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Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2012 • 1

2 • Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2012

founded in 1975PUBLISHER

JAMIE ELLIN [email protected]

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF VICTOR BENNETT FORBES

[email protected]

WEB MASTERJOAN HIMMELSTEIN

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTALLISON L. MAUCHSPECIAL THANKS

MARILYN GOLDBERG, ED HECK, SAMIR SAMMOUN, DR. ROBERT

BAKER, DR. MOSES HERKELIAN, PAUL ELMOWSKY, RICHARD FORBES, STEVE

ZALUSKI, ITA BULLARD, PO BOX 404,

CENTER MORICHES, NY 11934(631) 339-0152 • (718) 549-8956

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[email protected]© 2012 SunStorm Arts Publishing Co. Inc.


ZALUSKI’S HUMANSHPERE rolled into Chelsea during Armory Arts Week, New York City

The Armory Show’s splendiferous designer of the “Waterfront Lounge on Pier 92” Tucker Robbins,

and Dr. Bob Baker take a breather

PHOTOS BYJAMIE ELLIN FORBES

Leslee and David Rogath of Chalk + Vermilion and Martin Lawrence Galleries

Dr. Bob Baker, Carla Baker at the Michael Schultz Gallery

Amsterdam artist Sophie Walraven and Fine Art Editor-in-Chief

Victor Forbes

The Chaotic Harmony of

SvetlanaHakobyan

SPRING 2012 • $4.95 US


4 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2012

NOAH’S ARK ART GALLERYArt Dealer & Broker

We specialize in: Paintings-Sculptures (Lebanese, Russian, Armenian)

Icons (Greek, Russian, Melkit)Rugs & Carpets (Caucasian, Armenian)

Services:Estimation / Art Publication / Restoration & Framing

Represented Artists:Vahram, Yuri Tsvetaev, Vahan Roumelian, Alexander Isachev, Suren , David D.

Ruben Abovian, Alex Kochar, Berdj Tchakedjian, Armen Gevorgian, Yeghya Bakmazian,Hermes, Svetlana Hakobian, Edik Pertian, Arthur K.

Personnel:

Movses Zirani Herkelian(Ph.D)owner/director

Elo Saradjian(MA)Admin Director/Media Representative

Herag HerkelianAssistant Director

Noah’s Ark Art Gallery, Center Grand park 2, B.B. Street, Zalka Metn, LebanonTel: +961 4 711-852, Fax: +961 4 714-943, Mob: +961 3 72-72-11

E-mail: [email protected] , Website: www.noahsarkgallery.com

ARTHUR K., Phoenecian Echoes, 75 x 105cm, Mixed Media on canvas, 2011

Is it your dream to own and operate a fine art gallery? We are expanding our brand and are seeking those with a passion for the arts! Training and financing available.

For more information, contact our national headquarters at (619) 895-3027.

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ITA BULLARD

ITA BULLARD creates original art with an eclectic mix of techniques and absolutely no pretension. Her muses have come from deep within her spirit to find fulfillment through many years of dedication to authenticity and honesty of expression. Ms. Bullard was born in Paris in 1940. As a Jew in occupied France, she spent the first years of her life in hiding with her family. At the age of 21 Ita left France bound for New York City. In 1967, she met an ambitious and charismatic business entrepreneur. The two shared a life together for 35 years. While she assisted him with a plethora of successful ventures as partner/secretary/treasurer/family manager and companion, Ita found time and the space to begin creating her collection of oil, water color, acrylic, gouache and sculpture that now number over 100 pieces. Wanting to expand her artistic creativity, she left her New York City penthouse life and traded it for the quiet serenity of Lake Champlain, situated in the Adirondack Park region of upstate New York. Her new home and studio/gallery are located on Valcour Bay across from Valcour Island one of the more famous locations in Revolutionary War history, where Benedict Arnold delayed the British advance in 1776 which led to the British defeat at Saratoga in 1777. Ms. Bullard participates in various community projects, ranging from hosting Chamber of Commerce meetings to benefits for the local PBS and has donated numerous paintings for fund raising auctions for PBS and various other local and national/international charities

More than seventy years after his death, the recently canonized Brother André Bessette, C.S.C., remains beloved for his mercy to the sick, for his devotion to St. Joseph, and for his role in the construction of the majestic Oratory of St. Joseph in Montréal, which continues to be visited by millions of pilgrims each year. Pope John Paul II lauded Brother André as a “man of prayer and friend of the poor who led a life dedicated to the relief of human suffering.” Ita Bullard recently painted the face and hands of Brother André to complete this stained glass window donated by Don Strack to the St. Alexander Roman

Catholic Church in Morisonville, NY.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION [email protected]

Michael Jackson Blue, 36 x 42, oil on linen

Little Boy Waiting for Food, 48 x 48, oil on linen

Tulips, 24 x 36, oil on linen

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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents John Chamberlain: Choices, a comprehensive examination of the work of the late John Chamberlain and the first U.S retrospective since 1986. Comprising approximately one hundred works, John Chamberlain: Choices examines the artist’s development over a sixty-year career, exploring the shifts in scale, materials, and techniques informed by the assemblage process that was central to his working method. The exhibition presents works from Chamberlain’s earliest monochromatic iron sculptures and experiments in foam, Plexiglas, and paper, to his final large-scale foil pieces, which have never been shown in the United States. Chamberlain was first celebrated at the Guggenheim in a 1971 retrospective.

“One day something—some one thing—pops out at you, and you pick it up, and you take it over, and you put it somewhere else, and it fits. It’s just the right thing at the right moment. You can do the same thing with words or with metal,” Chamberlain has stated. Fit and choice have rightly become the guiding principles for Chamberlain’s work. His respect for the material’s inherent properties informs the multiplicity of his forms, the simplicity of his process, and the work’s complex underpinnings. The title of the Guggenheim’s exhibition pays tribute to the artist’s process of active selection, or choosing, that is fundamental to his practice. The exhibition is organized by Susan Davidson, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions. For more information www.guggenheim.org

John Chamberlain, Photo: Robert McKeever, courtesy Gagosian Gallery

SPHINXGRIN TWO, 2010, Aluminium

192 7/8 x 165 3/8 x 145 5/8 inches (490 x 420 x 370 cm)

Private collectionInstallation view: John Chamberlain: Choices, Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum, February 24 - May 13, 2012

© 2011 John Chamberlain / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

New York Photo: David Heald ©

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Guggenheim’s Chamberlain RetrospectiveExplores Six Decades of Masterful Work


Seeking Shambhala: The Quest for Perfect Peace, At Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The search for the utopian realm of Shambhala, also sometimes known as “Shangri-La,” has captured the imagination of people for thousands of years. Be it a state of mind or an actual place somewhere in Central Asia, this legendary kingdom is said to be ruled by a lineage of 32 mythological kings who are protectors of Tibetan Buddhist texts. Shambhala is a fabulous kingdom hidden by mist and a ring of snow covered mountains, where the rulers safeguard the Kalachakra Tantra, sacred teachings about the “Wheel of Time” that, through practice and meditation, allow one to achieve enlightenment. The texts also foretell of a world that descends into chaos and war, and of one king who will emerge after the apocalypse to restore order and prosperity in the year 2424. “I am always delighted by opportunities to bring to light paintings from our collections that have not been readily exhibited,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “Asian Conservation has breathed new life and energy into these magnificent kings by returning the paintings to their original regal and glorious formats. By combining this 17th-century set with contemporary art by Gonkar Gyatso and Tadanori Yokoo, new connections are formed. Our visitors will be pleasantly surprised by the symbolism, color, and brilliance of this exhibition.” For more, www.mfa.org

The Shambhala in Modern Times, 2008, Gonkar Gyatso

The Fifth Dharma (Religious)King of Shambhala, Sureshvara II

(Divine King), Tibetan, secondhalf of the 17th century

My Identity


WSW co-founder and Artistic Director Tatana Kellner (second from right, in the purple) leads a workshop on monopriting and encaustic during WSW’s

Summer Arts Institute (SAI). Each summer during SAI, WSW hosts over 20 two to five day intensive workshops in papermaking, screen printing,

letterpress, intaglio, encaustic, and book arts.

2012 Artist-in-Residence Beka Goedde in WSW’s papermaking studio. WSW supports women artists in all stages of their careers.

Jen Blazina (far left) silkscreens wallpaper, with help from WSW’s Chris Petrone, Terez Iacovino, and Kristen DeGree (left to right). WSW supports women artists in all stages in their careers through Fellowships, Artists’

Books Grants, and Residencies, through which artists have access to WSW’s specialized studios in printmaking, papermaking, ceramics, letterpress

printing, photography, and book arts.

Women’s Studio Workshop is a visual arts organization with specialized studios in printmaking, hand papermaking, ceramics, letterpress printing, photography, and book arts. Artists are invited to work at WSW as a part of our Fellowship Program, Artists’ Books Grants, Residencies, Internships, or to learn new skills in our Summer Arts Institute and community workshop series whose mission is to operate and maintain an artists’ workspace that encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists, to provide professional opportunities for artists, and to promote programs designed to stimulate public involvement, awareness, and support for the visual arts. www.wsworkshop.org

Women’s Studio Workshop Growing Their Outreach Programs

Jamie Eva Forbes, Board Members Richard Forbes and Robert Stack and Jamie Ellin Forbes

Chili Bowl Shoppers at WSW, Annual Chili Bowl Event

WSW fund-raising dinner, at Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz, NY Hand-made books and hand-made paper on view.


“Sammoun has indeed built upon history to develop a personal style that is reflective of his inner being. Nothing is held back by these emotionally charged canvases that capture the essence of Nature as recreated by Man, in this instance Samir Sammoun.

— Constance Schwartz, Director and CuratorNassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York

By VICTOR FORBES

One of the most sought after and beloved artists working in North America today, Lebanese-born Montréal-based Samir Sammoun closed out 2011 with a sold-out collection

at Boston’s prestigious Galerie D’Orsay. Featured in the exhibition were Sammoun’s masterful works on canvas of olive groves, fields of flowers and cityscapes along with his new bronze Olivier I, a self-contained prototype of his vision to develop this sculpture of a singular tree into a series of life-size replications to be installed as symbols of peace in public parks and gardens around the world.

“Sammoun’s body of work is an in-depth depiction of the connections he makes between his long-time residence in Montréal and birth and childhood in Lebanon. Painting and sculpture emerge as statements of common familiarity to be shared by all. His admirers enter into a personal involvement with the work making him a man for all seasons of expression through the universal language of art, notes Jamie Ellin Forbes, Director of the Fine Art Museum of Long Island (1990-1995) and publisher of Fine Art Magazine. The compelling power of his vision is truly informed in the majesty of the new sculpture created in the age-old Lost Wax method. The table top model, a 18” finished piece that serves as the maquette for the highly anticipated full-scale version, is imbued with a vital energy that summons a rare combination of awe and comfort to the viewer.

As a boy growing up in the Chouf Mountains, south of Beirut, Sammoun has fond memories of an idyllic life centered around harvest time in the olive groves. “The olive tree is a subject very close to my heart,” he declares, “because from the age of four I began to participate in the harvest with my entire family. The trees bear their fruit once a year in autumn, around the start of the school year.”

Sammoun seeks to share that cherished era of blissful childhood memory by recreating the spiritual and physical landscape with this major project that pays tribute to his homeland’s pastoral scenery and vibrant tradition. The olive tree possesses a majestic lineage dating back to the great flood when Noah’s dove returned to the ark with an olive branch, declaring that land was near and civilization could resume.

The initial painting that launched Sammoun’s “Peace Project”

was a rendition of an olive grove from his father’s land, a 48” x 72” canvas that was shown to great acclaim at the International Artexpo in New York City. Introduced to the work at this major art fair, Roslyn (New York) Museum Director and Chief Curator Constance Schwartz went on to compose these words in the introduction to Sammoun’s monograph, aptly entitled Walking With Giants: “With dramatic flair, an attractive, energetic and brilliant communications engineer, Samir Sammoun, follows the path of the Impressionists…enriching their characteristics with his unique and personal vision…and a more adventurous and experiential approach in terms of his

involvement with the formal aspects of painting…Brushwork, composition and color take on a life of their own in the painter’s process.”

S a m m o u n ’ s d r e a m —his vision, in addition to the sculptural installations—is to create a mosaic of a full-size olive grove suitable for installation in public buildings, such as the United Nations or in a great room, as in a museum, with a perhaps 100 paintings hanging next to each other, designed so that when put together the result will be powerful.

“The harmonious nature of these vistas represents the different themes of life and the

various joys with which people live and are designed to inspire feelings of peacefulness, first amongst individuals, then to be expanded to nations and ultimately the world,” says the artist.

“The olive grove in all its majesty and simplicity,” continues Samir, “is home to the tree of life. When you enter an olive grove, you are at peace with yourself and there is a wonderful silence. The olive is a complex plant yet a simple tree. The back of the leaf is silver, the front dark olive green. They flicker, so there is just a little bit of

Samir Sammoun at his sold-out exhibition at Galerie D’Orsay, Boston, MA,

SAMIR SAMMOUNExtolling the Virtues of Peace

Via A Life in the Arts

Collectors viewing Sammoun’s book, Walking With Giants


magic there. The beauty of the groves is special just before harvest. I render the atmosphere as it is to transmit the peace that you feel when you get into this place. What I really want is for the peasant from the mountain to tell me, ‘This is the field I just labored in yesterday.’

“This is the work for which I long to be remembered. I am continually fascinated by the grove and the simplicity of its significance thus venerating this tree.”

In creating the new sculptures, Sammoun relates, “I imagine it in my mind from my childhood. The trunk of the tree becomes an important reflection of the strength of these thousand year old groves.” With distant memories tempered with the harsher realities of modern times, the darkness of the olive tree’s base, combined with the beautiful silver and olive green of the leaves on the branches, very much reflect his psyche.

“The olive tree trunk presents a very strong contrast between light and dark, expressing happiness and sorrow at the same time. My art is a very intense internal process and my soul will always be like this mixture of feeling.”

Ah! My dear friend, to achieve in painting what the music of

Berlioz and Wagner has already done…an art that offersconsolation for the broken- hearted ! There are still just

Olivier, bronze, 18” ht...

a few who feel it as you and I do”. (Letter by Vincent van Gogh to Paul Gauguin. 22 January 1889)

An admittedly fervent disciple of van Gogh, the spirit of Vincent is ever-present in Samir’s works with swirling movement of paint giving life to traditional landscape elements so that they take on a mystical atmosphere of ethereal unity amidst the intense activity of his line. This dynamism is always natural as Sammoun makes the mountains, fields and trees dance like waves, channeling the pure and primitive energy of his hero. Without fanfare but with great dramatic effect all the more memorable for its subtlety, Sammoun magically sets himself apart from every other painter seeking to represent nature. His works are one of a kind, and he is not able to make the same painting twice.

In addition to The Peace Project, Samir dedicates his artistic energies to fund-raising for juvenile causes. His exhibits at the adjunct gallery of the Montreal

Museum of Fine Arts and the Marc-Aurele Fortin Museum in Old Montreal have raised considerable sums for the Saint Justine Children’s Hospital. Continually growing as an artist and humanitarian are Samir’s primary goals.

“His talent and highly personal painting style…are enthusiastically received by collectors as well as the academic community,” comments Jacqueline Hébert Stoneberger of the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, which holds two of Samir’s originals in their critically

Olive Grove Before Harvest, 48” x 72”


acclaimed permanent collection. Sammoun’s ability to transform his visual perception into a material form, expressing what he perceives, represents the history of art in a unique mode of expression. Sammoun offers a very personal and accomplished visual perception in the long chain of the giants of art history; a very specific and unique contribution to the ways in which man “sees” the world.

All this energy emanates from such a quiet man. A man so unassuming and easy to get along with he says, “If you can’t be my friend, you cannot be anyone’s.” Yet, there is a dynamic in his softness, a quiet in the explosion of color. It is indeed the flowering heart, a well-spring of perfectly constructed energy that captivates all who come in its path. It is the branches on his trees responding, being silent, allowing others to get through. “When I’m in the execution of the painting it is a very intense, but amazingly enough, a relaxing process. Why? Because I am discharging energy into it and afterwards I feel just great.”

As proprietor of Galerie D’Orsay, a prominent gallery in a city known for its historic and vibrant art scene, Sallie Hirshberg has been instrumental in presenting Samir’s work to the city’s prestigious Boston Museum of Fine Art where a number of his paintings have been selected for inclusion in annual fund raising campaigns. “We are quite proud to represent Samir,” she said in recent interview. “There is no one like him. He is full of life, generous of spirit, and an amazing painter. Samir has been with us a good seven years and every show that we have with him is a sold-out exhibition. The collector base for his work is quite eclectic, comprised of people of many backgrounds and nationalities. He has

built a wonderful bridge, creating a connection between people of different cultures who all love one artist. We have so many people who fall in love with his work.”

Walking With Giants is a phrase coined by an art writer who has spent many days with the artist, touring Montréal restaurants and museums, collecting responses from curators and

directors and basking in the glow of a room surrounded by Sammoun’s master works. This title not only reflects an

action— walking—but an objective. Samir’s fervent desire is that his paintings reside on a wall with other

great paintings. While “genius” is an over-used and over-wrought phrase to describe an artistic talent,

in Sammoun’s case it is justifiable if you take the definition to mean being able to convey perfect love, hope and harmony via one’s own creativity. In this case, Sammoun is undeniably a master, a genius if you will. His presentation is not clouded by delusions of grandeur or shallow artistic temperament cloaked in a body of work. There is no disrespect for his gift, his audience or those who came before him. Even in a long line of giants, Sammoun stands tall amongst them. His place in art history is secure and growing in

stature as more become aware of his work around the world. While museums and presidential palaces own and display his output, Samir relishes his relationships with his collectors, one in particular, a Vietnamese accountant in Montréal who had fallen upon hard times. “I

offered to buy back the paintings, but he refused to let them go. ‘How,’ he asked,

‘can I sell you back something that I talk to every day for 20 minutes before I go to work.’”

Tuscany, Winery on route between Florence and Sienna, 48” x 72”

Cypresses, bronze sculpture, 24” ht..


Dennis Manarchy Constructs 35’ Prototype Film Camera For

‘Vanishing Cultures’ ProjectAs part of his upcoming Vanishing Cultures – An American

Portrait project, Dennis Manarchy – Chicago-based and world renowned photographer – has spent over 10 years perfecting and constructing by hand a prototype film camera that barely fits in a semi-truck. The dimensions are 35’ long, 12’ tall and 8’ wide. The resulting film negatives are 6’ by 4’ with stunning visual detail. The camera will travel over 20,000 miles around the U.S. to photograph Vanishing Cultures in their natural environments for exhibitions, documentaries and educational material with the intent of capturing the uncommon beauty and individuality that defines the American people in a way that has never been done before. The means will be one of the world’s largest functioning film cameras capable of producing timeless images in microscopic detail not possible in the digital world. Stadium-sized traveling outdoor exhibitions featuring 24-foot portrait prints in captivating detail, documentaries, educational materials and cultural celebrations are planned.

Vanishing Cultures will be a ground-breaking photographic, educational and historical tribute to the American cultures that have helped to shape those which are thriving and those which are vanishing before our eyes. The power and scale of these images will bring a voice to individuals who ordinarily would not be heard, and it will raise awareness on a vast array of social, economic and environmental issues.

Manarchy always had a fascination with cultures. He lived with a Lumbee Indian tribe when he returned from the Vietnam war, which helped him to readjust to society. He has spent time with a circus troupe, lived in the swamps in Louisiana with the Cajuns...he loves the simplicity, the honesty and the way that these people have held on to whatever culture(s) surround them. Aligning with PBS as fiscal sponsor, Manarchy is seeking a corporation/foundation as a title sponsor for Vanishing Cultures and has fund-raising page at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2060332949/vanishing-cultures-by-dennis-manarchy. Kickstarter won’t fund the entire $10 million project budget, but it will be critical in helping with our initial expenses: camera design, developing of our prototype negatives, etc. “We have to start somewhere,” he says, “and Kickstarter is great because it gives people a chance to be a big part in getting Vanishing Cultures off the ground.

Chad Tepley, Project Manager, Dennis Manarchy and the prototype camera

Exhibit concept


MATTHEW TROYAN

“ You Carve A Path To A Man’s Soul.”— FRANZ KLINE

’’When the United States emerged from World War II as the most powerful nation in the world, its new stature was soonreflected in the arts. American (and European emigre) artists, (writers) and architects—especially those living in

New York City—assumed the leadership in artistic innovation that by the late 1950s had been acknowledged acrossthe Atlantic Ocean, even in Paris. Critics, curators and art historians, trying to follow art’s ‘mainstream,’

now focused on New York as the new center of modernism.”—Marilyn Stokstad, British art historian

Honor, Oil on canvas, 40” x 36”, 1961


By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES

The Abstract Expressionists were a brawl-ing and irreverent bunch. They had to be. They were carving out new universes on big sheets of canvas and found pieces

of lumber. Sometimes their behavior turned vulgar and violent. As when Jackson Pollock ripped the bathroom door off its hinges at the Cedar Bar. While Frank O’Hara saw Pollock’s act as “something (in which there was)… a sense of genius,” Matthew Troyan failed to see any brilliance in such an act. Right then and there he stood up from the table all were sharing and bellowed, “I CAN’T BE HERE ANY MORE! I CAME TO PAINT NOT ENTER ANOTHER WAR!”

With those words, “the best colorist in the world” (according to Franz Kline) chose to abruptly withdraw from his intimate alliance within the gath-erings at the fabled Greenwich Village landmark and made his exit from the tumultuous New York City art world. Retreating to domestic quietude, he settled in Connecticut where he was given solo museum shows at the New Britain Museum of American Art in 1954 and again in 1965. Troyan’s departure from the midst of the scene was not solely a death knell for fame and fortune, but a brave move that enabled him to paint in peace and create a considerable body of work until his death in 2007 at the age of 94.

Many in that creative and volatile group of poets, artists and writers would certainly make their mark, but for Troyan, who had endured years of unimaginable suffering, peace and dignity were far more meaningful than membership in this un-official club of current and future giants. He lived first-hand the push and pull of violence resulting in war and did not care to perpetuate the hostility and frustration of anger merely to gain an understand-ing of abstraction. Troyan had already perfected his abstracting expressions and impressions witnessing real life tortures.

Born February 19, 1913 in Kielce, Opatow County, Poland, Matthew Troyan was the youngest surviving child of nine. His father, Pawel, was a blacksmith and traveled extensively throughout Poland to create decorative gates, iron railings and ornamentation for wealthy clients. Matthew finished his public school education, and in 1937 began a four-year course of studying painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art under Professor Ted Pruszkowski. Soon after graduation, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis and spent three and one half years as a prisoner at the camps at Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and Ebensee. Upon release from the camp at Ebensee in 1945, Matthew began a six year course of study at the Academy of Fine Art at Dusseldorf under the guidance of Professors Pankok, Housier, Champion and Schreibert. A chance meeting there brought him together with Joan Miro who guided and gave advice to Matthew on his painting. Mat-thew received recognition as an outstanding student and was given the honor of painting a mural on the wall at The Academy of Fine Art at Dusseldorf. He was involved in a number of group exhibitions at Duisburg, Frankfort, Hanover, Mulheim Ruhr, Dusseldorf, and Gmunden and Munich in Austria. Troyan came to the United States

in December 1950, aboard the U.S.S. Balou as a displaced person.He made his way to Greenwich Village. Troyan, the artist, was

well-prepared to join the ranks of de Kooning, Pollock, Kline, James Brooks, Alfred Van Loen and the others merging into the New York City and East End Long Island scenes to paint and discuss art. They were all young and surviving in the post-War climate of intellectual change from which the New York School of Abstract Expressionists developed. New artistic language emerged which resulted in the birth of an unorthodox, modern, nuclear-age environment. The burgeoning Cold War threat of annihilation was synthesized by these painters, poets, writers and philosophers. Troyan’s experience as an artist who had lived in what was part of the dissolution of a civilization to this revolutionary group was more than welcome. Few were better suited to join the dialogue than he—a Calvary Officer who survived the Tuchola Forest massacre of men and horses and then three and one-half years at Auschwitz, Mauthausen and the Ebensee Concentration Camps as a prisoner and camp “artist.” A Catholic survivor of the holocaust, Troyan was intimately well-versed in the horror of destruction.

He had his vision to offer and share with the group based on his experiences and his relevance was cemented via personal familiarity with war, slaughter and prison camp life. With his European art

In the Moment, Oil on canvas, 76” x 51”, 1961

“When the heart of the observermeets the heart of the

Creator there is a symphony of angelsin the Heavens.”

—Dr. Robert Baker


training and interaction with Miró and Polish intellectuals, he was an easy fit within the group. The group imagined their paintings as vehicles to convey the vast possibility of nothing in which personal theories and palettes originated, dialoguing the abyss, evolving the foundations of a school.

The hardships that Troyan had endured along with the constant struggle to successfully communicate led him into an inner battle that most artists try to convey through their work. Matthew was in a constant struggle between good and evil, as many artists are and that internal struggle that rested within his unconscious always manifested itself some way on his canvas. It was his unconscious storage bin that permitted him to take all of his life experiences and to meld them with a real understanding of color theory to come out with something that is quite exceptional and quite specifically Matthew’s and his ability to move paint.

Taking excursions into the hinterlands of visual conscious-ness as developed by Richard Poussette-Dart in his photography and paintings, The New York School of Expressionists’ explora-tions into color and abstraction married conscious images moving into unconscious psyche. Artists mirrored and painted previously unknown concepts, like atomic annihilation, as reflective pools of simplicity in non-traditional and new personal styles. Color field images, influenced by the European Modernism in works by Mark Rothko and Esteban Vicente were included, as were lines of splat-tered paint investigated by Pollock. This “school” was a tailored fit made for Troyan. They gleaned, as a group, first-hand from the personal knowledge displayed in his images. The Expressionists’ dialogue of art and art theories employed in their work developed what became a decomposition of the known art alphabet. The post- atom bomb era shaped the artists in multiple directions. The civilized world’s ability to annihilate, stated abstractedly, was a constant theme.

Core names were developing. Their canvases painted, demon-strated the ingress and egress. Concepts and ideas not seen before became dissected and disseminated expressions. These new visual constructions using color, light and line formed the New York School painters’ response to their emotional displacement brought on in the post war era. The image of nothing that goes hand and hand with annihilation saw lines charred, burnt and blackened; expressions and impressions instilled to depict wasted civilization. This landscape was an intimate part of Troyan’s experience, which he had no problem accessing and employing on canvas in works imbued in an already evolved style and background.

By 1955 Troyan was living and working in Connecticut, refining on canvas the war trauma experience through richly expressive paint-ings. The human torso was explored, his love of horses, the female form, landscapes, abstracts and still lifes were placed stylistically in his new visual template for artistic construction using his particular vision of color, light, line and form. He remained ensconced in the heart-beat of the New York Expressionists’ emotional displacement of the era though he did choose to pass on further interaction, exiting with his convictions intact.

The image of nothingness that goes hand-in-hand with annihila-tion—charred burnt and black remains or wasted civilization—was an intimate part of Troyan’s oeuvre. He was gifted with an ability to review or see his most abstracted thoughts as impressions and ponder-ings to form images as conversations emanating from the wellspring of his passion. He had honed his talent utilizing the backdrop of war as a witness to the annihilation.

Troyan needed no outside stimuli to access his shadows and lines of simplicity. Nor did he find it necessary to deconstruct his imprinted memory to access images that would become paintings. With an ability to review or see his most abstracted thoughts or musings as image conversations from innate passions, he executed his desired compositions with a style strictly his own. His work reveals the overall depth of his brush as it taps into spatial relationships, enabling him to characterize an abstraction conceptually via his use of color and contrast with light. His ability to execute and render (realistically or

not as he chooses) the subject matter at hand reflects an ability to extrapolate sense from what his former colleagues called “nothingness.”

Imbuing his imagery with the spirit of his being, he paints a vi-sion of his soul. Composing with vibrant color to achieve this desired communication of forward-marrying the complexity or lack of it through an expression of very painterly brush strokes, he acknowl-edges his soul’s possibilities for redemption after peering into life’s difficult abyss. The resultant reflections of what he has experienced and perceived are documented in his paintings, some of which are set forth here in print and online for the very first time

On Friday, February 10, 2012, Jamie Ellin Forbes, publisher of Fine Art Magazine interviewed noted art historian and collector, Dr. Robert Baker in his gallery on Long Island. The following transcript includes italicized excerpts from Troyan’s memoirs and diary consist-ing of dialogues and interactions with Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, Tworkov and Hoffmann. They are insightful, entertaining and of great historical importance—in-the-moment remembrances of highly en-lightening art criticism intertwined with great friendship resulting in intimate and very educational first-hand descriptions of the artist, the art, their thoughts and their process. The memoirs provided to him by Mitzi Troyan were translated by Alina Sobera, professor of languages in Canada. Matthew died in 2007 at the age of 94 at his home in Connecticut with his wife Mitzi and his Children Lisa and Tom by his side. His extensive body of work is now stored, documented and articulated by Dr. Robert H Baker.

JEF: Tell us about your new Matthew Troyan book and project.Dr. BAKER: The title of the book is: A Date with a Monster: The Life and Works of Matthew Troyan – A Tribute to the Human Spirit. The importance of the book is not just his art, but the message of his art and what it means to the world. Matthew was in a constant struggle between good and evil, as many artists are and that internal struggle that rested within his unconscious always manifested itself some way on his canvas.FINE ART: Troyan, for a few years, was an integral part of the New York School of Expressionists. Do you know how that happened?Dr. BAKER: Yes. Matthew came to New York four days before Christmas in 1950 with $7.00 in his pocket. He began to inquire where he could find artists that dealt in today’s art, a place that he could go and learn and paint with others that would offer up information on new styles and allow him to become who he was inside of himself. So Matthew made his way to the Village because they said that that’s where everything was happening.

“Troyan’s unique ability to build an image asexpression of internal impressions, utilizing his per-sonal depth of soul as landscape, forged to form a life

exponentially less ordinary.”

Classic Recline, Oil on canvas, 54” x 88”, 1962


Matthew troyan, 1953:“New York didn’t spoil anybody; it opened new paths of thought and

swallowed a lot of sour things in its throat. It created new clear paths to follow that permitted the use of the best tension on art expression; as I

write this the glass houses of New York reach into the skies.” (The reference to “glass houses” comes from a Polish myth in

literature where glass houses are the land of milk and honey and freedom from the oppression of Poland).

FINE ART: What about him moves you to such a great degree of interest? Dr. BAKER: What captivated me was his truthfulness. There was a great truth about his painting that was not couched in the need to satisfy someone else’s requirements of what he should do but rather the truth that came from within him that he placed on a canvas. There was no pretense of needing to study what he put on the canvas, it just came from the insides of Matthew. What captivated me most about Matthew was his ability to overcome the most atrocious things that one can’t even imagine that one man can do to another and rise above that and do something great with that experience and turn it from horrific into something beautiful. This impresses me because in most instances its just words. But this is truly his life and its an experience that he documents. He writes about suffering, watching his friends killed, being beaten almost to death, escaping execution three separate times, being a war hero, being in the cavalry and fighting the Nazis on September 1st in the Tuchola forest. When you look at man like that, you have no right to complain. He was an extraordinary example of the strength of the human spirit.FINE ART: Do you think that this spirit affected the people he associated with?Dr. BAKER: Absolutely. I know it affected Kline there’s no question about that. Because Kline really wanted to understand from this man who was so special in all the things he went through, he wanted to understand what made him able to manipulate color in the way in which he was capable of doing and if he could learn that inner skill, he would become a better artist.FINE ART: Do you think its from experience or its an innate talent? Or the shock of having witnessed what he witnessed?Dr. BAKER: I think it is a combination of everything… His un-conscious storage bin that permitted him to take all of his experi-

ences and meld that with a real understanding of color theory to come out with something that is quite exceptional and quite specifically Matthew’s and his ability to move paint. It is what he uses from color theory and touches with his inner self that makes him unique.

Troyan: “Kline, you create the works characteristic of New York

in your studio. You are able to talk about art because you have a true knowledge of it. I can’t speak as

you do even though I want to but my language stops me. In your black and white imagination

you’ve found international recog-nition. I know, like me, you can’t afford good material – you use ordinary paints and big brushes used for houses. The occasional

true titanium and zinc makes you happy because you can create soft special effects. Don’t worry about

my color.”Kline: “Troyan you paint with such freedom, like you become the brush and the brush is you; me, I ponder and fret on one canvas after another.

To only have your freedom, your energy, your truth in the seconds in which you create. I don’t, I can’t, I need to…”

Troyan: “My truth and what you call freedom and energy is the haunt-ing messages I have taken with me from my imprisonment. Kline you

don’t want this painful teacher. I know that you walk canvas to canvas on the walls of your studio for days and even months struggling with

your imagination. That wonderful imagination of yours growing from the white color black and from the black to white. No explanation comes

from you. It is locked inside that imagination of yours. No titles but a fearless presence from the first hit of the brush to the last. Control in this way was always a sign of true courage. The world is full of color and I have seen it in the trips that de Kooning and I have taken out east in Long Island. But, your black and white is truly a creation and belongs

only to you in your very special way.”

FINE ART: Who else did he impact?Dr. BAKER: He walked out on Pollock. He struck a chord with Hoffman and they found a common core of understanding for art. They both felt the same things coming from similar backgrounds; the need to put it down on a canvas to evidence that background and they both saw the importance of color to evoke responses from the people that would view their canvases. They were not unlike Picasso in the sense that they needed to have a response to what they created. They forced the response by the choice of their colors and they needed that to verify what they were trying to communicate.FINE ART: So they understood they weren’t painting in a void, they were painting to share a concept with others. What was the length of time he dialogued with the expressionists?

“Pollock and James Brooks were friends. They started to experiment using watered down dye pigments to create the suggestion of forms us-ing stains or the points of wet brushes to start. Pollock had a passionate dedication to emotional truth and this was a very important starting

point for Brooks. However, the similarity of these artists end when you examine their paintings. Pollock’s paintings are direct, attacking, sharp,

and quick in tempo whereas Brooks talks with his feeling about his forms and makes possible attacks which talk to the bone marrow with its creative agony. This combination of violence with thought modification is the trait of his creative inspiration. The painter convinces himself that

Watercolor from the Troyan sketchbook, 9” x 11”, 1932


his work belongs only to him and that it is his internal force that drives it; this doesn’t mean that the work ends with this, for he knows that this familiarity is

the main channel of feelings recognized in his art and the expansion of form and space.”

Dr. BAKER: He would have been more active, cer-tainly, had it not been for his lack of English. Kline asked him over and over how he had this superior understanding of color and to help him move his color as Matthew did, but he couldn’t explain it to him in “the language he needs.” They asked him countless times to exhibit with them but so many things got in the way. He didn’t have money and needed to work only to buy more paints. He wrote that he “did not have time to make exhibits now; it is very frustrating for me.” Yet he was right there with them all until 1953, when he had an abrupt departure after the argument with Pollock. Before that, he travelled out to the East End with them and on the way, of course painted houses in order to buy bread which he couldn’t do from what he was painting. He tried and tried and tried and he said, ‘Hell, I’ll paint houses. I’ll do something, I have to live.’ And that’s what he did.

Troyan on Jackson Pollock:“Jack and I had a talk about art and Tworkov told me that ‘if I knew what I wanted to paint, I would like to paint for sure’. Tworkov believed that subjec-tive material was not different from reality, that it comes from the outside which he calls the real world. His painting is neither spontaneous nor automatic.

He creates a concrete expression that is dictated by his feelings and expressed in a language far from primi-tive or elementary. His colors can be compared with instruments in the orchestra. Visible differences exist

in his echo of red with a unity of yellow and blue. We finished our conversation with this thought from Jack: ‘the subject is with me from the beginning of my painting to the end as are the color parts’. I definitely noticed that unlike

me or Kline he used brushes of great quality, camel or ox, 2 inches or more. I guess he thought the viewer would know.”

Dr. BAKER: That was Matthew’s take on him. He says people don’t really understand the importance of what Pollock created. They think it’s a mish-mash of garbage but it’s brilliant.FINE ART: And Matthew wrote this in ’52, ’53?Dr. BAKER: 1952.FINE ART: After sitting down, talking, listening, watching, seeing the paintings, everybody went to everybody’s studio, and this was his impression?Dr. BAKER: Yes. Here’s what he said about Brooks. Brooks talks with his feelings about his forms, he makes possible attacks in art and he talks to the bone marrow. I thought that was a brilliant description. He creates with agony. The combination of violence and violent thinking, and the modification of the trait of creative inspiration is seen in every stroke. The painter has a conviction and is driven by an internal force which is unstoppable. This is the way he viewed him. He said you could see his drive that he had no control over. He also noted that Jack Tworkov said to him: “If I knew I wanted to paint, I would have started painting long ago.” Tworkov believed that creation belongs to an artist only. The true subject is not typical for an individual but it functions as an adaptation to time that people live in. For Tworkov, the mind invaded by feelings is a subjective material that art is built on. It comes from outside which he calls the real world, invades his insides and then he puts it out there on a canvas. He’s spontaneous and not controlled. He wants to create a concrete expression of his

inner self and his feelings.

Troyan to Franz Kline:“Often you make canvases of 10 feet or more and by doing these, do you feel

yourself better? Do you have an intellectual realization of your emotions and your own stylization?”

Kline to Troyan: “You have to give out of yourself to paint and it is easier if it is big-beyond expected boundaries. Half of the population

lives in the chaos of the city, the other half try to escape the noise. I think it is useless to ponder who is right, for nobody cares and so you are you,

to feel the you inside. You, Troyan, your colors beat into the inner part of man. You carve a path to a man’s soul. I need those tools but I can’t have

them because they belong to you. I am me and I must learn that.”

Troyan: “Kline, you create the works characteristic of New York in your studio. You are able to talk about art because you have a true knowledge of it. I can’t speak as you do even though I want to but my language stops me. In your black and white imagination you’ve found international recogni-

tion. I know, like me, you can’t afford good material- you use ordinary paints and big brushes used for houses. The occasional true titanium and

zinc makes you happy because you can create soft special effects. Don’t worry about my color”.

Kline: “Troyan, you paint with such freedom, like you become the brush and the brush is you; me, I ponder and fret on one canvas after another.

To only have your freedom, your energy, your truth in the seconds in which you create. I don’t, I can’t, I need to though”.

Troyan: “My truth and what you call freedom and energy is the haunt-ing messages I have taken with me from my imprisonment. Kline you

don’t want this painful teacher. I know that you walk canvas to canvas

Love, Oil on canvas, 53.5” x 43.5”, 1957


on the walls of your studio for days and even months struggling with your imagination. That wonderful imagination of yours growing from the white color black and from the black to white. No explanation comes

from you. It is locked inside that imagination of yours. No titles but a fearless presence from the first hit of the brush to the last. Control in this way was always a sign of true courage. The world is full of color and I have seen it in the trips that de Kooning and I have taken out east in Long Island. But, your black and white is truly a creation and belongs

only to you in your very special way.”

FINE ART: Kline said this to Matthew in a conversation and Mat-thew had written it down?Dr. BAKER: Yes. From Matthew’s diary...It was sensitive to history, modern in the best meaning of modern, full of the presence of the life he lived in. FINE ART: Thank you for this enlightening discourse on a great man. All of us need to understand Matthew Troyan’s direct participa-tion, his involvement, his influence in actuality as well as his unknown influence on the Abstract Expressionists. It’s an important school and people are constantly revisiting and looking for any information that comes out concerning that very important era in American art.FINE ART: He wants to merge the outside world with his inside view and he wants other people to share the experience. He wants to draw them in that way and Matthew shared these viewpoints with these people.Dr. BAKER: Yes! FINE ART: He saw deeper into their work than the critics and even

the artists.Dr. BAKER: Yes! These are actually his experiences that he needed to put down, his conversations. His only regret was that his English was very poor. He felt that he could not glean as much as he needed to from those he considered to be masters of the new age of art.FINE ART: It’s amazing you have his voice pre-served through the diaries.Dr. BAKER: Yes, it is an extraordinary compila-tion. I have so much stuff on Matthew. Imagine having his report cards from Dusseldorf? I mean, its crazy! Who has that stuff?FINE ART: There are some people who are born to annotate themselves. Dr. BAKER: It’s an amazing thing! What’s in-credible is that his second wife, Mitzi, kept it all together and was a great archivist. FINE ART: She believed in him.Dr. BAKER: She did. She said to me: “I wish that when I came home after work that I wasn’t so damn tired and I had paid more attention to what he was trying to tell me about his canvases.” FINE ART: They married after his first wife passed?Dr. BAKER: Yes. They became friends and it was seven years after his first wife passed away that he remarried and then decided to raise her children, not adopt them but raise them and give them school and education because he thought that school was very important. Dr. BAKER: This is Matthew: a new vision de-mands a new technique. Where force influences complete recognition of an artist and his work, the idea that art was created by itself is typical only to America. In my opinion, all students, in the majority of cases, create good art. Nowadays, a good abstract artist loses inspiration and sometimes doesn’t paint for months and months. He lives in an apathy and he wants to lie down and simply sleep and get rid of all those heavy thoughts of

creation. An artist is an artist when he paints and nobody is as much concentrated on himself and in himself like the artist. The artist gives up his own outside being, and is captured by the Art.FINE ART: That’s interesting. He really feels the muse of the art is the reason for existence. He sums up depression very nicely. And he’s witnessed it in all his Expressionist friends.Dr. BAKER: That’s why Willem de Kooning used to say that art was never for him a calm or a pure thing, it was a “vulgar power.” FINE ART: I had never heard that quote. Is that a popular quote?Dr. BAKER: No. FINE ART: That’s unbelievable.Dr. BAKER: Matthew was a friend of de Kooning who told him: “Art is dramatic and it doesn’t create from outside, nor inside from any gentleness. Strong ideas, something which pushes you ahead and excites you when you strike the canvas with paints and actively makes you enter into the painting. That’s what art is.”FINE ART: That was an amazing interaction. Do you know of anybody else that has a diary like this? I don’t.Dr. BAKER: No. Even though Matthew had Alzheimer’s, his last request was that someone would pick up his notes and his memoirs and tell his story. Because he thought his story was important in that he felt that it made you look at the truth of the artist.FINE ART: Oh that’s very interesting, Bob, very interesting. Is there any other quote you’d like to share with us? Dr. BAKER: Yes. When the heart of the observer meets the heart of the creator there’s a symphony of the angels of the heaven. It was my under-

Pride, Oil on canvas, 54” x 38”, 1959


standing of what Matthew was about, with the angels. His single-minded purpose was to communicate with the observer. He felt that communication was so vital to human existence that if it could occur, there was hope for mankind. FINE ART: What gave him the presence of mind to record?Dr. BAKER: He thought it was important to understand the soul of man.FINE ART: I see. He’s looking into the soul. It’s a soul push.Dr. BAKER: It’s a soul push. His art was meant to share the universal-ity of the human being, that there was a central core in which we all came, and that if we could speak to that, then we have hope and we can rise above anything and accept all of the omnipresent differences that are inherent within the world and move ahead as a human race.FINE ART: I think that’s brilliantly said. I happen to agree because I believe that is the only reason for communally coming together to share information; it certainly isn’t to have arguments. This must re-flect his experience in the war; from having seen the absolute horror of what can occur if people don’t agree.Dr. BAKER: It also was a result of his childhood experiences. He and his family lived through unspeakable violence, seeing villages burned by the Cossaks and who knows what else. His father myste-riously disappeared because all he wanted to do was have a free and independent Poland.FINE ART: Does he comment on the fact that atomic energy has occurred, that there is this ability to annihilate all? Dr. BAKER: No. He didn’t comment on that.FINE ART: Because his sense of annihilation was so immediate, he had seen everything burnt before him?Dr. BAKER: Yes. Some of his paintings show the destruction of Warsaw in very modern and impressionistic ways. He did one that is in red and black and oranges and yellows and periodic presence of small figures that cries out about all of that destruction and how we have to move beyond that in order for us to survive as a race.FINE ART: Well you have so brilliantly stated his pur-pose and with such a loving kindness and generosity you’re sharing this.Dr. BAKER: For me, Mat-thew epitomizes the nature of which we all struggle to become. A truthful, loving individual, understanding the importance of the human spirit and understanding its ability to rise above all the pettiness that exists in the world. And I think in understanding his thoughts and of others similar, we have an opportunity to survive as a human race.FINE ART: Brilliantly said, Robert. It is a beautiful sentiment. So you and your wife, Carla, are now going to take your 3,500 piece collection and present it to the world.Dr. BAKER: Yes, and allow people to view the art and reach their own conclusions. We intend to do that through exhibitions and shows throughout the country. We have an unusual opportunity to partner with Chiurazzi International Ltd., a 19th century company from Italy that created molds with the permission of the Italian government of all the great masters in Italy that made figures in statuary. The joint exhibition will show the universal spirit that exists in art from the ages to the present times.FINE ART: Where are the exhibits to be held?Dr. BAKER: We are setting up one in Naples, Florida and we are going to be doing a one month presentation in the Miami Day School in November. The purpose of that is to do a lecture series about art

and its progression through the ages. Gordon Root, who is a good friend of mine and managing Di-rector of Chiurazzi International Ltd., myself, and Lilly Speigel whose husband Paul Yeni was an artist who was also in the work camps in Nazi Germany are part of the team. We will present Troyan’s art and words to the students in hopes that we can help them understand how art has moved us above and beyond insignificant petty jealousies and arguments that are present from one nation to another to a higher plane. We hope that this mes-sage gets through to the younger generation so that the future generations of the world can have

a better outlook on uniting mankind. It is time for the world to learn and appreciate the body of work produced by Mr. Troyan and it is my pleasure and privilege to champion this cause.FINE ART: Do you have a website for the art yet?Dr. BAKER: Yes. www.matthewtroyanart.com. We are in the midst of creating another website, because I’ve just put the finishing touches on the Matthew Troyan Foundation for the Visual Arts, the purpose of which will be to provide a scholarship annually to the student that best represents Matthew’s thoughts on life, on humanity along with his talent as an artist. There is also a video that we produced ton YouTube about 16 minutes long that speaks to Matthew and some of his experiences and shows about 150 of his paintings. That’s on YouTube, Matthew Troyan and that will give you a better under-standing of Matthew.

“Troyan’s genius of recording his thoughts andopinions will no longer go unnoticed. …

Tworkov, Kline, de Kooning and Pollock havenow been unlocked for the world to see.”

Photo of Troyan, Connecticut, 1954, age 41

Dr. Robert Baker, with Troyan masterwork at National Arts Club, New York


Presenting for the first time, the complete works of

MATTHEW TROYANMaster of Expressionism,

Respected colleague of Kline, Pollock & de KooningHistorical paintings and insightful journal entries

for further information concerning Matthew Troyancontact Dr. Robert H. Baker

CIRCA SOMETHING117A South Country Road, Bellport, NY 11713 • (631) 803-6706

www.matthewtroyanart.com

“Abstract art approaches the most direct relationship we can have with the world.”—Robert Lapoujade

The Dancer, Oil on canvas, 32.5” x 29.5”, 1960


By MOVSES ZIRANI

Those monuments that are meant for worship, from the ancient monoliths up to the modern spiritual temples, are wide at the bottom —glued to the earth, and

are narrow, pointed upward at the top, as if ready to soar into the sky. They create a bond between earth and heaven, between the spiritual and the earthly. The Armenian churches are very typical of such monuments. Their architectural solutions aim to create a relationship between the earthly man and the heavenly principalities.

Svetlana Hakobyan is Armenian. As an artist, she has two personalities—one is earthly, life-loving and going after beauty. The other is spiritual and chases after mysticism. However, these two personalities not only do not cross, but also complement each other with dialectic bonds. For this reason, she simultaneously creates art with different styles of expression. The first kind of art work is earthen, treading on with sure footsteps, saturated with lively sensations and colorful

The Chaotic Harmony of Svetlana Hakobyan

Svetlana Hakobyan, The Chaotic Harmony, 104 x 160cm, oil on canvas, 2002

creations that open up to life with sincere and “simple” expressions as earthen formations. Such are her portraits and still life works. The Yerkir series of village scenes can be classified in this category.

Svetlana Hakobian, Me and You, 73 x 92cm, oil on canvas, 2004


These paintings have a different quality, different characteristics and a different nature. She has started this series in 2002, after visiting her forefathers’ homeland, Western Armenia. The Yerkir series has an earthly character, but somehow they suggest nobility and ecstasy because they are painted with much emotion and a special tenderness.

Svetlana Hakobyan’s forefathers were killed by the Turks during the Armenian genocide in 1915. When she visited their land, the villages of Western Armenia were barren. She only saw forsaken houses, empty streets, withered and lonely trees. Even the birds and wild beasts had left the region, that otherwise were kept clean, cared for and stood firm. They not only offer a hospitable sight, but also it seems that they miss their rightful owners and wait for their return, wait for

Svetlana Hakobyan and her children to come and give life to those empty towns and fields, to give water to the thirsty trees and bushes, to call back the birds and beasts, so that their children and grandchildren catch fish and crab in the streams, run barefoot in the streets or climb the mountains, even without underwear. This is why Svetlana Hakobyan has painted her forefathers’ landscape with special care and “virgin” brush strokes. These scenes are simple and humble, but put on a special meaning and monumental nature under Svetlana’s brush strokes.

The artist has intentionally named the series Yerkir. For the Western Armenians, Yerkir means land seized and emptied from its inhabitants, whose earth is baptized and anointed by the centuries-old sweat and blood of its people. There is a call in her creations, a sacred prayer of homeland nostalgia, and a burning desire to return…

Svetlana Hakobian, Universe Subtlety, 100 x 70 cm, oil on canvas, 2011 Svetlana Hakobian, Storm of Flowers, 100 x 70cm, mixed media on canvas, 2009

Svetlana Hakobyan, Still Life With Plums, 100 x 80cm, oil on canvas, 2006


Svetlana Hakobian, The Significance of Home, 100 x 90cm, mixed media on canvas, 2010

Only those who do not have a land and have survived genocide, can completely understand Svetlana Hakobyan ‘sYerkir series, its fascination and artistic feeling.

Although we have dubbed the canvases of this series “sacred prayer” and “burning desire”, however the artist has not detailed and personalized them. Through the national, she moves toward the humane and spreads on pan-human dimensions.

This double-personality artist is like the medieval architectural monuments: she is firmly attached to her forefathers’ land, but to escape the daily difficulties and additional troubles, she circles (without disrespect) the daily routine and the tangible surroundings and tries to enter spiritual mazes, in order to depart for the universe, and to dig into the borderless unknown, where “prayer” is rendered “desire”, and “desire” becomes “returned reality.” Through illuminated and colorful lines and stains, she soars as “The Lady of Dreams”, as a “Secret-Seer” in the “Chaotic Harmony” where “Universal Flowers” smile bitterly, where “Undulating Emotions” as “Beginnings” herald the birth of victory in the eternal movement, and from where “Fiery Seeds” burst to liberate “Sea to

Sea Armenia”, where, behind burning fences and mauve hues, is pictured Ararat, the sacred mountain of the Armenian nation as the symbol of survival.

If, at some point the Yerkir series is separated from Svetlana Hakobyan’s portraits and still life through nobility and bliss, then Sea to Sea Armenia bridges together the mortal and the eternal, where the earthly and spiritual meet as life “heartbeats”, as a “vision”, where the “wandering rules” turn the captured homelands into dreams.

The Armenian architecture, with its structure, style and spirit, is the direct reflection of the people who has created it. And Svetlana Hakobyan is its carrier and expresser in pan-human spheres. Her art, in its wholeness, is on one side rooted in the earth and tough reality, and on the other hand, it wanders in space to search and find its national identity, human right and especially those pan-human, undeniable values that separate man from the animal and render it Man with a capital “M” and face it with human responsibilities.

(The author holds a Doctorate in Fine Arts)


From Near-Extinctionto Super Distinction Ed Heck at Galerie Mensing, Berlin

ED HECK


From Near-Extinctionto Super Distinction

ED HECK


Dog by dog, creature by creature, with each new painting Ed Heck is getting closer and closer to his stated (tongue-in-cheek) goal of (art) world domination. Not since the heyday

of Erté, Warhol or Peter Max has an artist cut such a wide swatch across multiple elements of commerce internationally. Heck hasn’t crossed over, he’s taken over, and done it with a smile, true humility and impeccable artistic credentials.

At first glance, one might take a look at a gallery full of Ed Heck’s work and call to mind the immortal words of the legendary Popagandist Ron English who actually staged a notorious Soho exhibition called “Hey, my kid could do that.” In pairing the work of his artist friends with their progeny, English threw his dagger at the establishment and had a lot of fun at the opening with the families. That was a few years before Ed Heck took one of his self-described “child-like doodles” to the School of Visual Art’s silk-screen facility and made a print that became the amoeba in the evolution of what would become The World of Ed Heck.

Ed Heck’s arrival on the scene was not announced with trumpets blaring or rockets red-glaring, rather it was painted into existence, unfolding like a sunrise. It happened for him in the course of a four day Artexpo, at the Javits Center, New York City, 1999, the Capital of the Art World.

Fast forward to early 2012. Ed is standing in front of the Mona Lisa, at the Louvre, Paris, France. He had just finished another whirlwind sold-out tour of Galerie Mensing’s chain of locations in Germany (Berlin, Munich, Dusseldorf and beyond). The September, 2011 show was so popular, they called him back for another run in February.

“They started carrying my work about five years ago,” Ed was saying shortly after returning from his most recent trip. “Progressively it was getting a little more popular. The gallery owner, Harry Mensing, said I did better than any artist they had there, including Britto, for first time out. In one hour last September, Berlin and Hamburg sold everything. It is still going really well and they asked me to come back a little sooner. I can hardly keep up with the demand.” Over 200 pieces have sold there since September, and Heck came back with forty + commissions, and just received a note asking for 30 more paintings.

“People want special things in a painting, for example, their dogs, or if one thing was sold that they liked, they request similar one on the same theme. For some reason, Germany is really big on the dog pictures. People ask me, ‘Why do you always do dogs?’ I didn’t always do dogs though I always had them as pets. ‘Whose dog is that

you’re painting?’ The main one is the generic Ed Heck dog, I don’t do specific breeds.”

Heck never set out to be strictly a painter of man’s best friend, but after his first canine painting sold within a day of being placed a New York gallery’s window, the Director called the artist saying, ‘I need another dog!’” and it took off from there.

“I actually enjoy doing them,” continued Ed. “Dogs kind of show their emotions and you can play with that. In Germany they really love the dogs and it just connected. The first two trips, we ran out, so this time I brought plenty. Fortunately, they like my other stuff also.”

Meanwhile, back at the Louvre and the Mona Lisa…“I got there early, had a good 10-15 minutes alone with her

except for the guards, then the place got mobbed. I left her and walked down the halls, seeing all of these pictures on the walls that I have only seen in books.”

Safely ensconced back in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn, studio (“I was born here and just waited. It has become the new Village”) Heck is preparing for the next round of activity—TV shows, all kinds of books, luggage, linens, pet toys, Drum City and who knows what else. But it is the paintings that drive the machine and there is no compromise or shortcut in their execution. Meeting the orders from Germany and preparing for Spring 2012 Artexpo, Ed works in an old industrial building that has been converted to artist studios. He recently doubled his space and is about to expand again. “I found out if you give up sleeping that adds a little more time. I’m a one-man band and know I can’t do that anymore.”

For 16 years, Ed Heck held down what most in the field would consider a dream job: staff illustrator at the American Museum of Natural History—salary, benefits, security. Heck’s particular assignment was that of a scientific illustrator specializing in fossil renderings and dinosaur reconstructions. One afternoon, on a research and development excursion, Ed and a fellow worker went to the movies. Jurassic Park had just been released and the two felt a field trip to the local Loew’s Paramount would be instructional, if not inspirational. In a circuitous way, it was because when they left the theatre in the glowing late afternoon sunlight streaming down the West 57th Street canyon, Heck came to the realization that he would soon be going the way of the creatures he immortalized if he didn’t somehow adapt. “They don’t need us to draw dinosaurs anymore. They just made live ones,” he told his partner on the way back to the Museum.

At night to unwind from the rigors of his job, Ed would fill scrapbook after scrapbook with his whimsical exercises. His desire

Greetings

Up Against the Wall, Sabre Tooth By VICTOR FORBES

Monster Guitar


was to draw like a child. “When I was younger my mother had this old Bible with detailed etchings, and I would pick out the hardest one and copy it. I always loved children’s drawings, and envied their freedom to paint as they want to, outside the boundaries of art-world standards. If you ask a youngster if they can draw that, they say ‘Sure.’ Then we are told things have to be and look a certain way. I was teaching myself how to draw like a young child without any care of what people would think.” Putting aside his adult artists’ ego, he declared his artistic independence. “Knowing no one would see them, I felt free to do what I wanted to do.”

He executed hundreds of these self-described “doodles” over the years but in actuality felt like he “didn’t even do them. I don’t know where half of them came from, probably my subconscious. You can’t pre-conceive something people will like. ”

These little drawings took on a pivotal role in his life shortly after his epiphany at the movies. Rather than fall victim to the Tyrannosaurus Blues, Ed decided to take a course at his Alma mater in preparation for the 1999 Artexpo, where he planned to take a booth and test the waters. “I didn’t know what I would show there, so I decided to learn the silk-screen process.” While coaxing the

ink-laden squeegee over the hand-drawn screen on to a sumptuous sheet of rag paper, Heck had what he calls “a religious experience” as he pulled his first print.

The instructor, Donald Sheridan, told him, “The things you are putting together in class you could sell today.” In preparation for his initial foray into the artworld, Heck took his self-described “oddball art with brilliant color and bright fun,” to Excel Fine Art on Columbus Avenue to get framed and it was here that he met Tom Winer, who echoed the silk-screen instructors sentiments.

“Where did you get these,” he wanted to know.“They’re mine!” Heck replied and Tom asked if he could put

some of the work on display. “One of the dogs went in the window and a couple of days later he sold it and asked for more.”

Further heeding his instructor’s advice, “That drawing would make a great painting,” Ed completed a few and marched them into the neighborhood art gallery to get framed where musician-turned-gallery director Tom Winer was employed. He recalls their first meeting.

“I immediately saw that his work was, in my opinion, extremely appealing, that he had superstar qualities and it was just a matter of

Ed Heck Lookin’ Cool before Bath Time at Galerie Mensing, Berlin


Heck, ’Expo and AppiceBUILDING

DRUMCITY

Carmine Appice & Ed Heck Drum City

time before it would happen for him with enormous potential. I hung one of paintings in the window and the response was immediate, really quite amazing. He had that special magic that we in the commercial art business – whether it is music or anything else – just dream of and it turned out to be true for Ed.

“Ed has a combination that rarely exists – that special amalgam of ingredients that touch people in more than an art way. Psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, it’s all there and I believe that’s a big part of his success.”

Sure enough, Heck outsold every other emerging artist the gallery represented and that success led him to the Artexpo shortly thereafter. As it opened, Ed was just hoping the management wouldn’t, in his words, “throw him out” of the show when they saw his actual exhibition. Instead, the opposite happened. Attendees

were crowding around his booth, buyers from near and far. “Do you have a catalogue?” they seemed to shout in unison. A neophyte in the business of art, he printed no literature (“My walls are the catalog”). He just hung his prints and paintings and “Holy Art Fair, Batman”, somebody got the joke. Everything sold, with orders and commissions for more. After one art fair, Ed was a made man. “I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a really big hit; I was overwhelmed by the response. From there, it all just snowballed.”

The World of Ed Heck went from seedling to Redwood forest just like that.

Stranger things have happened, yet there is no need to elaborate“The comment I get most often from people is, ‘Your work

makes me smile.’ I can’t ask for anything more than that.”During the first Artexpo, Ed’s wife was pregnant with their

This is one place of which it can be truly said, “We built this city on Rock and Roll.” Ed Heck’s collaboration with the world-famous drummer Carmine Appice

(who jump-started “hard rock” with the Vanilla Fudge) fits right in with his interest in music (he played in bands through high school). “Carmine’s girl friend, Leslie Gold, the Radio Chick, brought him to Artexpo where Paul Stanley from KISS was exhibiting across from me. ‘Hey, you want to do

something?’ he said and he came to my studio about a week later and we created the first piece together. ” Recalls Carmine of their initial interaction, “Ed asked me if I painted and I said ‘No, but I can draw drums.’ He gave me a pad and showed me what to do. First we did a self -portrait. Then a piece called Drum

Head, which had my portrait inside a drum. We sold a few of these then I came up with a whole idea of a city made of drums and other famous place like Stonehenge (as Drumhenge), The Pyramids and Moon Landing all made of drums. Eventually we will have a collection of 24 such paintings of world landmarks created of

drums. I look forward to finishing this. Ed is an incredible talent and I love working with him. He is like family to us and a close friend. I am really happy things are happening for him.” “We are looking for gallery spaces now to plan some exhibits of the Appice/ Heck work,” said the artist.


Bull’s Eye Air Guitar Monster Drums

Taxi Dog


first son and he had a good job… “A job you could have for life, but I really enjoyed doing this stuff and wanted to take the plunge. I didn’t know what to expect and was overwhelmed, not prepared for the response. I knew I couldn’t do both — there’s not enough time in the day — so I had to make a decision.” A little while later, Heck left the Museum even though his wife was pregnant with their second son. “I could have retired out,” he said. “There’s a fine line between boldness and stupidity. Thankfully it worked out for the best. I am lucky and grateful that people are attracted to what I ended up doing.

“I’m having fun,” he continues. “Meeting so many different people is one of the best things about it. One of the things I really enjoy is that it can go into so many areas.” He was recently in Las Vegas at the Travel Show to unveil a line of luggage coming out with American Flyer where Celia Liang, vice president of product development and design on the Ed Heck collection for American Elite Inc. stated, “Ed Heck is an extremely talented artist and his unique style and approach to art make this collaboration exciting.”

The Ed Heck line of bedding and textiles for Maine Street Living is expected to be at U.S. mass retailers at the end of the third quarter. The collection will feature Heck’s artwork from his books and paintings with rollout events that will include art displays and book signings.

Heck has written and illustrated numerous children’s books for Penguin, starting with Big Fish, Little Fish and the company has the Ed Heck Just Board line which includes these six titles to date: Good Night Dog, Monster Opposites, Many Marvelous Monsters, Shape Up Pup, ABCD Eat, and Color by Penguins. In addition, he is in negotiations with Harry Potter’s publisher, Scholastic, for more projects.

Heck also works with a popular children’s performer, Kimmy Schwimmy, drawing all of her characters for print and TV, even animating her songs. The characters she created have been made into puppets for the live shows and DVD by the artist.

“People, most of the time, buy visual art for emotional reasons. To me, art is theatre, and with Ed, if he was a performer, he’d be a mime, because a mime has to impart a message without using words, in a very simple way. It’s a special craft and Ed is like that. His work is very powerful, very succinct and in the simplest conceivable way has the greatest impact. That is the greatest gift when you are an artist. He’s very unique and his success is predicated largely on that: anybody can appreciate what he does, whether you’re an intellectual or not, anybody can get it. I believe that he can go much father as an artist in terms of his messaging if he chooses to. He can become an important artist, even in the litany of fine art. It’s not just about sales, it’s about profundity. He has enormous talent—he has the skills of a photo realist. In music we call it chops and he has incredible chops. I think Ed could be as big an artist as anybody out there.”

For further information, visit www.edheck.com

Kimmy Schwimmy and Ed Heck

The Ed Heck Collection

Download - Fine Art Spring 2012

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