Caricature in Iran 5
The political complexities and crises at the time of the publication of Mulla Nassruldin caused the designers and writers of this weekly to view the political situation and the prevailing traditions with great criticism.
Because of this, their struggles for the development of the art of caricature in Iran were unsuccessful for the type of caricature and the way the artist expressed his own views through this medium made these caricatures caustic and biased. And this in turn prevented the people from gaining a true recognition of this art.
Rotor’s works wore the dearest introduction to the nature of Mullanassruldln weekly. He like Shelling was influenced by satirical picture movement which had begun in the west and especially in France because of the flourishment of the lithography industry. Of course, as was pointed out before, these two artists were originally from Germany so it was natural that the Western artistic spirit be reflected in their works. From his first piece of work in Mullanassruldin one could see that Roter was fascinated with a relatively realistic way of expressing the different events and problems which occurred around him. His style of work was to create images of the elements which formed his environment with explicitness and an exaggerated and unexpected exactness which carried with it an air of illusion.
After gaining much experience and after constant investigation into the Iranian customs and traditions he presented hundreds of caricatures, and by using Iranian symbols he displayed his own special expression of eastern and Iranian subjects.
He compared his caricatures with the designs that were attracting attention in the West at that time and with respect to existing elements and phenomenon in them provided himself with a very valuable background. Finding a different course from the customary image making, he achieved the essence of his experiences by which means he succeeded in putting the two worlds of realism and imagination beside each other. By using lines which were expressive of his power in the field of design and by employing the limited colors of stone print he improved the clarity of his subjects two fold.
Works which comprise all specialties of art, works whose power of attraction is the same in all their aspects, are rare. But we witness all these excellent qualities in Rotor’s works. His power of technique in presenting his pictures, and choosing the subject the excitement of the events at that time, the importance of personalities the precision with which he viewed the inner nature of his subjects made his work distinguished from that of others.
The masterfully drawn pictures of visages and people’s mood by Roter makes one think of the extent of understanding this artist had acquired from his surrounding environment and now after almost one century the vale of his work is becoming more clear.
By placing emphasis on the moods of his subjects and by accentuating their facial features, Roter commented on daily events. By using lins in showing the facial expressions which are formed by the movement of the facial muscles he would achieve a presentation and display of the spiritual and psychological moods of his subjects.
By creating changes and movement in different parts of the face like eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, lips and finally the face’s skin Rotor made the spiritual moods of his personalities clear.
In one of his designs, which is a picture of an ordinary man, Roter has realized the feeling of thinking in an exaggerated and foolish way. In this picture he creates various movements in the face of his model. The forehead muscles are drawn down and the eyebrows go up and down thus as creating a frown, the movement of his model’s lips complete the image to give a picture of a thinking man who has a hand under his chin.
The movement of all parts of this face is such that the act of thinking is manifested in this visage. This is closely related to the content of this design which attempts to portray the suspicion of the people towards the ruling machine in that period.
An important point about this design is the power of the designer in stating an emotional and spiritual case. Even if this design appears without a caption one can see a kind of foolish thinking accompanied with suspicion in this man’s face.
