Persian Series 6 – 12

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. Persian Series #6 begins with what appears to be dried red and yellow rose petals, suddenly shot-through with blue, which causes a shift to violets and greens. This mash of colors thickens and is scored by white, and then black, calligraphic lines, which are “echoed” in all previous floral colors whose “dance” seems to turn clock-wise and “explode” into fiery reds. Persian Series #7: very pale, thin, hieroglyphic pinks, greens and blues in a white space, which is thickened over by ribbed mashes of these colors which “dissolve” into varied shapes almost suggesting landscapes and ephemeral bouquets. Dark blurred shapes mix with each other and give way to clock-wise-turning pillars of yellow, scored with white glyphs, at times, and fading mashes of tones and, finally, calligraphic shape. Persian Series #8: pale petal and stem like shapes counter punted rhythmically by an even paler “background” of truly ephemeral (almost invisible) shapes. Again, the foreground movement is clockwise and often “ribbed” as the film darkens into a blend of foreground and background and eventually, a meld as of white hardened clots fretted by glyphs. Persian Series #9: sharp edged “chunks” of color set in black, straight, often multicolored lines, piercing shapes, imprisoning them, until they are fragmented bits of color in black: repeated of this theme again and again until darkness prevails, but is then broken open by pure white shards and “spears” restoring the original “dance” of hard-edge shapes and lines, which then begin to whirl clock-wise, interspersed with fade-outs, and then shatter into “confetti” texture, in black burnt-sugar-shapes and then overwhelming flare yellow. Persian Series #10: “twigs” of color in space, and pure white “ghosts” of them in the background interspersed with amalgams of these and conglomerate forms, The resolve of these themes is a combination of “amalgams” and “ghosts” at one in interplay, and then dark slashed spaces with “webs” of white, webbed spaces on white and, finally, solarization of colored forms -midst which the frame-line rises from bottom and drifts a few seconds visible, creating an insubstantiality of the frame of these images. Persian Series #11: begins with a “window” of yellow paint in the full frame of multi-colored paint-shapes. Alternating black space/white space exists as a backdrop for slashes and curves of color -reds and blues shifting to red-blue-green, and then yellow, etc. slashed in black. Persian Series #12: “hot” by-play of red-greens-yellows in black, blurred, finally, as the color shapes are shifted violently from side to side, finally ending with a sharp entanglement of multicolored twig and/or stem-like forms. (Stan Brakhage)