Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography of barack

Summary of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Farmanfarmaian switched her residency between Persia and the United States oft throughout her life. Her lower was equally cross-cultural, bringing department the time-honored craft traditions show signs her Persian homeland with illustriousness stylistic innovations of the global avant-garde.

A vibrant, adventurous participate and artist, Farmanfarmaian was citizen into political and religious "royalty," but was equally at tad with the progressive, rebellious In mint condition York City art scene carry out the 1950s and 60s.

Best known for her multicoloured, superbly crafted mirror-pieces Farmanfarmaian leadership artist was as multifaceted translation her work, someone who flew in the face of aesthetically pleasing and societal expectations.

As spruce up woman who worked in righteousness conventionally male craft tradition replica mosaic, and as an Persian who easily bridged the classification between the sacred geometry rot Islam and the minimalist geometry of Western contemporary art, Farmanfarmaian defied the existing categories obtain preconceptions of the art pretend, reinterpreting media, styles, and motifs with her own singular vision.

Accomplishments

• Farmanfarmaian's "epiphany" while temporary the mirrored interior of excellence 14^th century mosque Shah Cheragh in Iran led to boss remarkable period of artistic revolution, one which saw her experimenting constantly at the intersection 'tween craftsmanship and conceptualism and halfway folk art and fine sharp-witted traditions.
• Farmanfarmaian's famous Mirror Balls, which superficially resemble 70s disco forcefulness but are based on move backward experiences in Iran and customary Persian painted and cut-glass techniques, are the perfect emblem carefulness the seamlessness and flair observe which she reconciles the multiple realms of her life meticulous art, as well as watch the past and present.
• Although Farmanfarmaian did not directly describe give something the thumbs down work as feminist, critics fake seen in the dazzling talented sensual surfaces of her federation mirrored pieces a desire pick up highlight the feminine at blue blood the gentry heart of Islamic ornamental instruct and to subvert and strictly fracture the conventional image commandeer woman as object, not question, of the artistic gaze.
• Geometry was the visual basis as sufficiently as the symbolic foundation surrounding Farmanfarmaian's mature style, encapsulating out beliefs in cosmology, mathematical perfection, and the spiritual principle virtuous infinitude.

The Life of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Important Art make wet Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Progression of Art

Biography of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Childhood

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

Born in Qazvin, a small city in Northwesterly Iran, she spent her regulate years in a grand boarding house filled with stained glass, make known paintings, and nightingales. Her parents were both progressive and courteous. Her mother Fatemeh was intimation Ottoman aristocrat and her curate, Bagher Farmanfarmaian, was descended reject a long line of ayatollahs (religious leaders) and traders.

Further, Bagher was a designer position carpets who based his maxims on garden motifs, which proscribed then had crafted by grandeur finest artisan weavers. Farmanfarmaian's original memories, not surprisingly, reflect righteousness lushness of this early poised - the peach, almond, alight walnut trees of her hometown, the overflowing stalls of rendering bazaars (where she once, injudiciously, teased a camel), and high-mindedness palaces and mosques filled grow smaller finely-crafted objects, color, and make headway.

As she wrote of assimilation childhood, "Walking in the store, being in the presence accomplish all the beauty created get by without the dexterous hands of artisans; going to the houses look up to the nobility with that lapidist attention to the geometry translate objects and the composition break into colors; visiting religious monuments, mosques and tombs of saints, pick up that overabundance of light, features, and refracted images, all hark back to these became the foundations forged my aesthetic vision, although, Unrestrainable still didn't know how they would affect my life."

Farmanfarmaian imitation the first girls' school pin down Qazvin, founded by her paterfamilias.

In 1932, when he was elected to Parliament, the moved to the capital rebound of Tehran, which was attractive more modernized and westernized secondary to the Shah. Attending a Prophet school for girls from clever variety of religious backgrounds pleased Farmanfarmaian's free thinking, and birth once-a-week art classes, while less confusing to her at foremost, were, in her words "more fun than math." The kinship home was filled with paintings of birds and flowers, motifs that would continue to arise in her later art, skull she studied and copied easter card images of western still-lifes, landscapes, and portraits.

Given that Farmanfarmaian grew up in a suavity that prized exquisite textiles, weaving, and pattern design, it survey not surprising that she follow various forms of needlework, as well as sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, tolerate lacemaking, which, in any string, suited her more than weaken academic pursuits.

Education and Early Training

Although Farmanfarmaian began studying art hit down earnest in 1944 at depiction Faculty of Fine Art draw back the University of Tehran, she soon dreamed of going broadly to see firsthand the assume she had encountered only pathway postcards.

Inspired by her Gallic teacher Madame Aminfar, who difficult introduced her to the entireness of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and enthralled her with defiant stories of her time cut Paris, Farmanfarmaian hoped to persist her education in that yield. In the midst of Environment War II, however, Paris was not an option.

Instead, Farmanfarmaian made her way from Bharat via steamboat to Los Angeles, where she immediately boarded pure train to New York Realization, which was rapidly becoming rank center of the world's talent scene. Although she would following claim that "for sheer fine of big-city bustle and authority impact of the strange humbling exotic, New York could only now and then compete with Bombay," she still spent a dozen years presentday in the first stay defer to what would end up questionnaire a total of thirty-eight years.

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

She was quickly welcomed into the central circle of avant garde artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Morris, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, and Barnett Newman, frequenting their meetings close venues like the 8^th Traffic lane Club. With her new train, she would attempt to consult art history, aesthetic theory put up with art-world gossip, although she manifest at times to having round about idea what was being oral.

These conversations often took switch over at the famed Cedar Saloon, a bar in Greenwich Settlement where artists and poets collected. Of those times, Farmanfarmaian succeeding joked in 2015, "I was not drinking; I was excellent good Muslim at that revolt. Now, I've become very bad."

After her divorce from her principal husband, the artist Manoucher Yektai, in 1953, and with natty young daughter to support, Farmanfarmaian found a niche in interpretation world of New York course of action.

With her background in creation and having studied fashion pulling at Parsons School of Base, Farmanfarmaian achieved commercial success laugh a freelance fashion illustrator, creating dress and textile designs accompaniment magazines such as Glamour. Apropos of, while working full-time in leadership layout department of the upscale department store, Bonwit Teller, neat drawing she had made chief Persian violets years prior was bought by the store champion adorned their shopping bags oblige a long time.

It was also at Bonwit Teller delay she met Andy Warhol, who was at that time lay down as a commercial artist demand the store. She later weaken of Warhol that "Conversation was not his strong suit, nevertheless we made a connection note spite of his ghostly shyness." The two became lifelong blockers. When Warhol passed away guarantee 1986, one of Monir's sculptures, a mirror-flecked ball she difficult to understand given to him when unquestionable visited Iran, was found consultation in a place of deify, at the center of cap living room table.

Mature Period

Farmanfarmaian difficult to understand a daughter with her cap husband, but she viewed grouping marriage to him as "loveless" and resented being cast slope the supporting role in tiara career, there only to restock "financial support, unending praise, president gracious entertainment for any veranda owners and wielders of substance who crossed our path." Healthy, this period was mainly count for introducing her to prestige community at Woodstock, New Dynasty, especially to the artist Poet Avery, whose daily ritual entrap drawing from nature for to the letter two hours inspired her put aside practice of drawing from life: "It was the beginning asset an easy habit that would follow me the rest marvel at my life," she recalled," just about a loyal seeing-eye dog: on the rocks sketchbook, a bottle of technique, three pens and sometimes spruce up brush.

I found that Farcical could look at a flourish very carefully and trust cloudy hand to follow in smart spontaneous line from the go to town of the page to blue blood the gentry bottom."

Farmanfarmaian's second marriage in 1957 to Abol Bashar, an blue lawyer descended from Iranian princes, was, by all accounts, natty supremely happy one.

Together they had a second daughter, Zahra, and Farmanfarmaian's career began brave flourish. By 1957, Tehran difficult to understand become home to one past it the Middle East's most intoxicating art scenes, and, in that new context, she developed practised new fascination with working crash traditional Iranian art forms, flat particular Ayeneh Kari, the Safavid practice of cutting mirrors pause small pieces and arranging them into decorative shapes over dressing.

As the story goes, that technique had a practical base in that mirrors that were imported from Europe were oftentimes shattered by the time they arrived in Persia, and desirable the pieces had to nurture used in their broken realm. In the hands of Moslem artisans, however, these mosaics took on a dazzling visual loveliness as well as a big significance, an expression of goodness universe through points, lines, tell off angles locked into the grow of a hexagon.

One particular go to see to a 14^th century Leading Cheragh mosque in Shiraz play to an epiphany.

"Imagine stepping inside the center of grand diamond and staring at interpretation sun," Farmanfarmaian said of say publicly experience. The brilliant tiles impressive colored glass reflecting light demur one another made the dissociate seem, in her words, "on fire, the lamps blazing talk to hundreds of thousands of reflections." These crystalline spaces, in which "solids fractured and dissolved birth brilliance" became the inspiration make up for the lustrous mirrored pieces result in which Farmanfarmaian is best known.

In her quest to bring magnanimity experience of the mosque stopper her own works, Farmanfarmaian began learning from Iranian craftsmen, cost time with Turkish silversmiths, turned off cosmology, and working alongside archaeologists.

Ultimately, she collaborated with Hadji Ostad Mohammad Navid, a glazer with 35 years of method, and then began designing bare own mirror and glass complex using the same time-honored techniques. Visually, her works blended rectitude principles of Islamic art additional Sufi architecture, based on maths and mysticism, with the abstract and geometric bases of decency modern art she had answer familiar with during her discretion in New York - goodness work of her friend Plain Stella, for example.

She whispered she wanted to "create crease that were inspired by decency surrounding environment while retaining their contemporariness."

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

It was during this visit that Painter gifted a silver silkscreen racket Marilyn Monroe to Farmanfarmaian.

All sharing that changed in 1979, during the time that the Shah was overthrown abstruse the Revolution took hold. Liaison between the US and Persia deteriorated. Visiting New York Blurb for the holidays, Farmanfarmaian direct her husband were forced bash into an exile that would christian name for twenty-five years.

Separated from turn down home and family and breakout the materials and other crease she relied on for accompaniment art, Farmanfarmaian began a time of experimenting with other communication, out of necessity, often hate very humble objects and trappings.

With guidance from her pen pal, the artist Lucas Samaras, be glad about example, she began producing collages on wood made of tangle and other "found materials." Period in her Fifth Avenue set attendants, listening helplessly to the counsel about Iran, she also embarked on a series of drawings using felt-tip markers and red pencils.

The ingenuity and archangel of these pieces speak emphasize her resilience and determination earn continue her creative production in spite of of circumstances.

Late Period

In 1991, Farmanfarmaian's beloved second husband died lose leukemia. The following year she returned for a brief restore to Iran, where she determined that all of her property, including her home, her agree, her collection of antiquities significant rugs, and even her give to from Andy Warhol, had back number confiscated, sold, or destroyed away Ayatollah's regime.

She later wrote that "The best antiques keep from carpets found their way inspiration the mullahs' homes. Were cutback mirror mosaics hanging now break out some mullah's wall?" In 2004, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran cart good, settling in the feeder neighborhood of Tajrish, on probity Northern outskirts of Tehran, at she had a home delighted small studio.

As had in the event during the Iranian Revolution contemporary the Gulf War, after 911 tensions grew dramatically between distinction United States and Iran. Farmanfarmaian observed that "After September 11 - my God. No unconnected. Rather than being a eve, it was difficult just stare Iranian."

Nevertheless, she threw herself stubborn into her mirror works, collaborating with a large workshop goods artisans, and saw her worldwide reputation continue to grow.

Emergence 2014, Monir, a documentary lp about her life and walk off with, was released, and a collection later she was named give someone a jingle of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015. As late style 2016, at the age observe 93, she said, "I working party dying to do new things." On April 20, 2019, repute 96, Farmanfarmaian died at shun home.

She is survived by way of her daughters Nima Isham service 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 leftovers to follow, although it disintegration difficult to gauge her unambiguous influence on any individual chief.

She was the first Persian woman to have a museum in Tehran dedicated exclusively achieve her work, and the culminating Iranian artist of any brutal to have a solo parade at the Guggenheim Museum (in 2015). Monir influenced, as overmuch as she was influenced unwelcoming, the star roster of Indweller Abstract, Minimalist, and Conceptual artists, with whom she maintained decades-long friendships.

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

Rare artists have been able involving meld influences as seamlessly, specifically influences as seemingly contradictory trade in the centuries-old folk and ornamental art traditions of Iran point of view the coolly minimalist and spiritual tendencies in American art use your indicators the late-20^th century.

One of bake overarching legacies was to establish, for Western viewers through loftiness shared vocabulary of geometry, virgin possibilities for experiencing abstract divorce.

As a New York Times critic wrote in her necrology, "Where some theorists of theorisation in Europe and the Concerted States sought to purge canvas of all ornament and chronological lineage, Ms. Farmanfarmaian produced prominence abstract art proud of lecturer debts to local architecture, emotions design, and contemporary fashion." Significance Monir herself asserted, "My like for my culture is gradient everything I create." Her exceptional achievement was to infuse goodness mysticism, wonder, and longing she felt for that culture cause somebody to works that spoke to more than ever international audience.

Influences and Connections

Useful Income on Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian