Shoja Azari
Idyllic Life2012

Not on view

Installation with three red bentwood chairs facing a glowing, large-scale projected Mughal or Persian miniature painting on a dark wall

Persian manuscript painting with fine detail, depicting a multi-story courtyard scene with numerous figures in robes and turbans engaged in various activities across tiered architectural spaces, featuring a blossoming tree at center, vivid pigments in red, blue, gold, and green, and a decorative geometric border.

Composite work in the style of Persian manuscript illustration, combining multiple crowded architectural and figural scenes within a gilded ornamental border. Numerous figures in turbans and robes occupy multi-level interior and exterior spaces, with bare trees and domed structures visible. Rendered in grayscale with fine detail and flat spatial perspective typical of Persianate miniature painting.

Mixed-media work combining Persian miniature painting figures in vivid red, blue, gold, and green robes with a grayscale photographic background depicting war-damaged or ruined architecture. Multiple scenes show numerous figures across different registers, some carrying vessels and trays, others seated or standing in courtly groupings. Gold floral border frames the composition.

Artist or Maker: Shoja Azari
Iran, born 1958, active United States
Title: Idyllic Life
Place Made: United States, New York
Date Made: 2012
Medium: High-definition color video, with sound
Dimensions: Duration: 00:10:11
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Anousheh and Ali Razi, Shirine Reza, Wahideh Khaleeli, Darioush and Shahpar Khaledi, Chahla Aryana, Hormoz and Fariba Ameri, Angela and Isaac Larian
Accession Number: M.2015.104
Classification: Time Based Media
Collecting Area: Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
Curatorial Notes: Classical Persian miniature painting, which belongs to the small-scale art of book illustration, presents a whimsically implausible and idealized world created through expert draftsmanship; rich, jewel-like colors; and carefully contrived landscape and architectural settings. As has often been noted, in Persian painting it is always a perfect day. In his disquieting work Idyllic Life, Shoja Azari builds on and plays against this precious art form. His starting point is a projected image of a vastly magnified sixteenth-century manuscript page depicting an arcadian setting of a princely palace and surrounding town. A series of video clips are inserted into the projected painting, disrupting the idyllic scene with disturbing and sometimes violent vignettes drawn from contemporary Iranian life.
Born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1958, Azari began making short films as a teenager before moving to New York in 1983. Idyllic Life belongs to Azari’s solo series of "video paintings," in which he animates traditionally static paintings with contemporary video footage.
Selected Bibliography: Komaroff, Linda. "Islamic Art Now and Then." In Islamic Art: Past, Present, Future, edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, 26-56. New Haven, New York, and London: Yale University Press, 2019.
Komaroff, Linda. In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2018.
Copyright: © Shoja Azari, courtesy of the artist and Leila Heller Gallery, New York/Dubai

Shoja Azari
Idyllic Life2012

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Shoja Azari
Iran, born 1958, active United States
Title: Idyllic Life
Place Made: United States, New York
Date Made: 2012
Medium: High-definition color video, with sound
Dimensions: Duration: 00:10:11
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Anousheh and Ali Razi, Shirine Reza, Wahideh Khaleeli, Darioush and Shahpar Khaledi, Chahla Aryana, Hormoz and Fariba Ameri, Angela and Isaac Larian
Accession Number: M.2015.104
Classification: Time Based Media
Collecting Area: Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
Curatorial Notes: Classical Persian miniature painting, which belongs to the small-scale art of book illustration, presents a whimsically implausible and idealized world created through expert draftsmanship; rich, jewel-like colors; and carefully contrived landscape and architectural settings. As has often been noted, in Persian painting it is always a perfect day. In his disquieting work Idyllic Life, Shoja Azari builds on and plays against this precious art form. His starting point is a projected image of a vastly magnified sixteenth-century manuscript page depicting an arcadian setting of a princely palace and surrounding town. A series of video clips are inserted into the projected painting, disrupting the idyllic scene with disturbing and sometimes violent vignettes drawn from contemporary Iranian life.
Born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1958, Azari began making short films as a teenager before moving to New York in 1983. Idyllic Life belongs to Azari’s solo series of "video paintings," in which he animates traditionally static paintings with contemporary video footage.
Selected Bibliography: Komaroff, Linda. "Islamic Art Now and Then." In Islamic Art: Past, Present, Future, edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, 26-56. New Haven, New York, and London: Yale University Press, 2019.
Komaroff, Linda. In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2018.