Georgian art
Georgian Museum of Fine Arts
Art Palace of Georgia
Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili
Georgia is a country of less than 4 million inhabitants with a language its guides will tell you is unique. They might also mention that the word for hello “gamarjoba” comes from the word for victory. Effectively, Georgians wish each other a victorious day, reflecting their centuries-old concern with warding off external threats to their land and to their rich, intriguing culture.
Among those who serve as custodians are George (Gia) Jokhtaberidze and Manana Shevardnadze, the son-in-law and daughter of former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze.
The couple founded Georgia’s leading telecommunication company Magticom and managed to collect thousands of works of art. To house it, they bought a plot in front of the parliament and commissioned what in 2018 became Georgia’s only purpose-built art museum.
It remains a spacious, modern oasis of calm, delightfully crowd-free compared with say London’s museums and full of art dating back to the 1940s that has broken free from traditional, folk expression to explore the 20th and 21st-century Georgian world view.
The wealth of art is characterised by a concern with power and with resistance to it, refugees and migration, satire and naivety and sometimes just a loving depiction of what Georgia offers from pomegranates and wine to the winding streets of Tbilisi, at times snow-covered, at others shimmering in fierce summer heat.
Without exception, the works speak eloquently of resilience and defiance in shaking off Soviet conformism at lightning, intensely creative speed, while tapping into Georgian historic memory.
The process was in part embodied in the movement known as “The Tenth Floor”, a reference to the Tenth Floor of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts where innovative artists reinforced each other by working together.
Among them, Oleg Timchenko is prominent and often overtly political.
He takes aim at “Historical Monsters” – Stalin, Hitler and … Al Capone – by depicting their cars with the captions that sum up their power. For Georgian-born Stalin, it is: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
Hitler understood: “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future” and Al Capone lived by the maxim: “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Timchenko can also be lyrical.
“Snow Melt,” for instance, captures the ranks of silvery birch stems of the northern winter and the brown earth emerging as the thaw begins.
Exploring another side of the Georgian temperament, Timchenko depicts dramatic characters, such as “Infanta”, a cross between a child, a doll and Elizabeth I, whose sceptre is a rose, recalling Georgia’s rose revolution that led to Shevardnadze’s resignation.
Being born in Georgia is at once a source of joy and of tragedy. The guides who proudly relate the country’s many qualities are also likely to tell you they are desperate to leave.
“Born In” by Tato Akhalkatsishvili expresses what it is to grow up in a country whose citizens are not free
Its children are conveyed driving around in dodgem cars, but rather than enjoying a fairground attraction, they are trapped in a swimming pool devoid of water. It is housed in a derelict building of rust and faded paintwork. The boldest colour is the red background in a picture of Stalin who looks down from one of the walls.
Akhalkatsishvili also turns to Railway Tracks to explore the Georgian dilemma. They would be a route to freedom, except there are no trains in sight and grass growing over them under a sky shot through with eerie, unnatural light implies that has been the case for a very long time.
Not exactly straightforward realism, but closer, the collection’s scenes of Tbilisi include Gogi Chagelishvili’s “Winter in Tbilisi” and its huddled figures, and Natalia Palavandishvili’s warmer, gentler “Old Tbilisi”, the kind of Tbilisi where the much-praised food and drink raise the spirits.
One of the essential ingredients of Georgian feasting is the pomegranates that hang from the trees in town and country alike. Givi Aghapishvili is among those inspired to capture the texture of their tough skins and the pith and brilliant seeds within.
Everywhere there is tension and contrast.
Temo Japaridze “Man in Beret” is defined by an absence of colour unless you count the black beret that tops the soulful face above a gaunt body apparently starved of all nutrients.
Albert Dilbarian also implies the endurance and harshness of many people’s lives in Georgia, although again the paradox is always lurking.
His work “Mother’s Sewing Machine” depicts an object that represented hard work and eye strain, but a reel of red cotton, contrasting the dark, earthy shades, stirs hope and hints at the joy and overcoming of being the artist who stands back rather than the worker without freedom.
If, after the thousands of works of the Georgian Museum of Fine Arts, you are hungry for more, the Art Palace of Georgia provides yet another contrasting experience.
Combining Gothic and Islamic architecture, it was not built for art, but for a different kind of love, according to the museum’s website that says Prince Oldenburg of Germany built the palace for a Georgian beauty he met and lured away from her husband.
Among the treasures now within it are the fruits of a pre-1940s flowering of Georgian avant-garde art.
They include the sketches for “Othello” and “Joy Street” of theatre painter Petre Otskheli, a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge.
Niko Pirosmanashvili, also known as Pirosmani, immortalised all over modern Tbilisi on fridge magnets and even the the national currency, the Lari, is also represented by one deceptively simple work: “Tobacco Seller”.
Pirosmani draws on Georgia’s peasant folk culture, which is also expressed in Georgia’s dance in which it’s the men who surge up onto their toes, wearing soft leather boots, while the women glide poetically.
The Georgian National Ballet “Sukhishvili” was founded by Iliko Sukhishvili and Nino Ramishvili in 1945, who, unlike George Balanchine, born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, stayed in their native country.
Now it is led by the founders’ grandchildren, Iliko Sukhishvili Jr., current chief choreographer, and his sister Nino Sukhishvili, who designs the costumes that have dazzled audiences the world over.
We saw the troupe in its elegant summer attire, minus the swords, and still spectacular in an open-air performance on the outskirts of the capital, whose lights shimmered in the distance.
The question that haunts so much of Georgia, is will the next generation stay to keep the magic alive?
Barbara Lewis © 2024.
http://sukhishvili.com/history.php
https://sukhishvili.net/switzerland/
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/art-palace-of-georgia-georgian-state-museum-of-theatre-music-film-and-choreography-art-palace/UgUhmQA4HuW5LQ?hl=en
https://www.finearts.ge/en
Georgian art
Georgian Museum of Fine Arts
Art Palace of Georgia
Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili
Georgia is a country of less than 4 million inhabitants with a language its guides will tell you is unique. They might also mention that the word for hello “gamarjoba” comes from the word for victory. Effectively, Georgians wish each other a victorious day, reflecting their centuries-old concern with warding off external threats to their land and to their rich, intriguing culture.
Among those who serve as custodians are George (Gia) Jokhtaberidze and Manana Shevardnadze, the son-in-law and daughter of former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze.
The couple founded Georgia’s leading telecommunication company Magticom and managed to collect thousands of works of art. To house it, they bought a plot in front of the parliament and commissioned what in 2018 became Georgia’s only purpose-built art museum.
It remains a spacious, modern oasis of calm, delightfully crowd-free compared with say London’s museums and full of art dating back to the 1940s that has broken free from traditional, folk expression to explore the 20th and 21st-century Georgian world view.
The wealth of art is characterised by a concern with power and with resistance to it, refugees and migration, satire and naivety and sometimes just a loving depiction of what Georgia offers from pomegranates and wine to the winding streets of Tbilisi, at times snow-covered, at others shimmering in fierce summer heat.
Without exception, the works speak eloquently of resilience and defiance in shaking off Soviet conformism at lightning, intensely creative speed, while tapping into Georgian historic memory.
The process was in part embodied in the movement known as “The Tenth Floor”, a reference to the Tenth Floor of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts where innovative artists reinforced each other by working together.
Among them, Oleg Timchenko is prominent and often overtly political.
He takes aim at “Historical Monsters” – Stalin, Hitler and … Al Capone – by depicting their cars with the captions that sum up their power. For Georgian-born Stalin, it is: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
Hitler understood: “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future” and Al Capone lived by the maxim: “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Timchenko can also be lyrical.
“Snow Melt,” for instance, captures the ranks of silvery birch stems of the northern winter and the brown earth emerging as the thaw begins.
Exploring another side of the Georgian temperament, Timchenko depicts dramatic characters, such as “Infanta”, a cross between a child, a doll and Elizabeth I, whose sceptre is a rose, recalling Georgia’s rose revolution that led to Shevardnadze’s resignation.
Being born in Georgia is at once a source of joy and of tragedy. The guides who proudly relate the country’s many qualities are also likely to tell you they are desperate to leave.
“Born In” by Tato Akhalkatsishvili expresses what it is to grow up in a country whose citizens are not free
Its children are conveyed driving around in dodgem cars, but rather than enjoying a fairground attraction, they are trapped in a swimming pool devoid of water. It is housed in a derelict building of rust and faded paintwork. The boldest colour is the red background in a picture of Stalin who looks down from one of the walls.
Akhalkatsishvili also turns to Railway Tracks to explore the Georgian dilemma. They would be a route to freedom, except there are no trains in sight and grass growing over them under a sky shot through with eerie, unnatural light implies that has been the case for a very long time.
Not exactly straightforward realism, but closer, the collection’s scenes of Tbilisi include Gogi Chagelishvili’s “Winter in Tbilisi” and its huddled figures, and Natalia Palavandishvili’s warmer, gentler “Old Tbilisi”, the kind of Tbilisi where the much-praised food and drink raise the spirits.
One of the essential ingredients of Georgian feasting is the pomegranates that hang from the trees in town and country alike. Givi Aghapishvili is among those inspired to capture the texture of their tough skins and the pith and brilliant seeds within.
Everywhere there is tension and contrast.
Temo Japaridze “Man in Beret” is defined by an absence of colour unless you count the black beret that tops the soulful face above a gaunt body apparently starved of all nutrients.
Albert Dilbarian also implies the endurance and harshness of many people’s lives in Georgia, although again the paradox is always lurking.
His work “Mother’s Sewing Machine” depicts an object that represented hard work and eye strain, but a reel of red cotton, contrasting the dark, earthy shades, stirs hope and hints at the joy and overcoming of being the artist who stands back rather than the worker without freedom.
If, after the thousands of works of the Georgian Museum of Fine Arts, you are hungry for more, the Art Palace of Georgia provides yet another contrasting experience.
Combining Gothic and Islamic architecture, it was not built for art, but for a different kind of love, according to the museum’s website that says Prince Oldenburg of Germany built the palace for a Georgian beauty he met and lured away from her husband.
Among the treasures now within it are the fruits of a pre-1940s flowering of Georgian avant-garde art.
They include the sketches for “Othello” and “Joy Street” of theatre painter Petre Otskheli, a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge.
Niko Pirosmanashvili, also known as Pirosmani, immortalised all over modern Tbilisi on fridge magnets and even the the national currency, the Lari, is also represented by one deceptively simple work: “Tobacco Seller”.
Pirosmani draws on Georgia’s peasant folk culture, which is also expressed in Georgia’s dance in which it’s the men who surge up onto their toes, wearing soft leather boots, while the women glide poetically.
The Georgian National Ballet “Sukhishvili” was founded by Iliko Sukhishvili and Nino Ramishvili in 1945, who, unlike George Balanchine, born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, stayed in their native country.
Now it is led by the founders’ grandchildren, Iliko Sukhishvili Jr., current chief choreographer, and his sister Nino Sukhishvili, who designs the costumes that have dazzled audiences the world over.
We saw the troupe in its elegant summer attire, minus the swords, and still spectacular in an open-air performance on the outskirts of the capital, whose lights shimmered in the distance.
The question that haunts so much of Georgia, is will the next generation stay to keep the magic alive?
Barbara Lewis © 2024.
http://sukhishvili.com/history.php
https://sukhishvili.net/switzerland/
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/art-palace-of-georgia-georgian-state-museum-of-theatre-music-film-and-choreography-art-palace/UgUhmQA4HuW5LQ?hl=en
https://www.finearts.ge/en
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, art, dance, design, drawing, exhibitions, history, painting • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, dance, design, drawing, exhibitions, history, painting