Ali Banisadr

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2010

Jessica Smith, Emily Jackson and Noura Al-Maashouq, Eds., Ali Banisadr: One Hundred and Twenty Five Paintings, London 2015, pp. 94-95, illustrated in colour 

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly lighter and brighter in the original and the catalogue illustration fails to convey the various blue undertones in the sky. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Executed in a kaleidoscopic palette of powerful greens and magnificent turquoise hues punctuated with accents of purple, red, and yellow, The Garden is a climactic display of Iranian-born Ali Banisadr’s richly evocative art. Oscillating between figurative precision reminiscent of Persian miniatures and vast fields of gestural brushwork indicative of Abstract Expressionism, Banisadr has forged an idiosyncratic alloy of art-historical reference via a truly phantasmagorical vision.

The present work purposefully invokes Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights. Dated between 1490 and 1510, and today housed in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, this canonical triptych has been re-imagined by Banisadr as an intricately painted ‘orientalist’ panorama. Akin to Bosch’s masterpiece, in particular its central panel, The Garden comprises a myriad of miniature scenes in which fantastical creatures mingle with the real. In keeping with the artist’s unique semi-abstract style, only a handful of the figures have defined characteristics, leaving it to the viewer’s imagination to fill in the gaps. Regarding the tumult of such visual stimuli in his work the artist has elaborated: “It’s very important for me that there is no central focus. I want every single corner of the work to be as interesting as the rest. To have something to attract the eye. I don’t want any hierarchy – I want to express that sense of movement – the wind that blows through the whole thing…” (Ali Banisadr cited in: Jessica Smith, Emily Jackson and Noura Al-Maashouq, Eds., Ali Banisadr: One Hundred and Twenty Five Paintings, London 2015, p. 7). In breaking down compositional structures, The Garden is reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s all-over compositions in which formal hierarchies are abandoned to give way to an astounding intensity of abstract paint drips and splatters. The effect, akin to Pollock’s ground-breaking abstraction, is a thrilling dynamism activated by chromatic vibrancy and a muscular heroic drama.  Although lacking a central focus or protagonist, The Garden nonetheless maintains a sense of perspectival order; vanishing into the background a sumptuous prism of colour distends under a floating arc of delicate lines and anthropomorphic figures. Where the Abstract Expressionists fully abandoned figuration in favour of total abstraction, Banisadr blends the harmony of pure colour and dramatic gestural brushstroke with extraordinary figurative draughtsmanship to invoke a spectacular conflation of optical sensations. Filled with vigorous forms, out-of-scale figures, and exotic flora and fauna formed from indulgent dabs of oil paint and wash, The Garden is a wonderfully opulent yet disorienting landscape. In this work an encyclopaedia of different narratives merge into one complex superordinate composition, to create a work of striking visual allure that is also loaded with challenging narrative portent.

Banisadr's painterly brilliance embellishes mayhem and frantic activity, replicating the chaos of childhood memories of violence, confusion, and loss as a refugee of the Iran-Iraq war. In fact sound-memories of the Iraqi bombardments left the artist with a keen sensitivity to the sensorial crossover between sound and vision; a fusing of the senses also known as synaesthesia. Since then, synaesthesia has become the creative impetus for a practice in which a velocity of movement, echoed by a polyphony of sound, is translated into colour: “When I begin painting, it is always based on an internal sound. As soon as I apply the brush, the sound begins, and I am able to compose the work based on the sounds I hear as I’m painting. It is the force that drives the whole painting and helps me compose the work and pull everything together” (Ali Banisadr in conversation with Lilly Wei in: Studio International, 6 February 2014, online). Banisadr himself has asserted that the subject matter of his paintings "is based on three things: the history of myself, the history of our century, and the history of art” (Ali Banisadr in conversation with Jonathan Beer in: Art-Rated, January 2012, online). In this unique amalgamation of personal history and art historical past, Banisadr creates a superb panoply of encoded references. Imbued with a rich colour palette, infused with memory, and permeated with a deep appreciation for art history, this painting embodies the very height of Banisadr’s synaesthetic painterly power.