Modern Icons: Contemporary Artists Influenced by Illuminated Manuscripts | Armenian Studies Program

Illuminated manuscripts were books written by hand and graced with paintings. Whether copied on parchment or paper, they existed to be read. Not all of them were illustrated, because the important thing was the text, the word. Pictures were added to graphically describe the text; a manuscript on botany would be difficult to interpret without drawings of plants. Yet, for the most part the practical function of pictures was seemingly less important than their aesthetic quality, the beauty they brought to the manuscript. In religious texts, and in the Armenian tradition the favored manuscript was the Gospel book, the illustrations were also regarded as holy pictures, saintly images to be contemplated much as icons or frescoes in church, or in the western tradition, stained glass windows.

Medieval Armenian painting, that is all two dimensional works of art from the Christianization of the nation 1700 years ago to the seventeenth century, is preserved in the pages of the estimated 31,000 manuscripts which have come down to us. There are some church frescoes, at Aght'amar for instance from the tenth century, and even canvas paintings from the seventeenth century scattered here and there, but they would not represent one in a hundred of surviving art works. The often repeated remark that the history of Armenian painting is the history of manuscript illumination is a demonstrable truth.

The painter like any creative artist starts with the past, his or her own as well as the past of the discipline. The apprenticeship, whether through art school or by observation and persistence, requires an understanding, if not a mastery, of the skills of the craft, of the styles and approaches of earlier artists. To this are added observations of the world seen through individual perception and, usually, creative imagination. There is a received tradition in art as there is in literature and even in being. It can be accepted, rejected, ignored, forgotten; in can be embraced consciously or unconsciously, used whole or modified; tradition can be concealed, transformed, diminished, aggressed, dissimulated, distorted, enhanced. Dependence on the past is natural, unavoidable. Even the artist painting a canvas in one solid color (Rothko) or one presenting a fresh, unadorned canvas, like the composer or playwright who fills an auditorium and presents an hour of silence, is indebted to tradition, the past, because without it these minimalist or even absurd works would lose their meaning; they would have no context.

The premise of this exhibit, that a group of five artists of Armenian origin should be influenced by illuminated manuscripts, is a solid one. What influence would be more obvious on such artists than the single medium in which 99% of painting left by a millennia old culture was expressed? This is quite different than saying that Armenian artists should be influenced by miniature painting or even by the past, for that is a choice, voluntary or not. Armenian art is there. It is rich. It is beautiful. It is theirs.

A casual glance at the paintings on display reveals instantly how different the five are one from the other, yet all were influenced by the same corpus of medieval miniatures. Seroon Yeretzian approaches the past the most realistically. Her works bring into relief one or another of the classical motifs used in Gospel illumination in Armenia in the 12th to the 15th centuries. Using pen and brush she has created astounding repertories of peacocks, for instance, assembled from a variety of places and periods. They are reminiscent of the photographic collage postcards of cheeses, fruits, vegetables, breads, so popular these days in Paris. The large gypsum works of Saag Pogossian are also heavily dependent on a close association with original Armenian frescoes and miniatures, modified and mixed to created a mysterious, beautiful, highly evocative image, which at times juxtaposes wall painting with manuscript calligraphy.

In the fabulous world of Emil Kazaz we sense within his personal mythology filled with Breughelesque creatures, the structure of the miniature, creating canvases rich in color and allusion, with their squat and buxom characters, harkening back to the secular figures found in the canon table decorations of 12th and 13th century Gospels. The small paintings, really miniatures, of Vachag Ter Sarkissian, appear to be closest to the miniatures of manuscripts. The reduced surface is further segmented into separate rectangles haphazardly placed like pictures in a crowded gallery and each of these in turn is an icon or a miniature. The style is primitive, naïve, like the numerous, child-like illuminations of monastic Armenian Gospels of the 11th century. They focus on the portrait rather than the iconographic ensembles of the scenes from the life of Christ. The reference to miniatures is very subtle in the works of Vahe Berberian on display. Incomplete canon tables in yellow, the arch of the Eusebian Letter empty red but for "Misone," classical pediment and columns with blurry Evangelists, reveal an uncommon familiarity with the rules of Gospel illumination.

Five Los Angeles artists, two from Lebanon, two from Armenia, one from Iran are displayed together in the largest Armenia community in the diaspora. In their very diverse works the imprint of a common cultural legacy is palpable. However, though the affinity with illuminated manuscripts is clear, in three of the artists (Berberian, Ter Sarkissian, Pogossian) and in works of a fourth not on display (Yeretzian), function is reversed. Armenian words and phrases are clearly and plentifully used in their paintings, but here the text informs the painting, whereas originally it was the miniature that aided the understanding of the manuscript text. The majuscule letters (erkat'agir) of Ter Sarkissian, the miniscule (bolorgir) of Bogossian, the cursive (shghagir) of Berberian or the bird and animal alphabets of Yeretzian use Armenian script as symbols. These letters become cryptic guarantees of a cultural identity consciously evoking a heritage each of these artists is indebted to, and one which each strives to preserve and propagate.

Dickran Kouymjian
Haig & Isabel Berberian Professor of Armenian Studies
Director, Armenian Studies Program
California State University, Fresno