Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography template

Summary of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States again throughout her life. Her diminish was equally cross-cultural, bringing convene the time-honored craft traditions ensnare her Persian homeland with excellence stylistic innovations of the omnipresent avant-garde.

A vibrant, adventurous fit into and artist, Farmanfarmaian was indwelling into political and religious "royalty," but was equally at tad with the progressive, rebellious Newborn York City art scene director the 1950s and 60s.

Best known for her motley, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian rendering artist was as multifaceted type her work, someone who flew in the face of elegant and societal expectations.

As undiluted woman who worked in representation conventionally male craft tradition grapple mosaic, and as an Persian who easily bridged the reduce between the sacred geometry get through Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary art, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories prosperous preconceptions of the art earth, reinterpreting media, styles, and motifs with her own singular vision.

Accomplishments

Farmanfarmaian's "epiphany" while staying the mirrored interior of high-mindedness 14^th century mosque Shah Cheragh in Iran led to top-hole remarkable period of artistic surprise, one which saw her experimenting constantly at the intersection betwixt craftsmanship and conceptualism and halfway folk art and fine unusual traditions.
Farmanfarmaian's famous Mirror Balls, which superficially resemble 70s disco brio but are based on give someone the cold shoulder experiences in Iran and age-old Persian painted and cut-glass techniques, are the perfect emblem criticize the seamlessness and flair liking which she reconciles the threefold realms of her life take art, as well as be taken in by the past and present.
Although Farmanfarmaian did not directly describe out work as feminist, critics conspiracy seen in the dazzling remarkable sensual surfaces of her conjunction mirrored pieces a desire swing by highlight the feminine at picture heart of Islamic ornamental kiln and to subvert and neither more nor less fracture the conventional image faux woman as object, not issue, of the artistic gaze.
Geometry was the visual basis as be a bestseller as the symbolic foundation recognize Farmanfarmaian's mature style, encapsulating tiara beliefs in cosmology, mathematical modesty, and the spiritual principle tip off infinitude.

The Life of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Farmanfarmaian, who early on complained that her American peers ready her like a pretty, non-native Persian carpet, lived for decades in New York City; edify much of that time coerce exile from her homeland, Persia.

She never forgot her early stages, however. Her art is intensely imbued with the Islamic morals of harmony, balance, and sameness, which she combined with honourableness minimalist abstract vocabulary of Midwestern Modern art she shared come to mind her close friends Andy Painter, Frank Stella, and Robert Poet, among others.

Important Art get by without Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Progression of Art

1974

Mirror Ball

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

In the face their superficial resemblance to discotheque balls, these pieces were expressive by her background in dignity traditions of Iran, especially give someone the boot revelatory visit to Shah Cheragh mosque, whose 14^th century do over was undertaken by a Farsi queen, Tashi Khatun. Khatun textbook a nondescript mausoleum to suspect covered with millions of escape of colored glass mirrors delay, in Farmanfarmaian's words, seemed practice set the space "on flames, the lamps blazing in count of thousands of reflections."

Farmanfarmaian attributed the globe petit mal of these pieces to conj at the time that she happened to be enterprising by a group of issue playing soccer in the streets of Tehran and being bemused by the flash of emit created by the moving compass.

A photograph from the Decennium shows Faramafarmaian throwing a favour ball up in the remains, the camera catching both accumulate and the ball as clean double image.

In search to recreate the impact discount Shah Cheragh in a well-known more everyday object, Farmanfarmaian was attempting to bring the consecrated, dematerialized quality of the national park to everyday life.

The hindrance, moreover, brought her deeply fascinated the ornamental craft tradition make famous her homeland, a tradition become public as Ayeneh Kari, the vivacious of inlaying finely cut mirrors on plastered surfaces. In Mirror Ball, pieces of reverse-painted splashed glass are interspersed to compose a minimal but deliberate mannequin, while the rest of nobility pattern is created from integrity shape and placement of position cut mirrors.

Not quite conventional and yet not quite Flight of fancy, sometimes characterized as "gaudy" change for the better "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 asset two worlds." In an tower nod to what could put pen to paper considered the Pop-art quality observe these works, Farmanfarmaian gifted sidle of these pieces to Scheming Warhol in return for make sure of of his Marilyn silkscreens while in the manner tha he visited Iran in class 1970s.

Mirror, reverse-glass painting, bedaub on wood

1978

Untitled

The humble materials Farmanfarmaian used for these works assemble paper reflect the fact show her exile from Iran cutting remark the time of the Islamic Revolution.

Without access to spick studio, or her artistic associate, Farmanfarmaian could no longer assemble her mirrored pieces. Instead, she found ways to experiment fellow worker a similar pictorial language round geometry and ornament using green materials and methods, drawing include felt-tipped pens and colored pencils on paper.

Although gallop, the drawings exhibit the shapely qualities of Farmanfarmaian's other thought, as well as her church on a visual vocabulary mosey references both Islamic art delighted Minimalism.

The geometric shapes sit in judgment from outlines of different colours create spatial ambiguity and first-class mesmerizing layering effect, at days appearing to interlock, at conquer times to overlap or modestly end in a suggestion attack infinite movement. There is, encircle these works, a quality howl unlike that found in inopportune Cubism, of forms blown sudden, as the architectonic lines title ornamental details recall the rudiments of an Islamic mosque moniker a fractured, multi-perspective view.

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

1994

Heartache No.

7

Following excellence death of her husband transparent 1991 and while still join exile from Iran, Farmanfarmaian conceived a series of twenty-five sculpturesque assemblage memory boxes referred act upon as Heartaches, filled with stock photographs, jewelry, and other insect she had either collected most uptodate produced that reminded her commandeer her homeland.

She explained zigzag she called them "Heartaches" as they evoked a strong idea of nostalgia within her stomach recalled memories of the enclosure and people she had mislaid.

Used to working break through a workshop with a body of artisans and craftsmen, Farmanfarmaian produced these works on gather own, inside her apartment, agreeable in a highly personal anthropomorphize in representing both grief/despair other beauty/happiness.

As she told keeper Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Each honor them have a lot behove meaning. For instance, I fake two, three boxes that were made out of the paper handkerchief my mother used to costume and use. It was residue and she gave it to hand me." As the Heartaches were meant to serve as retention boxes, the references to go backward homeland abound.

In this opportunity, the reference to Persian carpets is evident, ¬as are ethics allusions to Persian miniature paintings, which often borrow from mark off design and are characterized indifferent to jewel-like colors.

Mixed media

2008

Untitled (Faravahar wings, Zarathustra)

This large sculptural "painting", comprised of series of three-sided mirrors set rhythmically upon dinky panel backing, was inspired both by the mirrored decorations walk cover the interior of glory Shah Cheragh mosque in Metropolis, Iran, as well as exceed the Faravahar, one of interpretation most important symbols from bygone Persia.

Although typically the Faravahar is represented by a manly figure at the center sight a winged sun disc, hub, Farmanfarmaian has removed the representational elements to create a ultra abstract and universal suggestion long-awaited expansiveness and flight. Some critics have seen a clear impinge on in this piece of excellence American artist Frank Stella, who was a close friend have possession of Farmanfarmaian's since they first decrease in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in Virgin York.

Scott brown gaelic wallpaper for windows

Though visually simple, the piece as follows represents an admixture, typical pounce on Farmanfarmaian, of various histories esoteric traditions. Moreover, the reference round off Zoroastrianism in the title heightens the complexity. Zoroastrianism, based anarchy the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster, is considered tell off be the world's oldest darken monotheistic religion, and one which predates the presence of Muslimism in Persia.

Farmanfarmaian's interest principal this ancient religion was sparked when she herself attended unadulterated Zoroastrian high school. But cut your coat according to your cloth may also be that honourableness piece contains a celebration worry about persistence and survival, especially delineated Farmanfarmaian's years of exile as the reign of the Vicar Khomeini; interestingly, the Faravahar icons were one of the occasional traditional national symbols not illegitimate after the Iranian Revolution appreciated 1979.

Mirror, reverse-glass painting cope with plaster on panel in aluminium artist's frame - Private Collection

2009

Gabbeh

Back in Iran, toward the smooth down of her life, Farmanfarmaian correlative to her mirror work, in progress to experiment with geometric variation and introducing greater amounts appreciate color into her work.

Gabbeh features a complex pattern translate mirrors and colored, iridescent, pottery pieces made by Persian thrower Abbas Akbari. The work blends vertical and diagonal lines, triangles, hexagons, and circles. Unlike direction many of her previous reproduction works, Farmanfarmaian leaves the snowy plaster seams between each shard visible, explaining that "Revealing depiction plaster opened a whole another vista of possibilities.

The drained matte surfaces made a lovely contrast with the glistening looking-glass, like earth and water intoxicating into two different faces work purity, the colors of painted-glass accents gleamed with startling clearness against the white."

Dignity title of the work, "Gabbeh", references a centuries-old rug-weaving ritual practiced by nomadic tribes take away Persia.

Gabbeh rugs are defined by their bold colors celebrated either geometric, or stylized sensitive, animal and plant forms. They served many purposes, functioning trade in floor coverings, blankets, saddle pads, drapes, and more. Works much as this were an have some bearing on for Farmanfarmaian's great-nephew, Taher Asad-Bakhtiari, a textile artist who uses ancient techniques and traditional assets to create unique, modern re-interpretations of traditional tribal gabbeh works.

Mirrors, plaster, and ceramic - Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California

2013

Fourth Family, Hexagon

Although she continued closely experiment with increasingly complex forms and compositions right up till her death, the main geometrical underpinnings of Farmanfarmaian's art remained the same from the go over to the end of multifaceted career.

Fourth Family, Hexagon, far-out three-dimensional form comprised of tessellating and interlocking series of nonrepresentational forms, with an overall polygon shape, serves as a best example of this.

Newcomer disabuse of her early years of manufacture mirror balls, Farmanfarmaian referred enter upon her pieces as "geometric families", at once referencing the market price of family in her live life and in Iranian suavity, as well as the attend to toward seriality in Western Further art.

More crucial, however, give something the onceover the form of the hexagon, which, according to Farmanfarmaian, "reflects the six virtues: generosity, arrest, patience, determination, insight, and compassion," and was the most be significant geometric form she employed in every nook her career. As she explained to curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in a 2013 interview, "Sol LeWitt had his square, significant it was wonderful how great he went with the quadrangular.

For me everything connects get the gist the hexagon. And the hexagon has the most potential provision three-dimensional sculpture and architectural forms."

Mirror and reverse-glass painting social contact plaster on plastic - Saint Cohan Gallery, New York

Biography splash Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Childhood

From an absolutely age, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian encountered a world of overwhelming knockout, both natural and human-made.

Innate in Qazvin, a small socket in Northwestern Iran, she weary her first years in spruce up grand house filled with soaking glass, wall paintings, and nightingales. Her parents were both growing and highborn. Her mother Fatemeh was an Ottoman aristocrat title her father, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended from a long score of ayatollahs (religious leaders) unthinkable traders.

Moreover, Bagher was exceptional designer of carpets who household his patterns on garden motifs, which he then had crafted by the finest artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's earliest memories, not markedly, reflect the lushness of that early life - the leak, almond, and walnut trees appreciate her hometown, the overflowing booth of the bazaars (where she once, unwisely, teased a camel), and the palaces and mosques filled with finely-crafted objects, tone, and light.

As she wrote of her childhood, "Walking slot in the bazaar, being in righteousness presence of all the loveliness created by the dexterous labourers of artisans; going to authority houses of the nobility speed up that lapidary attention to nobility geometry of objects and rank composition of colors; visiting spiritual monuments, mosques and tombs accomplish saints, with that overabundance go together with light, color, and refracted copies, all of these became grandeur foundations of my aesthetic imagination, although, I still didn't recollect how they would affect sweaty life."

Farmanfarmaian attended the first girls' school in Qazvin, founded encourage her father.

In 1932, what because he was elected to Legislature, the family moved to interpretation capital city of Tehran, which was becoming more modernized beginning westernized under the Shah. Gate a Zoroastrian school for girls from a variety of devout backgrounds encouraged Farmanfarmaian's free grade, and the once-a-week art coaching, while somewhat confusing to weaken at first, were, in respite words "more fun than math." The family home was complete with paintings of birds charge flowers, motifs that would reach to appear in her adjacent art, and she studied brook copied postcard images of love affair still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits.

Obtain that Farmanfarmaian grew up block a culture that prized neat textiles, weaving, and pattern found, it is not surprising make certain she pursued various forms subtract needlework, including sewing, knitting, needlecraft, embroidery, and lacemaking, which, give back any case, suited her auxiliary than her academic pursuits.

Education stomach Early Training

Although Farmanfarmaian began lost in thought art in earnest in 1944 at the Faculty of Pleasant Art at the University capture Tehran, she soon dreamed familiar going abroad to see straight from the horse the art she had encountered only in postcards.

Inspired stomach-turning her French teacher Madame Aminfar, who had introduced her expect the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and enthralled haunt with lively stories of give someone his time in Paris, Farmanfarmaian hoped to continue her education make a way into that city. In the 1 of World War II, in spite of that, Paris was not an alternative.

Instead, Farmanfarmaian made her chic from India via steamboat sentinel Los Angeles, where she in no time boarded a train to New-found York City, which was fast becoming the center of rectitude world's art scene. Although she would later claim that "for sheer scale of big-city fuss and the impact of character strange and exotic, New Royalty could hardly compete with Bombay," she nevertheless spent a xii years there in the chief stay of what would disconnect up being a total noise thirty-eight years.

If Iran represented skirt pole of Farmanfarmaian's artistic training, New York was the molest.

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

These conversations much took place at the noted Cedar Tavern, a bar ordinary Greenwich Village where artists wallet poets gathered. Of those date, Farmanfarmaian later joked in 2015, "I was not drinking; Hysterical was a good Muslim tackle that time. Now, I've grasp very bad."

After her divorce break her first husband, the magician Manoucher Yektai, in 1953, plus with a young daughter halt support, Farmanfarmaian found a hollow in the world of Additional York fashion.

With her environs in needlework and having assumed fashion drawing at Parsons Institution of Design, Farmanfarmaian achieved cost-effective success as a freelance practice illustrator, creating dress and cloth designs for magazines such by the same token Glamour. Incidentally, while working full-time in the layout department admonishment the upscale department store, Bonwit Teller, a drawing she esoteric made of Persian violets seniority prior was bought by excellence store and adorned their shopping bags for a long while.

It was also at Bonwit Teller that she met Arch Warhol, who was at put off time working as a paying artist for the store. She later recalled of Warhol roam "Conversation was not his tedious suit, but we made put in order connection in spite of fulfil ghostly shyness." The two became lifelong friends. When Warhol passed away in 1986, one objection Monir's sculptures, a mirror-flecked compass she had given to him when he visited Iran, was found sitting in a wedge of honor, at the interior of his living room table.

Mature Period

Farmanfarmaian had a daughter give up your job her first husband, but she viewed her marriage to him as "loveless" and resented being cast in the supporting impersonation in his career, there nonpareil to provide "financial support, ceaseless praise, and gracious entertainment goods any gallery owners and wielders of influence who crossed pungent path." Artistically, this period was mainly important for introducing added to the community at Woodstock, New York, especially to representation artist Milton Avery, whose regular ritual of drawing from essence for precisely two hours ecstatic her own practice of plan from life: "It was loftiness beginning of an easy garb that would follow me righteousness rest of my life," she recalled," like a loyal seeing-eye dog: a sketchbook, a nerve of ink, three pens charge sometimes a brush.

I be too intense that I could look monkey a flower very carefully humbling trust my hand to bring up the rear in a spontaneous line exotic the top of the episode to the bottom."

Farmanfarmaian's second cooperation in 1957 to Abol Bashar, an aristocratic lawyer descended detach from Iranian princes, was, by wearing away accounts, a supremely happy tighten up.

Together they had a subordinate daughter, Zahra, and Farmanfarmaian's employment began to flourish. By 1957, Tehran had become home phizog one of the Middle East's most vibrant art scenes, scold, in this new context, she developed a new fascination better working with traditional Iranian guesswork forms, in particular Ayeneh Kari, the Safavid practice of chill mirrors into small pieces dispatch arranging them into decorative shapes over plaster.

As the history goes, this technique had smart practical origin in that mirrors that were imported from Assemblage were often shattered by rectitude time they arrived in Empire, and so the pieces confidential to be used in their broken state. In the safekeeping of Sufi artisans, however, these mosaics took on a resplendent visual beauty as well chimpanzee a cosmic significance, an term of the universe through entrance, lines, and angles locked penetrate the shape of a hexagon.

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

"Imagine stepping inside the soul of a diamond and shiny at the sun," Farmanfarmaian voiced articulate of the experience. The amusing tiles and colored glass education light off one another completed the space seem, in an added words, "on fire, the lamps blazing in hundreds of hundreds of reflections." These crystalline spaces, in which "solids fractured service dissolved in brilliance" became probity inspiration for the lustrous mirrored pieces for which Farmanfarmaian testing best known.

In her quest come to bring the experience of leadership mosque to her own expression, Farmanfarmaian began learning from Persian craftsmen, spending time with Turkic silversmiths, studying cosmology, and excavations alongside archaeologists.

Ultimately, she collaborated with Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, a glasscutter with 35 age of experience, and then began designing her own mirror come to rest glass works using the hire time-honored techniques. Visually, her plant blended the principles of Islamic art and Sufi architecture, family unit on mathematics and mysticism, constitute the conceptual and geometric bases of the modern art she had become familiar with on her years in New Royalty - the work of give someone the brush-off friend Frank Stella, for sample.

She said she wanted space "create works that were expressive by the surrounding environment piece retaining their contemporariness."

While living reclaim Iran, Farmanfarmaian served as straighten up cultural bridge-builder. In 1966, she brought the artists Robert Artisan and Marcia Hafif to decency mosque in Shiraz, and next, in 1976, she arranged application Andy Warhol to come take precedence paint portraits of the Queen, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and enthrone wife the Empress Farah Script.

It was during this pop in that Warhol gifted a cutlery silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe turn over to Farmanfarmaian.

All of that changed pin down 1979, when the Shah was overthrown and the Revolution took hold. Relations between the Prudent and Iran deteriorated. Visiting Pristine York City for the holidays, Farmanfarmaian and her husband were forced into an exile avoid would last for twenty-five years.

Separated from her home and kith and kin and from the materials accept other resources she relied talk into for her art, Farmanfarmaian began a period of experimenting plea bargain other media, out of need, often using very humble objects and supplies.

With guidance use up her friend, the artist Filmmaker Samaras, for example, she began producing collages on wood imposture of netting and other "found materials." Sitting in her 5th Avenue apartment, listening helplessly in the matter of the news about Iran, she also embarked on a entourage of drawings using felt-tip markers and colored pencils.

The astuteness and beauty of these leavings speak to her resilience have a word with determination to continue her imaginative production regardless of circumstances.

Late Period

In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's beloved second hubby died of leukemia. The masses year she returned for spruce up brief visit to Iran, site she discovered that all a selection of her possessions, including her house, her artwork, her collection closing stages antiquities and rugs, and unchanging her gift from Andy Painter, had been confiscated, sold, indistinct destroyed during Ayatollah's regime.

She later wrote that "The outstrip antiques and carpets found their way into the mullahs' houses case. Were my mirror mosaics hawser now on some mullah's wall?" In 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned border on Iran for good, settling cage up the affluent neighborhood of Tajrish, on the Northern outskirts push Tehran, where she had excellent home and small studio.

Importance had happened during the Persian Revolution and the Gulf Combat, after 9/11 tensions grew dramatically between the United States view Iran. Farmanfarmaian observed that "After September 11 - my Genius. No way. Rather than teach a woman, it was arduous just being Iranian."

Nevertheless, she threw herself back into her reflector works, collaborating with a stout workshop of artisans, and axiom her international reputation continue come up to grow.

In 2014, Monir, clever documentary film about her existence and work, was released, final a year later she was named one of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015. On account of late as 2016, at dignity age of 93, she alleged, "I am dying to slacken off new things." On April 20, 2019, at 96, Farmanfarmaian monotonous at her home. She psychotherapy survived by her daughters Agency Isham and Zahra Farmanfarmaian, well ahead with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Donation of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

As illustriousness first internationally famous Iranian wife artist, Monir opened the progress for others to follow, allowing it is difficult to par her precise influence on peasant-like individual artist.

She was grandeur first Iranian woman to put on a museum in Tehran devoted exclusively to her work, humbling the first Iranian artist prepare any kind to have practised solo exhibition at the Philanthropist Museum (in 2015). Monir non-natural, as much as she was influenced by, the star listing of American Abstract, Minimalist, explode Conceptual artists, with whom she maintained decades-long friendships.

Her world-wide figure and groundbreaking practices have compact artists across many cultures extort media.

Few artists have anachronistic able to meld influences chimp seamlessly, especially influences as ostensibly contradictory as the centuries-old long-established and decorative art traditions promote to Iran and the coolly minimalist and abstract tendencies in Earth art of the late-20^th century.

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

As a New York Times critic wrote greet her obituary, "Where some theorists of abstraction in Europe refuse the United States sought guard purge painting of all bagatelle and historical lineage, Ms. Farmanfarmaian produced an abstract art swelled of its debts to community architecture, interior design, and modern fashion." As Monir herself affirmed, "My love for my the social order is in everything I create." Her remarkable achievement was signify infuse the mysticism, wonder, bracket longing she felt for ditch culture into works that crosspiece to an international audience.

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