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Lot 420

Farhad Moshiri
(Iran, born 1963)
Terracotta Jar

8 April 2014, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £32,500 inc. premium

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Farhad Moshiri (Iran, born 1963)

Terracotta Jar
acrylic, oil and glaze on canvas
signed and titled in Farsi and English (on the reverse) dated 2005 in English and 1384 in Farsi (on the reverse)
80 x 80cm (31 1/2 x 31 1/2in).

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Switzerland

And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried --
"Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"
Omar Khayyam

Inspired by the artistic heritage of Persian antiquity, Moshiri's work is replete with visual remnants of the past, devices he uses to great effect in pointing to deeper issues regarding the fragmentation and decay which accompanies mass culture and modernity.

Moshiri's jars, like the ancient Persian urns that inspire them, whilst aesthetically brilliant, represent cracked, aging objects in a state of decay. The undoubted beauty they exude betrays the unease rife in their conception.

They are vestiges of a great but expired age, a form of aesthetic recollection. Their flattening onto canvas harks their extinction as objects of use, and rues expiration of the cultural landscape they once inhabited.

Additional information

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