Disintegrating Progress

Home , Armenian art, Hakob Kojoyan, Hovhannes Tumanyan, Martiros Saryan, Minas Avetisyan, Paruyr Sevak

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62 ArtmArgins 1:1 entered into new combinations and formed new substances.” new formed combinations and new into entered mortuum caput components of this various the failed, had of life its spark last the “When He writes, cence of spirit. Ideology German The In aRMenia in PRactices aRt conteMPoRaRY of eMeRgence the anD national MoDeRnisM, BolshevisM, DisintegRating PRogRess similarities and differences with the situations in the West, Ipropose the in situations the with differences and similarities of their terms in them discussing and Western theories oflens current the through contexts art post-Soviet and Soviet the of reading instead fi of national discourse mainstream Methodologically, the by art. ne suppressed or instrumentalized were eventually that art) Stalinist and realism, revolutionary pre-Stalinist avant-gardes, (historical discourses artistic upon other touch only Iwill emerged. practices art contemporary which, from within and which, against platform the constituted discourse that fias canonized Armenia, in discourse art ne to the relation it in therefore, to discuss one has Armenia, in art rary of contempo- genealogy To the understand Armenia. post-Soviet and Soviet in of art history very the constituted project of this integration complex process of dis- highly the Indeed, policies. cultural its and mortuum caput decomposition of acertain the by formed “new substances” the one as of seen be can latter The Armenia. in practices art temporary emergence of the con- concerning my argument epitomizes image © 2012 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology© 2012ARTMargins andthe MassachusettsInstitute of Karl Marx, TheGerman Ideology (Amherst,NY: PrometheusBooks,1998),33. 1 caput mortuum caput this . Ipropose that , Marx provides an uncanny image of putres- image uncanny an provides , Marx was the Bolshevik project project Bolshevik the was began to decompose, began VArDAn AzAtyAn 1 This This

a close reading of local shifts in Armenian art in order to reveal its logic of disintegrating progress and disclose the ways larger international processes were appropriated locally.

Dialectics of Class and Nation In 1922 when the Soviet Republic of Armenia was only two years old, artist Hakob Kojoyan produced a watercolor illustrating the life and deeds of David of Sassoun, one of the central and most popular protagonists of the Armenian epic poem Sasna Tsrer (The Daredevils of Sassoun). Kojoyan’s work crystallized the dialectic between class and nation that animated the discourse of National Communism of the first government of Soviet Armenia, whose journal Nork (The New Ones) was illustrated by Kojoyan himself.2 Kojoyan’s watercolor presents different episodes of David’s life in one image divided into composite sections. The picture plane appears as a rectangularly divided centripetal surface whose sections grow larger as they reach the center of the picture. The largest central rectangle is occupied by the image of David the Warrior who, before the background of the shining sun, rushes on horseback to destroy the enemy with his flaming sword. The center of the illustration of the epic poem, thus, is the epicenter of power. And the figure who occupies it is David of Sassoun, the symbol of the Armenian people. Indeed, the visual language and technical means of the work owe much to applied arts and especially folk art. Kojoyan depicts the nar- rative of an epic poem on a small sheet of paper. This turns the latter into a page of an illuminated manuscript executed in a manner that makes it appear as a print. Additionally, the linear ornamentation fram- ing the central rectangles and the stylization of the figures leave the impression of jewelry, the art of which Kojoyan was a master. Finally, the specific rectangular and centripetal structure of the picture plane repeats the organization of a carpet. Just as in Eastern carpets with centric organization the center is often filled with a cosmic symbol of life

and/or sun, so the formal structure of the central rectangle occupied by ting Progress David is made to appear as a whirling vortex that moves clockwise.3

2 Kojoyan was an active member of the Armenian branch of the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), producing agitation “window posters” parallel to the ones produced by Vladimir Mayakovski and others in Russia.

3 This is done through the movement of (1) the horse’s crest intertwined with David’s hair a n | Disintegr and the flow of sparks coming out of the sword, (2) the sword itself, (3) the sparks thrown ty

off the horse’s rear legs, and (4) the horse’s front legs. Az a

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Hakob Kojoyan. David of Sassoun, 1922. Watercolor on paper, 47 ∞ 61 cm. National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan. 5 4 ary ways of destroying and constructing the world.” the constructing and of destroying ways ary revolution of the unity inner the reveals epos “The power: work this in he was invincible and victorious.” and invincible he was that of this It because was David. by displayed power of the vastness’ nal Nork nal jour of the of Kojoyan’s chief in afriend editor the and Hovhannisyan, Ashot Armenia, of Soviet People’s Enlightenment of first Commissar to the According people. Armenian of the struggle liberation of the dynamic the represents this Structurally ornament. arevolving as appears structure Warrior, centric where the the of David image the in at is height its two the between relationship dialectical The tions. styliza ornamental refined and diffused and structure architectonic appears as an embodiment of the devastating power of the struggling struggling of power the devastating of the embodiment an as appears Ibid., 396. are bytheauthor. HSSR GAhratarakchutyun,1957),393. All thetranslationsfromArmenianandRussian Ashot Hovhannisyan,Drvagnerhayazatagrakanmtkipatmutyan , vol.1(Yerevan, Armenia: The whole work is shaped by two opposite tendencies: the centric centric the opposite tendencies: whole two by workThe shaped is , “The people are the source of the ‘limitlessness and cosmic cosmic and ‘limitlessness source of the the are people , “The 4 And there is a certain dialectic at dialectic acertain is there And 5 Kojoyan’s David - - - common people that at the same time moves the wheel of history as a constructive force. Thus, Kojoyan’s work visually constructs the revolv- ing image of the Armenian people’s revolutionary struggle. According to Bolshevik theory, the power that fuels this struggle is rooted not only in the very oppression of the popular masses, but in their tight connection to the local conditions of their lives, in their “situatedness.” While admitting that Sasna Tsrer reflects the political aspirations of “Armenian working people” in their struggle against Arab invasion in the tenth century,6 Hovhannisyan argues that in contrast to the political visions of the ruling classes, here the liberators of the Armenians were not to come from outside. Instead, “The heroes of Sassoun symbolize . . . the collective strength of the Armenian popular masses attached to their soil and homeland, to their mountains and castles.”7 The exploited popular masses’ attachment to their soil empowered them in their struggle, which was not against other people, “but against the tyrant personalizing the class that dominates, subjugates and oppresses them, forcing them to wage war against other people.”8 In a Leninist move, Hovhannisyan sees the national liberation struggle as intertwined with class struggle. According to Hovhannisyan, the nation is by definition a historical formation that emerges in the process of what he calls “nation formation.”9 This is first of all shaped by the “common people” and not the bourgeoisie, even though the process itself starts with the emergence of bourgeois social relations. Nation formation is stamped with class antagonisms in which popular masses struggle to become the dominant class. When this goal is achieved, according to Hovhannisyan, they define themselves as a “national class, as a nation.”10 The nation, therefore, is the achieved political hegemony of the common people. But again, in a dialectical move, Hovhannisyan stresses that this process itself needs an “all-national” alliance between the popular masses and progressive strata of the bourgeoisie in order to “broaden and reinforce the social bases of the national-political struggle.”11 Quoting

Lenin, Hovhannisyan argues that only the “all-national revolution” can ting Progress

6 Ibid., 392. 7 Ibid., 393. 8 Ibid., 393. 9 Ashot Hovhannisyan, Nalbandyane ev nra zhamanake, vol. 2 (Yerevan, Armenia: Haypethrat,

1956), 207. a n | Disintegr

10 Ibid., 208. ty

11 Ibid., 210. Az a

66 artmargins 1:1 “study the class struggle in the course of this or that revolution.” or that of this course the in struggle class the “study to need the not must mask term this that claims move, Hovhannisyan imperialism and nationalism. imperialism both against people working front of the international united for the speak to him andenables conflicts national and ethnic from advocating him keeps This level. global on a interests class of in terms significance move, its sees adialectical in Hovhannisyan, struggle, national/political be victorious. be alist bourgeoisie?”alist imperi the or proletariat revolutionary the rebellion, that from benefits of Or, aprogressive it is or who arebellion regressive class? proletariat, of the struggle liberation general of the From of point view politics? the world play in rebellion role that does objective “What is, here, he writes, us concern Whatshould worldfor the revolution proletariat. of the of significance its terms in struggle liberation national the heas sees nationalism ethnic into not fall does Hovhannisyan constitution, ethnic ethnic aberration.” ethnic to “assimilation—national- process leading tion” adeterritorialized into “nation forma “common to the contrast turned people,” bourgeoisie the in that claims rhetoric, somewhat reactionary in Hovhannisyan, Indeed, of people’s struggles. liberation aspect ethnic/national the defending while nationalism into not to fall Bolsheviks the allowed antagonisms movement class by shaped is liberation national any that assumption content. cratic all-demo apositive and for urge uniqueness nationalist unacceptable an into dissected dialectically is people oppressed of the nationalism from the striving for national exceptionality.” national for striving the from it separating sharply while defend, content we unconditionally that content, it this and is all-democratic an is there nation oppressed of an nationalism bourgeois every “In quote from Lenin: another with trates he illus which struggle, class and struggle liberation national of the interconnectedness of the core the ofis Hovhannisyan’s understanding 17 16 15 14 13 12 This kind of sophisticated dialectical approach based on the on the approach based dialectical of sophisticated kind This Ibid., 210–11. Ibid., 212. Ibid., 208. Cited inibid.,213. Cited inibid.,213. Ibid., 213. 12 But, again following Lenin and in yet another dialectical dialectical another yet in and Lenin following But, again 16 15 By insisting on the ethnic/national integrity of the of the integrity ethnic/national on the Byinsisting Standing for the integrity of the people’s of the national/ integrity for the Standing 17 In short, it is this acute dialectic that that dialectic acute it this is short, In 14 It is as if the bourgeois bourgeois the It if as is 13 This This - - - - prevents Hovhannisyan from falling into the kind of reaction that his rhetoric and proposals sometimes seem to resemble. Kojoyan’s David implies a similar danger because of its over- whelming ethno-folkloric character. Indeed, the same dialectics of ethnic/national specificity and world communism inspire Kojoyan’s watercolor. The localizing folkloric characteristics and generalizing architectonic features of the work are dialectically intertwined. Being a careful depiction of the Armenian people’s agonistic struggle against foreign invaders in its local circumstances, it culminates in the figure of David in whose image this struggle is absolutized as a cosmic law of dialectics. David’s image historically grounds the Bolshevik project of Armenian nation formation as the apotheosis of the long liberation struggles of the Armenian common people, itself a step toward world communism. This is the point where ethno-traditionalism and revolutionary internationalism go hand in hand. This dialectic encompasses the Soviet Republic of Armenia itself: an ethnic/national communist country that came to replace the short-lived Democratic Republic of Armenia (1918–20) that was ruled by the nationalist party Dashnaktsutyun. Accordingly, the national art of Soviet Armenia had to be constructed on the same dialectical relationship between ethnic belonging and class struggle. However stylized and conventional, it had to remain realistic and represent deferent aspects of the process of ter- ritorialized nation formation and its history. Understandably, cultural policies were part of this process for which Hovhannisyan was respon- sible. This, first of all, meant the creation of an institutional infrastruc- ture that would make the cultural life of the country possible. True to the Leninist idea of national consolidation, Armenian Bolsheviks invited many fellow traveler intellectuals to contribute to this process.18 Among these intellectuals was perhaps the architect of what is now conceived as the Armenian national style of painting, Martiros Saryan. A figurative painter whose creative roots were in Russian Impressionism and Symbolism, Saryan saw painting as

a practice of visually revealing the tight and optimistic connection ting Progress between humans and nature. When he came back to Armenia from Russia, Saryan was entrusted by Hovhannisyan, an old friend of his, to organize cultural institutions: a n | Disintegr

18 “Fellow traveler” was Leon Trotsky’s term to describe the non-Bolshevik intellectuals sympa- ty

thizing with the revolution. Az a

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Martiros Saryan. Armenia, 1923. Oil on canvas, 138 ∞ 103 cm. National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan. 19 epic process of becoming. The culmination of this was his painting painting his was of this culmination The processepic of becoming. the in “fatherland” territorial new of the image the painting, in scape land national of the image the constructing in engaged became and work administrative left gradually Saryan Armenia, of Soviet scape “Narkompros” was theabbreviationforPeople’s Commissariat ofEnlightenment. Martiros Saryan,Izmoeizhizni (Moscow: Izobrazitel’noe iskusstwo, 1985),214–15. Narkompros. ficult periodofinitialworkIwasappointedadviserinart affairs at creative association(Union)ofpaintersorganized. .Inthedif Monuments. Thefineartcollegealsohadtobeestablished andthe Ethnography andtheCommitteeforProtectionofAncient institutions: theMuseums ofArcheology, Visual Arts,History and He entrustedmewiththeorganizationofanumbercultural After laying the institutional foundations for the cultural land cultural for the foundations institutional the laying After 19 - - - Armenia of 1923. This is a “humanized,” anthropomorphic landscape: it shows the path of the Armenian people through history as a geologi- cal movement. Saryan visually territorializes Armenia. Stylized female and male figures in indigenous clothing perform Armenian ethnic dance on the roof of a rustic house deeply embedded in the surround- ing landscape. They are part and parcel of this landscape. Moreover, the zigzag-like arrangement of the figures encapsulates the structure that animates the whole work: the trees, roads, hillsides that constitute the deep canyon also cross one another in a zigzag movement all the way up as if representing the troublesome but progressive march of the Armenian people through history as a tectonic zigzag. This strategy of representing history through nature constitutes the artistic act of the construction of the territorial homeland as an aesthetic entity. The high cliffs that sandwich the canyon loom not only over the heads of the figures but also over the viewer. Both are engulfed by the mighty mountain slopes and the tectonic zigzags of Armenia and its people. But this is by no means a claustrophobic experience. Just the opposite—sunny and friendly, the work opens itself up like a stage curtain inviting the viewer in. Here the dancing figures on the roof are again suggestive, as they encapsulate the compositional effect of the whole picture: the home as a stage. Saryan’s strategy of naturalizing history implies the same dan- gerous move that we witnessed in Hovhannisyan, a move that verges on essentializing national/ethnic belonging. The attachment of the Armenian common people to their natural surroundings is so tightly emphasized by Saryan that the landscape itself becomes Armenian. This is done through the very form he develops: the use of warm and local colors (with different hues of yellows dominating), a sketchy manner of applying the paint, and a stylized representation of figures. This came to stand for a specifically Armenian style of painting, a constellation of modernist, folkloric, and realistic elements. This “national form” leaves almost no room for what came to be known as “socialist content.”

Both Saryan and Kojoyan were criticized by two opposing parties ting Progress of younger artists whose central artistic concern was the process of Soviet modernization. On the one hand were the avant-garde proletarian artists who saw art in strictly utilitarian terms.20 Art for them had a n | Disintegr

20 These were the constructivist proletarian architects and graphic designers Karo Halabyan, ty

Mikael Mazmanyan, and Gevorg Kochar. Az a

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Front page of the first and the only issue of the journal Standard published by Yeghishe Charents, Karo Halabyan, and Mikael Mazmanyan, 1924. Museum of Art and Literature of Armenia after Eghishe Charents. Halabyan as “neo-Armenian style.” “neo-Armenian as Halabyan Kojoyan) and architects (e.g., Alexandr Tamanyan) dubbed by Karo and (e.g., Saryan older of of generation an painters stylizations loric 23 22 21 ideology.”ness of class pure on the content, based in and social form, in innovative to be Armenian visual arts. visual Armenian development of Soviet- the in role positive of older the artists edged acknowl of members AKhRR the but especially destructive, at times supported Revolutionary Realism. Revolutionary supported who of painters association Soviet largest Russia), the Revolutionary of of Artists (Association of AKhRR branch Armenian of the attitude AKhRR MikaelArutchyan, “NkarichHakob Kojoyan,”Ashkhatank5(1927):19–20. See thecritiqueof“romanticism” inKojoyan’s workbefore1923 bythethen-memberof Karo Halabyan, “OroboteOPRAArmenii,”Sovetskayaarkhitektura 1–2(1931):67. 1–2. Yeghishe Charents, KaroHalabyan, andMikaelMazmanyan, “Standartikurse,”Standard1:

21 This strategy was defined against the folk against defined was strategy This 23 22 Both of these critiques were sharp, were sharp, critiques of these Both On the other hand was the critical critical the was hand other the On - - - Among the latter was a female sculptor, Aytsemik Urartu, Hovhannisyan’s lifelong partner. She saluted the aesthetic agenda of the “neo-Armenian style,” but similar to her colleagues, she imbued it with realism and directed it toward the representation of different aspects of the modernization of Soviet Armenia.24 With an equally strong folkloric flavor, Urartu’s realism was focused on local national subjects. In her work the living and working men and women who shape the new society and culture of Soviet Armenia constitute an unbroken chain with the figures from Armenian history and mythology. Soviet modernity appears in a specifically local, ethno-national perspective. In this sense it encapsulates Hovhannisyan’s National Communism in its insistence on the local and ethnic determinants of a nation’s struggle for communism. This was the line Socialist Realism of the 1930s had to follow, forcing all the artists, including Saryan, to accordingly redefine their practice. In 1932, when Socialist Realism was instituted as a doctrine, Mikael Arutchyan, in a programmatic text, acknowledged Saryan’s merits, but criticized him for formalism in which the “depiction of humans is carried out not from a revolutionary but an ethnographic point of view.”25 This critique of Saryan’s “ethnographic formalism,” which was correct in many ways, was used by Saryan’s Stalinist critics especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Instead of producing art that is “national in form, socialist in content,” Saryan was accused of producing art that is “national in form, bourgeois in content.”26

Nonetheless, the Bolsheviks, who eagerly agreed with this estimation, ting Progress (detail), Urartu. Monument for Hovhannes Tumanyan Aytsemik 1935–38. Unrealized. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Armenia.

24 See her defense of Tamanyan against proletarian architects in Aytsemik Urartu, “Hazvagyut marde,” in Alexandr Tamanyan, ed. Levon Zoryan (Yerevan, Armenia: HSSR GA hratarakchutyun, 1960), 217–18. 25 Mikael Arutchyan, “Kerparveste Khorhrdayin Hayastanum,” in Hoktember-noyember taregirk

(Yerevan, Armenia: Pethrat, 1932), 192. a n | Disintegr 26 Tretia sessia. Voprosi teorii i kritiki sovetskogo izobrozitel’nogo iskusstva (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ty

academii xudozhestv SSSR, 1949), 111. Az a

72 artmargins 1:1 Ideologically, the nationalism of Khrushchev’s Thaw was constituted constituted was Thaw of Khrushchev’s nationalism Ideologically, the century. twentieth of the beginning the and nineteenth end of the the took place at that awakening spiritual golden of national age tragic the of were dreaming identity. They national Armenian oftion amodern construc historical the of subverting Bolsheviks accused nationalists anti-Soviet the contrast, In legitimacy. its lost had fact in which Leninism, done reclaiming was by Understandably, this nationalism. and classism dialectic: Leninist of poles the detached two from the themselves complex endeavor of distancing ahighly in were engaged turn, their in old Bolsheviks, The Bolsheviks. of the project political the by destroyed saw was what they back claimed nationalists the that being difference the of revival, politics the in were engaged Both dissidents. nationalist anti-Soviet of return moreout much influential, it but as turns no less dramatic, the paralleled himself, Hovhannisyan nationalism. post-Stalinist and Communism National returns: tic antagonis emergence of the by two constituted as seen be therefore, can Thaw, The second discourse. aspace emergence foropened of the this simultaneously and Communism National Lenin’s revived Stalinization of de- policies Khrushchev’s antagonisms. of class stripped identity ethnic/national on the based second was the while party, the and class the around itself constructed chauvinism, by Russian animated first, The unity.” “national homogenized that projects rigid were non-dialectical Both collapse. this embody that discourses interconnected structurally two as seen be can Thaw of Khrushchev’s nationalism post-Stalinist the and Stalinism collapsed. belonging ethnic/national and belonging class between relationship dialectical sophisticated the Stalinism, With The Antagonistic ReturnsofKhushchev’sThaw to Siberia. exiled 1937. was in were liquidated Hovhannisyan Armenia of Soviet intellectuals leaders and political Bolshevik the all Almost nation. of the enemies thus and were simply considered “nationalists” national communists a result,Leninist homogenizing As Sovietization. and subversion process of centralized of the intentional an view this however, Stalinism, must Sovietization cherished. be their considered process of the and people oppressed of an awareness ethnic/national the between relationship dialectical fragile the communists, national the and For Lenin content people’s oppressed of nationalism. the bourgeois all-democratic the to reveal move art foundSaryan’s adialectical in The dramatic return of the exiled old Bolsheviks, including including old Bolsheviks, exiled of the return dramatic The - - by the revival of all sorts of pre-Soviet nationalisms (liberal, ethnic, racial, mystic, etc.), intertwined with romantic and individualist sen- sibilities and reinforced by the trauma of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. This was a heterogeneous anti-Soviet front urging to reconnect Armenia with European modernity, something they saw aborted by the Bolsheviks. Two apparently opposing factors shaped this anti- Soviet discourse: nationalism and Europeanism. Running counter to Bolshevik internationalism, this anti-Soviet discourse may be described as Soviet-Armenian National Modernism that at times indeed became Nationalist Modernism.27 When back from exile, Hovhannisyan published two major historical studies that aimed to justify the moment when the Armenian people linked their political liberation to Russia and, through regional alliances with the neighboring oppressed peoples, to the cause of the liberation of the working people of the world.28 He thus grounded the Sovietization of Armenia as the only justifiable and historically necessary culmination of the Armenians’ centuries-old struggle for liberation. The aesthetic agenda of this position was realism based on Marxian dialectics and Lenin’s theory of reflection.29 Parallel to this, Saryan’s legacy was being rehabilitated after its Stalinist critique.30 In this context a series of illuminating dialogues started to unfold between Saryan and a younger National Modernist art historian and critic, Wilhelm Matevosyan. These dialogues give us an insight into the terms of Saryan’s rehabilitation. At one point in their conversation, Matevosyan lashed out at the Bolshevik leanings of Armenian poet Yeghishe Charents, a friend of Saryan’s killed in 1937:

How could he not understand, or did he understand too late, the destructive-tragic role the Bolsheviks . . . and Lenin personally, in a very short historical period, played in the life of his homeland and his people by their theory and practical actions rapidly pushing

27 The term “Nationalist Modernism” was introduced by the Italian historian Emilio Gentile ting Progress to describe the early-twentieth-century Italian modernist intelligentsia’s conviction that the industrial revolution and massification of society should be accompanied by the revolution of the spirit, a “religion of the nation” capable of shaping a “new Italian.” See Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 202.

28 See notes 4, 9. a n | Disintegr

29 Hovhannisyan, Nalbandyane ev nra zhamanake, 2: 415–58. ty

30 “Traditsii i novatorstvo,” Iskusstvo 2 (1956): 22. Az a

74 artmargins 1:1 Marxism, is enough to wipe out the cause of education.” cause out the to wipe enough is Marxism, ideology, mere for educational prepare rootor of one. even the . The qualification historical] [art such provide cannot country .of this ogy ideol educational the and system educational “Yet the lamented, Matevosyan Modernism. of National double structure founding the formed art, of component ethno-national the of valorization the with questions.” artistic to look had for “authentically that scholarship historical of art atype advocated Stalinism and Bolshevism, ferences tsarism, among dif about the much not care did that resoluteSuch anti-Bolshevism artist’s “creative I.” artist’s the through processed art of modern language the in uniqueness national whose work visualized apainter was Saryan For Matevosyan, style. painterly his in manifested as people whole Armenian the of the address and to embody claiming of art Saryan’s aspect ethno-national Modernism. of National discourse to the crucial is people, the inside antagonisms class to the eye ablind turns their strengths and weaknesses.” strengths their all with Armenians of the all himself within carried He organically stratum. social or that not he represent did this being view, asocial as awhole: as people embrace and my “In people the of his interests class above be the was) should Charents thought he indeed (which artist true the to Saryan, According lesson: nota negative tothem. repeat order in to learn of Charents writings Bolshevik-inspired the studying of importance on the tone approach and insisted and his in obstinacy of Matevosyan He merely accused of sincere defense formalism. his with and of Marxism Matevosyan’s critique overt with agreed Saryan 35 34 33 32 31

or theCommunisttype,tellhimanythingatall? Armenia andArmenians? forward theRussianempire’s age-oldblackpoliticsinrelationto As a true National Modernist, Matevosyan saw the classless classless saw the Matevosyan Modernist, National atrue As Ibid., 96. Ibid., 104. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 100. Wilhelm Matevosyan, ZruytsnerSaryanihet(Yerevan, Armenia: SargisKhachents,2002),98. Generally speaking,didRussian chauvinism,beitofthetsarist 32 This urge for “authentically artistic questions,” coupled artistic for urge “authentically This 35 Saryan was seen as an Armenian counterpart to to counterpart Armenian an as seen was Saryan 34 This anti-Marxist perspective, which which perspective, anti-Marxist This 31 33 Interestingly, - - Matisse, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Pollock, and other modernists, even though Saryan himself did not regard these artists as serious painters.36 Matevosyan’s understanding of artistic modernism was shaped by a complex network of texts. Yet Matevosyan’s reading of this body of texts was motivated by one urge: to debunk Soviet principles of realism in art. This urge led Matevosyan and other National Modernists to endorse a kind of neo-Kantian aesthetics that saw art as an autono- mous sphere of creative visual knowledge. Besides his intense involve- ment with German and other philosophical idealisms, Matevosyan’s art theory was animated by Heinrich Wölfflin’s formalism as well as Lionello Venturi’s individualism.37 Among Euro-American modernists, authors such as John Rewald, Alfred H. Barr Jr., Herbert Read, and Nello Ponente were of significant importance for Matevosyan. It is telling that Ponente, Read, and Barr explicitly saw modernist art from a neo-Kantian perspective, not to mention the fact that Wölfflin and the entirety of Western academic art history owed much to Kant.38 Moreover, Matevosyan’s strong emphasis on the national character of art was very much in tune with the ethno-national constants that animate Wölfflin’s neo-Kantian formalism.39 However, it is crucial to take note of the fact that it was in Russia where the discourse of National Modernism first spoke of itself. Here it aimed at overcoming the legacy of Stalinist Socialist Realism by revealing the modernist and national roots of early-twentieth-century Russian art. In this sense Russian National Modernism was heir to pre-Soviet Russian Impressionism and Symbolism and was heav- ily informed by Russian Orientalism. The specificity of Russian Orientalism lay in the conviction that Russia had true access to the authentic “East,” as opposed to the mere “orientalism” of the West. The Caucasus and Armenia were crucial for this bid. Back in 1913, Maximilian Voloshin, an influential figure of Russian Symbolism, read Saryan’s early work in exactly these terms: ting Progress

36 Ibid., 95–96. 37 For the importance of Wölfflin and Venturi for Matevosyan, see respectively his Hakob Kojoyan (Yerevan, Armenia: Sargis Khachents, 2003), 18–19, and “Hakob Kojoyani 1921– 1922tt. grafikakan erkere,” Lraber hasarakakan gitutyunneri 6 (1967): 73. 38 Mark A. Cheetham, Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001). a n | Disintegr 39 Lisa Deam, “Flemish versus Netherlandish: A Discourse of Nationalism,” Renaissance ty

Quarterly 51, no. 1 (1998): 27. Az a

76 artmargins 1:1 ful yet grounded yet ful truth now able was equally homeland, its to provide of his image ized ideal yet atruthful of producing instead Saryan, Kamensky, Alexandr historian art Modernist National Russian view, the proponents of this to oneleading work. According of the his in change astylistic in resulted which homeland, lost his able was to regain Saryan Armenia, of Sovietization of the because element: additional an with revived, subject. ethnographic anon-Russian as Saryan defined atension that Orientalism, Russian shaped that Orientalism, Western in axis East/West to the opposed as East, and North between tension It this is East. sunny of the cold dreams and in Russia lives form a visual as appears homeland the of truth The form. amodernist with national the links assumption This means. visual purely by East Orientalist non- authentic, the picture able was to truthfully Saryan homeland, lost to his of ason” attached “sensibility who remains to this Owing standing of Armenia and Armenian artists in general: in artists Armenian and of Armenia standing under Kamensky’s informed that Orientalism to Russian addition Soviet the was This employed Saryan. by style more painterly sound new, of adefense the it was fact, in Realism; Socialist post-Stalinist the for relevant still content was that of Realist kind of the a valorization 41 40 ness oftheimage, .notitsidealization. drenched inthesun,andwhatwasdeartohimtruthful- Moscow duringthewinter, dreamingexcitedlyofanEasternstreet ists. Thereisno“literature” init. .Onecanfeelhimsitting (коллекционерство there isnorubberneckinggazeofthetraveler, nocollectionism romanticism isalongingforhomeland.Thatwhyinhisart to northerncities.His art originatesinthesensibilityofason.His country, passedthroughtheEuropeanschool[ofart],transported ist. . He himselfisthesonof theEastwhoiscastawayfromhis Even thoughSaryan’s artreflectstheEast,heisnotanoriental- During Khrushchev’s Thaw (1956–64) this view of Saryan was was of Saryan view this (1956–64) Thaw Khrushchev’s During 1979), 14–16,35–36. Alexandr Kamensky, Etyudiokhudoznikakh Armenii(Yerevan, Armenia:Sovetakangrogh, Maximilian Voloshin, “Martiros Saryan,”Apollon 9(1913):9. generated by the sensibility of an Armenian artist who artist Armenian of an sensibility the by generated image. 41 ) ofexoticraritiesthatcharacterizesoriental- On the surface, Kamensky’s view looked like looked like view Kamensky’s surface, the On 40 - - - For some time after my visit, the sense of a peaceful, serene idyll did not leave me, as if I found myself in the land of eternal happi- ness. Only gradually did I become acquainted with other facets of Armenian nature, which is generally restrained and even severe; with the dramatic events of its people’s centuries-old history and with different aspects of its modern life. Yet the very first conviction of mine that Armenia is a beauti- ful, kind land, and its artists have a magical gift for feeling happi- ness and beauty of life, and for narrating this with amazing power in the language of modern plasticity; this conviction has remained with me forever, becoming stronger with every passing year.42

Aware of the dangers of Orientalism, Kamensky nonetheless continued to romanticize Armenia as a land of optimistic beauty whose artists, primarily by virtue of being Armenian, are able to articulate their homeland as an aesthetic sensibility in what Kamensky called “the language of modern plasticity.” These also applied to the National Modernist artists and critics who emerged during the Thaw. Many of them were graduates of the Leningrad Academy of Fine Arts and considered Kamensky their mentor. Among these figures was the influential Armenian art critic Henrik Igityan. Fully in line with Voloshin’s and Kamensky’s approach, Igityan had this to say about Minas Avetisyan, a major artist of his generation and a friend of his:

A year ago I had a chance to be present at a graduation ceremony of the Leningrad Academy of Fine Arts where students were defending their diploma works. Among many such works Minas Aveti- syan’s painting The Road to Mountains stood out: the painting told the story of road construction works in our Republic. It seemed as if a piece of sunny Armenia had been moved to foggy and rainy Leningrad.43

Avetisyan’s work gained its importance when positioned in the same “cold-Russia-sunny-Armenia” axis so pivotal for the Russian ting Progress Orientalism underpinning National Modernism. Avetisyan was now legitimized as a crucial heir to Saryan and his “neo-Armenian style”: a n | Disintegr

42 Ibid., 3. ty

43 Henrik Igityan, “Varvrun nerkapnaki nkariche,” Sovetakan Hayastan 12 (1961): 19. Az a

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Minas Avetisyan. Djadjour, 1960. Oil on canvas, 75 ∞ 100 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Yerevan. 45 44 theme.” of the interpretation and language the foremost through and first expressed is new The modern. extremely are canvases his Minas, by chosen motifs traditional the “Despite matter: subject not form, expressive an through primarily country” “sun-drenched of a construction visual the was at stake of Saryan, case the in As headline “The Most Important Thing Is Contemporaneity,” criticized Is Contemporaneity,” criticized Thing Most Important “The headline Iskusstvo journal, art Union’s official main Soviet the in contemporaneity. and editorial 1960 In an to nationality interests class and from party Realism of Socialist principles Stalinist the repositioned that of de-Stalinization policies cultural Khrushchev’s to owedmuch strategy anti-Bolshevik this Interestingly, old nation. for form an amodern propagating and elaborating in engaged was Modernism National of awork implications of art, sociopolitical and class-related the all away with Doing connotations. modernist and ist, national individualist, with form artistic an fills Modernism National Ibid., 4. Henrik Igityan,“Arvest vorin havatumes,”Grakan Tert 7(August 7,1964):4. express hismoodbeinginspiredbyit. country? . Insteadofcopyingnature,theartistshouldbeableto this feelinginpainting,howtocreateanimageofasun-drenched “hot,” “sultry,” “sunny.” Nodoubtthisisright, buthowtoexpress When talkingaboutournature,peopleoften usetheepithets 44 (Art), under the telling telling the under (Art), 45

- modernism for depriving art of its “national uniqueness.”46 To be contemporary and at the same time nationally unique was the maxim of cultural policies of the Thaw. But the “contemporaneity” here referred to the subject matter of the works reflecting the processes of indus- trialization and urbanization of Soviet society. National Modernism was based on the same principles of contemporaneity and nationality, with one crucial difference: contemporaneity was seen by National Modernism to manifest itself in form, and not in content. Interestingly, in his texts from the early 1960s, Igityan deliberately discussed Avetisyan in such a way that the artist appeared to be in line with the reformed principles of Socialist Realism of the Thaw. The peak year for the Soviet Union’s opening itself up to international exchange with the West was 1959. In that year both Igityan and Avetisyan were graduate students in Leningrad. As part of the US-USSR cultural exchange agreement, the American National Exhibition was opened in Moscow, attended by both of them. As Marilyn S. Kushner has shown, the exhibition was among other things a tool of cultural diplomacy against the Soviet regime: “[T]he United States was selling its lifestyle and its philosophy of government to a people who lived under a totalitarian regime, intending to project an image of a free and peace-loving America in which citizens lived in comfort with all modern conveniences.”47 The exhibition included a large art section that featured works by some of the American Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral and Mark Rothko’s Old Gold over White. Avetisyan is said to have been especially impressed by Pollock and his dripping technique.48 The section also featured Arshile Gorky’s Water of the Flowery Mill. Perhaps this was the first time that this generation of critics and artists had a chance to discover Gorky’s art in the original, and this art was to become crucial for their agenda of National Modernism. To them Gorky was primarily a genocide-survivor Armenian who, on the basis of his childhood traumas, developed a painterly language that became foundational for

the history of artistic Modernism of the mid-twentieth century. ting Progress Parallel to the American National Exhibition, American Modernism was promoted through the Russian-language journal

46 “Sovremennost—glavnoe!” Iskusstvo 9 (1960): 5.

47 Marilyn S. Kushner, “Exhibiting Art at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: a n | Disintegr Domestic Politics and Cultural Diplomacy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 1 (2002): 7. ty

48 My conversation with Narek Avetisyan, Yerevan, Armenia, May 10, 2005. Az a

80 artmargins 1:1 entire Soviet culture.” the but also culture, not of jewel only Armenian the is undoubtedly who Saryan Martiros with the meeting was significant especially that fact Ido not the hide artists. local to meet Armenia, in to be occasion to happy have an very “Iam studio: to Saryan’s taken also was Barr ing but also “organizing meetings with the public.” the with meetings “organizing but also ing sightsee guests foreign of not taking only policy new of the evidence as presented officially was Yerevan.and Yerevan, In lecture Barr’s Tbilisi in lecture his repeated Barr Russia, in lecturing ence. After audi the in were Academy also of Leningrad students Armenian the article in this series, titled “Painting from Gauguin to Pollock.” from Gauguin “Painting titled series, this in article ing it “A as ing Art.” of Modern Mecca York, New in (MoMA) present Art of Modern Museum on the articles Amerika. it was specifically aimed at local “art workers.” “art at aimed local specifically it was leaflet invitation to the according and Houseplace of at Architects, the on chairs and spilling over corridors.” into spilling and on chairs standing persons with crowded ahall in morning next the repeated to be had Hermitage, of the staff numerous the by “attended only Thompson’s abstract film NY,Thompson’s film abstract NY. and Francis on Pollock afilm him took with also Barr 35-mm slides, on works of art showing Besides Leningrad. in as Moscow well as of forms. abstraction gradual a process of the as art of modern history the presenting vigorously while of MoMA, sity diver stylistic the harboring as formalism evolutionary his he posited one of practice.” form to promote than rather culture of American diversity the emphasize to specifically works, more figurative conventional, including styles, of abroad array amongst placed were usually they Rather isolation. in shown experimentation of “examples modernist were these time at no Expressionists, Abstract other and works of Gorky,the Pollock, 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 In June 1959 Barr was invited to give a lecture about MoMA in about in MoMA alecture to give invited JuneIn 1959was Barr Sovetakan Arvest6(1972):17. Ibid., fund709,list 3, case74. National Archiveof Armenia, fund709,list1,case163,p.7. Ibid., 55. (Winter 1978):55. Elizabeth Jones,“A NoteonBarr’s Contribution totheScholarshipofSovietArt,”October7 Alfred G.Barr, “ZhivopisotGogenadoPolloka,” Amerika 61(1961):25–35. Mike O’Mahony, “Juvenile DelinquencyandArtinAmerika ,” ArtontheLine1,no.1(2004):12. See forexample“Mekka sovremennogoiskusstva,” Amerika44(1960):56–61. In the summer of 1959 summer Amerika the In 50 56 In 1961 Barr himself published an important important an published himself 1961 In Barr The local audience was so enthusiastic regard so enthusiastic audience was local The 49 52 In Leningrad, Barr’s lectures, lectures, Barr’s Leningrad, In Although such articles discussed discussed articles such Although started to publish a series of aseries to publish started 53 It is highly probable that It highly is 55 Apart from lecturing, from lecturing, Apart 54 The lecture took lecture The 51 Here Here - - - - - ing Barr’s visit that “[t]hanks to a spirited translator, he brought down the house and was offered a midnight banquet. However, just before leaving the Soviet Union, he was summoned to Moscow for a meeting with cultural officials and severely admonished for the tone of his lectures, in an effort to counteract the eager interest they had aroused.”57 It is clear that Barr was personally influential in promoting the ideas of High Modernism in Armenia and fueling the modernist inclinations and national sentiments of local artists and critics.

Art as Life Practice In 1972, when the Thaw was over and the Soviet Union entered into a much more rigid period of conservative governance, the Museum of Modern Art opened in Yerevan. Initiated by Igityan, it was the first museum of its kind in the entire Soviet Union. The museum, which opened just after Saryan’s death, had benefited from his authority and practical help, while Minas Avetisyan was seen as its “creative heart.”58 According to Kamensky, the museum was to provide the evolutionary perspective of the Armenian national style in its modern reincarna- tions.59 While Saryan was seen as representing the origin of Armenian national style, the work of Armenian avant-garde artist Yervand Kochar was thought to epitomize the Armenian way of addressing modernity.60 Together they constituted the two foundational poles of the museum, and therefore of Soviet-Armenian National Modernism. Within its agenda to present the internal evolution of style whose logical development was the gradual abstraction of forms,61 the museum was strikingly similar to Barr’s MoMA, only transformed to serve the modernist reconstruction of the history of the local national style. This appears to be all the more the case given the fact that Igityan’s vision of the museum was shaped in the Cold War cultural context of the Thaw, at the crossroads of American High Modernism and Soviet-Russian Orientalism. However, an important characteristic of Soviet-Armenian National Modernism was the denial of its own

sociohistorical conditions. Herein lay one of its defining peculiarities: ting Progress a somewhat obstinate attachment to its own position that was seen

57 Jones, “Note on Barr’s Contribution,” 55. 58 Henrik Igityan, Museum (Yerevan, Armenia: Tigran Mets, 1998), 11; Kamensky, Etyudi, 209.

59 Kamensky, Etyudi, 203. a n | Disintegr

60 Ibid., 203–4. ty

61 Igityan, Museum, 7. Az a

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Yervand Kochar. The Tragedy of War (detail), 1962. Oil on canvas, 290 ∞ 210 cm. Ervand Kochar Museum, Yerevan. “the blood of Armenian artistic thinking” artistic of blood Armenian “the possible to create a museum—it’d be a bazaar, not to say abrothel.” abazaar, be possible toamuseum—it’d create it to wouldn’t say, director,” be used bearded “I’m otherwise adictator, “intense, an Igityan, wrote, Whitney R. Craig York reporter New Times 66 65 64 63 62 art,” of Armenian lyricism masculine “the as such phrases Modernism, of National criticism art the in Indeed, chauvinist. emphatically at and some points traditionalist itself Modernism, High American undergirded that form of artistic understanding supranational the and formalism more from the sophisticated Modernism National rhetoric nativist Soviet-Armenian differentiated people. This Armenian of soil” the and “blood of the depths from the stemming directly as This position enjoyed the support of the highest ranks of the Armenian Armenian of the ranks highest of the support enjoyed position the This 62 Cited inCraig R.Whitney, “That’s Art—in Armenia,”NewYork Times, June 13,1978,C1. Kamensky, Etyudi,204. Igityan, “Arvest vorinhavatumes,”4. Kamensky, Etyudi,205. Igityan, “Arvest vorinhavatumes,”4. “an instinctive sense of form,” sense “an instinctive 63 “the breath of the soil,” of the breath “the 65 were common terms. As As were common terms. 64 and and 66

Communist Party, which, according to Igityan himself, made the founding of the museum possible.67 Culturally, the museum marked the point of institutionalization of National Modernist discourse. Politically, it symbolized the final break by local communists with Leninist politics. Thus, cultural Nationalist Modernism was supported by political Modernist Nationalism. Not sur- prisingly, the same officials who supported the founding of the museum banned the publication of Hovhannisyan’s last book on the history of Armenian political parties in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.68 Hovhannisyan advocated the Bolshevik idea of a united class struggle of different nationalities and criticized the Armenian national parties’ politics of national isolationism with its ideal of a modern nation-state.69 It came out that in Brezhnevian Armenia the Bolshevik perspective on Armenian modern history ran counter to the Communist Party’s official positions. Meanwhile, in a typical neo-Stalinist move, Hovhannisyan was awarded the Order of Lenin, the highest order bestowed by the Soviet Union. Therefore the Stagnation Period (1964–82) that followed the Thaw signified the final breakdown of the Bolshevik tradition, which was ironically rendered an empty sign of dominant discourse (well manifested in bestowing Hovhannisyan an order). Given that its emergence was structurally connected with the rebirth of National Communism during the Thaw, National Modernism still contained a distorted residue of Bolshevism, namely, the critical importance it attached to the ethno- national component of art.70 What National Modernism became during the Stagnation Period is well captured in the following statement by one of the forerunners of abstract art in Soviet Armenia, a follower of Saryan’s and a member of the Dashnaktsutyun party, Seyran Khatlamajyan: “Contemporary in form, Armenian in spirit.”71 An obvious twist on the

67 Cited in ibid., C1; Igityan, Museum, 11. 68 See Petros H. Hovhannisyan’s “Introduction” to Ashot Hovhannisyan, Patmagitakan usum- nasirutyunner (Edjmiadzin, Armenia: Mayr Ator S. Edjmiadzni hratarakchutyun, 2007), 20. 69 Ashot Hovhannisyan, “Verhishumner Hayastani sovetatsman naxapatmutyunic,” Leninyan ting Progress ughiov 11 (1970): 35–43. 70 See for example Kamensky’s revisionist attempt to justify his National Modernism with reference to Lenin’s idea of the democratic component of the national cultures of the oppressed people. Kamensky, Etyudi, 24. Yet another sign of this may be the fact that Hovhannisyan had a high opinion of the poetry of Paruyr Sevak, who may be considered

as the forerunner of Armenian National Modernism. See Aram Ghanalanyan, “Ashot a n | Disintegr

Hovhannisyan (drvagner husherits),” Garoun 4 (1978): 44. ty 71 Garoun 11 (1976): 51. Az a

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Seyran Khatlamajyan. April, 1987. Oil on canvas, 100 ∞ 100 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Yerevan. the physical barriers between color, line and object, and achieving their their achieving and color, object, and line between barriers physical the “breaking implied this terms, In formal (self-sacrifice). self-destruction of devotional astrategy through artist and art between boundary the down Tadevosyan’s breaks that conceptionfor of art understanding crucial is This painting. to the and artist to the both read referring be as can of a workart, of qualifications aesthetic the wherepoint it overrides self-sacrifice, even in failings.” in even self-sacrifice, achieves whose “painting those are “chosen painters” Tadevosyan, the to According transformation. of to apoint radical them he developed but and formalism, National individualism Modernism, Armenian Tadevosyan. Vigen artist, abstract of ayounger figure the in seen be can This Armenia. in practices art contemporary for emerging of point departure the also was Period Stagnation the of crisis societal the by exacerbated style” sion of a“neo-Armenian ver radicalized This spirit. and of only form content consists that without art an implied statement the Realism, of Socialist motto 72 Tadevosyan started with two principles that underlie Soviet- underlie that principles two with Tadevosyan started Ibid., 45. 72 The term “self-sacrifice,” elevated to a to elevated “self-sacrifice,” term The - inner perception.”73 In a spiritualist move that echoes the antimaterial- ism of Rudolf Steiner and Kandinsky, whom he admired and followed, Tadevosyan assumed an opposition between physicality and “inner 74 perception.” However, Tadevosyan seems to have gone a step further, (1980), Blue and Red since for him breaking with the physicality for the sake of achieving “inner perception” was not only a formal task of the painter, but the very process of subjectivization of an artist. This self-sacrificial process turns the artist into a work of art. The artist, thus, is not the producer of 2010. Photographer unknown. “art,” be it modern, national, or whatever else, but the one who embod- his to next Tadevosyan Vigen ies and enacts it, and not through some theatrical performance, but by his or her very own life. For Tadevosyan the being itself was art practice, while art was life practice. For years Tadevosyan did not produce a single painting, and in the last period of his life he almost entirely abandoned painting. Tadevosyan’s “life practice” that turned art into a performative gesture of liberatory subjectivization was to become a critical artistic strategy for contemporary art in Armenia to this day.75 Tadevosyan’s “life practice” was underlined by an intense and absorbing self-reflection that turned this practice into an intellectual-spiritual strategy that ran counter both to the doctrinaire rationalism of Soviet realism and to the Romantic-emotional underpinnings of National Modernism.76 In this light Tadevosyan can be seen as an artist who brought about a philosophical turn in Armenian art. Here Hegel, whom Tadevosyan considered the greatest philosopher of all, proved to be the most useful.77 In fact, one can see Tadevosyan’s “life practice” as a spiritual strategy in a Hegelian sense. Defining Spirit as something whose nature is to know

73 Ibid., 46. 74 See Sixten Ringbom, “Art in ‘The Epoch of the Great Spiritual’: Occult Elements in the Early Theory of Abstract Painting,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966): 386–418, esp. 394–97. ting Progress 75 For a discussion of contemporary art practices in Armenia, see my “On the Ruins of Soviet Past: Religion, Nationalism and Artistic Avant-Gardes in Armenia,” Springerin 14, no. 4: 38–41; and “Towards a Dilemmatic Archive: Historicizing Contemporary Art in Armenia,” in Cultural Memory: Reformations of the Past in the Present, and the Present in the Past, ed. Malcolm Miles and Vardan Azatyan (Plymouth: University of Plymouth Press), 60–73.

76 Tadevosyan’s creative rationalism was positively acknowledged in the 1970s; see Henrik a n | Disintegr

Edoyan, “Luyse ireri ev ktavneri mijev,” Garoun 8 (1978): 63–66. ty

77 My conversation with Tadevosyan, Yerevan, Armenia, August 31, 2010. Az a

86 artmargins 1:1 79 78 translation of which Tadevosyan was a forerunner in the visual arts of of arts visual the in aforerunner Tadevosyan was of which translation art.” visual in of phenomena not are accidental kinds these values, national our of part becoming are Rilke and Mann Thomas sphere where Pasternak, atmo to apsychological Tadevosyan.In peculiar apparently something characteristics, spiritual and of whole intellectual the system to possess means “Today original to appear this: contextualized and grasped acutely has Zakaryan Lilit historian Art or Armenians. by Armenia produced in art the including art, for every in Tadevosyan searched that uniqueness, rendered ethno-national modernly content, not and the spiritual universal and artist an of experience self-sacrificial tragic the of significance spiritual universal the was Gorky in WhatTadevosyan valued text-work. last his he devoted to Gorky,whom and whom he admired Arshile he understood that lines these It along life. is of his decades last the during practice” “artistic main Society by Man Suicided Van The Gogh: book of Artaud’s translation the in and Artaud, love of Antonin tional devo almost his in culminated Heidegger. This Martin and Nietzsche Friedrich all of Tadevosyan meantfirst which by night,” of the “thinkers to as used refer to he to adherence figures his in manifested also was This art. of character a negative-subversive he justified which by stance itual intellectual-spir his surrounded that aura somewhat grim the explains also fact This self-sacrifice. existential it an as through Tadevosyan lived stance, practice.” However, to Hegel’s“life contrast in speculative Tadevosyan’s animated in-itself-ness entire self-confrontational Such frontation: self-con it aprocess of as creative Hegel concept, understood own its 79 Lilit Zakaryan, “Sepakan pordzisahmannerum,”Garoun 8(1987):64. G. W. F.Hegel, PhenomenologyofSpirit(Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press,1977),263–64. the in-itselfofeveryself-consciousness expressedinthought. starting-point fortheactionofall,anditistheirpurposegoal, self-identical, andabidingessence,istheunmovedsolidground thing alientoit. .Spirit,beingthesubstanceanduniversal, a worldwhichhascompletelylostthemeaningforselfofsome- or ratherwhichitopposestoitselfasanobjective,actualworld,but [Spirit] istheselfofactualconsciousnesstowhichitstandsopposed, Zakaryan rightly saw Tadevosyan in a larger process of cultural process of cultural saw alarger Tadevosyan in rightly Zakaryan painting that Gorky was able to achieve. It is first of all this this all of It able first is was to achieve. Gorky that painting , which was perhaps Tadevosyan’s perhaps was , which 78 - - - - Soviet Armenia. This is not to say that Armenian art before Tadevosyan was not shaped by cultural translations; Tadevosyan only turned art practice into an articulated practice of translation. These five contributions made by Tadevosyan—art as life practice, the artist as thinker, his advocacy for art’s negative-subversive poten- tial, the questioning of art’s attachment to ethno-national context, and his view of art as a translation practice—made him an outsider in the mainstream discourse of Armenian fine art. At the same time it earned him affection and influence among the generations of contemporary artists to come. Tadevosyan represented the end of National Modernism, on the one hand, and the beginning of contemporary art practices, on the other. In him the first did not finish and the second did not fully start. With his performative spiritualism that did away not only with art’s class implications but also with any ethno-national determinants, Tadevosyan marked the final disintegration of the last distorted remnants of Bolshevik discourse in the art of Soviet Armenia. It is not surprising that for all his sophisticated understanding of artistic practice, Tadevosyan was perhaps the most fervent and sturdy of anti-Bol- sheviks.80 Born out of a crisis and locked into a double antagonism (the resistance to National Modernism and the opposition to Bolshevism), contemporary art practices in Armenia tend to deny their negative yet formative relations with the enemy (Bolshevism) of their enemy (National Modernism). Therefore, the “Modernism” criticized by truly insightful Bolshevik art theorists such as Mikhail Lifshits still func- tions like a wicked mirror that reflects many crucial aspects of Soviet and post-Soviet discourses of modern and contemporary art.81 This relationship is what renders Bolshevism the undead caput mortuum of contemporary art in ex-Soviet countries. ting Progress

80 His understanding of Marxism was so childishly simplistic that he once declared Freud to be Marxist, meaning Freud’s materialism. My conversation with Tadevosyan, Yerevan, Armenia, August 31, 2010. 81 See especially his “Modernizm kak yavlenie sovremennoi burzhuaznoi ideologii” (1969),

in Iskusstvo i sovremenni mir (Moscow: Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1978), 87–114. This also a n | Disintegr

explains the recent enthusiasm for Lifshits in parts of the Russian contemporary art world. ty

See, for example, http://gutov.ru/. Az a

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