Abstract
Here I return to a painting “A Mother and an Artist”by Arshile Gorky—a first-generation survivor of the Armenian genocide. I tell his life history and ask myself the question why this painting has such an emotional impact on my informants. Especially since his surname does not indicate he is an Armenian. (His surname does not end with “ian”.) So why the emotional impact? What does Arshile Gorky stand for or symbolize in the diasporic communities? Why does it has such an impact? The chapter explores both the meaning Armenians derive from the work of Gorky as well give a bird’s view on Gorky’s life.
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Notes
- 1.
Nouritza is one of only two informants in my book who gave me permission to use their first and last name. All other names in my research are pseudonyms. When I asked Nouritza during our interview if she wanted to be assigned another name, she looked at me with a vague smile. “How many Armenians do you know who have written a biography on Arshile Gorky?” she slyly answered. “I can hardly stay anonymous, regardless how well intentioned your question is.”
- 2.
Most Armenian surnames end with “-ian”, which means “daughter/son of father” but also refers to a place of origin or the father’s profession.
- 3.
The Armenianness in his art is however a point of discussion among art critics, art historians and biographers, like Auping (1995), Spender (2001) and more recently Herera (2003) who question the “Armenianness” in Arshile Gorky’s paintings. His style is considered too “modern” and too “European” and too “American”-influenced to be interpreted as “Armenian.” The argument is that he used various styles throughout his career; some of his paintings were abstract, others surreal and some cubist. As an anthropologist, I follow these discussions with great interest. First, it places “European” and “American” art outside an international and cultural continuum. Second, culture and “cultural influences” seem to be set in a fixed state. If we follow these discussions closely, European and American art seem to exist without influence from other schools or are only being influenced by Western schools. The term Western indicates an emphasis on the word “modern,” thus implying that non-Western cultural expressions are traditional. (This is also shown in the European and American centrism in international analyses.) By approaching culture as something that is fixed, the fluidity of culture and how non-Western art (if one considers this dichotomy) can be incorporated in Western art is neglected. These analyses indirectly imply that the Armenian style, whatever this is, is static, unchangeable and can be recognized by specific criteria. This approach underestimates the fluidity of cultural influences and specific themes—like frescoes, landscapes, cultural experiences—that are depicted in an abstract form. There is a greater argument to make here as well. Denying Arshile Gorky’s cultural heritage in his work is also denying the experiences that shaped him as an artist. As Balakian (1996) emphasises:
Can one imagine writing about the poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan without noting that he survived the Nazi’s extermination plan for the Jews? And that his parents were Holocaust victims? Would one write about Marc Chagall’s early work without delving into the climate of Anti-Semitism in Russia during the first decades of the century? Or about Picasso’s paintings of the ‘30’s without a consideration of what the Spanish Civil War meant to him? It should be equally unthinkable to write about Gorky without articulating the context and facts of the Armenian Genocide? (…) In an era before the Holocaust gave rise to a global discourse about genocide, Gorky sought to express what had happened to him, his family and his people. (ibid.: 60, 61)
Neglecting this dimension of Gorky’s work is therefore ignoring the historical and personal impact the Armenian genocide had on him. It is in a way extending the discourse of denial, even if unintended.
- 4.
On April 24 Armenians commemorate the genocide, since on that day in 1915 a large part of the Armenian elite was captured by the Ottoman rulers. This event is seen as the onset of the genocide.
- 5.
In her research on the current Armenian community on Cyprus, Pattie (1997) points out that the same feeling of risk still exists in the Armenian-Cyprian communities: “The Armenians still in Cyprus watch and wait. They are not detached bystanders, for they have developed a strong sense of being Cypriot as well as Armenian, but they feel just as strongly their position as neither Turkish nor Greek. … They say, resignedly, that the real Armenian story is that of moving and rebuilding.” (ibid.: 37—sic).
- 6.
I have spoken with a variety of Armenians in several settings before, during and after my research, but I am still surprised at how these subjects continuously blend together.
- 7.
There is a current debate between art historians about how many of these quotes are actually from Arshile Gorky. It is suspected that the letters in Karlen Mooradian’s (Arshile Gorky’s cousin) biography of Gorky were invented by the author. This would most likely have been politically motivated. Matossian (2001: xiii, xiv), the only person other than Mooradian who had access to the letters Gorky wrote to his sister, defends this theory. I have stayed away from this debate as the authenticity of the letters has never been proven. I defend my position from an anthropological point of view by stating that even if these remarks were not made by Gorky, they would have been made by his cousin. Either way, these comments reflect how the author (Gorky or Mooradian) thought about his Armenian identity and heritage.
- 8.
In the novel Aykesdane Ayrevoum E, by Kourken Mahari describes these events. The title is freely translated in “Aikesdan is on fire”.
- 9.
The word “genocide” is peculiar in this letter and strengthens the argument that the letters were fabricated. The word, even though first used in his book “Axis Rule of Occupied Europe” by Lemkin in 1944 and later in 1945 and 1946, in his publications, the word was not officially coined until 1948 during the Geneva Conventions. That this word is used in a letter of 1947 either implies that Gorky was aware of the word or that the letters are indeed fabricated. Before the word “genocide,” the Armenian massacres were known as the Armenian Catastrophe. The truth is, we do not know. I leave it here because it conceptualizes Gorky’s past, either through Mooradian or Gorky himself. It could be a shifting of the words that Mooradian made on purpose to emphasize what happened to the Armenians. See also footnote seven.
- 10.
The word “genocide” is derived from the Greek word “genos”—which means race/clan—and the Latin word “cide,” which is derived from the action “to kill” (Hinton 2002: 3).
- 11.
The name Maxim Gorky was in itself a pseudonym. Gorky means “bitter.” Arshile is Russian for Achilles. The name translated therefore means Achilles the Bitter (Balakian 1996: 63).
- 12.
Khachkars are Armenian stone crosses (sometimes also carved out of wood) and I was told by several artists that these are specifically Armenian. The cross is the symbol of Christ. The interwoven flower on top of it symbolizes eternity. The lines on the sides of the stone are interwoven and have neither beginning nor end; they represent the connection between humans and God. As another informant told me, the bow around the cross symbolizes God’s reciprocity. It represents the relationship of the earth with God and God with the earth. The stone cross shows this entire cycle.
- 13.
The first painting of this set can be found in the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, and the second painting in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In the first painting, the prominent colors are yellow and blue and the face of the mother is livelier. In the second painting, the color red is more prominent and the mother’s face seems like a death mask. I will come back to this in later chapters.
- 14.
During this period, Gorky made two other portraits: Self Portrait (ca. 1937) and Portrait of Master Bill (ca. 1937).
- 15.
This is a literal translation of the Armenian words “Eem seereliners” (Matossian 2001: 475).
- 16.
This is an issue Nouritza also brings up in her book. There she writes: “I recalled photographs of Armenians hanging from gallows in public squares with idle Turkish soldiers leaning on their rifles. Had Gorky punished himself for a dreadful crime?” (Matossian 2001: xii).
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Holslag, A. (2018). Introduction. In: The Transgenerational Consequences of the Armenian Genocide. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69260-9_1
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