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Arts: A Pastiche Of Styles In Heritage, Human Rights

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  • Arts: A Pastiche Of Styles In Heritage, Human Rights

    A PASTICHE OF STYLES IN HERITAGE, HUMAN RIGHTS
    By Sophia Tillie

    The Daily Star
    http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2012/Jan-31/161605-a-pastiche-of-styles-in-heritage-human-rights.ashx#axzz1l42Yw4cb
    Jan 31 2012
    Lebanon

    BEIRUT: Arthur K. is a contemporary Lebanese-Armenian self-made
    painter. Born in 1945, he is a doctor by profession, as well as a poet
    and an essayist. In addition to working in multiple fields, in the
    last 20 years of his artistic career Arthur K. has gone by many names:
    Arthur, Nicolian, Nakoul and more recently Arthur K., which stands
    for Harout Kapriel Nicolian.In his latest exhibition at the Hamazkayin
    Gallery, "Heritage and Human Rights," the artist employs acrylic and
    print on canvas to form a series of collages that the introductory
    material states "express the artist's position and struggle against
    the greed and difficulties that produce human injustice and give
    commentary to his political views." Each canvas has the words "human
    rights" embossed across it, and each carries a different assemblage
    of script, old photos, newspaper and magazine cutouts.

    "I employ [the] letterism of the Armenian alphabet to express my
    message," Arthur K. says. "Due to the Armenian massacre there is
    something of human rights in our alphabet, [that is] if there are
    human rights."

    The dominant colors are black red, blue and gold. Classical images
    stand juxtaposed with modern icons of famous and familiar faces such
    as such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Giorgio de Chirico, Freud, Parajanov,
    and Brecht. Violent and romantic images harmonize into an ascetically
    pleasing bricolage whose intertextuality is obscure. This disturbs
    the observer trying to weave the disparate parts into a cohesive
    narrative that seems hauntingly absent.

    One canvas has the late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti placed
    centrally, arms outstretched. "Pavarotti is a pillar of human rights
    because he is happy," he explained with a total sincerity that rendered
    all irony and sarcasm obsolete.

    Intermingled with and interrupting these series of collages are a
    couple of canvases entitled "Golden Houses," painted with mixed media
    on canvas, as well as a number of naive paintings of Phoenician icons.

    "Golden Houses" depict old, red roofed Lebanese houses, checkered
    with brown deterioration and golden wisps that rise like smoke or thin
    branches into blossoming flames of golds, reds and blues. The windows
    are black and hollowed and the houses stand crowded together. "The
    houses are about memory. This exhibition is about lost heritage too."

    A painting entitled "King and Queen Ashtarimus" depicts simplistic
    icons of a male and female, and the use of acrylic and mixed media on
    canvas gives it an appearance of being on painted wood. Their naive
    faces emerge from a tapestry of colored squares and swirls. Soft
    blues are scarred by red paint that drips from mouth and skull.

    Arthur K. has exhibited his works internationally through Noah's Ark
    Art Gallery in Beirut, New York, Sao Paulo, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and
    recently in the 12th International Art Exhibition in Beijing, China.

    He says his greatest influence is the philosophy of the author Zekharia
    Sitchin, who wrote about the birth of civilization in the areas where
    the people of Sumer, Mari, Urartu and Phoenicia lived, and about
    a missing 12th planet in the sky. Sitchin was an Azerbaijani-born
    American author (1920-2010), whose books propose an explanation for
    human origins involving ancient astronauts.

    Sitchin attributes the creation of ancient Sumerian culture to the
    Anunnaki, which he postulates was a race of extraterrestrials from
    a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. He believed this hypothetical
    planet of Nibiru to be in an elongated, elliptical orbit in the Earth's
    own solar system, asserting that Sumerian mythology reflects this view.

    Arthur K.'s early works depict rocket-esque structures with the
    concept of Mesopotamian, Phoenician and Egyptian figurines. "If you
    look at Baalbek, the Pyramids and other ancient temples you can see
    how much more evolved they were. Even ... in England today you don't
    know how Stonehenge was built."

    A dark image of Picasso with black hollow eyes stares out from one
    canvas. Beneath it the word "Dolly" is inscribed across an image of
    a semi-naked Indian man at work. The artist has embossed the word
    "pollution" into Picasso's brain "to show that the consciousnesses
    of geniuses are deformed today."

    "Human Rights and Heritage" is an interesting commentary on the
    devolution of our species from ancient times to the present. The
    artist's work is a pastiche of styles from three different epochs:
    naive icons, expressionism and postmodernist bricolage. The bricolage
    collages, by their very nature, present a blank parody of their own
    self-reflexivity and textual references and render the political
    message of human rights null and void.

    Rather than undermine the artist's political views, however, this
    serves to emphasize his view of our current degradation, juxtaposed
    with the more idealized epochs of our lost heritage.

    "Heritage and Human Rights" is at the Hamazkayin Gallery in Bourj
    Hammoud's Shaghzoyan Genter until Feb. 6. For more information,
    call 01-241-262.

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