle. By the way, Since the late 1980s, with the spread of digital media and the easily accessibility of information for the general public, a new wave of socio-critical art that was previously formed in the West has spread to other countries. Contemporary artists changed role from the narrators of beauty to the dynamic social activists by reacting to regional and global events. On the other hand, from the beginning of 21th century, due to the rise of political tensions in the world and the increasing irreparability of environmental damage - and such cases -public protests became widespread around the world. The emergence of new social themes in contemporary art can be considered as a result of these changes in societies.
Considering the importance of the socio-critical art movements in contemporary history and the necessity of studying the characteristics of this movement in Iran, the purpose of the present study was to find out the social themes reflected in the Iranian paintings of the 2010s and explain the way these themes are represented in the paintings. For this purpose, in addition to national festivals, the Archives of private galleries and Social Media pages of artists were explored to find works that match the definition of “social painting”.  According to the theoretical basis of this research, social painting is a genre of painting which not only represents social realities, but reveal the contradictions in reality, by its style and concept. In fact, social painting need not to convey an ideological accepted message in an accepted representational mode, it is more concerned to illustrate the situations which reevaluate the reality. In this regard, images have a special advantage over words, and painters have correctly applied it. Social themes have been represented in the painting of the 2010s in an individual style with a tendency to surrealism and resorting to figurative elements. In this approach, by using familiar visual elements, the artist equips the beholder with the ability to relate the artwork and the external reality, but with the use of visual devices, he/she challenges the constructed image of reality. The study and classification of the research samples indicates that the identity crisis (especially the sexual identity) and the inequality in social classification systems, the destruction of the environment and its consequences on human life, and the growing despair through the loss of welfare and spirituality are the most important social themes of this decade's Iranian paintings. Some of these visual organizations that have been used in the research samples are: visual metaphors, putting incongruous elements together or putting elements in an unusual space, destroying and damaging the represented subject, exaggeration and deformation, The use of color in line with conceptual expression, the arrangement if visual elements so that convey instability and disorder, and the use of writing accompanying the picture in a way that reinforce or reject its concept. Artists used this strategy to put the audience in a state of ambiguity and suspense and make them think about the existing situation.