Shahnameh Stories in Persian Miniature Painting:Divs

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsFgBm4UtJZeXRvnuDoCnzg

Art of Iran: Art Dubai 2013: Calligraphy

CALLIGRAPHY FROM TRADITIONAL WRITING TO CONTEMPORARY ART

CALLIGRAPHY is unquestionably the fundamental element of Islamic Art… The logos, the word, the gateway to truth and meaning, it is the sacred geometry of language and imbued with all the mystical spirituality of the divine. Used principally as a means to transmit a text, its inherent possibilities of intricate form and aesthetic appeal wove through underlying talismanic anchors and flourished into myriad ways of exploiting script as ornament. Denying the thread of consciousness which gave traditional calligraphy its layers of meaning, another visual landscape is molded out of pure color where bold letters surge and jostle against one another in a dichotomy of form and meaning. Teasing the interplay of decorative elements, one word can give the impression of random brushstrokes, or a single letter morph into florid knots or floating refrains. Often illegible or out of context words free themselves from the strictures of spiritual and poetic context and become shape for shape’s own sake. In doing so, they make a profound statement as the art of the word was only ever validated through explicit meaning. Today, a purely visual movement is replacing the “Written Word” with the “Painted Word” or Naqqashi-khat. Moving beyond language, the letters are not painted to be understood but to redefine the ancient roots of their relationship with experience. These illegible symbols reject their traditional reading and redirect the experience to evoke sensations rather than the structural familiarity of language. Indeed language is actively denied a role in both the expression and the understanding of the new calligraphy, opening fluid portals to sensory abstraction. . Yet as in the iconography of painting the basic reference points remain intact and meaning is awoken through re-contextualization. The illusion of infinity running through traditional calligraphy and the “arabesque” prevails, but legibility is drowned in a sea of form and colour as seen in the transition between the works of Mohammad Ehsai. The interwoven letters of Ajali fray into unintelligible heaps of strokes and coils. The floating letters of Bakhshayeshi rise in isolation and circle through an alchemical abysss as the intricate incantations of Afjei merge into a seemingly single stroke of the brush. The repetitions echo ancient calligraphic exercises but the letters have the majesty of the spectacular. Theatrical repetition is a fundamental element and yet we also see dramatic independence as in the work of Mohammad Yaghoubian. In Naqqashi -khat the deliberate and tranquil contemplation of the unfathomable is quickened through intense colour and complexity as it drums out a faster, stronger and bolder heartbeat. Yet beneath the loud and proud odes to modernity whisper the refrains of the timeless, the ancient and the archetypal as history flowers anew.

Zahra Faridany-Akhavan PhD

Faramarz Pilaram 1972

Nasrollah Afjehei 2012

Alireza Mohebi 2011

Ahmad Mohammadpour 2012

Ali Ajali 2012

http://www.operagallery.com/media/195.pdf DUBAI-ART_OF_IRAN_cat_bd

Mohammad Mahdi Yaghoubian

Farhad Moshiri

9’s on Yellow

INTERNATIONAL MODERN AND … – Catalogue.drouot
catalogue.gazette-drouot.com/pdf/…/Millon-22102012-BD.pdf?id..

Farhad MOSHIRI (1963-) Iranian

9’S on yellow, 2002 Signed and inscribed (on the reverse) Oil, acrylic, gold leaf and glue on canvas Huile, acrylique, feuille d’or et colle sur toile 240,5 x 179,5 cm – 94.7 x 70.7 in. AED 411,400 – 587,700 Provenance The artist’s studio Private collection

“Dark delphic shapes, here ‘9’s’ float suspended against a yellow canvas crackling and seeping into a pool of molten mystery. Swaying to a silent chant the elusive shadows glide in trancelike harmony, drawing the viewer into a talismanic world of signs and symbols which recall the ancient Arabic Abjad script which fascinates the artist in its magical blessings and spells. The fluid matrix of numbers weave together layer upon layer whispering eternal euphonies within an ethereal world. The flaked technique is characteristic of Farhad Moshiri’s earlier work, which together with his Jars series gives a bold pop art modernity to an ancient tradition. The number nine was considered sacred in ancient cultures. Amongst its many symbolic attributes are its significance as the expression of harmony and perfection, immortality, inspiration and the nine celestial spheres.”

Zahra Faridany-Akhavan PhD

The Blue Flower of Forgetfulness

The Blue Flower of Forgetfulness

Cyrus Samii

“If Iran was a fairy tale at all, it was a Persian tale… the story of the cold-hearted princess who would only be seduced by the one who bested her…. It is a fairytale that might explain…how each of us ran the race and how each of us lost.”

Iran’s psyche, no, her soul, is a labyrinth of allegories and anecdotes, parables and proverbs, myths and metaphors, lines of poetry and tales of old wives.  Like individual knots, these are intricately woven into that eternally beautiful, but ultimately functional thing called the Persian Carpet.

It is in this spirit that Cyrus Samii, in his powerful debut novel “The Blue Flower of Forgetfulness” has spun his tale of two friends who symbolically, but in a real and identifiable way, unfurl the image, design and pattern of the carpet that was Iran in the 20^th century. The pursuit of hopes and dreams and their ultimate betrayal are told through the contrasting lives of two friends, Firouz and Nur ed Din.  Narrated in detail from school days it is a “memoir” of a timeless love affair that each has had with Iran set within the context of Persian fairy tales and politics. Within the tenuous dualism that defines Iran, the two characters symbolize different views and approaches to their love for their country: the pragmatic, and the spiritual.

Samii describes Iran at once as Turandot, the beautiful princess who demands impossible feats from her suitors only to set them up for disappointment, and cruel punishment when they cannot deliver.  Her sublimity is never questioned, but her resistance to accepting love is the crux of the despair and frustration that Samii describes in a stunning descriptive voice.  Through a series of references to Persian folklore, English literature, and Hollywood movies he further alludes to Iran as Eliza Dolittle, the fair lady who is to be transformed according to western standards of acceptability, but against the traditions that have been part of her identity for so long.

Set in the context of the Islamic Revolution, the story begins in 1931 as a group of young students in the American College of Tehran (Alborz High School) form future aspirations that eventually take them to the American University of Beirut.  From there, Firouz goes on to the University of Chicago where he learns philosophical, as well as practical ways to serve his country as an administrator and bureaucrat.  His classmate Nur ed Din, the scion of a religious, though not dogmatic leader, returns to Iran to take his place as the would-be spiritual leader after his uncle’s death.

Firouz becomes a high-ranking official in the Plan Organization in charge of prioritizing and allocating resources for the development of infrastructure and commercial projects in Iran. Nur ed Din relocates to the foothills of Kerman growing roses for rosewater with his beloved wife, Fereshteh, in the hope that he will receive the inevitable “sign from God.”  As they settle into their respective positions, with the oil money flowing in and the Shah’s increasingly despotic rule, events in Iran develop at unbridled speed against the backdrop of an industrializing and mercantile nation on the verge of becoming the regional super power.   Exquisite and sensual passages paint a vivid, almost palpable description of how the nation transformed during this period.

Samii tells of the frustrations of the people, the corruption within the government, the disparate affluence manifested in Western-inspired kitsch influences, and the abject poverty of those who were left out of the “Carnival ride”, ultimately culminating in misplaced idealism and intangible misunderstanding of the Revolution that compelled a people to take to the streets with the unison cry of “The Shah Must Go!”

Metaphorically, the beautiful princess rejects all who wooed her only to be captured and abducted by the  “wizened” old Vizier” in the guise of the Islamic Republic.

Firouz, the pragmatic civil servant, who had so many idealistic plans for the modernization of this ancient country goes to England where he regretfully lives on in exile.  Nur ed Din, the grower of roses and maker of rose water, is imprisoned by the Revolutionary government.  The symbolic reference of the rose, said to have blossomed at the drop of Prophet Muhammad’s sweat, held captive by the Islamic government, is an inescapable depiction of the incarceration of the spiritual essence of Islam for self-serving aspirations of power.

Unlike many books on Iran and the Revolution of  ’79, Samii offers no pedantic analysis of the hows and the whys.  Yet he encapsulates a compelling view of the motley moods and the events that were destined to lead to the revolution.  His depiction of the black-shirted young men lacerating themselves in the Passion Plays paints a startling contrast to the elegantly and scantily dressed party-goers in North Tehran, and is but one of the many contradictions he so soulfully presents.

Told in a haunting female voice, “The Blue Flower of Forgetfulness” is a human drama of trial and error; of hope and failure and eternal soul-searching, played against their superhuman counterparts of idealism, chivalry and of the indomitable human spirit. Laced with intimate memories the novel is disarming in its profoundness.   It is the story of dreams, both personal and political, and their price.  Of that which we unwittingly lose in their quest: be it ideals, democracy or ourselves.

Full of fleeting impressions and rich detail, the language is at times overwhelming in its complexity.  Yet the elusive threads that confound the reader are essential to the appreciation of the infinite “arabesque” that is Iran, which like her fairytale counterpart Irandokht, cannot be fathomed, much less possessed.

For those who witnessed the events in Iran during the second half of the last century, this book is an album of nostalgia.  They will relive the sounds, sights and smells of this captivating yet mercurial land; street vendors with their blackened hands, the fresh mountain air and the taste of fruits picked from the orchards.  The fancy cafes on Pahlavi Avenue where young lovers wooed, and Western movies where Persian dubbing injected its own brand of deliciously incongruous one-liners will come to life as if it has all been but a blink of an eye. For others, it is a wonderfully rich universal tale of a nation going through dizzying change still clinging on to, while witnessing the inescapable loss of, ancient traditions.  A window into a lost time, it is a story of, and for, all those who love their country, yet cannot win her love in return.  It is a tale of eternal devotion to an ever-transforming beloved.  It is a love story without an ending.

Zahra Faridany-Akhavan

December 2011

The Art of Shahrzad Ghaffari

Shahrzad_Ghaffari_pages_(((_FINAL_EDIT_)))-2Iranian contemporary art

Cyber bidding

I love auctions.  I’m one of those people who go in convinced that everyone is after the one thing I want.  “My” item draws near to the accompaniment of sweaty, shaky  hands heralded by a deafening thumping of the heart.  I also get crippled by a terrible feeling of loss when something in which I did not have the slightest interest is sold under its value.  I’ve hauled home many  unwanted lots that my ballot wielding arm has bought for me in that state of delirium.  But these days I’ve discovered something of a safety net, a cyber barrier if you like that blocks out some of the auction room’s seductive rays…the live online auction.  Such was my experience when I “entered” the auction room in Dubai while sitting comfortably in Paris to watch Christie’s Middle Eastern contemporary art sale.  The Middle Eastern art market had rocketed into as yet unidentified planets in the last 3 years only to come crashing back down again, as least to vaguely recognizable currency in the last, and I was keen to see if this trend was still on its downward spiral (another gnawing feeling and annoyance at myself for not buying 5 years ago before the auction houses set up shop in the Middle East)  The sale started calmly enough with several items going for about their estimates.  But before I knew it there were exclamation marks everywhere on my catalogue. Items estimated at $60-80,000 started going for $550,000, and one at $150,000-$200,000 for $2,1 million, yes million!  And then it happened again….between my self loathing for not collecting these pieces when that clever businessman whose collection it was, had, came the ultimate blow.  An artist I love, could have bought at $2000, a mere  8 years ago, now estimated at $18-25,000, went for no where near its value.  As the bids stopped I stared at the screen in desperation.  Even though I didn’t have a ballot, in the sale room my clever arm could have still done its deed and saved the day, but alas, my virtual presence in the saleroom was no good against the safe invisible barrier that I had cast myself behind.  As I looked helplessly at my status of “viewing only” on the screen, the hammer came down on an “unwanted” item that I would have gladly lugged home.

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