Last week was a birthday of my friend’s daughter, she is an artist. Thinking a lot about the present, I have choose Datto Machavariani’s one of the modern painters in Georgia, illustrated book “The knight in the Panther’s Skin”. That is the Georgian epic poem, written in the 12th century by Georgia’s national poet Shota Rustaveli. Romance consists of over 1600 Rustavelian Quatrains and the “masterpiece of the Georgian literature” is most precious treasure, which was part of the dowry of any bride during centuries. Girl was gratified.
First editions were made up by various artists: Mamuka Tavakalashvili, Mihaly Zichy, Lado Gudiashvili, Sergo Kobuladze and others. The book attacked me in my childhood and same impact made on the little, five-year old Jubilee. I mean, it is not “Winnie-the-Pooh” fairy tale, and why does it still have the power to attract us, to seduce us, to stir our imaginations? The answers are of course multiple and often contradictory and I want collapse about it through the course of this essay.
1. Shota Rustaveli “The Man in the Panther’s Skin” 1646; Illustrator: Mamuka Tavakarashvili
2. Shota Rustaveli "The Man in the Panter's Skin" . Illustrator: Lado Gudiashvili, 1939
3. Zichy, Mihály. Illustrations to 'The Knight in the Panther's Skin'. 1888
The radical irrationality demands from interpretations, social logic ensures that proper rewards and punishments socially sanctioned ones.
Those have been favorites, not just with readers but with illustrator. Cannot imagine if modern illustrator can quite match the elegant perversity of Sergo Kobuladze’s black-and-white nature scene from “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin”, featuring the lonesome knight Tariel sitting near the water, carrying knout in one hand and the other hand under his head; disparity looking through the infinity, wearing beast’s skin on his shoulder and warrior saber inactively, and leather boots afloat knee-pans. The dreadful, sophisticated warrior is all heartbroken.
Years pass, the illustrations changed, their authors changed, the world has changed, many contemporary artists have come close in their versions of the knight’s profile, with which I will be primarily concerned in this essay.
The book drawings on paper, stands out. The artist’s ambition, complexity of his technique and thinking alike in the illustrations; the cruelty and crude eroticism in magic beauty and tenderness marked in its folkloristic roots still embraces us.
In addition, we - the viewers are clearly entering the drama. Due to the hero’s face looking in nowhere, cruel warrior with gentle heart. We feel identical heroes in love with him. What happens to him happens to us.
Datto’s illustrations are important not merely because they interpret the time-honored poem, but because the artist has found his new ways of fantasy and imagination daring his experimentation and achievement.
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