24/04/2025
“The artist must remain with man, for man never grows old (his style never vanishes, never ages). How could the human issue end, while we are still raw, unrefined material, and barely know our own humanity? Man remains with his fear, his illness, his death, the body, hate, war, racism. The artists who do not struggle against animalistic nature, death, borders, the media, languages, idols, and divisions are unable to be artists of the future. The world is a unity that cannot be divided. There are no greater peoples and lesser peoples, there is only a single species, the human species.
We will find, as was the case before the Tower of Babel, a single humanity, a single language,
a single aspiration: to triumph over nature, to humanize man, to destroy the legends and falsehoods that made us slaves. But the twentieth century is still trying to invent God and use him to justify wars and the most repulsive injustices. We are the English! We are the Americans! We are the Russians! They were capable of carrying out conquests and massacres. But the earth belongs to the whole world. There is a single man, and that man is
the one I seek.”
Excerpt from: Paul Guiragossian’s Book - Art Is a Search for Truth, and the Only Truth That Concerns Me Is the Truth of Man I Never Sought Out Beauty.
Interview with Said Abboud in Al-Nidaa, 1981
Artwork: La Longue Marche (The Long March) (circa 1990) - Oil on Canvas - 120 x 100 cm. Institut Du Monde Arabe collection, Paris, France. Image courtesy
© Paul Guiragossian Foundation
In remembrance of the 110th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
