Arman Manookian: Hawaii’s Van Gogh

by John Seed

Published: Saturday October 25, 2008

Hawaiian Boy and Girl.

In the lobby of the exclusive Hotel Hana-Maui hangs a striking painting of two Hawaiian outrigger canoes. The vessels, manned by silhouetted figures, rise on the crest of stylized green waves while the giant orange disc of the sun shines above an island in the distance. This vivid icon, which idealizes and celebrates the image of the Hawaiian Islands before the arrival of Europeans, is the work of an Armenian-American artist, Arman Tateos Manookian.

Outside of the Hawaiian Islands, few people have ever heard of him. He died young - he took his own life at the age of 27 - and less than 30 of his oil paintings can be accounted for. Still, to those who knew him, Manookian was a legendary and fascinating figure. "For years after his demise," said writer and historian Julius Rodman, "his legend was very much alive in Honolulu."

Born Tateos Manookian in 1904, the artist grew up in Constantinople. He was the eldest son of a family that owned a newspaper. As a boy, he saw the "Great White Fleet" appear in the harbor, and among his first recorded artworks are images of American military vessels. Tateos received an excellent education at the School of St. Gregory the Illuminator, where the headmaster was Daniel Varoujan, one of the greatest poets of the era and leader of the Mehyan literary movement.

During the years of terror and genocide that unfolded as Tateos grew to adulthood, his father, Arshag, managed to escape capture by the Turks, but died of influenza in France. Forever scarred by the terrors and losses of his childhood, Tateos Manookian arrived in Ellis Island in 1920 at the age of 16, hoping, like so many Armenian immigrants, to begin life anew in America.

After attending the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied illustration on a state scholarship, he spent time in New York and took additional classes at the Art Students League. At this time he changed his name to Arman Manookian and enlisted in the Marines, in 1923. Within a year he was working as a clerk for Edwin North McClellan, a writer and historian. McClellan noticed Manookian's skill as an illustrator, and soon had the young man at work providing illustrations for Leatherneck magazine, and also for a history of the Marine Corps.

When McClellan was assigned to Pearl Harbor in June 1925, Manookian went with him. Manookian arrived in Hawaii eight years before the first Pam Am seaplane would arrive, and fourteen years until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The beauty and culture of the place fired the young artist's imagination. In 1928, he was quoted in Paradise of the Pacific magazine as saying that "... in all his travels he has come upon no more intriguing paradise than these mid-Pacific gardens of the gods."

Even in paradise, Manookian was a restless, temperamental man who tested his friends. In April 1926, he walked off his post before being relieved, and only a strong legal defense crafted by his friend McClellan helped him avoid court martial. After his death, the Honolulu newspaperman Arthur Greene recalled that behind Manookian's back people would whisper "He is mad and will die in some mad way."

In September 1927, Manookian left the Marine Corps to pursue an artistic career, taking a job with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. His reputation grew after his elegant ink drawings and vivid paintings began to appear in Paradise of the Pacific, which published a profile of him in 1928.

In his six years in Hawaii, Manookian bloomed as an artist, just as Vincent Van Gogh had at Arles during his sojourn in Arles. Manookian wandered in the pristine Manoa Hills, marveling at the exotic flora. He also loved to sketch the ramshackle homes that could still be found on the local beaches, and was charmed by the Hawaiian people, whom he often painted with classical dignity. Manookian painted mythological and historical scenes with equal fervor, infusing them with drama and energy.

The artworks Manookian created in Hawaii demonstrated both his training as an illustrator and his willingness to experiment with vivid, expressive color harmonies. In fact, color became his trademark. Manookian's use of bold hues, which reflected his absorption of Byzantine color as a young man, was challenging to those who first saw them, including visitors to his one-man show at the Honolulu Academy in May 1928.

Responding in a news article to comments made by visitors to the show, the artist explained: "Now the colors: they are not supposed to stagger one; that was not the aim. In fact, my mind was quite free from such a diabolical idea. I did not try to achieve the illustration of a tropical heat nor the allurements of a moonlit night."

Manookian, who saw himself not as a modern artist but one grounded in the Renaissance tradition, believed that his works represented "... the achievement of aesthetic satisfaction in color and form." Arthur Greene would write in his eulogy of Manookian: "His was the dream of creating in color a great symphony of beauty."

In a review of the Honolulu Academy show, critic Clifford Gessler stated: "There is a great deal of strength in his work, largely done, as it is, in simple masses of color. There is sincerity and conviction in it, and one feels that it bears a potential richness for the future."

A cultivated esthete, Manookian was fascinated by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo, a historical novel set in ancient Carthage. He admired the works of the philosopher-poet George Santayana, and had a fascination with the film star Greta Garbo.

Manookian had a grandiose sense of self and didn't hesitate to challenge people whose ideas he considered complacent or ignorant. His temper often led him into heated discussions about art and culture, and he was often dissatisfied with his own work. One family in Honolulu still treasures a painting on paper that he tore in half following a public tantrum. After an extended visit at the home of one Honolulu couple, Manookian threw the four paintings he had completed while there into the trash. After his departure, the couple fished them out and kept the works.