International“Madison Avenue” on an escalator
by Gregory Lima
Published: Saturday November 14, 2009 in Cafesjian Center for the Arts
Michael Kimmelman, author of The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, 
A 28-foot model of a ship on which Gerard L. Cafesjian served in the Pacific during World War II, on display at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Nov. 8, 2009, Yerevan. Mkhitar Khachatryan
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Cafesjian Center for the Arts opens in Yerevan
A center of excellence – with a smile
Yerevan - When Yerevan's new Cafesjian Center for the Arts was still more a diagram than a reality, and taking one escalator after another, moving level by level to the high point over the city while wondering what Gerard Cafesjian was attempting to achieve here, it seemed what he sought was a Madison Avenue on an escalator, a traffic-busy, elegant avenue of top-notch art galleries.
The galleries are now open, and with them much more. A popular, open space has been re-created to become attractive as a center to an unusually wide public. It now invites active participation in an expanding variety of the arts at no, or little cost, and at various levels of interest, including just strolling by in the fragrance of the flowers and the sound of the splashing water.
The gallery spaces may also serve as lecture halls, becoming, as in the opening days, available for discourse on fresh approaches to the arts, or introductions to cross-cultural celebrities. They also may serve as concert salons and film discussion theaters, while each of the many levels of the Cascade structure offers continued opportunities to grow the size of the sculpture park.
When one thinks of creative further use for the many related outdoor spaces, they lend themselves to competition to create winning designs among artists and artisans for bold, experimental, organic compositions with local materials in each level's own garden, and if there is a need to create further excitement, they can serve as multiple stages for new concepts in performance art.
With the opening days came the first of promised formal discourses on art in our times. Michael Kimmelman, the chief art critic of the New York Times, holder of one of the most influential and prestigious jobs in the art world, was to give a talk in English. Tickets were quickly sold out and he would talk before a full house.
A graceful writer deeply grounded in his chosen subject and with persuasive eloquence at the podium, he talked of meaningful art and its relationship to culture. At the packed Khanjyan Hall, the acoustics needed more tweaking, and comprehension was very difficult for an eager audience mainly of young people with English as a second or third language.
Kimmelman bemoaned the fact that he went to Yerevan's National Art Gallery for two days running and was the only visitor, even though it was the weekend. Yerevantsis, the New York Times chief art critic concluded, are not gallery goers. They were at the new center in the tens of thousands, however. And yet, because of the language and the acoustics, even with so many people present, he was alone again, or almost.
It would be a shame to have missed the originality of his
perspective. It can be found in his bestselling book, The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa.
Kimmelman in the Khanjyan Gallery started his discourse on his approach to the art of our times with a photographer's approach to an unremarkable event as he walks a city. The photographer notices something that makes him stop to look more closely. From what he sees, he creates what may be called "an accidental masterpiece," although this photographer was predisposed to creating masterpieces.
With the photograph projected for us to see, he explains that the photographer has noticed a bare wall from which posters have been stripped. The residue of the glue has left smudges and traces on the otherwise blank wall. Before the wall a young child plays with a ball. When the child tosses the ball in the air, the child waits with a happy face, alive with expectation of catching the ball as it descends.
He takes the picture when the ball is out of the frame. We see only the wall and the child. The result is an undisputed masterpiece.
A beautiful child is looking skyward with great, engaging expectation against a confusing background of abstract shapes that suggests whatever we wish to read into it. It is virtually impossible to see this without a personal reaction, creating your own interpretation of where the child is and what the child is seeing that is making it so happy. The photograph is by Henri Cartier-Bresson and is a treasured classic.
Kimmelmann is suggesting that art is where you find it, and you as spectator become participant, helping to define and create it. He suggests art calls for your participation inside the frame of the visible, to which you must engage with your own experience, sensitivity, and imagination. Of necessity it involves "the art of seeing well" both to make art and to enjoy art, and if the skill does not come naturally to you, "fortunately it can be learned."
With a photograph of an earthquake in a small town in Italy, he went on to describe how art belongs to a whole people and it may be surprising what they value most. This is a town that boasted a genuine Giotto. But with the earthquake, the town flocked with far deeper immediate concern for the work of a local artist with whom their identity was far more intimately expressed and defined.
He showed a painting in strong colors with Chagall-like floating figures of a wedded pair above a tree of life. It was done by gypsies, Roma, in Hungary. He found this painting and a similar group of work not only original in its expression of social values but also culturally significant. The Roma have a difficult time all over Europe. They are regarded as outsiders who may not be trusted. They have learned that the way to warmer acceptance, even inclusion, is to show that they have a vivid, well-developed culture that is on a highly civilized level. A people define themselves in the way they live their art and how they bring the values they cherish into their lives.
