PRESS REVIEWS: Black Angel, A life of Arshile Gorky, Nouritza Matossian Chatto & Windus, Random House, UK.
New York Review of Books, March 09 2000, Review of Black Angel in The Washington Times April 30, 2000 Review of Black Angel in The Art Newspaper Review
of Black Angel in The Economist Review of Black Angel in The Times Read
a Transcript of BBC Radio 3 Interview of Nouritza Matossian
Editor's Choice: The Best in Books and Web Resources ArtSite Guide July, 2000 The saddest book about
a great artist you are likely to read. It took an Armenian-American
author to follow Manoug Adoian (Gorky's real name) and his story back
to the shores of Lake Van, in Armenia, and discover how his childhood
memories were later unlocked in his paintings. The author located
and interviewed Gorky's widow, and numerous relatives, and also discovered
how one relative had forged some early Gorky correspondence. How this
charming man, who like Picasso, lied when he needed to, bridged to
distance from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism before his early
death is a compelling, American story.
I thoroughly enjoyed your life of Gorky - I finished reading it on a recent Irish holiday; A wonderful achievement, as well as a depth of research that was quite awesome. Thank you for the gift of the book. Letter from Robert Fisk, The Independent
A rich biography; a sympathetic book. It is Matossian's thesis that Gorky's Virginia summer connected the artist to his Armenian childhood, "Gorky was painting his interior Armenia". Her reconstruction of the New York art world of Gorky's time is as informative as the picture she paints of Gorky's corner of Armenia, before the First World War. Her narrative of the suffering of Gorky and his family on the hunger march which led to his mother's death - is as shattering as her account of Gorky's personal agony at the end of his life. Beyond that, the book helps one to focus on Gorky as an artist. And it makes room for the kind of interpretation Matossian advances. Arthur C. Danto, Times Literary Supplement. 22 January 1999
The events of 1915 are part of a folk-memory uneasily scattered across the world and this remarkable book is as much an account of Nouritza Matossian's engagement with her people as it is a biography of Arshile Gorky. It is the story of a poignant diaspora, a circumstance which has lent Matossian fluency in no less than nine languages. If something of his nation and its extraordinary culture died with him 50 years ago, it is alive again in this remarkable book. Brian Morton, Scotland on Sunday. 3 january 1999
Matossian's portrayal of the artistic development and influence of a painter remembered by art history as the link between European Surrealist painters and the Abstract Expressionist movement in America is thoroughly researched. But where her particular talent lies is in her perception that the key to Gorky's work rests in Armenian history. Matossian's portrayal of the artistic development and influence of a painter remembered by art history as the link between European Surrealist painters and the Abstract Expressionist movement in America is thoroughly researched. But where her particular talent lies is in her perception that the key to Gorky's work rests in Armenian history. Readers will be swept along by a compulsive narrative and charmed to find something so like a love affair between biographer and subject revealed. One is almost unsurprised, turning to the author's photograph, to find that Matossian bears a striking resemblance to the lost mother with whom Gorky felt such a profound connection. Rachel Campell-Johnston The Times 31 December 1998
Nouritza Matossian has written a profoundly moving, illuminating biography of the painter she spent 15 years researching. She is the only biographer of Gorky's who has had intimate access to his relatives and culture, having undertaken a pilgrimage to the site of his birthplace, now in present day Eastern Turkey. Her visceral prose conveys the magical, otherworldly aura of the village of Van where he grew up. She provides an intricate historical framework for the circumstances of his early life and genocide. Despite the darkness of Gorky's life Matossian's account is paradoxically enlivening as she tells his story with an almost novelistic intensity. Her book finally leaves us with the image of a man of monumental will and spirit, who embraced life with every fibre, and whose sufferings never undermined his integrity as a man or as an artist. Baret Magarian The Independent. 22 December 1998
A profoundly moving, illuminating biography of the painter of 15 years research. Visceral prose. Magical. Otherworldly . Novelistic intensity. INDEPENDENT
Readers will be swept along by a compulsive narrative. A love affair between biographer and subject. A link between European Surrealist painters and the Abstract Expressionist movement in America is thoroughly researched. TIMES
A rich biography; a sympathetic book. Informative. Shattering. Helps one to focus on Gorky as an artist. Her reconstruction of the New York art world of Gorky's time is as informative as the picture she paints of Gorky's corner of Armenia, before the First World War. TLS
The story of a poignant diaspora. If something of his nation and its extraordinary culture died with him 50 years ago, it is alive again in this remarkable book. SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY
She traces Gorky's works not only to the rugged beauty of Van's mountains but to colourful Armenian manuscript painting and the abstract forms in rugs that he would have seen as a boy. Her title plays on a fearsome Armenian tale that white angels went to heaven and black angels went to hell: a grim prospect for the dark-haired, dark-eyed boy, and, as things turned out, a fateful one. The word gorki means bitter in Russian and bitter his life was, both at its beginning and at its end."Black Angel" has an infectious Gorkyesque myth making to it that takes him back to the land and people he fled. THE ECONOMIST
This extraordinary book passionately lays bare the tortured soul of one of this century's great artists Arshile Gorky. Tracing his childhood in western Armenia through to his flight to America, Nouritza Matossian vividly explores the sources of Gorky's unique genius. Atom Egoyan, Director, The Sweet Hereafter |