In 1924 in New York City. 34% of the population is foreign-born. Among them is 18-year-old Arshile Gorky, who fled the Armenian genocide committed by the Turks. Many people are currently searching for another life (a better life) through Ellis Island, a life without persecution and poverty. When Gorky arrived, he set out to reinvent himself and change his name, nationality, career and personal history. No wonder. His relatives were raped, imprisoned and executed. His mother died of hunger in her arms. When he arrived in the United States with his sister, he was ready to be a running thing for the past 18 years.
Introducing Arshile Gorky: New York CityEditor Ben Eastman is published by Hauser & Wirth. This book is an extraordinary document of Gorky’s brief life as an artist. It includes high-quality reproductions of his paintings and sketches, which began in 1926 and lasted until his last work in 1948, the year when he died of suicide at the age of 48.
This book also contains a lot. The whole process is a black and white photo of Berenice Abbott, providing readers with a visual background to the Gorky world. In 1929, Abbott moved to New York to create a photographic record of the city. Brand new skyscrapers line up in the streets. Store logo read “Hat 1.95”. Bloom Street Wall Street, Wall Street Union Square Photo – Captured by Abbott. His artwork, his wife and two daughters, his friends and his Union Square studio also have photos of Gocky. It’s Gorky’s New York – he approached Willem de Kooning and Stuart Davis, hosted exhibitions and created amazing works.
Five papers conduct a thorough examination of the mysterious artist. Scholar Christa Noel Robbins studied Gorky’s fabrics and provided important insights on grants and originality, noting that “the question of origin was one of the key issues elaborated by artists and critics in the 1920s and 1930s.” Gorky Strength Study Picasso, Uccello, and De Chirico. “Nothing is more vulgar and incompetent than originality,” Picasso said. Robbins wrote that originality is “the product of repetition” and shows how Gorky’s repetition of works and elements proposed by other artists demonstrates “how extensively the use and repetition of appropriate elements are used and reused.” All art is of blood – consciously worn in every artist or not.
Art historian Emily Warner contributed to Gorky’s murals, his “format flattened industrial patterns.” He created murals for the Newark Airport Management Building and the Aviation Building at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He believes that “the mural should not be part of the wall because it was lost at that moment and the painting lost its identity.” For him, the mural should not be integrated with the architecture. Colorful research of these murals appears throughout the book. Warner wrote that Gorky’s mural “was disengaged from the surroundings, visually and psychologically, and thus became rare… It was an alienating thing, another world, a form that arrested the audience and forced her to change in perception.”
Tamar Kharatishvili, also an art historian, introduced in detail Gorky’s lifelong self-invention. “When constructing myths and stories about one’s biography, artistic training, birthplace or racial descent, he believes there is no problem integrating facts and novels.” She also explores his innovations in painting techniques and materials. In 1937, he gave a speech on disguise at the American Federation of Arts in Washington, DC.
Remakeartist and writer Allison Katz describes how almost 20-year-old was staring at another artist who was another artist in Gorky’s. television (Now still life1935-36). During those long meetings, she began to realize: “When making or looking at paintings, you can’t ignore a painting. The way paintings stick is images.” Looking at televisionshe asked herself, “What does the painting that I didn’t choose mean when I settled in that painting; to become a loyal audience? Why is this painting especially? Destiny.”
The last article is New Yorkr Writer and novelist Adam Gopnik connects Gorky’s work to the city itself. “His art was busy, busy, because New York was busy, because his mind was busy.” Gopnik believes that many of Gorky’s works were not prescient that immediately appeared after him: “But what happened afterwards: photos of Helen Frankenthaler or Jules Olitski.”
Arshile Gorky: New York City Honor is not only the artist, but the art itself and all artists. It can be used as a guide for emerging artists, or it can be a window into the sobering mind of great artists. Out of trauma, Gorky rewrotes his life and makes excellent paintings. As the book properly shows, he made himself an original work.
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