Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry

by Nader Ardalan (Contributor), Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Karen Marta (Editor)

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 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

Genres: Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2011

Reviews

[Steve Kemple · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essays and other writings in this monograph portray Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian's life and work in the same way her mirrored works bend, refract, and explode their surroundings in an opulent, kaleidoscopic whole. Reflections by friends, relatives, and colleagues share equal footing with critical texts analyzing her prolific works from aesthetic, historical, cultural, and socio-religious perspectives. Hans Ulrich Obrist puts it nicely in the introduction:

The many stages of [Farmanfarmaian's] life correspond to the many dimensions, aspects, and inventions of her work—from her mirror mosaics to her geometric rugs, from her daily practice of drawing flowers to her architectural-scale installations. Monir is an active participant in the "protest against forgetting." Her work serves to activate memory—a memory that is as multidimensional as the artist herself.