NOT A FOLLOWER OF FASHIONS: PAINTER BAROOSHIAN HAS ALWAYS DEFINED HIS OWN STYLE
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent
Boston Globe, MA
May 25 2006
WATERTOWN — If you haven’t heard of Martin Barooshian, it’s because
his paintings and prints have always gone against the grain of the
art scene. He’s a Surrealist who arrived late to the table that de
Chirico, Dali, and Magritte set. His images are dreamlike, dense with
oblique meaning, and packed with symbols.
Barooshian, who turns 77 this year, has a small, bracing 50-year
retrospective up at the Armenian Library & Museum of America. In
some ways, this artist comes across as trapped in another era. But
the exhibition also traces the development of a master technician
who has constantly challenged his own aesthetic.
His early forms, fleshy and biomorphic, coalesce into whatever your
eye wants to see. The 1956 painting “Athena Nike” shows a woman whose
flesh seems to fold, curl, and reform itself into design elements;
she’s half woman, half fleur de lis.
Barooshian used intricate compositions to evince strength and
momentum. The intaglio print with engraving “Bronco Rider” (1961)
deploys bold lines to describe the bone, muscle, and contour of the
bronco, building up into a circular sweep of movement.
Twenty years later, his canvases were freighted with odd, dreamlike
images. Many of the women in his paintings from the 1980s are
Amazons, brawny and faceted like diamonds — Pablo Picasso meets Stan
Lee. “Vision 4 — Night Murmurs” (1983) centers on a woman with a hat
in her lap beside a waterfall of design elements that might add up
to another figure, painted in shards of color. Many of the paintings
of this era are absorbing, but so dense they feel cluttered.
Most recently, Barooshian has let loose his passion for design in
bright, flat paintings built up, Pointillist style, out of tiny
dabs of color. These read as a cross between fanciful mosaic and
stained-glass window, dominated by bold forms, such as a Cheshire cat
and a rooster. Occasionally, he introduces text, which can distract
from the power of his imagery and colorful technique.
Barooshian’s been a successful working artist, if not widely known,
for decades. He never hit it big because his imagination wasn’t in
synch with the times. But if he didn’t reinvent painting, he did
reinvent himself, and that’s worth seeing.
Martin Barooshian: A 50 Year Retrospective of Paintings, Prints, and
Drawings At: the Armenian Library & Museum of America, 65 Main St.,
Watertown, through June 1. 617-926-2562,
Ellen Rich: New Work At: Genovese/Sullivan Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave.,
through May 30.
617-426-9738,
Jered Sprecher: New Paintings At: osp gallery, 450 Harrison Ave.,
through June 3. 617-778-5265,
www.almainc.org.
www.genovesesullivan.com.
www.ospgallery.com.