Critics’ Forum
Visual Arts
Art and Identity: A Conversation with Joanne Julian
By Adriana and Hovig Tchalian

Joanne Julian is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work was recently
showcased in a retrospective at California State University,
Northridge. Entitled Joanne Julian: Counterpoints (January 22 –
February 23, 2008), the exhibit received great acclaim by critics and
attendees alike.

Julian has had a distinguished career as an educator as well as an
artist. She has taught at numerous colleges and universities, mounted
many exhibitions, and worked on several corporate commissions to
create site-specific art. Her work has been featured in publications
such as the Los Angeles Times, ARTS Magazine, Artweek, the San
Francisco Chronicle, and Images and Issues, among others. Yet despite
her accomplishments, she is relatively unknown in the Armenian
community.

Julian, a second-generation Armenian, describes herself as an artist
who "happens to be Armenian." And at first glance, there is nothing
ostensibly Armenian about Julian’s drawings, which are often done in
ink, graphite, Prismacolor (a brand of materials that includes color
markers and pencils), or acrylic on handmade paper.

In fact, Julian’s art seems often to defy categorization. Her
drawings are somewhat reminiscent of the simple lines employed by
Barnett Newman, a mid twentieth-century Modernist whose aesthetic,
like Julian’s, exhibits minimalist qualities. Many of Julian’s
compositions, such as Red Circle with Narrow Veil (2003, acrylic,
graphite, ink on Arches paper), thus have an affinity with Newman’s.
Critic Robert McDonald cites Julian’s regard for Agnes Martin,
another minimalist painter whose elegant, albeit stark, compositions
couple perfectly with Julian’s unfussy drawings. Compare, for
instance, Julian’s Orange Gingkos (2006, acrylic, ink on Arches
paper) or Two Anthurium (1989, monoprint on Arches paper) with
Martin’s elemental compositions (Joanne Julian, Louise Lewis, and
Robert McDonald. "Joanne Julian: Counterpoints II," Joanne Julian:
Counterpoints, 2007: 35).

These spontaneous bursts of expression can also be likened to another
school that valued simplicity in form and stroke, twentieth-century
Abstract Expressionism. Robert McDonald compares Julian’s work
explicitly to that of Franz Kline, an important figure in the
Expressionist school. In Black Water Collage (2005, acrylic,
collage, ink on Arches paper), for instance, Julian places a perfect
Zen circle against a white backdrop, much like Kline’s bold strokes
of black against a pristine white surface. Others, such as Louise
Lewis (Director, California State University Northridge Art
Galleries), remind us that these dark brush strokes represent the
Buddhist symbol for enlightenment, Ensô (meaning "circle" in
Japanese), a word traditionally used in Japanese calligraphy
(Counterpoints, 2007: 8).

Many of Julian’s motifs, in fact, are directly inspired by Asian
art. Julian’s love of Eastern art and culture began at an early
age. She started collecting Japanese prints as a teenager, being
attracted to their serene, minimalist palates. Since then Julian has
traveled and studied in Asia. The acrylic paintings in the series
called "Zen Circles," for instance, clearly display the Asian
aesthetic suggested by their collective title.

The drawings themselves serve to reinforce, one might say re-enact,
this multiplicity of source and purpose. Some of the forms playfully
disrupt the viewer’s expectations, appearing as two-dimensional
depictions on one surface – all heavy brush strokes and bold lines –
only to be transformed on another surface into seemingly three-
dimensional objects, rings or links in a chain, connected by those
same bold lines, twisted into braids or knots, grown more tactile by
virtue of their new context.

The drawings themselves, often large and free-flowing, many replete
with natural elements, seem to overwhelm the strict and "unnatural"
confines of their context. A number of the paintings in the series
Julian’s website (joannejulian.com) calls "botanicals" feature
a "close-up" of flowers, leaves or vines, the cropping effect almost
extending them forcefully beyond the square of the paper, merging
seamlessly with an imagined setting beyond its borders.

But as Julian explains, although the "products" of her artistic
efforts may not be Armenian, the "process" she uses to create them,
which she describes as a "craft," certainly is. She remembers her
Armenian grandparents on both sides of the family as craftsmen (and
women) – primarily tailors and lace makers. She also remembers the
painstaking detail of their labor, whether directed at creating art
or everyday objects. She never took her shoes to anyone but her
father-in-law, she says, a master shoemaker who could make anything
look new, often tearing a shoe apart and rebuilding it to look better
than it ever did.

That same level of craftsmanship can be found in Julian’s own
drawings. Her meticulous attention to detail has been well-
documented. Robert McDonald explains that Julian is "thoroughly
acquainted with the qualities of the materials she uses and the
characteristics of her tools. With respect to paper, usually Arches
or Stonehenge, she determines their weights, textures/finishes and
absorbencies with inks and pigments. With inks, colors are only the
beginning; there are infinitudes of transparencies and opacities. She
determines the appropriateness of her instruments, such as the
widths, varieties of resilience and softness of their bristles"
(Counterpoints, 2007: 31).

That approach to the detailed, delicate demands of craft has stayed
with Julian, both as influence and occasional obstacle. The Asian
influence in her art, for example, she attributes both to her
fascination with the delicate craft of Armenian lace making, much
akin to the intricacy of Asian art forms, but also to its opposite –
a desire to find solace in the simpler, more minimalist aesthetic
that grounds so much traditional Asian, particularly Japanese, art.

Julian considers her own identity as artist likewise fluid, more a
matter of artistic style and personal lifestyle than one of subject
matter, theme or artistic preoccupation. (Like her drawings, her
last name is also "cropped," an abridged version of "Julukian," a
change made by her grandparents in 1918 after escaping the Genocide
and arriving in the US.) But digging a bit deeper, the assiduous
viewer discovers other parallels. The braids glimpsed in one or two
of the Zen Circles drawings suddenly seem familiar, faintly
reminiscent of the traditional braids worn under Armenian woman
dancers’ headdresses, or perhaps the braided dough of Armenian and
Middle Eastern cakes.

Julian avers that she has intentionally tried to defy categorization
when it comes to herself and her art. Although proud of her heritage
as well as her sex, she still signs her works "J. Julian," a way of
eliding both her ethnic as well as her gender identity. As such, she
prefers to be known as an artist in the mainstream, rather than, say,
an "Armenian artist" or a "woman artist." She associates herself
most closely, she insists, with her identity as "outsider." That may
be the most potent suggestion yet of Julian’s identity,
paradoxically, as an Armenian woman artist in the truest sense, both
because of and despite herself.

All Rights Reserved: Critics’ Forum, 2008. Exclusive to the Armenian
Reporter.

Adriana Tchalian holds a Masters degree in Art History and has
managed several art galleries in Los Angeles.

Hovig Tchalian holds a PhD in English literature from UCLA. He has
edited several journals and also published articles of his own.

You can reach them or any of the other contributors to Critics’ Forum
at comments@criticsforum.org. This and all other articles published
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