“I went to Italy as a tourist for the first time with my girlfriend. I felt like I was out of time and space in Florence. I had a very pretty girlfriend and I felt like I couldn’t hold her hand, much less drive a car. I felt like nothing existed in the world except me and that city. I had to live there. When I decided to leave for Italy, my friends and relatives thought that I had lost my mind. I didn’t know Italian, I didn’t have money, but I had made a final decision. I took the written and oral art history tests without speaking a word of Italian and got accepted into the academy. Florence welcomed me with open arms. Of course, I faced some obstacles, I overcame all that but I knew that all that was only temporary,” says Vigen. Vigen has reached much success in Italy. Currently, he is in Yerevan, Armenia.
– Do you visit Armenia often?
– I come here 1-2 times a year. My parents are dead but I have friends here. This time I had to go to Mexico, but the trip got cancelled. I had not been in Yerevan during the New Year for a long time, so I decided to come.
– You were a student of great sculptor Ara Harutyunyan. What did he teach you?
– I owe him everything for teaching me what I know now. I have worked with him for eight years as an assistant. When I was in Poland (I studied in the Yerevan Art/Theatre Institute but have graduated in Poland), he was showing me things via letters and explaining the secrets of sculpting. I would like to talk a lot about Harutyunyan. He has sculpted the “Mayr Hayastan” (Mother Armenia) and Sardarapat monuments, the ornaments in the Erebuni museum, the statue of the Worker and many other sculptures. I can say that he has started and finished his career with Komitas. His first sculpture was Komitas’s grave and Komitas’s statue was his last. As a matter of fact, I have helped the great sculptor while working on Komitas’s statue and I am very proud to say that. But times changed and he went into depression. He started to get pressured; it seemed as if people were trying to “get revenge”. Ara Harutyunyan was a very famous sculptor both in Armenia and abroad. That was probably why other artists were jealous of him. He didn’t even have money for a pack of cigarettes in the beginning of the 90s. But the biggest blow was when his Worker statue was destructed. He believed that the worker is someone that lives in the capitalist world too. Besides that, the Worker statue contained all that one needed to know about sculpting. For me, Michelangelo’s “David” and Ara Harutyunyan’s “Worker” are of the same value.
– Do you have any plans to work in Armenia?
– For the time being, I don’t plan on making sculptures in Yerevan. I don’t think that people need to see my art here. However, I do want people to remember the work done by the master. I plan on turning the studio where Harutyunyan worked for 20 years into a museum. After all, sculptors like me have studied in this studio. I think that the street named after Komitas needs a museum like that because there are many artists living on that street. I passed by the studio today and I got heartfelt when I saw the situation it was in. I told Ara Harutyunyan’s wife about my plan last year and she said: “My dear Vigen, if that happens, then I will know that I have lived a good life.” In my opinion, this project will attract everyone’s attention because if that studio/museum opens, many artists, including me, will start to work there.
– What famous sculptures do you have in Italy?
– There is a 14th century old church in the heart of Florence called “San Carlo” which didn’t have an altar. They asked me to sculpt the altar. There was a contest for sculpting a fountain in the industrial city called Navara in Milan. I participated in the contest, but to tell you the truth, I had no hope of winning because as in Armenia as well as in Italy, the winners are someone’s “friends”. Despite that, I won because my plan corresponded to the structure of the city. There is a famous palace in Florence and a part of it turned into a hotel. Recently, I was asked to make sculptures for the hotel. I have sent sculptures to Mexico too.
– Do you make sculptures just for fun?
– It has been two years that I have been working on that hotel and I am not making any other sculptures. However, I have organized many exhibitions. I have sculptures in the Florence Central Bank. I opened an exhibition in a jewelry store for a week and they kept the sculptures for a year. The story is quite interesting. I was going to come to Yerevan so that I could baptize my friend’s son. I looked for a cross-stone all around the city and I found a beautiful one in that jewelry store. The owner of the jewelry store asked me to open an exhibition in his store. The priest from the church next to the store saw it and asked me to sculpt the altar.
– How do you feel when people see something else in your sculptures, something which you don’t see?
– I don’t see anything bad about that. The majority of people explain my sculptures to me. One time, I had sculpted something from rock. A 90-year old stranger called me about a year later and said that he would like to meet me. He called me again in 2003 and said: “Vigen, show that sculpture of yours to the whole world because you foretold what’s going on now.” He was referring to the war in Iraq. A sculpture can be a beautiful geometrical shape for someone and a symbol for somebody else. Another person can look at it as a procession of history. Here is my comparison. The young man who has fallen in love with your daughter can tell you more about your daughter than you because you look at her differently-through the eyes of the creator and the one that fell in love with her.
– Is there a sculpture that you consider to be your masterpiece?
– No. When you finish a sculpture, it seems as though that is your best sculpture. But after a while you start to hate it and feel the desire to start making a new one. For me, all my sculptures are like my children.
– Has your nationality ever got in the way?
– Never. Italians don’t care about things like that.
– How do you look at modern Armenian art?
– Unfortunately, I have to say that I see artists that don’t move forward, they are scared, think highly of themselves; they don’t love what they do, they are not daring. The sculptor must forget about his ego and create something which will show the situation that he is in. He should not say: “This is what I did, whether you like it or not, that is your problem.” You have to forget about yourself at the moment and in my opinion, contemporary Armenian sculptors lack that. Take for example the statue of Andranik in front of the “Ayrarat” movie theatre. I think that that statue is truly a work of art. I respect Ara Shiraz as a sculptor but that statue should not be there. That statue could be put up in the mountains because it is silent up there, but the statue has a lot to say. That noise could be heard in the mountains but not in the heart of the city. On one hand, you have the tranquility of the church, and on the other you have the noise of cars and carousels; even the sound of horses’ steps. Art has to tranquilize the situation at hand. I believe that we can’t really talk about harmony in this case.
– How do Italians install monuments? Does the sculptor choose the site?
– No, the sculptor decides where he is going to install his sculpture beforehand. The municipality announces a contest and the committee selects the sculptor. However, it is not easy to install a monument there. There is high supervision. There are Museum and Art Values ministries besides the Ministry of Culture.
– You said that you have had many financial difficulties in the beginning of your career. What made you overcome those difficulties?
– Art. I have many friends who did not continue art due to financial difficulties. But that is like a belief that gives you the strength. Life makes you forget about that. Man steals and kills by not overcoming the difficulties in life. You have to have faith in yourself and move forward when creating.
– As an artist, what do you consider the slough of Armenian culture and what do you suggest for getting out of that slough?
– There are two roads that my Homeland’s culture “takes”. As a matter of fact, these two roads are very dangerous. The first road is the one that foreign benefactors take in order to destroy our artists, demanding them to accept the art that is accepted “abroad”. That kind of art goes against Armenian culture. In other words, by intervening in our art, foreigners erase what we have as a nation and that can be looked at as a defect. The second road is the road that is marshy. We must not let art stay limited, but rather we must enfold it. But in order to do that, we have to think about finances. Another thing: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, people started looking at the reality of everything. Art has power; it is a great method of communication and all political forces face the reality of it and want that to become propaganda. Art needs to change, after all the changes this country has gone through; only art can help in times like these. However, during the years when the scientists became a merchant and the merchant became a minister, they went and installed a statue of Carrabelle. I have nothing against Carrabelle. He was a very honest and great person. But that statue symbolizes poverty. After that statue was put up, the people turned into “Carrabelle”. Armenian culture can only be saved by directing it towards another road.