Choghakate Kazarian

PhD student

Thesis: Unquicken the Pace: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Ripening Paintings

Supervisor: Pr David Peters Corbett

Examined in 2024 by Eleanor Jones Harvey and Nicholas Robbins 

 

My thesis is an attempt at understanding the apparently unnecessary long temporality of Albert Pinkham Ryder’s creative process. The artist was known for his extreme slowness in completing paintings, laboring endlessly on the same works for years. Rather than discarding the artist’s odd habits as mere extravagance, I would like to reevaluate Ryder’s overripe pictures, generally considered the spoilt masterpieces of an aging or naïve artist who did not know what he was doing as symptomatic of the temporal paradigm that guided Ryder’s life and work, one that valued a natural temporality against an artificial social timeframe.

 

Stemming from Ryder’s statement about his paintings “ripening under the sunlight of the years,” I argue that he viewed his works not as static finished objects but as organic entities in constant evolution. To understand Ryder’s elongated time, I explore the artist’s creative process through his metaphor of “ripening,” from planting the seed to bletting while also examining his habit of postponed completion. This process involves the agency of time, which cannot be rushed to comply with external expectations. Mixing technical, biographical, philosophical, and historical analysis, I look at Ryder’s lags both from a perspective internal to the creative process itself and through its contextual causes.

 

What I would like to show is how the amount of time is meaningful and to reevaluate Ryder’s seasoned pictures other than failures related to poor technique but as paintings informed by and infused with time. By doing this, I would like to challenge the way we tend to view artworks as static objects with an ideal final condition to be preserved for eternity, for a renewed appreciation and approach to conservation.

 

Choghakate Kazarian
Email

Education

  • PhD History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2019-2024
  • Conservateur-stagiaire (curatorial trainee), Institut National du Patrimoine (Paris)
  • MA History of Art, Ecole du Louvre (Paris). Thesis: “La matière comme Idée, autour d’Air de Paris de Marcel Duchamp” (published in Retour d’y voir, 2010).
  • MA Philosophy, Université Paris – Sorbonne (Paris)
  • BA History of Art, Ecole du Louvre (Paris)

Research Interests

  • Creative process
  • Time
  • American Art
  • Post-War and Contemporary International Art
  • Outsider Art
  • Artistic biographies

Grants

2021–22           Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.)

2021           Terra Foundation Immersion Semester at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)

Curated exhibitions

  • New Matter: Sergei Djavadian’s Collection of Armenian Abstraction, National Gallery of Armenia, 2024
  • Immersion: Les Origines, 1949-1969, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2023
  • Mood of the moment: Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloé, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2023
  • Karel Appel, l’art est une fête !, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2017
  • Piero Manzoni, Achrome, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne), 2016
  • Henry Darger, 1892-1973, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2015
  • Lucio Fontana, rétrospective, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2014

Publications (as editor and lead author)

  • Immersion: Les Origines, 1949-1969 / Immersion: The Origins, 1949-1969, exh. cat. (Editions Hazan, 2023)
  • Mood of the moment: Gaby Aghion and Chloé, exh. cat. (Yale University Press, 2023)
  • Karel Appel, exh. cat. (Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2017)
  • Piero Manzoni, Achrome, exh. cat. Co-ed with Camille Lévêque-Claudet (Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, 2016)
  • Henry Darger, 1892-1973, exh. cat. (Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2015)
  • Lucio Fontana, rétrospective, exh. cat. Co-ed with Sébastien Gokalp (Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2014)

Chapters in Books

  • “From 3rd Floor to Bunker: Sergei Djavadian’s Art Collection from late Soviet Armenia,” in New Matter: Sergei Djavadian’s Collection of Armenian Abstraction, exh. cat., National Gallery of Armenia (Yerevan), (forthcoming).
  • “Jackson Pollock dans les années 1930, entre Thomas Hart Benton et Albert Pinkham Ryder,” in Jackson Pollock : les premières années, exh. cat. Musée Picasso (Paris), 2024. There is also an English version of the catalogue. 

  • “Totalizing Experiences: Immersive Artworks between 1949 and 1969,” in Immersions. The Origins (1949-69), exh. cat., Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2023

  • “Gaby Aghion and the Mood of the Moment,” in Mood of Moment: Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé, exh. cat., Yale University Press, 2023

  • “Prédictions rétrospectives: Stéphane Mandelbaum ou le téléscopage temporel de l’expérience,” in Stéphane Mandelbaum, éditions Martin de Halleux, 2022
  • “Emanuele Becheri: Melancholies” in Emanuele Becheri, Campo Aperto, exh. cat., Museo Novecento Firenze, 2022
  • “Eloge de la marge,” in Stéphane Mandelbaum, ed. Anne Montfort, exh. cat. Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, 2019
  • “A Sixty-Year-Old Teaches Us Fencing: Lucio Fontana and Otto Piene,” in Otto Piene: Alchemist and Conqueror of the Skies, ed. Jutta Mattern, exh. cat. Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, 2019
  • “Spatial Sensations: the Crucifixions as a Tactile Experience of Concetto Spaziale,” in Lucio Fontana, Crosses, exh. cat. Karsten Greve Gallery, 2017
  • “Marcel Duchamp/Louis Michel Eilshemius: éloge de la peinture,” in Marcel Duchamp – la peinture même, ed. Cécile Debray, exh. cat. Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, 2014

Articles

  • “Indépendant, primitif, moderne, romantique, académique, excentrique, outlier: le dilemme Louis Michel Eilshemius,” De quoi l’Art brut est-il le nom ? (conference proceedings), (forthcoming)

  • “Bazile_Manzoni: Demystifying_Remystifying Merda d’artista,” in Quella Scandalosa Scatoletta. Piero Manzoni, Merda d’Artista (conference proceedings), (forthcoming)

  • “A True Individualist: Louis Michel Eilshemius and the Société Anonyme,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Société Anonyme), 2022

  • Interview with Melvin Edwards, The Brooklyn Rail, 2019
  • “Balthus. A Maverick Among the Moderns,” L’Officiel Art, 2018
  • “Artists for Artists”: Guest critic for the June issue of The Brooklyn Rail, 2018
  • “Marcel Duchamp, 50 cc air de Paris,” in Retour d’y voir, no. 3-4, Les Presses du Réel, 2010

Conferences

  • “Bazile_Manzoni : Demystify_Remystify the Artist’s Shit,” paper presented at the symposium “Quella scandalosa scatoletta: Piero Manzoni – Merda d’artista,” Università di Verona, 2023

  • “Outsider parmi les outsiders : Louis Michel Eilshemius,” paper presented at the symposium “De quoi l’art brut est-il le nom?,” Les Colloques de Cerisy, Cerisy-la-Salle, 2022

  • “Improving with Age : Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Mellowing Paintings,” Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellows lecture, 2022

  • “Mavericks of Art History: Albert Pinkham Ryder, Louis Michel Eilshemius, Henry Darger, Stéphane Mandelbaum,” Evening Lecture Series at the New York Studio School

  • “Enfance et innocence: Henry Darger, ‘artiste et protecteur des enfants,’” paper presented at symposium “L’Enfance de l’art et ses ennemis. Un mythe du vingtième siècle en débat,” (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art – Université Paris 1 Sorbonne)
  • Paper, “Albert Pinkham Ryder and the Ripening Painting,” Rethinking Late Style: New Approaches to Old Age in Art History, CAA Annual Conference (Chicago), 2020
  • Paper, “Henry Darger, From Found Forms to New Forms,” Finding Form in Found Materials, American Folk Art Museum (New York), 2019
  • Paper, “Marcel Duchamp/Louis Michel Eilshemius,” Jumex Museum and French Embassy (Mexico City), 2019
  • Chair, “Piero Manzoni. Materials of His Time,” Hauser & Wirth Gallery (New York), 2019
  • Speaker, “Translating Time: Exhibition as Sites for the Mediation and Production of Art History,” MIART Talks (Milan), 2019
  • Paper, “Magie, douleur et beauté: Paula Rego et Henry Darger,” Musée de l’Orangerie (Paris)
  • Chair, “Serial Narratives and Never-ending Stories,” American Folk Art Museum (New York), 2018
  • Speaker, “Henry Darger,” Mona Bismarck Foundation (Paris), 2015
  • Paper, “Eloge de la surface: Adolfo Wildt, maître/anti-maître de Lucio Fontana,” Musée de l’Orangerie (Paris), 2015
  • Speaker, “Ce qu’exposer veut dire?” Institut National du Patrimoine (Paris), 2015
  • Paper, “Jeff Koons, Buster Keaton,” Made in Koons, Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, 2015
  • Paper, “Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale as a Reenactement of the Male Artist as Demiurgic Body,” Refiguring Masculinities in Conceptual Art, CAA Annual Conference (Chicago), 2014
  • Presentation about exhibition curating, Università degli Studi (Milano), 2013

Citations