Arshile Gorky Research Articles

Аршил Горки и художники русской эмиграции в США в 1920-е – 1930-е годы

The relevance of the topic of this article is explained by the under-researched artistic and historical-cultural context; it helps visualize history. The life and work of Arshile Gorky (1901–1944) are considered during the peak of his creativity, after moving to the USA, in the 1920s and 1930s. Notably, Gorky becomes part of the community of Russian artist emigrants. The article analyzes the artist’s personality and his strong connection with Russian culture, as well as the American art scene. It examines the influence on his work of Russian teachers and contemporaries living at that time in the United States, among them Nikolai Fechin, David Burliuk, and Ivan Dombrowski (John Graham). The article also analyzes Arshile Gorky’s role in the formation and development of American abstract expressionism, especially his contribution to the creation of creative methods and artistic approaches that influenced many American artists among his contemporaries and followers. Several methods were used in the research, including cultural-historical and social-historical methods. It is quite evident that Arshile Gorky embodied in his work the spirit of search and experiment: his works were distinguished by boldness, plastic expressiveness, deep emotionality, and technical innovation.

Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music by Brian Morton

Reviewed by: Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music by Brian Morton Cameron Pyke Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music. By Brian Morton. London: Haus Publishing, 2021. [220 p. ISBN 978-1-913368-43-2. £9.99] The appearance of the first paperback edition of this 2006 volume is to be welcomed. Morton presents a clear overview of the composer's life while navigating and synthesising the key contours of the considerable scholarly literature. He draws upon a broad cultural understanding: there are perceptive references, for example, to Olivier Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg as well as to Arshile Gorky and Boris Pasternak. While the author acknowledges that he is not a musicologist, a significant number of key works are discussed in terms of their music, as well as underlying meaning: this is particularly the case with the symphonies, which Morton identifies as 'the form in which his essence as a composer would be expressed' (p. 40), acknowledging that some works are 'capacious enough to sustain any number of contradictory interpretations' (p. 46). Morton's discussions of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Symphony No. 8 are particularly sensitive. Reporting the composer's excitement at the film version of Lady Macbeth (released in 1966–1967 as Katerina Ismailova), Morton comments that it was 'as if his entire musical history were somehow embedded in that great work's narrative of cultural paucity, betrayal, defiance, violence, and imprisonment' (p. 202). In contrast, Symphony No. 8 is viewed as 'a meditation on the whole idea of symphonism … a return to the modernist experiment of the equally unloved Fourth Symphony' (p. 124). Both arguments could be extended: the sympathetically drawn Katerina re-emerges in the tragic figure of Loreley in Symphony No. 14, while the composer's wider tendency to subvert symphonic form, as in the 'problematic' Symphony No. 6 (p. 105) culminates in Symphony No. 15, in the final coda of which, as the late Alexander Ivashkin argued, symphonic syntax is itself eroded. Morton himself notes 'a steadily deepening absorption in sound itself' in some of the late period works (p. 189). Morton correctly identifies the key characteristics of the composer's genius: his ability to write music, often under considerable psychological pressure, which could operate on different levels; his sardonic exploitation, drawn from Gustav Mahler and Nikolai Gogol, of the full potential of juxtaposition; his profound sense of social and ethical duty; and his stature 'among the very greatest exponents – and perhaps the last greatest exponent – of what we still uneasily call classical music' (p. 24). In presenting 'a straightforward narrative of the composer's life and the evolution of his music' (p. 22) and emphasising 'a basic consistency of attitude' (p. 14), more could have been made of what Edison Denisov called the 'arch' between the early and late works: for example, the 'unexpected revival' (Denisov) of percussion in the coda of the Cello Concerto No. 2 and subsequently. Indeed, the discussion of the 'late period' works is more cursory than that of the earlier and middle-period scores. Moreover, while Morton earlier acknowledges the 'intermingling of major works in his mind with smaller-scale works' (p. 150), it is in these final works that the cross-referencing becomes a significant stylistic feature in itself, as if the composer increasingly sought to create a personal narrative on his entire creative output, towards much of which he seems to have felt a profound dissatisfaction. I would not, then, agree that the works of the last decade are 'less obviously encrypted' (p. 199), particularly when one considers the chamber music, and notwithstanding the composer's partial return to word setting. I would also have valued acknowledgement of the influence of Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov (on Symphony No. 4) and of Mieczysław Weinberg (on the later string quartets). [End Page 347] The book is written in an accessible style, though on occasion sensationalist phrasing sits uneasily with its erudition and seriousness of purpose, and some will also find references to Shostakovich's numerology more convincing than others. The lack of footnotes and an index likewise do not do justice to the range and clarity of the book's cultural reference. Shostakovich's visit...

Arshile Gorky’s Philosophical Thoughts in his Letters

Arshile Gorky or Vostanik-Manuk Adoian (1904-1948) is one of the innovators of American painting of the 20th century, whose name has been included in many encyclopedias of science and art. Gorky is considered as the founder of surrealist expressionism in world painting. The Armenian painter had a difficult fate. When he was four years old, his father, Sedrak Adoian, left his native village of Khorgom, went to the United States and settled in the Armenianpopulated town of Watertown near Boston. Before leaving Khorgom, he presents his son Vostanik with a pair of big peasant slippers, which can later be seen in Gorky’s surrealistic paintings. With his younger sister Vardush and his beloved mother Shushanik Gorky walked for many days on foot with the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, first to the center of Armenian Christianity in Etchmiadzin, then to Yerevan, where he stayed until he was 16 years old. Subsequnetly, by the invitation of his relatives, he travelled with great privations with his sister, first arrived in New York and then settled in Watertown. Gorky was involved in painting from an early age, then received his painting education in New York and earned a great reputation; he was considered one of the 4000 most famous people in the world, from the past to the present. In the Dictionary of Biography to People Past and Present, published in London in 1976, we read about Arshile Gorky: “Gorky, Arshile (1904-48), American painter, b. Armenia. Influenced by Picasso, Mirò; leader of Abstract Expressionists, used color to achieve emotional effect” [1, p. 215].

Arshile Gorky’s life in USA. The hard way of search of identity

The life and formation of the great Armenian artist Arshile Gorky in the USA and the search for his own identity is examined in the traditions of the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism, based on the analysis of the rich documentary material left by the artist himself and his contemporaries. The key to understanding the essence of the artist's identity is his statements about himself as a "child of Ararat", an artist who carries in himself the values of the images and colors of the lost homeland (Van, Khorgom). An analysis of the history of the search for identity shows that despite the socio-cultural problems caused by racist policies and the reality of early 20th century American society, Arshile Gorky remained faithful to his purpose and mission: in his paintings he was able to preserve the image of the lost homeland. He used his brush to recreate the image of Western Armenia. He did not change his national identity, and remaining faithful to the inherited principles nurtured himself "mighty as a giant, but tender at heart, like a child". With his art, Arshile Gorky was able to achieve the freedom he strived for.

Liberating the Artist or Controlling the Narrative? A Review of Arshile Gorky 1904–1948, edited by Gabriella Belli and Edith Devaney

Liberating the Artist or Controlling the Narrative? A Review of Arshile Gorky 1904–1948, edited by Gabriella Belli and Edith Devaney

The Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project Reconsidered

The Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP), which operated from 1935 to 1943, was a program created by Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), WPA director Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), and FAP director Holger Cahill (1887–1960) to employ American artists throughout the Great Depression. This article reexamines the FAP by looking more closely at Cahill and defining his populist approach to American art, which made the FAP not only a massive work-relief program for artists but also a major public education initiative. Cahill’s democratizing ideas on art were sparked by his experiences as an Icelandic immigrant and hobo in the Midwest and informed by the theories of Progressive era philosophers including John Dewey and John Cotton Dana. The FAP, in addition to employing prominent artists such as Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, sponsored local and national exhibitions and established thousands of local art centers, including the renowned Harlem Community Art Center. These accomplishments laid the groundwork for the emergence of Expressionism and success of the post-war American art market.

A Journey to Armenia: Visual Reminders of Genocide and Oppression

A Journey to Armenia: Visual Reminders of Genocide and Oppression

Abstract Landscape in Richard Diebenkorn’s Works

This research is devoted to the study of creative work of the leading representative of San Francisco school of abstract expressionism Richard Diebenkorn (1922—1993). Despite the wide popularity of the artist in the United States, the name of Richard Diebenkorn occurs in Russian art studies episodically, which makes the topic of research relevant. Diebenkorn’s creative path could be divided into three periods: mastering the experience of abstract expressionism (1948—1955), turning to figurative practice (1955—1967) and the “mature period”, associated with the cycle of works “Ocean Park” (1967—1988). The formation of his pictorial language was influenced, at different times, by Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Edward Hopper. Diebenkorn’s creative work is quite diverse and represented by painting, graphics, collages, sculptural objects. This research is focused on the artist’s painting. San Francisco abstract expressionism was less influenced by European modernism and was more focused on the connection with the surrounding nature. Richard Diebenkorn became famous, first of all, as a master of “abstract landscape”. This article studies the abstractionist’s theme of landscape, which was getting various refractions and interpretations at each stage of his artistic biography. In Diebenkorn’s creative works, the landscape changes through the evolution of the artist’s pictorial language. Basing on the experience of previous periods, the artist developed his unique abstract pictorial language in the “Ocean Park”, by means of which he managed to render the light and air environment.

Endel Kõksi abstraktsetest maalidest

Endel Kõksi abstraktsetest maalidest

Pursued by Demons: Creativity and Suicide

The dominant themes of modern art are gloom, depression, torment, loneliness, self-doubt, hypersensitivity, loss of identity and estrangement from the community. Avant-garde painters have always been antagonistic to conventional society. They defied traditional aesthetic norms, yet expected people to buy works they neither understood nor admired. Public hostility and contempt were often blamed for their tragic destinies. But this analysis of the lives of Jules Pascin, Arshile Gorky, Nicolas de Staël and Mark Rothko reveals that these four artists committed suicide not only to escape from pain but also to make a deliberate sacrifice for art.

Telling a traumatic story through Art: Arshile Gorky’s ‘The Artist and his Mother’

For more than a decade, through re-working a composition based on a sepia photograph, Arshile Gorky (ca. 1904–1948) tried to give form and represent that which by definition defies forms and shatters one’s capacity for representation. Having witnessed the systematic ethnic cleansing of his people as a child, Gorky began a ‘journey’ in his attempt to comprehend his traumatic ordeal through Art. In 1926, with the safety of a constructed name and life, the artist started working on ‘The Artist and his Mother’ series. Focusing on the two versions of Gorky’s early painting and using relevant aspects of psychoanalytic theory, the paper explores his work through a psychoanalytic lens. Psychoanalytic theories on extreme traumatisation along with psychoanalytic notions of temporality will be utilised in an attempt to follow the artist’s struggle to re-create and rework aspects of his traumatic history.

Trauma, bereavement and the creative process: Arshile Gorky's The Artist and His Mother

SummaryThe artist Arshile Gorky played a central role in the development of Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s. Born in Armenia, his early figurative works recall a childhood of persecution by Ottoman Turks, a period during which he suffered a number of significant losses. The painting The Artist and His Mother (c. 1926–1936) is based on a photograph showing the 7-year-old Gorky with his mother, 7 years before she starved to death during the Armenian Genocide. This article explores the early experiences that haunt this painting and the difficulties Gorky struggled with during his adult life as an immigrant to the USA – factors that contribute to an understanding of his suicide in 1948.

The liver in painting: a case of abstraction

The liver in painting: a case of abstraction

American vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning, and their circle, 1927-1942

The enigmatic and charismatic John Graham (1886-1961) was an important influence on his fellow New York artists in the 1920s through 1940s. Graham and his circle, which included Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, helped redefine ideas of what painting and sculpture could be. They, along with others in Graham's orbit, such as Jackson Pollock and David Smith, played a critical role in developing and defining American modernism. American Vanguards showcases about eighty-seven works of art from this vital period that demonstrate the interconnections, common sources, and shared stimuli among the members of Graham's circle. Three essays by notable scholars investigate the complex relationships among Graham and his New York artist-colleagues during this formative period. William C. Agee positions Graham and his circle within the movement of New Classicism, which drew upon classical and Renaissance examples in an attempt to overcome the devastation of World War I. Irving Sandler focuses on the social, political, and intellectual dynamics among Davis, Gorky, Graham, and de Kooning in the mid-1930s. Karen Wilkin discusses the circumstances that brought these artists together, their common commitment to modernism, and the fascinating artistic cross-fertilization evident in their work. This critical reconsideration sheds new light on the New York School, Abstract Expressionism, and the vitality of American modernism between the two world wars.

Achilles the Bitter: Gorky and the Genocide

What trace do genocide and exile from the homeland leave on an artist's aesthetic language? Given the previous century's history, it would seem a fundamental question, especially for an artist such as Arshile Gorky, a survivor of the first modern genocide of 1915. How did this experience – too deep to be expunged by any subsequent biographical events – shape Gorky's art? Should we look to iconography (to the allusive symbolic content of Gorky's shapes) or to history (a devotion to remembered forms and to re-established ties with an interrupted past)? Do such forms play a compensatory, restorative function, a search for a lost wholeness and unity, as suggested by more than one of the authors reviewed here?1 Does trauma reveal its trace in an aesthetic preference for a certain palette with its emotive associations, as Peter Balakian argued eloquently in one of the first articles (1996) to deal with the impact of the Armenian genocide on Gorky?2 Or is it located in the search for a substitute form of authority in the wake of one's own tragically aborted patrimony? Gorky's legendary apprenticeship to older artists would suggest as much.

Exile, Trauma and Arshile Gorky

The Art BookVolume 17, Issue 3 p. 3-4 Exile, Trauma and Arshile Gorky VICTORIA KELLER, VICTORIA KELLER Writer, New YorkSearch for more papers by this author VICTORIA KELLER, VICTORIA KELLER Writer, New YorkSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 August 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8357.2010.01107.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume17, Issue3August 2010Pages 3-4 RelatedInformation

Alan C. Braddock. Review of "Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective" by Michael R. Taylor.

Alan C. Braddock. Review of "Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective" by Michael R. Taylor.

Cezanne and beyond

The famous proclamation that Cezanne 'is the father of us all' has been attributed to both Matisse and Picasso, and his influence has extended to a great diversity of artists thereafter. In this monumental book, a team of distinguished scholars offers the most comprehensive view to date on Cezanne's vital role in shaping European and American art throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.More than forty paintings and ten works on paper by Cezanne - many of his best-known and most admired - are juxtaposed throughout the catalogue with approximately 120 works by a range of modern and contemporary artists who found in Cezanne a central inspiration. They include Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Charles Demuth, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Fernand Leger, Brice Marden, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi, Liubov Popova, and Jeff Wall, as well as Picasso, Matisse, Johns, and Kelly. The essays offer insights into the 'conversation' between Cezanne and each of these other artists, who stand on a par with his greatness. Among its many features, this book contains a conceptual overview by Richard Shiff and an illustrated chronology.

Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan (review)

Reviewed by: Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan Noreen Golfman (bio) Monique Tschofen and Jennifer Burwell, editors. Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. vii, 417. $29.95 Discussing his interest in Armenian artist Arshile Gorky, Atom Egoyan observes that he is ‘drawn to . . . works that are more open to interpretation.’ Egoyan holds the title of most intellectual feature filmmaker in English Canada. His work, from the seventies through to his 2005 feature, Where the Truth Lies, has always courted the ambiguity of complexity. At last, therefore, we have a collection of essays dedicated to the openness of interpretive possibilities. Editors Monique Tschofen and Jennifer Burwell have ambitiously assembled what is in effect an encyclopedic volume about Egoyan, in part voiced by the man himself. This collection includes not only a range of scholarly essays on his most acclaimed, reviewed, and, no doubt, taught feature films but also several pieces on Egoyan’s contributions to other genres, such as opera and installations, as well as a filmography, a comprehensive bibliography, and several interviews with the auteur. With the subject of the collection still conveniently alive and [End Page 465] keen to comment on his work and influences, Image and Territory has the incremental effect of a conversation with an artist who is eager to know what everyone is saying about him, even while he often flirts with what one essayist smartly calls a ‘willful inaccessibility.’ Egoyan would likely be pleased with the seriousness with which the essayists confront his creative output, as well as with the reach of their scholarship. As open to interpretation as many of Egoyan’s works are, especially his feature films, what emerges in this collection is a solid set of keywords that form a valuable chain of meaning: alienation, technology, doubleness, substitution, immigration, memory, loss, exile, diaspora, identity, ethnicity, family, and incest. These nouns recur throughout the volume with varying degrees of emphasis, depending on the film or work in question, but ultimately they cohere to an understanding of the filmmaker as an artist preoccupied with representations of individual, social, and cultural dysfunction. Nothing less is to be expected from a man who repeatedly cites absurdist theatre and Beckett as his major influences. As familiar as these keywords are to anyone who follows Egoyan’s work, most of the essays selected for this volume offer refreshing perspectives on his complex narrative structures. The editors frame each of the major sections around dominant preoccupations. The first of these takes up the familiar theme of media technologies, as essay after essay explores Egoyan’s fascination with how we negotiate the world, often badly, through mediated images of it. William Beard’s reading of The Adjuster is an especially lucid commentary on this vexingly cold fish of a film, offering readers a firm grasp of its witty strategies, while fruitfully linking its thematics to Family Viewing and Speaking Parts. David L. Pike is provocative in questioning Egoyan’s complicity with the technologies he harnesses, inviting us to consider how the filmmaker can escape the ‘cold and unfeeling dissections of postmodern anomie’ without falling for the old traps of mainstream emotionalism. The second section of the collection focuses specifically on Egoyan’s relationship to his Armenian heritage, especially as played out in Next of Kin, Calendar, and Ararat. Contributors Lisa Siraganian and Nellie Hogikyan write persuasively on the centrality of Armenian identity and family loss respectively, while Batia Boe Stolar extends the specificity of ethnicity to a general consideration of immigrant or outsider experience in the context of the wasp dominant. The third section brings us up to ‘pathologies’ and ‘ontologies of the visual,’ inviting us to consider the family as a site of repressed and even complicit illicit desire, perversions, and voyeuristic impulses that, not surprisingly, do not serve us well. The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey, and Exotica implicitly comprise a trilogy of shared concerns, extending themes in earlier films to much darker places. [End Page 466] The essays on the feature films most of us teach and talk about are probably of most interest, but by including pieces on Egoyan’s experiments with music, opera, and art the editors open us...

The Politics of Abstraction: The Tenth Inter-American Conference Caracas, Venezuela, 1954

THE POLITICS OF ABSTRACTION: THE TENTH INTER-AMERICAN CONFERENCE CARACAS, VENEZUELA, 1954 Monica Boulton On March 1, 1954, Venezuela’s President General Marcos Pérez Jiménez gave a welcoming speech to the Western hemisphere’s government figures attending the Tenth Inter-American Conference, being hosted in Caracas, Venezuela. Sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS),1 the Conference sought to foster economic, political, and cultural relations among the countries of the hemisphere. Despite local and international criticism of the anti-democratic practices of the repressive military regime of Pérez Jiménez, the organizers of the Conference promoted a climate of freedom and democracy. They emphasized the precepts of the OAS Charter, which stressed the solidarity of the American nations based on democratic principles. The hosting nation offered a variety of cultural events for the purpose of entertaining the delegates. Among these activities were two exhibits in separate venues that showcased artistic developments: La Pintura en Venezuela organized by federally-funded Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (MBA) and Six American Painters presented by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).2 La Pintura en Venezuela offered a broad range of Venezuelan work that went from Pre-Columbian objects to contemporary abstract paintings, specifically geometric abstraction. The coordinators of this show presented abstraction as the culmination of a progressive development in Venezuela’s visual arts. Six American Painters, the U.S. artistic representation, consisted of one work each by six artists working in the style of Abstract Expressionism: William Baziotes, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.3 The presentation of Six American Painters in Caracas indicated the ascendancy and importance of abstract art in the United States. This interest in abstraction seemed to demonstrate a unified vision among United States and Venezuelan artists, U.S. foreign-policy makers, and the administration of Pérez Jiménez. What made abstraction so appealing to these various groups? I argue that despite the semblance of unity, each faction used abstract art to promote diverse and in some cases conflicting ideas and aims. This paper studies the means by which each group used abstract art to advocate cultural, political, economic, and ideological platforms during the Cold War period. The exhibition catalog of La Pintura en Venezuela culminated with the late 1940s and early 1950s geometric abstraction of Alejandro Otero, 83 SECOLAS Annals, Volume 52, 2008 Pascual Navarro, Oswaldo Vigas, Alirio Oramas, and Mateo Manaure.4 In these works, such as in Otero’s La Serie del Pote Azul (c. 1948), the absence of regional and representational forms as well as allegorical themes signaled the departure from Venezuela’s mainstream artistic tendencies, which focused on local landscape and historical episodes. Although the organizers of La Pintura en Venezuela intended to present abstraction as the new direction for Venezuelan art, only seven of the 132 works featured in the catalogue were non-representational. The small number of works in geometric abstraction indicated that history and landscape paintings were still favored by the cultural elite. In Otero’s La Serie del Pote Azul, a work from his Cafeteras (Coffeepots) series, the blue cooking pot referenced in the title was not discernible.5 It was transformed into planes of color fragmented by strong diagonal lines, and following Picasso’s Cubist grid, there was no distinction between forms and ground. Otero removed the visible form of the real object, as if revealing its inner structure. Otero asserted that in his Cafeteras, “There is a set organization, a structure, a series of forms that will result in a rhythmic idea. . . . But the process has not been a simple stylization. It is a comprehension. . . . It now exists in space. It is another concept. Intuitively, it is another situation.”6 In using abstraction, Otero was attempting to create a new reality that was autonomous and independent of the familiar world of mundane objects such as the blue cooking pot. Otero developed his Cafeteras in Paris after obtaining, in 1945, a travel grant from the Venezuelan Ministry of Education. Here he became a participant in the international art movement that went against tradition by rejecting naturalistic imitations of nature. In this period after the Second...