The Art of Edmund Yaghjian
04/18/2007 - 04/24/2007
Freetimes
BY MARY BENTZ GILKERSON
Artist Had Key Role in Development of S.C. Art
When Edmund Yaghjian left New York in 1945 to come to Columbia to head the USC Art Department he gave up more than an urban lifestyle. A national reputation was difficult for an artist to sustain outside of the center of the art scene.
While his national reputation may have diminished, Yaghjian had an enormous impact on the developing art scene in South Carolina. His students include artists like J. Bardin, Jasper Johns, Blue Sky and Sigmund Abeles, among others.
Viewers can see a major retrospective of Yaghjian’s work at the S.C. State Museum through Sept. 16. Edmund Yaghjian: A Retrospective features approximately 100 of Yaghjian’s paintings and sketches.
Born in Armenia, Yaghjian came with his family to America in 1907. After finishing at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1930, he moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League. He quickly established a reputation, with his work being included in such exhibitions as the Portrait of American show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Painting in the United States at the Carnegie Institute.
Yaghjian’s time at the Art Students League was instrumental to his development. The influence of John Sloan and the Ashcan School permeates both his early work in New York and his later work in South Carolina. It is reflected in his focus on the vernacular, on the commonplace objects and scenes of everyday life.
Pieces like Subway at 57th St. are typical of the early New York period and show a continuation of the Ashcan School’s interest in daily life and the new modern urban reality.
Many of his earliest paintings in New York have the muted somber color associated with work by artists like Raphael Soyer and Reginald Marsh. Like Marsh, he applied oil paint in thin washes like watercolor, with more emphasis on drawing.
57th Street from My Window from 1933 is a full frontal view of the street’s dull red brick façade stretching from one end of the canvas to the other. The long horizontal row is punctuated by the bottom-floor storefronts along the street and the draping arcs of the utility lines.
Yaghjian’s later New York work is less muted and deeper in color. In Times Square, he depicts all the hustle and bustle of urban nightlife. Under a dark night sky, pools of light falling from the competing neon lights illuminate the cars and pedestrians below. The juxtaposition of the sepias and umbers of the street and buildings with the intense colors of the signs gives a sense of the vitality of the city.
Yaghjian’s concern with the everyday continued after coming to Columbia; the influence of the Ashcan School can still be seen in his focus on the working class and the commonplace. But his style also began to shift.
Pieces like Corner House for Sale, 1950, show a more abstracted, flattened space. The color has intensified and begun to veer away from the local. The movement and energy in the painting comes from a thick calligraphic black line that encloses and defines the various shapes.
Orange Sky on Park Street, circa 1970, has many of the same characteristics — flat areas of intense color and the strong graphic black contour line. It captures the feel of the old Park Street neighborhood, a sense of the specific place, but also maintains its modern feel.
In many of his later paintings, Yaghjian seems to come full circle stylistically. The color, motion, light and crowds of the South Carolina State Fair provided a recurring source of subject matter, but in Night at the Fair, 1970, you can see a stylistic break, actually a return.
The flat areas of color in Orange Sky are replaced by the thinned wash technique of his early New York work. The black contours are gone. A carefully defined space is created through his use of value, color and tone.
Retrospectives should cover a large span of an artist’s career, just as this one does. It proves that most artists don’t develop in a linear progression, but in a spiral that returns to the point of origin and then expands.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Freetimes
BY MARY BENTZ GILKERSON
Artist Had Key Role in Development of S.C. Art
When Edmund Yaghjian left New York in 1945 to come to Columbia to head the USC Art Department he gave up more than an urban lifestyle. A national reputation was difficult for an artist to sustain outside of the center of the art scene.
While his national reputation may have diminished, Yaghjian had an enormous impact on the developing art scene in South Carolina. His students include artists like J. Bardin, Jasper Johns, Blue Sky and Sigmund Abeles, among others.
Viewers can see a major retrospective of Yaghjian’s work at the S.C. State Museum through Sept. 16. Edmund Yaghjian: A Retrospective features approximately 100 of Yaghjian’s paintings and sketches.
Born in Armenia, Yaghjian came with his family to America in 1907. After finishing at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1930, he moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League. He quickly established a reputation, with his work being included in such exhibitions as the Portrait of American show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Painting in the United States at the Carnegie Institute.
Yaghjian’s time at the Art Students League was instrumental to his development. The influence of John Sloan and the Ashcan School permeates both his early work in New York and his later work in South Carolina. It is reflected in his focus on the vernacular, on the commonplace objects and scenes of everyday life.
Pieces like Subway at 57th St. are typical of the early New York period and show a continuation of the Ashcan School’s interest in daily life and the new modern urban reality.
Many of his earliest paintings in New York have the muted somber color associated with work by artists like Raphael Soyer and Reginald Marsh. Like Marsh, he applied oil paint in thin washes like watercolor, with more emphasis on drawing.
57th Street from My Window from 1933 is a full frontal view of the street’s dull red brick façade stretching from one end of the canvas to the other. The long horizontal row is punctuated by the bottom-floor storefronts along the street and the draping arcs of the utility lines.
Yaghjian’s later New York work is less muted and deeper in color. In Times Square, he depicts all the hustle and bustle of urban nightlife. Under a dark night sky, pools of light falling from the competing neon lights illuminate the cars and pedestrians below. The juxtaposition of the sepias and umbers of the street and buildings with the intense colors of the signs gives a sense of the vitality of the city.
Yaghjian’s concern with the everyday continued after coming to Columbia; the influence of the Ashcan School can still be seen in his focus on the working class and the commonplace. But his style also began to shift.
Pieces like Corner House for Sale, 1950, show a more abstracted, flattened space. The color has intensified and begun to veer away from the local. The movement and energy in the painting comes from a thick calligraphic black line that encloses and defines the various shapes.
Orange Sky on Park Street, circa 1970, has many of the same characteristics — flat areas of intense color and the strong graphic black contour line. It captures the feel of the old Park Street neighborhood, a sense of the specific place, but also maintains its modern feel.
In many of his later paintings, Yaghjian seems to come full circle stylistically. The color, motion, light and crowds of the South Carolina State Fair provided a recurring source of subject matter, but in Night at the Fair, 1970, you can see a stylistic break, actually a return.
The flat areas of color in Orange Sky are replaced by the thinned wash technique of his early New York work. The black contours are gone. A carefully defined space is created through his use of value, color and tone.
Retrospectives should cover a large span of an artist’s career, just as this one does. It proves that most artists don’t develop in a linear progression, but in a spiral that returns to the point of origin and then expands.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Labels: Armenian Diaspora - Art
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