Vostanik Adoyan

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Arshile Gorky - real name Vostanik Adoyan (1904-1948), considered one of the founders of abstract expressionism.

Born in a family of merchant in Horkome (territory of modern Turkey in the province of Van). In 1920, the artist's family immigrated to the United States to avoid the fate of 1.5 million Armenians who fell victim to genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

Gorki attended art school in Rhode Island in Providence, then (1926-1931) taught at New York, in art school and Central School of Arts.

In his stage name connected the name of "Arshile" (Armenian "Achilles") with the name "Hills" (in honor of Maxim Gorky).

Among his works - "artichoke leaf as an owl" (Museum of Modern Art, New York), "The liver as a cock's comb" (Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo), "How embroidered apron my mother unfolds in my life" (private collection, U.S., all work - 1944), "Engagement" (1947, Whitney Museum, New York)

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Gorki mastered abstract thinking, when applied directly to the image of nature. The medieval notion of nature as a repository of the universal ideal values - universals, echoed in abstract compositions Hills, created as a result of painstaking research.
Subtle but strong thread linked "hyperrealism" portraits of Gorky and his abstract compositions with the addition of surrealistic and expressionistic music. How to explain this connection? One can hardly give a definite answer, but we must not forget that the universe itself rests on the struggle between two mutually exclusive poles. Even in 1687 at a meeting of the French Academy, Charles Perrault threw down the gauntlet to the past, with absolutely modernist fervor saying that French art above the antique. In the 60 years of XX century began a new struggle, this time between modernism and postmodernism - at the same time she carried the eternal conflict between past and present. According to well-known writer, an expert on the Middle Ages Umberto Eco, in every period of history is its modernism and postmodernism, a German literary critic Erich Auerbach shared the literature in two directions: Homer and the Bible, which in relation to the art style similar to classic and modernist.

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Creativity Hills can be arranged at the point of discontinuity between modernism and classicism, without limiting the activities of the artist neither the one nor the other sphere. According to the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the mythological need of Western man is due to evolutionary worldview with mandatory concepts of beginning and end. Western man does not accept the idea of the way, where are equally important beginning and end, but there is no goal, he has no notion of an eternal cycle. These words can be confirmed by the merger of two styles in the works of Gorky and the importance of their mutual feeding.
Returning to the creation of abstract paintings by Arshile Gorky, one should note that they were born in the most difficult years for the artist, when he lost contact with dealers, and exhibited his works in the exhibition halls. These pre-war years Gorka said: passing through them, people can not remain intact, and heal their wounds.
Even in 1926, Gorky met with the avant-garde designer Frederick Kiesler, whose ideas influenced the formation of abstract thinking artist. Eden Hills reminded style Kiesler, but were more spontaneous and less abstract. Hills noted that abstract painting uses the same relationship between forms and numerical structure as the figurative. It can be divided into parts and analyzed in exactly the same as the fugue by Bach. Assimilation Arshile Gorky abstractions music demonstrates his approach to his art - the irrational, lyrical, spontaneous and at the same time in tune with the times. Since the cycle of paintings on Horgome 1938 in creativity Hills was approved by the concept of "nature-abstraction. Launched in the same year a series of "Gardens in Sochi" is an Horgen, Gorki simply replaced the incomprehensible to the public name. Series based on the memories of his native village - a theme churn-hnotsi, a sacred tree, decorated with scraps of cloth, fragments of stone, on which women were rubbing breast. The village formed pagan structures become an important universal and ontological significance for the artist, is gradually transformed into a sanctuary. This series of paintings for Gorki was associated with the following nouns - the heat, tenderness, juiciness, song, full of water trough. These "sacred" thoughts summarized in the form of geometric symbolic forms. Cycle "Khorgo" stood sculptural forms, with a thick layer of colorful, flowing, blending with each other lines. Theorists of art they see in these forms of motivation bird, leaf, eye, palette, see the figure of a woman, sexual organs, etc., interpreted in an abstract style. All forms thick line shows the contour, which seemed to cut them out from the background and makes it more expressive. In the foreground we see the delicate, nervous line, followed by the brush Hills until the end. This line carried the life-giving energy and made form organic - they, like the atoms of the body, constituted the life-giving elements of the picture. Here the background is merged with flowing contours of forms, making it as important as themselves obrazy.Po its organic characteristics of these forms are similar pictographic sites Miro and grafizmam "Masson. Although if you remember the reason for the creative technique of these two artists, assimilation seems doubtful. Miro and Masson were immersed in the surreal tradition and guided by the principle of automatism, when required unconsciously, without any intellectual or spiritual tension for a few minutes to create bioform. For Hills it was absurd - he created his organic abstract forms over the years of difficult experiences associated with the visible memories of the past.
In 1942, Gorky met directly with the "smeared" by nature in all its charm and clarity. He went to Connecticut, as guest of his friend, the artist Saul SCAR. Among the spacious fields and extensive gardens, he felt free physically and mentally. He was captivated by the local waterfalls, though all this beauty could not divert his thoughts away from the womb of their native village with her miraculously. He has created two original paintings by the same title, "Waterfall", which made special note of his work. Here he attained a silvery transparency, freshness impressionistic interpretation, flowing colors. This important experience Gorky used to create subsequent works, where the surface has become much more mobile, dynamic, panteistichnoy. Close contact with nature has given him a new cloth vitalistic charge. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "All poets believe that if you prick up his ears, lying in the grass or in a secluded grove, you can learn something about the things between heaven and earth." It seems that Gorki had completely otedinitsya of intense urban and cultural environment and to merge with the immaculate nature, which prompted him to major creative things.
The next event was a productive trip to Virginia, where the family usually rested his wife, Agnes Magruder. In the absence of his wife's relatives Hills was able to completely devote work to study the nature of especially intense and meticulous. He performed numerous similar to the botanical gardens Studies sketches, curly beans, flowering trees. In these sketches naturalistic approach has transformed the nature in a different environment, where to find the golden mean has a range of 'alchemy' experiments. Gorki very worried about what will not find it again in his work traces of the influence of other artists. At this time, calmed his wife - she believed he was free from influences. Certain elements can be linked with the works of Miro and the Chilean Surrealist Matta, but creative manner all three were quite different.
During the summer, Hills has created about a hundred sketches with colored wax crayons. The particles of nature he endowed humanity and heightened sensitivity. Here finally perfected his line, becoming tense, taut, elegant, she gathered all the track to the point and gives it a flexible structure. Highlighting this property, one of the scholars of Gorki William Seitz called him a painter, who had served their constructive arrangement "with accuracy up to the thickness of a hair."
Soon the atmosphere of America joined a new, fresh and unexpected element - scientists, doctors, writers and artists, to escape the iron claws of fascism. The father of Surrealism Andre Breton came to the U.S. in 1940, but was unable to join the new environment and even defiantly refused to learn English, communicating with all the French. He saw around him contemporary American art, believing that true art of the continent are doing Eskimos and Pacific Islanders. Those who later was to become the brightest figures of abstract expressionism, were engaged in a completely different craft (Barnett Newman), or created, based on a false understanding of abstract surrealism (Rothko, Pollock). Abstract Expressionism emerged in 1960, when the main driving force of association was a "new American cultural strategy. Gorki was not representative of this movement, but became one of the forerunners. He was able to create a new vnetsivilizatsionnoe, vnegeograficheskoe space, not connected with the cultural and political situation in any particular country. In American art, Gorky was a transitional link between the conservative official, national painting and abstract expressionism.
At a meeting with the Hills in 1944, Breton immediately found him inside consent. During dinner Hills likened artichoke owl head. Breton liked based on analogies thinking Hills, and he suggested the artist to give a picture of the name, based on the author's interpretation. In the preface to the exhibition catalog in the Julien Levy Gallery Breton wrote that Arshile Gorky - the first artist who discovered the secret of "eye-spring. He was able to correctly use the main function of the eye - a path and become a guiding light for various phenomena. Breton said that Gorky escaped from prison, thinking through analogies and calls his hybrids abstract forms - the end product compound contemplation of nature, childhood and other memories. In Breton Hills represents nature as a cryptogram, searching for a rhythm in her life.
Turning from the sketch, working simultaneously on several canvases, Gorky created his masterpieces: "The waters of the mill flower", "Annual spurge", "As an embroidered apron mother was revealed in my life," "Scent of apricots in the fields and others, where the fluid colorful layers combined with a clear grid lines, conveying both strength and vulnerability of memories in the flow of time. These lyrical works somewhat resembled an illuminated compositions Kandinsky, whose essay and abstract landscapes were familiar Gorki. Agnes says that her husband, Kandinsky became as important as Picasso. One of the first such work "Liver - a cock's comb." Its composition is based on the color "feathers", as he called them Gorki - they are separated form each other, representing a pause. This work is based on a sketch from nature, moved to the interior, a more isolated environment, where organic bioform identified with the sexual organs - their semantic interpretation of the role played by writers and critics surreal direction. Gorky wrote a short poem that can be associated with feelings which fill a canvas It includes associations related to children's memory, the fear of flight: "Cardinal Song", "liver" (both are characterized by red color), "aggressive heraldic branch, "saliva hungry man, whose face is painted white with chalk. Usually he did not like just to finish these paintings and work simultaneously on several canvases that reflect not only a single theme series, but all of his work - memory. Drawing from this fathomless source, he created a variety of images and compositions. In one of his interviews, Hills said about the peculiarities of his memory - they relate to the fact that in the age of five, he was forcibly separated from their village. The most important memories are the first years of life. It was then that he felt the aroma of bread, I saw the first red peony and the moon. Subsequent recollections were hieroglyphics.

  In the series "Unreachable", "Compile", "Betrothal" Gorki line becomes much more vibrant and sensitive. William Seitz wrote: "Gorki - passionate improviser can completely deny Hills, as contemplative drawer, or a slide as a rationalist and traditionalist." Due to tight flexible lines the artist was able to suppress the release of passionate memories in the form of flowing paint layer and the translucent form, expressing canvases dualistic struggle.
"Plow and song" - the cherished image of the motherland. The plow itself is not merely an object but a phenomenon associated with the earth, fertility, grain and integrity songs, where all this is sung. Hills said that his headstone should be a plow. It is no accident pictures in this series, as the work of "Agony" - Requiem artist. Troubles one after another hit on the heart can no longer resist. Initially, the fire in the studio, then rectal cancer, surgery, car accident with multiple injuries and, ultimately, cruel and logical end - suicide. All this taken together revealed in a blood-red Aegon, where there is no peace and can not breath.
In the biographical novel "Friedrich Nietzsche" Stefan Zweig wrote: "No one decided to join the circle of fate ... Throughout his life, he said, struggling and suffering in solitude ... This stay alone with myself, alone against himself - the most profound sense, the most sacred meal life tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche ...".
This could be a characteristic of the Hills, who said about himself colder and shorter: "Nineteen difficult years I have lived in America".

Author Anna GALSTYAN.

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More pictures!

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If there is an opportunity for someone to lay out more pictures will be very grateful.

[Allena]

"As an embroidered apron my mother is unfolding in my life." From the site Gagosian

[SergeiSK]

Little more work Arshila Gorki:

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Thank you very much!

[SergeiSK]

Just let go of the mind that Vozdanik Adoyan lived in Sochi! And that is the village near Sochi Loo. Remember his painting "The Battle of roosters in the Loo." Here's an interesting article from the newspaper "Our Sochi.

GORKIY ANGEL OF MIGRATORY.
Star and Death Vozdanika Adoyana

In 2006, at Christies auction for the painting "The Battle of roosters in the Loo" unknown judge laid out $ 5.7 million. In the constellation Lyra is the star of his name.
Gothic girlfriend gave me a poster. In the picture horned green angel tangled in the branches. She said: "Our people!" I have long thought about who is she? It turned out - about the artist.
Went to the city Art Museum - find out about the life of the painter. Still, 10 years, albeit with interruptions, albeit a century ago, he was our countryman. Looked at me, as Mr. Bean. "And about the early Picasso, you do not want to receive exclusive? This is almost the same ...
In Sochi - 9 am, in Seattle - well past midnight. Nevertheless, the response to an email arrives instantly, so even with the phone number. Ellina (Helen) Adoyan-Butcher - great-niece and biographer of the artist. Plain enough - it must be age 80 (book she wrote about him in 1959), and the voice - light as a feather. Online - interested. Accent - elusive.

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... - When I saw your message, just woke up! (Laughs). You are correct key words written to me they like Da Vinci Code!
- It's what?
- Gorky. Angel. Sochi.
     * * *
What we know about him? Little more than an encyclopedia.
Vozdanik Adoyan was born in 1904 - in the village Khorgo (Western Armenia), in the family priest. In 1915, fleeing from the Turkish massacre, the family flees to the mountain monastery of Echmiadzin. Wanderings begins in the Caucasus.
In craft tenements Sochi Vozdanik grinds bone combs for sale, works in bookbinding, then an assistant cutter shoes. This meeting is a landmark: a young man opens a world of colors and the fact that the shoe boxes can be perfect to paint! On unusual "designer" soon gossip Sochi fashionable women. Here he meets a first love, which later in the interview to say only the name - Anna, and that "her wealthy parents, of course, did not consider me a worthy man." Here he is known as Vozdanika-mad chicken suburb, who always wears a narrow shoe knife in the heel - because "we must be able to keep yourself high (194 cm during the growth is no choice!). Here he wrote his first paintings, mixing cheap blue dye with sand to catch the color of the tornado over the sea "...
In 1926, a year after immigrating to America, he has taught at the New York Academy of Art. Frescoes of the apostles Newark Airport. And immediately organized an exhibition "Twelve piglets gay" - for each of the 12 paintings standing tub with peach moonshine, which Vozdanik love in Sochi, and glasses did not stand. After that party some movie stars as a shy, wrote an eyewitness, "were loaded into cars wrapped in evening gowns. (Sorry, I swear, if the miraculous elixir recipe is lost forever!) Was married to Agnes Makgruder - daughter of Admiral U.S. Navy. He tried to drown her in a garden swimming pool ...
In June 1948, was in a car accident along with his impresario (he was driving). Severely injured his left - working! - Hand. A month later he hanged himself in a motel town Sherman.
In 2006, at Christies auction for the painting "The Battle of roosters in the Loo" unknown judge laid out $ 5.7 million. In the constellation Lyra is the star of his name.
      * * *
- Why he took the pseudonym Arshile Gorky?
- The name Arshile connected with the Armenian word "aysahar" - possessed, the damned. And with the popular hero of westerns - Archie Hahn, nicknamed "Big Gun". From proletarian writer, he certainly did not know.
- He really drew cartoons about Batman?
- Yes, to somehow survive in America. I made two thousand graphic works. It is difficult to call creativity. He called it "my screen Calvary. Could fooled around, for example, to write on ma-and-scarlet a button on pants in a Batman costume! For one sheet they paid him 70 cents. We have one copy of the comic strip, which Arshile Gorky had a hand, worth tens of thousands of dollars.
- The most valuable paintings because it was considered "Sochi period"?
- Yes, the experts valued higher than the U.S.. "Cherry plum and eight waterfalls," "River of Fire" - his early landscapes very uh ... cheerful. Then they came to grief. Then the pain. Changed colors - everything was dark, cold, with sharp angles. And he stopped to draw a winged figure on the back of the canvas. Previously, it was his autograph, a talisman. The frame of his latest paintings wrote "fly away, my dear" ...
- Is it true that he wanted to visit Russia, and even wrote to Stalin?
- He is very experienced events of the war. He collected money for the front to charity exhibitions. He was then supported by the leading artists of America - John Pollack, William Canning. But the Soviet leadership did not allow him even to come to Yerevan on his mother's grave.
     * * *
We talked a little more, and Ms. Butcher said: "What is in Sochi on the site of his hut?" I do not know what to say. We know (thanks to Alla Valentinovna Guseva from the museum of history of the city).
Former street Crafts - now part of sycamore avenue. Double-deck plank barracks ( "Chicken 'Village"), including one in which the artist filmed the angle from the window, were scattered at the site of the popular in the late XIX century baths Rudenko (caught the first flight into space!) To Mamontov descent (District Ex - cinema "Satellite"). They say that the reconstructed bridge miraculously preserved pair of age-old lime trees. Now here - fast food empire and the same trade. At faded cabinet grew ruffled elusive as fate, Batman ...
Prague before a dive, I saw a bronze behemoth with a mouth to belly. The sign read: "Presumably, this writer thought his Meyrink Golem. Presumably, it is clear? That is, may not Golem, and not here as well - went writer refreshment. But a swarm of tourists besieging the pub day and night, - reclamation works on the image of "cultural capital". A rather short history of Sochi permanently erased 10 years of life, recognized as a classic throughout the world. Good riddance. All we had these geniuses - like leaves in the wind.

(Vitaly TYUNNIKOV)

[Samvel]

On the testament of the artist's sister, Varduhi, 57 works Vostanik Adoyan transferred to perpetual storage Echmadzinskomu Holy See, the Armenian Apostolic Tserkvi. These paintings, until the completion
restoration, the building designed for
Museum A. Gorky in Echmidzine, located in New York, the Eastern Diocese of the AAC in the United States.
Hopefully soon, we shall see all these pictures in one exhibition.