Arman Manookian A. T. Manookian Tateos Manookian Manookian paintings art Do you wish to buy, sell or authenticate works of art by Hawaiian artist Arman Manookian? I maintain a catalog of known works including drawing archives in private and museum collections. I also continue to research his life and art. Please contact me if you have what you believe to be original Manookian works. e-mail: johnseed@gmail.com |
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When McClellan was dispatched to Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i , on June 1, 1925, he took his talented clerk/illustrator with him. As Manookian prepared to leave the East Coast for Pearl Harbor, he was conscious of just how far he was about to travel from his past and from his Armenian friends and identity. He ended a May 23, 1925 letter to Menou Tufankjian, a childhood friend who was now also in the U.S: " Who knows, perhaps I'll never see you again. Yours, A. T. Manookian" It was a prophecy that would come true. Manookian and McClellan may have been from tremendously different backgrounds, but the paradise of Hawai'i fired the creativity in both. Hawai'i was a long voyage from anywhere, and the ambience was magical. It was in Hawai'i that Manookian would transform himself from an illustrator to an artist, and McClellan the historian would be inspired to poeticize and mysticize his writing. To be stationed at exotic Pearl Harbor must have been a dream, both artistically and socially. In describing Marine life there, McClellan told Leatherneck in 1926 that: "...it is but a short trip to Honolulu, with its show-houses, its beaches, its well lighted streets with their cosmopolitan throngs...the worst grouch of all cannot but succumb to the soothing magic of a few hours spent with congenial companions under the glory of Hawaii's wondrous moon." For young Marines like Manookian, there was more than the moon to appeal to the senses. Despite prohibition, there was sake being served in Japanese "teahouses" and Hawaii's own homebrew, Okolehao, made from ti leaves and compared by some to the best French brandy, was a prohibition era staple. Prostitution was officially illegal, but the red light district on Honolulu's River Street flourished, and the Army made health inspections. The young Armenian was in a landscape he found fantastic, living near a city bustling with growth and vice.
Madge Tennent, the doyenne of Hawaiian art, once stated that she envisioned the Hawaiian kings and queens as "having descended from gods of heroic proportion, intelligent and brave, bearing a strong affinity to the Greeks in their legends and persons." This statement also perfectly expresses Manookian's approach to Hawaiian culture. This lofty idealization soon became apparrent in the historical and mythological images of Hawai'i that he created to accompany McClellan's pieces, which were soon being published in Paradise of the Pacific.
In a stunning illustration commissioned by McClellan, but never published, the Hawaiian myth of "Maui Snaring the Sun" is presented in these ideal terms. The almost Grecian figure of Maui, set against a vista of Olympian clouds, reflects a new artistic grace that Manookian would characterize his Hawaiian paintings.
In a short profile of the artist, published in "Paradise of the Pacific" Magazine in 1927, Manookian states grandly that "in all his travels he has come upon no more intriguing artists' paradise than these mid-Pacific gardens of the Gods". Identifying himself as having come from "Byzantium... the eastern capital of the Roman Empire", Manookian states that he "fails to understand why the beaches of the Hawaiian Islands are not thick with the easels...of at least half the artists or would-be artists of the world." By the time Manookian was discharged from the Marines in 1927, he had made up his mind to stay in Honolulu. He had not been given a recommended promotion to Sargeant that had been dangled in January of 1927, but he did leave the service as a Corporal, and the recipient of a "Medal of Good Conduct." On September 5 he filed a "Waiver of Transportation" stating that would not be returning to the Mainland. In his waiver application he referred to a "lucrative" job as an illustrator that he had taken with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, whose art director at the time was the artist John M. Kelly. As Manookian settled into his new life as a civilian, several changes took place. His mentor, Edwin Mc Clellan was called to the Pacific Coast in November of 1927, and then to Nicaragua. He managed to keep up his duties as Editor of "Paradise", even though it would be nearly ten years before he actually returned to Hawai'i as its editor. As McClellan and the Marines faded as influences in Manookian's life, tremendous new ideas and opportunities were appearing. In April of 1927 The Honolulu Academy of the Arts opened, and with its opening came lectures and programs. Did Manookian hear Madge Tennant give her series of November 1927 lectures on art, drawing and the use of color? If he didn't, its hard to believe, given his next artistic projects, that he would have missed a lecture by Madame Claude Riviere from Tahiti on the work of Gaugain, held the same month. By 1928 he had moved to Makiki, less than a mile from the Academy. Becoming a member of the Honolulu Artist's Association, he attended meetings with Madge Tennent, Lionel Walden, D. Howard Hitchcock and other important Hawaiian painters. Socially, Manookian may have found Honolulu similar to Constantinople: both were port cities where immigrant groups clustered with people of their own culture, hanging on to familiar lanuage and customs as best they could. In the islands, Manookian became friends with a Greek, George Geracimos, who owned the "Green Mill Grill" on Bethel Street, across from the Hawai'i Theatre. Bethel Street at the time was a kind of Bohemian transition between the bustle of Chinatown to the west and the dignity of the Iolani Palace district to the east. Restaurants like the "Green Mill", and its neighbors "Chez Parisien" and the "Monte Carlo" modeled themselves on Parisien brasseries, even if the alcohol had to be kept under the counter. Trading work for meals, it was for the "Green Mill" that Manookian made some of his most famous works, a series of oils that depicted Hawaii in the era of Captain Cook. Many of the restaurants patrons came in late after leaving the Hawaii theatre. They would have just watched a show beneath Hawaii's most ambitious mural, the 35 foot wide "Glorification of Drama" completed by Lionel Walden in 1922. What a shock the Manookian paintings must have been when compared with the pastel, Neo-Classical composure of Walden's work. In fact, the eventual buyers of the Green Mill Grill paintings were two Honolulu society women who first saw them when they dropped in after leaving the theatre.
The five Manookian canvasses presented a world of striking color. In "Red Sails", for example, scarlet sails are set against lapis blue skies. Hawai'i had unleashed the artist's perfect pitch as a colorist. Equally striking was the way that Manookian, who previously had used mainly tempera paint to apply color, employed oil paint in bold, flat areas, without the use of varnish or subtle gradations. Although the vivid hues struck most viewers as Modern, Manookian's color sense actually reflected a Byzantine world of color re-emerging from his adolescent and childhood memories. He was also trying out ideas about form, color and design that would later cause him to be called "Hawai'i's most scientific artist." Those who first viewed Manookian's new colored works were struck not only by the use of color, but by the emotions that his work could stir up. Artist/Writer Don Blanding, reviewing the 1928 Academy show, told readers of the Star-Bulletin: "If I were away from Hawaii and I chanced to see the exhibition of paintings which I have just finished viewing, I know that I should be overwhelmed with homesickness." Anna Balakian, an Armenian American art critic who was also a survivor of the genocide, once described the "mythological concept of Byzantium" as "a place of beauty and impending downfall." To the Honolulu public, the Marine from Turkey had remade himself as an exotic and a true island artist. Hawai'i had become his Byzantium. It has often been said that Modernism was the creation of exiles, and Manookian's life sadly fits this profile. His intantaneous and miraculous bond with Hawa'ii suggests a deep longing to be connected to a place and culture, perhaps as a replacement for what had been lost. Ultimately, Manookian's portrayal of Hawaii, like Gaugain's of Tahiti, is an idealized fantasy of a place that had never existed except in the Colonial imagination. That of course, was a fantasy of Eden that the world and its travel agents needed badly in the in the late 20's, and which it still needs now. The glowing colors of Manookian's work reflected the ecstatic vision of an artist who was also coming to know dreadful lows. Manookian, whose closest friends often found him a "puzzle" often kept to himself. The Armenian writer Zarian, who had also grown up in Constantinople, may help explain Manookian's reserve with his statement, "Our generation has more friends in the next world than in this one." The Stock Market Crash of 1929 took its toll on the Hawaiian economy as tourism began to decline, and building began to slow down. Manookian's last employment was to create mural decorations for the Waipahu theatre, which opened on December 21, 1930. The Waipahu, now the "City of Refuge" Church, was designed by Louis Davis and had a lavish building budget of over $100,000.00. In addition to Manookian's artwork, it featured painted Art Deco ceilings and a screen set in "a series of receding concentric planes covered in silver leaf." There are no photos in existence of the theatre's original interior, and the murals apparently vanished long before the Waipahu became an adult theatre in the 1960's.
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