Arshile Gorky...

[koko]

Read about Arshile Gorky:

 

http://www.ndoylefineart.com/gorky.html

[Rubo]

Koko jan, we might of meet in LA ten years ego.You were doing these "monster" series of paitings.Anyway his name was Koko too.I am a fellow painter, Gegham K.'s friend (this might refreash your memory.

 

I was preparing to give a short presentation about Armenia to my son’s kindergarten class when I found this tale. At first I laughed then at closer look it became a sad social commentary. May be we are stubborn, how else to explain our infighting and the resistance to change.

 

Advice From a Poor Man

There once was and was not a farmer going to market, carrying grain on his donkey's back. Along the way he passed a thin and hungry-looking man on the side of the road. The young man stopped the farmer and said, "I couldn't help noticing the way that you have your donkey loaded down with grain. I see that you have two large sacks of grain hanging on one side of the donkey, and a large rock tied with rope on the other side of the donkey." "I always do it that way to balance the donkey," replied the farmer. "I'm sure that's so," replied the young man, "but you are weighing down the donkey unnecessarily! Why don't you divide the sacks so that you have one on each side? You can get rid of the rock and lighten the donkey's load." This made good sense to the farmer, who started to untie the rope. He said, "You're a smart young fellow, you must be rich!" "Not at all," said the young man. "I'm just a poor schoolteacher." The farmer stopped, looked the scrawny man over, and started to retie the ropes as they were before. He said, "Compared to you, I'm pretty well off, so I think I'll stick to doing things my way."

[Rubo]

I wanted to share few thoughts on Arshile Gorky

Let me give share a brief Bio in case you are not familiar

The painter Arshile Gorky (1895-1948) was born Vostanig Adolan in eastern Turkey. Raised in a poor Armenian farming family, Gorky's childhood was reportedly shaped by two disasters: the first being the massacres of 1896, during which his mother and father both lost their first spouses; the second was the genocide of 1915, that affected the entire Armenian population, and which claimed the life of Gorky's mother.

 

Arshile Gorky was the name the aspiring artist assumed after coming to the U.S. in 1920. He reportedly adopted it from his admiration of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, who at times, he boasted being a nephew of. Once settled with relatives in New England he enrolled in art classes. Not long after, one of his instructors arranged for Gorky to move to New York to work as an art instructor himself. In the 1930s he achieved his first public success - producing a large abstract mural painting for Newark Airport. In his artistic endeavors, CÈzanne and Picasso became his praised models. Other influences came from the surrealist painters and poets who came to New York as exiles from the war in Europe. Surrealism's aspect of automatism, the unconscious and the erotic, sent him onto a new path in which he newly asserted himself as a draftsman.

Tragically enough, the years in which his art was ascending to its greatest heights were also the darkest in his life. His marriage was disintegrating; he was operated on for colon cancer, and he lost many works in a studio fire. When he then discovered that his wife had cheated on him with another artist - the Chilean painter Matta who was an influence on his best work - the humiliation was too much to bear and he hanged himself.

 

What I wanted to talk about is how little his work has been understood By American critics and also European ones such as Andre Breton. Americans saw him as Abstract expressionist and the Europeans saw him as a surrealist. He was both and neither. He loathed the idea of subconscious automatic ideas of surrealism. He believed great Art always comes from thorough planning which he did. Nothing was accidental. He meticulously planned his paintings and executed like a renaissance painter. His paintings are still greatly misunderstood. The real content is his experience of the Genocide and subsequent death of his mother of starvation. His paintings do convey definite agonizing forms with a poetic stroke. The part that irritates me is when all this critics never bothered to look his background thus they misunderstood him. They often saw sexual interplay of forms whereas to my Armenian eyes they are tortured souls forever suspended in paint.

 

Regards to all

Ruben S.

[koko]

Hello Rubo,

 

My name is Karine and Iv never been to La, so i dont supposed we'v meet! I am sorry for the missunderstanding!

 

And thanks for the info about Arshile G.

/K

[Harut]

can somebody explain this to me?

[Rubo]

Dear Harut, parents of Arshile Gorky were previously married and both lost their spouses in 1896 massacres and later remarried.