Footnotes

"In Paris, at the Louvre, I find myself standing face to face with the Mona Lisa. On closer inspection, to my fascination, I see thousands of tiny cracks on its surface. I was mesmerized, big time. What I found utterly beautiful would otherwise be considered a nightmare for the museum restorers and a tragedy for the art world"
Farhad Moshiri

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, London
Acquired directly by the above from Danyal Mahmoud Gallery, 2006

Exhibited:
Danyal Mahmoud Gallery, New York, 2006

The present work is a large and important example of Farhad Moshiri's most celebrated body of work. A particularly rare early composition, the work appears at the market for the first time since being exhibited at Danyal Mahmoud Gallery in New York in 2006

The 13th century Persian poet and polymath Omar Khayyam proclaimed clay as a "mysterious mother substance", and exalted what he described as a "wizard dust, wherein all shapes of birth, — soft flowers, great beasts, and huge pathetic kings, fill a needled girth".

The analogy of the substance of life, as mere clay at the behest of an unseen potter which shapes, forms, breaks and remoulds at its whim, is a powerful and lasting motif in classical Persian literature, and serves to highlight the indifference of the universe to the relentless cycle of extinction and decay which characterises existence. It is this symbolic, poetic clay which forms the substance of Moshiri's jars, and it is in the context of this symbolism where their true meaning is brought to light.

In their form, Moshiri's jars are inspired by the artistic heritage of Persian antiquity, which was home to one of the foremost centres of ceramic production in the ancient world. Ceramics which survive, as Moshiri depicts them, in a state of beautiful decay; fractured, discoloured and petrified beneath the earth, they live on as mere vestiges of a bygone age, their brilliance reminding us of the illustrious civilisation that gave rise to them, their decay ruing its inevitable downfall.

For Moshiri, the flattening of these jars onto canvas harks their extinction as objects of use, and whilst rueing the expiration of the cultural landscape they once inhabited, Moshiri superimposes the visual language of their cultural successors. Pithy contemporary song lyrics adorn the pots, where benedictory and spiritual phrases were once inscribed. This is the imprint of the culture industry; in choosing lyrics from popular contemporary love songs Moshiri ridicules contemporary cultures dilution of grand themes into sound bites and vapid platitudes.

A consummate draftsman with a deft touch, Moshiri's Jars show an astounding level of technical skill, seldom has melancholy been channelled in such an aesthetically brilliant and visually vibrant form. Poignant, striking and refined, the present work is an example of Moshiri in his artistic prime.