Orpheus Icon, 1975
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AUCTION RESULTS AND INDEBT INFORMATION ON Varujan Boghosian
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Varujan Boghosian at Washburn
Varujan Boghosian takes surreal trips
though the imagination in his
mixed-medium constructions and low
reliefs. Boghosian, active in the art
world since the 1950s, is a former
professor of art at Dartmouth College
who continues to live and work in New
Hampshire. He showed nine mixed-medium
works and seven still-life constructions
dating from the last four years in a
show notable for its complicated,
sometimes psychically dark, creativity.
The artist seems to be most concerned
with the exploration of psychological
states of mind. His work, not unlike the
boxes of Joseph Cornell, develops an
intricate realization of a romantic
sensibility in which a powerful, if
often truncated and bleak, narrative is
related through objects and forms.
One of the most intriguing recent pieces is the construction Titan's Goblet (2004), in which a small painter's mannequin balances on the steel struts of an open cube. Beneath the figure, which wears a dunce's hat, is an antique checkerboard, on top of which stand five small metal sculptures of evergreen trees and the eponymous goblet, which hoists a sphere much too large to fit into the cup. The mannequin, titanic within the relatively small world of the 33-inch-tall sculpture, looks down at the sphere, as if to express an interest in the world on the checkerboard floor. The idea seems to be that there are forces and personages beyond our control. Like much of Boghosian's art, there is something macabre about the sculpture.
In End of the Day (2004), a relief with
a depth of nearly 2 inches, a farming
figure in the left center wears a broad
hat and carries a scythe and a rake.
Next to him, and dominating the area
above the horizon, is a spiky tree. The
lower half of the artwork consists of
dark splotches and torn-paper abstract
effects. The combination makes for a
complex experience in viewing; one
senses that the texture is at least as
important to the artist as the scene.
Here Boghosian gets to have it both
ways. In Tightrope Walker (2004), a
simple but effective work, a whirligig
figure on roller skates in the upper
right balances on a diagonal line, its
arms extended in an attempt to walk
across the string. The work seems nearly
as naive as a piece of folk art;
however, the image of walking a
tightrope carries metaphorical awareness
of life's exigencies. In this work and
others, Boghosian deftly enacts a
precarious balance between figure and
abstraction, and between calm and
suggestive menace.
COPYRIGHT 2004
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