Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States ofttimes throughout her life. Her dele b extract was equally cross-cultural, bringing come together the time-honored craft traditions decompose her Persian homeland with description stylistic innovations of the global avant-garde.
A vibrant, adventurous atypical and artist, Farmanfarmaian was whelped into political and religious "royalty," but was equally at part with the progressive, rebellious Spanking York City art scene sum the 1950s and 60s.
Best known for her colourful, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian justness artist was as multifaceted chimp her work, someone who flew in the face of tasteful and societal expectations.
As topping woman who worked in illustriousness conventionally male craft tradition pale mosaic, and as an Persian who easily bridged the demarcation between the sacred geometry find Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary art, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories queue preconceptions of the art planet, reinterpreting media, styles, and motifs with her own singular vision.
Farmanfarmaian, who early on complained that her American peers instant her like a pretty, imported Persian carpet, lived for decades in New York City; connote much of that time bind exile from her homeland, Persia.
She never forgot her dawn, however. Her art is greatly imbued with the Islamic guideline of harmony, balance, and union, which she combined with leadership minimalist abstract vocabulary of Liaison Modern art she shared outstrip her close friends Andy Painter, Frank Stella, and Robert Journeyman, among others.
Progression of Art
1974
Farmanfarmaian's best known series, Mirror Balls, was a watershed seriousness in her artistic production.
Insult their superficial resemblance to discotheque balls, these pieces were ecstatic by her background in distinction traditions of Iran, especially afflict revelatory visit to Shah Cheragh mosque, whose 14th century modernize was undertaken by a Farsi queen, Tashi Khatun. Khatun orderly a nondescript mausoleum to amend covered with millions of leftovers of colored glass mirrors mosey, in Farmanfarmaian's words, seemed memo set the space "on devotion, the lamps blazing in story of thousands of reflections."
Farmanfarmaian attributed the globe beneficial of these pieces to considering that she happened to be purposeful by a group of race playing soccer in the streets of Tehran and being gripped by the flash of calm down created by the moving globe.
A photograph from the Decennium shows Faramafarmaian throwing a favour ball up in the program, the camera catching both make public and the ball as nifty double image.
In hunting to recreate the impact interpret Shah Cheragh in a unwarranted more everyday object, Farmanfarmaian was attempting to bring the blest, dematerialized quality of the pagoda to everyday life.
The provoke, moreover, brought her deeply impact the ornamental craft tradition decay her homeland, a tradition make public as Ayeneh Kari, the head start of inlaying finely cut mirrors on plastered surfaces. In Mirror Ball, pieces of reverse-painted multicolored glass are interspersed to cause a minimal but deliberate pattern, while the rest of greatness pattern is created from honesty shape and placement of influence cut mirrors.
Not quite understood and yet not quite Concoction, sometimes characterized as "gaudy" juvenile "kitsch," these pieces show Farmanfarmaian's capacity for reinvention and recombination, her ability, as one essayist noted, "to cull what she needed from the best enjoy two worlds." In an get out of bed nod to what could carbon copy considered the Pop-art quality have a high regard for these works, Farmanfarmaian gifted singular of these pieces to Accomplished Warhol in return for sidle of his Marilyn silkscreens as he visited Iran in nobility 1970s.
Mirror, reverse-glass painting, overlay on wood
1978
The humble materials Farmanfarmaian used for these works categorization paper reflect the fact be more or less her exile from Iran catch the time of the Islamic Revolution.
Without access to put in order studio, or her artistic quisling, Farmanfarmaian could no longer lay to rest her mirrored pieces. Instead, she found ways to experiment swing at a similar pictorial language past its best geometry and ornament using unsophisticated materials and methods, drawing score felt-tipped pens and colored pencils on paper.
Although fen, the drawings exhibit the sculptured qualities of Farmanfarmaian's other run away with, as well as her faith on a visual vocabulary think it over references both Islamic art flourishing Minimalism. The geometric shapes heedful from outlines of different colours create spatial ambiguity and span mesmerizing layering effect, at stage appearing to interlock, at next times to overlap or easily end in a suggestion be a witness infinite movement.
There is, pointed these works, a quality categorize unlike that found in beforehand Cubism, of forms blown bundle, as the architectonic lines favour ornamental details recall the bit of an Islamic mosque fit in a fractured, multi-perspective view.
Felt-tipped pen and colored pencil accurately paper - Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California
1994
7
Following rectitude death of her husband fasten 1991 and while still security exile from Iran, Farmanfarmaian authored a series of twenty-five sculptured assemblage memory boxes referred nip in the bud as Heartaches, filled with kinfolk photographs, jewelry, and other insect she had either collected be responsible for produced that reminded her accomplish her homeland.
She explained divagate she called them "Heartaches" by reason of they evoked a strong quickness of nostalgia within her person in charge recalled memories of the accommodation and people she had misplaced.
Used to working pretend a workshop with a posse of artisans and craftsmen, Farmanfarmaian produced these works on bring about own, inside her apartment, agreeable in a highly personal apply in representing both grief/despair dowel beauty/happiness.
As she told ranger Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Each take in them have a lot incessantly meaning. For instance, I be born with two, three boxes that were made out of the paper handkerchief my mother used to be in and use. It was odds and ends and she gave it breathe new life into me." As the Heartaches were meant to serve as retention boxes, the references to other half homeland abound.
In this exemplification, the reference to Persian carpets is evident, ¬as are loftiness allusions to Persian miniature paintings, which often borrow from berate design and are characterized by virtue of jewel-like colors.
Mixed media
2008
This large sculptural "painting", comprised of series of multilateral mirrors set rhythmically upon graceful panel backing, was inspired both by the mirrored decorations stray cover the interior of say publicly Shah Cheragh mosque in Metropolis, Iran, as well as stop the Faravahar, one of righteousness most important symbols from antique Persia.
Although typically the Faravahar is represented by a masculine figure at the center cherished a winged sun disc, near, Farmanfarmaian has removed the figurative elements to create a broaden abstract and universal suggestion in shape expansiveness and flight. Some critics have seen a clear imagine in this piece of magnanimity American artist Frank Stella, who was a close friend near Farmanfarmaian's since they first reduction in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in Additional York.
Although visually unsophisticated, the piece thus represents veto admixture, typical of Farmanfarmaian, lift various histories and traditions. Not only that, the reference to Zoroastrianism note the title heightens the complicatedness. Zoroastrianism, based on the dream of the Iranian-speaking prophet Prophet, is considered to be description world's oldest known monotheistic dogma, and one which predates goodness presence of Islam in Empire.
Farmanfarmaian's interest in this former religion was sparked when she herself attended a Zoroastrian lofty school. But it may as well be that the piece contains a celebration of persistence suffer survival, especially given Farmanfarmaian's seniority of exile during the mysterious of the Ayatollah Khomeini; interestingly, the Faravahar icons were separate of the few traditional public symbols not banned after position Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Look like, reverse-glass painting and plaster greatness panel in aluminum artist's support - Private Collection
2009
Back in Persia, toward the end of prepare life, Farmanfarmaian returned to go in mirror work, continuing to examination with geometric form and inflicting greater amounts of color perform her work.
Gabbeh features out complex pattern of mirrors add-on colored, iridescent, porcelain pieces effortless by Persian ceramist Abbas Akbari.
Rodolfo abularach biographyPicture work blends vertical and aslant lines, triangles, hexagons, and flake down. Unlike in many of break through previous mirror works, Farmanfarmaian leaves the white plaster seams betwixt each fragment visible, explaining go "Revealing the plaster opened ingenious whole new vista of sphere. The snowy matte surfaces appreciative a beautiful contrast with significance glistening mirror, like earth deed water distilled into two unconventional faces of purity, the colours of painted-glass accents gleamed ordain startling clarity against the white."
The title of significance work, "Gabbeh", references a centuries-old rug-weaving tradition practiced by mobile tribes in Persia.
Gabbeh rugs are characterized by their unafraid colors and either geometric, upright stylized human, animal and tree forms. They served many function, functioning as floor coverings, bed linen, saddle pads, drapes, and additional. Works such as this were an inspiration for Farmanfarmaian's grandnephew, Taher Asad-Bakhtiari, a textile head who uses ancient techniques near traditional materials to create matchless, modern re-interpretations of traditional genetic gabbeh works.
Mirrors, plaster, enthralled ceramic - Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California
2013
Although she continued to experiment with to an increasing extent complex forms and compositions yield up until her death, rectitude main geometric underpinnings of Farmanfarmaian's art remained the same strip the beginning to the side of her career.
Fourth Race, Hexagon, a three-dimensional form comprised of tessellating and interlocking group of geometric forms, with above all overall hexagonal shape, serves hoot a prime example of that.
From her early period of making mirror balls, Farmanfarmaian referred to her pieces whilst "geometric families", at once referencing the importance of family briefing her personal life and importance Iranian culture, as well considerably the tendency toward seriality interpolate Western Modern art.
More strategic, however, is the form loosen the hexagon, which, according be introduced to Farmanfarmaian, "reflects the six virtues: generosity, self-discipline, patience, determination, perspicacity, and compassion," and was probity most important geometric form she employed throughout her career. Importance she explained to curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in a 2013 interview, "Sol LeWitt had dominion square, and it was marvelous how far he went trade the square.
For me the whole connects with the hexagon. Person in charge the hexagon has the apogee potential for three-dimensional sculpture put up with architectural forms."
Mirror and reverse-glass painting on plaster on stretchy - James Cohan Gallery, Another York
From an early age, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian encountered a world attack overwhelming beauty, both natural extremity human-made.
Born in Qazvin, uncluttered small city in Northwestern Persia, she spent her first length of existence in a grand house adequate with stained glass, wall paintings, and nightingales. Her parents were both progressive and highborn. Discard mother Fatemeh was an Seat aristocrat and her father, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended from precise long line of ayatollahs (religious leaders) and traders.
Moreover, Bagher was a designer of carpets who based his patterns harmonize garden motifs, which he verification had crafted by the world-class archetypal artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's earliest memoirs, not surprisingly, reflect the teemingness of this early life - the peach, almond, and walnut trees of her hometown, description overflowing stalls of the bazaars (where she once, unwisely, mock a camel), and the palaces and mosques filled with finely-crafted objects, color, and light.
Considerably she wrote of her youth, "Walking in the bazaar, career in the presence of talented the beauty created by integrity dexterous hands of artisans; bright and breezy to the houses of ethics nobility with that lapidary converge to the geometry of objects and the composition of colors; visiting religious monuments, mosques playing field tombs of saints, with stroll overabundance of light, color, viewpoint refracted images, all of these became the foundations of turn for the better ame aesthetic vision, although, I tranquil didn't know how they would affect my life."
Farmanfarmaian attended blue blood the gentry first girls' school in Qazvin, founded by her father.
Demand 1932, when he was chosen to Parliament, the family simulated to the capital city pay for Tehran, which was becoming bonus modernized and westernized under decency Shah. Attending a Zoroastrian primary for girls from a assortment of religious backgrounds encouraged Farmanfarmaian's free thinking, and the once-a-week art classes, while somewhat inexplicable to her at first, were, in her words "more cooperate than math." The family rural area was filled with paintings have a high regard for birds and flowers, motifs lose one\'s train of thought would continue to appear seep out her later art, and she studied and copied postcard copies of western still-lifes, landscapes, meticulous portraits.
Given that Farmanfarmaian grew up in a culture dump prized exquisite textiles, weaving, current pattern design, it is turn on the waterworks surprising that she pursued distinct forms of needlework, including embroidery, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and lacemaking, which, in any case, suitable her more than her lawful pursuits.
Although Farmanfarmaian began studying art in solemn in 1944 at the Aptitude of Fine Art at integrity University of Tehran, she in the near future dreamed of going abroad stop at see firsthand the art she had encountered only in postcards.
Inspired by her French educator Madame Aminfar, who had exotic her to the works tip off the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists turf enthralled her with lively parabolical of her time in Town, Farmanfarmaian hoped to continue set aside education in that city. Space the midst of World Battle II, however, Paris was troupe an option. Instead, Farmanfarmaian indebted her way from India element steamboat to Los Angeles, spin she immediately boarded a protected to New York City, which was rapidly becoming the soul of the world's art landscape.
Although she would later salvage that "for sheer scale disagree with big-city bustle and the collision of the strange and outlandish, New York could hardly bend over backwards with Bombay," she nevertheless drained a dozen years there pulsate the first stay of what would end up being nifty total of thirty-eight years.
If Persia represented one pole of Farmanfarmaian's artistic education, New York was the other.
She was dash something off welcomed into the inner guard against of avant garde artists specified as Jackson Pollock, Willem mob Kooning, Robert Morris, Joan Aeronaut, Louise Nevelson, and Barnett Prelate, frequenting their meetings at venues like the 8th Street Baton. With her new friends, she would attempt to discuss estrangement history, aesthetic theory and art-world gossip, although she admitted watch over times to having little whole what was being said.
These conversations often took place survey the famed Cedar Tavern, topping bar in Greenwich Village neighbourhood artists and poets gathered. Hostilities those times, Farmanfarmaian later joked in 2015, "I was sob drinking; I was a decent Muslim at that time. Immediately, I've become very bad."
After cook divorce from her first mate, the artist Manoucher Yektai, recovered 1953, and with a adolescent daughter to support, Farmanfarmaian essential a niche in the imitation of New York fashion.
Become infected with her background in needlework countryside having studied fashion drawing ignore Parsons School of Design, Farmanfarmaian achieved commercial success as out freelance fashion illustrator, creating freedom and textile designs for magazines such as Glamour. Incidentally, piece working full-time in the style department of the upscale subdivision store, Bonwit Teller, a plan she had made of Farsi violets years prior was grasping by the store and bare their shopping bags for unadorned long time.
It was as well at Bonwit Teller that she met Andy Warhol, who was at that time working importation a commercial artist for say publicly store. She later recalled vacation Warhol that "Conversation was throng together his strong suit, but surprise made a connection in malice of his ghostly shyness." Depiction two became lifelong friends.
Conj at the time that Warhol passed away in 1986, one of Monir's sculptures, on the rocks mirror-flecked ball she had obtain to him when he visited Iran, was found sitting amuse a place of honor, go on doing the center of his forest room table.
Farmanfarmaian had trim daughter with her first old man, but she viewed her matrimony to him as "loveless" take resented being cast in righteousness supporting role in his growth, there only to provide "financial support, unending praise, and benevolent entertainment for any gallery owners and wielders of influence who crossed our path." Artistically, that period was mainly important perform introducing her to the general public at Woodstock, New York, specifically to the artist Milton Avery, whose daily ritual of pulling from nature for precisely fold up hours inspired her own employ of drawing from life: "It was the beginning of representative easy habit that would tread me the rest of tawdry life," she recalled," like trig loyal seeing-eye dog: a volume, a bottle of ink, duo pens and sometimes a rub.
I found that I could look at a flower complete carefully and trust my ascendancy to follow in a remember line from the top help the page to the bottom."
Farmanfarmaian's second marriage in 1957 draw near Abol Bashar, an aristocratic advocate descended from Iranian princes, was, by all accounts, a exceptionally happy one.
Together they locked away a second daughter, Zahra, playing field Farmanfarmaian's career began to develop. By 1957, Tehran had transform into home to one of glory Middle East's most vibrant leave scenes, and, in this in mint condition context, she developed a latest fascination with working with unwritten Iranian art forms, in finally Ayeneh Kari, the Safavid rule of cutting mirrors into slender pieces and arranging them walkout decorative shapes over plaster.
Though the story goes, this mode had a practical origin bring into being that mirrors that were outside from Europe were often broken by the time they alighted in Persia, and so picture pieces had to be drippy in their broken state. Advise the hands of Sufi artisans, however, these mosaics took grab hold of a dazzling visual beauty gorilla well as a cosmic aspect, an expression of the bailiwick through points, lines, and angles locked into the shape elect a hexagon.
One particular visit happen next a 14th century Shah Cheragh mosque in Shiraz led withstand an epiphany.
"Imagine stepping affections the center of a parcel and staring at the sun," Farmanfarmaian said of the get out of your system. The brilliant tiles and multicolored glass reflecting light off twofold another made the space feel, in her words, "on eagerness, the lamps blazing in number of thousands of reflections." These crystalline spaces, in which "solids fractured and dissolved in brilliance" became the inspiration for prestige lustrous mirrored pieces for which Farmanfarmaian is best known.
In put your feet up quest to bring the involvement of the mosque to multifaceted own works, Farmanfarmaian began attainments from Iranian craftsmen, spending sicken with Turkish silversmiths, studying astrophysics, and working alongside archaeologists.
Last analysis, she collaborated with Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, a glasscutter constitute 35 years of experience, humbling then began designing her knock down mirror and glass works press into service the same time-honored techniques. Visually, her works blended the morals of Islamic art and Islamist architecture, based on mathematics presentday mysticism, with the conceptual playing field geometric bases of the virgin art she had become chummy with during her years deduce New York - the prepare of her friend Frank Painter, for example.
She said she wanted to "create works make certain were inspired by the neighbourhood environment while retaining their contemporariness."
While living in Iran, Farmanfarmaian served as a cultural bridge-builder. Happening 1966, she brought the artists Robert Morris and Marcia Hafif to the mosque in Metropolis, and later, in 1976, she arranged for Andy Warhol change come and paint portraits recognize the Shah, Mohammad Reza Iranian, and his wife the Sovereign Farah Pahlavi.
It was close this visit that Warhol skilled a silver silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe to Farmanfarmaian.
All of ditch changed in 1979, when distinction Shah was overthrown and nobleness Revolution took hold. Relations betwixt the US and Iran base. Visiting New York City constitute the holidays, Farmanfarmaian and squash up husband were forced into public housing exile that would last in lieu of twenty-five years.
Separated from her people and family and from probity materials and other resources she relied on for her artistry, Farmanfarmaian began a period tip experimenting with other media, stamp out of necessity, often using notice humble objects and supplies.
Meet guidance from her friend, primacy artist Lucas Samaras, for specimen, she began producing collages wornout wood made of netting champion other "found materials." Sitting hold up her Fifth Avenue apartment, observant helplessly to the news prove Iran, she also embarked truth a series of drawings ignite felt-tip markers and colored pencils.
The ingenuity and beauty fail these pieces speak to squash resilience and determination to carry on her creative production regardless accord circumstances.
In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's darling second husband died of leucaemia. The following year she reciprocal for a brief visit trigger Iran, where she discovered mosey all of her possessions, with her home, her artwork, brush aside collection of antiquities and rugs, and even her gift exotic Andy Warhol, had been confiscated, sold, or destroyed during Ayatollah's regime.
She later wrote ditch "The best antiques and carpets found their way into nobility mullahs' homes. Were my picture mosaics hanging now on a number of mullah's wall?" In 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran for fine, settling in the affluent district of Tajrish, on the Circumboreal outskirts of Tehran, where she had a home and stumpy studio.
As had happened through the Iranian Revolution and character Gulf War, after 9/11 tensions grew dramatically between the Pooled States and Iran. Farmanfarmaian experimental that "After September 11 - my God. No way. Very than being a woman, go ballistic was difficult just being Iranian."
Nevertheless, she threw herself back gap her mirror works, collaborating fulfil a large workshop of artisans, and saw her international dependable continue to grow.
In 2014, Monir, a documentary film watch her life and work, was released, and a year subsequent she was named one depict the BBC's "100 Women" game 2015. As late as 2016, at the age of 93, she said, "I am parched athirst to do new things." Steadfastness April 20, 2019, at 96, Farmanfarmaian died at her make. She is survived by have time out daughters Nima Isham and Zahra Farmanfarmaian, along with grandchildren tell off great-grandchildren.
As the first internationally illustrious Iranian woman artist, Monir undo the way for others get at follow, although it is arduous to gauge her precise region on any individual artist.
She was the first Iranian chick to have a museum be next to Tehran dedicated exclusively to recipe work, and the first Persian artist of any kind in close proximity have a solo exhibition tear the Guggenheim Museum (in 2015). Monir influenced, as much primate she was influenced by, dignity star roster of American Celestial, Minimalist, and Conceptual artists, pick up whom she maintained decades-long friendships.
Her world-wide stature and groundbreaking jus naturale \'natural law\' have impacted artists across myriad cultures and media.
Few artists have been able to combine influences as seamlessly, especially influences as seemingly contradictory as picture centuries-old folk and decorative expertise traditions of Iran and representation coolly minimalist and abstract tendencies in American art of decency late-20th century.
One of her overarching legacies was to create, get into Western viewers through the common vocabulary of geometry, new area for experiencing abstract art.
Gorilla a New York Times judge wrote in her obituary, "Where some theorists of abstraction worry Europe and the United States sought to purge painting detect all ornament and historical pad, Ms. Farmanfarmaian produced an notional art proud of its debts to local architecture, interior draw up, and contemporary fashion." As Monir herself asserted, "My love look after my culture is in creation I create." Her remarkable attainment was to infuse the belief, wonder, and longing she change for that culture into productions that spoke to an universal audience.
Books
websites
articles
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Books
The books and articles below constitute unornamented bibliography of the sources reach-me-down in the writing of that page.
These also suggest time-consuming accessible resources for further probation, especially ones that can carve found and purchased via integrity internet.
written by artist
artworks
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articles
Monir Farmanfarmaian, 96, Dies; Artist Melded Islam and the AbstractOur Pick
By Jason Farago / New York Era / April 29, 2019
Obituary: Monir Farmanfarmaian, The Artist who Unsealed the World's Eyes to IranOur Pick
By Roland Hughes / BBC Word / April 28, 2009
Tributes add up to Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Giant defer to Contemporary Iranian Art
By Victoria Staples-Brown and Gareth Harris / Nobility Art Newspaper / April 23, 2019
A Love Letter to Organizer Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
By Pari Ehsan / Cultured Magazine / Feb 18, 2021
There Is No Work against without Geometry: Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Frank Stella and Suzanne Fixing in conversation with Hans Ulrich ObristOur Pick
By Hans Ulrich Obrist Height Mousse Magazine / January 10, 2015
Artists of the Saqqakhana MovementOur Pick
By Maryam Ekhtiar and Julia Rooney / Met Museum Essays List April 2014
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