the letter as a sonata charles hossein zenderoudi profile In 1970, the renowned French journal, Connaissance des Arts, nominated Charles Hossein Zenderoudi among 10 of the most important living artists, alongside Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. The founder of the Iranian Saqqa-khaneh movement, this most universal of artists is also a master of the letter. Clarity, simplicity and purity are his consistent hallmarks, bringing an unerring order to what appears to be Zenderoudi’s very own particular form of chaos. T E X T BY myrna ayad and james parry with thanks to R O U L A E L- Z E I N I M A G E S C O U R T E S Y O F C H R I S T I E ’ S A N D P R I VAT E C O L L E C T I O N S harles Hossein Zenderoudi is quite clear about his art hammer fell, Tchaar-Bagh had sold for $1.6 million, setting and why it strikes such a strong chord with the public. an auction record. Yet, however much this caused a ripple “People around the world are all the same and everyone through the chattering artistas, the high figure was hardly the is able to read my work,” he explains. “What matters is the point. Zenderoudi is not a man to be swayed by such matters. harmonisation between the heart of the artist and the heart of He has received many accolades and won many international the viewer.” That there should be such pronounced empathy awards, starting at the biennales of Venice in 1960 and São between creator and viewer may help explain, at least in part, Paolo in 1961, when he was still in his early 20s. Following why Zenderoudi was so outstanding an artist at such a young the 1963 acquisition by New York’s Museum of Modern Art age and why he has continued to be a major player on the of his K+L+32+H+4, which not only marked the first of his world stage of art for half a century. paintings to enter a major public collection but also served Fast-forward almost 40 years to the brave new world as a catalyst for other museums to follow suit, most of the of Dubai and the foyer of the Godolphin Ballroom at the world’s prominent art institutions have sought to include his Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel. It is April 2008, and the works in their collections – London’s British Museum, Paris’s Christie’s Dubai International Modern and Contemporary Art Centre Pompidou and Copenhagen’s Statens Museum, sale is about to start. Auction-goers gather to admire Tchaar- among others. Bagh, one of Zenderoudi’s seminal works. The 210 x 195 cm artwork is remarkable not solely for its beauty but also A Curious Mind because it is one of the pieces he created in the early 1980s Born in Tehran in 1937, Zenderoudi’s discoveries began in when moving towards an aesthetic featuring larger symbols. the bazaars of the Iranian capital. An independent child, he Extended maze-like black and white lettering creep towards was insatiably curious and especially attracted by images, the centre of the piece, where 45 colourful ha letters hold primarily posters of American and Indian films and stamps, but court. Lot 59’s estimate was $200,000–250,000, yet when the also by the Hand of Fatima, rings inscribed with calligraphy and medallions too. “I used to spend all my savings on such Previous pages: (Detail) Crowns of Love. 1972. Oil on canvas. 106 x 144 cm. © ADAGP 2009. things. I remember having bought hundreds of stamps with Facing page: (Detail) Tchaar-Bagh. 1981. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 210 x 195 cm. people’s names on them made out of semi-precious stones,” Courtesy Christie’s. recalls Zenderoudi, who would continually wander through the 137 profile “People around the world are all the same and everyone is able to read my work. What matters is the harmonisation between the heart of the artist and the heart of the viewer.” alleys of the bazaars on the lookout for objects that caught The ideas it expressed set alight the art world in Iran and his eye. At school, his favourite class was geography, mainly were quickly taken up by other important figures of the time, because of the maps, which he would colour or make cut- especially after Zenderoudi left Iran in 1960: the ideas he outs from – an idea which, along with stamps, he would later championed proved to have potent durability. Indeed, until pursue through his artworks. Art was a passion for the young today, the movement continues to exert a significant influence Zenderoudi; not in painting and drawing per se, but rather on younger generations of artists. Meanwhile, important art through a more self-experimental approach. “I did bizarre critics who became close friends with Zenderoudi, such as things – prints and others – in my own way, and I discovered, Pierre Restany and Frank Elgar, encouraged him to move to later on, that I was able to do portraits or landscapes. Scientific Paris, something which became possible when the French theories, concepts of time and space, astrolabes and government granted him a scholarship to the National School astrology, all fascinated the young Zenderoudi. In particular, of Fine Arts in Paris in 1960. a visit to Iran’s Bastan Archaeological Museum triggered the beginning of his questioning of the nature of man’s relationship Steady Rhythms with the cosmos, something that has engaged him ever since. The 23-year-old Zenderoudi found Paris “fabulous”. He met In two of the museum’s display cases, calligraphic script and artists like Alberto Giacometti, Stephen Poliakoff and Lucio tables of numerology swathed white cotton shirts worn by Fontana and writers such as Eugène Ionesco, recalling how, warriors underneath their armour. The numbers, symbols and “the artistic and literary scene in Paris was extraordinary, with talismanic nature of the cloth were later to feature in his work. no frontiers, and I was part of it.” The years that followed saw By 19, he was exhibiting in various galleries in his native an infusion of iconography into his work, with Iranian motifs Iran, but when the College of Decorative Arts (CDA) opened enveloping his canvases. However, by the early 1970s he had in the late 1950s, he enrolled immediately – despite already abandoned much of the iconography, albeit briefly returning to enjoying a rapidly rising level of fame. “It was very important it later, and preferred to focus on the letter per se. Essentially, for me to have a diploma to be able to continue,” he recalls. Zenderoudi toyed with the rules of calligraphy – rhythmically “My aim was to leave Iran and go to Europe, but I also wanted overlapping words and letters into complex, indecipherable to learn classical subjects such as drawing, lithography and compositions. By the 1980s, his letters took on larger forms fresco-making.” and his childhood fascination with stamps resurfaced in some It was in the late 1950s that Zenderoudi created the works in the early 1990s, resembling work executed two Saqqa-khaneh movement. A reaction to Western art and the decades before. His more recent work, however, harks at a relentless clash between traditional and modernist Iranian art, disambiguation between balance and imbalance. “We don’t the Saqqa-khaneh lobbied for the incorporation of national, hear them,” says Zenderoudi of the visual vibrations in his folkloric and religious elements into Iranian art. In essence, work, “what we hear is the music.” For him, Saqqa-khaneh took pride in Iranian-ness and sought to writing is to spaces what notes are to music. Facing page: (Detail) Sia Kalar. 1982. Lead pencil, pigments, pastels, mesh Iranian heritage with Contemporary art, proposing a re- His is an explicit will to distance, a acrylic and mixed media on paper. 120 x 80 cm. © ADAGP 2009. reading of cultural content by means of a referential continuity. desire to abolish the seductiveness of the 138 profile 139 140 Scientific theories, concepts of time and space, astrolabes and astrology, all fascinated the young Zenderoudi. 143 144 profile line so as to retain its conceptual path. “I am a scholar in book illustrator; the list is constantly expanding, the career calligraphy but I am not a calligrapher. I paint; I don’t do letters. studded with landmark achievements. In 1973 Zenderoudi Like the architect who uses stones or bricks to construct a won the UNESCO award for ‘The Most Beautiful Book of building, I use calligraphy to construct my painting,” he the Year’, for example – a project that involved design and explains. When asked whether the repetition of letters and lithographs for the Holy Qur’an. A decade later, he created numbers is associated with Sufism, his response is quick: monumental works for the international airports of Jeddah and “I dislike all ‘isms’ and I have nothing to do with that. When Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Then, in 1995, at the Bernay Museum people speak of calligraphy in my paintings, they are really of Fine Arts in France, he created an extraordinary work in talking about the stereotype: if there is a letter then it is which he spent a whole night painting and walking on a 100 calligraphy and if it is repeated then the artist is Sufi. Spirituality square-metre canvas in one of the museum spaces, working is found in all periods and many artists in various fields and against a backdrop of music and poetry. He mixed ancient cultures have dealt with this question. The list is endless, from techniques, such as the use of egg-based tempura, with vocal Giotto to Kandinsky to Bergman. Each and every one has a art expressions from more contemporary periods, and in so personal answer.” doing, fulfilled “an act of art, music and poetry” and created a The desire to know and learn more keeps him alert. bridge between different periods and styles of art history. Lively, fast-moving cities are where his varied interests thrive In this way, Zenderoudi has consistently worked to most. “I change the process according to my feeling or by break codes and conventions, to disrupt the boundaries that necessity. If I am, for example, in a car in the desert, I use exist between forms of artistic expression. At the same time, my camera to take photographs. And these are as valid and his works – however ornate and intricate they may appear worthy as my paintings. I always have to find a way to create – are invariably lean and to the point. Every component is and I can adapt to all sorts of situations,” he says. Meanwhile, specifically essential to the work in which it appears, and Zenderoudi can be funny, ironic and challenging, his works there is nothing that is superfluous or gratuitous – the artist never shrinking from saying the un-sayable – as, for instance, has already stripped away anything unimportant. in one of his Saqqa-khaneh works, where he penned ironic In 2001, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art dedications to “writers who cannot write, poets who spout presented a retrospective of Zenderoudi’s work. Appropriately, nonsense, philosophers who witter on about this and that, the same art critic, Restany, who had encouraged Zenderoudi and artists who make crap.” In this way, Zenderoudi mocked to move to Paris in the late 1950s, wrote the preface to the the concept of ‘intellectualism’ and challenged the prevalence exhibition catalogue. In it, he explained how Zenderoudi of value judgements, which he felt served to obscure the real transcends painting and photography in his art to affirm “his content, and indeed, beauty, of art. unmistakeable distancing vis-à-vis calligraphy”. Meanwhile, Zenderoudi himself affirms: “What was written about me Matters of Substance decades ago proves that art has no frontiers. Do people refer Zenderoudi’s open-minded approach is one in which his to Picasso as ‘Spanish’ or Duchamp as ‘French’? It is not a conceptual drive leads him down many avenues and to work matter of country or nationality. Artists are universal.” It is surely through all possibilities. He is a painter, sculptor, photographer, this uncanny ability to transcend categories and definitions of art, culture, history and geography that will prove this artist’s Previous spread: (Detail) Ayame. 2008. Mixed media, pigments, acrylic on canvas. 176 x 213 cm. © ADAGP 2009. most enduring legacy. Previous pages: (Detail) Hafteh + Aval. 1978. Acrylic on canvas. 104 x 122 cm. © ADAGP 2009. Facing page: (Detail) Five Sweet Hearts. 1983. Mixed media, pigments, acrylic on canvas. 213.5 x 183 cm. © ADAGP 2009. For more information visit www.zenderoudi.com 145
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