How to Paint Destruction: The Role of Material Objects in the Work of Armenian Painter Vardges Sureniants

Maranci, Christina · 2025

Maranci, a leading scholar of Armenian art and architecture, offers a close formal reading of Vardges Sureniants' painting 'Trampled Sanctuary' (1890s), a near-contemporary depiction of the Hamidian Massacres. She argues the work should be read not merely as documentation of destroyed artifacts but as a totalizing scene of wreckage that gathers up nearly the whole repertoire of Armenian art. Sureniants' impressionistic handling, she contends, both invites and obstructs close inspection of the ruined objects, producing a tension between recording artifacts and re-creating them — a meditation on loss and on the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage.

Citation checked against the publisher's record on 2026-07-22.