Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Karen Marta. Text by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin, Eleanor Sims. Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Born in 1924 in the ancient Persian city of Qazvin, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian spent her childhood in a grand old house replete with stained glass, wall paintings and nightingales. Coming of age during World War II, she left occupied Iran and audaciously set out for New York, where she was quickly absorbed into the city's thriving avant garde. In the decades to follow, during successive exiles in Tehran and New York, Farmanfarmaian developed an intuitive yet painstakingly crafted artistic practice in mirror mosaic and reverse-painted glass that weds the cosmic patterning of her Iranian heritage with the rhythms of modern Western geometric abstraction. This book is the first substantial survey of Farmanfarmaian's acclaimed geometric works, and features an in-depth interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist; critical essays by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin and Eleanor Sims; warm 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; 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. "A role model for the artist of the twenty-first century." -Hans Ulrich Obrist
Featured image, "Relief Heptagon" (1977), mirror, reverse glass painting and plaster on wood, is reproduced from Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
ArtAsiaPacific
Olivier Krischer
More than a monograph of a six-decades-long oeuvre, this is a lavish tribute by critics and admires to the grand dame of Iranian art, renowned for her mirrored geometric constructions, which speak with equal fluency of classic and modern beauty.
"Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is not only a pioneering figure of Iranian art but also a forerunner of current artistic models that participate in global dialogues without annihilating local difference. It was Rosemarie Trockel who first helped me realize that it is urgent to preserve traces of intelligence from past decades, particularly that of the twentieth-century pioneers whose eyes have seen a century, many of whom are not online and whose invaluable testimony thus might pass into oblivion. With my everexpanding Interview Project, I try to contribute by interviewing artists like Monir and other cultural practitioners to what historian Eric Hobsbawm has called a “protest against forgetting.” After all, it is not only in art that the future is built out of fragments of the past.
In 2007 I was invited to participate in the first Art Dubai. I was just beginning to research the Middle East, and I started asking artists my favorite question, “Who is one of your heroes?” Many of them answered, “Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian.” The following year I asked that Monir be invited to Art Dubai so I could finally have the opportunity to meet her in person. At our first meeting over breakfast, Monir began telling me about her extra-ordinary life. Since then, it has been my dream to publish a book that not only recounts the fascinating narrative of her life but also serves as a survey of her amazing work. I am especially pleased that this monograph is also a document of the ongoing dialogue and lasting friendship that Monir and I have established since that first meeting in Dubai."
In the Fall of 2011, Damiani published the surprising and enlightening book, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry—the first substantial survey of the Iranian artist whose work is currently on view at the Guggenheim. In the book—which includes texts by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Frank Stella, among others—art historian Media Farzin writes, "At their most complex, the mirror-works elaborate on their source material with the rhythmic repetitions of a musical refrain. They allow forms and potentialities to flow through their structure as they build on pre-existing themes and motifs. They capture the very idea of potential, the long view that is needed to recognize the forces that organize matter in the world. It is misleading to explain them by discussing their provisional subject or technique. They are about movements, connections, relationships, progressions, appropriations and redistributions. If their diagrammatic structures have a theme or subject matter, it is their own limitless potential for repetition and difference: how their order facilitates invention, and how their past contains their future." Birds, 1977, (mirror, reverse-glass painting and plaster on wood) is reproduced from Cosmic Geometry. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 256 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $70.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $92.5 ISBN: 9788862081757 PUBLISHER: Damiani/Third Line AVAILABLE: 10/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani/Third Line. Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Karen Marta. Text by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin, Eleanor Sims. Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Born in 1924 in the ancient Persian city of Qazvin, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian spent her childhood in a grand old house replete with stained glass, wall paintings and nightingales. Coming of age during World War II, she left occupied Iran and audaciously set out for New York, where she was quickly absorbed into the city's thriving avant garde. In the decades to follow, during successive exiles in Tehran and New York, Farmanfarmaian developed an intuitive yet painstakingly crafted artistic practice in mirror mosaic and reverse-painted glass that weds the cosmic patterning of her Iranian heritage with the rhythms of modern Western geometric abstraction. This book is the first substantial survey of Farmanfarmaian's acclaimed geometric works, and features an in-depth interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist; critical essays by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin and Eleanor Sims; warm 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; 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.
"A role model for the artist of the twenty-first century." -Hans Ulrich Obrist
