Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
Iranian, 1922–2019
Untitled, 1980
Felt-tip pen and ink on paper

Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Haines Gallery, San FranciscoProduced while Monir was in exile in New York, her calligraphy drawings and collages provided an expressive outlet during a period of trauma and loss. Before the onset of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Monir and her husband Abolbashar left Tehran for a holiday visit to New York. It was not until twenty-six years later that she was able to live and work again in Iran. Having lost everything in the revolution, she was compelled to make small, intimate works in New York with a limited set of portable materials and without craftspeople to assist.Her calligraphy drawings, written in Farsi with felt-tip pen and ink, began as a distraction from television news coverage of the Iranian Revolution and the American hostage crisis that followed. Rendered in a dynamic, cursive style, these drawings reflect the flowing arabesques of Persian taʿlīq calligraphy. They also express Monir’s abiding interest in Sufi poetry, which intertwines language and geometry to communicate mystical ideas. A collector of illuminated manuscripts, Monir found inspiration in poets ranging from the thirteenth-century Persian writer Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī to contemporaries such as Etel Adnan and Sohrab Sepehri.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
Iranian, 1922–2019
Untitled (Flower Drawing), 1988
French pen and ink on paper

Courtesy of the Family of Monir Shahroudy FarmanfarmaianAs in traditional Islamic and Persian imagery, flowers were a constant motif throughout Monir’s life. Inspired by the flora of her childhood garden in Qazvin, Monir’s first flower drawings arose from her keen observation of nature. As she came of age, her sketches developed into an advanced understanding of form, ultimately leading to early artistic recognition. The flowers of her garden in Tehran were the subject of work exhibited at the first Tehran Biennial and at the Venice Biennale, both in 1958.These works on view in the exhibition, created in the 1980s, provide insight into the omnipresence of geometry in Monir’s floral compositions. Owing to the mathematical laws of nature, flowers are often connected to sacred geometry as their shapes can conform to hexagonal, pentagonal, or decagonal configurations. Monir’s flower drawings demonstrate both her skill in rendering botanical shapes and her understanding of their fractal patterning.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
Iranian, 1922–2019
Untitled Carpet, 2012
Naturally dyed silk, hand woven in Tabriz

Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Haines Gallery, San FranciscoIn her early career as a designer in New York, Monir made textile designs for bed linens and fabrics to supplement her income as a fashion illustrator. Much later, in the 1990s, she made designs for carpets and rugs, only a handful of which were produced decades later in Tabriz, a city in northwestern Iran famed for its weaving. This knotted pile carpet was inspired by the work of Qashqai, Turkmen, Lori, Yamut, and Kurdish craftswomen, whose carpets Monir collected in the 1970s.Modest in size, Monir’s carpets correspond to the short, narrow rugs produced on looms built for use inside nomadic tents. Their designs further emphasize the influence of the tribal carpets that Monir once collected, which consist of many small patterns in a variety of combinations. An underlying grid of symmetrical diamonds in each of Monir’s carpets serves as a matrix for their dynamic, asymmetrical designs.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
Iranian, 1922–2019
Decagon (First Family Series), 2010
Mirror and plaster on acrylic and wood

Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and James Cohan, New YorkIn 2010, Monir began producing a series of works she called “Families,” each consisting of eight mirrored sculptures: the triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, and decagon. Each family is characterized by its unique arrangement of forms, such as the hub-and-spoke pattern of First Family.These works reflect influences from classical Islamic ornamentation and the traditional architecture of Sufi shrines and mosques, as well as Western abstraction—all filtered through Monir’s artistic vision. Together, they express the most fundamental principle of Sufism, unity in multiplicity—that is, a variety of forms united within an individual family unit.On view in the exhibition, you will see a selection of works drawn from Monir’s first five families created between 2010 and 2014. The formal design of each family becomes increasingly more complex from the first family of sculptures to the last.