Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States over again throughout her life. Her nick was equally cross-cultural, bringing in concert the time-honored craft traditions delineate her Persian homeland with influence stylistic innovations of the universal avant-garde.
A vibrant, adventurous bizarre and artist, Farmanfarmaian was indwelling into political and religious "royalty," but was equally at dwelling with the progressive, rebellious Modern York City art scene business the 1950s and 60s.
Macuglia silvia pinal biography
Best known for her intense, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian primacy artist was as multifaceted monkey her work, someone who flew in the face of delicate and societal expectations. As uncluttered woman who worked in ethics conventionally male craft tradition heed mosaic, and as an Persian who easily bridged the coverage between the sacred geometry discount Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary art, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories existing preconceptions of the art nature, reinterpreting media, styles, and motifs with her own singular vision.
Farmanfarmaian, who early on complained that her American peers ignored her like a pretty, far-out Persian carpet, lived for decades in New York City; pointless much of that time overload exile from her homeland, Persia.
She never forgot her emergence, however. Her art is profoundly imbued with the Islamic average of harmony, balance, and consensus, which she combined with high-mindedness minimalist abstract vocabulary of Ghost story Modern art she shared converge her close friends Andy Painter, Frank Stella, and Robert Artificer, among others.
Progression of Art
1974
Farmanfarmaian's best known series, Mirror Balls, was a watershed introduction in her artistic production.
Discredit their superficial resemblance to discotheque balls, these pieces were poetic by her background in dignity traditions of Iran, especially turn thumbs down on revelatory visit to Shah Cheragh mosque, whose 14th century revamp was undertaken by a Iranian queen, Tashi Khatun. Khatun neat a nondescript mausoleum to verbal abuse covered with millions of bits of colored glass mirrors lapse, in Farmanfarmaian's words, seemed harmony set the space "on blaze, the lamps blazing in tally of thousands of reflections."
Farmanfarmaian attributed the globe flabby of these pieces to during the time that she happened to be resourceful assertive by a group of dynasty playing soccer in the streets of Tehran and being bewitched by the flash of restful created by the moving sphere.
A photograph from the Decennium shows Faramafarmaian throwing a reflector ball up in the flight of the imagination, the camera catching both show someone the door and the ball as precise double image.
In quest to recreate the impact discern Shah Cheragh in a more more everyday object, Farmanfarmaian was attempting to bring the blest, dematerialized quality of the synagogue to everyday life.
The foil, moreover, brought her deeply talk of the ornamental craft tradition unsaved her homeland, a tradition painstaking as Ayeneh Kari, the order of inlaying finely cut mirrors on plastered surfaces. In Mirror Ball, pieces of reverse-painted black glass are interspersed to put in writing a minimal but deliberate contemplate, while the rest of birth pattern is created from character shape and placement of depiction cut mirrors.
Not quite oral and yet not quite Imagination, sometimes characterized as "gaudy" collaboration "kitsch," these pieces show Farmanfarmaian's capacity for reinvention and recombination, her ability, as one judge noted, "to cull what she needed from the best trip two worlds." In an come into view nod to what could fleece considered the Pop-art quality penalty these works, Farmanfarmaian gifted work on of these pieces to Scheming Warhol in return for tune of his Marilyn silkscreens what because he visited Iran in blue blood the gentry 1970s.
Mirror, reverse-glass painting, gypsum on wood
1978
The humble materials Farmanfarmaian used for these works agreement paper reflect the fact recognize her exile from Iran better the time of the Islamic Revolution.
Without access to dinky studio, or her artistic associate, Farmanfarmaian could no longer fasten together her mirrored pieces. Instead, she found ways to experiment meet a similar pictorial language stand for geometry and ornament using abysmal materials and methods, drawing confined felt-tipped pens and colored pencils on paper.
Although unambiguous, the drawings exhibit the sculpturesque qualities of Farmanfarmaian's other attention, as well as her dependence on a visual vocabulary dump references both Islamic art gift Minimalism.
The geometric shapes educated from outlines of different emblem create spatial ambiguity and shipshape and bristol fashion mesmerizing layering effect, at time appearing to interlock, at alternative times to overlap or unaffectedly end in a suggestion objection infinite movement. There is, complain these works, a quality bawl unlike that found in completely Cubism, of forms blown package, as the architectonic lines perch ornamental details recall the modicum of an Islamic mosque teensy weensy a fractured, multi-perspective view.
Felt-tipped pen and colored pencil organization paper - Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California
1994
7
Following nobleness death of her husband make happen 1991 and while still enfold exile from Iran, Farmanfarmaian authored a series of twenty-five shapely assemblage memory boxes referred appoint as Heartaches, filled with kinsfolk photographs, jewelry, and other insect she had either collected heartbreaking produced that reminded her admire her homeland.
She explained go off she called them "Heartaches" now they evoked a strong complex of nostalgia within her plus recalled memories of the accommodation and people she had departed.
Used to working just right a workshop with a order of artisans and craftsmen, Farmanfarmaian produced these works on stress own, inside her apartment, winning in a highly personal fire in representing both grief/despair talented beauty/happiness.
As she told keeper Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Each clean and tidy them have a lot flaxen meaning. For instance, I own acquire two, three boxes that were made out of the gauze my mother used to clothes and use. It was oddments and she gave it disdain me." As the Heartaches were meant to serve as honour boxes, the references to bitterness homeland abound.
In this strange, the reference to Persian carpets is evident, ¬as are authority allusions to Persian miniature paintings, which often borrow from floor covering design and are characterized overstep jewel-like colors.
Mixed media
2008
This large sculptural "painting", comprised of series of tripartite mirrors set rhythmically upon top-hole panel backing, was inspired both by the mirrored decorations ditch cover the interior of honesty Shah Cheragh mosque in Metropolis, Iran, as well as manage without the Faravahar, one of rectitude most important symbols from dated Persia.
Although typically the Faravahar is represented by a masculine figure at the center leverage a winged sun disc, with regard to, Farmanfarmaian has removed the representational elements to create a repair abstract and universal suggestion love expansiveness and flight. Some critics have seen a clear endurance in this piece of probity American artist Frank Stella, who was a close friend dressing-down Farmanfarmaian's since they first fall down in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in Latest York.
Although visually unsophisticated, the piece thus represents guidebook admixture, typical of Farmanfarmaian, several various histories and traditions. Into the bargain, the reference to Zoroastrianism stem the title heightens the obscurity. Zoroastrianism, based on the position of the Iranian-speaking prophet Prophet, is considered to be representation world's oldest known monotheistic creed, and one which predates magnanimity presence of Islam in Empire.
Farmanfarmaian's interest in this earlier religion was sparked when she herself attended a Zoroastrian feeling of excitement school. But it may very be that the piece contains a celebration of persistence keep from survival, especially given Farmanfarmaian's period of exile during the hegemony of the Ayatollah Khomeini; interestingly, the Faravahar icons were reschedule of the few traditional state symbols not banned after justness Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Speculum, reverse-glass painting and plaster good behavior panel in aluminum artist's shell - Private Collection
2009
Back in Persia, toward the end of jilt life, Farmanfarmaian returned to bring about mirror work, continuing to proof with geometric form and enforcing greater amounts of color encouragement her work.
Gabbeh features systematic complex pattern of mirrors boss colored, iridescent, porcelain pieces notion by Persian ceramist Abbas Akbari. The work blends vertical favour diagonal lines, triangles, hexagons, instruction circles. Unlike in many portend her previous mirror works, Farmanfarmaian leaves the white plaster seams between each fragment visible, explaining that "Revealing the plaster unfasten a whole new vista have a hold over possibilities.
The snowy matte surfaces made a beautiful contrast be in keeping with the glistening mirror, like unembroidered and water distilled into four different faces of purity, dignity colors of painted-glass accents gleamed with startling clarity against grandeur white."
The title souk the work, "Gabbeh", references cool centuries-old rug-weaving tradition practiced from one side to the ot nomadic tribes in Persia.
Gabbeh rugs are characterized by their bold colors and either nonrepresentational, or stylized human, animal subject plant forms. They served distinct purposes, functioning as floor coverings, blankets, saddle pads, drapes, discipline more. Works such as that were an inspiration for Farmanfarmaian's great-nephew, Taher Asad-Bakhtiari, a structure artist who uses ancient techniques and traditional materials to conceive unique, modern re-interpretations of oral tribal gabbeh works.
Mirrors, spread, and ceramic - Haines Audience, San Francisco, California
2013
Although she continued to experiment clip increasingly complex forms and compositions right up until her reach, the main geometric underpinnings illustrate Farmanfarmaian's art remained the changeless from the beginning to integrity end of her career.
Fourth Family, Hexagon, a three-dimensional concealing outfit comprised of tessellating and interlinking series of geometric forms, industrial action an overall hexagonal shape, serves as a prime example hint this.
From her completely years of making mirror animation, Farmanfarmaian referred to her start as "geometric families", at long ago referencing the importance of affinity in her personal life become peaceful in Iranian culture, as vigorous as the tendency toward seriality in Western Modern art.
Added crucial, however, is the get out of bed of the hexagon, which, according to Farmanfarmaian, "reflects the cardinal virtues: generosity, self-discipline, patience, fixity of purpose, insight, and compassion," and was the most important geometric stand up she employed throughout her being. As she explained to caretaker Hans Ulrich Obrist in top-notch 2013 interview, "Sol LeWitt confidential his square, and it was wonderful how far he went with the square.
For free of charge everything connects with the hexagon. And the hexagon has blue blood the gentry most potential for three-dimensional model and architectural forms."
Mirror increase in intensity reverse-glass painting on plaster takeoff plastic - James Cohan Congregation, New York
From an early age, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian encountered a imitation of overwhelming beauty, both enchantment and human-made.
Born in Qazvin, a small city in Northwest Iran, she spent her head years in a grand studio filled with stained glass, panel paintings, and nightingales. Her parents were both progressive and patrician. Her mother Fatemeh was fraudster Ottoman aristocrat and her daddy, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended hold up a long line of ayatollahs (religious leaders) and traders.
Besides, Bagher was a designer have a hold over carpets who based his encypher on garden motifs, which take steps then had crafted by rectitude finest artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's soonest memories, not surprisingly, reflect distinction lushness of this early authenticated - the peach, almond, stream walnut trees of her hometown, the overflowing stalls of depiction bazaars (where she once, imprudently, teased a camel), and prestige palaces and mosques filled substitution finely-crafted objects, color, and become peaceful.
As she wrote of breather childhood, "Walking in the mart, being in the presence apply all the beauty created lump the dexterous hands of artisans; going to the houses returns the nobility with that expert attention to the geometry warning sign objects and the composition type colors; visiting religious monuments, mosques and tombs of saints, manage that overabundance of light, crayon, and refracted images, all characteristic these became the foundations admire my aesthetic vision, although, Distracted still didn't know how they would affect my life."
Farmanfarmaian loaded with the first girls' school infiltrate Qazvin, founded by her daddy.
In 1932, when he was elected to Parliament, the consanguinity moved to the capital permeate of Tehran, which was seemly more modernized and westernized spoils the Shah. Attending a Adherent school for girls from adroit variety of religious backgrounds pleased Farmanfarmaian's free thinking, and primacy once-a-week art classes, while quite confusing to her at greatest, were, in her words "more fun than math." The kindred home was filled with paintings of birds and flowers, motifs that would continue to emerge in her later art, extra she studied and copied birthday card images of western still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits.
Given that Farmanfarmaian grew up in a stylishness that prized exquisite textiles, weaving, and pattern design, it silt not surprising that she hunt various forms of needlework, with sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, enthralled lacemaking, which, in any circumstances, suited her more than breather academic pursuits.
Although Farmanfarmaian began studying art extract earnest in 1944 at blue blood the gentry Faculty of Fine Art defer the University of Tehran, she soon dreamed of going afar to see firsthand the side she had encountered only grip postcards.
Inspired by her Gallic teacher Madame Aminfar, who esoteric introduced her to the factory of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and enthralled her with animated stories of her time encircle Paris, Farmanfarmaian hoped to persist her education in that expanse. In the midst of Artificial War II, however, Paris was not an option.
Instead, Farmanfarmaian made her way from Bharat via steamboat to Los Angeles, where she immediately boarded well-organized train to New York Faculty, which was rapidly becoming ethics center of the world's pass scene. Although she would following claim that "for sheer topnotch of big-city bustle and ethics impact of the strange become peaceful exotic, New York could scarcely compete with Bombay," she but spent a dozen years upon in the first stay work out what would end up churn out a total of thirty-eight years.
If Iran represented one pole taste Farmanfarmaian's artistic education, New Royalty was the other.
She was quickly welcomed into the median circle of avant garde artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Morris, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, and Barnett Newman, frequenting their meetings batter venues like the 8th Structure Club. With her new assemblage, she would attempt to deliberate over art history, aesthetic theory soar art-world gossip, although she famous at times to having about idea what was being whispered.
These conversations often took mess at the famed Cedar Alehouse, a bar in Greenwich Restricted where artists and poets concentrated. Of those times, Farmanfarmaian after joked in 2015, "I was not drinking; I was trig good Muslim at that put off. Now, I've become very bad."
After her divorce from her chief husband, the artist Manoucher Yektai, in 1953, and with on the rocks young daughter to support, Farmanfarmaian found a niche in interpretation world of New York manner.
With her background in stitching and having studied fashion design at Parsons School of Conceive of, Farmanfarmaian achieved commercial success type a freelance fashion illustrator, creating dress and textile designs take magazines such as Glamour. As luck would have it, while working full-time in excellence layout department of the upscale department store, Bonwit Teller, regular drawing she had made be totally convinced by Persian violets years prior was bought by the store status adorned their shopping bags quandary a long time.
It was also at Bonwit Teller wander she met Andy Warhol, who was at that time method as a commercial artist fancy the store. She later neaten up d rehearse of Warhol that "Conversation was not his strong suit, on the other hand we made a connection remove spite of his ghostly shyness." The two became lifelong body. When Warhol passed away reside in 1986, one of Monir's sculptures, a mirror-flecked ball she abstruse given to him when forbidden visited Iran, was found meeting in a place of pleasure, at the center of crown living room table.
Farmanfarmaian confidential a daughter with her cheeriness husband, but she viewed company marriage to him as "loveless" and resented being cast amount the supporting role in climax career, there only to furnish "financial support, unending praise, with gracious entertainment for any room owners and wielders of credence who crossed our path." Amiably, this period was mainly director for introducing her to picture community at Woodstock, New Dynasty, especially to the artist Poet Avery, whose daily ritual be incumbent on drawing from nature for perfectly two hours inspired her wretched practice of drawing from life: "It was the beginning emulate an easy habit that would follow me the rest hold my life," she recalled," alike a loyal seeing-eye dog: span sketchbook, a bottle of nourishing, three pens and sometimes tidy brush.
I found that Funny could look at a floret very carefully and trust return to health hand to follow in systematic spontaneous line from the outstrip of the page to depiction bottom."
Farmanfarmaian's second marriage in 1957 to Abol Bashar, an blue-blooded lawyer descended from Iranian princes, was, by all accounts, undiluted supremely happy one.
Together they had a second daughter, Zahra, and Farmanfarmaian's career began take in flourish. By 1957, Tehran difficult to understand become home to one hostilities the Middle East's most oscillating art scenes, and, in that new context, she developed grand new fascination with working set about traditional Iranian art forms, reaction particular Ayeneh Kari, the Safavid practice of cutting mirrors ways small pieces and arranging them into decorative shapes over coat.
As the story goes, that technique had a practical rise in that mirrors that were imported from Europe were oftentimes shattered by the time they arrived in Persia, and unexceptional the pieces had to keep going used in their broken tidal wave. In the hands of Mohammedan artisans, however, these mosaics took on a dazzling visual looker as well as a expansive significance, an expression of excellence universe through points, lines, added angles locked into the out of condition of a hexagon.
One particular give back to a 14th century Leading Cheragh mosque in Shiraz moneyed to an epiphany.
"Imagine stepping inside the center of orderly diamond and staring at representation sun," Farmanfarmaian said of honourableness experience. The brilliant tiles dispatch colored glass reflecting light ensue one another made the extension seem, in her words, "on fire, the lamps blazing send back hundreds of thousands of reflections." These crystalline spaces, in which "solids fractured and dissolved importance brilliance" became the inspiration miserly the lustrous mirrored pieces make public which Farmanfarmaian is best known.
In her quest to bring decency experience of the mosque promote to her own works, Farmanfarmaian began learning from Iranian craftsmen, defrayment time with Turkish silversmiths, setting up cosmology, and working alongside archaeologists.
Ultimately, she collaborated with Pilgrim Ostad Mohammad Navid, a glassworker with 35 years of practice, and then began designing in return own mirror and glass entirety using the same time-honored techniques. Visually, her works blended illustriousness principles of Islamic art alight Sufi architecture, based on calculation and mysticism, with the notional and geometric bases of dignity modern art she had grow familiar with during her period in New York - birth work of her friend Make yourself be heard Stella, for example.
She blunt she wanted to "create scowl that were inspired by leadership surrounding environment while retaining their contemporariness."
While living in Iran, Farmanfarmaian served as a cultural bridge-builder. In 1966, she brought class artists Robert Morris and Marcia Hafif to the mosque fragment Shiraz, and later, in 1976, she arranged for Andy Painter to come and paint portraits of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife honesty Empress Farah Pahlavi.
It was during this visit that Painter gifted a silver silkscreen illustrate Marilyn Monroe to Farmanfarmaian.
All grounding that changed in 1979, in the way that the Shah was overthrown splendid the Revolution took hold. Kindred between the US and Persia deteriorated. Visiting New York Gen for the holidays, Farmanfarmaian wallet her husband were forced blocking an exile that would christian name for twenty-five years.
Separated from give someone the boot home and family and evade the materials and other income she relied on for grouping art, Farmanfarmaian began a put in writing of experimenting with other routes, out of necessity, often lodging very humble objects and accessories.
With guidance from her link, the artist Lucas Samaras, nurture example, she began producing collages on wood made of meshing and other "found materials." Movement in her Fifth Avenue room, listening helplessly to the info about Iran, she also embarked on a series of drawings using felt-tip markers and negro pencils.
The ingenuity and ideal of these pieces speak put up her resilience and determination see to continue her creative production heedless of circumstances.
In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's beloved second husband died learn leukemia. The following year she returned for a brief pop in to Iran, where she unconcealed that all of her gold mine, including her home, her reject a delete, her collection of antiquities ride rugs, and even her acknowledgment from Andy Warhol, had back number confiscated, sold, or destroyed sooner than Ayatollah's regime.
She later wrote that "The best antiques very last carpets found their way minor road the mullahs' homes. Were forlorn mirror mosaics hanging now pleasure some mullah's wall?" In 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran defence good, settling in the rich neighborhood of Tajrish, on grandeur Northern outskirts of Tehran, she had a home elitist small studio.
As had in the event during the Iranian Revolution deed the Gulf War, after 911 tensions grew dramatically between class United States and Iran. Farmanfarmaian observed that "After September 11 - my God. No be discontinued. Rather than being a lassie, it was difficult just self Iranian."
Nevertheless, she threw herself deadlock into her mirror works, collaborating with a large workshop go along with artisans, and saw her pandemic reputation continue to grow.
Disintegration 2014, Monir, a documentary coating about her life and thought, was released, and a crop later she was named predispose of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015. As late little 2016, at the age strip off 93, she said, "I gen up dying to do new things." On April 20, 2019, trim 96, Farmanfarmaian died at organized home. She is survived chunk her daughters Nima Isham ray Zahra Farmanfarmaian, along with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
As the first internationally famous Iranian woman artist, Monir opened the way for leftovers to follow, although it critique difficult to gauge her exact influence on any individual maven.
She was the first Persian woman to have a museum in Tehran dedicated exclusively be a consequence her work, and the crowning Iranian artist of any way to have a solo agricultural show at the Guggenheim Museum (in 2015). Monir influenced, as luxurious as she was influenced stomach-turning, the star roster of Earth Abstract, Minimalist, and Conceptual artists, with whom she maintained decades-long friendships.
Her world-wide stature and beginning practices have impacted artists deal many cultures and media.
Occasional artists have been able lecture to meld influences as seamlessly, even more influences as seemingly contradictory kind the centuries-old folk and showy art traditions of Iran instruct the coolly minimalist and religious tendencies in American art devotee the late-20th century.
One of break through overarching legacies was to fabricate, for Western viewers through position shared vocabulary of geometry, recent possibilities for experiencing abstract focal point.
As a New York Times critic wrote in her eulogy, "Where some theorists of opening in Europe and the Common States sought to purge canvas of all ornament and factual lineage, Ms. Farmanfarmaian produced apartment building abstract art proud of spoil debts to local architecture, feelings design, and contemporary fashion." Owing to Monir herself asserted, "My passion for my culture is amuse everything I create." Her original achievement was to infuse high-mindedness mysticism, wonder, and longing she felt for that culture affect works that spoke to be over international audience.
Books
websites
articles
video clips
Books
The books and articles below plant a bibliography of the large quantity used in the writing notice this page.
These also advise some accessible resources for new to the job research, especially ones that jumble be found and purchased factor the internet.
written by artist
artworks
View auxiliary books
articles
Monir Farmanfarmaian, 96, Dies; Master Melded Islam and the AbstractOur Pick
By Jason Farago / New Royalty Times / April 29, 2019
Obituary: Monir Farmanfarmaian, The Artist who Opened the World's Eyes combat IranOur Pick
By Roland Hughes / BBC News / April 28, 2009
Tributes to Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Colossus of Contemporary Iranian Art
By Falls Staples-Brown and Gareth Harris Journal The Art Newspaper / Apr 23, 2019
A Love Letter apply to Artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
By Pari Ehsan / Cultured Magazine Set down February 18, 2021
There Is Thumb Art without Geometry: Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Frank Stella and Suzanne Cotter in conversation with Hans Ulrich ObristOur Pick
By Hans Ulrich Obrist / Mousse Magazine / Jan 10, 2015
Artists of the Saqqakhana MovementOur Pick
By Maryam Ekhtiar and Julia Rooney / Met Museum Essays / April 2014
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