tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post7388545018699391812..comments2024-03-26T10:07:14.049-04:00Comments on Painting: The Gorky Connection:My great uncle Marvin and Arshile Gorky in BostonMartin Mugarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-6965486009023882432023-01-01T20:27:29.771-05:002023-01-01T20:27:29.771-05:00I am trying to get the MFA interested in his work....I am trying to get the MFA interested in his work. His ashcan school style is powerful but the documentation of his role in the life of Gorky makes a Boston/New York connection that needs to be documented.Martin Mugarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-85079563626401842402014-11-08T06:54:04.793-05:002014-11-08T06:54:04.793-05:00Thank you Larry for putting him in the context of...Thank you Larry for putting him in the context of the genocide and Resnick. I think what strikes me about Marvin and Gorky was their gratitude to those who had made their existence possible. Gorky did his portrait of his mother who brought him into the world ,conveying so much sorrow,tenderness and fragility in the relation of mother and son.Marvin did the rugged portrait of his working class father with his big hands,who slaved away at the Hood Rubber Plant to send his son to France. Martin Mugarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-2784437597832035542014-11-07T23:17:31.876-05:002014-11-07T23:17:31.876-05:00Martin,
The described simplicity and austerity of ...Martin,<br />The described simplicity and austerity of Marvin Julian's studio on Newbury Street reminds me of the descriptions of Arshile Gorky's studio and how he scrubbed the floors once a week to a high polish. Now with this essay I know both men lived simple lives dedicated to painting, though Gorky’s got more complicated with his move to New York from Watertown and the submersion of identity it required re-emerge as a relative of the Russian Maxim Gorky. Yes, I can imagine Gorky’s shock at seeing his Armenian past show up in the person of your great uncle Marvin at his New York show. (Similar I imagine to the subterfuge Kahlil Gibran used to navigate the Brahim Back Bay and present himself as the artistic son of wealthy landowners in Lebanon when in reality he was living in the tenement next to my grandparents in the poor South End. Maybe the dedication both Julian and Gorky gave to painting was a penance for surviving the genocide in their homeland to pursue careers as artists in the safety of Boston and New York. The photograph of Marvin with his family in Turkey is a pendant to the photo I have e-mailed you of my own grandmother and great grandparents in Damascus taken roughly the same time with all the men wearing the fezzes of the Ottoman Empire. No one in either photo ever smiled it seems. Considering the horror of Syria today (the US Holocaust Museum in Washington is exhibiting some of the 55,000 photos smuggled out of Syria of the starvation and torture of Syrians by Assad Regime) the fact that the Armenian Holocaust started in 1914-15 one hundred years ago is especially tragic if not sickening for the region and its people. So many of them ended up in Boston like the travel agent in Harvard Square who asked me what kind of name Deyab was when he asked for my passport and when I told him Syrian he said he was Armenian born in Syria and had served in the Syrian Army. Or the Syrians like my late mother who used to get rides to the “Armenian store” (the Arax Market) in Watertown to buy the ingredients they needed to cook with. And in my head the image of Gorky painting on the same back porch of those wood frame houses in Watertown and Cambridge still exist and you and I have sat smoking cigars on mine.<br />I think in a book on Stuart Davis it was commented on that with so much poverty around in the Depression Gorky always had plenty of expensive paint in his studio and no hesitation in using as much as he needed. Aside from biographies of Gorky, most of what I know of him is from my conversations with Milton Resnick heard over many years drinking coffee in Milton’s old synagogue/studio home. Milton knew Bill de Kooning and Gorky from the Depression days and like de Kooning had great respect for Gorky but he said he was a difficult and at time a fearsome man to know. Two anecdotes come to mind: Gorky told Milton that when you want to make a mark with your brush, at the very last moment put it in the opposite place you meant to. Perhaps this was a result of his friendship with Andre Breton and other Surrealists. I don’t know and Milton didn’t explain. The other anecdote is humorous: apparently if Gorky ever borrowed something from you it was very difficult to get it back. De Kooning once asked Milton to go to Gorky’s studio to get back an overhead projector he used to project drawings that he lent him and wanted back after many months. Milton got into Gorky's building on Union Square and pounded on the door of his studio. Gorky asked who was there and when he heard Milton’s voice opened it. At that point Milton stuck his foot in the door so Gorky couldn’t slam the door shut on him and finally talked him into giving back the projector. Perhaps Gorky was projecting Picasso’s graceful line onto his own..<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16823541401839315960noreply@blogger.com