Author Orhan Pamuk and Artist Ali Banisadr On the Thin Line Between Painting and Writing

Ali Banisadr

The first book I read by Orhan Pamuk was My Name is Red. It was New Year's Eve when I first picked it up. I was in California visiting my mom, who was going to my uncle’s house for the evening. I was supposed to join her, but instead, I just stayed in and read, absorbing in the world Pamuk had created. After that, I read every book of his I could get my hands on. 

Pamuk sees the world like a painter, which makes sense given his background. A painter, after all, takes the time to study their subject, to break it apart and put it back together, layer by layer. Pamuk’s way of writing felt like that to me—always observing, always questioning, always rearranging things until they made sense in a new way. His writing captures a mix of ideas, emotions, and history that resonates with me deeply.

In 2014, I was in Paris for a few days, and my art dealer, Thaddaeus Ropac, invited me to a dinner. He mentioned it would be a small group of friends, but didn’t tell me exactly who would be there. When I arrived, I found myself seated between Anselm Kiefer (an artist I had admired for years) and Orhan Pamuk.

My next encounter with Pamuk came in February 2020, just before the world shut down, at the Morgan Library in New York. It was an odd coincidence—both of us happened to be at the same exhibit on the visionary architect Jean-Jacques Lequeu. The museum was almost empty, and it felt like a private moment, just the two of us wandering through the galleries. It was the last exhibition I attended before everything went into lockdown—a memory that feels strangely significant.

So it is with great pleasure that I spoke with Pamuk once more, this time on the occasion of the publication of his new book, Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022.