Talk:Arshile Gorky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Arshile Gorky article.
Article policies
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Stub This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group.
This article has been automatically assessed as Stub-Class by WikiProject Biography because it uses a stub template.
  • If you agree with the assessment, please remove {{WPBiography}}'s auto=yes parameter from this talk page.
  • If you disagree with the assessment, please change it by editing the class parameter of the {{WPBiography}} template, removing {{WPBiography}}'s auto=yes parameter from this talk page, and removing the stub template from the article.
Armenia Portal
Arshile Gorky is within the scope of WikiProject Armenia, an attempt to better improve and organize information in articles related or pertaining to Armenia and Armenians. If you would like to contribute or collaborate, you could edit the article attached to this page or visit the project page for further information.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale.
This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Visual arts, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to visual arts on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start Class: This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale.


[edit] Name?

Was his firstname Vosdanig, Vosdanik or Vostanik? This page differs from the external links' versions given. If the transliteration of his name is undecided, this should be mentioned.Malick78 17:24, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Vosdanig is Western Armenian. Vosdanik is a hybrid form and Vostanik is Eastern Armenian. Because he was a Western Armenian one would assume that he himself would transliterate the name as Vosdanig.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 03:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
But the Van dialect is eastern Armenian, isn't it? Meowy 14:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fake letter claim needs documentation

"In English translations of letters allegedly written by Gorky in Armenian to his sisters he often described moods of melancholy, and expressed loneliness and emptiness, nostalgia for his country, and bitterly and vividly recalled the circumstances of his mother's death. Most of these translations (especially those expressing nationalistic sentiments or imparting specific meanings to his paintings) are now considered to be fakes produced by Karlen Mooradian (a nephew of Gorky) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Unfortunately, the contents of the fake letters heavily influenced the authors of books written about Gorky and his art during the 1970s and 80s."

Says who? I believe that this might be true but would like to know the source

Thanks PaulGrant3 (talk) 05:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Says me! I added that text, but others have said (or implied) it too - so it isn't original research. Every individual point has its source. For example, on the fake letters, and why they are certainly fake, see: Nouritza Matossian. Black Angel, A Life of Arshile Gorky. London, 1998. To see excerpts from them extensively used to impart specific meanings to Gorky's paintings see the article by Spender in: Diane Waldman, Arshile Gorky, 1904-1948, A Retrospective, New York, 1981. Spender, without admitting he was the one fooled, later recanted and wrote, quote: "translations of Gorky’s letters are untrustworthy. I suggest ignoring his versions whenever he makes Gorky discuss art (Mathew Spender, From A High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky. Berkeley, 2000, page 377). I can't remember now if the words I have used to summarise the essense of the fake letters are my own, or if I was quoting the actual words and phrases used by Spender in his 1981 essay to describe their contents. Meowy 14:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Oops. Looking back I see that actually most of the sentence that describes the character of the letters was not written by me, but by another editor working on the article before me. So I don't know the source, but the sentence does correctly sum up the content of the fake letters. Meowy 21:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
BTW, the letters were faked because Mouradian wanted to make Gorky's work, inspirations, and lifestyle appear to be more "Armenian" than they acutally were. In the late 60s and early 70s Mouradian published in several articles in Armenian periodicals what purported to be English translations of letters originally written in Armenian by Gorky, however no such Armenian originals have ever been discovered. Meowy 14:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)