Art and IDENTITY, part 1

Martiros Sarian, one of the key figures in Armenian culture, grew up in Nakhichevan-on-Don, a town of Armenian settlers in Russia. At sixteen, he was already attending the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, slowly immersing himself in Russian cultural movements. He was very impressed and affected by the contemporary art scene such as the one of symbolism, while also getting interested in European painters, gaining direct contact with French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists including Matisse.

After visiting Armenia, his historical homeland, in 1901, which at that moment was a part of the Russian Empire, Sarian developed an artistic interest in the particular zone in-between the Middle East, East, and the Caucasus.

He was almost facing a ghost, which was slowly regaining its flesh. Some details on the history of his nation were found only 40 years before his birth. The unknown Urartian civilization was one of those cases, rediscovered in Van by Friedrich Eduard Schultz, a German philosopher, and orientalist, who was commissioned by the French government.

Sarian`s generation was introduced to the missing gap in their history, which was mainly composed of myths and legends before those excavations.

Though his artistic search was very personal, it synched with the flow of 20th-century culture, aligning him with such artists as Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse. These artists were inspired by the East, searching for new forms and aesthetics that could contribute to the development of their artistic individuality.

Sarian`s wanderings were driven by the desire to fully embrace the identity of his homeland. He was finding similar narratives in other countries, where he could see the ruins of ancient civilizations just like within his own culture, which he was trying to understand and rebuild within himself.

His introduction to the East started with Constantinople, which officially adopted the name Istanbul in 1930. It was a truly unique dimension situated right between the East and the West.

By the time Sarian visited Constantinople for the first time, it had already gone through many transformations. In the 1900s, the port of Istanbul was opened, which affected tourism on many levels and made Constantinople even more lively.

The city was actively being reshaped under the Young Turks, the first Ottoman reformers to promote industrialization. A major development in national journalism took place. At the same time, many new Armenian magazines came up; one of them was “Jamanag” - the longest continuously running Armenian-language daily newspaper in the world to this day.

The improvement of women's rights was also an important change of this historical period.

By the 1910th, the city was filled with new structures, custom houses, post offices, medical services, stores, multi-story warehouses, and banks.

Yuksek Kaldirim, which means "High Pavement," was originally a street of 118 stone steps, connecting what is now Galipdede Caddesi. This area had always been cosmopolitan and lively, filled with numerous cafes and shops.

Sarian was among the last ones to witness such a huge number of dogs before the infamous historical event of the Hayirsiz Ada (Sivriada) island.

The banishment of dogs began in the 19th century but reached its peak in 1910, in an effort to "westernize" the city just after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The caught strays were exiled to the island Sivriada, many of them dying on the boat ride over there.

The multi-layered textures of Constantinople as well as its unique structure built from accidental architectural layerings challenged Sarian to create a compositional system, where all these elements and dimensions can exist without creating visual noise. This will be later expressed in Sarian`s unique compositional approach expressed in his artistic style.

Sarian visited Egypt in the Khedivate period, which started in 1867 and lasted till 1914. Cairo was already playing a major role in Armenian cultural life since the 19th century. Many important cultural hubs for Armenians were established in Cairo, including the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), which was opened in 1906 by Boghos Nubar, the son of the first Prime Minister of modern Egypt, Nubar Nubarian, also known as Nubar Pasha. In this way, Cairo hosted many Armenian intellectuals and artists.

Sarian, with his passion for history and archaeology, always dreamed of seeing Egypt, only to later see Egypt as a slowly eroding culture. With British troops occupying the nation, the people of Egypt were being pushed to adopt the Western culture. In a way, Egyptian culture was also entering a new stage, controlled by Western powers.

The arrival of the Europeans in Egypt changed Cairo. The modern quarters of the city were taken over by European newcomers who built European shops, hotels, and exclusive clubs. The new quarters of the city grew into vast blocks of apartment buildings.

Two new sections were added to Cairo: Maadi, to the south, was built as an exclusive European enclave shortly after the turn of the century, and Heliopolis, to the northeast, was built in the 1910s. These areas were built with the latest modern conveniences: running water, electricity, and a tramway that connected Heliopolis to central Cairo.

Unfortunately, the hotel was closed by 1906. In his letter written in Cairo, Sarian mentions another name, “Bristot du Nil”, which had opened on Khazinder Square in 1894, marketing itself as “Hotel Bristol et du Nil” to absorb the name of a recently defunct old hotel and inherit its clientele. This was a common practice for hotels at that time.

Though he was inspired by the city textures and rhythms, the museums and temples became his obsession, giving him a deeper understanding of the cultural roots of Egypt and the ability to see how those roots transformed into this new cultural identity he was witnessing.

The trips to Cairo, Giza, Memphis, and Luxor enriched Sarian's art with new influences directing his search for the original style.

Sarian's notes show how amazed he was by this uninterrupted connection. These notes also show his interest in understanding how the ancient masters were transforming their environment into cultural codes, remaining relatable while still preserving a sense of the time.

Sarian was very affected by the idea of immortality found in the very basis of Egyptian art.

Sarian's works from the Egyptian series earned very positive reviews from his contemporaries and were exhibited in Rome in the autumn of 1911.

The exhibited material aroused a big interest in artistic circles.

The works exhibited at this exhibition, “Egyptian masks”, “Walking Woman” and “Night Landscape. Egypt”, are currently kept at the Sarian House-Museum, which still holds his original exposition created by the artist himself.

Moscow Painters Association
Sarian also took part in the Exhibition of the “Moscow Painters Association”. During this exhibition, several works from his Constantinople series were commissioned by Ilya Semyonovich Ostroukhov, a Russian painter and art collector, and the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Sarian visited Persia in 1913, cities Barfrush, Tehran, and Rasht. It was not the best time for Persia, which had just undergone the Constitutional Revolution between 1905 and 1911. The revolution resulted in the establishment of a parliament in Persia (Iran) during the Qajar dynasty.


In his notes, Sarian often mentions the name of Salar-al-Daulah, brother of the former shah, who revolted against the government of the Sublime State of Persia in the 1910s and was defeated in 1913.

From Sarian`s notes, one can understand that during his visit to Barfrush, Salar and his gang were keeping the locals in fear, locked at home. For this reason, Sarian wasn't able to take his usual walks to observe the city, but instead, he was observing everything he could from the windows.

This specific occasion brought an interesting twist to his usual outlook, dividing his depicted scenes into “witnessed” and “voyeured”. While the first group seems to reflect a sense of belonging to the depicted scenes and the environment, the other gives a distant sense of disconnection from it.

As Sarian notes, the market was the most interesting place in this city, offering a diversity of human expressions and emotions.

Sufis, a mystical sect of Islam devoted to communion with God through deep introspection, was the first Muslim group to embrace the usage of hashish. Simultaneously it was a group whose specific form of meditation, the whirling, has been popularized and used as a “tourist attraction”. Unlike alcohol, which was forbidden by the Koran as khmar (intoxicant), cannabis was originally considered medicinal and therefore not prohibited, until the government took steps towards Westernizing.

Sarian`s notes reveal a judgemental outlook on hashish smokers, reflecting the discourse of that time. The usage of cannabis, opium, and other narcotic elements, also popularized by the same wave of orientalism in European countries, started turning into a point of discussions and prohibitions.


At the same time, the fact that those elements sneaked into Western societies from the East was downgrading the image of the East. So the East, often trying to show itself off as “modern”, was taking steps towards prohibition and illegalization of those elements.
Sarian`s visit to Persia was split into different cities; in between his journeys from one city to another, he was spending time making sketches of nature.

Tehran surprised Sarian with its dustiness and lack of museums, which he noted was shocking to see in a capital of a country with such a rich and influential cultural history. The people were all dressed in black as if the “other colors were expelled from the city,” as he poetically notes. He saw the crowd as less diverse than the people of Constantinopolis or Cairo and found the Tehran of 1913 “an uncalm city which increases the sense of loneliness”.


Though being shocked by the lack of museums in Tehran at that time, his visit to Persia was still generally satisfying since he had time to observe the beautiful architectural sites, the gardens, the urban architecture, and the people.

Women especially caught his attention, as he saw them “prisoned” in their dresses and harems, bearing the heaviness of the norms of society.

Though being against the rules of these societies, Sarian represented these women as an organic part of the cultural environment they inhabit, and not as its victims.