How to Paint Destruction
Vardges Sureniants’ Trampled Sanctuary is among his most celebrated works of the 1890s. As a contemporary representation of the Hamidian Massacres, the painting draws attention to the fate of material objects, and to acts of desecration and material destruction. Inspired by Sureniants’engagement wit...
Αποθηκεύτηκε σε:
| Τόπος έκδοσης: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/eac, |
|---|---|
| Κύριος συγγραφέας: | |
| Μορφή: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Γλώσσα: | Anglais |
| Έκδοση: |
Études arméniennes contemporaines
2026
|
| Θέματα: | |
| Διαθέσιμο Online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Περίληψη: | Vardges Sureniants’ Trampled Sanctuary is among his most celebrated works of the 1890s. As a contemporary representation of the Hamidian Massacres, the painting draws attention to the fate of material objects, and to acts of desecration and material destruction. Inspired by Sureniants’engagement with material culture, this essay offers a close formal reading of Trampled Sanctuary, which draws out the ways he confronts the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage. Sureniants’ representations should be understood not only as visual documentation of destroyed artifacts but as a totalizing scene of wreckage comprising almost the entire repertoire of Armenian art. His use of an impressionistic style and his simultaneous insistence on the specificity of each painted object invite us to take close account of the destroyed materials, while, at the same time, diverting our attention to the strokes and daubs of paint which seem to obstruct such careful inspection. Pictorial details lie just beyond the viewer’s perception, hinting at, but never delineating clearly, a catalogue of objects, monuments, and texts, producing a tension between the documentation of artifacts and his creation of them anew. Trampled Sanctuary demonstrates how the painterly surface of the canvas, and the material culture represented upon it, offer meditations on loss and responsibility, image-making and commemoration. |
|---|