The READER

When Alexander the Great conquered Babylon, he realized that it was thanks to its immensely rich library that the city was able to gain a solid grasp of fields as varied as culture, science, politics and even economics. It inspired him to create a similar library but his plans were waylaid by his untimely death. In the end, it was his successors who created the Library of Alexandria, considered to be the centre for human knowledge in antiquity.

It is a well-known fact that libraries are the very source from whence intellectualism springs and that an avid reader’s thirst for knowledge moves humanity, and in turn civilization, one step further.

​

Megerditch Tarakdjian, a doctor and accomplished sculptor, brought just such a reader to life in his sculpture entitled “The Reader.” Sitting on a chair with legs crossed, he holds in his hands an oversized parchment. Deeply engrossed in its words, it appears as though he is drawing on the very essence of wisdom. His facial features are not well-defined and his eyes are barely visible. Nonetheless, the hunched shoulders and head bent in concentration clearly express the artist’s intended meaning. The bodiless sculpture features only a head, hands, legs and feet, though this in no way proves unnerving for the viewer. Such is the duty of the artist upon whom destiny has bestowed true creative genius!

We live in a time when many works are forgotten in what can be considered the “wastelands of culture,” a time when director Serguei Paradjanov extracts the essence of the spirit and soul from medieval archives, like words under a grinding stone, when New Realist sculptor César Baldaccini wishes to capture writers and artists along with their works in fishing nets to protect them—this too, is how we should conserve the legacy of Tarakdjian’s sculpture for future generations.

​

Movses Zirani

PhD in Fine Arts