A Collaboation of Artists, Scientists at Armory Center

Jirayr Zorthian was known as an eccentric artist, celebrating each new birthday surrounded by nude women who would feed the socialite grapes. His wife has said that he believed “woman was the savior of everything,” using the canvas as a means to exhibit and illustrate what can be considered every man’s fantasy. With a long history of tragedy – surviving the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, losing his father because of it and seeing two of his children die – Zorthian used art as a means of salvation from all the troubles that seemed to haunt him throughout his life. Nudes gave him the refuge he needed to escape the pains of his past.

Having taught renowned physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman how to draw, it is easy to see the amount of Zorthian’s influence in Feynman’s work. Like Zorthian, Feynman grew interested in nude models, drawing several sketches of the female figure.

The appreciation and intimacy between these two artists and their subjects pervade the Armory Center in Pasadena with the exhibit “A Conversation in Art.” It documents the “most famous artist and scientist collaborations in the history of Southern California,” according to the Armory Center.

Zorthian’s work is vibrant with color, even using Dali-esque themes, mixing surrealist concepts with everyday ideologies. In one painting, Zorthian paints a modern day fable of Sleeping Beauty and the Beast, illustrating the beast with a gold Mickey Mouse watch, a gold dog-tag military chain, hipster-looking sunglasses and an extravagant, pimp-like wardrobe. Of course, the sleeping beauty in front of the beast is a beautiful nude woman, while skyscrapers of neighboring cities – Pasadena, Hollywood and Altadena – reside geometrically in the background.

Made in 1993, the painting of Sleeping Beauty and the Beast perfectly captures Zorthian’s bouncy, enigmatic persona. A calm, colorful character (the beast) poised at observing its subject (the sleeping, naked beauty).

Likewise, Feynman’s work captures his brilliance and interest in everyday figures, namely women and people. Most of his work is a collection of pencil sketches of random people around the Caltech campus, where he researched and studied quantum electrodynamics (the field that won him his Nobel Prize) and physics.

Feynman’s most interesting piece is a display of his notes, appropriately titled “Head Studies and Mathematical Equations,” which is an illustration of exactly that. On one side of the paper lie complex equations while the other side displays outlines of figures of heads. It is no masterpiece of any sort, yet of the all paintings, it gives the most insight to Feynman’s playful, day-dreaming personality. It is a perfect display of his character – the scientific artist, so to speak, or vice versa.

The exhibit opened June 29 and will continue in the Armory Gallery of the Armory Center in Pasadena until Aug. 31. Admission is free.