/Reporter.am/ Yerevan - Grigor Khanjyan spent a large part of the last eight years of his life on a scaffold with his color box and brushes in a broad hall allotted to him in Yerevan's Cascade. Here he painted al fresco the vast triptych that is his final masterwork.

His last days on the scaffold were in bitterly cold weather; old, sick, and eyesight failing, he seemed to know the end would soon come. On the day before his death, working on the final panel, the "Rebirth of Armenia," he summoned his last reserves of strength, completing - one could say illuminating - in a single day the critical central area that had remained unfinished; on this day he painted the beautiful face of Mother Armenia and her child, the new Armenia. Only hours later, he passed away.

The huge triptych, completed and in full restoration, graces the entire wall in its own designated, stately hall, open and free to the public, an integral part of the new Cafesjian Center for the Arts.

In this environment I see it and feel it as a sacred space. I believe Grigor Khanjyan also thought of it that way.

He created a mural of this ancient Christian land and its people, telling of struggles, early triumphs, tragedy, and rebirth in independence. He did it with heart and soul on a public wall for everyone who wishes to know what it means to be an Armenian.

He would do it in a way that speaks to the generations into which he was born, inspiring and legible to the common man and woman.

Who was Grigor Khanjyan?

Born in Yerevan in 1924, he graduated from art schools in the city as World War II ended. His work spans the second half of the 20th century. He lived to see the end of Stalin, the resurgence of the Apostolic Church, and to take active part in the movement for the independence of Armenia. He passed away in the year 2000, with red, blue, and orange on his palette and under the skin of his hands.

Khanjyan, was a man of prodigious talent, understanding of Armenian literature, and abiding religious faith. As an artist he possessed an uncanny ability to catch, and to express graphically, the decisive narrative moment.

It led him to unfashionable clarity. By choice, because it suited his way of thinking, he was as modern as the vivid moment, capturing its mood, its light, its musical movement. He recomposed for dramatic effect, painting the world as he felt it before his eyes, but without painterly devices that might compromise lucidity at the popular level.

Trained as a prodigy by his Armenian teachers, he learned how to get along within the system, the Soviet regime finding little to criticize besides too little of the rootless, mass modern man and too much specifically of Armenian national consciousness in his work. Under these circumstances, he turned to the masterpieces of Armenian literature as an effective shield, becoming its most successful graphic interpreter. As a consequence, with the strength of the literature, combined with the artistic strength and clarity of his illustrations, the highest exhibition prizes and honors in the Soviet Union began to heap up.

In his earliest period his favorite writer was Hovhannes Toumanian. Khanjyan illustrating Toumanian's beautiful "Anoush," the story "Gikor," and the poem "Sako from Lory," for each of which he received great praise and prizes. He turned to Khachatur Abovyan for The Wounds of Armenia, receiving an award of "The Best Book of the Year" in the Soviet Union.

He was able to use this success as a passport to the world. He was first able to visit Albania. What he saw there, his exhibited works suggest, is a nation that had kept a vital connection to the genius of its traditional handicrafts - something he would come back to fight for in Armenia.

He also recognized the deep, emotional attachment on the popular level of the people of Albania to their own Vartan, their Scanderbeg, the abducted Christian Albanian who learned as a general in the Turkish Army how best he could destroy the oppressive Turks, leading greatly outnumbered but victorious Christian Albanian armies against them. There was an affinity to Armenian struggles that Khanjyan would also not forget.

Over the next few years he would go on to tour Poland, France, and Italy. In Rome he would visit and sketch a reverent scene in the Sistine Chapel. In a sense a part of him never left the scaffold that held Michelangelo aloft.

He returned do some of his best work in the illustrations for Paruir Sevak's "The Ever-Tolling Bell Tower," dealing with the Genocide and the life and death of beloved Komitas. No work of art was more completely embraced by the Armenian public in its time. It would find a place here in virtually every Armenian household.

More success followed with further illustrations of Armenian literature and travel abroad. A critical journey was in 1974 to Mexico. He had earlier been to Spain, but it was in Mexico that he caught the spirit of Latin rhythms, the focus of the mind on what is personally most hallowed and important that distinguishes prayer, along with the momentary relief from oppression and the spiritual qualities that may be found in some of the popular arts. His canvases from this period done in Mexico and back in Armenia have an especial brilliance.

In Mexico he studied the wall murals of Diego Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, discussing al fresco painting and becoming a close friend of Siqueiros'. He would devote his moving "Where are you, Son of the Lord?" to Siqueiros. It was in this period that he also decided to openly reconnect with his church.

In 1975, he painted "He Returned," and accompanied Catholicos Vasken I to Jerusalem, developing a strong friendship and productive working relationship with the Catholicos that directly bears on the murals in the Cascade.

While applying himself to plans to restore to brilliance the Holy See at Etchmiadzin, he illustrated Avetik Isahakyan's "Fables" and a personal favorite, Gevorg Emin's "The Dance of Sassoon," which now hangs in Yerevan's National Art Gallery, and he went on to complete the illustrations for "Western Armenian Poetry."
At Etchmiadzin the church was in disrepair. The adjacent residence of the Catholicos of All Armenians, the "Veharan," used to house refugees from the Genocide, was in even more of a shambles, having soon afterward been commandeered by the army for use as a military headquarters, then as an army field hospital, finally as a grain storehouse. Khanjyan talked about doing painting on the walls. The Catholicos said he had a better idea. Create tapestries. At least they can be rolled up and saved.

Khanjyan completed the design and details of what is called the "cartoon" of two tapestries: "The Armenian Alphabet" and "Vardanank" in 1982. The "cartoons," later to be adapted as basic designs of the wall paintings in the Cascade, were shown in Yerevan, receiving critical acclaim. They were then sent to France, to Obussion, to be woven in the workshop of the Pantene Brothers. Upon completion, they were hung as treasures in the Veharan in Etchmiadzin.

In 1983 the composition for "Vardanank" won the State Prize of Armenia. This generated a swell of interest in having a version of it done in a permanent place in Yerevan. With the construction underway of the Cascade, the place was decided. The design for the "Rebirth of Armenia" was started at this time.

It can be said that Khanjyan worked on the great triptych in the final Cascade version for a period of 15 years, with most of the labor on the wall following the declaration of Armenian independence.

In the year of Armenian independence, 1991, Khanjyan's beautiful "Madonna and Child" was consecrated and placed over the central altar in the cathedral of Etchmiadzin.

"The Armenian Alphabet" was completed on the Cascade wall in 1994. "Vardanank" was completed in 1998; "Rebirth" had an unfinished area of the fresco at his death in 2000.

Describing the difference between the frescos and the tapestries, Khanjyan is said to have replied, the difference is that the angels have been left in the church.

In this illumination of the saga of Armenian history, Grigor Khanjyan, whose emphasis throughout his life as an artist was on the vitality and drama and what can be achieved in the present moment, gives us a history that remains as vital and alive as the present moment. He peoples the triptych with many recognizable faces. History, he appears to say, lives in the people, generations past, the people present today, and those to come - but it is most alive on this very day because, today as we live, we carry it in us in a vital way and can do something about it to further our freedom and dignity.

Thus, with history as continuity, is not surprising to see the very recognizable visage of Vazgen I near that of Saint Mesrop Mashtots, nor further in the triptych a whole pantheon of familiar faces of poets, musicians, dramatists, and artists, and as part of the anonymous populace, his own children. We can recognize the features of his son, Ara, and among the graces, his lovely daughter, Seda, who has greatly helped as a source in these paragraphs.

This vital connection of past with the present is a theme that has been elaborated many times. Vazgen I, who commissioned "The Armenian Alphabet," was to put it this way: "The Armenian language is our essence, our honor, our identity, the foundation of our culture. . . . We cannot live without our mother tongue." Among the challenges of current Armenian history is to keep the mother tongue alive in the diaspora and to create further opportunities for all Armenians to express themselves in the common human language of the sciences and the arts.

That is a part of the strength of the Vardanank. A small band of beleaguered people have heavenly help as standing among their dead they fend off an almost overwhelming army of foes surrounding them. But heavenly help or not, the dead and the dying are many, and while the Bible is held aloft and an armed prelate proclaims, it is the will of the people to struggle on that is holding the day. While Vartan is in the center, on his armored stallion with his sword and arm raised in a V for victory, in the composition, nowhere is the will of the people better seen than in the lower left hand corner. Here is a man with neither sword nor arrows. He joins the fight with his bare hands. And notice, standing beside him a woman steps beyond the shields to become forefront, a leader in struggle that will have no end.

Before moving to the "Rebirth," let's review the characterization in the first two panels. In the center of the first panel is St. Mesrop Mashtots holding the newly created Armenian alphabet in the 5th century. It is seen as the beginning of a new era. The bookstand beside him symbolizes the rise of a new literature and of learning. Indeed, the texts of more than one hundred poems will be attributed to Mashots himself in the flowering of written literature immediately after his creation of the alphabet.

Pictured above Mashtots is King Vramshapuh, the queen on one side, Vahan Amatouni on the other, Mount Ararat above. The vault of heaven gains interest in the composition as the palpable spirituality of the moment has the fragrant hues of incense and lighted honey wax candles.

The Vardananz tells the story of the war of 451, when Prince Vardan Mamikonian led Armenia to a decisive victory over the Persians, enabling Armenia to thereafter retain its separate identity and its devotion to Christianity as integral to this identity. Among the heroic figures peopling the canvas, connoisseurs with a deeper acquaintance with Khanjyan's time will discover familiar faces. It also contains a self-portrait of Grigor Khanjyan in the tradition of earlier masters. You may also be able to find Komitas, Varuzhan, Charents, Paruir Sevak, and even William Saroyan. By popular demand, Khanjyan also painted in General Andranik among the soldiers.
But it is the "Rebirth" that holds an even wider pantheon of distinguished Armenians of the modern era. If the visitor needs help in identifying a who's who in the compositions, a useful key can be found in the major street names of Yerevan and in the faces of the most warmly chiseled statues holding court in all the parks. Identifying the figures may well be a game for the centuries.

Can you find Aram Khatchaturian? He is shown with white hair. Easy should be Martiros Saryan; harder to his side is the actor Hrachia Nerssissyan in the flowing golden cape. The poet Hovhaness Shiraz is there, as well as might be expected, Hovhaness Toumanian.

The suggestion was made that a key to all the major historic figures in the triptych be made, each numbered in the key, and the answers placed up-side down nearby. It would help this great masterwork to not only be more educational for the young, but also fun to score and to study. One can wish this is followed through.

To stand before this mural in this sacred place is a pleasure to the eyes, a celebration in being an Armenian, and a challenge to our efforts to sustain this history with good work of our own.

 

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