Comic Strip Design of Qajar History with Emphasis on Tea House Paintings

Structural similarities and differences in the visual expression of two artistic methods, i.e., tea house painting and comic strip art as new and emerging branches in the contemporary world are very significant. Comic is the art of narrating themes via images. Comic strips are parts of history, momentary memories and without an extensive burden of semantics that helps the reader's or viewer's imagination to go through in the desired directions. It is actually an art that highlights the story and executes it according to its own taste with sounds, whistling and self-made sound effects. Folklore or tea house paintings are parts of peoples' culture which contain the affection of people. This school has been established in tea houses, which is a meeting place for the poor and middle class, and has gradually become popular. It is not very clear when the first tea houses were established in Iran, but they certainly existed during the reign of Shah Abbas Safavid. In these tea houses, all classes, public and official people, and sometimes the king himself, would attend. In the field of tea house painting, the beliefs and boundaries of iconography as well as religion and traditions are the main forms of the image. On the other hand, the illustrated story is analyzed separately with the topics in terms of lack of spiritual thinking and only by the functions of two areas in recognizing visual relationship for the audience and the society. This study performed a comparative study method by collecting information through library.