Siah Armajani - Amazon Web Services

Siah Armajani
American, b. Iran, 1939
Commissions
Covered Foot Bridge (1970), Fifth Element (1971), Irene Hixon Whitney
Bridge (1988), Bridge Book (1991)
Exhibitions
1962 Biennial of Painting and Sculpture (1962; catalogue), Drawing
in Minnesota (1965; catalogue), 1966 Biennial of Painting and
Sculpture (1966; catalogue), Invitation 1967 (1967), 9 Artists/9 Spaces
(1970; catalogue), Drawings: 10 Minnesota Artists (1971; catalogue),
Works for New Spaces (1971; catalogue), Scale and Environment:
10 Sculptors (1977; catalogue), The Garden in the Galleries (1994),
The Cities Collect (2000)
Holdings
1 painting, 4 sculptures, 4 drawings, 1 unique work on paper,
1 edition print/proof, 2 books, 6 models
Siah Armajani was born into a highly educated and
cultured Christian family in Tehran. He was educated
at a Presbyterian missionary school, where he thrived
in his studies of Western philosophers such as Socrates,
Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.1 It was there that he
received his first lessons in American history as well.
He recalls, “When I was in high school in Iran, one of
my teachers was very familiar with American philosophers, especially Emerson, who had translated Hafez,
the great Persian Sufi poet, from German into English,
which earned him a special place in Persian literature.
That teacher knew a lot about Jefferson and Adams,
and instilled in me a passion for democracy.” 2 Yahya
Armajani, the artist’s paternal uncle, who was already
in the United States teaching history at Macalester
College in St. Paul, Minnesota, recognized Siah’s intellectual curiosity and encouraged his nephew to join
him. The younger Armajani immigrated to the United
States in 1960 and took classes in mathematics while
majoring in philosophy. This course of study reacquainted him with the work of Emerson, who, according to the artist, “underlined the excitement, the
unpredictable madness of America in terms of daily
life. Unpredictable because the past is forgotten intentionally; Emerson wanted to break away from Europe
intellectually and to develop a truly American context.
This led to pragmatism rather than metaphysics, to
anthropology rather than philosophy—to John Dewey’s
insistence that all ideas be tested according to their
applicability to life.” 3
Emerson’s words continued to inspire Armajani as
he searched for a way to bring his political and social
consciousness in line with his lifelong dream of being
an artist. He set up a studio in downtown Minneapolis
and continued producing paintings in the same vein
that he had in college. Prayer (1962), which Armajani
completed prior to graduation, was included in the
Walker Art Center’s 1962 Biennial of Painting and
Sculpture and entered the collection that same year.4
Despite his inclination toward all things American in
his studies at the time, Armajani retains in this work
a vestige of his Iranian heritage and native language,
Persian Farsi, which he continues to speak and write
fluently.5 He selected poems from the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, including the works of Sufi writers
Rumi and Hafez, and transcribed them by hand in
black ink onto the canvas. By including only excerpts
and sentence fragments from these poems, he severely
restricted the narrative flow, rendering it virtually
unreadable, and in so doing, accentuated the all-over,
cumulous pattern. Created in the abstract idiom of the
time but with text instead of expressive gestures, the
work connects the past to the present and the literary
to the visual, thereby bridging the gap between cultures and time periods. The artist’s use of text as image
also reflects the widespread practice in Islamic art
and architecture of including Koranic quotations as
integral decorative and thematic elements rather than
incorporating figural embellishments, which are
considered profane.
In conjunction with his ongoing, autodidactic
studies of American history and populist ideologies,
Armajani had also begun educating himself in the
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American building
techniques of anonymous structures, such as log cabins, barns, covered bridges, shingle-style schoolhouses,
Quaker reading rooms, and other vernacular forms.
This background, coupled with his interest in the
socially relevant and utopian art of the early twentiethcentury Russian Constructivist and Suprematist movements, helped him clarify his focus toward public art
and his commitment to democratic ideals. Over the
course of his career, Armajani would go on to build
pragmatic structures out of wood and metal, including
Siah Armajani Prayer 1962 oil, ink on canvas 70 3/4 x 50 3/4 in.
(179.7 x 128.9 cm) Art Center Acquisition Fund, 1962 1962.53
SIAH ARMAJANI 107
bridges, houses, reading rooms, and various other
indoor and outdoor dwellings (both ephemeral and
permanent) as well as freestanding sculpture. Not interested in building monuments to his ego or anyone
else’s, he unequivocally states, “I am interested in the
nobility of usefulness. My intention is to build open,
available, useful, common, public gathering places.
Gathering places that are neighborly. They are not
conceived in terms of wood and steel, but in terms of
their nature as places at hand, ready to be used.”6
His first forays into sculpture came with the creation
of bridges, some intended to exist only as models, others as temporary constructions or large-scale, permanent installations. Bridge for Robert Venturi (1970),
in the Walker’s collection, is one of many nonutilitarian
bridge models that he fabricated out of balsa wood
between 1968 and 1975.7 Typical of his early Limit
Bridges series, none of which were produced full scale,
the primary function as a thoroughfare is rendered
defunct by structural blockages and bisections. By placing the bridge entrances at the midsection rather than
at either end and creating steep inclines in both directions, Armajani frustrates viewers’ expectations of normative passage and challenges preconceived notions
about the role of architecture in the built environment.
This and other architectural projects ultimately led
to one of Armajani’s most important commissions, the
Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, which opened to pedestrian foot traffic in September 1988.8 This 375-foot steeltruss construction—a combination of suspension,
arched, and closed steel trestle bridge types—spans
fifteen lanes of traffic to connect the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden with the urban oasis of Loring Park.
The bridge has become an icon for the city as well as
a metaphor for the peaceful coexistence of the diverse
backgrounds and interests of the population. Armajani
collaborated with then-director Martin Friedman,
the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the
Minneapolis Park Board, and countless engineers and
steelworkers to bring the project to fruition. The bicolor
treatment of the bridge’s armature was the artist’s antidote to the harsh midwestern weather and a nod to one
of Armajani’s architect-heroes of old, Thomas Jefferson:
“The yellow is from Monticello. Jefferson called it the
color of wheat, of the harvest, but it is also the color of
happiness. The blue is just—well, the sky. Minneapolis
has these long, gray winters, so I felt that colors should
be light.”9 Armajani has long integrated poetry into
his sculptural compositions, and this project was no
exception. He commissioned New York School poet John
Ashbery to compose an original work that could be
read by pedestrians traversing the bridge. Upon its
completion, Friedman aptly described Armajani’s masterpiece as “a symbol of serenity as well as transition.”10
Since 2000, Armajani has expanded his repertoire
of materials to include glass and plexiglass, and in
so doing has been able to capitalize on the metaphoric
possibilities of transparency, fragility, metamorphosis,
and transcendence.11 Enigmatic, yet literally and conceptually accessible, Glass Room (2000) is a contemplative space set on wagon wheels that incorporates
many of the artist’s familiar sculptural forms borrowed
from domestic architecture—an aluminum-frame
108 SIAH ARMAJANI
Dutch door opens onto an ethereal chamber containing a bronze folding cot and an oversized chair of
slatted wood. In addition, a model of a nineteenthcentury American clapboard house rests on a platform
projecting out from one of the exterior walls. The notion
of flexible and mobile architecture is contained in the
glass metaphor, where forms are not fixed and measurable. With this piece, Armajani has succeeded in his
mission to provide an environment that is at once
“open, available, and useful,” encouraging us to enter,
sit, and contemplate.
E.C.
Notes
1. For more information on the artist’s biography, see Calvin Tomkins,
“Profiles: Open, Available, Useful—Siah Armajani,” New Yorker, March
19, 1990, 48–72.
2. Quoted in Martin Filler, “Designed to Bridge Two Cultures, Two
Arts,” New York Times, November 17, 2002, 36.
3. Tomkins, “Profiles,” 53.
4. This acquisition ushered in what would become a major
institutional commitment on the Walker’s part to the collection and
exhibition of Armajani’s work early in his career, and for more than
four decades. Important early group shows included 9 Artists / 9
Spaces (1970), in which the artist was commissioned to create
Covered Foot Bridge (1970), often referred to as “Bridge Over a Nice
Triangle Tree,” in the empty lot of what would become the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden; Works for New Spaces (1971); and Scale and
Environment: 10 Sculptors (1977), which included numerous bridge and
house pieces.
5. In a conversation with the author on December 4, 2001, Armajani
explained that Persian calligraphy uses the same alphabet as Arabic
but has its own peculiar sensibility that might be missed by Western
readers.
6. Quoted in Tomkins, “Profiles,” 49.
7. This work was dedicated to American architect Robert Venturi,
whose book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1966) was an important influence on
Armajani’s burgeoning artistic practice. A champion of vernacular
architecture, Venturi rejected the monolithic and austere forms found
in modernist architecture in favor of structures that retain a historical
sensibility.
8. The bridge was a gift of the family of Irene Hixon Whitney to the citizens of Minneapolis, and it is owned and maintained by the Minnesota
Department of Transportation. Although not part of the Walker’s collection, it is a major component of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
9. Quoted in Tomkins, “Profiles,” 48.
10. Martin Friedman, “Growing the Garden,” Design Quarterly 141
(1988): 15.
11. Armajani has acknowledged that his glass works have been influenced by architect Bruno Taut’s Glass House (1914/1915) and an article
written by architectural historian Rosemarie Haag Bletter entitled
“The Interpretation of the Glass Dream—Expressionist
Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor,” Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians 40, no. 1 (March 1981): 20–43.
Siah Armajani Model for the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge 1985 wood, paint 12 x 74 x 4 in. (30.5 x 188 x 10.2 cm) Acquired in connection with the
construction of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, 1986 1986.60
Siah Armajani Model for Red School House for Thomas Paine 1976–1977
wood, cardboard, paint 10 1/4 x 23 x 31 in. (26 x 58.4 x 78.7 cm) Gift of the
artist in honor of Martin Friedman, 1990 1990.171
Siah Armajani Bridge for Robert Venturi 1970 wood, stain 14 x 76 5/8 x 12 1/4 in. (35.6 x 194.6 x 31.1 cm) Purchased with the aid of funds from Mr. Brooks
Walker, Jr., 1977 1977.67
SIAH ARMAJANI 109
Siah Armajani Glass Room 2000 stainless steel, wood, bronze, aluminum, glass, plexiglass 114 x 106 x 127 in. (289.6 x 269.2 x 322.6 cm) Gift of Martha
and Bruce Atwater, Judy and Kenneth Dayton, Penny and Mike Winton, Margaret and Angus Wurtele, and the T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2001 2001.23
110 SIAH ARMAJANI
Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance
of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections
Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter
Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance
of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections is published
on the occasion of the opening of the newly expanded
Walker Art Center, April 2005.
Major support for Walker Art Center programs is
provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through
an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature,
The Wallace Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation through the Doris Duke Fund for Jazz
and Dance and the Doris Duke Performing Arts
Endowment Fund, The Bush Foundation, Target,
General Mills Foundation, Best Buy Co., Inc., The
McKnight Foundation, Coldwell Banker Burnet,
the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the
National Endowment for the Arts, American Express
Philanthropic Program, The Regis Foundation, The
Cargill Foundation, 3M, Star Tribune Foundation,
U.S. Bank, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and
the members of the Walker Art Center.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker Art Center
Bits & pieces put together to present a semblance of a
whole : Walker Art
Center collections.-- 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-935640-78-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Walker Art Center--Catalogs. 2.
Arts--Minnesota--Minneapolis--Catalogs. 3. Walker Art
Center--History. I.
Title: Bits and pieces put together to present a
semblance of a whole. II.
Title: Walker Art Center collections. III. Title.
N583.A53 2005
709’.04’0074776579--dc22
2004031088
First Edition
© 2005 Walker Art Center
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WALKER ART CENTER COLLECTIONS
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