Article

Name: Old Tiflis in the Memory of Different Generations: Painting, Cafe, Sunset of the City (By the Example of V. Elibekyan, A. Ayvazian)

Authors: T. S. Simyan

Yerevan State University, Armenia

In the section Visual Arts: Plots and Fortunes

Abstract:

The article describes urban space as a subject of microhistory. Empirical material for the analysis of the city and urban space is revealed through visual and text artifacts of contemporaries of Old Tiflis (first generation), as well as via texts created by the next generations, which was recorded from a time distance. The Old Tiflis of the end of the 19 th until the beginning of the 1920s is described from the third generation at the level of the metalanguage and as a product of the collective (cultural) memory of the first and second generations. In other words, scientists begin to describe and interpret a study of a historical past and fact. Both cultural figures and sci- entists become “creators” of collective (cultural) memory, but with the only difference that scien- tists describe it at the metalanguage level, thereby becoming the authors of the scientific dis- course, which, in turn, is also a part of cultural memory.

The material for the empirical analysis was collected from paintings and artistic texts of Ar- menian artists (Khojabekyan, Elibekyan), as well as the texts of representatives of the second generation of Old Tiflis (Grishashvili, Ayvazyan). The article presents the main thematic con- stants of Old Tiflis in the works of V. Elibekyan, as well as the functions of the fixer and “carrier” of the traditions of Old Tiflis to another urban space, in Yerevan 1980s. The final part of the arti- cle describes the “sunset of the city”, Old Tiflis. The main thesis of the article: the scientific dis- course of the visual and textual history of the city and urban space is based on the collective (cul- tural) memory of the first and second generations.

An analysis of the empirical material of the Armenian artist V. Elibekyan showed that his paintings are not a mimetic depiction of the urban space, but rather convey the spirit of the city and era. The urban space is transmitted as carnival, theatrical, and not as a product of Old Tiflis. Such an image is correlated by his professional qualities, since he was a theater director.

V. Elibekyan represents the city’s space to the audience through the language of the theaters, the eyes of the director, the ability to look at “things” from the outside, as well as the point of view “from above”, which became the style-making factor of his work, one of the “techniques” of describing city space, modeling the composition. The habitat, value world of V. Elibekyan was also influenced by the cultural tradition of Old Tiflis, the life and work of Pirosmani, the cultural tradition of Old Tiflis: the Khimerioni cafe vs. the Tiflis, decorated with paintings, painted walls. A similar cultural “gesture” is described in the literary discourse (Ayvazyan). Typological analy- sis showed that in the story “The Signs of Tiflis” there is a lot in common between a literary hero (Grigor) and a real person (Pirosmani), since they can be seen a lot in common; they loved Queen Tamara, national poets and writers (Rustaveli, Abovyan), etc.

Keywords: cultural memory, individual memory, semiotics of urban space, city in the text, visualization of the city, cafe interior, cafe and city

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