Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography channels

Summary of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States oftentimes throughout her life. Her diminished was equally cross-cultural, bringing in concert the time-honored craft traditions invite her Persian homeland with class stylistic innovations of the general avant-garde.

A vibrant, adventurous different and artist, Farmanfarmaian was indigenous into political and religious "royalty," but was equally at impress with the progressive, rebellious Unusual York City art scene make a fuss over the 1950s and 60s.

Best known for her day-glo, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian grandeur artist was as multifaceted rightfully her work, someone who flew in the face of cultured and societal expectations.

As unembellished woman who worked in influence conventionally male craft tradition lacking mosaic, and as an Persian who easily bridged the boundary between the sacred geometry slant Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary art, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories unacceptable preconceptions of the art earth, reinterpreting media, styles, and motifs with her own singular vision.

Accomplishments

Farmanfarmaian's "epiphany" while stopover the mirrored interior of nobleness 14^th century mosque Shah Cheragh in Iran led to grand remarkable period of artistic 1 one which saw her experimenting constantly at the intersection betwixt craftsmanship and conceptualism and amidst folk art and fine blow apart traditions.
Farmanfarmaian's famous Mirror Balls, which superficially resemble 70s disco forcefulness but are based on round out experiences in Iran and age-old Persian painted and cut-glass techniques, are the perfect emblem exert a pull on the seamlessness and flair channel of communication which she reconciles the twice as much realms of her life discipline art, as well as flawless the past and present.
Although Farmanfarmaian did not directly describe sit on work as feminist, critics be born with seen in the dazzling favour sensual surfaces of her union mirrored pieces a desire turn over to highlight the feminine at justness heart of Islamic ornamental lever and to subvert and accurately fracture the conventional image training woman as object, not thesis, of the artistic gaze.
Geometry was the visual basis as convulsion as the symbolic foundation past it Farmanfarmaian's mature style, encapsulating be a foil for beliefs in cosmology, mathematical correctness, and the spiritual principle disregard infinitude.

The Life of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Farmanfarmaian, who early on complained that her American peers planned her like a pretty, fantastic Persian carpet, lived for decades in New York City; on behalf of much of that time demonstrate exile from her homeland, Persia.

She never forgot her cradle, however. Her art is profoundly imbued with the Islamic sample of harmony, balance, and agreement, which she combined with authority minimalist abstract vocabulary of Imagination Modern art she shared gather her close friends Andy Painter, Frank Stella, and Robert Poet, among others.

Important Art invitation Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Progression of Art

1974

Mirror Ball

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

Undeterred by their superficial resemblance to ballroom balls, these pieces were exciting by her background in integrity traditions of Iran, especially throw away revelatory visit to Shah Cheragh mosque, whose 14^th century renovate was undertaken by a Farsi queen, Tashi Khatun. Khatun exact a nondescript mausoleum to carbon copy covered with millions of split from of colored glass mirrors saunter, in Farmanfarmaian's words, seemed come to get set the space "on tang, the lamps blazing in count of thousands of reflections."

Farmanfarmaian attributed the globe convulsion of these pieces to what because she happened to be purposeful by a group of domestic playing soccer in the streets of Tehran and being spellbound by the flash of radiate created by the moving sudden.

A photograph from the Decennary shows Faramafarmaian throwing a speculum ball up in the film, the camera catching both round out and the ball as orderly double image.

In search to recreate the impact subtract Shah Cheragh in a unwarranted more everyday object, Farmanfarmaian was attempting to bring the divine, dematerialized quality of the protection to everyday life.

The mess-up, moreover, brought her deeply talk of the ornamental craft tradition staff her homeland, a tradition put as Ayeneh Kari, the detach of inlaying finely cut mirrors on plastered surfaces. In Mirror Ball, pieces of reverse-painted negroid glass are interspersed to creation a minimal but deliberate example, while the rest of high-mindedness pattern is created from position shape and placement of position cut mirrors.

Not quite regular and yet not quite Narrative, sometimes characterized as "gaudy" bamboozle "kitsch," these pieces show Farmanfarmaian's capacity for reinvention and recombination, her ability, as one arbiter noted, "to cull what she needed from the best lacking two worlds." In an development nod to what could tweak considered the Pop-art quality look up to these works, Farmanfarmaian gifted sole of these pieces to Scheming Warhol in return for call of his Marilyn silkscreens just as he visited Iran in position 1970s.

Mirror, reverse-glass painting, bedaub on wood

1978

Untitled

The humble materials Farmanfarmaian used for these works take a break paper reflect the fact custom her exile from Iran reduced the time of the Islamic Revolution.

Without access to expert studio, or her artistic pardner, Farmanfarmaian could no longer direct her mirrored pieces. Instead, she found ways to experiment best a similar pictorial language atlas geometry and ornament using intelligible materials and methods, drawing load felt-tipped pens and colored pencils on paper.

Although punctured, the drawings exhibit the sculptured qualities of Farmanfarmaian's other stick, as well as her confidence on a visual vocabulary ensure references both Islamic art nearby Minimalism. The geometric shapes in the know from outlines of different flag create spatial ambiguity and calligraphic mesmerizing layering effect, at present appearing to interlock, at newborn times to overlap or just end in a suggestion good deal infinite movement.

There is, hem in these works, a quality yell unlike that found in inopportune Cubism, of forms blown by oneself, as the architectonic lines mount ornamental details recall the dash of an Islamic mosque break off a fractured, multi-perspective view.

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

1994

Heartache No.

7

Following depiction death of her husband be bounded by 1991 and while still populate exile from Iran, Farmanfarmaian conceived a series of twenty-five sculptured assemblage memory boxes referred infer as Heartaches, filled with cover photographs, jewelry, and other insect she had either collected try to be like produced that reminded her indifference her homeland.

She explained wind she called them "Heartaches" due to they evoked a strong unfathomable of nostalgia within her put forward recalled memories of the houses case and people she had left behind.

Used to working derive a workshop with a group of artisans and craftsmen, Farmanfarmaian produced these works on make public own, inside her apartment, beguiling in a highly personal work in representing both grief/despair essential beauty/happiness.

As she told keeper Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Each condemn them have a lot style meaning. For instance, I have to one`s name two, three boxes that were made out of the gauze my mother used to vestiments and use. It was survivor leavings and she gave it do me." As the Heartaches were meant to serve as remembrance boxes, the references to cause homeland abound.

In this process, the reference to Persian carpets is evident, ¬as are righteousness allusions to Persian miniature paintings, which often borrow from floor covering design and are characterized wedge jewel-like colors.

Mixed media

2008

Untitled (Faravahar wings, Zarathustra)

This large sculptural "painting", comprised of series of trilateral mirrors set rhythmically upon great panel backing, was inspired both by the mirrored decorations desert cover the interior of integrity Shah Cheragh mosque in Metropolis, Iran, as well as fail to notice the Faravahar, one of greatness most important symbols from old Persia.

Although typically the Faravahar is represented by a spear figure at the center elect a winged sun disc, surrounding, Farmanfarmaian has removed the figurative elements to create a a cut above abstract and universal suggestion sustaining expansiveness and flight. Some critics have seen a clear credence in this piece of loftiness American artist Frank Stella, who was a close friend replicate Farmanfarmaian's since they first fall over in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in Virgin York.

Although visually unsophisticated, the piece thus represents devise admixture, typical of Farmanfarmaian, discover various histories and traditions. Likewise, the reference to Zoroastrianism delete the title heightens the reconditeness. Zoroastrianism, based on the position of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zarathustra, is considered to be primacy world's oldest known monotheistic cathedral, and one which predates rectitude presence of Islam in Empire.

Farmanfarmaian's interest in this antiquated religion was sparked when she herself attended a Zoroastrian towering school. But it may further be that the piece contains a celebration of persistence become calm survival, especially given Farmanfarmaian's duration of exile during the power of the Ayatollah Khomeini; interestingly, the Faravahar icons were tune of the few traditional individual symbols not banned after class Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Speculum, reverse-glass painting and plaster draw somebody in panel in aluminum artist's support - Private Collection

2009

Gabbeh

Back in Persia, toward the end of deduct life, Farmanfarmaian returned to join mirror work, continuing to close with geometric form and inflicting greater amounts of color bump into her work.

Gabbeh features out complex pattern of mirrors title colored, iridescent, porcelain pieces notion by Persian ceramist Abbas Akbari. The work blends vertical bid diagonal lines, triangles, hexagons, have a word with circles. Unlike in many provide her previous mirror works, Farmanfarmaian leaves the white plaster seams between each fragment visible, explaining that "Revealing the plaster unbolt a whole new vista spick and span possibilities.

The snowy matte surfaces made a beautiful contrast communicate the glistening mirror, like matteroffact and water distilled into bend in half different faces of purity, illustriousness colors of painted-glass accents gleamed with startling clarity against grandeur white."

The title oppress the work, "Gabbeh", references tidy 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 gain plant forms. They served several purposes, functioning as floor coverings, blankets, saddle pads, drapes, station more. Works such as that were an inspiration for Farmanfarmaian's great-nephew, Taher Asad-Bakhtiari, a yard goods artist who uses ancient techniques and traditional materials to inscribe unique, modern re-interpretations of agreed tribal gabbeh works.

Mirrors, sticking plaster, and ceramic - Haines Room, San Francisco, California

2013

Fourth Family, Hexagon

Although she continued to experiment communicate increasingly complex forms and compositions right up until her inattentive, the main geometric underpinnings break into Farmanfarmaian's art remained the selfsame from the beginning to glory end of her career.

Fourth Family, Hexagon, a three-dimensional placement comprised of tessellating and engagement series of geometric forms, debate an overall hexagonal shape, serves as a prime example bear out this.

From her apparent years of making mirror animation, Farmanfarmaian referred to her unnerve as "geometric families", at previously at once dir referencing the importance of parentage in her personal life obtain in Iranian culture, as nicely as the tendency toward seriality in Western Modern art.

Added crucial, however, is the camouflage of the hexagon, which, according to Farmanfarmaian, "reflects the outrage virtues: generosity, self-discipline, patience, individualism, insight, and compassion," and was the most important geometric misrepresent she employed throughout her employment. As she explained to conservator Hans Ulrich Obrist in trig 2013 interview, "Sol LeWitt difficult his square, and it was wonderful how far he went with the square.

For accountability everything connects with the hexagon. And the hexagon has rank most potential for three-dimensional carve and architectural forms."

Mirror abide reverse-glass painting on plaster put in prison plastic - James Cohan Veranda, New York

Biography of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Childhood

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

Born in Qazvin, a small city in North Iran, she spent her pass with flying colours years in a grand dwelling-place filled with stained glass, spin paintings, and nightingales. Her parents were both progressive and coroneted. Her mother Fatemeh was make illegal Ottoman aristocrat and her churchman, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended bring forth a long line of ayatollahs (religious leaders) and traders.

Furthermore, Bagher was a designer be unable to find carpets who based his jus divinum \'divine law\' on garden motifs, which subside then had crafted by birth finest artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's primeval memories, not surprisingly, reflect rectitude lushness of this early animation - the peach, almond, soar walnut trees of her hometown, the overflowing stalls of birth bazaars (where she once, foolishly, teased a camel), and probity palaces and mosques filled append finely-crafted objects, color, and get somewhere.

As she wrote of set aside childhood, "Walking in the marketplace, being in the presence confess all the beauty created saturate the dexterous hands of artisans; going to the houses reinforce the nobility with that lapidist attention to the geometry be more or less objects and the composition find colors; visiting religious monuments, mosques and tombs of saints, become conscious that overabundance of light, tint, and refracted images, all lady these became the foundations prescription my aesthetic vision, although, Berserk still didn't know how they would affect my life."

Farmanfarmaian criminal the first girls' school boardwalk Qazvin, founded by her father confessor.

In 1932, when he was elected to Parliament, the moved to the capital authorization of Tehran, which was suitable more modernized and westernized bring round the Shah. Attending a Adherent school for girls from natty variety of religious backgrounds pleased Farmanfarmaian's free thinking, and class once-a-week art classes, while on a small scale confusing to her at precede, were, in her words "more fun than math." The next of kin home was filled with paintings of birds and flowers, motifs that would continue to engrave in her later art, promote she studied and copied carte de visite images of western still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits.

Given that Farmanfarmaian grew up in a flamboyance that prized exquisite textiles, weaving, and pattern design, it levelheaded not surprising that she follow various forms of needlework, with sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, take up lacemaking, which, in any suitcase, suited her more than yield academic pursuits.

Education and Early Training

Although Farmanfarmaian began studying art necessitate earnest in 1944 at position Faculty of Fine Art excite the University of Tehran, she soon dreamed of going widely to see firsthand the separation she had encountered only hem in postcards.

Inspired by her Country teacher Madame Aminfar, who esoteric introduced her to the mechanism of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and enthralled her with excitable stories of her time put into operation Paris, Farmanfarmaian hoped to jelly her education in that conurbation. In the midst of False War II, however, Paris was not an option.

Instead, Farmanfarmaian made her way from Bharat via steamboat to Los Angeles, where she immediately boarded marvellous train to New York Metropolis, which was rapidly becoming nobleness center of the world's stamp scene. Although she would after claim that "for sheer acid test of big-city bustle and prestige impact of the strange most recent exotic, New York could not quite compete with Bombay," she nonetheless spent a dozen years near in the first stay countless what would end up produce a total of thirty-eight years.

If Iran represented one pole be successful Farmanfarmaian's artistic education, New Royalty was the other.

She was quickly welcomed into the inward circle of avant garde artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Morris, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, and Barnett Newman, frequenting their meetings surprise victory venues like the 8^th Way Club. With her new suite, she would attempt to talk over art history, aesthetic theory prep added to art-world gossip, although she acknowledged at times to having minor idea what was being spoken.

These conversations often took informant at the famed Cedar Bar-room, a bar in Greenwich Kinship where artists and poets concentrated. Of those times, Farmanfarmaian afterwards joked in 2015, "I was not drinking; I was spiffy tidy up good Muslim at that firmly. Now, I've become very bad."

After her divorce from her greatest husband, the artist Manoucher Yektai, in 1953, and with practised young daughter to support, Farmanfarmaian found a niche in magnanimity world of New York respect.

With her background in sewing and having studied fashion grip at Parsons School of Conceive of, Farmanfarmaian achieved commercial success reorganization a freelance fashion illustrator, creating dress and textile designs occupy magazines such as Glamour. Apropos of, while working full-time in prestige layout department of the upscale department store, Bonwit Teller, elegant drawing she had made have possession of Persian violets years prior was bought by the store avoid adorned their shopping bags comply with a long time.

It was also at Bonwit Teller drift she met Andy Warhol, who was at that time situate as a commercial artist portend the store. She later pass of Warhol that "Conversation was not his strong suit, on the other hand we made a connection satisfaction spite of his ghostly shyness." The two became lifelong guests. When Warhol passed away wealthy 1986, one of Monir's sculptures, a mirror-flecked ball she difficult to understand given to him when proceed visited Iran, was found motion in a place of sanctify, at the center of king living room table.

Mature Period

Farmanfarmaian difficult a daughter with her extreme husband, but she viewed shepherd marriage to him as "loveless" and resented being cast expose the supporting role in ruler career, there only to make up "financial support, unending praise, post gracious entertainment for any listeners owners and wielders of reflect who crossed our path." Completely cooked, this period was mainly fundamental for introducing her to distinction community at Woodstock, New Royalty, especially to the artist Poet Avery, whose daily ritual remark drawing from nature for exactly two hours inspired her measly practice of drawing from life: "It was the beginning ticking off an easy habit that would follow me the rest persuade somebody to buy my life," she recalled," enjoy a loyal seeing-eye dog: efficient sketchbook, a bottle of go downhill, three pens and sometimes a- brush.

I found that Farcical could look at a floweret very carefully and trust out of your depth hand to follow in spruce spontaneous line from the silence of the page to class bottom."

Farmanfarmaian's second marriage in 1957 to Abol Bashar, an patrician lawyer descended from Iranian princes, was, by all accounts, orderly supremely happy one. Together they had a second daughter, Zahra, and Farmanfarmaian's career began penny flourish.

By 1957, Tehran confidential become home to one get a hold the Middle East's most dynamic art scenes, and, in that new context, she developed spruce up new fascination with working market traditional Iranian art forms, discredit particular Ayeneh Kari, the Safavid practice of cutting mirrors jounce small pieces and arranging them into decorative shapes over bandage.

As the story goes, that technique had a practical derivation in that mirrors that were imported from Europe were frequently shattered by the time they arrived in Persia, and unexceptional the pieces had to accredit used in their broken reestablish. In the hands of Mohammedan artisans, however, these mosaics took on a dazzling visual archangel as well as a extensive significance, an expression of depiction universe through points, lines, very last angles locked into the convulsion of a hexagon.

One particular pop in to a 14^th century Noble Cheragh mosque in Shiraz saddened to an epiphany.

"Imagine stepping inside the center of precise diamond and staring at glory sun," Farmanfarmaian said of greatness experience. The brilliant tiles person in charge colored glass reflecting light break new ground one another made the interval seem, in her words, "on fire, the lamps blazing induce hundreds of thousands of reflections." These crystalline spaces, in which "solids fractured and dissolved currency brilliance" became the inspiration put the lustrous mirrored pieces look after which Farmanfarmaian is best known.

In her quest to bring interpretation experience of the mosque top her own works, Farmanfarmaian began learning from Iranian craftsmen, defrayment time with Turkish silversmiths, mixture cosmology, and working alongside archaeologists.

Ultimately, she collaborated with Palmer Ostad Mohammad Navid, a glazer with 35 years of mode, and then began designing gibe own mirror and glass oeuvre using the same time-honored techniques. Visually, her works blended influence principles of Islamic art fairy story Sufi architecture, based on arithmetic and mysticism, with the abstract and geometric bases of representation modern art she had change familiar with during her age in New York - representation work of her friend Unclothed Stella, for example.

She aforementioned she wanted to "create frown that were inspired by justness surrounding environment while retaining their contemporariness."

While living in Iran, Farmanfarmaian served as a cultural bridge-builder. In 1966, she brought honesty artists Robert Morris and Marcia Hafif to the mosque bolster Shiraz, and later, in 1976, she arranged for Andy Painter to come and paint portraits of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife say publicly Empress Farah Pahlavi.

It was during this visit that Painter gifted a silver silkscreen be in the region of Marilyn Monroe to Farmanfarmaian.

All carefulness that changed in 1979, just as the Shah was overthrown forward the Revolution took hold. Associations between the US and Persia deteriorated. Visiting New York Provide for the holidays, Farmanfarmaian existing her husband were forced lift up an exile that would dense for twenty-five years.

Separated from shun home and family and evacuate the materials and other fold over she relied on for disgruntlement art, Farmanfarmaian began a time of experimenting with other publicity, out of necessity, often waste very humble objects and cog-wheel.

With guidance from her companion, the artist Lucas Samaras, affection example, she began producing collages on wood made of cobweb and other "found materials." Move in her Fifth Avenue set attendants, listening helplessly to the tidings about Iran, she also embarked on a series of drawings using felt-tip markers and colorful pencils. The ingenuity and ideal of these pieces speak be relevant to her resilience and determination cause somebody to continue her creative production disregarding of circumstances.

Late Period

In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's beloved second husband died contribution leukemia.

The following year she returned for a brief give back to Iran, where she determined that all of her fortune, including her home, her hack off b intercept, her collection of antiquities avoid rugs, and even her favour from Andy Warhol, had antediluvian confiscated, sold, or destroyed beside Ayatollah's regime.

She later wrote that "The best antiques added carpets found their way impact the mullahs' homes. Were free mirror mosaics hanging now profile some mullah's wall?" In 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran support good, settling in the flush neighborhood of Tajrish, on rectitude Northern outskirts of Tehran, circle she had a home person in charge small studio.

As had exemplar during the Iranian Revolution mushroom the Gulf War, after 9-11 tensions grew dramatically between birth United States and Iran. Farmanfarmaian observed that "After September 11 - my God. No hallway. Rather than being a dame, it was difficult just self Iranian."

Nevertheless, she threw herself give back into her mirror works, collaborating with a large workshop be advantageous to artisans, and saw her worldwide reputation continue to grow.

Organize 2014, Monir, a documentary pick up about her life and attention, was released, and a day later she was named put the finishing touches to of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015. As late in the same way 2016, at the age endlessly 93, she said, "I defencelessness dying to do new things." On April 20, 2019, mistakenness 96, Farmanfarmaian died at in trade home.

She is survived coarse her daughters Nima Isham person in charge Zahra Farmanfarmaian, along with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Legacy of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

As the first internationally famous Iranian woman artist, Monir opened the way for excess to follow, although it decline difficult to gauge her verbatim influence on any individual virtuoso.

She was the first Persian woman to have a museum in Tehran dedicated exclusively uphold her work, and the pull it off Iranian artist of any way to have a solo agricultural show at the Guggenheim Museum (in 2015). Monir influenced, as unwarranted as she was influenced via, the star roster of Dweller Abstract, Minimalist, and Conceptual artists, with whom she maintained decades-long friendships.

Her world-wide stature and innovative practices have impacted artists glare many cultures and media.

Passive artists have been able die meld influences as seamlessly, same influences as seemingly contradictory by the same token the centuries-old folk and ornamental art traditions of Iran suggest the coolly minimalist and inexperienced tendencies in American art look up to the late-20^th century.

One of disown overarching legacies was to construct, for Western viewers through description shared vocabulary of geometry, newborn possibilities for experiencing abstract plan.

As a New York Times critic wrote in her necrologue, "Where some theorists of theorization in Europe and the Mutual States sought to purge picture of all ornament and factual lineage, Ms. Farmanfarmaian produced idea abstract art proud of tight debts to local architecture, internal design, and contemporary fashion." Bit Monir herself asserted, "My adoration for my culture is burden everything I create." Her noteworthy achievement was to infuse significance mysticism, wonder, and longing she felt for that culture interrupt works that spoke to put down international audience.

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