The Farjam Collection is renowned for its vast collection of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art, which is a testament to the region’s vibrant artistic culture. The collection includes works by both established and emerging artists from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, and represents a diverse range of media, styles, and themes.
One of the most significant aspects of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art in the Farjam Collection is its representation of the region’s cultural and political landscape. Many of the works address issues of identity, displacement, and conflict, providing insight into the complex social and political realities of the region. The works often explore themes such as migration, gender, religion, and the impact of globalization on local cultures.
The Farjam Collection is also significant because it features works by some of the most important contemporary artists from the Middle East. The collection includes works by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, and Syrian artist Khaled Takreti, among many others. These artists have gained international recognition for their unique and insightful perspectives on the Middle East and their contributions to contemporary art.
Another important aspect of modern contemporary Middle Eastern art in the Farjam Collection is its innovation and experimentation with different media and techniques. Many of the works in the collection employ traditional techniques such as calligraphy, but also incorporate new technologies and materials. For example, the collection includes works that use photography, video, and digital media to explore themes of identity and globalization.
Finally, the importance of contemporary modern Middle Eastern art in the Farjam Collection extends beyond its aesthetic and cultural significance. The collection serves as a platform for promoting greater understanding and appreciation of the region’s art and culture. The collection has been exhibited in many venues worldwide, including the British Museum, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and the Venice Biennale, among others. Through these exhibitions and other initiatives, the collection helps to promote greater awareness of the unique and innovative contributions of Middle Eastern artists to contemporary art.
In conclusion, the Farjam Collection’s modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art is an important and valuable part of the collection. It provides insight into the complex social and political realities of the region and showcases the diverse and innovative perspectives of Middle Eastern artists. The collection serves as a platform for promoting greater understanding and appreciation of the region’s art and culture and helps to highlight the unique contributions of Middle Eastern artists to contemporary art.
Untitled
MANSOUR GHANDRIZ
(born Tabriz, Iran, 1936; died Chalous, Iran, 1966)
1960s
Oil on canvas
100 × 75 cm
Signed in Persian
K2078
These three paintings by one of the pioneers of Iran’s modern art
movement, Mansour Ghandriz, uniquely encapsulate his artistic
evolution during the span of his short yet prolific career. Skull and
Palette reflects his early art education at the Mirak Boys’ Art School,
Tehran, in 1954, where he was taught a broad range of western art
history, from the Renaissance to modern art.1 Highly influenced by
the art of Pablo Picasso, Ghandriz depicts a flatly rendered skull of
a bull – an atypical motif in Iranian art – which sits upon an artist’s
palette and brushes, accompanied by abstract spiders.
In his quest to find an authentic expression of modern art, which
would go beyond mimicry of the western tradition, Ghandriz
began to produce works that combined the aesthetics of western
modernism with motifs and themes from Iranian culture. Created
during his two-year residency in Tabriz, Gift to Travelers is an
example of the artist’s synthesised style using modern aesthetics
to convey a traditional form of an Iranian narrative painting with a
typical pastoral setting.2 Untitled – exhibited at the Fourth Tehran
Biennial (1964) as indicated by a label on the back of the canvas
– depicts abstract, primal figures set on a deep blue background
reminiscent of Iranian tiles. These figures, marked with intersecting
geometric lines and calligraphy, are a reinterpretation of motifs
found on antique talismans – a popular item sold at bazaars –
that were thought to hold the sacred knowledge of the cosmos.
These shapes not only reflect indigenous motifs, but also lend to a
modern abstract aesthetic.
Ghandriz played an important role in the rise and development
of Iranian modern art, specifically the neo-traditional movement in
the 1960s.3 Fortified by his education at the College of Decorative
Arts, Tehran (1961), Ghandriz was inspired to create works that
ultimately gave birth to a unique Iranian modernism, later known
as the Saqqakhaneh movement. Alongside fellow artists, he
established Talar-e Iran (Iran’s Hall) in 1964, a gallery dedicated to
this new style of art.4 In 1966, just as Ghandriz’s career was taking
off, he was killed in a car accident. In his honour, his colleagues
renamed the gallery Talar-e Ghandriz.5 [SS]
Untitled
SHAKIR HASSAN AL SAID
(born Samawah, Iraq, 1925; died Baghdad, Iraq, 2004)
1992
Mixed media on wood
80 × 126 cm
K2076
Shakir Hassan Al Said is widely considered one of Iraq’s most
influential modern artists and thinkers. He was not only prolific in
his artistic production, but was also an important teacher, critic and
theorist, writing books and articles that have provided a foundation
for an art historical understanding of Iraqi cultural modernism of
the twentieth century.1 In 1951 he co-founded the Baghdad Group
for Modern Art with Jewad Selim and wrote the group’s manifesto
espousing the synthesis of international avant-garde styles with
iconographies of relevance to the local Iraqi context.2 Al Said’s
Untitled from 1954 is indicative of this negotiation. Utilising
modernist abstraction, the painting flattens the representation of
a still life into a series of brightly coloured patterns, the contours
of the plants and their vases giving way to the crescents, roundels
and pointed ovals that are suggestive of an Iraqi visual vocabulary.
Characteristically, forms blend and emerge from the configuration
of abstract shapes: for instance, a rooster – a common motif in Al
Said’s oeuvre – appears out of the plant’s vegetation.
As Al Said’s philosophic investigations progressed into the
1960s, he moved further away from figuration in favour of a
deeper exploration of the Arabic letter as a fundamental mode
of abstraction. This led the artist into ever-more esoteric and
introspective engagements with the picture plane, culminating in
the idea of the ‘One Dimension’, an approach to art-making that
sought to transcend the two-dimensional surface by means of
expressing, and ultimately collapsing, complex temporal and spatial
relationships.3 Untitled from 1992 demonstrates Al Said’s methods
for achieving this transcendence. The wooden surface has been
marked with dripped, sprayed and accumulated paint that has then
been scratched and pierced, opening the surface to that which is
beyond and, thus, extending the painting into both space and time
as both immediate and eternal. [TF]
Stardust
ALI BANISADR
(born Tehran, Iran, 1976)
2011
Oil on linen
137.6 × 182.7 cm
K2042
Ali Banisadr is an Iranian-American painter who moved to the USA
at the age of 12, after fleeing the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). His family
moved to San Francisco, where he embraced graffiti art and learned
about art history. In 2005 Banisadr graduated from the New York
School of Visual Arts, and in 2007 he was awarded a Master of Fine
Arts from the New York Academy of Fine Arts. With work inspired by
mythology, art history, childhood memories and ’his own experience
of synaesthesia, Banisadr quickly made a groundbreaking entry
onto the international art scene. He received early recognition with
solo exhibitions just a year after he graduated and his work became
widely collected.
Banisadr’s highly distinctive paintings are based on the viewer’s
cognitive and optical experience, and are also informed by various
systems of knowledge, including classical literature and painting
(such as Ferdowsi’s Shahnama and the works of Dante Alighieri,
Francisco de Goya and Hieronymus Bosch), especially works
representing an epic relationship to history and human civilisation.
Just as in Bosch’s masterpieces (for example, The Garden of Earthly
Delights, 1490–1500; Museo del Prado, Madrid), the surfaces of
Banisadr’s paintings crawl with agitated people and anarchic winds,
fires and avalanches.
Stardust and Meanwhile both reveal Banisadr’s outstanding
talent and agility: he delicately balances form and content, along
with vibrant colours, thereby producing a rhythmic sense of motion
to recreate cosmologies. The enigmatic figures that populate the
canvases are creatures of fantasy which emerge from the artist’s
imagination and embody the constantly shifting identities of our
increasingly digital world. The various battlefields and glorious or
defeated crowds represented by Banisadr implicitly draw on his
experience as a refugee of the Iran–Iraq War. While the artist’s
work is arranged in recognisable forms when viewed from afar, the
images transform into abstract brushstrokes upon closer inspection.
This phenomenon is evocative of how Banisadr is able to recall
his childhood; he has remarked that his memories of the Islamic
Revolution and Iran–Iraq War are an amalgamation of abstract and
identifiable forms. The sensation is heightened by the scale of his
larger canvases, which are intended to overwhelm the viewer.1 [MM]
Untitled
BAHMAN MOHASSESS
(born Rasht, Iran, 1931; died Rome, Italy, 2010)
1966
Oil on canvas
81.5 x 60 cm
K2038
Bahman Mohassess was a sculptor, painter, collagist, translator
and theatre director who staged works by Jean Genet and Eugene
Ionesco. He is recognised today as one of Iran’s leading modernists
who – unlike the Saqqakhaneh artists – rarely referenced his cultural
heritage or nationalist identity. Although some of his early work drew
upon his youth near the Caspian Sea, he is mostly known for his
depiction of anthropomorphic figures and the ‘nameless landscapes’
on which they are scattered. As a young painter, Mohassess was an
apprentice of Seyyed Mohammed Habib Mohammedi. He spent
most of his life between Tehran and Rome where he died in 2010.
He had travelled to Rome for the first time in 1953, following the
American coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh,
at a time of general pessimism in Iran. Mohassess attended the
Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where he became acquainted with
post-Cubist and informal abstraction, as evident in Composition.
Although Mohassess was a prominent Iranian artist and a widely
respected intellectual, he incarnated one of the best examples of
the diasporic retreat and self-marginalising figures of modernism.
This is due in part to his troubled relationship with the Islamic
Republic of Iran and censorship. In fact, many of his sculptures
used in municipal spaces in Iran, like those in front of the National
Theatre and in some public gardens, were destroyed or damaged
during the Islamic Revolution. The artist subsequently decided to
destroy most of his remaining works in Iran.
Mohassess’s works from the 1960s present dismembered or
truncated figures lying on a terra incognita. Although he was based
in Iran at the time, works like Young Boy and Bird and Beach could
be said to engage in an intense artistic dialogue with sculptors such
as Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti. They seem to represent
the existentialist ‘condemnation of the being’, a being reduced to a
corporeal assemblage or more exactly, as they are often nicknamed,
the ‘footless and handless’ (Bi dast-o pa). Some of these figures
have also been compared to mythological ‘beasts’ and reflect the
artist’s preoccupation with nihilism and the beauty of ugliness.
Mohassess participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions
in Rome, Milan, Florence, Paris, Beirut, Geneva and Tehran, and his
work was included in Iran’s first presentation at the Venice Biennale
in 1957. Most recently his works were featured prominently in the
landmark Unedited History: Iran 1960–2014 exhibition at the Musée
d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2014.1
Lamea
JEWAD SELIM
(born Ankara, Turkey, 1919; died Baghdad, Iraq, 1961)
1949
Oil on canvas
61 × 46 cm
K2002
The importance of painter and sculptor Jewad Selim in the
development of Iraqi modern art cannot be overstated. Despite
his death at a young age, Selim’s impact reverberates not only
among his students and the generations of artists that came after,
but also among all Iraqis for whom the Freedom Monument in
Baghdad’s Tahrir Square is a symbol for the country and the spirit
of its people.1 As an advocate for the formation of a modern but
uniquely Iraqi artistic sensibility, he encouraged and practised
the exploration of local folk motifs, Ancient Mesopotamian
iconographies and Arabo-Islamic aesthetics, applying these
investigations to representations of ordinary Baghdadis.2 In 1951
Selim formalised his artistic goals when he co-founded with Shakir
Hassan Al Said (cat. 23) the Baghdad Group for Modern Art.3 The
Cream Sellers is an elegant example of his negotiation between
modernity and tradition. Utilising modernist abstraction to render
its anonymous yet familiar feminine subjects, the small copper
sculpture exhibits aesthetic hints of the Iraqi past in the curvilinear
structure of the figures and the repetition of the crescent.
Only a few years prior to establishing his grand objectives, Selim
was a student at the Slade School of Art in London where, in 1949,
his last year, he completed a delicately intimate portrait of Indian
dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai, titled Nalini.4 In the same year, after his
return to Baghdad to become chair of the Department of Sculpture
at the Institute of Fine Arts, Selim painted a similarly graceful but
less formal portrait of the Iraqi poet Lamea Abbas Al-Amara.5
Both portraits signal the artist’s ability to capture the sitters’ inner
vitality through an application of broad, reductive strokes of colour
and an intellectual attention to the subtle strength of eyes and
mouth. Indeed, the portraits are early examples of Selim’s intuitive
approach to art-making. [TF]
Nalini
JEWAD SELIM
(born Ankara, Turkey, 1919; died Baghdad, Iraq, 1961)
1949
Oil on canvas
56 × 46 cm
K1999
The importance of painter and sculptor Jewad Selim in the
development of Iraqi modern art cannot be overstated. Despite
his death at a young age, Selim’s impact reverberates not only
among his students and the generations of artists that came after,
but also among all Iraqis for whom the Freedom Monument in
Baghdad’s Tahrir Square is a symbol for the country and the spirit
of its people.1 As an advocate for the formation of a modern but
uniquely Iraqi artistic sensibility, he encouraged and practised
the exploration of local folk motifs, Ancient Mesopotamian
iconographies and Arabo-Islamic aesthetics, applying these
investigations to representations of ordinary Baghdadis.2 In 1951
Selim formalised his artistic goals when he co-founded with Shakir
Hassan Al Said (cat. 23) the Baghdad Group for Modern Art.3 The
Cream Sellers is an elegant example of his negotiation between
modernity and tradition. Utilising modernist abstraction to render
its anonymous yet familiar feminine subjects, the small copper
sculpture exhibits aesthetic hints of the Iraqi past in the curvilinear
structure of the figures and the repetition of the crescent.
Only a few years prior to establishing his grand objectives, Selim
was a student at the Slade School of Art in London where, in 1949,
his last year, he completed a delicately intimate portrait of Indian
dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai, titled Nalini.4 In the same year, after his
return to Baghdad to become chair of the Department of Sculpture
at the Institute of Fine Arts, Selim painted a similarly graceful but
less formal portrait of the Iraqi poet Lamea Abbas Al-Amara.5
Both portraits signal the artist’s ability to capture the sitters’ inner
vitality through an application of broad, reductive strokes of colour
and an intellectual attention to the subtle strength of eyes and
mouth. Indeed, the portraits are early examples of Selim’s intuitive
approach to art-making. [TF]
La Famille
PAUL GUIRAGOSSIAN
(born Jerusalem, Israel, 1925; died Beirut, Lebanon, 1993)
1991
Oil on board
137 × 130 cm
K1996
One of Lebanon’s most celebrated painters, Paul Guiragossian is
recognised largely for his bright figurative compositions and gestural
painting style.1 Guiragossian was born into an Armenian family in
Jerusalem and much of his childhood was spent in the care of the
Order of the Daughters of St Vincent de Paul in Jerusalem and the
Salesians of Don Bosco in Bethlehem.2 His early education was
completed at the Salesian seminary, where his schooling included
a stained-glass apprenticeship with the resident priests.3 He
additionally trained in icon painting at the Studio Yarcon in Jaffa.
These early exposures to liturgical art traditions came to inflect his
later painting practice.
In 1947 Guiragossian and his family relocated to Lebanon, settling
in Burj Hammoud with other Armenian refugees from Palestine.
In Lebanon, Guiragossian began to work as a painting instructor in
Armenian secondary schools and founded a workshop producing
cinema posters and book illustrations alongside his brother Antoine
Guiragossian. During this period, Paul quickly became enfolded in
Beirut’s arts community and began exhibiting his own paintings.
Guiragossian’s paintings often explore themes of motherhood
and family life, which are frequently represented through
emblematic religious subjects like Mary and the Christ Child. The
figures in Guiragossian’s compositions are highly abstract, often
reduced to a few skilfully applied brushstrokes that suggest a
human form. This approach is seen particularly well in Around
the Child, where broad vertical swathes of blue and orange paint
create a tight configuration of figures surrounding a child held in a
mother’s arms. La Famille echoes this compositional formulation,
but with each figure composed of multiple unblended patches of
colour. Painted using a bright and varied colour palette arranged
in discrete sections, La Famille recalls the composition style of the
stained-glass images on which Guiragossian would have worked in
his youth. [SD]
He Is Destroyed That He May Then Return, from the series ‘The Martyr’s Epic
KADHIM HAIDER
(born Baghdad, Iraq, 1932; died Baghdad, Iraq, 1985)
1963
Oil on canvas
50.8 × 40.6 cm
K2173
‘The Martyr’s Epic’ is an important series of works produced by
pioneering Iraqi artist Kadhim Haider. Not only do the 35 paintings
display a stunning visual power, but they are also indicative of new
trajectories of Iraqi modernism in the 1960s that began to focus
on more esoteric and allegorical themes, rather than the everyday
subjects of the 1950s.1 The series received an outpouring of critical
acclaim when it was exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art
in Baghdad in 1965. Lauding the exhibit’s emotive address, the critics’
responses circulated around the paintings’ subject matter, along with
their innovative style, which depicted the annual commemoration of
al-Husayn’s martyrdom in the seventh century. Held over ten days at
the beginning of Muharram, these commemorations took the form of
dramatic processions and poetic performances. In this vein, Haider
composed a poem for the exhibition brochure wherein each line
was ascribed to an individual painting.
He is destroyed that he may then return represents a refrain in
Haider’s poem that conjures a mixture of tragic and triumphant
imagery often suggested in rituals of remembrance.2 The painting
recreates the fervour of a processing crowd, the white-washed
bodies blended into a spray of outstretched arms that could also
be interpreted as a burst of light forming out of the bottom third
of the canvas. Rising from the crowd are a series of loose roundels
and linear marks created by the dynamic application of paint. These
forms read like the standards held by worshippers, the symbolic
accoutrements of parades. Haider’s abstracted composition with
its frenzied, layered strokes of sky blues, earthy browns and blood
reds seems to universalise the subject into an affecting, experiential
passion that moves beyond historical realism to express the themes
of sacrifice and mourning that became significant in Haider’s midcentury
practice.3 [TF]
Birds of Paradise
MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN
(born Qazvin, Iran, 1922; died Tehran, Iran, 2019)
2008
Mirror mosaic and reverse glass painting
180 x 129 cm each
K1895
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is best known for her distinctive
mirrorwork technique (aina-kari). She was initially inspired by her
visits to the Shiʿi Shrine of Shah Cheragh in Shiraz. Like her counterparts
of the 1960s who created a distinctly Iranian form of modernism
using traditional indigenous art forms, Monir integrated the popular
decorative technique of mirror mosaic and reverse glass painting
with elements of minimalism, which she had absorbed during years
of artistic study and practice in New York from 1945 to 1956.
Untitled is a typical example of her compositions that draw from the
geometric designs found in Islamic architectural decoration, yet for
Monir the deeper meanings of these forms are based on the
interconnectivity of the macro- and microcosm.1 In an interview
with Hans Ulrich Obrist, she stated, ‘The triangle is human
consciousness … and the hexagon is the human body.’2 In The
Triangle of Harmony her attention to the mathematics of sacred
geometry is showcased through the complex intertwining of
spiralling forms reminiscent of the visual representation of the
golden ratio. The seemingly infinite loops could also be seen as
a nod to the many images of rams found in ancient Iranian art.
Birds of Paradise uses the visual vocabulary of Persian miniature
painting as seen in the band of clouds resembling a widely used,
borrowed Chinese motif. Monir was also inspired by sparrows’
feathers, which she often found on her balcony, incorporating
feather-like archways into her work.3
Monir graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran, in 1945,
continuing her studies in New York at Parsons College and the
Art Student League. There she became friends with notable
artists like Andy Warhol and Frank Stella. She returned to Iran
in 1956, yet in 1979 her rising career as an artist and collector
was abruptly suspended due to the Iranian Revolution, and she
inevitably returned to New York. In 2004 she moved back to
Tehran where she remained until her death. At 91, Monir became
the first Iranian artist to have a retrospective at the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2017 Tehran University
recognised her life and work by opening the Monir Museum in
the grounds of the Negarestan Museum.
Traces en Soie
NJA MAHDAOUI
(born Tunis, Tunisia, 1937)
2012
Aubusson tapestry
Handwoven silk, wool and gold threads
200 × 200 cm
K1987
Tunisian Nja Mahdaoui is of a generation of Arab artists who
continually derive inspiration from their native culture despite going
abroad for their studies.1 His prolific practice has been described
expressively by himself and others as an exploration of signs and
a choreography of letters.2 Indeed, Mahdaoui utilises the timehonoured
art of Arabic calligraphy as a conduit for the formal
expression of his gestural mark: one that can be both freely applied
and rigidly defined. Moving beyond any connection to a textual
understanding, Mahdaoui cultivates a visual language that relies on
the calligram – letters transformed into pictures – as an organising
principle, a perspective that communicates not only a profound
poetic that opens the viewer to the rhythms and structures of the
composition but also a transcendent abstraction that flows from
the spontaneity of emotive and sensual experience.3 Mahdaoui
began experimenting with the Arabic letter in the early 1970s after
working under one of the pioneers of the Iranian Saqqakhaneh
School, Charles-Hossein Zenderoudi (cat. 189).4
Mahdaoui performs his ‘calligraphic abstractions’ on a variety of
materials ranging from paper and ceramics to textiles and vellum.5
This reflects the artist’s delight in interacting with the surface of his
chosen support, manipulating the dynamic movements of colour
and line as they traverse the two-dimensional field, collecting,
crossing and covering each other in a vivid oscillation that creates
Mahdaoui’s unique vision.
The diptych Lamassat Hazaliya demonstrates Mahdaoui’s
engagement with the material surface as he fills the papyrus sheet
with concentric bands of calligraphic marks that radiate outwards
from a golden diamond. The frayed edges of the thick paper signify
its fragility and tactility even as the rigour of line reinforces an image
of stability. Likewise, the tapestry Traces en Soie invites the viewer
to contemplate the textures of the surface along with the drama of
gestural line and vibrant, complimentary colour. To create Traces en
Soi, the artist collaborated with a master weaver from Aubusson, a
city in France famous for its textiles. Mahdaoui’s sculpture Maqam
Essafa, another collaborative undertaking, which engaged graphic
design and metalsmithing, translates the principles of surface and
form into three dimensions. With its shining gold leaf on a reflective
base, the calligraphic curves tangle, morph and leap in the gestural
dance of sign characteristic of Mahdaoui’s oeuvre. [TF]
Untitled
KOOROSH SHISHEGARAN
(born Qazvin, Iran, 1945)
2008
Oil on panel
Three parts, 100 x100 cm each, 100 × 300 cm overall
Signed and dated in Persian
K1797
Initially consumed with the idea of making public art, Koorosh
Shishegaran believed that art should always hold a social significance.
From 1971 to 1978, he focused on the mass reproduction and
distribution of both his original art and the works of the ‘5 great
artists’1 who most influenced him. During the years leading up to
the Iranian Revolution in 1979, he was extremely politically active,
creating and sending partisan posters to several newspapers and
organisations, such as the United Nations. However, after the
Revolution, under the newly formed and conservative Islamic regime,
Shishegaran adapted a novel style of calligraphic abstraction in order
to convey a more discreet message in his works. These paintings
represent his most celebrated style, incorporating calligraphy as a
building block of the modern composition, similar to the works of
Faramarz Pilaram (cat. 151) and Mohammad Ehsai (cat. 63).
Untitled (1991?) is an example of what Shishegaran called khatkhati,
meaning ‘doodles’: abstract entanglements that highlight
colour, form and line with no clear beginning or end. The triptych
Untitled (2008) hints at traditional Islamic calligraphy, although
the letter-like forms are devoid of meaning. However, Moon and
Me and Figure demonstrate Shishegaran’s more representational
abstractions; the vague figures are made up of interlocking and
warped lines, subtlety indicating tension and melancholia despite
their colourful compositions, perhaps hinting at Shishegaran’s
unspoken feelings. These later works reveal an artist carefully
manoeuvring between representation and abstraction, expression
and limitation, social and aesthetic value, humanity and the self.
Shishegaran studied at the Tehran School of Fine Arts from 1964
to 1967. He graduated from the Tehran Faculty of Decorative Arts in
1973 with a degree in Interior Design. He served time in the military
from 1973 to 1975, where he first started drawing in his distinct bold
lines. His war drawings of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), a precursor
to his later style, were exhibited at the Golestan Gallery, Tehran,
from 1990 to 1992. [SS]
Tête Dure
MOUNIR FATMI
(born Tangier, Morocco, 1970)
2006
Acrylic and gold paint on canvas
200 × 250 cm
K1767
Mounir Fatmi’s Tête Dure, or ‘Hard Head’, consists of the outlined
profile of a human skull filled with gold script and overlaid with
the numbers one to six. The calligram references the Qurʾanic
verse: ‘Do they look alike, those who know and those who do not.’1
Along with its obvious shape and placement, the text invokes the
complexities of knowledge production and human understanding.2
The diagrammatic rendering of the cranium suggests a scientific
structure, whereas the calligraphy, the verse from the Qurʾan, a nod
to the tradition of memento mori, conjures the spiritual realm. Here,
Fatmi explores the negative, and spurious, meanings that have
often been attached to Arabic calligraphy, and by extension Islamic
culture, in the wake of 9/11.3
The duality of knowing and not knowing – positions that are
often contingent on geopolitical perspectives – is a theme that
Fatmi returns to throughout his artistic production, which often
juxtaposes language and iconic representations with unexpected
media to complicate interpretation.4 For instance, Fatmi is known
for using coaxial antenna cables to render linguistic, abstract and
figural compositions, as seen in Bas Relief (Pieta) in which he has
recreated Michelangelo’s sacred scene of lamentation. Here, religion
and technology promise connection and communication but are
also interrogated as outmoded and ineffectual in enabling true
understanding. Fatmi’s use of everyday objects in his work, such as
antenna cables, stems from his childhood spent at the flea market
of Casabarata, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Tangier. He
considers the long hours spent at the market with his mother, who
sold children’s clothes, to be his first form of artistic education
as to him it resembled a ruined museum. His use of common
objects reinforces his conception that the status of art is located
somewhere between archive and archaeology.5
A further example of using non-traditional media is Fatmi’s The
Machinery (Sculpture), which is composed of circular-saw blades
of different sizes painted with texts from the Qurʾan and the
Hadith.6 The grace and ornamentation of the Arabic calligraphy are
undermined by the sharp violence insinuated by the cutting edges.
The mode of address thus oscillates between visual lyricism and
material aggression, conflating the two poles and playing on the
audience’s preconceived notions of cultures deemed foreign and
unknowable. [TF]
Banquet
MOHAMMAD EHSAI
(born Qazvin, Iran, 1939)
2009
Oil on canvas
Three parts, 260 × 188 cm each
Signed and dated in Persian
K1748
In Iran, calligraphic art, known as Naqqashi-khat (literally, paintingcalligraphy),
first emerged in the early 1960s among the artists
of the Saqqakhaneh movement. Later, this neo-calligraphic art
continued as a subgenre, dominated by skilled calligraphers like
Mohammad Ehsai, who aimed to modernise the venerable art form
rather than merely including calligraphy as an element in his work.1
Oo bakhshandeh ast and Banquet are examples of Ehsai’s
Naqqashi-khat style, exhibiting his masterful ability to use the
inherited abstract quality of Islamic calligraphy, in which the
writing element goes beyond the notion of legibility to a limitless
sequence of expressive forms. Banquet is one of Ehsai’s largest
compositions, in three panels. the middle panel acts as the focal
point, featuring an abstract design of overlapping and interweaving
pseudo-text rendered in the thuluth style of calligraphy. Elongated,
horizontally oriented ‘letter’’ stretch across the whole of the left
panel. The right panel mirrors these extended tails suggesting an
absent text has been cut off by the edge of the canvas. Likewise,
in Oo bakhshandeh ast, meaning ‘he is merciful’, associated with
attributes of God, Ehsai transforms the text into purely aesthetic
symbols. In Calligraphy (1995), lines from a fourteenth-century
poem by Hafiz2 are written in the genre of siyah mash3 and
rendered in nastaʿliq script: the calligraphic style in which Ehsai has
the most expertise. Calligraphy (1997) incorporates a Qurʾanic verse4
rendered in muhaqqaq, another traditional script, reinstating the
exalted status of Islamic calligraphy that was originally associated
with Qurʾanic scripture.
Professionally trained as a calligrapher, Mohammad Ehsai
graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran, in 1971. He
worked as a calligrapher, graphic designer and editor on various
publications, most notably for Iran’s Educational Book Organization
from 1965 to 1974. As well as showing his work in exhibitions locally
and internationally, he has also been commissioned to create a
number of architectural design projects, including inscriptions at
the Alghadir Mosque in Tehran (1983), the Iran Bastan Museum in
Tehran (1985) and the Iran Embassy in Abu Dhabi, UAE (1988). He
inscribed the entire Qurʾan – 2,650 pages in muhaqqaq script – an
ambitious decade-long project that he finished in 2019.5 [SS]
Untitled
REZA MAFI
(born Mashhad, Iran, 1943; died, Tehran, Iran, 1982)
1969
Oil on polystyrene laid down on board
Two parts, 151 × 76 cm each, 151 × 153 cm overall
Signed in Persian
K1747
Iran’s master calligrapher, Reza Mafi, is celebrated for his unique
style of traditional calligraphic virtuosity informed by modern
aesthetics. Captivated by the beauty of the calligraphic inscriptions
rendered on religious buildings in his native city of Mashhad, he
trained extensively at a young age.1 At 18 years old, he travelled to
Tehran where he studied under the great master of calligraphy,
Hossein Mirkhani. Mafi was soon caught up in the capital’s vibrant
art scene during the 1960s and 1970s, which resulted in the
formation of the neo-traditionalist movement. Along with other
classically trained calligraphers such as Mohammad Ehsai (cat.
XX), Faramarz Pilaram (cat. XXX) and Nasrollah Afjei (cat. XX), Mafi
became one of the pioneers of Naqqashi-khat, a style showcasing a
variety of scripts as a form of modern art.2 Mafi’s work transformed
traditional calligraphy to further reflect contemporary society. In
recognising the similarities between abstraction and traditional
calligraphic forms, he accentuated the script’s inherent formal
qualities that naturally fit the context of a modern composition, as
reflected in his Poster of 10th Shiraz Festival . The diptych Untitled
(1969), a work informed by poetry and architecture, is one of the
most impressive examples of Mafi’s innovative three-dimensional
works. In this oval composition shifting from white to black, he
gives dimensionality to an otherwise flat writing of a siyah mashq
inscription: a calligraphic exercise in which a page is covered
completely in nastaʿliq script. In accordance with this practice,
individual words made from polystyrene are stacked up one on top
of another, causing their illegibility and lending to their abstraction.
An example of Mafi’s political work, Untitled (1973 or 1978?)
portrays the phrase ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) countless times in
red muhaqqaq script against a dark background. Here, Mafi uses
the elegant, elongated letters to mimic the outline of raised fists.
Reflecting the Iranian Revolution, in the years leading up to the
overthrow of the Pahlavi regime in 1979, this phrase was chanted
in the streets to defiantly protest the Shah’s reign, but was also
shouted from rooftops under the dark of night as a sign of solidarity
despite the strict martial law. Mafi died shortly after the Revolution
in 1982 at the age of 39. Mohammad Ehsai designed the calligraphic
inscription on his tombstone, just as Mafi had done for the grave of
Sohrab Sepehri. [SS]
They Hunt …
REZA DERAKHSHANI
(born Sangsar, Iran, 1952)
2011
Gold leaf, acrylic, oil and lacquer on canvas
Four parts, 200 × 250 cm each, 200 × 1000 cm overall
K1803
Reza Derakhshani is a multitalented painter, poet, musician and
performance artist who currently lives and works between Austin,
USA, Istanbul and St Petersburg, Russia.
A child prodigy, Derakshani held his first solo exhibition at the age
of 19 at the renowned Ghandriz Art Gallery in Tehran, in 1971. He
graduated from the Tehran University Faculty of Fine Arts in 1976 and
continued his studies at the Pasadena School of Art in California.
While living in New York City he was exposed to Abstract
Expressionism and became associated with the revival of painting
in the West in the 1980s, through the Neo-Expressionist movement.
Evolving in New York artistic circles with fellow artists and friends
Francesco Clemente, Shirin Neshat (cat. 00) and Cy Twombly,
Derakshani experienced an identity crisis in his work but overcame
it by reconnecting with his Iranian roots.
As manifested in the masterpieces They Hunt … and Gold Fig/
Black Fig , his tendency for pure abstraction becomes blended
with figurative elements directly taken from Persian miniatures,
rugs and antiquities. In They Hunt … his highly sophisticated tonal
harmony is showcased boldly in monumental scale (10 metres),
and the subject is almost secondary to the layered, Richter-like
abstract coloration. The repeated but constantly shifting figures
elaborated by Derakshani imitate the textures of ancient artefacts,
with enhanced frescoed technique, to encapsulate the eye of the
viewer within anachronistic visions. In Gold Fig/Black Fig from
his ‘night and day’ series, actual fig leaves have been used in the
composition, involving a novel technique. With its red-brown
organic and appealing tones, Untitled is another highly skilled
layered image, as Derakshani masters the art of charging the canvas
with the same lively effect as that of a piece of fabric or tapestry.
Echoing his ‘Miniatures’ and ‘Hunting’ painting series, this work
functions as a visual allegory for the postmodern feeling of lost past
and fragmented heritage. The shadow-like silhouettes of Persian
miniature characters, similar to those in a portrayal of a romantic
encounter between Nizami’s King Khosrow and Princess Shirin,
create an anachronistic and melancholic feeling. By obscuring the
natural landscape in a way that is typical of a Persian miniature, with
its bold clouds, gigantic rocks and overflowing rivers, Derakshani’s
ghostly landscapes and hallucinatory visions exemplify this
compositional style.1 [MM]
Laundry at Kobba
MAHMOUD SAID
(born Alexandria, Egypt, 1897; died Alexandria, Egypt, 1964)
1920
Oil on canvas
60 × 37.3 cm
K1633
Egyptian painter Mahmoud Said is perhaps best known for his
boldly rendered, celebratory depictions of Egyptian life, rural and
urban alike.1 Born to a wealthy political family, Said began his early
arts studies under the tutelage of Italian painters Amelia da Forno
Casonato and Arturo Zanieri.2 While ultimately educated as a
lawyer, Said continued to pursue painting alongside his legal work.
He frequently travelled to Paris for arts training, notably studying at
the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Julian.3
Said was a founding member of La Chimere, an artist’s group that
sought a modern Egyptian aesthetic that drew on the country’s
ancient past and contemporary present, alongside fellow artists
Mahmoud Mokhtar (cat. 134), Mohammed Naghi (cat. 141) and
Ragheb Ayad.4
An early painting in the artists’ oeuvre, Laundry at Kobba
showcases Said’s germinal experiments with the conventions of
European landscape painting, particularly French Impressionism.
Depicting the courtyard of the Royal Palace of Kobba in Alexandria,
Said’s use of short, loose brushstrokes and unblended whorls of
colour echoes the techniques of French Impressionists like Claude
Monet and Georges Seurat.
In View of Sirros, we see the artist’s developed signature
approach to landscape painting, characterised by robust, simplified
volumes and a richly saturated colour palette. Painted during
the artist’s travels in coastal Greece, View of Sirros captures the
rolling hills surrounding the harbuor of the island of Sirros. Said’s
depiction gives particular attention to the austere buildings
densely populating the port city, which he renders as reduced
planes punctuated by pared-down architectural details and
angular shadows. The boats and minutely rendered fishermen in
the foreground recall Said’s many paintings of coastal life in Egypt
and Lebanon, as well as Nile scenes, drawing parallels across the
Mediterranean. [SD]
The Years of Fire and Snow, from the series ‘Memories of Destruction’
AYDIN AGHDASHLOO
(born 1940, Rasht, Iran)
1978
Gouache on board
79 × 59 cm
K1314
Aydin Aghdashloo is an Iranian painter, graphic designer, curator,
writer and film critic. As a teacher and museum adviser, he played
an important role in the development of art pedagogy. Aghdashloo
is primarily self-taught; he honed his skills and learnt the
fundamentals of craftsmanship and classical painting in his youth by
spending hours restoring damaged calligraphies and miniatures. He
also became a skilful copyist by studying and painting the works of
European masters, as evident in his Memoirs of Destruction series
that began in 1974. Here, the artist painstakingly copies Renaissance
paintings, taking Botticelli’s portraits as a subtext and Giorgio de
Chirico’s phantomatic figures as an ironic trick, and then disfiguring
them. The series culminated in The Years of Fire and Snow,
described by Aghdashloo as, ‘a gesture toward the final days of
carelessness and merriment for some boastful, pompous creatures,
unaware of the cold winter behind their backs’. The pattern of
erasure and the presence of forgotten or censored faces return
repeatedly in Aghdashloo’s Memories of Destruction period and
in his later work. beyond. In Darvish Khan this dialectic of erasure
through the play between the positive and negative expands into
the whole frame as a diptych.
Aghdashloo’s crumpled miniatures can be seen as the synergetic
pinnacle of the East and West through a dual craftsmanship:
a crossover of the aesthetics of the seventeenth-century Isfahan
School with western ideas of realism and objective dimension.
Crumpled Miniature, and the whole of this particular series, speaks of
the bitterness Aghdashloo feels towards the younger generation of
Iranian artists who he feels are quick to discard his own generation.
The sense of tragedy and death alluded to in the titles of
Aghdashloo’s works take deeper roots during the harsh times of the
1979 Revolution and the eight-year long Iran–Iraq War (1980–88).
Aghdashloo’s works from this period frequently include memorial
symbols: rotten windows, broken spectacles or old doors.
By eventually fusing an Italian Renaissance style with that of
classical Persian arts and craft, Aghdashloo has proven to be
an early initiator of postmodernist thinking in Iran, resorting to
anachronistic and intertextual visual strategies while interrogating
the original and the copy. [MM]
No. 100
FARAMARZ PILARAM
(born Tehran, Iran, 1937; died Mazandaran, Iran, 1983)
1972
Oil on canvas
150 × 150 cm
Signed and dated
K0510
Faramarz Pilaram, a core member of the Saqqakhaneh movement
and an innovator of ‘calligraphic modernism’ known as Naqqashikhat,
was one of the most influential Iranian artists of his
generation.1 Trained as a classical calligrapher and fascinated with
the idea of expressing a national identity through art, Pilaram’s
early style utilised Shiʿi imagery, such as motifs related to Ashura,
juxtaposed with geometric shapes and calligraphy. In Untitled
(Map of Iran), Pilaram repeatedly uses semi-legible Persian text
to form the outline of a map of Iran. The large, central script
vaguely resembles that of a traditional calligrapher’s signature,
mimicking the structure of the words sana, or ‘the year of’, and
al-haghir, meaning ‘the humble one.’ However, his later works truly
distinguished him as one of the pioneers in modernising the art
of calligraphy by manipulating and exaggerating the forms and
stripping them of any meaning or linguistic association. No. 100 and
Calligraphy Painting are completely devoid of coherent language;
the mesmerising twisted, intertwining and serpentine lines seem
to only mimic writing, creating a new modern visual language that
relies on movement, abstraction and repetition.
Pilaram graduated from Tehran’s Boys’ Art School in 1950, where
he learnt traditional miniature painting. He graduated from the
Faculty of Decorative Arts, Tehran, in 1965, and in 1968 received
his Master’s degree in Painting and Interior Design from the same
institution. In 1971 he received a scholarship to study lithography
in France. After returning to Iran, he joined the Independent
Group of Painters and Sculptors in 1975,2 and became an associate
professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Science
and Technology, Tehran. Due to the political upheavals after the
Revolution of 1979, Pilaram lost his job at the university in 1981. He
died prematurely two years later in Mazandaran. [SS]
Lilith Playing Monkey
MARCOS GRIGORIAN
(born Kropotkin, Russia, 1925; died Yerevan, Armenia, 2007)
1981
Oil on canvas
104.1 x 121.9 cm
Untitled, from the series ‘Tree of Life’
MARCOS GRIGORIAN
(born Kropotkin, Russia, 1925; died Yerevan, Armenia, 2007)
1961
Acrylic on burlap
116.5 x 39 cm
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