Lilit Sargsyan
On May 17, 2002, at the Russian Museum of Art (Professor Abrahamyan’s collection), the Yerevan intellectual community once again met with Henry Elibekyan.
The project he presented was dedicated to theatre—what the artist himself calls his “illness,” his unwavering love, to which he returns again and again, always embodying theatricality in different ways within his non-theatrical artistic work. “Conversations about Theatre. Impressions from the 3rd World Theatre Olympiad (Moscow, April–June 2001)”—this is the title of the artist’s presentation.
Elibekyan’s projects of recent years are multifaceted. As a rule, they combine the “image-object” component with action (which may take the form of a performance, a happening, or, as in this case, a lecture). Overall, they are perceived as unified artistic statements (actions), in which the author’s position—as both an artist and a contemporary individual—is expressed vividly and expressively, sometimes allegorically and sometimes unequivocally. And although the author himself—and we along with him—called the event an “exhibition-lecture,” it nevertheless resembled a statement more than anything else, regardless of the informational content of the lecture.
The “Conversations…” took place against the backdrop of portraits of 18 renowned figures of contemporary theatre, recently created by the artist. The works of these theatre figures had been presented at the Moscow Olympiad. They are: Giorgio Strehler, Peter Stein, Declan Donnellan, Eimuntas Nekrošius, Robert Sturua, Boris Eifman, Tadashi Suzuki, Robert Wilson, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Alexander Tairov, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Yuri Lyubimov, Lev Dodin, Anatoly Vasiliev.
It would be particularly worthwhile to dwell on the portraits themselves. At first glance, they may appear imaginary. In the collage-like images transformed in a modernist spirit, the real object seems to disappear and dissolve into a flood of color and line generated by associations and sensations born exclusively of the author’s imagination. In this series of portraits, as in earlier works, H. Elibekyan delicately departs from the precise reproduction of the model’s facial features: the tribute of respect to the renowned figures of theatre is combined with the author’s subjective mental image—masking, yet not entirely ignoring, likeness. This creates a generalized, associative-imagistic formula for interpreting a given figure. Like visions, the portraits of theatre figures abruptly appear against neutral or graphic backgrounds. Each face is distinct, caught in a specific state and expression that records, first and foremost, the temperament of the creative personality, and only then the facial features. Elibekyan’s attraction to using ready-made graphic backgrounds for paintings emerged back in the 1990s, although his love for the object as a self-sufficient aesthetic phenomenon—detached from any utilitarian context—had always been characteristic of him. In several of the presented portraits, traces of drawings groove the face, intruding within the contours. In the artist’s words, “the drawing, corresponding to contemporary technical aesthetics, creates a special dynamic environment for self-expression.”
The “conversations” that formed part of the project essentially implied the artist’s account of the Moscow Olympiad and an analysis of the directors’ works. It should be noted that H. Elibekyan demonstrated professionalism and deep insight in matters of theatre.
Of course, the theatrical origins of H. Elibekyan’s art are well known. The role of theatre in the Elibekyan family has its own specific definition in art-historical literature. However, in Henry Elibekyan’s art, theatre as a phenomenon is expressed in a far more complex and allegorical manner, since for the artist it is not only a creative and artistic, but also a psychological category. Beginning with stage design, it transforms into other synthetic forms, including performances and statements. The fact is that he was connected to theatre from an early age due to his parents’ work (Henry recounts that he could have been born in a theatre). Later, episodes of his own biography were added. Theatre is an unrealized dream for him—one he strives to reach through the mediation of the visual arts. For him, it is not merely material, but a crucial component of the synthetic works characteristic of his art. He employs elements inherent to theatre as components of his creative method—whether they be so-called “soft sculptures” reminiscent of mannequin-characters, assemblages combined with theatrical scenery, or later objects and installations. This especially underscores Elibekyan’s aspiration to realize his concepts through action—a drive genetically linked to theatre, yet not theatrical in the literal sense.
As early as the beginning of the 1980s, H. Elibekyan began presenting his performance-statements. According to the artist, his initial conception of the vast project “Theatre of the Late 20th Century,” involving performances and statements, assumed its transformation into part of an actual theatrical production. Only later did performance in Elibekyan’s art acquire an independent significance.
Performance, as a specific type of artistic activity, did not originate from theatre at all. Most researchers and artists affirm that performance is the result of internal structural transformations within the visual arts—transformations of which theatre was not originally a part. While a director embodies a specific literary-artistic text through theatrical play and other attributes, the artist, in performance, realizes exclusively his subjective “text” through the use of his own body, environment, objects, and the involvement of spontaneous spectators.
In H. Elibekyan’s art—born and shaped in an Elibekyan manner—performance emerges not from the plastic arts but, on the contrary, from theatre, later forming as an independent creative genre. Elibekyan’s professionalism in matters of theatre is a purposeful principle, a guarantee of a more conscious approach to performance, even when it becomes overtly provocative.
Art history knows many avant-garde artists who have turned to performance. H. Elibekyan notes that there have also been artists who came to theatre from the plastic arts (for example, Bob Wilson). This, we believe, is natural and expresses the boundlessness and universality of the creative will granted to humans by God. Hidden within this is also the tendency toward synthesis, the interpenetration and dissolution of boundaries between individual art forms. Thus, the essential crystallizes: not in which specific field the artist expressed himself, but what he did and how. Henry Elibekyan is one of those remarkable contemporary artists who, for nearly five decades, has always had something new to say and has continuously sought new methods of self-expression.
Published in the newspaper “Golos Armenii”,
May 28, 2002.