"In Memoriam"
"Art springs from the wild and anarchic side of human nature; between
the artist and the bureaucrat there must always be a profound mutual
antagonism, and age-long battle in which the artist, always outwardly
worsted, wins in the end through the gratitude of mankind for the joy
he puts into their lives."
This quotation taken from the selected papers of Bertrand Russell,
marked in a book once the property of Arman T. Manookian, and given to
the writer when he was his closest friend, sums up the life philosophy
of the youth who, finding the struggle with a futile bureaucratic
world too great, left to seek in the "vast womb of uncreated night:
the fulfillment of an unfinished dream of beauty.
Arman Manookian, by those who met him casually, has been called a
decadent. He was not a decadent.
His was the soul of youthful revolt. His was the spirit of Benvenuto
Cellini, that great anarchic spirit that battled the futilities of
dying feudalism, until he had seen the dawn of the Renaissance burst
into the full noon brilliance of a new era of artistic creation.
Manookian was chiefly a colorist. His was the dream of creating in
color a great symphony of beauty. He would do in color what Beethoven
had done in music.
This was the dream of this anarchic youth. He brought to this dream
the color heritage of the Byzantine Oriental groping for help amongst
the chaos of Occidental science which has forgotten art in its forced
bondage to the practical harlot materialism.
This dreamer youth was an Armenian. He had within his soul that
strange unrest of this strong pariah people. At times he showed the
wild moods of his berserk ancestors. Then again he would reveal the
wild moods of Semetic ancestor who had seen a metaphysical mirage born
of his lonely vigil with the desert stars.
Often he told me of his sea watches at night while he was a member of
the United States Marines, aboard the pulsing warship, plowing through
lonely seas. How he loved to look up at the stars dancing above the
masts and then visioned the sea as some restless soul tossing in dream
that would bring but an unsatisfied ache at the dawn.
On those nights would his soul wander to play with his dreams of some
day putting on canvas a great symphony of color that would make the
world see the great soul loneliness of the night and the beauty of
what even might be called futility.
And often since he has left us I love to recall our wanderings in the
Manoa hills. We would walk amongst the exquisite beauty of the spring
verdure of this section, while he told me of his discovery of some new
book he had been reading. He one day with gleaming eyes described his
discovery of the profundities of Santayana. Then again he would
discourse on his reading of Flaubert's "Salambo," which seemed to
touch some hidden chord in his beauty loving soul.
As I watched him it seemed a contradictory thing that nature had given
such an exquisite soul to a youth who, in visage, resembled the
historic figure, Cyrano de Bergerac. Not unlike him he was doomed to
be judged for the physical mask that covered a beauteous soul.
Often we would stop to gaze at some thing of beauty which captured his
attention for a moment. While he thus stood one forgot the body of the
youth and could think of him as some gay loving companion of Marius
the Epicurean of that jeweled piece of prose of Walter Pater.
And then again I love to think of the nights, while at parties of
would be lovers of things of the soul, he would do battles for his
ideas of beauty amongst the Philistines of art.
They were gorgeous battles and how he loved them and how he sometimes
strutted in his lusty sentimental youth egoism when he had slain the
idiots of sentimental art.
How I loved to watch him pounce on the middle aged compromiser of his
dreams, who would caution him to so called sanity in art: as if there
had ever been a sane art that was but a piteous thing of maudlin
sentimentality for complacent bourgeois.
After he would leave the group I often would hear these middle aged
compromisers whisper: "He is mad and will die in some mad way."
Yes, he was mad, but so are all creative dreamers. As quoted above
"art springs from a wild and anarchic side of human nature."
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From
"Paradise of the Pacific": "A fancy of ancient
Hawaii, decorative of the tale of some noble warrior's shell
being borne afloat to sanctified repository" by A.
T. Manookian
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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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