Monday, Oct. 9, 2000 | 9:21 a.m.
What: art21
When: Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: Venetian-Sands Expo Center.
Cost: $10.
Information: 733-5556.
In a pink-stuccoed house in the Southwest section of the valley, Armenian artist Ruben Abovian directs an imaginary cast of what he described, through an interpreter, as his impetuous prodigy to settle down on the canvas and come to life.
"These are my children, they have their own mind," Abovian said. "Sometimes I play with them, sometimes they play with me. It is art that is happening."
He is a thin man with a bushy mustache and deep voice. He uses Renaissance-era techniques to paint scenes of sensuous and playful creatures whose faces glow on the canvas, and he's a featured artist in the trade show art21. The vast convention of artistic displays, open to the public, runs Thursday through Sunday at the Venetian-Sands Expo Center.
More than 700 exhibitors from around the world will present art pieces to the industry for use in other mediums, which will also be made available for sale to the public.
The Sunrise Children's Hospital Foundation will benefit from art21 with "Lady's Man" a painting donated by Abovian.
Abovian came to Las Vegas three years ago after the title of Honorable Artist of Armenia was bestowed on him by the once-communist country.
The title enabled him to apply for extraordinary talent status, which allowed him to come and go as he pleased -- something most Armenians are denied under law.
According to Abovian's interpreter, Ripsime Marashian, Abovian accrued many titles, honors and letters of acclaim which allowed him to apply for a visa to leave the country, and was one of the few artists in Armenia to establish this. "He's free now," she said.
Marashian is also the managing director of the Art Source International, Inc. publishing/distributing agency. She heard of Abovian through friends and clients in the art world.
In his native Armenia, Abovian's ghost-like figures in tender, sometimes erotic poses caused a stir and he was rarely allowed to exhibit his paintings.
He asked Marashian to help him show the world his art at the New York Expo in March of 1998.
The show was well-received, according to Zella Jackson, an art industry expert and author of "The Art of Selling Art" (Novasearch Consultants & Publishing, 1998).
Jackson wrote of Abovian's show in Art Expressions magazine in 1998 that he sold 60 commissioned paintings and eight original paintings right off the walls. He also signed a five-year contract with London's Washington Green art house for exclusive rights to use his art prints overseas.
"I knew I had a strong artist, very talented, but I was nervous about his images," Marashian said. "I was told the American art lovers were very conservative so it was risky but I wanted to take that risk and show the world what is Ruben Abovian all about."
Art start
Born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1948, Abovian grew up in a socialist and communist political climate in which art was defined by the government.
In the '60s and '70s Armenian museums and galleries showed paintings that were approved only by a government jury, a practice to which Abovian did not bow.
"It was Soviet times and there was no freedom for the artist to express themselves freely," he said.
After graduating from the Terlemezian Fine Art College in 1969 he volunteered at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet as a stage hand, all the while painting in private.
During performances he would find a place above the stage where he could observe. Below him, the beauty of the chandeliers, the costumes and the decorations captivated and pulled the audience into fantasy.
Abovian could also see behind the glittering facade, where the harsh reality of dedication to art, and the shadow dance of the engineers who worked the lighting and scenery to make the fantasy complete, worked arduously.
"It was like watching two performances at the same time," Abovian said. "It was like seeing the beautiful ballerina on stage dancing like a butterfly and going backstage and collapsing on the floor, so tired. The workers backstage played cards and did not pay attention to her. You see the dark side and the light side, the mystery -- that is what explains my art."
Abovian later sketched set designs for the Armenian movie industry, working on a major motion picture, "The Longest Spring," and a handful of theater documentaries.
Abovian had his own vision, complete with set, cast and costumes, and he began to create his own theater in his mind and on canvas where he was the director, the lighting technician and the costume designer.
"They are always in my mind, turning around, changing costumes," Abovian said of the characters he paints. "I often argue with them, but they insist I paint them this way. I then comply. They are like grown-up kids. I love them very much."
Abovian's art was frequently banned from Armenian galleries and museums because a peek of white flesh from the loose top of a woman or the bared belly and chest of a milk maid resting seductively in a wagon was too risque for the Armenian exhibition juries.
"The problem for the artists who grew up during that time and created and worked during that time was that many times there were demonstrations during the '60s, '70s, close to the '80s," Abovian said. "I did not want to get involved, but I did not want to do as they said I should."
The government continually approached him with a commission to paint a subject which had to be related to socialist and Soviet sympathies, and he claims he never accepted.
He knew if he commissioned a painting, he would be paid in money, but if he painted what he felt was right, he would have his pride as well as money from objective museums and private collectors.
"I have always painted what I saw, never did I waiver," Abovian said.
Henrick Igitian, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Fine Art in Armenia, fought to display Abovian's work. At one point in the late '80s an unapproved Abovian painting was continually pulled from the museum's wall.
In a recent statement, Igitian wrote, "A painting by Ruben was presented to an exhibition jury (for) consideration seven times in a row. Only after the seventh attempt did this picture make its way through."
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika movement reformed the stifling Armenian government in the late-1980s. Abovian was named the Honorable Artist of Armenia in 1991, which eventually allowed him to move to the United States for permanent residency.
The artist's way
The characters Abovian paints haunt and tease him, he said.
"I cannot explain how these plays, or rather paintings, are born," he said. "The characters appear all by themselves. I only have time to portray them as they appear."
With multilayering techniques to flatter shadow and exude light, Abovian said he paints a moment of joy or sadness he sees in his mind -- a lift of a defiant chin or a coquettish turn of the head as a lover looks on.
The masters of portrait painting such as Rembrandt and Diego Velazquez have always inspired Abovian because he said the most human element in painting comes from those men and their techniques.
"I loved the era of the Renaissance, they brought the paintings to life," Abovian said. "I really appreciated the artist's approach to their art, the way that they saw art, the way they were thinking."
They were masters of shade and light, he said. Abovian particularly studied Velazquez's freedom with the brush and masterful strokes that he made on the canvas to create such great works of art as "Las Meninas," and "The Maids in Waiting."
"He mastered his brushwork," Abovian said. "It was like a photograph but no, it is the light, the technique, detail. It is beautiful to look at his work."
Abovian said he drew from these techniques to pour sunshine into the faces of his glowing women, but created his own style from the plays that wander through his mind from his days perched above the opera stage.
"The painting itself commands you in what direction it wants to grow and you need to listen," he said. "It's alive during the whole process of creation and it is evolving into the final product."
Each painting takes two to three months, according to the characters' whim, he said. He is working on a series of casino-inspired paintings, based loosely on what he sees in the Las Vegas hotels.
When he first came here in December of 1997 to visit a friend, Abovian saw art.
"To me, this city is like a humongous theater with big decorations," Abovian said. "It was so huge and so beautiful with its magnificent casinos."
Abovian moved to Las Vegas within months.
"It's a city of finest taste and then you can find just the opposite, the tasteless," Abovian said. "It's a big city, so open, but it's also very dark and mysterious. This is a city of expectations and a city of shattered dreams."
He frequently catches the improvised comedy of errors he sees in the people who walk along the Strip. He often finds a place with a good view to sit and observe, invisible among the throngs of moving people.
"I want to blend in with people and experience their joy and sadness," Abovian said. "I want to become part of this big game that is life and Las Vegas is a city of big game. And me? I'm the painter of that game."
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