Monir Farmanfarmaian has created work over the past fifty years that reflects the dichotomous nature of her two homes: Iran and New York City, and the dualities of her successes and devastations (during Iran’s Islamic Revolution in the 1970s, most of her work was confiscated or destroyed). Her sculptural mosaics, featured here, marry traditional Persian design motifs with elements of Western modernism, combining mirrored pieces and reverse painting on glass in striking geometric frameworks. The glass and mirrors she uses put the world’s reflection front and center, but their arrangements also explore potentially mathematical concepts of infinity, bursting with an internal light that enhances their own physicality.
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| Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Porto 24. |
Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian's sculptures at the Newcomb Art Gallery during New Orleans' international art festival, Prospect.3, are like giant gemstones. She creates abstract geometric shapes based on traditional Persian architecture, then encrusts them with reflective mosaics made from thousands of small, precisely cut mirror fragments. On one hand her sculptures have the cool cerebral quality of minimalism, but their glimmering surfaces lend them an irresistible gaiety as well.
Born in 1924, Farmanfarmaian has seen a lot of history go by. According to Internet references, World War II prevented her from traveling to Paris to study art as she had hoped, so she attended art schools in New York during the advent of the abstract expressionist movement, becoming friends with avant-garde stars such as Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock and eventually Andy Warhol. By 1958 she was a star herself, representing Iran in the Venice Biennale, the international art event that is the model for Prospect.3. Her career flourished in Iran until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when much of her work was destroyed and she returned to New York.
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| Mirrored geometric sculptures by Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian (L: Instagram photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune; R: Courtesy Newcomb Art Gallery) |
LAST SPRING, I had a survey exhibition at the Third Line in Dubai which then traveled to Doha. Suzanne Cotter had seen these shows, and she invited me to bring my drawings and sculptures from the past forty years to Porto. My work is largely based on geometry, which, as you know, always begins with a single point and can move from there into a circle. Or a point can become three leading to a triangle, or four to a square, five to a pentagon, hexagon, octagon, and so on—it’s endless. I was inspired by the geometry I found in old mosques with their tile, metal, wood, and plaster work. A master metalworker that I studied with once told me, “Everything is in geometry.” I then found out that with a hexagon you could do so much. And today, I still work on geometry—it’s at the base of my art because it has an infinite amount of possibilities. You can create thousands and thousands of designs in textiles, metal, tiles, everything.
These recent shows have been a remarkable time in my life because for so long I was really a nobody. Little by little, I’ve become…I don’t know…better known? Certainly the Guggenheim wasn’t giving me a show until now. I lived in New York for almost forty years, and moved there initially in 1944 to be a student. I was friends with many poets and artists at the time: Calder, Mitchell, Avery. I used to go to a club once a month on Tenth Street; all the artists would gather there and one would give a talk. I remember Philip Johnson, de Kooning, Newman, and then after that they would all go to the Cedar Tavern. I would follow but I wouldn’t drink. I had a lot of fun, though. Anyway, these days in Tehran the disco doesn’t let me in!
I met Warhol a little later on. After studying at Parsons, I got a job through a classmate of mine at Bonwit Teller. I met the head of the art department, and they hired me for eighty dollars a week. I used to also do freelance work for them, drawing a bottle of perfume, slippers, or a bag. Andy was drawing his shoes. He was very friendly, and at the time we thought we were making a lot of money. We used to go to picnics for lunch. When I returned to Iran in the ’60s, I knew Andy was becoming a very famous Pop artist in New York. So he came to Tehran to make a portrait of the queen. I had a big luncheon for him and his crew. My daughter arranged it. At the time we exchanged some works. I had so many great works in my collection until they were confiscated during the revolution in 1979, which also marked the beginning of my twenty-six-year exile in New York. Thankfully, many of my drawings were still in New York at Denise René’s gallery, where I had a show in 1977, as well as at her Paris gallery that year.
The Serralves show is an honor for me. Suzanne was the first one to notice that my drawings are something different and deserve a special focus, particularly those that were made when I didn’t have a studio following the early years of being exiled in the US. Many of these drawings will be in Porto and New York, and they’ve never been exhibited before. Honest to God, I’m grateful to those who have helped me to get my work back into the world. From Chris Dercon at Tate Modern to Gary Tinterow at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston to Hans Ulrich Obrist to Frank Stella to Suzanne, and to everyone else I might be missing.
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| Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Untitled (Sculpture 2), 2008, mirror, paint, plaster, wood, 29 x 29 x 19”. Courtesy Artforum. |
Overall, Prospect.3 reflects the eclectic nature and visual incongruence of 21st-century art. But Newcomb Art Gallery on the Willow Street side of the Tulane University campus, is an island of aesthetic and thematic harmony.
The topic is celebration in all its psychological complexities. In addition to Farmanfarmaian's mirrored sculptures, visitors will encounter Montana artist Andrea Fraser's poignant pyramid of cast off Brazilian Carnival costumes, British artist Hew Locke's symbol-laden parade mural made from black Mardi Gras beads and Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson's glitter-coated collages inspired by Caribbean dance clubs.
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| Monir Farmanfarmaian, Convertible Series, Group 10 (2011), Mirror and reverse glass painting on plaster and wood, 4 parts, 47" x 47" x 1.25". Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery, San Francisco via Artnet. |
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| Monir Farmanfarmaian, First Family - Triangle (2010), Mirror, plaster, natural glue and acrylic on wood, 35.5" x 40.5" x 5". Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery, San Francisco via Artnet. |
Via Artforum, ArtAsiaPacific magazine and The Times-Picayune on NOLA.com
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