Образ мужчины в искусстве Рудольфа Хачатряна The Portraits of Men in Rudolf Khachatrian's Works Տղամարդու կերպարը Ռուդոլֆ Խաչատրյանի ստեղծագործություններում

Translated from Armenian

THE PORTRAITS OF MEN IN RUDOLF KHACHATRIAN’S WORKS

Rudolf Khachatryan (born 4 March 1937 in Yerevan, died 15 August 2007 in Berlin) is one of those twentieth-century Armenian artists whose talent developed on the foundation of classical art and, naturally, thanks to his exceptional natural gift. Constant creative searching, meetings and contacts with celebrated Armenian artists helped to shape his aesthetic taste, to perfect his hand and to widen the scope of his searches. Khachatryan tried himself in both drawing and painting. Although painting occupies a considerable place in his art, by the master’s own admission drawing was closer to his heart.

At every successive stage of his work, even in each individual picture, one senses Khachatryan’s searching impulse. He is one of those artists who are bound to a person’s inner world by every fibre of feeling. Giving preference in portraiture to heroes who are strong individuals, he brought out a person’s self-sufficiency, originality and uniqueness. The artist has a gift for looking subtly into the spiritual world of the sitter, for studying a theme in depth and giving it form. It is no accident that at different times art historians have tried to draw parallels between the Armenian master and the artists of the Renaissance. Khachatryan stands out for the distinctive thinking and manner of expression of a man whose roots are bound to the past and who is at the same time entirely modern. His portraits and works in other genres reveal psychological, emotional and material combinations, hidden stores of symbolic and allegorical meaning.

A special place in Khachatryan’s artistic legacy belongs to his drawings on levkas. The distinctive technique, above all the white ground, gives the virtuoso drawings a tangible volume and a particular depth, so that the whole image leaves the impression of a painting. The heroes of the levkas works are familiar to us: handsome, charming individuals with a proud bearing. Here, too, the artist gives an artistic interpretation of nude models and strong-willed men. Unlike the drawings on paper, works in sepia or in other, “mixed” techniques now especially predominate, and charcoal is often used as well. The luminosity and durability of the ground make it possible to leave even very fine lines on it, which was impossible on paper. All this gives the works new breath and a special vibrancy. Mikhail Lazarev noted: “There had always been something monumental in Khachatryan’s graphic art; it is no accident that some have found in it a resemblance to Armenian memorial stones—khachkars. And, like those cross-stones, Khachatryan’s drawings never repeat one another”[1].

In both male and female nude sitters Rudolf Khachatryan sees the human being of all times, adhering in his notions of meaning and beauty to antiquity. Almost all his figures seem not to belong to our day: they are naked sons of Adam with expressive features and fine physiques, recalling ancient Greco-Roman art, or, on the contrary, people clad in sumptuous, somewhat “theatricalized” garments—heroes who in their essence still belong to the past, yet whose faces, gaze and bearing reflect the present. “These portraits of people—our contemporaries—dressed in costumes somewhat stylized after those of earlier times, combined a concrete rendering of outward features with an approach that seemed to view the sitter at a certain remove from our own time, through the prism of classical art”[2]. The artist bridged the ages in his own way: armed with the past but aimed at the future, as a master of the classical portrait.

In Rudolf Khachatryan’s portrait legacy the female models are as graceful, enchanting and tender as the men are strong, strong-willed and masculine. A special place among his drawings belongs to the portraits of ordinary Armenians and of well-known cultural figures: the world-famous choral conductor and composer Hovhannes Chekijyan, laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR and the Armenian SSR (1977), the art historian Henrik Igityan (1982), the ethnographer Levon Abrahamian (1983), the academician Kamo Demirchyan (1983), the choreographer Maxim Martirosyan (1983), the well-known actors Vladimir Msryan (1983), Armen Dzhigarkhanyan (1986) and Khoren Abrahamyan (1986), the writer Hrant Matevosyan (1986), the artist Eduard Kharazyan (1988), the film director Frunze Dovlatyan (1997) and others. These portraits are meant not only to reveal the essence of the sitter but also to build up a complete image of the contemporary Armenian. On this subject A. Tarkovsky writes: “His devotion to his native land and people finds generous expression in his portraits of figures from Armenian culture and of those whom some, with a certain lordly condescension, call ‘ordinary people.’ Yet how often they prove to be anything but ordinary; indeed, there are no ‘ordinary people’ in the world. I would call the animating spirit of Rudolf Khachatryan’s ‘graphic art’ heroic”[3].

In the Portrait of Henrik Igityan (1982) Khachatryan depicted his hero in a calm, seemingly tranquil state. Here we see an art historian who knows his field, who draws inspiration from works of art and passes their history through his own soul, and at the same time a man who has lived through a great personal drama and carries a deep grief: the sadness of his eyes has stamped itself on his face forever. In Igityan’s slightly elongated features some tension throbs—a creative tension, dictated by a passion for searching. The hero’s hands are executed with Khachatryan’s characteristic mastery. The finest transitions of light and shade, the folds of the skin and the highlights recall classical portraits. The choice of clothing is not accidental: a fur jacket and a knitted sweater seem to underline the art historian’s free, easy, masculine spirit.

The portrait Armen Dzhigarkhanyan. Before the Performance (1986) is distinctive. Perhaps the work really was made “before the performance,” but it is clear that it is not about any particular performance or role: what is depicted is the restrained turmoil in the soul of an outstanding actor, an artist called upon to embody the most varied characters. At the same time he appears as a wise man who has “learned his lessons” from life and from the roles he has created. Masks, beneath which are hidden his physicist Artyom from the film Hello, It’s Me!, the blacksmith Mukuch from The Triangle, the caring grandfather Levon Poghosyan from the film When September Comes, the adventurer Staff Captain Ovechkin, the hunchbacked gang leader, as well as Molière, Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), Socrates, Nero and others played on stage. This is one portrait and at the same time a collective image of the actor’s real and stage life.

The Portrait of Hrant Matevosyan (1986) condenses the deep reflections that the times imposed on the prose writer. One of the greatest figures of twentieth-century Armenian literature looks at us with the troubled, sad gaze of a man carrying the burden of his powerful talent. His eyes seem to hold the past and future events of his native village of Ahnidzor. Yet, contrary to the forest shade “befitting” Tsmakut, the image is built in comparatively light tones. Instead, the eloquent eyes and the cheekbones are “sharpened.” The writer sits on a chair with a cigarette in his hand, patiently waiting for the artist to finish his work, with the same patient, calm bearing so characteristic of many of his own heroes.

Among the portraits of famous Armenians, the portrait of the well-known political figure Artashes Geghamyan (1988) is especially impressive. The work is built on a subtle range of colour passing from light to dark brownish grey. Without particularly emphasizing the features, Khachatryan with remarkable powers of observation embodied the image of a man who responds to the signals of the outer world, fuses them with his inner world and is endowed with a keen sense of modernity. The artist, as was his habit, concentrated on the hero’s eyes. The sitter seems to enter into direct contact and dialogue with the viewer. The hero’s eyes reveal hidden potential, the life experience of many years and a turbulent inner world. Beneath an apparent outward calm lie the anxieties of the time. Before us is an Armenian politician of the late twentieth century, yet the artist seems at the same time to have “foreseen” his hero’s future fate, trying through him to present his own vision of what was to come. There is sadness on the sitter’s face, but not despair; anxiety, but not fear. His gaze is full of cares, but not weary. Evidently this is how it had to be, since a man concerned for the future of his people, and still more a statesman, could not, as the artist perceived him, appear otherwise. The portrait, created immediately after the Sumgait tragedy, also conveys to us a certain sense of uncertainty, a kind of alarm: after all, the Soviet country was on the verge of collapse, and Armenia was about to suffer a catastrophic earthquake… The portrait radiates the anxiety of impending dangers. In general, the perception of every work should rest on its historical subtext[4].

If, in depicting famous Armenians, Khachatryan seeks to catch every nuance of human character, then with sitters unknown to us he builds the composition so delicately that the viewer, coming into contact with their “human type,” involuntarily analyses them himself, ascribes and supposes traits of character, even a profession.

As we have said, Khachatryan’s male heroes are steadfast; they lack the feminine grace found, for example, in some works by Leonardo (St John the Baptist, 1516; Saint John, 1516, and others). Many of them are free of the states of torment and suffering so evident in the heroes of Théodore Géricault. Khachatryan seems on the whole not to pursue the ideal Renaissance hero, which was a combination of strength and grace (as, for example, in Michelangelo’s sculptural masterpieces David, 1504, and Victory, 1534). In the Armenian artist’s view, the beautiful is the natural, and this is what he seeks in each of his sitters. We have already noted that he is mainly drawn to bearded, long-haired models (this, too, is a distinctive gaze turned towards the past). His approach to different embodiments of the same person is also interesting—a predilection also shared by the Russian painter and graphic artist, the master of the portrait Valentin Serov[5]. The same face, the same features may, depending on the “profession” of the “character” in a given work, receive a different interpretation from Khachatryan, while preserving, let us repeat, the traits the artist prefers. The model for the graphic works Male Portrait (1980), Pilgrim (1981) and Karavan-Bashi (1982) was the linguist Melvar Melkumyan. Three time periods are present in these works. In Male Portrait the hero’s thoughts and feelings are “imprinted” on his face. The seemingly impassive features and the heaped-up wrinkles of the forehead concentrate the sitter’s character. The artist’s virtuoso solution deserves particular attention: the hero’s whole body is caught in a special concentrated light that creates spatial depth. The meticulous work makes “tangible” every fold of the silky, shimmering garment, rendered with the finest transitions of light and shade, and the muscles of the hands, while the fingers turning the pages of a book seem to have halted the course of things, the very moment after which life is to continue. Incidentally, we see a similar compositional solution in the penultimate Self-Portrait (1610) by the Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola and in Rubens’s Portrait of Doctor Thulden (1615), which, despite the nearly three centuries separating them from Khachatryan’s sheet, belong to the same circle of meaning, ideas and style. Melvar Melkumyan appears in another “role” in the levkas Pilgrim. The sitter’s heavy, massive pose embodies a magical strength in which one sees at once the zealous pilgrim who has paused for a moment on the road to the Holy Land, the weary stranger, the seeker of a path, and the abandoned, lonely man. Khachatryan succeeded in directing the viewer’s attention and acting psychologically on his perception. It is a strength that can arise only from deep faith. If the hero of Ilya Repin’s Pilgrim (1881) is a typical Russian walking to the Holy Land in the frosty winter, Khachatryan’s pilgrim has no direct national identity. He embodies a free, strong, believing (above all in his own strength, confident of his unbreakable will) and, most importantly, independent man. As with many of Bryullov’s heroes (Nude Youth with a Spear, 1810; Narcissus Looking into the Water, 1819, and others), Khachatryan lightly covers certain details of the model’s nudity, excluding any presence of eros. Here, as in classicist art, there is not only the body but a harmonious union of the body and the spirit. On the same path of searching for a spiritual and religious ideal stands Mikhail Nesterov’s enlightened, pure hero, filled with spiritual beauty—The Hermit (1888–1889)[6]. Drawing the viewer away from external features, Khachatryan concentrates the image on the lines that convey the sitter’s inner strength and courage, reflected in his features and muscular hands. The influence of Kochar’s pencil drawing Reclining Man (1925) is evident in this work. Incidentally, in both Kochar’s and Rudolf Khachatryan’s works the heroes lean against a thick tree trunk—a symbol of closeness to the earth, of “deep roots” and steadfastness. Both heroes are in almost the same position; only their characters differ. Let us note that Khachatryan preserved the proportions of the reclining hero’s body[7], which is especially difficult when the model is in such a position. Kochar’s Reclining Man gives the impression of a man worn out by hard labour, exhausted and longing for rest, whose firm, solid body confirms the fact of his hard life and long struggle. We meet a similar figure in Yervand Kochar’s canvas Family. Generations (1925). The weariness on the elderly hero’s face is interpreted as the condition of an old father who has grown old, has borne the burden of a long life and is yielding his place to the coming generation. Khachatryan, one might say, continued both of these stories. As A. Aghasyan notes, Kochar’s canvas Family – Generations gives rise to certain biblical associations: the myth of the Flood and the story of righteous Noah served as the starting point for the picture. The art historian believes that it was by no means by chance that Kochar repeated in his canvas the position and pose of the patriarch painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and notes that however peaceful the scene depicted by Kochar may seem, there is nonetheless unease and alarm in it: “It is expressed in the figure of the grandfather with his bowed head, in the folds of his preoccupied face…”[8]. Almost the same can be said of Khachatryan’s pilgrim. His thoughtful, downcast gaze is an image of present difficulties, but also of hope for a bright future. An active role in the composition is given to light and shade. The white of the ground seems to suggest faith in a future as yet unknown, but benevolent. If in the works Male Portrait and Pilgrim Khachatryan, especially through the facial features, allegorically condensed the spiritual ferment of his contemporaries and at the same time embodied inwardly rebellious individuals, then M. Melkumyan as the hero of the drawing Karavan-Bashi embodies the collective image of an active leader. Here the sitter’s gaze, directed at the viewer, and his eyes seem to hold memories that make sense of what he has lived through. As in many of Khachatryan’s male portraits, the hero is not shown simply in a moment of repose. And this is not physical calm at all, but a spiritual, intellectual, self-assured calm. This is conveyed by the nervous, emotional expression of the caravan leader’s eyes, his searching, doubtful and somewhat tense gaze, rendered through the fine network of blood vessels in his eyes. The composition of the work is brought to meticulous completion. Again keeping within the bounds of his preferred “narrative manner,” the author depicted his heroes without superfluous details. There is nothing to betray the sitter’s profession. By depicting the hero without his camels, only through his clothing, headscarf, the sheen of his face and his slightly bloodshot eyes, the artist managed to create the “illusion” of a sweltering, empty desert. The eyes, the aquiline nose and the lips slightly hidden under the moustache and beard of a by no means randomly chosen chance sitter complete the image of a skilful and powerful man. The caravan leader bears “the seal of fate”: he is at once unhappy and fortunate, cheerful and sad, a leader and a follower, who has begun his conversation with the viewer.

The years he lived in Moscow gave Rudolf Khachatryan the opportunity to become closely acquainted with Russian art and its representatives, and sometimes even to become close to prominent figures in various fields. Thanks to these contacts he came to know the Russian person and his inner world, portraying them with his characteristic depth and expressiveness. A considerable part of the artist’s creative legacy consists of the portraits of the art historian Savely Yamshchikov (1982), the physicist Arkady Migdal (1983), the artist Dmitry Bisti (1983), the director and actor Arkady Raikin (1986) and others.

However preoccupied and burdened by difficulties the heroes of these portraits may be, they are by no means gloomy. Typical in this respect is the portrait of the physicist Arkady Migdal. The scientist appears with a frowning expression, perhaps weary of difficulties. Yet at the same time one “reads” the storms that brought to shore his far-reaching theories, which many generations of scientists have followed and still follow. The scientist, who had passed his seventieth year, appears here not only as a physicist but also as a lyricist, a poet, with a poetic spirit playing beneath his “dry” exterior.

The portrait of Arkady Raikin, made a year before his death, in 1986, is impressive (incidentally, it was the first time Raikin had agreed to sit for a portrait). Khachatryan’s favourite manner is applied: it would seem easy to confine oneself to an external (superficial) record of the humour and satire so dear to the artist—a sly smile, narrowed, sharp, piercing eyes. But in reality Raikin is here a deeply reflective intellectual from whom nothing escapes, who mocks with kindness and rejects with a sore heart and firm wisdom… The white-haired Raikin, whose face is rendered with somewhat dense accents of sepia, appears with the experience of life and stage accumulated over the years, which united completely different characters that replaced one another in an instant as perfect stage transformations.

If, in portraying the people mentioned above, an important role was played by the fact that the artist knew many of them personally, the drawing Alexander Pushkin. Dialogue (1987) is distinctive in that it expresses the artist’s sincere admiration for the great poet’s works, a communion of souls across distance in which R. Khachatryan tried to involve the viewer as well. The image of Pushkin is the fruit of his perception of the poet’s works, unlike the master of the Russian portrait Orest Kiprensky, whose Portrait of Alexander Pushkin (1827) is the gaze of a contemporary cast upon the writer.

The portraits of famous people mentioned above are not types that served as the basis for other works, nor the metamorphoses and transformations Khachatryan loved, but characterizations of particular persons, the artist’s own subjective perceptions, often even idealized—which, incidentally, sometimes gave some people grounds to accuse the author of flattering his sitters. But in the end an artist portrays those who have in some way interested or captivated him. Otherwise these would be merely unsuccessful, indifferent records.

In Rudolf Khachatryan’s works man is a child of nature, close to mother earth and to tradition, and it is by no means accidental that his heroes, “soaring” through different epochs, are acceptable and comprehensible in our time. As Martiros Saryan noted in his writings, “thought and feeling, in the highest manifestation of their harmony, are necessary not only for creating a work of art, but also for perceiving it”[9]. The harmony of thought and feeling is greatly helped by the environment and atmosphere in which the creator lives. In this sense Rudolf Khachatryan can be considered fortunate. His studio in Krivokolenny Lane became a centre of meetings, dialogue, debate and the refining of ideas with specialists in various fields.

It was during his years in Moscow that Arno Babajanyan and Rudolf Khachatryan met, and the meeting became the basis of a lasting friendship. In the 1970s the well-known Russian musician and close friend of the artist Alexander Slobodyanik asked Khachatryan to move his piano to his studio for a time. Later the instrument already stood on the stage of the artist’s studio, a direct participant in many fascinating evenings. One day Arno Babajanyan, having finished in a single night his famous piano piece Elegy, dedicated to the memory of Aram Khachaturian[10], came to the artist’s studio early in the morning and played it for Rudolf. And so it was in Rudolf Khachatryan’s studio that the modulations of the composer’s famous music, penetrating the deepest layers of his inner world, were heard for the first time. Khachatryan’s works bear a likeness to actuality, to reality, which is one of the obligatory conditions of the classical portrait. And regardless of his heroes, his manner of drawing or the period, he himself—Rudolf Khachatryan—is undoubtedly present in all the characters he embodied. Naturally, before finishing each work the artist passed it not only through his imagination and inner world but also through the prism of his soul. The pictures are part of the author, and the author is part of the pictures. Truly, it has been well said that “an artist creates many pictures in his life, but in fact he creates only one picture—his own”[11].

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Summary (printed in the collection in English)

THE PORTRAITS OF MEN IN RUDOLF KHACHATRIAN’S WORKS

HRIPSIME VARDANYAN

This article is an attempt to analyze the portraits of men painted by Rudolf Khachatrian. It can be noted that his paintings - are a kind of a specific reflection both of himself-as a personality of a talented Armenian painter and of his own image in art. The issue of expressing himself through portraits are also perceived. It would be of interest to note that the portrait empowers to judge the inner, spiritual world, development and formation of Khachatrian’s character.

Key words - Rudolph Khachatrian, portraits of men, self-expression, levkas, composition, manliness, graphic works, realism.

[1] See: Rudolf Khachatryan. Drawing (introductory essay by M. Lazarev). Moscow: Sovetsky Khudozhnik, 1984 (unpaginated).

[2] See: Belogorlova L. The Drawings of Rudolf Khachatryan // Iskusstvo. Moscow, 1979, no. 9, p. 30.

[3] Tarkovsky A. Rudolf Khachatryan’s Monochrome Polyphony // Literaturnaya Armeniya. Yerevan, 1983, no. 5, p. 65.

[4] See: Janson H. W. Fundamentals of Art History (Russian edition). Moscow: Ikar, 1996, p. 17.

[5] See: V. Serov (introductory essay by S. Yaremich). Leningrad: Publishing House of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, 1936, p. 13. This notes a feature of V. Serov’s creative method: he could return to the same subject, the same face, many times, and this never cooled his interest or made him indifferent to the work.

[6] For more detail see: Popular Art Encyclopedia, book II. Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1986, p. 59.

[7] See: Baryshnikov A. Perspective. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1955, p. 80. The author discusses all the mistakes artists make in depicting a reclining body: a sharp foreshortening of height, disproportion of the body, and so on. These mistakes occur when artists do not depict the hero from a live model. In Khachatryan’s case, as we see, this is ruled out.

[8] Aghasyan A. In the Space of Yervand Kochar. Yerevan: Voskan Yerevantsi, 2013, p. 13 (in Armenian).

[9] Matevosyan V. The Aesthetic Views of Martiros Saryan. Yerevan: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, 1980, p. 59 (in Armenian).

[10] Asatryan A. Sayat-Nova, “Qani vur jan im” – Arno Babajanyan, Elegy // Sayat-Nova – 300. Yerevan: Gitutyun, NAS RA, 2012, pp. 83–85 (in Armenian). In the article Anna Asatryan describes in detail the history of the Elegy’s creation.

[11] See: Khachatryan Sh. The New Breath of Drawing // Sovetakan Arvest. Yerevan, 1974, no. 5, p. 25 (in Armenian).