A master’s thesis at the College of Fine Arts, University of Basrah, discussed evolutionary and historical determinism in contemporary Iraqi painting - a study in the intellectual concept of historicism
 The thesis presented by the researcher Muhannad Muhammad Hussein Abdul Razzaq included the evolutionary idea in which many variables occurred and raised many questions about the mechanism of change, development and transitions in the course of history
The thesis aims... to know the artistic work by knowing its historical context and its connection with its intellectual references and reformulating it with a new concept and in a contemporary manner because returning to the past provides for the present and its development, as well as at reproducing and reading the old methods, techniques and works of art with a contemporary artistic vision according to the mechanisms of historicalism.

The thesis concluded: On the quest of historicism by relying on the principle of metaphor to give additional, expressive and aesthetic strength to artistic discourse, as borrowing methods or techniques, or through metaphor of forms and symbols.