Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky [Hardcover]

Nouritza Matossian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2000

The first full-scale new biography of Arshile Gorky, the charismatic, controversial genius of 20th Century art.

Arshile Gorky is one of the most mysterious of major twentieth-century artists. Born Armenian, he adopted the cover of a famous Russian name, and paradoxically helped to change the course of American art. The art critic Robert Hughes wrote in The Shock of the New, "Gorky's life as a mature artist formed a kind of Bridge of Sighs between Surrealism and America; he was the last major painter Breton claimed for Surrealism and the first Abstract Expressionist as well." In this first full-scale biography, Nouritza Matossian charts Gorky's tumultuous life from his childhood to his evolution into a key figure on the New York art scene of the 30s and 40s to his tragic last years.

Handsome and deeply intense about art, he cut a dramatic figure among the Abstract Expressionists, influencing a generation of painters including de Kooning, Rothko, and Pollack. This powerfully revealing biography sheds crucial new light on Gorky's passionate life and monumental legacy.

"A profoundly moving, illuminating biography 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 either as a man or as an artist."--The Independent

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An admired outsider among the New York school of painters in the 1940s, Gorky (1902-1948) has long been a cipher as a person, in part due to his constant self-disguises. Born Manoug Adoian in Armenia, he survived the horrific 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turks, as well as subsequent famines, only to disguise his past once he reached America in the 1920s. Presenting himself as a cousin of the writer Maxim Gorky, he convinced friends he was Russian, despite his ignorance of that language. Now arts journalist Matossian (Iannis Xenakis) clears up a good part of the mystery, armed with a reading knowledge of Armenian that past writers have often lacked. Matossian proves that past sources on Gorky's life, such as letters published by a nephew, were forgeries. She probes deeply and without sentiment into the tragic life, which included a devastating studio fire, a colostomy after rectal cancer was diagnosed, followed by a broken neck in a car accident. These mishaps, along with his wife absconding with the "'bright and glib'" surrealist painter Matta, may have compelled Gorky to hang himself at age 46. At times, Gorky seems like an outsized fictional Armenian such as novelist William Saroyan might have created on his darkest day. Still, Matossian reveals lighter moments: in one, the artist-as-suitor pays clumsy compliments to one woman by exclaiming, "Oh, what charming little wrinkles you have around your eyes." Little space is devoted to describing the art, but by bringing us closer to Gorky the man, this book makes his life's tragedies all the more immediate and appalling. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

One of the most influential painters of the New York School, Arshile Gorky zealously kept his true identity a secret from everyone throughout his sad life. When he hung himself in his studio in 1948, most of his intimates did not know that he wasn't the cousin of the Georgian writer Maksim Gorky, as he claimed, and that in fact he had spent his childhood in a Turkish Armenian village before fleeing the genocide of 1915-18. Tall and shaggy-haired, he personified the Marx Brothers-like stereotype of the histrionic and vaguely foreign artist. Yet he had enormous artistic talent, and although he was never a financial success he was mentor to many postwar painters, most notably Willem de Kooning. Matossian follows Gorky from the village of his birth to his lonely suicide 44 years later, concentrating less on his art than his oft-strained relationships with everyone else. Her generally limp chronological telling is enlivened by an occasional interesting disclosure, such as his plan (unrealized, alas) to camouflage the entirety of New York City during World War II. Matthew Spender's From a High Place (LJ 4/15/99), published earlier this year, is a far better biography of this fascinating subject.
-Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover; 1ST edition (April 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585670065
• ISBN-13: 978-1585670062
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,380,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Surrealism

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life changing book, February 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky (Hardcover)

I read this book during a recent illness and I am glad of it because I was able to concentrate fully and stay within the world which the author so skilfully evokes. I have rarely found a biography of an artist, especially a modern one, so lovingly and painstakingly portrayed with brushstrokes just like a painter to produce image after image and make the man come alive in such an engaging way. I learned about the history of the ARMENIANS but through his eyes and yet the scholarship and objectivity shone through. So many insights and beautiful stories, such a strong sense of place, whether in long-lost Armenia or Boston of the 20s or New YOrk of the 30s and 4os , the characters who weave through this incredible tapestry, no a carpet. This writer belongs to the tradition of Armenian troubadours who were storytellers and sang their songs in verse in many languages. I felt the narrative had a poetic lilt and yet she kept back her obvious involvement in the subject. In her introduction which is worthy of attention Nouritza Matossian tells of her own family and their wanderings because of the Genocide, her desire to keep an even balance and not to succumb to the despair of her foretfathers. This book is a vindication of a culture which has been hammered and a Genocide which needs to be acknowledged. It tells of the courage of exiles and immigrants who brought such skills and moral values to this country which did not accept them very often. The accounts of Gorky's pursuit of excellence in art, his love for his mother and her inspiration are universal themes. I saw him as a quixotic, temperamental and charming character whom I would have loved to know. She brought him alive and I cared for him so much that I could hardly bear to finish the book, knowing that he would die. I received a great gift in understanding how it is possible for someone who has lived at traumatic life to transcend his suffering and 'give something to the world' as he said to Leger, something good. His paintings are incredibly beautiful and I see l know that he paid an even greater price than the loss of his childhood for those canvases, he paid for them with his health and security. Gorky's suicide has always puzzled me and I understand it for the first time after reading Matossian's book twice. The discussion of art and ideas, her ability to interpret him and even to depict the work is accurate and vivid. I saw from her website www.arshile-gorky.com that she performs a one-woman show in which she tells his story with slides and music as his mother, sister, sweetheart and wife. Those four characters are in the book and she pays tribute to them. It must be wonderful to hear this author tell her extraordinary story in her own words because this is a book which rings with her love and commitment for her subject and that is a rare and generous gift. All I could wish is that this book were even longer because I hated putting it down at the end. It changed my attitude to many things in my own life. This book deserves to win prizes.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Troubled Youth, April 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky (Hardcover)

For anyone convinced that crucial or shocking events during childhood have a major impact on psyche, this book is a must read to understand Gorky's art and his impact on American art. It is also an enlighting read to better understand the rituals, culture, and methods used by Gorky's (Adoian's) Armenian kin to survive (or not survive!) opression at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Matossian points to the ancient Armenian architecture, illuminated manuscripts, stone crosses, among other objects which Gorky saw and experienced as a child and which left a powerful imprint on his future art. Once some of these objects are seen, it is easier to understand the origin of Gorky's shapes, colors, and titles of his masterpieces.

Besides the extensive research that took Matossian to Gorky's Armenia, her knowledge of the Armenian language gives powerful insight into the letters written by Gorky in his native tongue to his family. Fantastic book which is part history, biography, art history, psychology, criticism and reads like a compeling historical novel!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy of a great artist, June 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky (Hardcover)

Allow me to add an "amen" to the previous reviews. Matossian's background in Armenian culture is a great advantage in exploring Gorky's childhood, and her obvious patience in organizing material from the many first-hand interviews of Gorky's survivors pays off in a vivid, scrupulously detailed account of his rise and cataclysmic final years. As an arist I brought a huge respect and admiration for Gorky's work to the book, and wasn't disappointed to find that the Gorky the author describes matches the intensity and dazzle and complexity of the works. So vivid was her writing that the ending left me moved almost to tears. This is our American Van Gogh, a giant arguably greater than Pollock, and his story is one of the great tragic--and ultimately triumphant--dramas in all of biography.