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The Arshile Gorky legacy: Armenian supreme cleric seeks artist’s bones and art
Moves to return Gorky’s remains to Etchmiadzin are being opposed by
his descendants
By David D’Arcy
Moves are afoot to transfer to Armenia the remains of the artist
Arshile Gorky, who is buried in the US, and a collection of his work,
that is presently in Portugal. Calls for the transfer of his remains,
(and appeals for funds to do so) made by a nationalist group calling
itself the Arshile Gorky Foundation, based in Yerevan, the Armenian
capital, have been rejected by the artist’s heirs. Officials of the
Council of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern),
which owns the 50 works that are now in Portugal are weighing the
potential consequences of moving those works to Armenia.
At issue are some 50 drawings, paintings and documents in a collection
that belonged to Gorky’s nephew Karlen Mooradian, who died in 1990,
and his mother, Gorky’s sister, Vartoosh, who died in 1991. The works
were placed by the church’s American diocese council with the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
Members of the council, who are volunteers, are now considering a
request from the church’s world spiritual leader, the Catholicos of
All Armenians, His Holiness Karekin II, to place the collection in a
renovated monastery in a wing of the Catholicos’s residence in
Etchmiadzin, the seat of the church near the capital of Yerevan in the
Republic of Armenia.
Haig Dadourian, a New York businessman who chairs the council, said
`we do not like the idea of the collection being moved’, but noted
that he was considering sending a certain number of works in rotation,
if it could be shown that the monastery had installed acceptable
levels of climate control and security.
Mr Dardurian stressed that the collection, even if were moved, would
still belong to the diocese in New York, and that the Catholicos had
simply asked to act as custodian of Gorky’s work. Mr Dardurian noted
that the diocese’s collection had not been appraised, but he estimated
its value at $30 million.
Moving Gorky’s work to Armenia, especially on the centenary of his
birth this year, could provide a powerful publicity boost for Armenian
ambitions to create an instant pilgrimage destination around the tomb
of a national martyr. A pioneer of abstract art, Gorky, originally
named Vostanig Adoyan, never spoke publicly about being Armenian.
Yet Armenians still see him as a national artist because he was a
survivor of and a witness to the Armenian Genocide, the mass murder of
the Armenian population in Anatolia by the Ottoman authorities between
1915 and 1923. Gorky’s mother is said to have died of starvation in
1919 in her son’s arms and his portrait of her, painted in 1938, has
become a powerful symbol of Armenian sufferings and identity.
Gorky committed suicide in 1948 in Sherman, Connecticut, and is buried
there. He died without a will, and the settlement of his estate with
the Julien Levy Gallery in New York involved the division of the
artist’s works among his widow and his two daughters.
Ambitions for what some critics are calling a Gorky shrine in Armenia
are viewed as manoeuvring to promote tourism there, and to draw
philanthropic funds from the Armenian diaspora.
Critics call it a scam. `I see no symbolic significance to having
Gorky’s remains in Armenia. He was born in Khorgom, which was Western
Armenia, not Armenia proper, and he lived his adult life in the US’,
said Alice Kelikian, a professor of history at Brandeis University,
who opposes the transfer. Dr Kelikian’s parents were the executors of
the estates of Gorky’s sister and nephew. `It seems that His Holiness
is trying to make the so-called `repatriation’ of Gorky’s drawings and
bones the legacy of his episcopacy’.
Speaking on the telephone to The Art Newspaper from her home outside
Siena, Maro Gorky, the painter’s daughter, said she was against
sending her father’s works or his bones to Armenia. `They can’t move
them without our permission, and we’re not giving it. It’s that
simple’.
Maro Gorky sees another motive for the revival of the campaign by the
Arshile Gorky Foundation. Last spring, Ms Gorky and her husband,
Matthew Spender, the sculptor and Gorky biographer, were surprised to
learn that the Arshile Gorky Foundation was using Spender’s name to
raise funds for the transfer. `They’re terribly impressed that Gorky’s
work is selling for so much at the moment, and so they want the
bones. It’s a scam to collect funds from innocent Armenians’.
Tuesday, 25 January 2005