Trees 1918

Editor: Martiros Sarian's oil painting "Trees" from 1918 offers a simplified landscape of nature that feels simultaneously peaceful and a bit unsettling to me. What strikes you most about it? Curator: Considering the year, 1918, amidst the turmoil of World War I and the Armenian genocide, it’s impossible not to see this as a landscape charged with meaning. The almost naive simplicity you pointed out speaks to a yearning for peace, but the vivid, unnatural colors—the red tree trunks, for instance—hint at an undercurrent of anxiety and perhaps trauma. What do you make of the way Sarian uses color here? Editor: I see the colors as evocative and a little bit discordant; not at all how you'd naturally find those colours together. They emphasize the unnatural and emotional, hinting, as you say, at the anxiety beneath the surface. The simplified forms, especially the trees, also create a flattening of space. Curator: Exactly. The flattened space could symbolize a disruption of established social orders. Further, consider the positioning of the trees. Are they individuals, standing firm despite the storm, or a collective, offering each other strength in solidarity? How does Sarian's cultural background inform the symbolism we might see in these forms and colours? Editor: I guess I hadn't considered it so explicitly political until now! I was mostly responding to the raw, emotional content, but framing it this way reveals deeper possibilities. It prompts so many more questions about art's cultural contexts than what you see at face value. Curator: It’s that dialogue between the personal, the visual, and the historical that allows us to understand a work’s enduring power. Editor: Absolutely, I will definitely keep all of that in mind moving forward. Thanks for opening my eyes to that!