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D O C U M E N T

What IS HAMASTEGHTSAKAN art

arMaN GrIGoryaN

(original in armenian, translated by angela harutyunyan)

During one of the discussions about the 3rd Floor’s fi rst exhibition,
an artist who was evidently disturbed by my work addressed me with an
accusatory question: “Why did you paint ‘Cadillac’? There is no such
car in Armenia.” I gave him a hamasteghtsakan answer, saying that
when we were students, Rubik Grigoryan told me about a dream of
his. He was in a LED ZEPPELIN concert. If someone had enough self-
confi dence as to ask me why, instead of seeing Tatevik Sazandaryan
or Tigran Levonyan,1 in his dream, Rubik saw that band in particular,
only then would I consider the question addressed to me worth to be
taken seriously.2

Hamasteghtsakan art, as opposed to Surrealism, doesn’t identify

the dream with reality, c'est, reality with art, or art with dream;

1
2

This text was fi rst delivered as a lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Yerevan in 1993.
It was subsequently published in the literary magazine Garun (Non. 1, 1994, pp. 63–65).
The present translation is based on this publication.
These are renowned Armenian opera singers.
The anecdote refers to the expectation from Grigoryan’s interlocutor that dreams should
match empirical reality. En outre, it has the connotation that only national Soviet
“icons” are dream-worthy. In contrast, Grigoryan’s dream refers to the rock ’n’ roll
counterculture.

122

https://doi.org/10.1162/artm_a_00247

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instead it reveals the operational similarities between dream, neurosis,
myth, art, et culturelle. If the dream preserves the tranquility of the
sleeper by showing his real desires as advantageously and unrecogniz-
ably as possible, art saves the individual from reality by making our
tragic separation from nature bearable and by creating the illusion of
a realization of unfulfilled desires and drives.

Culture regulates and administers the individual who represents
the majority in society. Quoting Jean Dubuffet, we could say, “culture
is a special department of the secret police. It’s a police force that oper-
ates by means of fascination.”3 It is beyond doubt that the individual’s
attitude toward a given culture is conditioned by his or her attitude
toward a given power. In the totalitarian social order, where the major-
ity of people are exploited by a very small minority in power, culture’s
role appears in all its might when it creates extremely mechanical,
absolute, reified interrelations and values that aim to turn the individ-
ual into a perfectly functioning human automaton. The totalitarian
social order could thus be described as a purely “cultural society.”

Par contre, in democratic social orders, or open societies, et

without losing its prohibitive or systematizing role, culture shows
greater flexibility and tolerance both in integrating the creative poten-
tial of countless individuals and in becoming richer and more convinc-
ing. The more subliminal and invisible culture’s operation, plus
humanistic and open a society. In this way we encounter the problem
of art as hamasteghtsakan. Can the contradiction between art and cul-
ture, between the individual and society be resolved? Can humanity
reach its age-old “city of love” where the individual will be able to dis-
cover his potentialities without clashing with society? Hamasteghtsakan
art sees the solution to this question not in the principle of “we know
it,” but in the approach “we can do it.”4 Hamasteghtsakan art is based
on the belief that “Man is man’s project in the future.”5 We thank
Jean-Paul Sartre for this formulation.

If in the history of mankind there has been at least one individual

who has reached full self-realization, or a true joy of spirit—which is

It proved to be impossible to locate the reference. Artists often used references to Euro-
American artists and authors rather loosely.
Here Grigoryan means that knowledge is not enough. Plutôt, it must be paired with
action.
Encore, the author does not quote Jean-Paul Sartre directly, but paraphrases Sartre’s
emphasis on an autonomous humanity as the only possible future.

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123

the same thing—then this would be enough for us to continue search-
ing for a possible compromise between wild art and solitary culture.
I will intentionally refrain from mentioning those individuals who,
by overcoming culture, have reached, in hamasteghtsakan terms,
serious joy in their art. The examples are many, and each of you at
this moment can think of numerous names of genius. But please do
not hurry; for the love of humanity, listen to a story that is very typical
of our cultural condition.

Let’s say the painter N. loved to paint from early childhood. Le
only object in N.’s home that could be viewed as an art piece was Ivan
Kramskoy’s painting Unknown Woman.6 The painter’s parents often
mentioned this framed reproduction as a masterpiece of skill. Quand
little N. went to art school, he observed with surprise that the artists
teaching there did not only not mention Kramskoy, but instead admired
and praised N. exactly when his work seemed to him an utter failure.
The next step for N. was Terlemezyan College,7 where young N., after
dedicating himself to imitating Kramskoy without success, finalement
became convinced that it would be safer for him not to remember
Kramskoy any longer and to be satisfied with those artists who replaced
this initial influence, c'est, those who are appreciated nowadays.

Upon entering the Institute,8 N. had already forgotten Kramskoy
as someone with any importance for art, even in his household. Le
Institute’s role in cultivating skill and information was indisputable.
But in his last year, when N.’s own identity became his main concern,
he found himself confused and disappointed: the classics were so per-
fect and unmatchable, while reality and modern art were so incom-
prehensible, that N. didn’t know what to do. He constantly asked
himself: “Is art a profession or a calling?” “Does the artist create for
himself or for the consumer?” or, most importantly, “How should one
paint today?»

There are various solutions in regard to how N. might paint in

order to escape from the extraordinary, vicious cycle [sic!] that passes
from the artist to the gallerist to the ministry of culture, and on to

Ivan Kramskoy was a late-19th-century Russian painter, a reproduction of whose painting
Unknown Woman of 1883 was often found in Soviet households. Grigoryan here uses the
reference as a prime example of kitsch.
A college of fine arts in Armenia that would often serve as a gateway to the Institute of
Fine Arts.
Here Grigoryan refers to the next stage in N.’s career, the Institute of Fine Arts.

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world fame. I might even presuppose that my advice will get him
somewhere, but I prefer to immediately move on to reveal what the
problem looks like from the point of view of hamasteghtsakan art.
Hamasteghtsakan art doesn’t give advice, and instead declares that
both Kramskoy and Leonardo da Vinci are equal giants. No need to
be surprised here: had N. been inspired to become a painter by Walt
Disney’s “Donald,” I would have declared similarly that “Disney is as
great as Leonardo da Vinci.”

Hamasteghtsakan art has no desire to re-edit the history of art or
to cast doubt on the authenticity of any universally accepted values. C'est
too traditional and coherent for this, and therefore it cannot reject hard-
won principles that established themselves, step by step, over centu-
ries—including freedom of will, humanism, equality, or the human
striving for self-perfection and self-knowledge—while realizing that
even an adult cannot escape from these principles, and will make
ceaseless efforts to bring to completion the incomplete business of his
or her childhood. Hamasteghtsakan art once and for all liberates the
artwork from the constraints of high vs. faible, old vs. new, ours vs.
theirs, objective vs. subjective, figurative vs. non-figurative, cheap vs.
expensive, accepted vs. unaccepted, as well as styles, schools, tech-
niques and technologies. Art is simultaneously high and low, old and
new, ours and theirs, figurative and non-figurative, expensive and
cheap, accepted and unaccepted. It’s a style, a school, a technique, et
a technology. It is totalitarian art, [et] absolute illusion. No need to be
terrified, though, depuis, all told, art remains the only place where man’s
insatiable striving both toward wild nature and the superhuman “ter-
minator” will fully reign.

Certainly, the above formulations call for “cultural studies”
interpretations.

The fact that hamasteghtsakan art acts as post-Conceptual art

should not be a cause for confusion. By “Conceptualism” we do not
mean art that is gelatin-like, generally individualized, and sensually all-
embracing, as it is understood in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, et
often also by us. We mean a Conceptualism that accepts as its begin-
ning and its foundation the tradition of “pure art” or “art for art’s sake.”
C'est, art that is autogenic and self-fulfilling, and not subject to either
time or space. Whatever art shows is not art. Art has its own logic of

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development and charts its own course. Art is cognized through the act
of art [making]. Being conceptual, hamasteghtsakan art does nothing
more than carry on a conversation, presenting art as a cultural phe-
nomenon, showing this connection as art or the conversation about art
as art.9 And perhaps, the only thing that makes hamasteghtsakan art an
“art of resistance” and different from Conceptualism is its rejection of
intellectual self-admiration and deception, as if only knowledge could
directly bring about the liberation from desires.

The formulation in the original text is convoluted and might be paraphrasing Ad
Reinhardt’s “Art as Art” (1962).

Nazareth KaroyaN

(original in armenian, translated by angela harutyunyan)

In our artistic context the word “hamasteghtsakan” was first used to
delineate certain artistic manifestations that go back as far as 1990,
and it was moreover used as a noun (“hamasteghtsakanutyun” in
Mshakuyt, 1990, n. 2). Cependant, only in 1993 when it appeared in the
subtitle of an exhibition (“Subjective Integration”: Hamasteghtsakan
Art in Yerevan [sic])1 did the term come to be used as the name of an
artistic style.

Circulating throughout these years, hamasteghtsakan has acquired

the status of a concept with a multi-layered structure from which I
want to separate one nuanced layer delineating the above-mentioned
artistic manifestations as well as the spaces they project. I am driven
by a concern for greater precision and accuracy in using the concept, comme
well as a sense of authorial responsibility. The word “hamasteghtsakan”
in Armenian is synonymous with “primordial” and “divine creation,»
but the sphere of its functional usage is significantly narrower than
these synonyms. As adjectives, these words are predicated on the act of

*
1

Published in Garun, Non. 2, 1996, pp. 95–96.
The subtitle was “Hamasteghtsakan Art in Armenia.” The English title of the exhibition
differed from the Armenian title, and was Beyond Idiom: Crossover Art in Armenia
(Yerevan: American University of Armenia, 1993). The word hamasteghtsakan was
arbitrarily translated here as “crossover.”

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the substance (God) and point to the qualitative feature of the result
of that act.2

Departing from the paradigm mentioned above, the word “hama
steghtsakan” undergoes certain semantic transformations in its struc-
ture. This does not bring about a horizontal dispersion (it stays
unchanged) but creates instead a vertical depth where we find a
certain degree of shallowness. Such decrease in verticality is due to
the fact that in the word “hamasteghtsakan” the stress is transferred
from the root steghts [in Armenian, “creation”] to the prefix hama
[corresponding to the English prefixes con-, pan-, and inter-]. Par conséquent
of this shift, the inner balance of the word is displaced, and the hori-
zontal plane of the semantic layer acquires a dominant role over the
vertical plane. Par conséquent, in “hamasteghtsakan,” the expression of the
semantic nuance is placed on the prefix “hama.”3

In Armenian, the prefix hama means connection, unity, et

relationality, and is as such identical with the Latin prefix con-.
Semantically it incorporates the prefixes ner (in-), mij (inter-), arta
(ex-), and andr (trans-), as well as the Latin prefix syn. Although
as a prefix hama is not differentiated, in certain functional usages
either its horizontal semantic layer (par exemple, hamapatasxanutyun >
correspondence, hamadasutyun > coordination, hamagortsaktsutyun >
cooperation) or its vertical semantic layer (hamakentronatsum > concen-
tration, hamaparpak > contained, hamashxarhayin > international) est
emphasized, along with neutral emphases that correspond to the prefix
syn- (conjoining, concurrence).

As already mentioned, in the word hamasteghtsakan, there is a

semantic imbalance. Donc, the sphere of its operation, par lequel
the prefix hama appears as semantically neutral, is of no interest to
us because it is a rare phenomenon in artistic manifestations as well.
Meanwhile those semantic expressions of the prefix hama- or the
other prefixes within its semantic orbit (ner > in-, andr > trans-, mij >
inter-) whose transitive character is stressed to the utmost cannot
escape our attention. In hamasteghtsakan art and in postmodern artistic

This passage is especially convoluted in Armenian. Karoyan means that the synonyms
refer to the results of divine creation and point to the latter’s qualities.
This is another convoluted passage where Karoyan argues that rather than emphasizing
the word “creation,” hamasteghtsakan focuses on the prefix—hama (collectively). He does
so through a structuralist linguistic analysis of the word in which contradictions are pre-
sented and then resolved.

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manifestations generally one finds the latter prefixes more often, as in
Italian transavanguardia; among artistic methods [tel que] interven-
tion; among artistic forms [such as installation art—within the limited
environment of its site], as well as in the artist’s public creative activi-
liens, such as excursions, expeditions, et ainsi de suite.

Hamasteghtsakan originated in the Armenian milieu that has
come to describe specifically the Yerevan situation of the second part of
the 1980s. Donc, examples drawn from the manifestations of post-
modernism are irrelevant here. Plutôt, while such manifestations
share many commonalities with the [hamasteghtsakan] aesthetic (dans
particular, the same method of intervention), they do not reveal any of
the local nuances, lequel, even if they could be ignored on other occa-
sions, in this case present themselves as elements of an aesthetic struc-
ture. I can back up this argument by returning, once again, to the
semantic analysis of the term hamasteghtsakan. The Latin equivalent
of this word is the word “conceptual.” From here, the reader can arrive
at two inadequate conclusions: d'abord, the word hamasteghtsakan is an
arbitrary translation from Latin (several years ago the terminological
committee4 started circulating the term hayetsakatgayin5 ); et deuxieme,
the concept “hamasteghtsakan art” is meant to localize the manifesta-
tions of Conceptual art. Regarding the first of these conclusions, nous
can say that “hamasteghtsakan,” while differing from “divine concep-
tion” and “primordial creation” with its autogenic [semantic] nuance,
shares with them the primary semantic field and has as such nothing
to do with “hayetsakargayin.” Meanwhile the artistic manifestations
demarcated by hamasteghtsakan art not only have no connection with
Conceptual art from the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the
70s, but they are also counter-conceptual in terms of their content.
(They are not aimed at predicating the concept which was the summa-
tion of the content of Conceptual art and of the neo-avant-garde in
général, but at its counter-predication). The word “hamasteghtsakan”
preserves the idea of Immaculate Conception, one of the most impor-
tant amongst the impersonal Catholic dogmas with its specifically
carnal (humanized) undertone. The emphasis on the prefix hama
manifests a tendency toward the limitation, if not eradication, of the

The linguistic committee was established in 1993 to adjudicate national policies regard-
ing the Armenian language.
The Armenian word for “conceptual.”

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artist’s creative consciousness, of his “I” that reached the peak of its
absoluteness in the neo-avant-garde. Dans ce cas, hama- signifies the
striving of the artist’s “I” for the impersonal, including all the inter-
personal and suprapersonal manifestations of such striving.

In the self-recognition of the authorial “I” are reflected those pro-
found shifts that have been registered in the transformation of the cul-
tural paradigm brought about by the transition from modernism to
postmodernism. This narrative of transition affects the whole system
of postmodern civilization, running like a red thread through all of its
structures and inter-structural nodes—from economy to morality, depuis
politics to art, and from religion to law. The sense of living in two par-
allel realities, which is the prevailing feeling among those who have
found themselves in the postmodern condition, is born from this nar-
rative of transition. (Current attempts at the technological modeling of
virtual reality are merely the realizations of the project of reflecting
subjective reality materially.) The postmodern fine arts are entirely
saturated with the above-mentioned discourse; not only can they not
escape it, they also claim to be the subject that models these parallel
realities. Their grand Narrative is a history of that transition, and their
small Narrative [is a story]6 about the dissolution of the narrative of his-
tory. The artist’s “I” tries to find its place within these parallel narra-
tives. The Grand Narrative places him within a field that restricts the
“I,” whereas the small one [puts him] on the path of the multiplication
of the “I.” In both cases, what is being curtailed is his traditional “I.”
Within the boundaries of hamasteghtsakan art, the curtailing of

the artist’s “I” doesn’t necessarily mean the proposition of the affirma-
tion of the “we” so familiar from Soviet reality, even though this is not
precluded. This transfiguration only presupposes that the artist no lon-
ger speaks from his name or with his “own mouth,” but largely in the
name of others, mainly for others, mostly for others, and finally simply
that he speaks because he cannot not speak. It seems that this post-
modern passion for tattling is no different from the desire for silent
tattling and the suspension of action that filled neo-avant-garde art of
the post-war period and the 1960s (existentialism, the theater of the
absurd, minimal, and Conceptual art). We could recall the Beckettian
heroes buried in sand (“Happy Days”) who were left with nothing else

All the capitalizations are in the original Armenian text, and we have chosen to follow
the original.

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to do but to speak, or the multifaceted and anonymous hullabaloo of
N. Sarraute’s novels reminiscent of oriental bazaars.

But if in the case of modernism, the author was constituted
through a disjointed connectivity of syntactic components realized
though the plurality of anonymous “I”s, what remains inaccessible to
postmodernism is his supra-self which is constituted as a record from
the rubbles of the ruined speech of a linguistic catastrophe, torn asun-
der (and therefore unique and authentic). This inaccessibility is condi-
tioned by the uncontainability of the authorial “I,” which, cependant,
never appears as such but always already represents the Other. Dans
postmodernism this authorial status, which has been formulated as
“representativity” (Ch. Jencks) came to replace modernism’s authorial
authenticity. (The fact of this transformation of authorial status within
the framework of hamasteghtsakan art is registered through the artist’s
nom, [and through] the mainly thematic articulations of his authorial
droits, as a kind of signature.) With this shift, the classical author,
who continued to exist in late modernism (during the years of the
neo-avant-garde), starts to become history and gives way to the Myth-
monger. The difference between the real author and the Myth-monger
is that the material of the latter’s work [the original always already
belongs to another and relates to the Myth-monger only in the case of
the work’s recitation, while the result is directed outside of the Myth-
monger, and is again transferred to the Other. The meeting of the self
and the Other, their identification, becomes possible only because both
are simultaneously motivation and medium but never ever a purpose
(immanent existence). Hamasteghtsakan art stands out from within
postmodernism’s overall landscape solely because of the choice of its
characteristic specificity vis-à-vis the above-mentioned Other, lequel
is only due to the particularity of the local conditions. In the case of
hamasteghtsakan art, this “Other” is not “art in general,” and neither
does it refer to that art’s history (of styles, names and events), even if
with its subject matter it closely recalls the “return to its substance”
(Bonito Oliva).7 The Other is the already extant ready-made image in
which the name of the author, his worth and history, are of no impor-
tance. In this case the ready-made image is nothing but an information

Karoyan insists that while part of the postmodern condition, hamasteghtsakan art also
stands apart from it because of its local specificity. It does not establish itself within an
art historical trajectory but in relation to communicability.

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image. The material of hamasteghtsakan art is a layer of this image-
information.

The appearance of layers of information as a motivation for cre-

ative work has exclusively to do with the closed system of culture dur-
ing the Soviet period. Exogenous and transfigured, the fragmented
distribution of the rubble of information alien to the regime contrib-
uted to prepararing the grounds for their sacralization, especially since
[this distribution] temporarily coincided with the moment when the
organization of information management systems started taking place
around the world. Under these conditions, the problem of accessibility,
c'est, the right to receive and broadcast information freely, clashed
with the totalitarian cultural system, since it was contraindicated for
the latter. But in addition to its juridical-political and moral-psychologi-
cal aspects, the dissemination of pure information has objective pat-
terns. In this sense, by simultaneously being continuous (wavy) et
intermittent (particular), information, like any other (physical, psycho-
logical, historical and so on) phenomenon, is dualistic in its structure.
This structural duality brings about its dual state (solid and fluid).8
Donc, even in closed Soviet culture, information, even if discrete,
was characterized by the same antinomies. Simply appearing in a pow-
erful informational-ideological field, it served as an anti-informational
layer. In the frame of hamasteghtsakan art, the ritualistic desacralizing
strategy of the information-image is the already de-ideologized repro-
duction of the method of Soviet anti-propaganda.

But how are ready-made images generated, and what are they?

As ready-made images, information images are born from the self-
reproduction of information systems, and materialize as a result of the
entropy accompanying the latter. Ready-made images (objets) sont
donc [those that have been] left out of the circulation of informa-
tion; [ils sont] the residue of that circulation. Being collective public
ideas, they entirely belong to the realm of feelings, to the world of
public dreams and nightmares. But their accumulation is so opaque,
self-sufficient, and gradually increasing that they produce a sense of a
parallel reality.

Here the reference is to wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics.

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131

In hamasteghtsakan art, the strategy of ready-made images directed
toward ritualistic desacralization pursues one crucial aim: the reconsti-
tution of the information flow between parallel realities, which creates
a holistic and concrete reality and the possibility of a full and real
sensibility.

Accordingly, the hamasteghtsakan image, in its structure, is a
binary image. The ready-made image posited in its structure is only
realized through the empty canvas, which symbolizes a mental image
or an image archetype. Donc, this discourse of the ready-made
image and the image-archetype prevalent in the microstructure is car-
ried out on the vertical plane. This means that the prefix “andr” (trans)
is here semantically dominant in the prefix “hama” (con-). This dis-
course posits an ontological problem: the questioning of the existence
of a ready-made image and the possibility of a meta-image, lequel, dans
a constructed (համադրված) situation, is read as a rhetorical question
pertaining to the possible existence of the image in general.

In the microstructure of the hamasteghtsakan image the horizontal

plane dominates, or in the prefix “hama” the semantic layer “mij”
(inter) prevails because the hamasteghtsakan image here evolves in par-
allel to the surface of the canvas and doesn’t have depth. Even the great-
est optical recesses of the hamasteghtsakan image are incapable here of
creating visual depths because with their outlines they are conjugated
with the network of fragments woven through the macrostructure.9 But
on this plane the ready-made image is already severed from its state of
existence as a public myth and is placed onto a new plane, that of the
personal, sacral icon. As a result of this intervention, which becomes
possible due to the status of the Myth-monger, the ready-made image
already ceases to be a dream and becomes embodied, c'est, the flow
between the object and concept, between subject matter and history,
text and context, is restored.

The profile of hamasteghtsakan art as one of the expressions of the

newest Armenian art came to completion in the period between the
second half of the 1980s and the beginning of the 90s. Depending on
[one’s] attitude toward ready-made images, here we can single out two
streams: sanitary-hygienic and archeological. The artists included in

Here the author means that because of the vertical discourse of the frame, what is
ultimately constructed is a network rather than depth, where the latter appears as
a surface.

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the first (UN. Grigoryan, UN. Hovsepyan, R.. Grigoryan, A Petrosyan,
K. Mnatsakanyan, and K. Terzyan) saw in their method of intervention
a rationalistic purpose. Donc, the passion to surgically operate, à
cleanse, and to erase is dominant in their interventions, and so is the
desire to revive pure color.

The artists of the second—archeological—stream (Ararat and
Arthur Sargsyans, UN. Gevorgyan, R.. Arevshatyan, S. Hamalbashyan,
H. Margaryan) use their interventions as a means of preservation.
Their efforts to seal and conserve the ready-made image (the object),
which left the impression of being irrational actions, relied on the
desire to add and to supplement.

This division, bien sûr, is purely arbitrary because, if we attend
to their specific characteristics, some of them [the artists] can be placed
in the opposite stream (such as Hamalbashyan’s passion for color or,
in S. Poghosyan’s case, the presence of motives of conservation).

Only one thing is certain: that with the completeness of its aes-
thetic conception and the holistic manifestation of its means of its
expression, hamasteghtsakan art has become a direction in its own
right that awaits a more methodologically oriented examination.

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133 D O C U M E N T image

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