Ode to the Aubergine

I was sitting in my garden, wondering what to write about in my next blog, when I heard the lush produce in my vegetable patch whispering, “Write about us!” Amidst the greens of my Swiss chard, cucumbers and curly lettuce, my eye focused on a perfect, pink baby… aubergine.

I’ve been growing vegetables faithfully for fourteen years. When I went to Jean Talon market in May to buy my plants I was determined to try something new. I settled on pink aubergine, thinking it would contrast pleasantly with green. I was right. When the first fruit matured I was so in love with it that I didn’t want to pick it. Finally, after taking several photos of it, I let my son pick it. He was also fascinated by it, but unlike me, had no qualms about cutting it up and cooking it. I must admit that once my baby eggplant transformed into an aromatic, steaming dish I had no problem eating it, savoring each mouthful of sweet sensation.

The Aubergine in Art

Still Life With a Ginger Jar and Eggplants, Paul Cezanne

Paul Cézanne painted Still Life With a Ginger Jar and Eggplants, between 1890 and 1894. With all due respect to Cezanne, I must say that this composition doesn’t glorify the eggplant. The pears on the other hand look scrumptious.

Interior With Aubergines, Henri Matisse

In Henri Matisse’s Interior With Aubergines, painted between 1911 and 1912, the eggplants rule! Although the three eggplants are small, they are the focal point in this delightful, decorative interior.

This painting inspired me to create a photographic still life with an eggplant. Since we had already eaten my eggplant, I’d have to buy one. When I got to I.G.A., all I found was a pack of two baby eggplants, for 3.99$, which seemed a bit steep because when I say baby I mean baby, as in three inches worth of fruit. Yes, fruit, because this member of the nightshade family is classified botanically as a berry. I didn’t dish out the 3.99$ because although the babies were cute they would never amount to much in a dish.

Aubergine Trivia
How did the eggplant get its name? The word eggplant originally referred to a white-skinned, ovoid-shaped variety. Mark Vogel, in his article, “Eggplant: A Botanical Identity Crisis,” writes that while the word eggplant was popular in the United States, the British, French, and other Europeans referred to this berry (!) as aubergine, which derives from a Sanskrit word meaning “to cure wind-disorder.” Eggplants were thought to cure flatulence. They’ve also been known, at different points in history, to be aphrodisiac, poisonous, and to cause insanity.

Aubergine Anecdote
My cousin, Sylvia, who makes an irresistible babaganoush, swears that if you utter the word babganoush while looking for a parking spot, you will automatically encounter a space to park your car. She successfully demonstrated this piece of folklore in the congested streets of downtown Istanbul. I tried this trick in Montreal’s Plateau distrct, without success, and just when my son chanted “Hummus, hummus, hummus!” from the backseat, an SUV pulled out in front of us, leaving ample room to park our car. Perhaps each city has its own magic word.

The Stray Eggplant Project
Stray Eggplant, is a conceptual art project by artist, author and ordained minister, Laura E. Gentry. The project consists of hundreds of small, ceramic eggplants, each with a random quote on it, sold in Art-O-Mat vending machines throughout the U.S.A., Canada and the U.K. Gentry gleaned the phrases from different sources such as song, TV, news, or an overheard conversation. Some of my favorite eggplant quotes are:

“host chocolate tasting parties”
“don’t pay the ferry man”
“a zeal for troll”
“poof, you’re a puppeteer”

Owners of stray eggplants are invited to stage a photograph of themselves posing with their purple fruit, thereby giving meaning to the quote. Some of these photos can be seen on this slide show.

A New Baby
I am not a stray eggplant owner but I bought two fairly large eggplants at I.G.A. the other day. I tried engraving into one of them with a woodcarving tool but wasn’t satisfied with the jagged lines. So I chopped it up into a pasta sauce. The second eggplant is still in the fridge, its skin becoming more wrinkled and less photogenic with each passing day. I considered abandoning the idea of creating a photographic still life featuring the eggplant slash aubergine.

This morning, two weeks after picking the first eggplant, I inspected my vegetable patch. To my delight, under a jungle of leaves I discovered a brand new nightshade berry, quietly waiting to be photographed, Matisse style, and posted on my blog for its 15 minutes of fame.

Talleen Hacikyan

Printmaker Pablo

When my husband and I were expecting our baby twelve years ago, we spent countless hours trying chose a perfect name. It had to sound good in English, French, Spanish and Armenian; it had to be original, without burdening the child with too much originality; and it had to sound good with Herrera-Hacikyan, no easy feat! We settled on the name Paloma.

It’s not that we knew we were going to have a girl. My mother can, and regularly does, attest to the fact that when it comes to opening presents I am the most patient person in the world. It’s true. I like delaying the pleasure, to make it all the more exciting when I do find out what’s under the wrapping. So when our 7-pound-15-ounce gift arrived, and when the resident nurse announced, just like in the old movies, “It’s a boy!” that was news to us, and we were back in the name game. Since Paloma was no longer an option, we chose Pablo.

We didn’t consciously decide to stick with names within the Picasso family but we definitely liked the idea that our son would carry the name of a famous artist. Other inspiring namesakes were Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda; Cuban singer, Pablo Milanés; and Spanish cellist and composer, Pablo Casals. Pablo sounded like the right name for the son of two artists.

Monotype by Pablo, 38 x 28 cm, 2008

When Pablo came to Atelier Circulaire last month to make some prints, and when one of the artists, Judith, saw the monotypes he was churning out, she said, “Well, he certainly has the right name.” A couple of hours later, after seeing the rest of his production, she told another artist, Wing, “Did you see Pablo’s work? We’re wasting our time here!” Wing took one look and asked Pablo if he could buy the pieces from him at cut-rate, sign them himself, and sell them-- for a profit of coarse-- as his own. Maybe I should try that.

Monotype by Pablo, 38 x 28 cm, 2008

Monotype by Pablo, 38 x 28 cm, 2008

Pablo made his monotypes by applying printing ink to a plastic styrene plate and printing onto paper, through an etching press. This is probably the most spontaneous of all printmaking techniques. Ink can be applied with paintbrush, rag, fingers, spatula, rubber stamp, toothbrush…anything goes!

Very quickly I realized that I had to let Pablo experiment and find his own way. I watched him as he rolled colors, one on top of the other, scraping with the spatula along the way to reveal previous layers. I had never seen anyone work a monotype plate quite like that.

Monotype by Pablo, 38 x 28 cm, 2008

Pablo was in his element. Anyone who knows this boy knows that he’s a scientist at heart, forever experimenting, mixing things, constructing, taking apart, figuring out how things work, repairing electronic equipment, freezing things and defrosting them. Alas, my freezer is a lab that has contained, at different times, items such as water balloons, snowballs, wet leather gloves, and just two days ago, a whole tomato! As I watched Pablo apply ink on his plate, I witnessed his scientific and artistic energies converge. I know that art and science overlap; both are a means of investigation. However, to actually see this being demonstrated by one’s own son really drives the point home.

Pablo at the press

Whenever Pablo comes to the studio with me I throw in a visit to one of the many ethnic restaurants on the Main, a few blocks away. We had lunch at an Indian restaurant. Two hours of inking plates and turning the press worked up a healthy appetite; he gobbled up a three course meal, including my desert-- small pieces of round dough, fried and served in severely sweet syrup, a dish that Pablo later tried to concoct at home, unsuccessfully!

Back at the studio, Pablo finished printing his tenth monotype-- a large format, full of energetic strokes of color. As he pulled this print off the press and held it up for his Mom to see, he said, “I liked coming to the studio and I liked making the art.”

I think my husband and I chose the right name, even though it took us the full 30-day legal limit for naming newborns in Quebec to figure that out.

Talleen Hacikyan

Hot off the press!