An important, rare early work by Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani, Book (1957), is one of the few still available pieces created during the artist’s formative period in Tehran. This work was exhibited in Armajani’s seminal retrospectives at both the Walker Art Center in 2018 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019, and is illustrated on page 145 of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition.
Maryam Ekhtiar, curator in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, writes in her essay 'Allusive Expressions: Siah Armajani’s Persian-period Collages' (1957-64), found in the recently published Festschrift in honor of LACMA’s curator of Islamic Art, Linda Komaroff, titled Iranian Art from the Sassanians to the Islamic Republic:
“Armajani chose collage as his preferred medium of expression. Its inherent fragmented, layered, and random nature lent itself well to recording his intense political… Collage provided a safe space where he could express himself freely using clever strategies of concealment while challenging established canons of image-making and calligraphy. Interestingly, in a handful of his Persian-period works, such as Book (1957) (Figure 4.1), Father Has a Pomegranate (1958), and Taraneh (1957) (Figure 4.7)…”
The work Book (1957), made with watercolour and coloured pencil on paper (60.96 × 31.75 cm), features handwritten script—possibly freestyle poetry, a form Armajani devoted himself to since childhood. In the middle left there is a clear depiction of the Archangel Israfil, who, according to Qur’anic tradition, was sent to announce the Day of Judgement, though his name is not explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an. In the bottom right, an upside-down figure appears in a black, tomb-like tunnel.
This mysterious, prophetic work foreshadows Armajani’s lifelong exploration of the transformative power of poetry in society. In 2008, Armajani created a major sculptural installation titled Edgar Allan Poe’s Study. Both Poe and Armajani were deeply influenced by Islamic and Persian epic poetry in their early years. In fact, Poe’s early poem Israfil and Armajani’s Book share a common reference to the Archangel of the Day of Judgment, further linking these two artists across time and space.
