The Unknown Craftsman Made Real: Sopon Bezirdjian, Armenian-ness and Crafting the Late Ottoman Palaces

Sopon Bezirdjian (1839-1915) was an Armenian subject of the Ottoman Empire, born in Constantinople. He spent his earlier professional life designing the decorative programs for the palaces of Sultan Abdülaziz (r.1861–76), such as Beylerbeyi (1865) and Çırağan (1871), which were built under the management of the architect Serkis Balyan. This essay draws attention to legacy of Sopon, which has been virtually written out of the historiography. In contrast to recent interpretations that foreground cosmopolitanism, this essay stresses the Armenian nature of the teams that were responsible for these works of the 1860s to 70s and starts to place the role of Sopon within these teams. It also, through looking at Sopon’s archive of drawings, investigates Sopon’s engagement with his Ottoman, Armenian and the European (he moved to England around 1880) sides to his identity and shows how Armenian aspects were increasingly coming to the foreground as political strains increased. This essay puts forward the case for the highlighting the Armenian-ness behind the crafting of late Ottoman architecture and for the centrality of this working milieu to later communal transformations

‘I Understood that he Is entrusted to serve some great business undertaking’: Armenian architects reshaping the Ottoman east in the Hamidian era (1876–1909)

Ottoman urban change in the nineteenth century has been associated with two ‘top down’ factors: firstly European influence (in the form of foreign architects, new building types, planning methods, civic bodies, etc.) and secondly, the state’s implementation of reforms centralising the supervision of building works. This paper looks to the cities of the Ottoman east to stress the agency of Armenian architects over local building activities. These architects not only provided a service at a time when the state was incapacitated, but they reformulated the urban image in these locations so that it was, at once, modern (conceived in terms of a European or Russian metropolitan model), local, and Ottoman

Towards Inclusive Art Histories: Ottoman Armenian Voices Speak Back

Despite a focus on art history, the concerns raised in Issue 6 of Études arméniennes contemporaines transcend the merely art historical, critically reflecting upon the manner in which the turbulent and heavily politicized seas of the Ottoman historical past are navigated by historians of all stripes and shades. The essays presented in this volume advocate new types of revisionist, methodologically and empirically sound histories that challenge misconstrued and misrepresented historical pasts, and critique the problematic, inadequate approaches and reductive projections of dominant nationalist/nation-centric or Ottomanist historiographies. Furthermore, they introduce into the debate hitherto silenced voices that have thus far been deliberately excluded from history. In so doing, this volume aims to contribute to the discussion towards the rendering of inclusive, nuanced and just representations of complex pasts. Dans cette sixième livraison, Études arméniennes contemporaines a choisi de donner toute la place qu’elle méritait à l’histoire de l’art, et particulièrement celle des artistes arméniens, peintres, photographes, décorateurs, mécènes qui ont pris leur essor dans le contexte ottoman d’avant 1915. Un choix d’autant plus nécessaire à l’heure où les historiens tentent d’amener l’écriture du passé ottoman vers de nouveaux rivages, loin des écueils ordinaires d’une histoire politisée et stato-centrée. Les articles rassemblés dans ce volume plaident tous pour des approches méthodologiques et empiriques révisées de ce passé. Rompant avec une grille de lecture nationale ou nationaliste de l’histoire de l’art et des artistes ottomans, il s’agit d’en faire entendre toutes les voix dans leur diversité et de restituer les nuances d'un monde disparu