Monir Farmanfarmaian @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta - A Mirror Garden

Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
August 14, 2020 - January 3, 2021 
(dates to be confirmed)

MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN

(Iranian, 1924-2019)

Untitled (Muqarnas), 2012

Mirror, reverseglass painting, plaster on wood

High Museum of Art, purchase with funds from

the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation, 2019.174

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1924-2019) was one of Iran’s most celebrated and revered visual artists, known internationally for her geometric mirror sculptures that combined the mathematical order and beauty of ancient Persian architectural motifs with the forms and patterns of hard-edged, postwar abstraction. The High Museum of Art will present the first posthumous exhibition of her work in an American museum with “Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden”.

The exhibition was inspired by the High’s 2019 acquisition of Monir Farmanfarmaian’s cut-mirror sculpture titled “Untitled (Muqarnas)” (2012) as well as her 2014 drawing “Untitled (Circles and Squares).” Muqarnas was acquired with funds from the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation as part of a significant gift to The Woodruff Arts Center, of which the High is an arts partner, to present work by Persian artists and to engage the Persian community.

“We are honored to present Farmanfarmaian’s work at the High and to recognize her importance as a singular creative force,” said Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family curator of modern and contemporary art. “For generations of artists in post-revolution Iran, Farmanfarmaian represents the paradigm of an independent artist whose work was unfettered by the histories and customs of its context but existed in conversation with contemporary art practices across cultures. At the same time her work reflects a deep understanding and reverence for Iranian culture.”

The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Monir Farmanfarmaian’s 2007 memoir, co-authored by Zara Houshmand, which evokes the visual splendor of the artist’s mirror-mosaic sculptures. Objects on view will include a selection of sculptures, drawings, textiles and collages spanning four decades, from 1976 to 2019. Drawings from the late 1970s such as “Untitled” (1977), featuring a composition based on the hexagon, provide examples of her early investigations of geometric form and pattern, while later drawings such as the High’s “Untitled (Circles and Squares)” (2014) are painstakingly crafted, demonstrating the artist’s conceptual and technical virtuosity and her use of repetition and pattern.

Sculptures from 2009 to 2019 unite fragments of mirror and colorful painted glass in resplendent mosaic patterns. “Untitled (Muqarnas)” (2012) is composed of identically opposite, wing-like forms. The title refers to the honeycombed ceilings in Persian shrines and palaces while also recalling the wings of the Faravahar, an ancient Zoroastrian symbol tied to Persian cultural identity. Another work, titled “Gabbeh” (2009), features a triangular pattern formed by overlapping hexagons that serves as the foundation for an irregular combination of colorful polygons, arcs and diagonals. Its title refers to a type of Persian carpet produced by Nomadic weavers. The exhibition also includes four silk carpets designed by Monir Farmanfarmaian.

Monir Farmanfarmian often grouped her work in series she called “families,” suggesting a familial affinity of form, dimensionality or structure between works in each group. The exhibition will include several examples of these “families,” most notably all eight members of “Third Family,” which is based on the first eight regular polygons in Euclidian geometry. Shown together, the entire group of works will demonstrate the complete progression of the artist’s concept for the series. Another special feature of the exhibition includes two works from the artist’s “Convertible” series in which component parts of the sculpture may be rearranged in multiple configurations demonstrating the fluidity of geometric structure.

The galleries will also feature several intimately scaled collaged boxes that the artist called “Heartache Boxes,” which were produced after the death of her husband Abol-Bashar Farmanfarmaian in 1991. Recalling Joseph Cornell’s boxes arranged with objects related to longing, memory and dreams, as well as the art of Persian miniature painting, these elaborately crafted assemblages are arranged with prints, photographs and a variety of objects that refer to the artist’s life and career, including images of her early work and references to her “lost” life in Tehran before the Islamic Revolution.

The exhibition will be presented on the second level of the High’s Anne Cox Chambers Wing.

Born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1924, MONIR FARMANFARMAIAN studied at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran in the early 1940s, later traveling to New York to further her education. There she attended Parsons School of Design, Cornell University and the Arts Student League. In New York, Monir Farmanfarmaian absorbed the development of geometric abstraction and observed its burgeoning permutations in contemporary art. Her community of artist friends and colleagues there included Milton Avery, Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and others. These experiences, combined with her deep knowledge of Iranian arts and crafts, resulted in her personal vision for a truly global modernity.

Following her marriage in 1957, the artist returned to Iran, where she began to study, collect and preserve the traditional decorative arts of her home country. However, the 1979 Islamic Revolution led Monir Farmanfarmaian and her family back to New York, where they would remain in exile for the next 26 years. In 2004, Monir Farmanfarmaian moved back to Tehran, reestablishing a studio where she worked with some of the same craftsmen she had known in the 1970s.

The artist first received significant attention in 1958, when she was awarded a gold medal for her work in the Iranian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, leading to exhibitions in Tehran, Paris and New York. Since then, her work has been shown at major institutions and in exhibitions worldwide. Most recently, major retrospective exhibitions of her work have been presented by the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto.

Farmanfarmaian’s work is included in important public collections around the world including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Modern Art, Tehran; Tate Modern, London; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

She is the subject of the monograph “Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry,” edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and is the co-author of her autobiography, “A Mirror Garden” (Knopf, 2007). In December 2017, the Monir Museum opened in Tehran, the only museum dedicated to a single female artist in Iran.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART
1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309
www.high.org

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014 at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974-2014 

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC 
March 13 - June 3, 2015

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States of the celebrated Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (b. 1924). In recognition of a lengthy career, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014 focuses on the faceted mirror sculptures and corresponding geometric drawings Monir has produced over the past forty years. The majority of the selected works in this exhibition are from the artist’s own collection, and many have never been shown to the public.

MONIR SHAROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN 

Untitled, 2012. 

Felt-tip pen on paper, 70 x 100 cm. 

Collection of the artist, courtesy The Third Line, Dubai 

© Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. 

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai

Monir’s rich body of work references Persian architectural and decorative tradition, the mathematical basis of geometric forms in Islamic pattern, and Sufi cosmology. When considered along with the Guggenheim’s historical commitment to abstraction and internationalism, the exhibition offers a timely opportunity to examine Monir’s rich body of work in its own right and as part of an increasingly transnational perspective on artistic production and its reception.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014 is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal, where it was on view in fall 2014 before traveling to New York. The exhibition is curated by Suzanne Cotter, Director, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, and former Curator, Abu Dhabi Project, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, with assistance from Karole Vail, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, for its New York presentation.

The Leadership Committee for Infinite Possibility is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Simin N. Allison, Maryam Eisler, The Soudavar Memorial Foundation, Mohammed Afkhami, Patricia and Alexander Farman-Farmaian, Haines Gallery, Yasmine Nainzadeh and Sara Nainzadeh, Nazgol and Kambiz Shahbazi, and The Third Line.

MONIR SHAROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN

Mirror Ball, 1973

Mirror on plaster ball, 19 x 19 x 19 cm

Collection of Nima Isham, Montana

© Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Photo: Filipe Braga 

© Fundação de Serralves–Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014 includes early wood, plaster, and mirror reliefs, a series of large-scale geometric mirror sculptures, and an impressive body of works on paper, focusing on a sculptural and graphic oeuvre developed over a period of more than forty years. The presentation reveals how the compositional principles used by the artist during this period were translated into large-scale commissions, including a series of etched glass doors created for a New York townhouse in the early 1980s. A selection of previously unseen abstract works on paper produced between 1974 and 2014 reveals the central role of drawing as a conceptual foundation for Monir’s sculptural practice. The artist’s ambitious mirror sculptures, known as “geometric families,” which she produced in the last decade since reinstating her studio in Tehran, will also be on view. Monir’s prolific body of work is characterized by the merging of visual and spatial experience and a distinctive approach to abstraction, coupled with the aesthetic tradition of Islamic architecture and decoration, allowing for, in the artist’s own words, “infinite possibility.”

MONIR SHAROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN 

Untitled, 1980

Felt-tip pen and colored pencil on paper, 63 x 44.5 cm

Collection of the artist

© Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1924, MONIR SHAROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN attended the Fine Arts College of Tehran before moving to New York in 1945, where she studied at Cornell University and at Parsons School of Design and worked as a freelance illustrator for Vogue and as a graphic designer. These formative years in New York served as a sort of apprenticeship for Monir, who spent time alongside fellow artists Milton Avery, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, and later Andy Warhol, among others. Notably, during her time in New York, Monir visited the Guggenheim in its founding locations and was present at the 1956 groundbreaking for the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed museum building on Fifth Avenue. She returned to Iran in 1957 and journeyed across the country, further developing her artistic sensibility through encounters with traditional craftsmanship. Indigenous art forms such as Turkoman jewelry and clothing, coffee house paintings (a popular form of Iranian narrative paintings), and the technique of reverse-glass painting influenced her work, resulting in a productive period of artistic discovery and breakthrough that culminated in a series of commissions in Iran and exhibitions in Europe and the United States, including presentations at Galerie Denise René in Paris and New York. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 marked the beginning of Monir’s twenty-six-year exile in New York, during which she focused on drawing, collage, and a few commissions, and also returned to carpet and textile design. In 2004, when she finally returned to Iran, she reestablished her studio there and resumed working with some of the same craftsmen she had collaborated with in the 1970s.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian in her studio working on Heptagon Star, Tehran, 1975

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Italian Institute, Tehran (1968); Jack Kaplan Gallery, New York (1975); the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. (1976); the Iran American Society, Tehran (1976); Galerie Denise René, New York and Paris (1977); the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2007); and Leighton House Museum, London (2008). Her work has also been featured in a number of group exhibitions, including the first Tehran Biennial (1958); the Venice Biennale (1958, 1964, 1966, and 2009); Gold, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978–79); Living Traditions: Contemporary Art from Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, Queen’s Palace, Bagh-e Babur, Kabul (2008); The Power of Ornament, Lower Belvedere, Orangery, Vienna (2009); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2009–10); There is always a cup of sea to sail in, São Paulo Biennial (2010); and Jef Guys/Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: The world as seen through a Pelican in Plexi, Wiels, Brussels (2013).

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s works are found in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Tate, London; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Several of the artist’s extant works from the 1970s are in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Major commissions include installations at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Dag Hammarskjöld Tower in New York, and the Niavaran Cultural Center in Tehran

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY

www.guggenheim.org

ACAW 2011 NYC Asian Art Celebration

Asian Contemporary Art Week 2011

New York City 

March 21 - 31, 2011 

Now in its seventh year, Asian Contemporary Art Week celebrates and promotes Asian contemporary art through artist conversations, panels, screenings, book launches, exhibitions, and curator tours at over 35 museums and galleries. This year, ACAW take place throughout New York City, and opened on the first day of spring: March 21, also celebrated as the New Year in many countries of Central Asia. Events take place at various locations around NYC for ten days, ending on March 31. 

RACHID RANA

Rashid Rana, Aar Paar. 2000-2004. 

Collaborative project by Shilpa Gupta and Huma Mulji in Karachi.

“Asian Contemporary Art Week highlights the latest trends in contemporary art while recognizing that contemporary art in Asia doesn’t come out of nowhere,” says Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “This year’s program showcases emerging artists and work never seen in the U.S., and also recognizes the enduring importance of influential artists such as M.F. Husain and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, both participants in our series of artist discussions.” 

As part of its mission to educate the public and to increase the visibility of artists, ACAW 2011 features DIALOGUES IN ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART, a series of talks with more than 25 leading artists and professionals in the field. “Over the course of the week, ACAW Dialogues will strive to disseminate broader, more thorough knowledge of art communities and artists’ activities within and outside of Asia,” notes ACAW director Leeza Ahmady. “Enthusiasm for this project continues to build and expand, with a U.S. West Coast-based consortium now coming together to plan similar initiatives in San Francisco.” 

With numerous exhibitions and artist dialogues, ACAW 2011 includes artists from the US and Asia. Among the countries represented are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. 

MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN

Monir Farmanfarmaian, Untitled, 2010. 

Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting, 210 x 130 cm. 

Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery San Francisco 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ACAW DIALOGUES include: a discussion with Mariam Ghani at the Museum of Modern Art (March 21); Rashid Rana and Pooja Sood at Sotheby’s (March 22); M.F. Husain  and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at Asia Society Museum (March 23); David Elliott, Massimiliano Gioni and Suzanne Cotter at the Guggenheim Museum (March 25); Ushio Shinohara and Tomokazu Matsuyama at Asia Society Museum (March 28); Liu Xiaodong at the Guggenheim Museum (March 29); Xie Xiaoze interviewed by Robert Hobbs at China Institute (March 29); a discussion with Asian Cultural Council 2011 grantees/contemporary artists Rahraw and Manizhah Omarzad, Firoz Mahmud, Chaw Ei Thein, and Fong Wah Phoebe Hui led by Leeza Ahmady at Location One (March 29); Yang Jiechang and Zheng Shengtian in conversation with Jane DeBevoise at Museum of Chinese in the Americas (March 31) and Almagul Menlibayeva at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art (March 31). Another highlight is a dramatic installation by New York-based Korean artist ATTA KIM, who will create a 5 and 1/2-ft-tall, 1,300 pound ice sculpture of a seated Buddha that will slowly melt in Rubin Museum of Art’s spiral lobby, from March 25 through 27. ACAW Dialogues program is sponsored by Asian Cultural Council, New York.  

ACAW 2011 PARTICIPATING VENUES include: Aperture Gallery; Asia Art Archive; Asian Cultural Council; Asia Society and Museum; Bose Pacia; China Institute Chambers Fine Art; Ethan Cohen Fine Arts; Gallery Korea/Korean Cultural Service; Indo-American Arts Council; Jack Shainman Gallery; Japan Society; Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery; Location One; Meulensteen; Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA); Museum of Modern Art; Priska C. Juschka Fine Art; Queens Museum of Art; Rubin Museum of Art; sepia EYE; Sotheby’s; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Sundaram Tagore Gallery; Taipei Cultural Center; Tally Beck Contemporary; Thomas Erben Gallery; Tyler Rollins Fine Art; and Zürcher Studio. 

Asian Contemporary Art Week is an initiative of the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium, which includes: Melissa Chiu and Miwako Tezuka, Asia Society Museum; Steve Pacia and Shumita Bose, Bose Pacia; Agnes Hsu, China Institute; Ethan Cohen, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts; Jean Kim, Gana Art Gallery; Jack Shainman, Jack Shainman Gallery; Joe Earle, Japan Society; Leila Heller, Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery; Esa Epstein, sepia EYE;  Alexandra Munroe and Sandhini Poddar, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Barbara London, The Museum of Modern Art; Thomas Erben, Thomas Erben Gallery; Tyler Rollins, Tyler Rollins Fine Arts; Jack and Susy Wadsworth, Collectors; Xiaoming Zhang, Private Art Consultant; and Leeza Ahmady, ACAW Director (Independent Curator).

ACAW web site : www.acaw.net