The Response to Hatred: A Labor of Love

Artistic monuments destroyed by Azeris live on in
Ararat Sarkissian’s designs

by Sonia Porter
May 27, 2006

Much of Ararat Sarkissian’s art reflects a lifelong fascination with
signs and icons. It’s a fascination that goes to the heart of
symbol-making — its mechanics, cultural underpinnings, and evolution
across the ages. Not surprisingly, history is a powerful constant in
Sarkissian’s paintings and graphics, making for narratives, however,
that go beyond the linear.

Alphabets, pictographs, architecture, urban grids, religious
iconography. All of these spheres are by turns honored and playfully
tweaked in Sarkissian’s work, whose perhaps most salient statement is
about movement and becoming. In his paintings of vanished cities, for
instance, the purpose is not to inspire nostalgia or romanticize a
glorious past, but to convey the transformation of a certain spirit
that may be traced to the vanished space in question.

It is no doubt the quest for such a transformation that these days
finds Sarkissian busy in his Yerevan studio, painstakingly reproducing
khachkars, or cross stones, that no longer exist.

Cross stones have been a central element in Armenian architecture and
decorative art since the 4th century. Consisting of intricate cross
designs carved on rectangular slabs of stone, cross stones can
function as gravestones, free-standing monuments in cathedral
complexes, or integrated sections of church facades and other
structures. Cross stones were also built for a wide range of social
and political purposes. They commemorated war victories, baptisms and
weddings, and were built as offerings to God for good luck and the
redemption of one’s sins.

Ever since the early 19th century, Armenian cross stones have been
casually and often systematically destroyed throughout the occupied
territories of historic Armenia. The obliteration of cross stones
continues today in Turkey, Nakhichevan, and Azerbaijan, where there
was a sizeable Armenian community until the start of the
Nagorno-Karabagh conflict in the late 1980s. In recent months, the
razing of Armenian monuments reached fever pitch in Nakhichevan, where
local armed forces destroyed some 3,500 cross stones in the Old Jugha
cemetery. The incident prompted Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian to file a letter of protest with the United Nations.

`The men behind the destruction of these monuments either don’t
realize or don’t care that they’re wiping out irreplaceable pieces of
a rich artistic legacy,’ Sarkissian said. `Their crime is being
carried out not only against Armenian culture per se, but civilization
as a whole. As a human being and an artist, I am saddened and
outraged, but I also believe that I must act.’

Sarkissian’s decision to respond has resulted in one of his most
profoundly-felt projects to date. After pouring over hundreds of
sources such as photographs, cross stone fragments, archeologist
drawings, and illuminated manuscripts, he has begun etching likenesses
of extinct cross stones, then embossing the designs on paper that he
himself makes, using a time-honored technique. The goal is to produce
packages containing 36 designs each — 36 being the number of letters
in the Armenian alphabet. Each package will also include a compact
disc documenting the destruction of cross stones and featuring
Sarkissian at work throughout the reproduction process.

`I wish I could help undo the damage at the Old Jugha cemetery… I’d
love to travel there right now and start rebuilding some of those
lovely cross stones,’ Sarkissian said. `But wishful thinking won’t get
us anywhere.’ He then pointed at his designs. `This project, right
here, is my way of dealing with the brutality in Nakhichevan. I’d like
to believe that, in a sense, I’m rebuilding what has been lost,
through these recreations on paper; I’m helping preserve the memory.’

History, Christian lore, folklore, and a great deal of personal
narratives converge in Sarkissian’s embossed designs. As he explained,
the diversity of themes and styles found on cross stones offers an
important insight into the history and artistic evolution of the
Armenian people.

`Armenian sculptors did not simply carve a cross on a piece of stone,’
Sarkissian continued. `Rather, they expanded the definition of the
design with progressively elaborate compositions.’

Born in Gyumri, Sarkissian studied fine art in his birthplace and
Yerevan, and has become one of Armenia’s most prominent painters and
graphic artists, exhibiting his works in Europe, the United States,
Japan, and Russia. Several of his paintings are now part of museum
collections throughout the world. Sarkissian has also published a
number of catalogues, including monographs on signs, icons, and
archetypes.

—
Ms. Sonia Potter has acted as philanthropic advisor to galleries,
museums and foundations promoting artists, cultural institutions and
humanitarian causes. She may be reached at sonayar@yahoo.com