1981_09 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper September 1981

              Page 4
Hye Sharzhoom
September, 1981
CENTRO STUDJ E DOCUMENTAZIONE DELIA CULTURA ARMENA
Architecture Exhibit Makes
Special Fresno Showing
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A vast exhibit of Armenian architecture from the 4th to the 18th
century will be shown at the Phebe
Conley Art Gallery on the California
State University, Fresno campus
from October 4th to 27th, 1981. The
exhibition was conceived and prepared by a team of Italian and Armenian architectural historians in
Milan, Italy. It has been acclaimed
throughout the world as a model of
its kind, bringing to a western public a comprehensive view of the
church architecture of an eastern
Christian people, the first to accept
Christianity as a state religion in the
early 4th century.
The exhibit has already been
shown in various cities in France,
Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Lebanon, Iran, Argentina,
and most major cities of Italy. A
joint effort of several university programs of Armenian studies, including Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, UCLA and Fresno State has
finally brought this remarkable show
to the United States.
ANI CATHEDRAL, c. 1000 A.D.
genius of this remote Christian
people. The various elements of the
display allow the viewer to appreciate the mastery of masons who
came from a stone-carving tradition thousands of years old. Some
specialists even see in the various
masons' marks carved on these
buildings, the beginnings of the
mason guilds and ultimately the
masonic movements in medieval
Europe.
One of the distinctive features
of Armenian architecture is the
material employed. All churches
were built in stone, including domes,
and often.even roofs. The multicolored, light-weight, but extremely sturdy volcanic tuf or
tufa stone provided the ideal
material for flexible construction and
ST.HRIPSIME,618A.D.
Armenian architecture has long
been recognized as the first church
architecture to reflect a truly unique,
national style, having perfected its
various and complex forms already
by the 7th century. However, until
recently, there were few books and
no major exhibitions about these
monuments for the scholar or the
general public in the west to witness
and study. At the initiative of a
group of specialists at the Milan
Polytechnic, spearheaded by Drs.
Adriano Alpago-Novello and Herman Vahramian supported by the
Armenian Cultural Union of Italy and
the Manoukian and Pambakian
families of Milan, an enormous
photographic exhibit was assembled
based on materials collected during
several expeditions into Turkish
occupied Armenia, Iran, and the
Soviet Armenian Republic; the work
was assisted by the Armenian
Academy of States. Some 66 monuments of early churches and
monastic complexes are presented
through a series of floor plans and
elevations, exterior and interior
photographs, and numerous sculptural details. Precise explanations
accompanying each of the monuments provide the historical, structural, and artistic background for
each building.
The exhibit has been praised by
both experts and the general public wherever it  has  appeared.   It
unveils  the  mystery  behind  the
powerful    and    creative    building
artistic carving as well as the basic
substance of the inner concrete core
used in Armenian churches as early
as the late 5th century. The technical
problem of placing a dome, sometimes of large dimensions, made
entirely of stone upon a square or
rectangular structure, was so masterfully and quickly passed to
Byzantium (the eastern Roman
Empire) and ultimately into many
regions of Europe.
Thus, the influence of this architecture spread far beyond the Armenian plateau and the Caucasus.
Though it is still debated, a considerable body of opinion feels that if
Armenian architectural innovations
were not the inspiriation for many
developments of romanesque and
gothic architecture, certainly they
were used in Armenia long before
they appeared in Europe.
The exhibition highlights such
world renowned buildings as the
Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin, the
seat of the Armenian Apostolic
church, which is today essentially
of the same plan as it was in the 5th
century and is perhaps the oldest
continuously existing church in all of
Christendom. Zvartnotz, an enormous three-storied circular church of
the 7th century that was the recognized wonder of its age. The church
of the Holy Cross at Aght'amar on an
island in Lake Van, a church unique
in all Christian architecture because
of the extraordinary program of
extremely deep relief sculpture on its
exterior walls. Or the famous cathedral of the royal capital of Am built
around the year of 1000 A.D. with
architectonic  features  which   anti-
see Exhibit, page 12
HOLY ETCHMIADZIN CATHEDRAL