Sirak Melkonian's exhibition, September 2004

From September 23rd through September 26th Hamzakayin Arshile Gorky Art Gallery in Toronto exhibited some of Sirak Melkonian’s paintings and sketches. Ms. Maral Hasserjian, the organizer of the event, on the opening reception at the Armenian community centre, opened the exhibition with a few remarks on Mr. Melkonian’s works. She categorized Sirak’s works among abstract art. To introduce Sirak is a difficult task. A website that has exhibited some of his works, quotes:
“a prominent contemporary artist, Sirak Melkonian was born in 1930 in Tehran and has been active as an artist since the 1950s in group exhibitions and personal exhibitions in Tehran, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Paris, France and Germany. His art is dispersed in private and public collections around the world, and his rich artistic activity spanning fifty years includes teaching art for 3 years in Zarvan Academy of Tehran, and from 1992 to the present in Toronto, Canada.”
For Sirak Melkonian himself, even this very brief introduction is too lengthy. Yevgeni Yevtushenko, a well-known Russian poet once said an artist’s biography is his work. Nobody would agree with him more than Sirak. He tries hard to be invisible as a person, although he is one of the most visible artists of our ‘country’ and ‘community’, which ever word you choose, as an Iranian, Armenian or Canadian. Sirak would disagree with anybody who categorizes him as any of those. He considers himself as a citizen of the world. Even the word cosmopolitan would unjustly limit him as an artist.
Alain Bousquet, an eminent art critic, had written about him, some three decades ago, during an exhibition of Sirak’s works in Paris:
‘In every generation one can only find three or four artists such as Sirak. He draws our attention and even annoys us. We are not sure how to categorize him, how to measure him and how to understand him. He is beyond liking or disliking, beauty or aggression.’
Bousquet believes that his landscapes are not like anything we have seen before. ‘They are not utopian lands’, he writes, ‘rather they are some inner-real places with no records in the past. Looking from close at the texture of paints and brush strokes one is amazed at the masterly rendering of greens into olives and oranges.’
Jean-Marie Tasset, a famous Figaro columnist, believes his works are windows to a world deep in the soul of the artist.
When Sirak’s works first appeared in the prestigious Galerie Odermatt in Paris, art critics were amazed at the simplicity and yet complexity of the works. M.H. Parrino of Galerie-Jardin des Arts, wrote: ‘…and here we are suddenly entrapped in a world that leaves us no space for breathing or thinking. A world of amazing microscopic and macroscopic dimensions, at the same time…’
Galerie Odermatt, regularly features works of art by 19th and 20th century Masters such as: Léger, Goetz, Chagall, Cézanne, Bonnard, Renoir, Ernst, Atlan and Masson.

A Novelle Literaire columnist asks a rhetorical question: ‘is it necessary to discover the everyday life replica of these amazing dimensions and entwining lines? Melkonian’s works do not fall short of strength and attraction.’

In 1959 Sirak won the first prize of Paris Biennale. Prior to that he had won other significant prizes in other exhibitions. In 1974, he was awarded the first prize of International Art Exhibition in Tehran. Among Iran’s contemporary artists such as Sohrab Sepehri, Marko Grigorian, Aydin Aghdashloo and other well-known artists of the country, Sirak’s works will always open unknown windows onto amazing worlds.

Aghdashloo, who met Sirak a few years ago in Toronto, recalls his visit to Sirak’s studio:
“He is an important artist of our country. He is still ours! His works amaze me and are admirable. Every work, be it a small hand size piece or a wall size, is rendered masterly and genuinely.”

(This article first appeared in Shahrvand, October 5th 2004)