Paul Sarkisian

1928 - 2019

PAUL SARKISIAN Paul Sarkisian, visionary American artist, husband, father and grandfather passed away on July 29, 2019. He was 90 years old. Paul Sarkisian was a true visual auteur and unwavering creative force throughout most of the 20th century and early part of the 21st century. He helped define contemporary art on the West Coast as a member of the Ferus Gallery's stable of artists in the 1950's, then played an important role as a New Realist painter during the 1970's and 1980's. Born in Chicago in 1928, Paul was given a full scholarship at age 16 to attend the prestigious Chicago Art Institute. While serving stateside during the Korean War, not even the U.S. Army could curtail Paul's creative impulse, and his regiment commander arranged for an off-base studio and after-hours furlough so that he could paint without interference. As a young painter in early 1950's Los Angeles, Paul caught the eye of maverick curator Walter Hopps, and together they began a decades-long working relationship. He was among the few artists to exhibit in all venues overseen by Hopps during his seminal Los Angeles period, including the Syndel Studio in 1954, Action Painting in 1955, Action Painting 2 in 1956, the Ferus Gallery in 1957 and the Pasadena Art Museum in 1961, 1963 and 1968. Hopps later championed Paul's work with solo shows at the Corcoran Museum's Dupont Center and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. During the mid-1950's Paul lived in Mexico City, where he spent time at Frida Kahlo's home and studied under Norman Mailer at Mexico City College. In the late 1950's he took a studio in Boston, where he met a beautiful young artist named Carol McPhee. Paul and Carol were married and opened the Nova Gallery with friends Bill Georgenes and Don Shaw, then moved to the West Coast, where they thrived as artists and members of the burgeoning contemporary art scene. They founded the Aura Gallery with fellow artists George Herms and Richard Pettibone and had as friends and colleagues some of the most progressive thinkers and artists of the era, among them John Altoon, Peter Volkas, Ed Keinholtz, Dean Stockwell, Stan Brakhage and the pioneering Caltech quantum physicist Richard Feynman, to whom Paul gave drawing lessons in a go-go bar while dancing girls posed for them as life-drawing models. Whose idea that was, we'll never know. The 1960's and 1970's were a prolific period for Paul. He held teaching positions at UC Berkley, the University of Southern California, the University of Oregon and the University of South Florida at Tampa. He won a Copley Foundation Grant, sat on the jury of the National Endowment for the Arts and exhibited at numerous public venues including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the 34th Corcoran Biennial, DOCUMENTA 5, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Chicago Arts Club and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where Paul and Chuck Close shared a two-person show. In 1965, Paul's work was shown in the American Express Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, only to be taken down after the Reverend Billy Graham lobbied against its depiction of nudity. Paul loved that. In 1965 Carol gave birth to their only child, Peter, and in 1971 the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Paul held a position as artist in residence at the famed Tamarind Institute. With help from lithographer Chris Cordes and other Tamarind printers, Paul produced the institute's first-ever series of lithographs to incorporate photographic source material. While working in New Mexico Paul and Carol fell in love with the small village of Cerrillos, purchasing the town's historic school compound, which included a large gymnasium, basketball court, bleachers and stage. The family lived there throughout the 1970's, becoming good friends with artist Georgia O'Keefe, who often visited them for impromptu roller skating parties in the gym. In 1980 Paul and Carol moved to Santa Fe, where they designed and built a large studio and exhibition space. They lived and worked there together for the rest of their lives, practically buried beneath seven decades of art. Paul's repertoire and visual command as an artist was truly remarkable. He worked his way there from humble beginnings, painting almost every day for over 70 years. During that time he transitioned from Abstract Expressionism, to Assemblage, to Figurative Surrealism, to New Realism, to Color-Field Minimalism, to pure line drawing - achieving a level of mastery in each discipline that few artists ever attain in a single mode or medium. Paul Sarkisian was a force of nature who lived in the service of beauty. Words cannot express how his passing marks the end of an era in which original thinkers shaped their own reality and set the stage for great contributions through art and action. He did it his way, putting passion before everything else, and that passion lives on in the nearly 1000 works he left behind. He is survived by his son Peter, daughter-in-law Lisa, grandson Roman, sisters-in-law Doris and Rose, cousins Julia, Janice, Laurie, Gina and Sophia, his nephews and nieces Scott, Mark, Keith, Kirsten, Debra, Lois and Lee, his great nieces and nephews, his brother-in-law Joe, Joe's wife Mary Ellen and the rest of the McPhee clan. He was the great artist in the family, for whom we all had deep respect and admiration. We love you Paul. Safe travels. A private memorial for Paul will be held during the fall.