Imagining Ottoman Armenia: Realism and Allegory in Garabed Nichanian’s Provincial Wedding in Moush and Late Ottoman Art Criticism

This essay examines the manifestation of Realism within the Constantinople Armenian intellectual milieu of the 1880s by delving into the hitherto untested waters of Ottoman visual art production and art criticism. An image and kindred text are closely read and held to mirror major, yet interrelated, concerns of the Constantinople Armenian Realist Generation (Պոլսահայ Իրապաշտ Սերունդ) – the precarious socio-economic and political situation in Ottoman Armenia and the phenomenon of bantkhdoutioun (պանդխտութիւն), the large scale movement of provincial migrant workers from Ottoman Armenia to the imperial capital – and, to reflect upon the manner and avenues of articulation of these concerns under conditions of autocratic rule and increasingly tightening censorship. The essay proposes that an artist’s brush was often able to evade the censor’s scalpel more effectively than the pen, to convey meaning and project allegorical content under the guise of an ethnographic cloak. By extensively drawing upon a wealth of hitherto unutilized Ottoman Armenian sources, the re-introduction and inclusion of diverse silenced voices to complicate the art historiography of the Ottoman Empire is advocated. Through the introduction of some of these voices, this essay hopes to contribute to efforts towards more empirically and methodologically sound, nuanced and inclusive, Ottoman art histories.