MEDITATION AT THE BASE OF THE GIANT MOUNTAIN
One day the giant biblical mountain moves closer, the other moves away in the overheated and dry June air…The air seems to be colored in light yellow of the summer sun, and guise of a shadow is invisible, but yet desirable by everyone. Such displacement of spatial volumes happens quite often around here. The eye of an average by-passer as well as every resident of Etchmizdzin, one of the oldest settlements of Armenia, have used to this metamorphosis. It is worth mentioning that it has been 1710 years now that the city is the religious capital of Armenia.
Summer. The heat is toppling over the Ararat valley like a pagan god, or airy and magical ball. Ochreous limb of the sun is fusing with wheat fields, with burned grass of small meadows where field flowers have taken to earth.
These expanses are often being visited by the artist Nerses Melikyan with a purpose of sketching surrounding splendor. I write this all for a single reason for you reader be able to enter his graphic world and everyday life. It will allow us to understand his efforts in transformation of the artistic form, color, and figurative language…
Modern art and pictorial ad, in particular, in the second half of the 20th century is in the search of new combinations of previous trends with the latest global esthetic synthesis. Stagnation of the present day and lack of persons of figure have forced small and large national cultures to closely study the past in order to experiment in creating new artistic world from the fragments of the 20th century. It is a creation, without a doubt, rather than destruction. It represents a trend of both today and tomorrow. This is the very context I would like to see an entire pleiad of artists, including the artistic world of Yerevan which is a true experiment in different combination of stylistic synthesis itself. This does not conclude the list.
Artistic heritage of Nerses Melikyan is intriguing, especially, with its special nature to creating a distinct local world within every day of his oeuvre which in turn does not relate to the one preceding it. Rather long journey in a figurative art has series of unique turns and emotional spaces which as a result have brought briefly into abstraction, into very impulsive and psychologically keen habitat. It shaped his state of mind, his anything but simple appearance in the world of art and in the context of culture. Characterizing Nerses it’d be safe to say that he doesn’t strive to lead the main group of experimental Armenian artists. He is not only of a quiet nature but is also modest and reserved. He can analyze the reality of national culture being both interesting artist and one of the consistent collectors of the new period. He very closely follows the trends of western art and is well informed of its art forms. I write this all for one particular reason to show the complexity of the ground that the artist stepped from into the second decade of the 21st century.
By this I suggest having a look on the general tendency in evolution of the artist’s oeuvre. Overtime the palette became brighter and lighter. The eye of the artist now prefers simple objects. Naturalness of a subject, on one side, and situation and psychological state of a painting as work of art, on the other, make the paintings of N. Melikyan both approachable for a wide audience and reasonably apprehensible and interesting. Apparent simplicity of his thought which acquires the shape of a terse dialogue can also be brought into the picture. His style is not mannered, although may remind the Art nouveau or post-impressionistic works of Nabis group. Today he moves towards free associations in the universe of simple metaphors. In the meantime, he pays great deal of attention to such aspects as culture of drawing and color, while interpreting this relatively small group of French artists in his own way. The style of painting and ornamentality, for example, of R Bonner is particularly familiar to the artist. However, unlike metaphysical exercice of French masters inspired by symbolical and spiritual elements, Armenian artist creates touching poetic stories about the world of a man in the era of a great stress under pressure of global information where aggression of chronicles or immediate facts defeats the very idea of a personality nature turning it into a mannequin.
Nonetheless, Nerses has also something in common with the Nabis group. It is his determination to the art synthesis. In this vein some works of the Armenian artist, for instance, are interpreted as paintings for decorative folding-screens, for fireplaces or fabrics. Nerses is responsive to human feelings in a complex and contradicting world. However, today he goes deeper into the idea of cognition which clearly but slowly finds its reflection on his oeuvre. He conceives delicate human conditions where he enjoys listening to the silence or being in a harmony with the world of nature. On the other hand, he prefers humane and quite dialogs from the whole variety of stylistic and esthetic conceptions which haven’t even fixed their guiding line on the global scale. Such is the graphic work dedicated to a friend, to a talented artist Ayvaz, who recently passed away. The work is particularly interesting due to its lack of psychological disruption, exposed nerves or other appearances of tragedy. Instead, silence, concentration and light melancholy of bright memories have penetrated the picture. These elements all together shape the character of Nerses who is a man with a great share of responsibility before human relationships and life itself. The painting breathes calm confidence so much intrinsic to male friendship.
Musicality is another principal characteristic of his new style of painting. Music is part of the substance in every painting. It allows the audience to relate to the painting and find it more credible. I would even say that music is also seen in his own oeuvre. It is simple and unpretentious, reminding a pipe or a human voice under the dome of a church. By the way, this credibility in his paintings comes from subconscious kindness of his human nature. Nerses does not hide either his kindness or his naivety, or his rational analysis. Artistic heritage of N. Melikyan is interesting in the essence that it doesn’t protrude itself on a forefront or declare its quest the only possible, it rather meticulously cognizes itself within this world. Today he mainly works using parsimony of color and rhythm consciously limiting himself in his painting. Here is the calmest limb of a tree absorbing half of the sky; here is the space of a leaf or an elegant oleander, or something reminding still-life with fruits…I would like to remind that complex combinations of diluted ochre or chlorocrous bring their peculiar associations with the oeuvre of a metaphysician, an outstanding Italian painter Giorgio Morandi whose still-life paintings, perhaps, one way or the other, inspired or refracted in the paintings of the Armenian artist. Yet, Nerses is simpler rather than prune. This is how a thin trunk of a tree is holding the arch of the sky marking the horizon as the beginning of coordinates. There is an entire series of such paintings. This variety is justified. Pictorial canvases should have their foundation which in our case is the artist himself who is striving to comprehend the architectonic of a live nature, its musicality, dimension and harmonious symmetry of a tree shape in the painting. It is a symbol of a tree rather than a true-life reproduction of a tree; it is a symbol of a sky rather than a true-life reproduction of a sky; it is a symbol of love and loneliness rather than a real life situation. This is the very reason that makes Nerses Melikyan interesting to the audience in the world of vociferous contemporaries, because he treats a human with care. It is important for him to suggest something new that would be a source of guidance for the contemporary out of loneliness and tragic, bringing him closer to a quiet and heart-to-heart talk. Today the Armenian artist offers this very cycle of meditation paintings, moving the contemporary away from the brutality of intallations and their constructions, from the fixed and remorseless reporting close-up of a video-art or from the destructive metaphors of performance. Perhaps, this is the very reason that makes the new wave of artistic quest important. It can be explained by its involvement in sharing warm humane feelings rather continuing the chronicle full of poor quests of reality which was apparently prevailing in the preceding decade. It represents a fascinating artistic quest, an experience in contemporary Armenian pictorial art which in turn is rich with tradition of experiments. Yet, every artist is diving into the experiment of synthesis carrying his own character, his own knowledge and world outlook, and his own complexity of thinking and emotional warmth. Pictorial art works introduced at this exhibition and in this catalogue represent the last two years of the artist oeuvre (2010 – 2011) which is a result of persistent, meticulous and inspirational work of Nerses Melikyan. This remarkable page in the biography of our contemporary has been open, while the future journey remains unknown. Sincerity of his quest lies in this unknown.
Ruben Angaladian
Yerevan, August 2011
HE HAD A NUMBER OF PICTURES ON HAND
He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill.
He was the sort of painter who could paint leaves better than trees.
He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen,
and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges.
Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien,
“Leaf by Niggle”
The artist in the tale of Tolkien tries to depict an ideal tree, a desire which is particular to every modernist artist. And the problem for this character is as follows, how to live according to his ideals, if the cruel reality makes obey the dictate of everyday cares and responsibilities, forcing to give up the art?
Another character is Perish and he obeys the dictate of life, the symbol of which is his garden, but he also has his own problems; his house is pulled down, and this also is the symbol of the dictate of everyday cares and responsibilities.
Tolkien tries to solve this dilemma; the canvas becomes life, becomes a garden; and the garden of Perish becomes a realized ideal garden. Both the garden – being the symbol of life – and the picture, that is to say, the ideal tree, are destroyed by decaying influence of reality, leaving some fragments of them only.
The thing that is important for us is that Niggle depicts the tree, which is the symbol of life. This also connects life with the world of ideals. This also is the symbol of creation in Tolkien’s tale, which is contrasted to the work; the first is natural and the second is artificial. When creating the author gives a form to the matter at his hand; and creation of art for him, more probably, is giving birth to breathless things. This also is the symbol of the ideal artist, Niggle, because they become identical.
There is a great resemblance between the heroes of Nerses Melikyan and Tolkien. They both depict a tree. They both work with concentration. I think that all the above stated thoughts about the symbol of a tree are mainly held about the art of Nerses, too. The comparison of the canvases: The Beginning, a Birth, the Sky and the Earth, Eros, with the series of trees gives evidence that the author sees the mystery of creation in trees.
The compositions in Nerses’s canvases are very simple. There is a round-like tree crown on a thin stem and the leaves are round-like too, which are as conditional as the stem and the crown. Nerses’s trees are round because they are essences concentrated on their own selves.
The isolated takes the form of a circle. The colors are restrained; they are of most refined tones of brown, ochre and green, which make the observer concentrate his eye- sight and attention, just as in meditation. The canvases are as solemn as a religious rite but this is due to their poetic essence.
Trees have been depicted often in world’s art history, but the most known series of them is by Piet Mondrian, in 1908-1912. Trees had an important role in his all works, being a preliminary stage for his future geometrical abstraction period.
For him, to depict a tree meant finding the universal construction of the world. Mondrian was attracted by the complicated and entangled game of the branches, which he began to depict firstly in cubist and then in a more abstract manner. Comparing Mondrian’s canvases with those by Nerses, we found great generalities, up to their captions. But the main thing here is their desire of expressing the universal construction of the world through trees.
But their general community does not go further than this. Mondrian was afraid of nature, afraid of green color, of the leaf-crown and flowers. A tree is a phenomenon that covers the general law of Universe, as the leaf-crown covers the branches. He wrote that ‘the tragedy of nature is in its materiality and it reveals itself in natural color and form…in curvature, in unstable and irregular surfaces.’
In contrast to this, Nerses sees the essence of the tree in its crown, in curved and round forms and he often uses green colors and he is not afraid of the crown and flowers. (It is to be said that Mondrian had a series of flowers, too.) The theoretical source of Piet Mondrian’s inspiration was theosophy, and Nerses has been under the rule of poetical command.
How can one explain a poem? There are not such explanations. An explanation of a poem only is another poem with same power. To see and understand Nerses’s can- vases one must see and understand the tree in the poetical space but not in a seemingly one. This is the only way of understanding of his canvases, as this is the only way to understand a poem, which is not created, but grows in the spiritual space. The tree taken as an archetype explains how a poem and a poetical canvas are created.
What is the tree in the internal poetical space? The Armenian poet, Tiran Chraqyan, is one of those exceptional persons who could see the tree in the inner poetical space.
He wrote in one of his poems:
“O, you everlasting entangled and black cypresses
That stand over deep holes, ever tending to life
With all your longing that death endowed upon you
To willingly climb the up-gone Eternity.”
And Rilke put.
“Space, outside ourselves, invades and ravishes things:
If you want to achieve the existence of a tree,
Invest it with inner space, this space
That has its being in you.”
Man grows up to the sky like a tree and is pulled down just like a tree. Man does not fall but is pulled down like trees. Man feels his spiritual kinship to trees because he shares the loneliness of his own being with trees. Man shares his powerlessness with trees when they stretch their hands to tenderly kiss the clouds. Trees are our comfort, as well.
Marina Tsvetaeva put:
“O, trees! I’m coming to you!
To be saved from the roar of the market!
Your rush into the height
Is a heart breathed out and up!”
Man not only shares his powerlessness with trees, but also sees his spiritual power in them. A tree is such power that takes the earthly life to heaven.
Nikolay Gumilyov put in his poem, Trees:
“I do know that the greatness of the pure life
Is given to trees and never to us!”
When man sees the inner essence of trees he unites with them and grows. Man him- self becomes spiritually higher with high trees. Rilke put – in another place:
“One space spreads through all creatures equally- Inner-world-space.
Birds quietly flying go flying through us.
Oh, I that want to grow, the tree I look outside that grows in me!”
To see the tree you must grow internally and climb up its crown. The French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, said that one of the functions of trees is to give ‘flying things,’ that is to say, to give leaves. The magic of trees is not only that they give leaves, but that they are nests or birds. Every flying soul can perch on branches of trees. Nerses has a canvas, The Family Tree of the Artists of Etchmiatsin, in which the names of his fellow artists are perched on the branches of the tree of being.
Soul is a bird that finds its peace in the crown of the tree of being. Life is immortal because the soul is immortal, and a life gives forth another life. The soul is the very thing which gives forth another life, not only biologically, but also spiritually, for it endows with life the art and poetry.
Nerses’s trees are both alike and different: Birch, Olive Tree, Golden Tree, Polar Tree, Brown Tree and so on! Yes, they are alike and different. For instance, the Olive Tree is the symbol of victory and peace, and the joy that accompanies the victory. It also carries the symbol of abundance and fertility because of its oil giving fruits; it is also the symbol of purity and virginity and, at last, it means immortality.
The Birch symbolizes light, illusiveness and feminity; this, like the plane-tree in the Armenian tradition, is the tree of the very origin, the mother of ‘being a tree.’
Now Nerses Melikyan has created a canvas by the name, My Garden, and is working at a series which poetically symbolizes the idea of garden. It seems it would be more exact to speak about the series about garden than about trees, because trees become a garden or even a forest if they overcome their loneliness; just like men which become a nation or a society when overcoming their loneliness. Nerses creates an imaginary garden on his canvases. This garden has its caretaker and it is growing, get- ting richer and richer and makes us richer, too, with its poetry.
Vardan Jaloyan
