Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Private Collection, Tehran (acquired directly from the artist in the 1970s)
Thence by descent

This work is in very good condition. Some minor hairline cracks and scuff on few of the mirrors across the ball, all in line with the artist choice of medium and age of the work. Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate. The illustration fails to convey the reflective and shinny aspect of the work.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Sotheby’s is honored to offer Mirror Ball by the highly accomplished and globally recognized Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. A work with a visceral appeal that transcends cultural boundaries, it is also wonderfully reflective of the diversity of cultural backgrounds that frame its existence. Mirror Ball is part of a well-known and important series, and is perhaps the body of work for which Farmanfarmaian has garnered most admiration: an artist who can create work that is both timeless and contemporary.

Farmanfarmaian’s artistic career has spanned over five decades and straddled two cultures. While her use of traditional reverse-glass painting and mirror mosaics are rooted in her heritage, its placement and scale reflect an appreciation of her Western contemporaries. Inspired by the likes of Frank Stella but committed to the possibilities of Islamic geometry, her sculptures and installations cannot be easily categorized. Mirror Ball beautifully brings together the prowess of, and reverence for Iranian handicraft, and the lightness of a life lived in the perceived pop and glitz of New York in the seventies. A piece that is conceptually refined and technically nuanced, it is both playful and poignant.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was born in Iran and spent over a decade in the U.S. From being awarded the Gold medal at the XXIX Venice Biennale in 1958 to her commissioned installations for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the universal appeal of her work is reflected in her widely acclaimed career. Formally trained yet subtly influenced, her time spent in New York was formative to her artistic development. She took art classes at Cornell University and studied Fashion Illustration at Parsons School of Design in New York. In the midst of the avant-garde scene of Abstract Expressionism, she spent time socializing with the likes of Frank Stella, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol. However, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran in 1957 and a 1966 visit to the Shah Cheragh Shrine perhaps truly redefined her artistic trajectory. Adorned with mirror-mosaics, the architecture, the light, and the people were said to have felt like a performance; a reflection of a reality that bore the sinuous traces of the mystical and unworldly. 

Mirror Ball isn’t intended to be a holy piece. Its physicality is in homage to a disco ball, inspired by the glitz of the 1970s American Pop Culture. With her stylistic technique, she shows how worlds conflate. Mirror Ball brings together the decorative elements of Iranian traditional craft with the ethos of Western abstraction. And, in the spirit of Sufi thought and harking back to Shah Cheragh, the interaction of surface texture, form, light and reflection are fused together into a ball that also personifies the changing cultural scene of the seventies.  

Her recent retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2015, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings, 1974-2014 featured a series of these glittering and rare mosaic balls. A similar piece as the one on offer was gifted to Andy Warhol who was a friend and, for a time, a colleague. Warhol famously kept his mirror ball on his desk in his Madison Avenue home until his death.

An innovator and a true transnational artist in a postmodern world, the beauty of her works lie not in the juxtaposition of opposing worlds, but in her ability to distill and conflate them to a universality not marred by cultural differences.