News Article

The New York Times covers and critiques Siah Armajani's public art.

"'Kantian philosophers believed that art was good because it was useless. We believe that art is good because it is useful.' So says Siah Armajani, who is one of the major sculptors working in the realm of public art today. This is a big summer for Mr. Armajani. On July 19, his Olympic tower and bridge, built of wood and gray steel, topped by a brilliantly painted caldron, stood as the symbolic center of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and on millions of television screens around the world."

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Examples of visual art

The City of New York created this description of Siah Armajani's art and his artistic philosophy.

In 1996, Armajani completed his work Lighthouse and Bridge on Staten Island, a 65-foot by 65-foot installation located at the North Shore Esplanade at St. George's Ferry Terminal in New York. Armajani said, "All buildings and all streets are ornaments. Moreover, the lighthouse and bridge gives a place to the representational arts of poetry, music, and performing. By embracing all of the arts, the lighthouse and bridge asserts its own perspective everywhere."

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Images provided by Oberlin College provide examples of Armajani's early work.

"First House is one of a series of works from the late 1960s and early '70s in which Siah Armajani explored the properties of different building types. The Oberlin First House exists as a model. As he did with other works from this period, Armajani also built a temporary large-scale version, which remained in his Minneapolis studio for three or four months in 1970 before being dismantled."

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The Storm King Art Center provides images of Armajani's art installed outdoors.

Gazebo for Two Anarchists: Gabriella Antolini and Alberto Antolini (1992) is "an excellent example of the architectural sculpture of Siah Armajani. The work, set atop a specially constructed hill, has a symbolic "stream" running underneath. The viewer is invited to enter the sculpture. The constricted spaces and institutional seating affects ones view of nature. Instead of a picturesque effect that one would expect from a 'gazebo,' the space inside and the view itself is intentionally confined, reinforcing the work's politicized content..."

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The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art relates Armajani's art to themes taken up in American literature.

"For Between the Lakes, Armajani has created a sculptural installation exploring the tenets of Emerson's teachings regarding nature, man, and life, and the work of art. Although Armajani was born and raised in Iran, he was introduced at a young age to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other American proponents of democracy and populism... Entitled Emerson's Parlor, the work consists of three glass spaces and several symbolic objects, including a wooden coffin, a table, two bare bed frames, a white house with a black roof, a scarecrow, and a diamond-shaped mirror... Loss, exile, self-reflection, and transparency demonstrate Armajani's interest in bringing Emerson's ideas to physical form."

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Review of visual art

This review considers Armajani's art before and after September 11, 2001.

"Siah Armajani has long been concerned with creating "neighborly" public sculptures--including bridges, gazebos and reading rooms--that are both physically and psychologically accessible. In striking contrast, his new work, which is at least partially inspired by the sense of alienation engendered by the attacks of Sept. 11, embodies a sense of isolation, imprisonment and surveillance, and a foreboding sense of nostalgia and death."

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