Farah Ossouli -  فرح اصولی 

Farah Ossouli (1953) Painter and Graphic Designer
فرح اصولی (۱۳۳۲)  نقاش و طراح گرافیک

Farah Ossouli is a prominent Iranian artist who boldly depicts multilayered social and personal subject matters through her distinctive visual language and painting style. Ossouli was born in 1953[i] in Zanjan and has been drawn to art from a very young age. She (2013) recalls:[ii]

“I realized quite early on in my childhood that dolls were not capable of embodying all the tales and personalities I lovingly nurtured in my active imagination. So I started creating my own characters out of paper and paint, specific to each one of my fantastic stories. I drew, painted, and cut them out of cardboard, and played with them for hours and days. After a while, I needed new stories, with new actors. The old cut outs were all thrown away along with the old sagas, only to be replaced by totally new ones. I would start all over again, recreating, redrawing, and repainting brand-new characters, relating to my new scenarios.”

Ossouli studied at the High School of Fine Arts in Tehran and graduated with a diploma in painting in 1971.[iii] She learned color composition and line drawing in miniature painting from Mahmoud Farshchian[iv] for three years. After high school Ossouli entered Tehran University, studied graphic design and graduated two years prior to the 1979 revolution in Iran.

“I have studied painting in the art high school and did not want to do it again in the university therefore I decided to study graphic design. I am a very adventurous person and like change and new experiences."[v]

At the university she studied art and design under renowned Iranian artists such as  Behjat Sadr[vi] (b. 1924-2009), Hanibal Alkhas (b. 1930-2010), Morteza Momayez (b. 1935-2005), Parviz Tanavoli (b.1937), Mohammad Ehsaei (b. 1939), and Sima Kouban (b. 1939-2013). In Tehran University she also became very interested in drama and acting and started to make friends with many students majoring in theater. From them and also by auditing classes she learned about acting, directing, makeup design and set design and from 1971 to 1976 she played in a number of successful plays.[vii] After graduation and as a graphic designer Ossouli created covers for books and magazines, illustrated children’s books, created logos, brochures, posters, billboards and title sequences for films. She made educational animations and has worked as a cinematographer and assistant film director.

Her first teaching experience started when she was eighteen years old and later, she taught basic drawing and art history at Design Studio in Tehran (1972 to 1977) to those who wanted to pass the entrance exam of universities and major in art. She founded Moaser Studio (1981 to 1987) in Tehran and accepted students for her art classes. There she taught basic design, painting with different subject matters and techniques and copying from masters to her students. In 2001 Ossouli co-founded and directed DENA[viii], which is a women artists group in Iran. DENA’s members regularly showcase their latest works and organize workshops and traveling exhibitions in Iran and abroad. Ossouli not only has been a jury member and the curator but also has served as the director of national and international competitions and exhibitions such as 2002 Tehran Painting Biennial. She advises graduate students on their research and mentors young artists on a regular basis. Ossouli’s work is part of the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA) Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (Tehran, Iran), Tropen Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Ludwig Museum (Koblenz, Germany) and Devi Art Foundation (New Delhi, India).

Modern miniatures
The 1979 revolution in Iran[ix] had a profound effect on Ossouli and her painting style. Before the revolution she worked in “Western” realistic classical style and depicted surrealistic settings and later her paintings and drawings narrated her personal life stories which were situated in imaginary spaces. It was after the revolution that her style drastically changed and she started to paint in Iranian miniature painting style but with a modern approach (Figure 1). Ossouli explains:

“At the beginning I was much occupied with finding a solution, a visual solution that would be contemporary and yet universal so when anyone at any corner of the world looks at my painting they could feel close to it...After the revolution when I started painting in miniature style. I searched for a personal style, a style that no one had explored before. I was going through an identity crisis I didn’t know who I was, and where I was. My country has been through a revolution and life had changed drastically. I couldn’t find myself. Maybe I thought I should look at the past and the period that the Iranian paintings were unbelievably beautiful like Timurid period miniatures, which I loved. This was as if I wanted to deny the ugliness around me or endure it just like what Iranians have been doing throughout our history.” [x]

The core theme of Ossouli’s paintings is womanhood and her artistic mission has been narrating emotional and physical states of being a woman both from personal and social angles. Ossouli paints women in sweet or bitter private moments of their lives such as, reading, writing, painting, thinking, daydreaming, waiting, falling in love or crying, mourning, and committing suicide. In public spaces her women are placed in varied situations as joyous as dancing and playing music; as heroic as fighting and rescuing others; and as horrific as being separated from loved ones, imprisoned, tortured, mutilated and murdered. Ossouli’s female protagonists are portrayed as God, guardian angels, mothers, daughters, and wives. They may be real or mythological figures that are seducers (Salome), obsessed with beauty (Narcissus), symbols of beauty (Venus), saints (Eve, Mary and St. Teresa), and lovers (Shirin and Manijeh). 

By utilizing her knowledge in painting, graphic design and theater, Farah Ossouli invented her unique visual language, which not only has a deep root in traditional Persian miniature painting but also encompasses modern aesthetic sensitivities. Her style of painting has been influenced by Timurid and Safavid schools and works of Kamaladdin Behzad[xi] and Reza Abbasi[xii] as well as Eastern and Western abstract and geometrical motifs and patterns. In her recent works (since 2009), Ossouli has been technically focusing on her line drawing (Ghalam Giri) and writing (Neveshtan) and staying away from her prior multi-color and multi-paneled compositions. Now her arrangements are open, centered, and confrontational, and her subject matter is multi- layered, dark and disturbing. In this group of paintings, she is occupied with contemporary cultural and political dilemmas and dichotomies and paints good and evil in various disguises and in constant battle with each other. Ossouli has also added the element of writing to her compositions and writes verses of deconstructed contemporary poems in the borders of her paintings. She surrounds the images by boxed-in words which are repeated over and over and makes these echoes become the voices of her painted characters.

The most important theme of Ossouli’s recent paintings is re-presentation of canonical works of male artists through her aesthetic lens.  Although she tries to stay true to the formal composition of figures and objects in each painting, yet she transforms the narrative and cultural subtext of each image by adding or subtracting some visual and cultural elements. She has created paintings such as Creation of Man (2007) based on Michelangelo’s Creation of Man (1511), Birth of Venus (2007) based on Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1486) And Someone Will Come (2007) based on Jean Auguste Dominique Ingre’s Roger Freeing Angelica (1819). 

In 2009 Ossouli painted Monalisa  which is based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1519) (Figure 3). Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is one of the most viewed, discussed, speculated, and appropriated icons in the history of art[xiii], and one of the famous portraits of the Renaissance era in Italy. 

[i] This is the year that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (b.1991-1980) the last king of Iran, returned to power by a coup d’état supported by the United States and Great Britain. Ossouli experienced first half of her life in the Pahlavi era.

[ii] http://www.farahossouli.com/Biography.aspx

[iii] In the High School of Fine Arts students who majored in painting started with drawing practices which included pencil and charcoal drawings of the plaster models of classical figures such as Hercules, Venus, and horses as well as live figure drawing of individuals or group of models. After a few months of focusing on drawing students would start working in color with oil paint. They first created black and white still lives and gradually added yellow ochre and other colors to the composition. They also painted nudes and landscapes and chose their own subject matters or copied from masters. Students took classes in painting, graphic design, sculpture (plaster and wood), miniature painting and also in order to become familiar with ancient Iranian art copied or interpreted artifacts in the Iran’s National Museum (Muze-ye Iran-e Bastan). They studied art history, folk art, Persian literature, English, anatomy, perspective, geometry, and drafting. 

[iv] Mahmoud Farshchian (b.1930) is a contemporary Iranian master miniature painter.

[v] Farah Ossouli (2013) from interview with Roshanak Keyghobadi.

[vi] Behjat Sadr was a painter and she was one of the pioneers of Iranian modern art. Those who are unfamiliar with Iranian culture and history are not aware that in spite of social restraints, women have always been active members of Iranian society throughout Iran’s historic and political upheavals and before and after the 1979 Revolution. They have held positions, such as vice president, ministers, members of parliament, university professors, teachers, scientists, engineers, physicians, and their accomplishments have been recognized internationally. According to recent statistics, more than sixty percent of Iranian university students are women and Iran has the highest female to male ratio at primary level of enrollment in the world. 

[vii] The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca (directed by Mehdi Hashemi), The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (directed by Pari Saberi), and Rozaneh-ye Abi by Akbar Radi (directed by Mahmoud Mohammad Yousef).

[viii] DENA is the name of a mountain peak in Iran. It is also a female name in Persian.

[ix] The 1979 Revolution in Iran overthrew the Pahlavi Dynasty established the Islamic Republic of Iran.

[x] Farah Ossouli (2013) from interview with Roshanak Keyghobadi.

[xi] Kamaladdin Behzad (c. 1450 - c. 1535) was a master miniature painter.

[xii] Reza Abbasi (c. 1565-1635) was a master miniature painter.

[xiii] In 1911 the painting was stolen from Musée du Louvre and recovered two years later. In 1919 Marcel Duchamp created the Mona Lisa readymade, L.H.O.O.Q., which is a reproduction of the painting in form of a postcard with a penciled-in moustache and beard. In 1963 Andy Warhol created the Double Mona Lisa. In 1986 a researcher claimed that Mona Lisa is indeed da Vinci’s self-portrait.

Note: This essay was originally published in the Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art. March 2014, titled:  Mona Lisa speaks Persian: An Iranian artist’s visual response to an iconic painting
By: Roshanak Keyghobadi