By Rachel B. Doyle
THE show was about to begin at a Soviet-era playhouse with olive-green seats, antique Caucasian rugs and a tiled ceiling, in Yerevan, the Armenian capital. I was with a man almost 50 years my senior who, while giving me a tour of an experimental art center in a former disco that morning, had asked if I would join him at the State Theater of the Young Spectator that night.
(Ara Alekyan’s “Spider” by Cinema Moscow in Yerevan, Armenia)
Like Mr. Khachaturian, the composer who was once denounced as “antipopular” and sent back to Armenia for “re-education,” the country’s artists often had to deal with government repression. The Soviets banned Sergei Parajanov, the legendary Armenian director, from making movies for 15 years after his critically acclaimed film, “The Color of Pomegranates,” was released in 1968.
To fill the void, Mr. Parajanov began to make collage art. Hundreds of his unique assemblages are collected in theMuseum of Sergei Parajanov, an oddball standout of Yerevan’s rich house museum scene. One room is devoted to works Mr. Parajanov created during his nearly five years in prison, like bottle-cap carvings that look like old coins.
Despite the danger, Armenian intellectuals continued to test boundaries. During an era when “unofficial art” — anything besides Socialist Realism — was anathema to the Kremlin, and exhibitions of it were being bulldozed in Moscow, the authorities somehow allowed a modern art museum to open in Yerevan in 1972. “Even some artists didn’t believe it would open,” said Nune Avetisian, director of the Modern Art Museum of Yerevan.
The city’s Modern Art Museum was the first state institution of its kind in the Soviet Union. It is still hard to fathom how it was permitted to display works like Hakob Hakobyan’s “In a City,” a 1979 painting that shows a crowd of headless men raising handless arms in a Soviet-style square.
Perhaps the freedom the authorities allowed the museum was simply the result of the city’s geography: “It was so small and very far from the center in Moscow,” Ms. Avetisian said.
On my last day in town I traveled south to the Khor Virap monastery, passing deep gorges and endlessly rolling hills that seemed to touch the clouds, red-roofed houses and purple wildflowers sprouting from cracks in jagged volcanic rock walls. The snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat was always in the distance.
As I entered Khor Virap, where the main draw is a deep dungeon where Gregory the Illuminator, Armenia’s patron saint, was imprisoned in the third century, a young man brandished a large rooster at me, smiling mischievously. I had been keen to go to a country that still felt undiscovered, and while the rooster-seller might have guessed that the redheaded woman with a camera was not really in the market for a blood sacrifice, I appreciated the gesture.
WHERE TO GO
State Theater of the Young Spectator (3 Moskovyan Street; 374-10-563-040)
Dalan Gallery (12 Abovyan Street, second floor; 374-553-307; dalangallery.com)
Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (1/3 Buzand Street; 374-10-568-225; accea.info)
Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall (46 Mashtots Avenue; 374-10-560-645; apo.am)
Museum of Sergei Parajanov (15/16 Dzoragyugh Street, off Proshyan Street; 374-10-538-473; parajanov.com/museum.html)
Modern Art Museum of Yerevan (7 Mashtots Avenue; 374-10-539-637; mamy.am)
Many of Armenia’s best sites can be seen on day excursions from Yerevan. Envoy Tours(54 Pushkin Street; 374-10-530-369; envoyhostel.com; from 13,000 dram) and Hyur Service (96 Nalbandian Street; 374-10-546-040; hyurservice.com; from 5,500 dram) offer English-language tours to the major sites, including the Geghard and Khor Virap monasteries.
That evening I watched a Franco-Russian violinist named Fédor Roudine, the grand prix winner of the Aram Khachaturian International Competition, performing concertos in an elegant 1930s concert hall. My ticket cost just 2,000 dram (or $5 at 400 dram to the dollar). When Mr. Roudine finished, two cannons on either side of the stage shot out bursts of glitter in red, blue and orange, the colors of the Armenian flag.
Justyna Mielnikiewicz for The New York Times
Statue of an Armenian hero. More Photos »
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Like Mr. Khachaturian, the composer who was once denounced as “antipopular” and sent back to Armenia for “re-education,” the country’s artists often had to deal with government repression. The Soviets banned Sergei Parajanov, the legendary Armenian director, from making movies for 15 years after his critically acclaimed film, “The Color of Pomegranates,” was released in 1968.
To fill the void, Mr. Parajanov began to make collage art. Hundreds of his unique assemblages are collected in theMuseum of Sergei Parajanov, an oddball standout of Yerevan’s rich house museum scene. One room is devoted to works Mr. Parajanov created during his nearly five years in prison, like bottle-cap carvings that look like old coins.
Despite the danger, Armenian intellectuals continued to test boundaries. During an era when “unofficial art” — anything besides Socialist Realism — was anathema to the Kremlin, and exhibitions of it were being bulldozed in Moscow, the authorities somehow allowed a modern art museum to open in Yerevan in 1972. “Even some artists didn’t believe it would open,” said Nune Avetisian, director of the Modern Art Museum of Yerevan.
The city’s Modern Art Museum was the first state institution of its kind in the Soviet Union. It is still hard to fathom how it was permitted to display works like Hakob Hakobyan’s “In a City,” a 1979 painting that shows a crowd of headless men raising handless arms in a Soviet-style square.
Perhaps the freedom the authorities allowed the museum was simply the result of the city’s geography: “It was so small and very far from the center in Moscow,” Ms. Avetisian said.
On my last day in town I traveled south to the Khor Virap monastery, passing deep gorges and endlessly rolling hills that seemed to touch the clouds, red-roofed houses and purple wildflowers sprouting from cracks in jagged volcanic rock walls. The snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat was always in the distance.
As I entered Khor Virap, where the main draw is a deep dungeon where Gregory the Illuminator, Armenia’s patron saint, was imprisoned in the third century, a young man brandished a large rooster at me, smiling mischievously. I had been keen to go to a country that still felt undiscovered, and while the rooster-seller might have guessed that the redheaded woman with a camera was not really in the market for a blood sacrifice, I appreciated the gesture.
WHERE TO GO
State Theater of the Young Spectator (3 Moskovyan Street; 374-10-563-040)
Dalan Gallery (12 Abovyan Street, second floor; 374-553-307; dalangallery.com)
Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (1/3 Buzand Street; 374-10-568-225; accea.info)
Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall (46 Mashtots Avenue; 374-10-560-645; apo.am)
Museum of Sergei Parajanov (15/16 Dzoragyugh Street, off Proshyan Street; 374-10-538-473; parajanov.com/museum.html)
Modern Art Museum of Yerevan (7 Mashtots Avenue; 374-10-539-637; mamy.am)
Many of Armenia’s best sites can be seen on day excursions from Yerevan. Envoy Tours(54 Pushkin Street; 374-10-530-369; envoyhostel.com; from 13,000 dram) and Hyur Service (96 Nalbandian Street; 374-10-546-040; hyurservice.com; from 5,500 dram) offer English-language tours to the major sites, including the Geghard and Khor Virap monasteries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/travel/in-armenia-art-in-the-shadow-of-ararat.html?pagewanted=1&mabReward=relbias:s,{&%2334&_r=0&%2359;RI:15&%2359;2&%2359;:&%2359;}&module=Search
6 October 2014 Last updated at 16:39 GMT
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