Путь через тернии A Journey Through Suffering ԵՐԹ ՏԱՌԱՊԱՆՔՆԵՐԻ ՄԻՋՈՎ

Translated from Armenian

[88] Only three years have passed since the solo exhibition of Rudolf Khachatryan’s graphic works. And now we encounter the artist’s latest creations once again. The progress made in the three years since the previous exhibition is equivalent to what may be achieved over an entire creative lifetime. What matters is that the changes have been qualitative as well as quantitative. Only a fortunate individual endowed with creative madness is capable of understanding the classics, drawing close to them, and grasping the secrets of their mastery. We must honour those rare masters who, before the ages of the past, affirm the stature of our own time. We may be proud that our contemporary Rudolf Khachatryan has taken his assured place in this endless procession.

[89] Rudolf Khachatryan continues to create new works on levkas. Chance proved decisive: one day he was given a primed board, on which the first self-portrait was created. This was the first experiment. The solidity of the support answered the artist’s dream of finding a material that would allow him to produce weightier, larger-scale works and to work on them for longer.

The material alone is not decisive, of course: levkas itself is not new; what matters is how it is used. It proved to be precisely the material towards which Khachatryan had instinctively been striving, without any thought of mechanically transferring a technique from paper to board. His creative possibilities expanded and allowed many elements to be brought together. The drawing emerged as an autonomous organism, not only worthy of its elder siblings—sculpture and painting—but no longer dependent on them. The artist returned to his beloved, familiar materials: sanguine and sepia. Levkas opened new possibilities for graphic art. Its pure, luminous white ground radiates light, as though advancing to meet the artist and lending him strength through its magnetic glow. The new material demanded painstaking labour, great dedication, concentration, and a sense of responsibility, giving the artist’s monumental thinking an appropriate scale and embodiment.

There is a customary procedure: the image is first outlined, the composition established, the objects grouped, and sketches and studies made—in other words, extensive preparatory work is carried out before the artist begins to resolve the specific task. At first glance, Rudolf Khachatryan seems to follow a paradoxical path. On the untouched surface, without any preparation, he begins by drawing the eyes. If we recall the familiar saying that ‘the eyes are the mirror of the soul’, such a beginning to the study of the model may perhaps be justified. Yet, to be candid, this principle is astonishing every time. It is difficult to become accustomed to it. Each time one expects failure, while knowing that it will not occur. As he works, Khachatryan anticipates nuances, light, and accents so precisely that he can fix a completed area with varnish and never return to it; when the work is finished, he has no cause to regret having overlooked, misjudged, or mishandled anything. It is important that the tension never subsides throughout the sessions: only physical exhaustion brings a session to an end. To study a particular part in this way without losing the sense of the whole is an exceptional gift.

Rudolf Khachatryan’s creative method is unusual to some degree. As noted above, whatever the size of the portrait, he begins with the eyes and then, without any preliminary markings, turns to the details that affect him most, unafraid that their interrelationship may be lost as the work develops.

Even the seasoned viewer is perplexed: how can the artist foresee the development of the composition, especially when, over the course of prolonged sessions, the model does not maintain an unchanging pose, while every section, regardless of its role, is meticulously worked and subsequently requires neither correction nor revision? Tonal and even the subtlest transitions, accents, and the handling of light are determined in advance. The entire process culminates in a work so complete, harmonious, and crystallised that it seems to have been created by magic—in a single instant, in a single breath.

All this testifies to a unique analytical method, an astonishing visual memory, and extraordinary powers of concentration. Freedom and intense concentration are fused in the artist’s method. Every line is drawn with emotion, lived experience, and love. The sitter becomes a participant, a co-author—a person who lives through the entire creation of the work, from the first line to its completion. The artist immerses himself in his own being and, at the same time, in the model; he does not merely work, he lives, and it is in this creative tension that the culminating moments of his life, the meaning of his existence, are revealed. This, perhaps, is the sensation of happiness itself. Even when he knows the sitter well, the artist scrutinises, converses, studies, and searches for the most exact state, movement, pose, clothing, and composition. Only after everything has been finally clarified and fixed in his memory does he begin to work. An astonishing, spellbinding, electrified atmosphere arises—a rare communion with the model. Nothing superfluous remains to distract attention: no memories, no information, no surroundings—only the artist, the model, the levkas, the sepia, and… the creative spirit. It is the artist who charges the session [90], delighting in the happiness of merging with nature, concentrated almost as though hypnotised, wholly giving himself to the work, as if consumed by an inner flame. Then come exhaustion, withdrawal, detachment, a pause, and the psychological preparation required before turning to the next model.

The artist demands the same dedication, self-forgetfulness, and concentration from the sitter.

Almost involuntarily, the model becomes a kindred spirit, before whose eyes a miracle gradually takes place, and comes to understand that his or her participation in the working process is truly necessary.

In Rudolf Khachatryan’s works, tangibility reaches its highest point. The issue is not merely the technical perfection he has possessed since childhood and which naturally astonishes the viewer, but the spiritual essence that often remains beyond the limits of the visible.

The artist’s power compels us to follow the movement of graphite across the levkas, attending to every point touched by his hand. The rendering of the model is compelling in its painstaking completeness; the artist focuses the viewer’s attention at once, and what is depicted is perceived more directly and more fully than the living sitter. The artist reduces his own intervention to a minimum. It seems that he has no personal emotional attitude at all: with complete freedom, he seeks each time to enter into communion with the model and merge with the sitter entirely. Such freedom is possible only for an artist whose impressions of life are profound and firmly grounded.

It is difficult to seek any outward expression on the faces of those portrayed: they inhabit elusive inward thoughts of their own, as though apart from the artist’s creative process. The words ‘unconsciously’ and ‘subconsciously’ are unnecessary here, especially since both principles are present in Khachatryan’s creative process; and the more deeply the artist sinks his roots into his own foundations, the more he can rely on an inner ‘self-direction’ that has become an organic and inseparable part of his nature. It is precisely this concentrated ‘self-direction’ that enables the artist to marshal his powers to the utmost during prolonged sessions.

These extended creative states cause the sitter’s character to be continuously layered upon the levkas. This accumulation, continuing throughout the work, releases the portrait from the condition of a copy and gives it an inner power that is transmitted to the viewer.

A face frozen in one particular expression can scarcely be endowed with depth of character or the expressiveness of individuality.

Rudolf Khachatryan is able to achieve a transformation of the sitter, and despite its outward stillness, the image moves us through an inward, autonomous life, independent of both artist and model. Time and space enter the portrait without additional explanatory devices that might distract attention.

[91] As a rule, the pure, still untouched ground of each new levkas harmonises and corresponds with the contour, creating within the image itself a unique sense of air, atmosphere, and perspective.

Likeness often becomes a subject of discussion. It is sometimes argued that the characteristic features of the sitter’s external resemblance need not be conveyed. For Khachatryan, however, it is a matter of principle to know the model exhaustively. He does not wish to forfeit the opportunity to know the sitter by turning it merely into an occasion for his own ‘self-expression’. We may say with confidence that the old masters penetrated not only the essence of their material and the particularities of human character, but also studied characteristic external features with the greatest care, striving to attain likeness and identity. Often they were simply obliged to do so by the demands of the patron and by the need to preserve the honour of their craft. It is precisely for this reason that we believe in the truthfulness of the classics.

When we invoke photography, we often forget that even the finest photographer is separated from the sitter by a technology capable of immortalising only a second, an instant, but incapable of penetrating the essence of movement or conveying the eternity of matter and the inner world.

Ultimately, every art form has its own vocation and distinctive qualities. The apparent generalisations of many of our contemporaries are perceived as the work of an initial, preparatory stage and, regrettably, often as evidence of the artist’s helplessness.

The truthfulness of Khachatryan’s portraits is beyond doubt. Structural completeness is, for the artist, flesh and blood—a spiritual essence. He strives to penetrate the nature of the individual and to explore his or her microcosm and macrocosm. The generalisation of character proceeds from the essence of the sitter. As though by means of an X-ray, the artist brings to light states characteristic of that particular personality and emphasises the individual’s distinguishing qualities. Khachatryan does not merely study the sitter’s outward appearance, nor does he conduct a simplistic conversation with the viewer, pretending that he wishes to present some singular trait that must be seized in an instant. On the contrary, he seeks to see the individual in eternity, or eternity within the individual, far removed from the state, mood, and cares of a particular moment.

Khachatryan entered the genre of portraiture through the self-portrait. It was his first portrait, his first attempt at knowledge: he felt his face with his hands in order to understand its form, since he knew nothing of anatomy. Thus, at the age of thirteen, the boy approached the very origins of portraiture.

‘Whenever my strength is exhausted and a crisis sets in—despondency, a creative pause—I begin a new portrait. It becomes a kind of self-examination, and the desire to work returns, the desire to overcome myself once again. The self-portrait is a kind of springboard for the next leap. The first levkas work also began with a self-portrait.’

At the small solo exhibition held in Yerevan, Self-Portrait (1979) was the final work to bring the long road already travelled to a common conclusion, while at the same time becoming the first work to inaugurate a new creative period.

Khachatryan has returned to the self-portrait many times, seeking solitude and concentration, but I believe that the most significant, weighty, and mature work is the Self-Portrait created in 1981. One may say with confidence that in it the artist created a work of absolute artistic value. A man made wise by life’s experience seems to address us, his contemporaries, while at the same time reflecting on the future and examining the past. The work is a confession, a relic, a credo, a firmly held conviction. A face expressing powerful will; an intent, serious gaze; the monumentality of the image; spirit and flesh—frighteningly real and unreal at once.

The atmosphere of the self-portrait is entirely autonomous—outside time, place, and space—and the many-layered state of mind is especially palpable within it. Among the other levkas works, it stands apart as the most significant. The strain of prolonged sessions, the close scrutiny of every stroke, and the careful elaboration of detail were made increasingly difficult by the gradual deterioration of the artist’s eyesight. He frequently had to remove his spectacles and peer closely at the hand holding the graphite.

Yet in this condition a new trait of character reveals itself. The viewer of the self-portrait never senses the strain of labour, the sweat, or the suffering of creation, which at times approaches self-torment.

Khachatryan bears his cross alone, silently and in contemplation, concealing from us the suffering of creation.

Over the many years in which I have engaged with Rudolf Khachatryan’s art, I have often wondered what the artist’s principal driving force might be. Painful labour, an ascetic way of life, inexplicable endurance, and the ceaseless renewal and increasing complexity of the tasks he sets himself. The artist has attained such virtuosity of execution that it might have tempted him with the possibility of an easy life. Fortunately for us, this did not happen: honesty and the creative spirit did not allow him to set foot on a false path. Great faith, love, constant self-education, [92] extraordinary demands upon himself, his friends, and his colleagues, and a firm remembrance of the standards of classical art accompanied him towards maturity and immense creative tension. Perhaps nowhere is all this expressed with such force and consistency as in this self-portrait. There is no self-dramatisation or self-admiration here; instead there is a gaze directed, as if from outside, into the self. The self-portrait seems to condense the artist’s entire biography, becoming his most programmatic work and the clearest expression of his credo. Its drama reaches the pitch of cruel tragedy and is transformed into a distinctive artistic document of our complex age, a monologue addressed to the future. And as the weightiest weapon expressing the artist’s thoughts, doubts, and convictions, the small pencil in a manly, weary hand becomes a weapon of goodness, strength, light, and beauty—a weapon capable of miracles.

Love for the human being, compassion, kindness, and a concrete, deeply felt involvement in the fate of those around him have always been characteristic of Khachatryan’s personality. Art has never been entertainment for him, whether the work is a ten-minute drawing or a levkas created over thirty prolonged sessions. He advances towards love and truth through suffering, and for him there is no greater happiness than the happiness of making art, the happiness of creation.

Strength lies in merging with nature, in forgetting one’s own self and becoming one of its natural particles; only then is it possible to create works for which the very thought of correction or verification is inconceivable. Are not profound harmony and sincerity the essence of Mozart’s music and Pushkin’s lyric poetry—works that are, in their own way, as inexplicable as the mysterious light of the moon or the beauty of morning freshness? Is this not the meaning of existence: when departing, to leave nature a new nature, born of human life, will, and reason?

For Rudolf Khachatryan, the driving force is constant self-perfection, the comparison of his own works, and the raising and increasing complexity of his standards. Whenever I visit the artist’s Moscow studio after an interval, I involuntarily ask myself what more can possibly be done, and I am delighted to observe not only quantitative additions but substantial qualitative growth. From one work to the next, a process of refinement takes place. One becomes so accustomed to surprises that one eagerly awaits the next encounter. There is not the slightest trace of self-satisfaction. There is a continuous movement towards doing more, an unrelenting overcoming of great difficulties.

The nude body, whose perfection and plasticity have fascinated the masters of many ages, has today been almost consigned to oblivion.

[93] Few artists of our time address this subject. The plastic form of the nude body had fascinated Khachatryan since childhood. Even today, the study from the model that he made at fifteen is astonishing. It appears to be the work of an artist who had completed a full academic education, yet it was his first nude model. The grace of his many nude figures and the plasticity of their lines are remarkable. The artist admires without limit the perfection and harmony of the nude model. The coarse, animal play of muscles is alien to Khachatryan; he also avoids excessively sensual movement, and his models are magnificent in their stillness. His acute visual memory and innate powers of observation allow him to render the finest nuances and the affecting plasticity of the nude body.

The culmination of the theme was Pilgrim (1981). This complex work on levkas demanded prolonged labour and great exertion. The philosophical reflections of a self-contained traveller left alone with nature are convincing in their expressiveness and force. As usual, there is nothing to distract attention: a young, still powerful body bears a grey head aged and tormented by cares and thoughts; the biblical face is furrowed with wrinkles, and the half-open eyes of the weary man are filled with sadness and inward concentration. The work exerts its force not through an exotic subject or a literary-theatrical narrative, but through sincerity, strength of spirit, genuine mastery, and truth. Khachatryan wholly rejects unusual plots and effects, which are given to few. Any artistic conception, whether new or old, is real only when it discovers a new affirmation of truth. The artist is then always an innovator, because every new confession before nature denies mannerism. The analytical treatment of the nude model is the result of Khachatryan’s emotional penetration; it frees him from conventional manner and, becoming his own, distinguishes him from every other artist and every other age.

Khachatryan avoids deformation, exaggeration, and deliberate effect, striving precisely and actively to attain plastic tangibility. Everything here is subject to an active but unobtrusive interpretation that does not interfere with the rights of nature. This is not the artist’s weakness but his strength: he does not seek to argue with nature, but tries to comprehend it within the limits of his abilities. His aim is not merely to see the visible part of the iceberg, but to penetrate its essence. Profound technical skill and brilliant mastery do not make the artist an advocate of technicalism; they merely strengthen his position and allow him to express his innermost feelings with greater independence and conviction.

The whole series of levkas works is separated from the outer frame by a new cardboard border. The artist had often used this device in his graphic works. The drawn border seemed to enclose the image, becoming an inseparable part of the work. In The Window, the cardboard border appears as the window frame and becomes an organic part of the image. The subject itself suggested this solution. In terms of genre, it is a synthesis of landscape and still life, but its meaning is far deeper than such a dry definition. Morning. Studio. Window is as unreal as it is real. Its reality lies in the representation and in the materiality of the walls, yet the entire image is imbued with the mood of a distant, carefree childhood and the sensation of awakening from peaceful sleep, when one wishes to live with renewed strength. The work also contains sorrow and a poignant longing for childhood. It has a direct connection with the landscapes of earlier years, together with depth, wisdom, maturity, and an unusual freshness of perception.

The window curtains, like a theatre curtain, have been drawn fully aside and invite us in to see the theatre of life. Here once again we can observe the artist’s ability to gather objects that do not in themselves form a whole into a single image, to connect them and turn them into a unified relationship. A landscape seen from different points has been brought together so convincingly that the truthful perception of the work raises no doubt. In our view, the author’s presence is felt in no other work as strongly as it is here. The invisible artist stands there by the window, admiring the freshness of the green leaves. This is a finished work whose significance reaches beyond the treatment of an ordinary domestic subject: a curtained window, commonplace Moscow roofs with their drainpipes, and ordinary, unremarkable trees. Yet everything is extraordinarily warm, pleasing, and compelling. Every detail and every leaf has been meticulously studied and presented with profound feeling. Silence, calm, reflection.

The ability to make the everyday lyrical creates a distinctive masculine poetry. Different textures and planes, near and distant perspective, rigorous detail, and broad generalisation do not result in stylistic discord or eclecticism. Once again the artist’s ability to master any genre and any subject becomes apparent. The Window, like a herald from the artist’s childhood portfolio, opens a path [94] towards this forgotten genre, which will, it seems, lead to new discoveries in the future.

The same brown sepia becomes a many-coloured palette in the master’s hand, taking on every possible hue and nuance and turning into a miracle: one senses the bluish tint of the fish, the gold of the onion, the reddish-brown copper of the metal vessel, and the green of the leaves. This is no illusion. While retaining their material substance, the tangible qualities of different objects receive a unique stylistic revelation. Yet when the single brown graphite gliding over the levkas creates alternately warm and cool tones, a many-coloured gamut, without provoking the slightest need for additional colour, the image is perceived not as drawing but as painting—painting of an entirely different order.

Khachatryan’s finest works possess impeccable taste. Taste, like many other qualities, is probably born with a person and subsequently develops. This is not the practical taste that can, to some extent, be acquired through information and exercise. Such taste may belong to the consumer or viewer, but not to the creator. Without elevated innate taste, just as without a musical ear or a subtle feeling for colour, line, and form, no amount of instruction, however thorough, and no arduous labour will lead to the summits of creation.

For your works to radiate and warm others, that warmth must come from your own soul. What matters is not seeing the object’s outer shell, but seeing the miracle. A person is born with such gifts. Ultimately, in Self-Portrait, At the Window, and the artist’s other discoveries, we find the same quality that was present in the works of the fourteen-year-old youth. His abilities have naturally been refined, and maturity and wisdom have come with age, but the importance of the early works has not diminished, because they are the source of all that is good and continues to grow today from one work to the next.

Khachatryan is unsparing towards both himself and the sitter, striving for the utmost. Looking at the artist’s works, one is repeatedly astonished that he accomplished all this with nothing more than a small, sharpened graphite pencil. There is something miraculous and unfathomable in it. Despite its authenticity and fidelity to the sitter, the representation is not mechanical. The artist seeks to be as sincere as nature itself, navigating unerringly between life and creation. Possible associations with classical art, being not a source of information but a continuation of art and nature, in no way imply imitation of one master or another.

Khachatryan’s constant striving towards new heights and his refusal to be satisfied with what he has achieved are signs of possible further refinement. ‘I dream of working to the very end, of exhausting all my possibilities, not scattering them among different works but concentrating them in a single one. Perhaps one day I shall succeed.’

Rudolf Khachatryan’s art is fresh air: it sobers us and reminds us of values, of the bond between our age and human culture in all its sublime periods. Every age undoubtedly has its own breath and its own problems of every kind, including artistic ones. Human culture is not defined by decades; it began at the dawn of civilisation and must be accepted as a whole, with all its rises and falls, while the mountain summits must always remain the standard.

We can and must think about our contemporaries while moving away from the past, living in the present, and directing our gaze towards the future. Does something unique, true, and absolute exist? A tuning fork? Yet a tuning fork is not yet a melody, not music. ‘Truth is one, but it has many faces.’ So does art. Can many of our contemporaries take their place among the classics? We try to make the artistic aspirations of past ages and the works of old masters the property of today, compelling them to serve us. Can we, even in thought, do the reverse and transport our contemporary into the depths of the past? Can we attempt to measure his suffering and happiness? I believe we can, if we enter deeply into Rudolf Khachatryan’s work and cast from our shoulders the sense of inferiority, or the superiority claimed by the ‘noisy age’ of scientific and technological progress. We not only admire the results of Rudolf Khachatryan’s creative work; we inevitably want to understand how he achieved them.

He learned the alphabet of art by himself. The methods and forms established around him did not attract the artist. From childhood he absorbed a most valuable principle: nature is the finest teacher, and its treasures are inexhaustible and boundless. He did not seek to see nature altered; he sought to penetrate its depths, to understand it, and to convey his own experience through the sitter. Here lie the boundlessness of the material, the boundlessness of realism, and the eternity of art. From the classics one had to learn sincerity and morality, but never to repeat them, because another’s truth is unrepeatable: it already exists and lives its own life, and every attempt, across the distance of centuries, to commune with them through repetition can lead only to wasted time.

[95] Nevertheless, classical painting, in its unattainability, allowed him no peace; rejecting mechanical execution, it pointed to the sole original source from which it had itself begun—nature. Considerable energy, honesty, and diligence were required, and Rudolf Khachatryan possessed them. Every artist, whatever the nature of the field he has chosen, seeks to establish contact with the viewer; ultimately, the best that is created in art belongs to people. In this respect Rudolf Khachatryan has been fortunate. His work instantly arrests and enchants the viewer, transporting us into the complex world of his thoughts. Khachatryan never depends upon the taste or whim of a patron; while he works, no authorities exist for him. He is at once the author and director of his own performance.

Khachatryan never makes group portraits. In his view, it is impossible, and unnecessary, to combine different inner and outer temperaments in a single work. Each individual is so self-contained and so full of emotion that to comprehend them is practically impossible, and to combine them all the more so. As a rule, Khachatryan’s portraits are accompanied by neither surrounding objects nor an environment. In the artist’s view, nothing should distract attention from the portrait. They have an absolutely pure ground: through the contours and the placement of the figure in space, the neutral whiteness of the paper acquires a different expressiveness.

Khachatryan is alien to pathos, pretension, and the heroisation of his subjects—to the pomposity and posturing that contradict human nature and are contrived to characterise the outward manifestations of one period or another. A heightened reality, penetration beyond the visible line, and a vivid imagination that violates the laws of naturalistic fixation of a visual state are qualities of the finest levkas works. Examining the smallest details with great care, the artist does not lose his sense of generalisation, thanks to tonal solutions and a sensitive line. He seems continually to extract light from the levkas, and the works radiate brilliance and solemnity.

One of the merits of Khachatryan’s work is its precise accentuation of line, tone, light, and shadow—a factor sometimes lacking even in talented artists, whose works consequently lose taste and expressiveness.

The artist has devoted more than thirty of his forty-six years to art. His creative path has held suffering and joy, defeats and victories, but never inertia or indifference. Intense, difficult work and repose; self-affirmation, when there is no longer anything to prove to anyone and only one desire remains—to attain knowledge of oneself.