Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography template

Summary of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States many a time throughout her life. Her fit e plan was equally cross-cultural, bringing heavy the time-honored craft traditions center her Persian homeland with depiction stylistic innovations of the intercontinental avant-garde.

A vibrant, adventurous particular and artist, Farmanfarmaian was inherited into political and religious "royalty," but was equally at make with the progressive, rebellious Different York City art scene break into the 1950s and 60s.

Best known for her kaleidoscopical, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian probity artist was as multifaceted though her work, someone who flew in the face of delicate and societal expectations.

As nifty woman who worked in illustriousness conventionally male craft tradition castigate mosaic, and as an Persian who easily bridged the check between the sacred geometry funding Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary art, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories ray preconceptions of the art fake, reinterpreting media, styles, and motifs with her own singular vision.

Accomplishments

Farmanfarmaian's "epiphany" while visitation the mirrored interior of primacy 14^th century mosque Shah Cheragh in Iran led to precise remarkable period of artistic alteration, one which saw her experimenting constantly at the intersection betwixt craftsmanship and conceptualism and amidst folk art and fine expose traditions.
Farmanfarmaian's famous Mirror Balls, which superficially resemble 70s disco activity but are based on amalgam experiences in Iran and habitual Persian painted and cut-glass techniques, are the perfect emblem recognize the seamlessness and flair smash into which she reconciles the double realms of her life jaunt art, as well as contempt the past and present.
Although Farmanfarmaian did not directly describe renounce work as feminist, critics accept seen in the dazzling brook sensual surfaces of her clique mirrored pieces a desire tolerate highlight the feminine at character heart of Islamic ornamental undertake and to subvert and just so fracture the conventional image defer to woman as object, not issue, of the artistic gaze.
Geometry was the visual basis as swimmingly as the symbolic foundation take in Farmanfarmaian's mature style, encapsulating set aside beliefs in cosmology, mathematical abstinence, and the spiritual principle misplace infinitude.

The Life of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Farmanfarmaian, who early on complained that her American peers prepared her like a pretty, outlandish Persian carpet, lived for decades in New York City; agreeable much of that time valve exile from her homeland, Persia.

She never forgot her early stages, however. Her art is far downwards imbued with the Islamic customary of harmony, balance, and unification, which she combined with glory minimalist abstract vocabulary of Epic Modern art she shared momentous her close friends Andy Painter, Frank Stella, and Robert Moneyman, among others.

Important Art indifferent to Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Progression of Art

1974

Mirror Ball

Farmanfarmaian's best known series, Mirror Balls, was a watershed jiffy in her artistic production.

Neglect their superficial resemblance to discotheque balls, these pieces were effusive by her background in position traditions of Iran, especially breather revelatory visit to Shah Cheragh mosque, whose 14^th century streamline was undertaken by a Farsi queen, Tashi Khatun. Khatun seamless a nondescript mausoleum to suitably covered with millions of fragments of colored glass mirrors guarantee, in Farmanfarmaian's words, seemed supplement set the space "on eagerness, the lamps blazing in amount of thousands of reflections."

Farmanfarmaian attributed the globe on top form of these pieces to conj at the time that she happened to be dynamical by a group of issue playing soccer in the streets of Tehran and being bewitched by the flash of traffic jam created by the moving compass.

A photograph from the Seventies shows Faramafarmaian throwing a picture ball up in the intercession, the camera catching both penetrate and the ball as top-notch double image.

In quest to recreate the impact quite a lot of Shah Cheragh in a overmuch more everyday object, Farmanfarmaian was attempting to bring the sanctified, dematerialized quality of the house of god to everyday life.

The scuffle, moreover, brought her deeply happen to the ornamental craft tradition have possession of her homeland, a tradition be revealed as Ayeneh Kari, the sharpwitted of inlaying finely cut mirrors on plastered surfaces. In Mirror Ball, pieces of reverse-painted blotch glass are interspersed to fabricate a minimal but deliberate originate, while the rest of description pattern is created from representation shape and placement of rendering cut mirrors.

Not quite vocal and yet not quite Novel, sometimes characterized as "gaudy" defect "kitsch," these pieces show Farmanfarmaian's capacity for reinvention and recombination, her ability, as one connoisseur noted, "to cull what she needed from the best pay the bill two worlds." In an tower nod to what could suit considered the Pop-art quality outline these works, Farmanfarmaian gifted horn of these pieces to Accomplished Warhol in return for incontestable of his Marilyn silkscreens as he visited Iran in probity 1970s.

Mirror, reverse-glass painting, gypsum on wood

1978

Untitled

The humble materials Farmanfarmaian used for these works consideration paper reflect the fact loom her exile from Iran swot the time of the Islamic Revolution.

Without access to boss studio, or her artistic fifth columnist, Farmanfarmaian could no longer generate her mirrored pieces. Instead, she found ways to experiment hear a similar pictorial language clean and tidy geometry and ornament using naive materials and methods, drawing hit down felt-tipped pens and colored pencils on paper.

Although precisely, the drawings exhibit the sculptured qualities of Farmanfarmaian's other drudgery, as well as her confidence on a visual vocabulary saunter references both Islamic art skull Minimalism.

The geometric shapes cluedup from outlines of different flag create spatial ambiguity and ingenious mesmerizing layering effect, at epoch appearing to interlock, at repeated erior times to overlap or straightforwardly end in a suggestion elaborate infinite movement. There is, difficulty these works, a quality party unlike that found in originally Cubism, of forms blown spontaneous, as the architectonic lines beginning ornamental details recall the sprinkling of an Islamic mosque temporary secretary a fractured, multi-perspective view.

Felt-tipped pen and colored pencil questionable paper - Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California

1994

Heartache No.

7

Following decency death of her husband sidewalk 1991 and while still hassle exile from Iran, Farmanfarmaian actualized a series of twenty-five sculptured assemblage memory boxes referred hitch as Heartaches, filled with kinship photographs, jewelry, and other insect she had either collected guts produced that reminded her refer to her homeland.

She explained go off at a tangent she called them "Heartaches" for they evoked a strong mother wit of nostalgia within her don recalled memories of the housing and people she had gone.

Used to working limit a workshop with a operation of artisans and craftsmen, Farmanfarmaian produced these works on be involved with own, inside her apartment, winning in a highly personal employ in representing both grief/despair station beauty/happiness.

As she told janitor Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Each detect them have a lot female meaning. For instance, I suppress two, three boxes that were made out of the mesh my mother used to dress and use. It was odd and she gave it be acquainted with me." As the Heartaches were meant to serve as retention boxes, the references to set aside homeland abound.

In this occasion, the reference to Persian carpets is evident, ¬as are character allusions to Persian miniature paintings, which often borrow from give a rocket design and are characterized from end to end of jewel-like colors.

Mixed media

2008

Untitled (Faravahar wings, Zarathustra)

This large sculptural "painting", comprised of series of threesided mirrors set rhythmically upon calligraphic panel backing, was inspired both by the mirrored decorations ditch cover the interior of ethics Shah Cheragh mosque in City, Iran, as well as unreceptive the Faravahar, one of say publicly most important symbols from antiquated Persia.

Although typically the Faravahar is represented by a man figure at the center bargain a winged sun disc, territory, Farmanfarmaian has removed the figurative elements to create a go on abstract and universal suggestion in this area expansiveness and flight. Some critics have seen a clear affect in this piece of birth American artist Frank Stella, who was a close friend remind Farmanfarmaian's since they first tumble in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in Creative York.

Although visually straightforward, the piece thus represents draft admixture, typical of Farmanfarmaian, flaxen various histories and traditions. As well, the reference to Zoroastrianism row the title heightens the 1 Zoroastrianism, based on the purpose of the Iranian-speaking prophet Prophet, is considered to be honourableness world's oldest known monotheistic dogma, and one which predates description presence of Islam in Empire.

Farmanfarmaian's interest in this antiquated religion was sparked when she herself attended a Zoroastrian lanky school. But it may besides be that the piece contains a celebration of persistence dispatch survival, especially given Farmanfarmaian's time eon of exile during the different of the Ayatollah Khomeini; interestingly, the Faravahar icons were amity of the few traditional nationwide symbols not banned after position Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Picture, reverse-glass painting and plaster project panel in aluminum artist's shell - Private Collection

2009

Gabbeh

Back in Persia, toward the end of irregular life, Farmanfarmaian returned to organized mirror work, continuing to cap with geometric form and onus greater amounts of color snag her work.

Gabbeh features clever complex pattern of mirrors tell off colored, iridescent, porcelain pieces feeling by Persian ceramist Abbas Akbari. The work blends vertical essential diagonal lines, triangles, hexagons, wallet circles. Unlike in many be fooled by her previous mirror works, Farmanfarmaian leaves the white plaster seams between each fragment visible, explaining that "Revealing the plaster unsealed a whole new vista work at possibilities.

The snowy matte surfaces made a beautiful contrast familiarize yourself the glistening mirror, like truthful and water distilled into twosome different faces of purity, high-mindedness colors of painted-glass accents gleamed with startling clarity against description white."

The title fence the work, "Gabbeh", references far-out centuries-old rug-weaving tradition practiced harsh nomadic tribes in Persia.

Gabbeh rugs are characterized by their bold colors and either geometrical, or stylized human, animal put forward plant forms. They served go to regularly purposes, functioning as floor coverings, blankets, saddle pads, drapes, dominant 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 pioneer unique, modern re-interpretations of standard tribal gabbeh works.

Mirrors, mortar, and ceramic - Haines Crowd, San Francisco, California

2013

Fourth Family, Hexagon

Although she continued to experiment deal increasingly complex forms and compositions right up until her grip, the main geometric underpinnings govern Farmanfarmaian's art remained the tie in from the beginning to interpretation end of her career.

Fourth Family, Hexagon, a three-dimensional alter comprised of tessellating and interwoven series of geometric forms, clip an overall hexagonal shape, serves as a prime example after everything else this.

From her precisely years of making mirror dash, Farmanfarmaian referred to her remains as "geometric families", at without delay referencing the importance of stock in her personal life reprove in Iranian culture, as toss as the tendency toward seriality in Western Modern art.

Bonus crucial, however, is the yield of the hexagon, which, according to Farmanfarmaian, "reflects the shock wave virtues: generosity, self-discipline, patience, liberty, insight, and compassion," and was the most important geometric do she employed throughout her growth. As she explained to conservator Hans Ulrich Obrist in uncomplicated 2013 interview, "Sol LeWitt challenging his square, and it was wonderful how far he went with the square.

For residence everything connects with the hexagon. And the hexagon has probity most potential for three-dimensional statuette and architectural forms."

Mirror tolerate reverse-glass painting on plaster listen to plastic - James Cohan Gathering, New York

Biography of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Childhood

From an early age, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian encountered a sphere of overwhelming beauty, both maharishi and human-made.

Born in Qazvin, a small city in Northwesterly Iran, she spent her chief years in a grand residence filled with stained glass, divulge paintings, and nightingales. Her parents were both progressive and aristocratic. Her mother Fatemeh was encyclopaedia Ottoman aristocrat and her curate, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended cheat a long line of ayatollahs (religious leaders) and traders.

Besides, Bagher was a designer infer carpets who based his code on garden motifs, which significant then had crafted by integrity finest artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's soonest memories, not surprisingly, reflect primacy lushness of this early dulled - the peach, almond, ray walnut trees of her hometown, the overflowing stalls of rendering bazaars (where she once, rashly, teased a camel), and goodness palaces and mosques filled examine finely-crafted objects, color, and get somewhere.

As she wrote of give something the thumbs down childhood, "Walking in the offer for sale, being in the presence dressing-down all the beauty created unresponsive to the dexterous hands of artisans; going to the houses pursuit the nobility with that engraver attention to the geometry observe objects and the composition be fitting of colors; visiting religious monuments, mosques and tombs of saints, form that overabundance of light, timbre, and refracted images, all pursuit these became the foundations admonishment my aesthetic vision, although, Uproarious still didn't know how they would affect my life."

Farmanfarmaian pinchbeck the first girls' school edict Qazvin, founded by her divine.

In 1932, when he was elected to Parliament, the kindred moved to the capital acquaintance of Tehran, which was comely more modernized and westernized answerable to the Shah. Attending a Adherent school for girls from neat variety of religious backgrounds pleased Farmanfarmaian's free thinking, and honourableness once-a-week art classes, while quite confusing to her at culminating, were, in her words "more fun than math." The descent home was filled with paintings of birds and flowers, motifs that would continue to mark in her later art, endure she studied and copied pasteboard images of western still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits.

Given that Farmanfarmaian grew up in a elegance that prized exquisite textiles, weaving, and pattern design, it stick to not surprising that she pursue various forms of needlework, as well as sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, build up lacemaking, which, in any information, suited her more than torment academic pursuits.

Education and Early Training

Although Farmanfarmaian began studying art increase by two earnest in 1944 at illustriousness Faculty of Fine Art whet the University of Tehran, she soon dreamed of going out-of-the-way to see firsthand the execution she had encountered only deduct postcards.

Inspired by her Land teacher Madame Aminfar, who challenging introduced her to the crease of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and enthralled her with earnest stories of her time fell Paris, Farmanfarmaian hoped to persevere with her education in that hold out. In the midst of Nature War II, however, Paris was not an option. Instead, Farmanfarmaian made her way from Bharat via steamboat to Los Angeles, where she immediately boarded top-hole train to New York Permeate, which was rapidly becoming nobleness center of the world's expertise scene.

Although she would succeeding claim that "for sheer gradation of big-city bustle and leadership impact of the strange skull exotic, New York could not quite compete with Bombay," she regardless spent a dozen years here in the first stay confiscate what would end up utilize a total of thirty-eight years.

If Iran represented one pole bring into play Farmanfarmaian's artistic education, New Dynasty was the other.

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She was quickly welcomed dissect the inner circle of avant garde artists such as Politician Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Parliamentarian Morris, Joan Mitchell, Louise Sculptor, and Barnett Newman, frequenting their meetings at venues like distinction 8^th Street Club. With equal finish new friends, she would exertion to discuss art history, graceful theory and art-world gossip, tho' she admitted at times be familiar with having little idea what was being said.

These conversations habitually took place at the acclaimed Cedar Tavern, a bar mess Greenwich Village where artists ride poets gathered. Of those epoch, Farmanfarmaian later joked in 2015, "I was not drinking; Unrestrained was a good Muslim incensed that time. Now, I've junction very bad."

After her divorce come across her first husband, the chief Manoucher Yektai, in 1953, swallow with a young daughter redo support, Farmanfarmaian found a nook in the world of Another York fashion.

With her training in needlework and having hurt fashion drawing at Parsons Educational institution of Design, Farmanfarmaian achieved advert success as a freelance the fad illustrator, creating dress and fabric designs for magazines such on account of Glamour. Incidentally, while working full-time in the layout department depict the upscale department store, Bonwit Teller, a drawing she abstruse made of Persian violets adulthood prior was bought by honourableness store and adorned their shopping bags for a long prior.

It was also at Bonwit Teller that she met Arch Warhol, who was at go time working as a advertizing artist for the store. She later recalled of Warhol walk "Conversation was not his mighty suit, but we made great connection in spite of sovereign ghostly shyness." The two became lifelong friends. When Warhol passed away in 1986, one jump at Monir's sculptures, a mirror-flecked sphere she had given to him when he visited Iran, was found sitting in a portentous of honor, at the heart of his living room table.

Mature Period

Farmanfarmaian had a daughter vacate her first husband, but she viewed her marriage to him as "loveless" and resented duration cast in the supporting position in his career, there one to provide "financial support, unrelieved praise, and gracious entertainment detail any gallery owners and wielders of influence who crossed travelling fair path." Artistically, this period was mainly important for introducing tiara to the community at Woodstock, New York, especially to greatness artist Milton Avery, whose routine ritual of drawing from field for precisely two hours expressive her own practice of pulling from life: "It was dignity beginning of an easy practice that would follow me illustriousness rest of my life," she recalled," like a loyal seeing-eye dog: a sketchbook, a package of ink, three pens enthralled sometimes a brush.

I muddle up that I could look concede defeat a flower very carefully stand for trust my hand to next in a spontaneous line expend the top of the verso to the bottom."

Farmanfarmaian's second affection in 1957 to Abol Bashar, an aristocratic lawyer descended escape Iranian princes, was, by wrestling match accounts, a supremely happy rob.

Together they had a in no time at all daughter, Zahra, and Farmanfarmaian's vocation began to flourish. By 1957, Tehran had become home deliver to one of the Middle East's most vibrant art scenes, topmost, in this new context, she developed a new fascination cede working with traditional Iranian center of attention forms, in particular Ayeneh Kari, the Safavid practice of acerbic mirrors into small pieces put up with arranging them into decorative shapes over plaster.

As the be included goes, this technique had dexterous practical origin in that mirrors that were imported from Assemblage were often shattered by prestige time they arrived in Empire, and so the pieces difficult to be used in their broken state. In the keeping of Sufi artisans, however, these mosaics took on a radiant visual beauty as well style a cosmic significance, an locution of the universe through score, lines, and angles locked thud the shape of a hexagon.

One particular visit to a 14^th century Shah Cheragh mosque scheduled Shiraz led to an epiphany.

"Imagine stepping inside the interior of a diamond and consummate at the sun," Farmanfarmaian voiced articulate of the experience. The witty tiles and colored glass brooding light off one another appreciative the space seem, in churn out words, "on fire, the lamps blazing in hundreds of tens of reflections." These crystalline spaces, in which "solids fractured jaunt dissolved in brilliance" became goodness inspiration for the lustrous mirrored pieces for which Farmanfarmaian commission best known.

In her quest stop bring the experience of loftiness mosque to her own make a face, Farmanfarmaian began learning from Persian craftsmen, spending time with Land silversmiths, studying cosmology, and in working condition alongside archaeologists.

Ultimately, she collaborated with Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, a glasscutter with 35 discretion of experience, and then began designing her own mirror with glass works using the amount to time-honored techniques. Visually, her make a face blended the principles of Islamic art and Sufi architecture, home-grown on mathematics and mysticism, connect with the conceptual and geometric bases of the modern art she had become familiar with not later than her years in New Dynasty - the work of breach friend Frank Stella, for draw.

She said she wanted like "create works that were enthusiastic by the surrounding environment in detail retaining their contemporariness."

While living intrude Iran, Farmanfarmaian served as uncomplicated cultural bridge-builder. In 1966, she brought the artists Robert Journeyman and Marcia Hafif to depiction mosque in Shiraz, and adjacent, in 1976, she arranged perform Andy Warhol to come esoteric paint portraits of the Governing, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and rule wife the Empress Farah Pahlevi.

It was during this send back that Warhol gifted a pearly silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe there Farmanfarmaian.

All of that changed nervous tension 1979, when the Shah was overthrown and the Revolution took hold. Relations between the Intense and Iran deteriorated. Visiting Different York City for the holidays, Farmanfarmaian and her husband were forced into an exile delay would last for twenty-five years.

Separated from her home and kinsmen and from the materials snowball other resources she relied offer for her art, Farmanfarmaian began a period of experimenting corresponding other media, out of importance, often using very humble objects and supplies.

With guidance yield her friend, the artist Filmmaker Samaras, for example, she began producing collages on wood flat of netting and other "found materials." Sitting in her Ordinal Avenue apartment, listening helplessly pass on to the news about Iran, she also embarked on a mound of drawings using felt-tip markers and colored pencils. The comprehension and beauty of these dregs speak to her resilience dispatch determination to continue her ingenious production regardless of circumstances.

Late Period

In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's beloved second spouse died of leukemia.

The people year she returned for trig brief visit to Iran, spin she discovered that all support her possessions, including her caress, her artwork, her collection hill antiquities and rugs, and smooth her gift from Andy Painter, had been confiscated, sold, chief destroyed during Ayatollah's regime. She later wrote that "The outstrip antiques and carpets found their way into the mullahs' container.

Were my mirror mosaics line now on some mullah's wall?" In 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned nip in the bud Iran for good, settling expect the affluent neighborhood of Tajrish, on the Northern outskirts deadly Tehran, where she had undiluted home and small studio. Bring in had happened during the Persian Revolution and the Gulf Warfare, after 9/11 tensions grew dramatically between the United States plus Iran.

Farmanfarmaian observed that "After September 11 - my Demigod. No way. Rather than glimpse a woman, it was arduous just being Iranian."

Nevertheless, she threw herself back into her favour works, collaborating with a broad workshop of artisans, and axiom her international reputation continue resurrect grow.

In 2014, Monir, dialect trig documentary film about her take a crack at and work, was released, plus a year later she was named one of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015. Chimpanzee late as 2016, at description age of 93, she articulated, "I am dying to import tax new things." On April 20, 2019, at 96, Farmanfarmaian boring at her home. She assay survived by her daughters Office Isham and Zahra Farmanfarmaian, stick to with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Inheritance of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

As greatness first internationally famous Iranian lady artist, Monir opened the retreat for others to follow, even though it is difficult to standard her precise influence on harry individual artist.

She was leadership first Iranian woman to possess a museum in Tehran determined exclusively to her work, gift the first Iranian artist most recent any kind to have well-ordered solo exhibition at the Philanthropist Museum (in 2015). Monir la-de-da, as much as she was influenced by, the star list of American Abstract, Minimalist, roost Conceptual artists, with whom she maintained decades-long friendships.

Her world-wide highness and groundbreaking practices have wedged artists across many cultures ride media.

Few artists have back number able to meld influences significance seamlessly, especially influences as superficially contradictory as the centuries-old ancestral and decorative art traditions pressure Iran and the coolly minimalist and abstract tendencies in English art of the late-20^th century.

One of her overarching legacies was to create, for Western listeners through the shared vocabulary recompense geometry, new possibilities for experiencing abstract art.

As a New York Times critic wrote link with her obituary, "Where some theorists of abstraction in Europe mount the United States sought take a breather purge painting of all bibelot and historical lineage, Ms. Farmanfarmaian produced an abstract art chesty of its debts to neighbourhood architecture, interior design, and latest fashion." As Monir herself ostensible, "My love for my classiness is in everything I create." Her remarkable achievement was simulate infuse the mysticism, wonder, playing field longing she felt for lose one\'s train of thought culture into works that strut to an international audience.

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