Vardan Jaloyan
At the beginning of the 21st century, a growing interest in modernism can be observed in global art. People speak of many “modernisms,” viewing Western High Modernism as one of them. The modernism of Soviet Armenia was one of those “minor modernisms” that reached its fullest expressive form in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the following decade, the ideas that had been discovered were developed, refined, interpreted, and given institutional form. From the distance of nearly half a century, one comes to realize that this period was the most romantic both in world history and in our own. All over the world, many artists are once again turning to the 1960s and to the giants who symbolize that era, attempting to rediscover new paths for the development of art.
In this regard, Henri Elibekian is the artist—perhaps the only one of his generation—who attempts to make a breakthrough from the 1960s into the new century, searching for the weak points inherent in postmodern art and, within that paradigm, pointing out the possibilities for a modernist rearticulation. His works from the 1990s and 2000s are striking in their contradictions: on the one hand, they contain a mindset that has already become foreign to us; on the other, they possess a passion that amazes with its freshness. He blends the analytical discourse of contemporary art with the pathos of his generation, counterposing irony with the tragic fate of the artist.
The 1960s cannot return spontaneously or mechanically. Contemporary art is interested not in the form of that era’s art, but in its spirit. In other words, such a return should resemble a séance of conjuration rather than the chaotic bustle of retro fashion. It is with this sense of necessity that H. Elibekian conjures the giants of the 1960s—Minas, Parajanov, Sevak, and others—attempting to fill the desiccated space of contemporary art with the spirits of the past (“Minas,” “Hamlet Is Not Hamlet, or Vengeance for the Father,” statements, and so on). Only the spirit of the past can call the hesitant Hamlet to action, yet he must act in an entirely different way, without repeating what has already been done. This is precisely the secret by which spirits communicate with the living: they impel them to do the unpredictable.
In H. Elibekian’s recent performance-presentations, two generations are mainly present: the Mohicans of the 1960s and the young. The former recall the past, while the latter find that missing essential element they do not encounter in contemporary, overly placid postmodern art. These works carry within them historical depth and the presence of experience. Within experience there is something unrepresentable—something time has rendered invisible. The invisible appears in H. Elibekian’s authorial texts and commentaries. An attentive reader can discern in these texts a modernist discourse combined with post-structuralist affinities. The forgotten codes of the past are the unconscious, which has sunk from the surface of consciousness into the depths of the body. H. Elibekian brings back what has been repressed—the unconscious of contemporary Armenian art. Sigmund Freud wished to call the science he discovered archaeology. In this sense, H. Elibekian’s performances and texts are archaeological. The texts are largely about precisely this unconscious—this “archaeological” dimension.
The generation of the 1960s, to one degree or another, became a generation of “rejecters,” opposing Soviet ideology with technocracy or mythology, and socialist realism with the figurative and non-figurative manifestations of formalism. Here there are obvious parallels with the ideology of the “great refusal” that emerged in the West during the same years. The renewed interest in forms of resistance at the beginning of the 21st century is driven by the demand to oppose commercialization and bourgeoisification; thus, the art of the “rejecters” generation becomes relevant once again.
Contemporary Armenian art exists as if the 1960s never happened. This is a strategy of avoiding contextualization, whereas when previous paradigms begin to fall out of play, nothing remains. It is a clash of fathers and sons that H. Elibekian seeks to interpret in his performance “Hamlet Is Not Hamlet, or Vengeance for the Father.” Where contextualization is the source of artistic progress, the opposite image appears. In the West today, a new generation strives to spark new anti-capitalist movements—such as the anti-globalization movement—seeking an equivalent to the youth movements of the 1960s. H. Elibekian recalls his generation’s attempts to oppose authority and to interpret political and social phenomena.
Soviet Armenian art existed within the field of tension between the “Soviet” and the “anti-Soviet” poles. That is, the “Soviet” was the mass, the subordinate; the anti-Soviet was the elite, the elevated. The Western was decontextualized and therefore always elite. A great artist was one who could expand the “Soviet” at the expense of the “anti-Soviet,” the Western. Many innovators—from Minas to S. Parajanov—worked according to this strategy of expanding context. H. Elibekian stood at the most dangerous, marginal edge of this boundary, and thus was the most contradictory, encompassing the entire spectrum of appropriation—from futurism to pop art and conceptualism. He boldly experimented with the most radical efforts to broaden the local context, constantly risking being pushed outside it. It was a game in which the stakes were highest. H. Elibekian was the maestro of this game, perhaps because theater, in his own words, “is his eternal passion.” Theater can be interpreted as a situation of response between the artist and the audience: it makes the artist dependent on the spectator while simultaneously pushing him to free himself from that dependence (“My Spit Is My Manifesto,” statement, 2002).
The artist does not merely content himself with pouring out his inner freedom onto the canvas; he strives to live that inner freedom concretely and to creatively transform his reality, imbuing his surrounding environment with spiritual charge. Society gives human passions the intensity they seek and for which the individual yearns. He enters the public sphere, establishing himself as one of the main actors on the social stage. For such an artist, living means being on the stage of life in the broadest sense. If life in his surroundings is not organized as theater, it seems meaningless. In the most varied situations of life, he attempts to dictate his role—from clown to tragedian. His life becomes a plot, and the “myth” of the artist—such as that of Van Gogh or Picasso—is created. This myth tells of the secret the artist carries within himself. There are artists who create their own myth, such as Salvador Dalí. H. Elibekian belongs to this latter type: he actively shaped and continues to shape his myth. Life is transformed into theater, and there is no event that is not staged, no human activity outside of role-playing. Theater, in the broad sense, is a way of organizing the world. Our society, starting from the 1960s, was a “society of the spectacle,” if we recall Guy Debord’s definition.
Between the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods, one can observe a certain rupture. When the stubborn struggle for existence becomes paramount, what is vitally necessary is pushed to the foreground, and theater becomes superfluous.
The collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated the opposition between “Soviet” and “anti-Soviet” art. The foreground was taken, admittedly, by the Western but mass-contextual phenomenon of pop art. From there, it was one step toward the truly contextual—conceptualism. Meanwhile, the “Soviet,” including the Soviet “anti-Soviet,” became decontextualized. The return of the latter in the 21st century can be anticipated. H. Elibekian’s works of recent years herald precisely this.
The art of Henri Elibekian in the post-Soviet years is a message that needs to be heard. It is one of the guarantees of our art’s development.
2005