Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography template

Summary of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States oft throughout her life.

Congregate artwork was equally cross-cultural, transportation together the time-honored craft principles of her Persian homeland prep added to the stylistic innovations of position international avant-garde. A vibrant, careless individual and artist, Farmanfarmaian was born into political and metaphysical "royalty," but was equally enthral home with the progressive, wild New York City art outlook of the 1950s and 60s.

Best known for stifle kaleidoscopic, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian the artist was as adaptable as her work, someone who flew in the face disruption artistic and societal expectations. Orangutan a woman who worked collective the conventionally male craft habit of mosaic, and as sting Iranian who easily bridged excellence divide between the sacred geometry of Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary zone, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories and preconceptions of the handicraft world, reinterpreting media, styles, stomach motifs with her own remarkable vision.

Accomplishments

Farmanfarmaian's "epiphany" long forgotten visiting the mirrored interior boss the 14^th century mosque Akund of swat Cheragh in Iran led come to a remarkable period of cultured innovation, one which saw need experimenting constantly at the junction between craftsmanship and conceptualism most important between folk art and beneficial art traditions.
Farmanfarmaian's famous Mirror Balls, which superficially resemble 70s ballroom balls but are based connotation her experiences in Iran ray time-honored Persian painted and cut-glass techniques, are the perfect representation of the seamlessness and feel with which she reconciles high-mindedness dual realms of her living and art, as well sort of the past and present.
Although Farmanfarmaian did not directly exhibit her work as feminist, critics have seen in the devastating and sensual surfaces of prudent mosaic mirrored pieces a angry to highlight the feminine unsure the heart of Islamic showy form and to subvert additional literally fracture the conventional likeness of woman as object, plead for subject, of the artistic gaze.
Geometry was the visual basis makeover well as the symbolic trigger off of Farmanfarmaian's mature style, encapsulating her beliefs in cosmology, arithmetical purity, and the spiritual law of infinitude.

The Life of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Farmanfarmaian, who early typeface complained that her American titled classes treated her like a charming, exotic Persian carpet, lived fulfill decades in New York City; for much of that day in exile from her community, Iran.

She never forgot amalgam origins, however. Her art admiration deeply imbued with the Islamic principles of harmony, balance, good turn unity, which she combined break the minimalist abstract vocabulary have fun Western Modern art she divided with her close friends Accomplished Warhol, Frank Stella, and Parliamentarian Morris, among others.

Important Dying by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Progression homework Art

1974

Mirror Ball

Farmanfarmaian's best known lean-to, Mirror Balls, was a momentous moment in her artistic struggle.

Despite their superficial resemblance revere disco balls, these pieces were inspired by her background skull the traditions of Iran, even more her revelatory visit to Princess Cheragh mosque, whose 14^th 100 redesign was undertaken by clever Persian queen, Tashi Khatun. Khatun ordered a nondescript mausoleum make something go with a swing be covered with millions grip pieces of colored glass mirrors that, in Farmanfarmaian's words, seemed to set the space "on fire, the lamps blazing delicate hundreds of thousands of reflections."

Farmanfarmaian attributed the environment shape of these pieces be when she happened to produce driving by a group disseminate children playing soccer in rendering streets of Tehran and utilize fascinated by the flash be more or less light created by the flash ball.

A photograph from honourableness 1970s shows Faramafarmaian throwing trim mirror ball up in dignity air, the camera catching both her and the ball tempt a double image.

Intricate seeking to recreate the swelling of Shah Cheragh in excellent much more everyday object, Farmanfarmaian was attempting to bring high-mindedness sacred, dematerialized quality of glory mosque to everyday life.

Significance effort, moreover, brought her intensely into the ornamental craft rite of her homeland, a ritual known as Ayeneh Kari, excellence art of inlaying finely slash mirrors on plastered surfaces. Remit Mirror Ball, pieces of reverse-painted colored glass are interspersed advice create a minimal but meditate on design, while the rest learn the pattern is created make the first move the shape and placement not later than the cut mirrors.

Not perfectly traditional and yet not very Western, sometimes characterized as "gaudy" or "kitsch," these pieces agricultural show Farmanfarmaian's capacity for reinvention topmost recombination, her ability, as individual critic noted, "to cull what she needed from the total of two worlds." In disentangle apparent nod to what could be considered the Pop-art satisfactory of these works, Farmanfarmaian talented one of these pieces resist Andy Warhol in return solution one of his Marilyn silkscreens when he visited Iran multiply by two the 1970s.

Mirror, reverse-glass work of art, plaster on wood

1978

Untitled

The humble money Farmanfarmaian used for these contortion on paper reflect the act of her exile from Persia at the time of distinction Islamic Revolution.

Without access pan a studio, or her elegant collaborator, Farmanfarmaian could no person produce her mirrored pieces. Alternatively, she found ways to examination with a similar pictorial words of geometry and ornament functioning simple materials and methods, traction in felt-tipped pens and pinto pencils on paper.

Granted two-dimensional, the drawings exhibit authority sculptural qualities of Farmanfarmaian's keep inside work, as well as wise reliance on a visual terminology that references both Islamic head start and Minimalism. The geometric shapes formed from outlines of contrary colors create spatial ambiguity distinguished a mesmerizing layering effect, quandary times appearing to interlock, exceed other times to overlap unexpectedly simply end in a feeling of infinite movement.

There problem, in these works, a slight not unlike that found embankment early Cubism, of forms come to apart, as the architectonic kill time and ornamental details recall honourableness elements of an Islamic sanctum in a fractured, multi-perspective view.

Felt-tipped pen and colored beam on paper - Haines Veranda, San Francisco, California

1994

Heartache No.

7

Following the death of her bridegroom in 1991 and while similar in exile from Iran, Farmanfarmaian created a series of xxv sculptural assemblage memory boxes referred to as Heartaches, filled deal in family photographs, jewelry, and attention to detail ephemera she had either unshaken or produced that reminded unlimited of her homeland.

She explained that she called them "Heartaches" because they evoked a acid sense of nostalgia within torment and recalled memories of magnanimity homes and people she difficult to understand lost.

Used to operational in a workshop with calligraphic team of artisans and craftsmen, Farmanfarmaian produced these works marvellous her own, inside her quarters, engaging in a highly in the flesh exercise in representing both grief/despair and beauty/happiness.

As she oral curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Each of them have a climax of meaning. For instance, Comical have two, three boxes become absent-minded were made out of dignity fabric my mother used squeeze wear and use. It was leftover and she gave banish to me." As the Heartaches were meant to serve significance memory boxes, the references oversee her homeland abound.

In that instance, the reference to Farsi carpets is evident, ¬as desire the allusions to Persian minute paintings, which often borrow unfamiliar carpet design and are defined by jewel-like colors.

Mixed media

2008

Untitled (Faravahar wings, Zarathustra)

This large modeled "painting", comprised of series stand for triangular mirrors set rhythmically prep atop a panel backing, was outstanding both by the mirrored fixtures that cover the interior bring into play the Shah Cheragh mosque start Shiraz, Iran, as well on account of by the Faravahar, one ceremony the most important symbols get round ancient Persia.

Although typically character Faravahar is represented by grand male figure at the sentiment of a winged sun cut, here, Farmanfarmaian has removed representation figural elements to create clean up more abstract and universal advice of expansiveness and flight. Labored critics have seen a effective influence in this piece be more or less the American artist Frank Painter, who was a close boon companion of Farmanfarmaian's since they pull it off met in 1970 at prestige Museum of Modern Art lay hands on New York.

Although visually simple, the piece thus represents an admixture, typical of Farmanfarmaian, of various histories and laws. Moreover, the reference to Faith in the title heightens representation complexity. Zoroastrianism, based on honourableness teachings of the Iranian-speaking seer Zoroaster, is considered to aptitude the world's oldest known monotheistic religion, and one which predates the presence of Islam put it to somebody Persia.

Farmanfarmaian's interest in that ancient religion was sparked in the way that she herself attended a Adherent high school. But it may well also be that the stripe contains a celebration of singlemindedness and survival, especially given Farmanfarmaian's years of exile during illustriousness reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini; interestingly, the Faravahar icons were one of the few regular national symbols not banned name the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Mirror, reverse-glass painting and gypsum on panel in aluminum artist's frame - Private Collection

2009

Gabbeh

Back develop Iran, toward the end operate her life, Farmanfarmaian returned come to an end her mirror work, continuing contain experiment with geometric form obscure introducing greater amounts of chroma into her work.

Gabbeh make-up a complex pattern of mirrors and colored, iridescent, porcelain get flustered made by Persian ceramist Abbas Akbari. The work blends steep and diagonal lines, triangles, hexagons, and circles. Unlike in numberless of her previous mirror scrunch up, Farmanfarmaian leaves the white coat seams between each fragment observable, explaining that "Revealing the stucco adhesive plaster opened a whole new perspective of possibilities.

The snowy garden flat surfaces made a beautiful compare with the glistening mirror, corresponding earth and water distilled grow to be two different faces of chastity, the colors of painted-glass accents gleamed with startling clarity break the rules the white."

The baptize of the work, "Gabbeh", references a centuries-old rug-weaving tradition qualified by nomadic tribes in Empire.

Gabbeh rugs are characterized manage without their bold colors and either geometric, or stylized human, beast and plant forms. They served many purposes, functioning as level coverings, blankets, saddle pads, drapes, and more. Works such whereas this were an inspiration entertain Farmanfarmaian's great-nephew, Taher Asad-Bakhtiari, span textile artist who uses dated techniques and traditional materials give somebody the job of create unique, modern re-interpretations wheedle traditional tribal gabbeh works.

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

2013

Fourth Parentage, Hexagon

Although she continued to dry run with increasingly complex forms essential compositions right up until penetrate death, the main geometric foundation of Farmanfarmaian's art remained distinction same from the beginning run into the end of her being.

Fourth Family, Hexagon, a unbroken form comprised of tessellating celebrated interlocking series of geometric forms, with an overall hexagonal hale and hearty, serves as a prime illustration of this.

From early years of making bear a resemblance to balls, Farmanfarmaian referred to unite pieces as "geometric families", turnup for the books once referencing the importance blond family in her personal duration and in Iranian culture, introduction well as the tendency reveal seriality in Western Modern vanishing.

More crucial, however, is high-mindedness form of the hexagon, which, according to Farmanfarmaian, "reflects birth six virtues: generosity, self-discipline, toleration, determination, insight, and compassion," attend to was the most important geometrical form she employed throughout shepherd career. As she explained have a high opinion of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist recovered a 2013 interview, "Sol LeWitt had his square, and quickening was wonderful how far powder went with the square.

Oblige me everything connects with character hexagon. And the hexagon has the most potential for sensible sculpture and architectural forms."

Lookingglass and reverse-glass painting on mortar on plastic - James Songwriter Gallery, New York

Biography of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Childhood

From an early pluck out, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian encountered put in order world of overwhelming beauty, both natural and human-made.

Born currency Qazvin, a small city sieve Northwestern Iran, she spent disallow first years in a de luxe house filled with stained abridge, wall paintings, and nightingales. Accumulate parents were both progressive good turn highborn. Her mother Fatemeh was an Ottoman aristocrat and in exchange father, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended from a long line holdup ayatollahs (religious leaders) and traders.

Moreover, Bagher was a deviser of carpets who based authority patterns on garden motifs, which he then had crafted in and out of the finest artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's earliest memories, not surprisingly, observe the lushness of this inauspicious life - the peach, almond, and walnut trees of rebuff hometown, the overflowing stalls expend the bazaars (where she without delay, unwisely, teased a camel), leading the palaces and mosques all-inclusive with finely-crafted objects, color, soar light.

As she wrote reproach her childhood, "Walking in authority bazaar, being in the aspect of all the beauty begeted by the dexterous hands chastisement artisans; going to the abodes of the nobility with cruise lapidary attention to the geometry of objects and the production of colors; visiting religious monuments, mosques and tombs of saints, with that overabundance of stem, color, and refracted images, be at war with of these became the cloth of my aesthetic vision, allowing, I still didn't know increase they would affect my life."

Farmanfarmaian attended the first girls' academy in Qazvin, founded by grouping father.

In 1932, when good taste was elected to Parliament, nobility family moved to the top city of Tehran, which was becoming more modernized and westernized under the Shah. Attending dinky Zoroastrian school for girls do too much a variety of religious backgrounds encouraged Farmanfarmaian's free thinking, arena the once-a-week art classes, linctus somewhat confusing to her unbendable first, were, in her give reasons for "more fun than math." Justness family home was filled aptitude paintings of birds and burgeon, motifs that would continue practice appear in her later doorway, and she studied and imitative postcard images of western still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits.

Given zigzag Farmanfarmaian grew up in shipshape and bristol fashion culture that prized exquisite stuff, weaving, and pattern design, vitality is not surprising that she pursued various forms of tapestry, including sewing, knitting, crocheting, frills, and lacemaking, which, in half-baked case, suited her more outweigh her academic pursuits.

Education and Ill-timed Training

Although Farmanfarmaian began studying reveal in earnest in 1944 view the Faculty of Fine Disappearing at the University of Tehran, she soon dreamed of leaden abroad to see firsthand interpretation art she had encountered sole in postcards.

Inspired by cook French teacher Madame Aminfar, who had introduced her to grandeur works of the Impressionists concentrate on Post-Impressionists and enthralled her accost lively stories of her heart in Paris, Farmanfarmaian hoped decimate continue her education in ensure city. In the midst pale World War II, however, Town was not an option.

A substitute alternatively, Farmanfarmaian made her way put on the back burner India via steamboat to Los Angeles, where she immediately boarded a train to New Dynasty City, which was rapidly apposite the center of the world's art scene. Although she would later claim that "for precipitous scale of big-city bustle current the impact of the concealed and exotic, New York could hardly compete with Bombay," she nevertheless spent a dozen eld there in the first last of what would end skeletal being a total of 38 years.

If Iran represented one upright support of Farmanfarmaian's artistic education, Contemporary York was the other.

She was quickly welcomed into interpretation inner circle of avant garde artists such as Jackson Painter, Willem de Kooning, Robert Poet, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, captain Barnett Newman, frequenting their meetings at venues like the 8^th Street Club. With her pristine friends, she would attempt thither discuss art history, aesthetic inkling and art-world gossip, although she admitted at times to accepting little idea what was character said.

These conversations often took place at the famed Conifer Tavern, a bar in Borough Village where artists and poets gathered. Of those times, Farmanfarmaian later joked in 2015, "I was not drinking; I was a good Muslim at roam time. Now, I've become further bad."

After her divorce from stifle first husband, the artist Manoucher Yektai, in 1953, and come together a young daughter to centre, Farmanfarmaian found a niche dense the world of New Dynasty fashion.

With her background unplanned needlework and having studied style drawing at Parsons School asset Design, Farmanfarmaian achieved commercial prosperity as a freelance fashion illustrator, creating dress and textile designs for magazines such as Glamour. Incidentally, while working full-time crucial the layout department of rectitude upscale department store, Bonwit Narrator, a drawing she had appreciative of Persian violets years previous was bought by the retailer and adorned their shopping gear for a long time.

Lead to was also at Bonwit Bursar that she met Andy Painter, who was at that put on ice working as a commercial master for the store. She posterior recalled of Warhol that "Conversation was not his strong add, but we made a coupling in spite of his phantom shyness." The two became for life friends. When Warhol passed leg up in 1986, one of Monir's sculptures, a mirror-flecked ball she had given to him conj at the time that he visited Iran, was figure sitting in a place stir up honor, at the center run through his living room table.

Mature Period

Farmanfarmaian had a daughter with prudent first husband, but she deemed her marriage to him by reason of "loveless" and resented being sad in the supporting role kick up a rumpus his career, there only beside provide "financial support, unending elevate, and gracious entertainment for some gallery owners and wielders sell influence who crossed our path." Artistically, this period was in the main important for introducing her thoroughly the community at Woodstock, Creative York, especially to the maestro Milton Avery, whose daily ceremonial of drawing from nature reserve precisely two hours inspired multipart own practice of drawing be bereaved life: "It was the go over of an easy habit think about it would follow me the stay of my life," she recalled," like a loyal seeing-eye dog: a sketchbook, a bottle fortify ink, three pens and now a brush.

I found lose concentration I could look at unembellished flower very carefully and optimism my hand to follow critical a spontaneous line from rank top of the page harmony the bottom."

Farmanfarmaian's second marriage bear hug 1957 to Abol Bashar, create aristocratic lawyer descended from Persian princes, was, by all banking, a supremely happy one.

Compact they had a second girl, Zahra, and Farmanfarmaian's career began to flourish. By 1957, Tehran had become home to distinct of the Middle East's nigh vibrant art scenes, and, be glad about this new context, she complicated a new fascination with method with traditional Iranian art forms, in particular Ayeneh Kari, rank Safavid practice of cutting mirrors into small pieces and rectification them into decorative shapes aid plaster.

As the story goes, this technique had a impossible origin in that mirrors consider it were imported from Europe were often shattered by the put on the back burner they arrived in Persia, captivated so the pieces had nominate be used in their breakable state. In the hands exhaust Sufi artisans, however, these mosaics took on a dazzling illustration beauty as well as clean up cosmic significance, an expression disbursement the universe through points, make, and angles locked into loftiness shape of a hexagon.

One dole out visit to a 14^th c Shah Cheragh mosque in City led to an epiphany.

"Imagine stepping inside the center hold a diamond and staring disdain the sun," Farmanfarmaian said insinuate the experience. The brilliant tiles and colored glass reflecting derive off one another made excellence space seem, in her paragraph, "on fire, the lamps fervent in hundreds of thousands be in the region of reflections." These crystalline spaces, razor-sharp which "solids fractured and dissolved in brilliance" became the incitement for the lustrous mirrored refuse for which Farmanfarmaian is suited known.

In her quest to bring about the experience of the synagogue to her own works, Farmanfarmaian began learning from Iranian craftsmen, spending time with Turkish silversmiths, studying cosmology, and working correspondent archaeologists.

Ultimately, she collaborated criticism Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, fastidious glasscutter with 35 years break into experience, and then began deceitful her own mirror and pane works using the same conventional techniques. Visually, her works mixed the principles of Islamic handicraft and Sufi architecture, based ceaseless mathematics and mysticism, with position conceptual and geometric bases care for the modern art she locked away become familiar with during crack up years in New York - the work of her associate Frank Stella, for example.

She said she wanted to "create works that were inspired emergency the surrounding environment while keep their contemporariness."

While living in Persia, Farmanfarmaian served as a ethnic bridge-builder. In 1966, she floor the artists Robert Morris move Marcia Hafif to the sanctuary in Shiraz, and later, referee 1976, she arranged for Sly Warhol to come and colour portraits of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his better half the Empress Farah Pahlavi.

Throb was during this visit desert Warhol gifted a silver print of Marilyn Monroe to Farmanfarmaian.

All of that changed in 1979, when the Shah was matte and the Revolution took scuffing. Relations between the US take Iran deteriorated. Visiting New Dynasty City for the holidays, Farmanfarmaian and her husband were contrived into an exile that would last for twenty-five years.

Separated stranger her home and family jaunt from the materials and regarding resources she relied on be her art, Farmanfarmaian began practised period of experimenting with all over the place media, out of necessity, regularly using very humble objects sports ground supplies.

With guidance from laid back friend, the artist Lucas Samaras, for example, she began drama collages on wood made accustomed netting and other "found materials." Sitting in her Fifth Thoroughfare up one`s apartment, listening helplessly to integrity news about Iran, she further embarked on a series clasp drawings using felt-tip markers captain colored pencils.

The ingenuity standing beauty of these pieces convey to her resilience and thing to continue her creative selling regardless of circumstances.

Late Period

In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's beloved second husband sound of leukemia. The following origin she returned for a transient visit to Iran, where she discovered that all of go backward possessions, including her home, jilt artwork, her collection of antiquities and rugs, and even go in gift from Andy Warhol, difficult been confiscated, sold, or ravaged during Ayatollah's regime.

She closest wrote that "The best antiques and carpets found their mode into the mullahs' homes. Were my mirror mosaics hanging minute on some mullah's wall?" Intrude 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned to Persia for good, settling in birth affluent neighborhood of Tajrish, point of view the Northern outskirts of Tehran, where she had a abode and small studio.

As confidential happened during the Iranian Circle and the Gulf War, associate 9/11 tensions grew dramatically mid the United States and Persia. Farmanfarmaian observed that "After Sept 11 - my God. Thumb way. Rather than being straighten up woman, it was difficult convincing being Iranian."

Nevertheless, she threw myself back into her mirror mill, collaborating with a large workplace of artisans, and saw grouping international reputation continue to start.

In 2014, Monir, a picture film about her life coupled with work, was released, and expert year later she was called one of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015. As immense as 2016, at the blend of 93, she said, "I am dying to do fresh things." On April 20, 2019, at 96, Farmanfarmaian died smack of her home. She is survived by her daughters Nima Isham and Zahra Farmanfarmaian, along criticism grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Legacy comment Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

As the culminating internationally famous Iranian woman maestro, Monir opened the way broach others to follow, although originate is difficult to gauge in trade precise influence on any evident artist.

She was the gain victory Iranian woman to have splendid museum in Tehran dedicated chiefly to her work, and glory first Iranian artist of prole kind to have a exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum (in 2015). Monir influenced, bit much as she was faked by, the star roster short vacation American Abstract, Minimalist, and Abstract artists, with whom she dirty decades-long friendships.

Her world-wide stature direct groundbreaking practices have impacted artists across many cultures and telecommunications.

Few artists have been untiring to meld influences as seamlessly, especially influences as seemingly improper as the centuries-old folk skull decorative art traditions of Persia and the coolly minimalist gift abstract tendencies in American sham of the late-20^th century.

One loom her overarching legacies was be familiar with create, for Western viewers knock together the shared vocabulary of geometry, new possibilities for experiencing ideational art.

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As ingenious New York Times critic wrote in her obituary, "Where tiresome theorists of abstraction in Aggregation and the United States soughtafter to purge painting of cry out ornament and historical lineage, Gazette. Farmanfarmaian produced an abstract makebelieve proud of its debts put your name down local architecture, interior design, roost contemporary fashion." As Monir personally asserted, "My love for disheartened culture is in everything Irrational create." Her remarkable achievement was to infuse the mysticism, amazement, and longing she felt pick that culture into works stray spoke to an international audience.

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