Monday, November 16, 2020

 PIROSMANI, PARAJANOV, AND KOMITAS


Before watching Giorgi Shengelaia’s  slow and poetic film I knew very little about the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani, but by the time it ended I felt that he was an artist whom I might come to admire and perhaps understand. Later, as I read more about him and familiarised myself with Pirosmani’s work, I realised just how sensitive and restrained Shengelaia had been in his approach to his subject, and I began to develop a deeper appreciation of the film’s beauty and discretion, because it could easily have become sentimental. At its heart is a story about how Pirosmani, devoted to his calling, was determined to live a free life, unencumbered by commitments and the expectations of others. He paid a high price for his independence.  

Although unfamiliar abroad, Pirosmani is beloved in his own land, perhaps because of his obvious sense of belonging, both to his country and to its melancholy people. His main trade was that of an itinerant painter, producing shop signs and pictures that he exchanged for food, lodging, and alcohol. He never settled down. Born about 1866, his life appears to have been unfulfilled and sad; he was an outsider, a loner, and he died, forgotten, at the end of World War I. He worked on the railways for a while and briefly opened a shop, but his heart was set on painting and this is what he chose to do despite little success. Although he received some modest support from artists and the art world it seems to have made little difference to him, probably because of his dreamy nature and incessant drinking.

Pirosmani’s ‘primitivist’ style is disconcerting; at first glance it looks as though he barely knew how to paint at all. His images are simply and boldly outlined, their colouring coarse, and more often than not their background is dark, as he liked to paint on black industrial oilcloth. As sometimes happens, however, it is those very limitations that make his work so perplexingly effective. His figures are stiff and still, as if self-consciously posing, but they are nonetheless iconic; his many animals, which he once described as ‘friends of my heart’, are particularly touching. Infused with feeling, they seem to live in a timeless world, parallel to ours, but radically apart. They often have a certain urgency and a sense of foreboding, as if the artist felt that the world was under threat. A religious man, Pirosmani imbued his paintings with humility and awe.

As I thought about Pirosmani, the work of another Georgian eccentric, Sergei Parajanov, came to mind, and while reading up about him I was intrigued to discover that he had once made a short film called Arabesques on the Pirosmani theme. I was introduced to Parajanov’s films many years ago in the context of a discussion of his friend Tarkovsky, and I learnt to enjoy them very much, perhaps especially the extraordinary The Colour of Pomegranates, a visionary biography of Sayat Nova, the 18th century Armenian poet, singer, and musician. Parajanov, born in Georgia to Armenian parents, became devoted to Georgian and Armenian folklore and history, with the unfortunate consequence that he raised the suspicions of the Soviet authorities and came to be considered a dangerous subversive. He was later jailed on several charges, which many commentators have suggested were false and untrue.

Parajanov developed a luxuriant cinematic style that can seem excessively mannered; his dreamlike films, inspired by icons, traditional dress, folk artefacts, and Persian enamels, appear over-refined and decadent to contemporary taste. His art was akin, in many respects, to the Symbolist paintings of Gustave Moreau and to late 19th century Aestheticism, such as that of the novel À Rebours by J.K.Huysmans. Nevertheless, there is a sense of innocence in his films, which perhaps explains Parajanov’s admiration for Pirosmani; his cinematic portrait of the painter, whose pictures are so plain and earnest in comparison to Parajanov’s fanciful tableaux, is deeply respectful, even to the point of reverence.

With the Caucasus still on my mind, I also searched for the film on Komitas, the Armenian musician and composer, that I’d been hoping to watch for some time, but I failed to find it online. Born in 1869 as Soghomon Soghomonian, Komitas Vardabet is similarly revered in his home country, and it is sometimes said that whenever Armenians gather to honour their past, they sing his songs. Komitas spent his last twenty years in mental institutions, traumatised by the 1915 genocide of two million of his compatriots in Turkey. He wrote comparatively little; important works include some majestic choral pieces, arrangements of the Armenian mass, and a few dances for the piano, but it is as a collector and arranger of folksongs that he is perhaps most loved. Komitas did for Armenia what Bartók did for Hungary, turning simple tunes into more sophisticated compositions, always retaining the soul and spirit of their sources. His music can be exceptionally beautiful; after a concert in Paris, Claude Debussy once said that Komitas deserved to be recognised as a great composer, even on the basis of a single song. Sadly, outside Armnenia, few people even know his name.

For further exploration: 

Pirosmani:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favP7b57y8E

Parajanov:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfu9KA78jI0 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZwhS_b4Df4 

Komitas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW-zuBMOZNk