Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
Native name	منیر شاهرودی فرمانفرمائیان
Born	Monir Shahroudy 1924 (age 91–92) Qazvin, Iran
Nationality	Iranian
Education	University of Tehran, Parsons The New School for Design, Cornell University, Art Students League
Style	Traditional Persian mosaic work related to contemporary abstraction
Movement	geometric minimalism, Saqqakhaneh movement
Spouse(s)	Manoucher Yektai (1950-1953) Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian (1957-1991)
Awards	Venice Biennale,1958, Iranian Pavilion (gold medal) (solo)

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Persian: منیر شاهرودی فرمانفرمائیان‎‎; born 1924) is an Iranian artist who lives in Tehran, and a collector of traditional folk art.^[1] She has been noted as one of the most prominent Iranian artists of the contemporary period,^[2] and she is the first modern artist to achieve an artistic practice that weds the geometric patterns and cut-glass mosaic techniques of her Iranian heritage with the rhythms of modern Western geometric abstraction.^[3][4]

Biography

Education

Born to educated parents in the religious town of Qazvin in north-western Iran, Farmanfarmaian acquired artistic skills early in childhood, receiving drawing lessons from a tutor and studying postcard depictions of western art.^[4] After studying at the University of Tehran at the Faculty of Fine Art in 1944, she then moved to New York via steamer boat, when World War II derailed plans to study art in Paris, France.^[5] In New York, she studied at Cornell University, at Parsons The New School for Design,^[6] where she majored in fashion illustration, and at the Art Students League.^[4] As a fashion illustrator, she held various freelance jobs, working with magazines such as Glamour before being hired by the Bonwit Teller department store, where she made the acquaintance of a young Andy Warhol.^[4] Additionally, she learned more about art through her trips to museums and through her exposure to the Eighth Street Club and New York's avant-garde art scene, becoming friends with artists and contemporaries Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Joan Mitchell.^[4]

In early 1957, Farmanfarmaian moved back to Iran. Inspired by the residing culture, she discovered “a fascination with tribal and folk artistic tradition” of her country’s history, which “led her to rethink the past and conceive a new path for her art.”^[4] In the following years, she would further develop her Persian inspiration by crafting mirror mosaics and abstract monotypes, featuring her work at the Iran Pavilion in the 1958 Venice Biennale,^[7] and holding a number of exhibitions in places such as Tehran University (1963), the Iran-America Society (1973), and the Jacques Kaplan/Mario Ravagnan Gallery (1974).^[4]

Exile and second return to Iran

In 1979 Farmanfarmaian and her second husband, Abolbashar, traveled to New York to visit family.^[4] Around the same time, the Islamic Revolution began, and so the Farmanfarmaians found themselves exiled from Iran, an exile that would last for over twenty years.^[4] Farmanfarmaian attempted to reconcile her mirror mosaics with the limited resources offered in America, but such lacking materials and comparatively inexperienced workers restricted her work.^[4] In the meantime, she placed larger emphasis on her other aspects of art, such as commissions, textile designs, and drawing.^[8]

Since moving back to Iran in 1992, and later Tehran in 2004, Farmanfarmaian has reaffirmed her place among Iran’s art community, gathering both former and new employees to help create her mosaics.^[4] Today, she continues to live and work in Tehran.^[9]

Artwork

Aside from her mirror work, Farmanfarmaian is additionally known for her paintings, drawings, textile designs, and monotypes.^[8]

Mirror Mosaics

Around the 1970s, Farmanfarmaian visited the Shah Cheragh mosque in Shiraz, Iran.^[10] With the shrine’s “high-domed hall… covered in tiny square, triangular, and hexagonal mirrors,”^[10] similar to many other ancient Iranian mosques,^[2] this event acted as a turning point in Farmanfarmaian’s artistic journey, leading to her interest in mirror mosaic artwork. According to her memoir, Farmanfarmaian has described the experience as transformative:

“The very space seemed on fire, the lamps blazing in hundreds of thousands of reflection... It was a universe unto itself, architecture transformed into performance, all movement and fluid light, all solids fractured and dissolved in brilliance in space, in prayer. I was overwhelmed.”^[10]

Aided by Iranian craftsman, Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, she created a number of mosaics and exhibition pieces by cutting mirrors and glass paintings into a multitude of shapes, which she would later reform into constructions that evoked aspects of Sufism and Islamic culture.^[4] “Ayeneh Kari” is the traditional art of cutting mirrors into small pieces and slivers, placing them in decorative shapes over plaster. This form of Iranian reverse glass and mirror mosaics is a craft traditionally passed on from father to son. Farmanfarmaian, however, was the first contemporary artist to reinvent the traditional medium in a contemporary way.^[11] By striving to mix Iranian influences and the tradition of mirror artwork with artistic practices outside of strictly Iranian culture, “offering a new way of looking at ancient aesthetic elements of this land using tools that are not limited to a particular geography,” Farmanfarmaian is able to express a cyclical conception of spirituality, space, and balance in her mosaics.^[4]

Personal life

Farmanfarmaian married Iranian artist Manoucher Yektai in 1950.^[4] They divorced in 1953, and in 1957, she returned to Tehran to marry lawyer Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian.^[4] In 1991, Abolbashar died of leukemia.^[12] She has two daughters, Nima and Zahra.^[4] While living in Iran, Farmanfarmaian was also an avid collector. She sought out paintings behind glass, traditional tribal jewelry and potteries, and amassed one of the greatest collections of "coffee-house paintings" in the country—commissioned paintings by folk artists as coffee-house, story-telling murals.^[13] The vast majority of her works and her collections of folk art were confiscated, sold or destroyed.

Exhibitions

Farmanfarmaian's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Grey Art Gallery, New York; Galerie Denise Rene, Paris and New York; Leighton House Museum, London;^[14] Haus der Kunst, Munich; The Third Line, Dubai;^[15] Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern; Lower Belvedere, Vienna; and Ota Fine Art, Tokyo. She participated in the 29th Bienal de São Paulo (2010); the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2009); and the Venice Biennale (1958, 1966 and 2009).^[16] In 1958 she received the Venice Biennale, Iranian Pavilion (gold medal) (solo).^[15]

Suzanne Cotter curated Farmanfarmaian's work for her first large museum retrospective titled 'Infinite Possibility: Mirror Works and Drawings' which was on display at the Serralves Museum (also known as Fundação de Serralves) in Porto, Portugal (2014-2015)^[9] and then the exhibition travelled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City (2015).^[17] This was her first large US museum exhibition.^[17]

Commissioned installations

Major commissioned installations include work for the Queensland Art Gallery (2009), the Victoria & Albert Museum's Jameel Collection (2006), the Dag Hammerskjod building, New York (1981) and the Niyavaran Cultural Center (1977–78), as well as acquisitions by the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[18] The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.^[16]

In popular culture

Farmanfarmaian was named as one of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015.^[19]

Bibliography

Farmanfarmaian's memoir is titled A Mirror Garden: A Memoir was co-authored by Zara Houshmand (Knopf, 2007).^[20] Her work is documented in the book, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry (Damiani Editore & The Third Line, 2011), which features in-depth interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and critical essays by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin and Eleanor Sims, tributes by Farmanfarmaian's friends Etel Adnan, Siah Armajani, caraballo-farman, Golnaz Fathi, Hadi Hazavei, Susan Hefuna, Aziz Isham, Rose Issa, Faryar Javaherian, Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin Neshat, Donna Stein and Frank Stella. She is referenced in an excerpt from The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973), and an annotated timeline of Farmanfarmaian's life by Negar Azimi.^[21]

Film

The film Monir (2014) directed by Bahman Kiarostami, is a documentary about Farmanfarmaian's life and work.^[12][22]

References

External links

• ArtForum magazine interview with Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
• Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian Interview from 2010 with ArtAsiaPacific at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Byrnes, Lucy (19 August 2015). "Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian". Freunde von Freunden. Retrieved 1 September 2015.