Persian Series 13 – 18

In the spirit of the Roman, Arabic, Egyptian and Babylonian Series, these hand-painted films attempt to imagine the kind of Persian visual thinking which created their calligraphy, miniatures and aesthetic designs in general. This is a collection of singly- and doubly-printed (two frames for each one) hand-painted work in six parts: 1) Singly-printed multi-colored watery “blobs” and “feathery” streaks of painted color, dominated by yellows and reds interweaving in complexity until there’s an evolution of hard-edge autumn leaf patterns which dissipate into patterns similar to the beginning of the film. 2) This begins in a deep brilliant red which darkens into deeper reds and lavender shapes, disrupted by a variety of colors settling into browns and grays and shapes most rock-like, all of which is then shot-thru with sufficiently yellow to break up all hard-edge form and give a molten aspect to the mixtures of shapes. This is double-printed. 3) Doubly printed striations of “brush-strokes” through multicolored “rock” forms dissolving then to blackened ‘mud’ eliciting increasing sense of being under earth. 4) Singly-printed criss-crosses of molten “brush” – (hard edge) strokes of black over pebbled yellow, ending finally on an inter-mix of all intertwined forms with increasing lightness/whiteness. 5) Double-printed thinnest possible lines and multiple dots of pale color interwoven with sweeps of linear tones in swiftly transversing motion, all deepening from this almost white field of flitting activity to some solidification of forms. 6) Singly-printed evolution from a deep blue-blackness of hard-edge twisting and sweeping bars and deep black swirls of dry-cracked and electrically “webbed” blotches, giving way to mixtures of bright blue and deep black sweeps of almost hieroglyphic forms midst swirls of multiple colors played against fleeting blacks evolving into multiple shapes in contrastingly brilliant whites. (Stan Brakhage)