Keeping a work of art for a long time serves as recognition and valuing art. The two go together. When we talk about the monuments in different countries dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, we feel pleased and hope that the people passing by the monument and finding out that there has been genocide will get more interested in getting information. Perhaps that will be the first time they hear about Armenians. In 2001, when the National Assembly of France officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, it was immediately decided to construct a monument dedicated to the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide. A special area was provided for the monument installation through the combined efforts of French president Jan Shirak and the one and a half million Armenian community of France.
The statue of Komitas has been standing in one of the alleys of the Canada Square located near the Sena coast in the heart of Paris for three years now. The statue has turned into a symbol of the Genocide. It is currently worth 300,000 Euros. It was hard to find somewhere better than that. That part of Paris is always full of tourists. Each tourist visiting the capital of France studies each historical monument with pleasure and in detail, reads the index under the monument and takes a picture next to the monument. But nobody really visits the statue of Komitas. Tourists go around the square after checking out the outline of the statue. Some reporters and I sat near the statue for two hours, but we only saw two Japanese tourists look at the monument with little interest and read the inscription below, which read: “In memory of composer Komitas and the one and half million victims of the Armenian Genocide.” They didn’t even wish to take a photograph near the monument. We had a very short conversation with them.
“It’s an ugly statue,” said the Japanese tourists.
If the tourists actually were to take the time to further view the statue of our Komitas, their opinion could have been considered as a subjective opinion. The entire structure of the statue is probably what doesn’t attract the eye of different ethnic groups and tourists.
The issue concerns the field of art. It was simply wrong to install such a monument in Paris, where each rock and bridge instilled with elements of art is what makes Paris a heavenly place for tourists.
For over three decades, crafter and sculptor David Yerevantsi (Babayan) from France, has been crafting bad and imperfect versions of the statue of Komitas. The depressed Komitas looks like a pile of green rocks without any hands and his eyes are half-closed. According to the sculptor, his half-closed eyes and cold face are supposed to express pain, but passer-bys look at the statue indifferently because the statue doesn’t really express anything. Komitas has lost his value as an individual due to the fact that the sculptor wasn’t able to solve the problems with the statue. The idea of it has become more important than the quality of the work done. We are so pleased knowing that the Komitas statue is in Paris that we forget the influence it has on residents of Paris and tourists. Even the faces sculpted on the bottom of the statue, which are supposed to symbolize the victims, express nothing. This was not the kind of statue of Komitas that we would like to have in Paris, with no facial features or feet.