RUDOLF KHACHATRYAN

(1937)

Translated from Armenian. Fazil Iskander's epigraph is based directly on the Russian original.

[315] Rudolf Khachatryan draws on levkas. Chance proved fortunate for the artist: one day he was given a primed board, on which he created his first self-portrait. The solidity of the support answered the artist's dream of finding a material that would enable him to make weightier works, to work on a larger scale, and to sustain the process over a longer period.

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 united.

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 and lends the artist 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.

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 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 detail without losing the sense of the whole is an exceptional gift.

Rudolf Khachatryan's creative method is unusual to some degree. [317] 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 concern him most, unafraid that their interrelationship may be lost as the work develops.

Even an experienced viewer is perplexed by the artist's ability to foresee the development of the composition, especially since the model does not maintain an unchanging pose over the course of prolonged sessions, while every section is meticulously worked and subsequently requires neither correction nor revision. 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 breath.

All this testifies to a unique analytical method, an astonishing visual memory, and extraordinary powers of concentration. Freedom and rigour are united 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 and 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 surroundings; only the artist, the model, the levkas, the sepia, and... the creative spirit. [318] It is the artist who charges the session, 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. What matters here is not 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 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 experience of life is profound and firmly grounded.

It is difficult to seek any outward expression on the faces of the sitters. 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 descends into his own foundations, the more he can rely on an inner 'self-guidance' that has become an organic and inseparable part of his nature. It is precisely this concentrated 'self-guidance' 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. As a result, the portrait does not become a copy but acquires 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 bear the imprint of individuality.

Rudolf Khachatryan is able to achieve a transformation of the sitter, and 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.

As a rule, the pure, still untouched ground of each new levkas harmonises with the contours, creating a unique sense of air, atmosphere, and perspective.

Likeness often becomes a subject of discussion. It is sometimes argued that the characteristic external features of the sitter need not be conveyed. For Khachatryan, however, it is a matter of principle to know the model exhaustively and to make that knowledge an occasion for his own 'self-expression'. 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. 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.

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 [319], 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 marking the beginning of 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 credo. A face expressing powerful will; an intent, serious gaze; the monumentality of the image; spirit and flesh - frighteningly real and unreal at once. [320] The atmosphere of the self-portrait is entirely autonomous, outside time and space, and the many-layered state of mind is especially palpable within it. 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. Yet 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 depart from the true path. Great faith, love, constant self-examination, extraordinary demands upon himself as well as his friends and colleagues, and a steadfast adherence to the standards of classical art accompanied him towards maturity and through work of immense creative tension. Perhaps nowhere is all this expressed with such force as in the self-portrait under discussion. There is no self-admiration here; instead there is a gaze directed into the artist's own inner world. The self-portrait seems to condense the artist's entire biography, becoming a programmatic work that expresses 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. It gives form to 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 involvement in the fate of those around him have always been characteristic of Khachatryan as an artist and as a person. Art has never been entertainment for him, whether he is making a ten-minute sketch or a levkas work over thirty prolonged sessions. He advances towards love and truth through suffering, and for him there is no greater happiness than making and creating.

The artist's strength lies in merging with nature, in forgetting his own self and becoming one of its organic particles; only then is it possible to create works for which correction and verification need not even be considered. Are not profound harmony and sincerity the substance 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 freshness of early morning? Is this not the meaning of existence: when departing, to leave within nature a new nature, born of human life, will, and reason?

For Rudolf Khachatryan, the driving force is constant self-perfection and the raising and increasing complexity of his own 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. 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. Few artists of our time turn to this subject. The plasticity of the nude body has moved Khachatryan since childhood. The drawing of a model that he made at the age of fifteen remains astonishing to this day. It seems to be the work of an artist who has completed a full academic course, yet this was his first nude model. The elegance of his many nudes and the plasticity of their lines are compelling; the artist delights without limit in their perfection and harmony. The coarse, animal play of muscles is alien to Khachatryan. He avoids excessively sensual movement, and the models are magnificent in their stillness. His sharpened visual memory and innate powers of observation enable him to render even the smallest nuances.

[322] The culmination of this theme was The Stranger (1981). This complex work on levkas demanded prolonged labour and immense tension. The philosophical reflections of an inward traveller left alone with nature are convincing in their expressive power. Nothing distracts attention: a young, still powerful body bears a head aged by cares and thoughts, tormented and grey; a biblical face furrowed with wrinkles; the half-open eyes of a weary man, filled with sadness and inward absorption. The work acts upon us not through an unusual subject or a literary-theatrical narrative, but through its contagious sincerity, strength of spirit, genuine mastery, and truth. Khachatryan wholly rejects the extraordinary subject and effects. Every artistic conception, whether new or old, is real only when it reaffirms truth. In that case the artist always remains an innovator, for every new confession of love for nature [323] negates mannerism. Khachatryan's analytical treatment of the nude model results from emotional penetration: it frees him from traditional manner, and, being wholly his own, differs from that of any other artist.

Khachatryan avoids deformation, exaggeration, and deliberate effect, striving to attain plastic tangibility with precision and active engagement. Everything in his art is subject to an active but unobtrusive interpretation that does not encroach upon nature's rights. It is evidence of the artist's strength, not weakness, that he does not seek to enter into dispute with nature but tries to comprehend it within the limits of his powers. The artist's purpose is not merely to see the visible part of the iceberg but to penetrate its essence. Great technical skill and brilliant mastery do not make him an advocate of technicalism; they merely affirm his position and allow him to express [324] his innermost feelings with greater independence and conviction.

The entire series of levkas works is separated from the outer frame by an additional cardboard border. The artist had often used this device in his graphic works. The drawn frame seemed to enclose the image and became an inseparable part of the work. In Window, the cardboard border functions as a window frame and becomes an organic part of the image. The subject itself suggested such a solution. In terms of genre, the work combines landscape and still life, yet its meaning is considerably deeper. Studio Window: Morning is as real as it is unreal. Its reality lies in the act of depiction and in the materiality of the image, yet the entire picture is permeated by the mood of a distant, carefree childhood and by the feeling of awakening after peaceful sleep, when one wishes to live with renewed strength. The work also contains an ache, a moving nostalgia for childhood. It is directly connected with the landscapes of earlier years, while also possessing depth, wisdom, maturity, and an unusual freshness of perception. The window curtains are fully drawn back like a theatre curtain and invite us inside to witness the theatre of life.

Here once again we see the artist's ability to bring objects that do not in themselves form a whole into a single image, to connect them and turn them into a coherent harmony. The landscape, viewed from different points, is unified so convincingly that the truthfulness of the work is beyond doubt. In our view, the artist's presence is felt more strongly here than in any other work. The invisible artist stands here, at the window itself, admiring the freshness of the trees' green leaves. This is a complete work whose significance far exceeds the depiction of an ordinary domestic motif: a curtained window, ordinary Moscow roofs with their drainpipes, and unremarkable trees. Yet everything is extraordinarily warm, pleasing, and inviting. Every detail, every leaf, has been carefully studied and conveyed with deep feeling. Silence, peace, reflection...

In the master's hands, brown sepia becomes a many-coloured palette, assuming every possible hue and nuance and turning into a miracle: one senses the bluish colour of the fish, the gold of the onion, the reddish-brown copper of the metal bowl, and the green of the leaves. This is no illusion. The tactile properties of different objects retain their materiality while acquiring a unified stylistic expressiveness. Yet when the single brown graphite medium gliding over the levkas creates now warm, now cool tones and a many-coloured range without producing the slightest need for additional colour, the image is perceived not as graphic art but as painting of a new order.

Khachatryan's finest works display impeccable taste. Without a highly developed innate taste - just as without an ear for music or a subtle feeling for colour, line, and form - no training in craft, however thorough, and no painstaking labour can lead to the heights of creation.

For a work to radiate and give warmth, that warmth must come from the soul. In Self-Portrait, Window, and the artist's other revelations, the same quality ultimately appears that was already present in the work of the eighteen-year-old youth. Naturally, his values and mastery have been refined; maturity and wisdom have come with age. Yet the significance of the early works has not diminished, for they are the point of departure of the positive principle that now grows from work to work. Khachatryan is unsparing towards both himself and the sitter in his effort to attain the utmost. Looking at his works, one is repeatedly astonished that all this has been accomplished with nothing more than a small piece of graphite. There is something marvellous and incomprehensible in it. For all its accuracy and fidelity to the sitter, the image is not mechanical. The artist seeks to be as sincere as nature itself, with a fine awareness of the boundary between life and art.

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

[325] Rudolf Khachatryan's art is clean air: it sobers us and reminds us of values, of the connection between our own age and human culture in all its exalted periods. Every age undoubtedly has its own breathing and its own tasks of every kind, including its overarching artistic tasks. Human culture is not measured in decades. It began at the dawn of civilisation and must be perceived as a whole, with all its ascents and declines; yet the measure must always be its summits.

We must think about our contemporaries while moving away from the past, living in the present, and directing our gaze towards the future. Does something single, true, and absolute exist? A tuning fork? But a tuning fork is not yet a melody or music. 'Truth is one, but it has many faces.' So does art. Can many of our contemporaries take their place beside the classics? We seek to make the artistic ideas of past ages and the works of the old masters the property of the present, compelling them to serve us. But can we, even in thought, do the reverse and transport our contemporary into the depths of the past? Can we measure his suffering and his happiness? By entering deeply into Rudolf Khachatryan's art and casting the sense of inferiority from our shoulders, I believe that we can. We do not merely admire the results of his art; we also seek in every way to understand how he achieved them. He learned the alphabet of art by himself. Ready-made methods and forms did not attract him. From childhood he had absorbed a principle of exceptional value: nature is the finest teacher, and its treasures are inexhaustible and infinite. He sought not to alter nature but to penetrate its depths, understand it, and communicate his own experience through the model. Herein lie the infinity of the material and of realism, and the eternity of art. From the classics one had to learn sincerity and morality, but never to repeat them, for another person's truth is unrepeatable: it already exists and lives its own life, and every attempt to commune with it through repetition across the distance of centuries can lead only to wasted time. Nevertheless, classical painting gave Rudolf no peace precisely through its unattainability. It required immense energy, honesty, and industry, and he possessed all three. Every practitioner of art, whatever field he or she has chosen, seeks contact with the viewer; ultimately, the best that is created in art belongs to people. In this respect Rudolf Khachatryan has been especially fortunate. His art instantly enchants the viewer and carries them into the complex world of his reflections. He is never dependent upon the taste and whims of a patron; while working, he recognises no authorities. He is at once the author and director of his own performance. Khachatryan never makes group portraits. In his view, it is both impossible and unnecessary to combine different inward and outward temperaments within a single work. Each individual is so self-contained and so full of emotion that complete comprehension is virtually impossible; to combine several individuals is more impossible still. As a rule, Khachatryan's portraits are accompanied neither by surrounding objects nor by an environment.

Pathos, pretension, the heroic elevation of images, and pose-making that contradicts human nature are alien to Khachatryan. Heightened reality, penetration beyond the visible line, and a vivid imagination that disrupts the laws of naturalistic recording of the visual state are qualities of his finest levkas works. While examining the smallest details with great care, the artist does not lose the sense of generalisation, thanks to tonal solutions and a sensitive line. He seems constantly to extract light from the levkas, and his works therefore radiate brilliance and solemnity. One of the values of Khachatryan's works lies in the precise placement of accents in line, tone, light, and shadow.

The artist has devoted some forty years of his life to art. His creative path has contained suffering and joy, defeats and victories, but never moments of inertia or indifference. Intense, difficult labour and continual self-affirmation - when there is no longer anything to prove to anyone, and only one fundamental desire remains: to know oneself.

TRANSLATION AND EDITORIAL NOTES

The following notes concern features of the supplied Armenian text and the editorial decisions taken in translation.

Authorship. Henrik Igityan's name is taken from the filename supplied by the user. No separate authorial byline appears in the body of the document.

Title and date. The heading Rudolf Khachatryan and the date (1937) have been retained exactly as they appear in the source. The date probably indicates the artist's year of birth, but it has not been editorially expanded.

Epigraph. The Armenian source reproduces a passage from Fazil Iskander's essay-dialogue Conversation with the Artist's Paintings. The English epigraph has therefore been translated directly from the surviving Russian typescript with the author's handwritten revisions, rather than indirectly from Armenian. This restores the phrases 'the artist's loving gaze' and the essential contrast Пчеле — достать. Художнику — вложить., rendered here as 'The bee's task is to take; the artist's is to put in.'

Pagination. The markers [315], [317]-[320], and [322]-[325] have been retained as references to the pagination of the printed source. Pages [316] and [321] are not marked in the supplied file and have not been inserted.

Terminology. Levkas has been retained as the established transliterated term. Sanguine, sepia, and graphite are used in accordance with the graphic-art context.

Titles of works. Self-Portrait, The Stranger, Window, and Studio Window: Morning are literal working translations. Before publication, they should be aligned with the approved English titles in the archive's object records.

Ambiguous construction. In the supplied Armenian version, the passage on likeness states that complete knowledge of the sitter becomes an occasion for the artist's self-expression. A different known version of the text frames this logic differently; the present translation follows the wording of the supplied source.

Sepia and graphite. In the paragraph on colouristic possibilities, the source first refers to sepia and later to 'brown graphite'. This terminological inconsistency has been preserved rather than silently corrected without the printed original.