Nina Allakhverdova

SCATTERED THOUGHTS

An Improvised Dialogue between a Journalist and an Artist

ARCHIVE NOTE

This file contains an English working translation of the text “Scattered Thoughts” by Nina Allakhverdova from the uploaded file “текст из каталога ммси.doc”. The source appears to be a catalogue text / interview selection connected with the Moscow Museum of Modern Art publication context. It is a shortened, edited version of the conversations with Rudolf Khachatryan, not the full book version.

Status: working English translation for archive use; before publication it should be checked against the final Russian source, catalogue layout, names, and the unified archive glossary.

EPIGRAPH

“And will a poet be born?

Only a poet?

A philosopher no less.”

Goethe

SCATTERED THOUGHTS

— Rudolf, your and Natasha’s studio hovers above Chistye Prudy. It has many windows, each of a different shape, each set at its own level and fitted into space in its own way. There is even a diamond-shaped window. I recognize some of them in your paintings. And the atmosphere of your studio is also quite extraordinary. Do you agree with me?

— Yes, of course. But in general all studios are special. Any studio is the face of the artist. Every person feels beauty in his own way; everyone creates comfort according to his own idea of it. As for ours, I spend most of my life in it. I cannot even sleep anywhere else. It is our home with Natasha, our life over thirty years, our creativity, and our atmosphere.

— What was here before?

— An attic — and in such a state that none of the artists dared to move in here. People were not simply frightened; they were horrified. But I saw the Cathedral of the Archangel Gabriel beyond the windows and immediately understood that we would stay here. I cast aside all doubts, forgot that I was an artist, and spent an entire year building. Few people now remember how difficult that was in those years. Materials were impossible to get; the search for every nail exhausted one to the point of hopelessness. But I was young… That was the beginning of the 1970s. And now, when I see beyond the windows the bell tower floating in the air with its shining dome like a flower bud, the sky, clouds, and sometimes free, swift birds, my soul feels good. These walls have truly become a home. Great labor has been invested in them.

At first the studio was practically empty, but gradually objects and furniture began to gather in it. Someone gave us an interesting armchair. But above all, many works accumulated, and the place became cramped. We should probably move to a larger studio, but our life has imprinted itself on everything here to such a degree that I cannot find the strength to do it.

— Do new works often appear in your studio? Does this happen often? Tell me.

— Well, first of all, an artist works all the time. And secondly, I do not sell very much. The point is — and I am aware of this — that my paintings of the “classical” period were closer and more understandable to viewers than what I do now. And that is natural.

— What do you call the classical period? Your unique graphic art — drawings on levkas, refined female portraits and deep male portraits?

— I mean, above all, the youthful stage of my work, which art historians at some point began calling “Leonardesque.” Beginning with the early “portraits” of a landscape, an old shoe, a small dilapidated house, a tree, an iron stove with its pipe coming out of the window of our room — and ending with drawings on levkas and portraits of many of our contemporaries.

— We shall certainly speak about what you mean when you talk of “portraits” of a shoe, a stove, a tree — if we have in mind your spontaneous drawing of the 1950s — and later, of “portraits” of multidimensional objects. But for now… tell me, please, how do you experience beauty?

— Well, yes. And it is accessible to each person only at the level of his consciousness. One person is happy because beauty has unexpectedly revealed itself to him in a new, special way. Another has no idea at all what is being discussed. For example, someone is indignant: “Why does the hyena exist? It should not exist! It feeds on carrion!” I can only shrug. If you look attentively, you will see that it too is beautiful in its own way, like everything that exists in life, like everything God has created. But how can one explain this to people? It is difficult.

— You are a master of classical drawing. Your portraits on levkas, restrained and at the same time extraordinarily emotional, are known throughout the world. I remember very well what an event it was when they were exhibited at the House of Artists on Gogolevsky Boulevard…

— I painted light in a special way. In fact, that was the secret of those portraits.

— Not only were the portraits very successful; it seemed then that nothing foretold that the artist Rudolf Khachatryan would become so different…

— Yes, there were many commissions. And I was considered a fairly well-off artist.

— But you, already a participant in the London exhibition “Outstanding Russian Artists of the Twentieth Century,” abandoned a developed manner and moved into an entirely different artistic world, into a completely different artistic space…

— Into a more complex art, as I see it, and therefore my works are now bought less often: people become accustomed to the new with difficulty.

— Is what you arrived at in the London period really so new?

— From London — I went there for the second time after the exhibition you just mentioned and lived there for five years — I brought back around a thousand works consisting of different cycles: Twofold Unity, Metamorphoses, Manifestation of the Image, Double State, Images and Shadows, Minimalism, Projections, Mythologems, Connections, Consonances, Shadows.

— It turns out to be like music? A thousand canvases from the Metamorphoses period — themes with variations?

— Perhaps.

— Was it in them that the strange, unfamiliar beauty of your object-creatures was born?

— At that time many of my admirers were shocked. What has happened to Khachatryan? Are there any explanations for this change? In the visitors’ book there were questions, criticism, even threats…

— Even that? Strange…

— Exactly that. Sometimes I look back at the path I have traveled, at more than fifty years of my creative work. How much rapture before life there is in the youthful works! But the years went by, everything changed. Another age, another perception — and so I moved toward another beauty. Today, toward the beauty of multidimensional objects… I came to this; they seem beautiful to me; I have lived through it.

— And how were they perceived in general?

— I heard many times: “Why these arms… legs… What for?” How can another person pass in a single instant along the path of understanding beauty that I followed for many years? Of course, none of this is so terrible. But, if one moves to a general conclusion, I would say that this is the tragedy of the artist.

“Listen,” I think, “it is very good that you like my drawings on levkas. I agree, they truly deserve it. But I have not died; I am alive, I exist. And is it really bad that, besides everything you like, something new, something entirely different has appeared in my work? Perhaps you and I will nevertheless understand each other? Perhaps you will at least begin to trust the artist you loved? After all, I paid for this ‘failure,’ as you define it, with my entire creative life. Why are you so sure you are right?”

It is well known that we judge classical art and familiar works with ease, but everything changes when we are faced with works created from another worldview, new in the full sense of the word. We want to reject what does not seem familiar to us…

— Even Chekhov needed time before people began to understand him.

— And Van Gogh? He was an astounding artist. A genius vision of the world. But he was not understood, not felt. Today his paintings are bought for the highest prices in the world, yet during his lifetime he did not manage to sell a single one. And, despairing of breaking through to people, he ended his life tragically. Now Van Gogh is seen, heard, and understood. Are they understood…

— History shows that there are always fewer people who accept the new. There are many more of the others. But over the years the difference diminishes. And finally the new becomes visible and understandable to many. But let us return to the London period… What does it really mean?

— The London period is a serious stage in my life, and it cost me dearly. But that is a separate conversation. Metamorphoses, as you know, was exhibited at the House of Artists on Krymsky Val and occupied the entire second floor. The catalogue of that Moscow exhibition was also called Metamorphoses. Many people came to see it. There was a large and significant press response.

— A grand exhibition! You work very intensively in general…

— Not that much time has really passed, but again there are so many new works in the studio that I cannot look at them all at once. They stand on the racks, pressed tightly against one another. Of course, there are photographs, some kind of systematization… Thanks to Seva, my son — he overcomes all of this.

— It is cramped! Now multidimensional objects have also appeared. That is sculpture! Where is it to be placed? But all of that is unimportant compared with the fact that I feel happy in this studio.

— “And everything lives in one fused unity. From the depths of my cares a house has risen. And I am loved. And on my shoulder the beloved, in tears, will find peace…” This is Rilke, my favorite poem; I have recited it from memory… So there may be inaccuracies here, but when you encounter something beautiful, you feel such joy, and most of all gratitude to the one who has shared it with you…

— Thank you, I think I understand.

— What is visual art in the twenty-first century?

— Do we understand that the very concept of the “picture” is changing? The two-dimensional world is exhausting itself. When Einstein said, “Forgive me, Newton, you were wrong…,” it marked the discovery of another era, the birth of a new view of time, motion, and space. The plane of paper or canvas, confined by a frame and hanging on the wall, is becoming obsolete. Today the picture is a museum concept. Therefore something new appears — “Painting in Space.” The multidimensional object calls for a new level of thinking. It trans-forms itself! And the essence of the transition to the multidimensional object lies precisely in this.

— And if we return to multidimensional objects? What is their special quality?

— They have no top or bottom, no right or left side, and they can rotate in any direction, along any axis; in that sense they may be considered spherical. But I will begin with the spiritual category of multidimensional objects. And this time — not for the first time — it was a kind of revelation for me. For this is the formula of man that I had been searching for all my life and that I reached in the 1990s. I simply gasped. I shall quote from the rarely published Gospel of Thomas: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inner side like the outer side, and the upper side like the lower side… When you make an eye in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and an image in place of an image, then you will enter the Kingdom…”

An object must move, and the more varied its movement, the more varied its meaning will be: in a circle, from top to bottom, or conversely from bottom to top, from right to left, or from left to right. All of this gives rise to endless possibilities of transformation. It is astonishing when I imagine this perspective. Movement is embedded inside the object. The same object, joining with others, each time forms something new. And so on to infinity.

In the end, it is important to understand: the object is called “multidimensional.” It consists of many fragments and has a definite form. Let it be static! The idea of manifold movement is placed inside it. Therefore it may not move at all. A person himself, walking around the object, will be imbued with its infinity. There is no difference whether the object moves or the person walks around it; what matters is that the person be capable of being imbued with the ideas of its transformation. But the viewer thinks that the object’s possibilities are limited to its present position. He mostly perceives only what he sees with his eyes and does not sense the idea of multidimensional objects.

— One more thing. I am concerned by the presence of the sphere in your objects.

— Multidimensional objects are spherical in themselves. Why are all galaxies round? Because for ages they rotate and, in their endless rotation, cast off what is superfluous. The sphere is an eternal perfect form: all points in it are equal; there is no top and bottom. In the multidimensional object all points are different, but they become equal during movement.

The sphere alongside the multidimensional objects is a symbol. They are sworn brothers. It is not a sphere, but sphericity is embedded in it. And with rotation this already becomes manifest. This is sign art.

— I think I am beginning to understand what you want to say: if a person, sitting in his studio or somewhere else, thinks spatially, cosmically, then this is no less than if he actually traveled through space?

We sometimes speak of the cosmos as if it existed separately from us. In fact, we are not outside the cosmos, but within it. That is one side. And on the other side, the cosmos is within us. That means that, in the largest sense, a person must be aware of himself as a bearer of the cosmos, a bearer of the world. Everything that exists in the world must also be in us. God gave man spiritual wings so that he could fly cosmically within himself. How beautiful that is! When, in your imagination, your soul floats in any direction and across any distance, then you feel how vast the world is, how boundless the heavenly spaces are within man. And that is incredible.

— How should one perceive a specific work of art — for example, from your cycle Metamorphoses?

— Art has always been mythological and always will be. At least, it should be so. The Metamorphoses I created are a mythological system which, through its imagery, led me to the multidimensional object. Therefore one must understand the language of this mythology.

— Is it true to say that behind everything an artist creates stands the labor of his whole life?

— Yes, but rather the enormous experience of humanity in art. A true creator strives toward truth, toward the connection of times, toward associative thinking. How inspired he is, how much culture he contains within himself — that is what makes him significant. The artist is nourished by the centuries-old traditions of visual art. One must know a great deal. One must have roots. The artist, like every human being, is Adam, embodying humanity within himself. One must feel oneself to be Van Gogh and Picasso, Russian, Black, Armenian and Chinese. And truly there is no difference. The artist unites the whole world within himself.

I want to say that the existence of such classics as Picasso, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Kandinsky, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Goya makes the artist not lonely in the world space of visual art. And at the same time it gives him confidence that in creativity, in all times and under any life circumstances, it is possible to follow one’s own path.

— They say that the first garment of the human soul is the body, the second is clothing, and the third is the house in which one lives. The studio, let us say… What can you say about that?

— Only that for me the soul exists as a whole, independently of anything else; I do not see the soul in these three correspondences.

There is such a word as “inspiration.” I do not like it; it seems mannered to me. But the unity of the studio and “inspiration” is essential. Of course, sometimes, in order not to go mad, I tear myself away from here. I need to rest. The energetic saturation of creativity becomes so strong. The things, the multidimensional objects, the paintings press on me so heavily that I cannot bear it; I leave, wander through the streets, sit in cafés with different people, do not remember art, do not speak about it. If they learned that I was an artist, they would probably be very surprised. But more often the studio gives such peace and happiness as one can find nowhere else.

— Do you like, as I have just heard, ordinary human relationships?

— Yes, of course. I am a real person.

— Not a romantic?

— No. I have seen too much.

— And not a mystic?

— Not at all.

— Once, in the depths of winter, I saw in your window, looking out onto a corner of the inner courtyard, an entire host of icicles. They densely filled the whole window; they were powerful, at least a meter long. A rare sight! On streets or in courtyards where passersby hurry about, such a thing cannot be seen; they knock them down. And it seemed to be something like a curtain, astonishingly organic to the winter season. Or perhaps something like a heavenly organ on which, in time, spring would play its dripping melodies…

— I am happy for you. Beauty truly surrounds us. We are in an ocean of beauty. But only those in whom it lives can see it. Only from within, only through unity with beauty, can we sense it. But in everyday life our perception of beauty is usually clouded.

— How should your collages be interpreted? They are very beautiful.

— Before the multidimensional objects, I worked quite seriously with relief. It is not simple work. It was preceded by many years of effort. I had to create an entire system for it. It would be interesting to speak about this. But the main thing is that, sorting through ordinary paper scraps left over in the process of working on spatial compositions, objects, and reliefs, combining them with one another and placing one over another, I tried to transform them into distinctive new compositions — if possible, polyphonic and serious… And I was astonished by the unexpected solutions that emerged. In other words, I tried to hold and investigate the beauty that is inherent in absolutely everything — one only has to know how to see it. It is accessible not only to the artist, but only the artist can hold and investigate it in his works.

Experimenting with scraps of paper and cardboard destined to be thrown away, I wanted to reach the beautiful in them, the beauty, the perfection — these concepts are always interconnected — to reveal and make manifest their beauty… Beauty, the beautiful, in whatever it appears, cannot deceive. Thus a new series appeared, which was both rest and joy for me.

— Does the beautiful in multidimensional objects mean that there is truth in them? Do I understand correctly? And they are beautiful…

— An artist is distinguished by the fact that he creates beauty out of everything he touches. This, it seems to me, is what primarily determines the value of everything he does.

— You said that art is an endless road, and that, walking along it, you do nothing “from yourself,” but simply live by creativity, and it leads you itself. Is that so?

— There are artists who, in essence, do one and the same thing all their lives — apart from the changing subjects of their creations. Today he has drawn a jug, tomorrow a still life or a landscape outside the window. For them there is no difference in what they express themselves through. But an artist must not repeat himself. In London I experienced a profound creative crisis. I could no longer do what I had done yesterday. It seemed that there was nothing ahead, everything was over. I could not even imagine that merely another period of my work was ending — and that this could be the precondition for new discoveries. But when the inner tension reached its limit and I sank into despair, suddenly, as if by itself, something new began to open. In this way, the London period expressed itself in the birth of Metamorphoses. After some time, already in Moscow, I arrived at the multidimensional objects.

— Did your mysterious multidimensional objects arise here, in this studio?

— Yes. The second exhibition after my return from London took place at the Tretyakov Gallery and was called Multidimensional Objects. Incidentally, the very concept “multidimensional objects” appeared for the first time. I myself gave my creation that name. True, Yaroslav Klivar, the well-known art historian, believes that the title “multidimensional objects” is too inexpressive; it would be better to give another title: Time of Open Space, uniting three times within itself — past, present and future.

— So, experiencing the creative crisis in London, you could not even suppose that you were moving toward new discoveries?

— The multidimensional objects were preceded by no fewer than thirteen completed periods, which for me were discoveries. As early as the beginning of the 1960s I went through several creative stages, as a result of which, from an enthusiasm for Cubism and Surrealism, I came to the idea of open forms. One could say that every ten years a new artist is born within me and a new period of discoveries begins. Any one of them could have been devoted an entire life, and one would still have been unlike anyone else. I am not a bad artist, though perhaps that sounds immodest. But I did not stop at the second, or the third, or the fourth discoveries. I never exploit what I have found. I always want to go further.

— Must each period express itself fully so that the next can arise?

— Yes. But in this process of discoveries there is nothing artificial or speculative. In each one the next is already embedded, and sooner or later it begins to make itself known. Thus, joining together, passing one into another like a chain, they led me to the multidimensional objects. They led me, it seems, in the most unexpected way. And that is happiness. Today it seems infinite, but it will be so only until the period exhausts itself completely. But that will be later. There is no sense thinking about it now. In truth, everything is born as if by itself. By fate.

— That is, you do not have to make decisions, to choose between continuing the direction you have found in art or moving on to a new discovery?

— That is exactly what I was speaking about.

— The creative torments in London were “resolved,” if one can put it that way, by two heart attacks that followed one after another… A sad “resolution”…

— Yes, but I remained alive and I am working.

— God keep you. What worries you in visual art today?

— Well, what can I say? Visual art is visual art. It is not literature and addresses our consciousness and subconscious without the help of words. Therefore its messages must begin and end according to its own laws, laws sufficient unto itself. And, very importantly, the artist’s thought must express itself through movement, form, rhythm, light, shadow, color, pause, beauty, scale, plasticity and harmony… And sometimes, if necessary, through disharmony as well… But only not through words. Literature exists within visual art, and that is a great misfortune.

— Do you mean that if it is possible to tell in words what is depicted on a canvas, then there was no need to create it? But can a particular painting not have its own important phrase, so to speak? Its own theme? Its own aria, as in opera, for example, which is immediately remembered unlike the whole work?

— No, it cannot. That is contraindicated for the art of depiction.

— I have encountered publications where they speak precisely of the diversity and musicality of your works.

— But in objecting to you, I meant something entirely different: the images of visual art are very significant. They penetrate into us directly, without the help of words.

— Do you oppose your understanding of the artist to science? Is that possible? After all, scientific proof has great force.

— I do not know; I am far from science. But I myself am amazed by the precision with which my multidimensional objects are made and live. Here every point is thought through and corresponds to every other, because the formula I searched for so long and which lies at the foundation of the object is one hundred percent complete. I know neither mathematics nor physics at all; I did not even finish school. But scientists who are familiar with some of my discoveries are astonished: “You have managed to create a four-dimensional world; this is a scientific discovery!” My friend, Academician Migdal — a scientist, a physicist, a very erudite man — wrote a book about the beauty of science. Speaking at my exhibition, he also said that the discoveries I arrived at in art are scientific. But I deal with art, not science. And I am hardly able to evaluate what I do from a scientific point of view. Still, I have the feeling that the artist, with his hypertrophied intuitiveness, like art as a whole, always moves ahead of science. It is known that our brain works only with some small part of itself; if it functioned as a whole, then man would probably become God, so much has been placed in him by the Creator. Sometimes a person remembers astonishing things he never knew and never saw. Where does that come from? All of this is in him, in his consciousness… So is it really so surprising? Among artists there are many discoverers in science, but we do not speak the language of science. And we do not use the method of proofs.

— Did you truly never study anywhere?

— I studied in fragments, if one means official education. Four years in school. Later I entered art school. After three months I was expelled. Then I met Kochar…

— I knew well the remarkable writer Gennady Snegiryov, who also studied in school for only four years, but until recently was the most widely published children’s writer from our country abroad. Other examples could be given.

— We live in a time when the formal plan of life nevertheless gives way to the living one. One cannot fail to value this. But if one speaks seriously, my school was life, and the remarkable, astonishing, beloved people whom fate sent me. I greedily learned everything from them.

— You are speaking of something very important, something greater than what you have just said: of the fact that many astonishing things happen in your life, yet they happen in a completely natural way… Fate is truly mysterious. Talk to me about this.

— It happened in Yerevan when I was fifteen. I was drawing in the little square opposite the Opera Theatre in the center of the city, not far from our house, where old men usually gathered to play backgammon. An elderly man — in fact he was fifty, but he seemed elderly to me then because I was young — had been watching me for some time and asked: “Where do you study drawing?” “I do not study anywhere. I have already been expelled.” “It is good that they expelled you,” he said. “Do you see that house? Bring all your drawings this evening.” I came, he looked at them and exclaimed: “The spirit of Leonardo lives!” I was astonished, because I did not know who Leonardo was. I thought one had to learn to draw like Repin and considered him the greatest artist. The man climbed up to the mezzanine, took down an old heavy volume, opened a page with drawings of draperies, and handed it to me. I was struck by the similarity of my works to them. He said: “Read!” The book was called Leonardo da Vinci.

— Who was this astonishing man?

— Maestro Yervand Kochar, the famous Armenian artist-innovator, a brilliant connoisseur of French culture, creator of the artistic principle “Painting in Space.” And the most tragic person on my life’s path. At thirty-six, in the prime of his life, he left Paris, where he had exhibited repeatedly, where articles were written about his discovery, where scientific research was conducted, where the famous collector Rosenberg bought his works, where he had lived for many years. And he returned to Armenia. He was arrested, accused of being a French spy. He came out of prison with a damaged spine and permanently deaf in one ear.

— Listening to you now, I imagine the sky darkening, thunder beginning to roll, and then lightning flashing — once, twice, three times… A downpour begins… How good it would be to watch the stormy sky from here, thinking about Yervand Kochar…

— Maestro Kochar became my teacher and spiritual mentor. I did not only study with him; it was priceless communication, and I realized that I was near a great man. Thanks to that meeting, my life became very significant.

— So Kochar accepted you immediately as an equal?

— It was precisely Kochar who taught me to treat myself as a major artist. I was not yet twenty when he once said: “You may calmly die; you will remain in the history of Armenian art anyway.”

Being near Kochar, I found myself among the most outstanding people of Armenia. It was a true academy of creativity and of life.

Kochar introduced me to the genius of theatre — Papazyan. Once Papazyan even performed the role of Othello for me alone in his dressing room. I looked in the mirror at the way he acted and made quick sketches of his portrait. But that is a separate story.

I sensed and understood very well who these people were, what each of them represented, because I felt their spirit, shared their views, and knew how to value it. Apparently my own judgments were correct too, and they loved me. I compare these relationships to reading the Bible. Reading it, you become wiser.

— I understand that after your many years of meetings with Kochar, you could not have created as if they had never happened.

— Kochar is the discoverer of the fourth dimension. I have already said that he was the first to invent and develop the artistic method of “Painting in Space,” based on a new thinking comparable to the fourth dimension. His conversations with me about this discovery in art played the most important role in the formation of my spatial thinking.

When I was still a youth, he told me: “You will come to Painting in Space and will remind people of me. When will that be? I do not know. But you will come to it, and you will come in your own way, without imitating me…”

That is exactly what happened. But I did not hurry and came to the multidimensional objects only at the age of fifty-five, after my heart attack. The Moscow period after returning from London became the time of the discovery of multidimensional objects.

Of course, first, long before the discovery of multidimensional objects, in my youth, I lived through a period called Open Forms, under the direct influence of Kochar. It was Kochar who enabled me to become acquainted with journals he had brought from Paris. I saw the art that was forbidden in our country then — modern, avant-garde art. What I saw shook me and convinced me of the rightness of the search for open forms.

I want to conclude by saying that my art is permeated by spatial thinking, but by a thinking already different from Kochar’s.

— Rudolf, would you like to return to the past?

— What does it mean to return to the past? To move in the opposite direction? Nothing of the kind can exist. Nothing repeats itself. And it is impossible to return anywhere. How could it be that at sixty-seven I would return to my childhood? Not in thoughts, not in memory — the past lives in that sense in every soul — but actually. That is what we are speaking about now. I am moving toward death, and that is beautiful. Everything dies, something else is born. And in this, to my mind, lies the meaning of life.

— In death?

— In the development of life. Would you like me to read you the only poem I have written in my life? A literal translation from Armenian… “When I was little, God came to me with His image and His light. And from His light He gave me some, so that from that light I might create my own art, and then depart as well.”

— What impression did your all-encompassing exhibition Metamorphoses on Krymsky Val make on you, when you were finally able to see all the works of the London period at the same time?

— I awaited that exhibition impatiently. Perhaps it was even more important for me than for the viewers. At last there was an opportunity to see all the works together. I was, as it were, reporting to myself, and that is the most important thing. I felt that it was natural.

— What do you think, Rudolf? What epigraph could we take for this conversation?

— I do not know yet…

— Do you have illuminations in the process of work?

— …I do not know. I do not want to call it that.

There is joy. Creativity is a living process. Acting within it, you find something, and you are shaken and surprised, and you feel joy, and sometimes pain. The act of creation is incomprehensible. I myself do not know how and from what it is formed.

— They say that the truth of art is testified to by its beauty. Perhaps unusual, unfamiliar beauty, but beauty nevertheless. It seems to me that in the Metamorphoses, in the multidimensional objects, you moved toward a new self-expression through beauty. Some people do not understand this. In fact, you moved to such a level of expressing beauty that you no longer need to see a model before you, as happens, for example, when creating portraits, still lifes, landscapes. Creating multidimensional objects, you extract this beauty from within yourself: rhythm, pauses, relief, the drawing of separate fragments and their interaction in movement, mirror reflection, the play of shadows…

— Yes. It is precisely beauty that tells us we are before a work of art. The beautiful is found everywhere, including in forms that are unfamiliar to us, incomprehensible and new.

— Have you ever depicted yourself laughing?

— No! I have never painted myself laughing. And in general people tell me I am a man without humor. Nothing of the kind. I love wit, although I cannot say that it has great importance for me. Of course laughter is useful for the body. A laughing person is better than a gloomy one, but an artist, a writer, any creative person, cannot live laughing. He feels too deeply the weight of time, its tragedy, the injustices of the past. He carries all of this within himself in the present and foresees burdens in the future. People want to make us laugh, but to be honest, it is very hard to make me laugh.

— I came across an ancient Tibetan saying: “Many come — they look, look, look. One comes — and sees.”

— During the creative process artists see very deeply. People look, but artists see and depict so that others too may look, look, look, and suddenly also be able to see.

When I begin working, trying to penetrate the essence of what I have conceived, I concentrate to such a degree that I see microelements, like a radiologist. The creativity of the artist is an energetic passion, an energetic concentration.

That is creativity. Hands, eyes, head, heart, feelings, love — everything must be equal to everything else. Ordinary people do not see that way. But we artists too, in everyday life, certainly see somewhat differently than when we are working.

— Rudolf, these difficult-to-comprehend beings in your Metamorphoses — are they born of imagination, or do you see them in reality?

— They are connected with the real world, but they do not reflect it literally; they only recall that reality associatively. Such associations are found in Cubism, Surrealism, and other modern movements.

— But admirers really are confused by the changes in the art of Khachatryan the artist.

— I understand. Recently one art historian wrote about my latest works: “Beautiful ugliness.” Yes… beautiful ugliness. And you know, many of our great predecessors came to a new understanding of beauty, strange for their time and for themselves.

Take, at least, Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesque drawings. Or Michelangelo, who, at the peak of his grandiose creativity, came to the strange, incomprehensible Pieta that his contemporaries did not accept…

Criteria, canons and concepts of the beautiful changed. Something stirred the restless souls of artists and forced them to see with different eyes and to express with different means a new, transformed beauty. The hidden beauty of creativity did not change. That is why Goya’s painted masterpieces and his graphic nightmares are so unfailingly piercing. At the end of his life everyone was certain he had gone mad. Nothing of the kind. He simply began to see how diverse the world is. And he showed us its images — caricatures. And this, in fact, proved to be the summit of his creations. In them Goya expressed himself as an artist to the end.

Yes, the most brilliant artists at the end of their lives begin to see another beauty too. They do not turn away from it, but investigate and depict it in their works. And the passionate Soutine, the astonishing Rouault, El Greco — perhaps the most mysterious and free artist of his time — and Picasso, Francis Bacon, shocking and overturning the very concept of external beauty, Dubuffet, Dalí, and finally the Impressionists, whom we now love so much. All of them in their time became innovators, and often tragic loners. And mature Rembrandt, the artist closest to my heart, moved from a luminous Raphael-like palette to dark coloring, rough texture, sensual corporeality, to the new, shimmering precious surface of his canvases.

— You are astonishingly sincere. This conversation is very important…

— As I understand it, it is very creative.

— That means there is a chance the conversation will be interesting not only to us, but to others too… I interrupted you…

— And how did Rembrandt change over the years? Here is the self-portrait with his wife Saskia on his knees. Their love, joy, happiness burst forth from the Raphael-like luminous canvas. But the years pass, and poor Rembrandt! There is less light in his paintings, the color darkens, the brushstroke grows rougher and rougher. Why? Life! It leaves no one untroubled. Rembrandt himself was pursued by misfortunes in life. Losses…

The famous painting The Morning Watch was not accepted because everyone wanted to see himself bright, beautiful, shining, while in Rembrandt the participants in the action — a group of officers — sink into semi-darkness. The dark palette through which Rembrandt, from a certain time on, expressed himself in art was perceived by them as night. And The Morning Watch came to be called the Night Watch. But it is not The Night Watch! In that case all his portraits of that period should be called “night portraits.”

And here is the riddle: in one of the self-portraits, at the end of his life, Rembrandt, in spite of everything, depicted himself laughing. It seems to me that I understand him, that I hear his voice: “What is life? Something inexplicable. I came and I left… And I am powerless to affect it.”

Yes, he was a genius.

For me Rembrandt is the true, unique image of the artist, with all his warmth and humanity. Without him it is impossible to imagine Art — what emptiness there would be!

So there is a certain regularity in the mature artist’s transition to such a turn of self-expression, which is not so easy to explain. I do not know how my work will develop further, but I think this is how every life develops. I am no exception.

— So there comes an understanding that life is not the canvas on which the artist paints his pictures; rather, the artist — and all people in general — are the canvas on which life paints its subjects?

— Yes, yes. A very serious revelation, a testimony of mature consciousness. And it requires courage in order to be accepted.

— Rudolf, what can you say about infinity?

— I have already spoken so much about this that I am afraid I have nothing new to say.

— Repetition in art is not such a useless thing. Novella Matveyeva has these lines: “Everything in the world has been said, there is nothing unsaid, and yet for people there shines the light of the unsaid…” Everything has been said, but has everything been understood? And therefore we speak and speak about what has already been said.

— Then I will say this to you: thanks to multidimensional objects, infinity began to open itself to me in its ceaseless development, which cannot go backward. But we are still very, very far from unequivocal answers or conceptions of infinity. And perhaps they will never be found.

— Do you like the studio on a rainy day?

— Of course. In the rain you feel especially that we are all here, on earth, that we are all alive. In those sounds is life itself. All natural phenomena are beautiful.

— They are beautiful through their movement? Here it is warm, the sun is shining, while somewhere else blizzards rage, snow falls. Everything moves, moves, and it becomes so clear that the path has not yet been traveled.

— Yes, everything in nature is changeable: waters move across the whole earth, winds rush over fields, mountains and deserts, sands crumble and rise again, coastlines of seas and oceans change, rivers alter their courses and cut new channels. In millions of years — of course I name a conditional time — the globe, if it remains, will present an entirely different map, absolutely different. And an entirely different art.

— Then that is all? Yes?

— Then that is all.

Moscow, 2004.