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The Artist and His Mother is the name of two oil-on-canvas paintings by Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky created during a period of around a decade, from 1926 to 1936.

Background
In 1908, his father fled to the United States to avoid the Turkish draft and its policy of using Armenians to kill other Armenians. In 1915, when a new wave of massacres threatened Armenians, Shushan Adoian and her two younger children found refuge in “Caucasian Armenia.” Shushan, Gorky’s mother, Vartoosh, his sister and young Vosdanig (called, Manouk) moved from place to place. In 1919, while in Yerevan, Shushan fell gravely ill and died of starvation [Armenia was stricken with famine in the early years of the republic] even though Vosdanig and Vartoosh worked hard to bring food to her.

Description
The Artist and His Mother, on which the painter worked for ten years (1926-36), is linked to Picasso's classical style of the early 2o's, though it manages at the same time to be highly personal, grave, passionately felt and, in spirit, some way between an icon and the old, faded photograph on which it was based. The colouring of this portrait, and other less successful essays in the same style, is both curious and attractive. They are all carried out in pale, chalky, muffled pastel tones, with the lightest of pinks, washed-out orange, and bleached browns and greens.

"haunting paintings"

Byzantine icon

Second variant
National Gallery of Art

Reception
Art journalist Linda Yablonsky described it as a "powerful picture of loss" in The New York Times.

This is one of the most distressing and powerful of portraits

Shushan der Marderosian, mother

Cultural references

 * In Atom Egoyan's 2002 film Ararat the painting is presented to have been modeled after The Madonna and Child.
 * The painting was used, along with Cynthia Kadohata's novel Kira-Kira, in a 2006 study by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to asses schoolchildren's literacy and critical thinking skills.
 * The painting appeared on the cover of Shoghaken Folk Ensemble's 2012 album Arshile Gorky and the 2020 book The Armenian Experience: From Ancient Times to Independence by Gaïdz Minassian.

raw
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/28/arts/art-review-arshile-gorky-poet-of-line-and-color.html?searchResultPosition=640 The show presents his drawings for paintings based on a photograph of himself and his mother taken by a studio photographer in Van. The photograph was to be sent to his father, a reminder, in case he had forgotten, that his family still existed. Shushan stares vacantly at the camera, as if already departed from the world. Gorky stands beside her, feet primly together, a little boy unsmilingly proffering a small bouquet to his long-lost parent. Gorky tried two different versions for his own expression in the drawings, one glaring, the other downcast, while his mother stays the same, frozen in time, profoundly beautiful and sad, as he wished for her to remain in his memory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/arts/art-review-suspended-between-modernism-and-an-armenian-past.html?searchResultPosition=372 Arshile Gorky: Portraits at Gagosian Gallery is the first show ever devoted to the artist's portraiture, which seems surprising. One of Gorky's most familiar and defining paintings is an image of himself at 8 standing beside his mother. It's based on a 1912 photograph taken in Armenia, where he was born, a few years before his mother died, under terrible circumstances.

about the Armenian Genocide, how the trauma of the events never left the young Vostanig Adoian — especially the death of his mother, in his arms, from starvation. Most people are acquainted with the famous painting of the young Vostanig standing beside his seated mother. Actually, there are two such paintings and, though rarely seen together, both are on display. And, as a bonus, there is a copy of the photo from which the paintings were made — probably the first time all three have been seen together. The photo was taken in Van and sent to his father who had left their home, earlier, and had gone to Boston. Later, the young Gorky was to visit his father in Boston and found the photo. What is so poignant about the two paintings is that they were never “finished” — especially his mother’s hands. To have done so, we are told, would have meant the final death of his mother.

both versions of The Artist and his Mother, an image that distils the experience of the millions of immigrants who made their way from the old world to the new in the early years of the past century. Based on a black-and-white studio photograph taken in Armenia in 1912, it shows Manoug and his mother posing stiffly in front of the camera like figures in a Byzantine icon. The little boy stands like a bridegroom at his mother’s side, wearing a coat with a velvet collar and shyly holding a bouquet of flowers. Seated next to him, monumental as a Madonna by Giotto, his mother wears the traditional Armenian head scarf and long apron. His round eyes look out pleadingly, hers are full of accusation.

The young Gorky stands earnestly next to his beautiful, spectral mother, both of them unaware of the imminent tragedy. The painting serves as a haunting memorial to the Armenian genocide and in a cathartic way, brings his mother back from annihilation.

rest
(archived)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9907EEDA143FEF3BBC4053DFB4678388679EDE&nytmobile=0&legacy=true

https://www.arshilegorkyfoundation.org/artist#tab:thumbnails