Zorthian Art $ Times

Full transcript of Zorthian Art $ Times on The Dr. Susan Block Show:

The purpose of life is living. 92 years ago in a small town in Armenia a baby was born. And yes, yes, his name is Zirair Zorthyam. A little correction, my full name.

It happens to be Colonel Zirair Arnak Hampartsum Hovsep Baldanos Zorthyam. How could I forget? He only knew my early life. I was born before the genocide.

One and a half million Armenians were slaughtered and I was there at the time. I was five years old and at five years old I have seen beheadings, rapes, unbelievable, horrible, horrible things. But somehow, somehow my father escaped death seven times. It's such a long story.

And then finally we came to New Haven, Connecticut. I loved New Haven. I had some very interesting experiences during my youth. I got a scholarship to study in the Yale School of Fine Arts.

Yale used to teach every kind of technique imaginable. This painting is done in a medium that artists no longer use. It's egg tempera. One third yolk of an egg, one third water and one third color.

And this is the result. It was when Cortez came to Mexico and they thought he was a god with this interesting ship and so on. And they brought him many presents. And then when he started cutting their fingers off, if they didn't give him enough gold,

they changed their mind a little bit. He went from god to the devil real quick. Okay, and you did this at Yale? Yale, yes.

This was your graduation piece? My graduation piece. I also got honors for the year. And you deserved it.

Very wealthy people would send their offering to Yale so that they would get into skull and bones. Right. By the way, my brother was a skull and bone. Yale men had an attitude towards sex.

There was a girl you picked up on the street. And category number two was a very attractive New Haven girl that they took to certain football games and minor prompts. Then there was a girl back home that they were going to marry and they would come to the Yale, Harvard, Princeton games. So these guys, who of course know me very well, I had a studio up in an attic in my father's house.

During that weekend, they thought they might bring their girl to meet an interesting person, who's Gerard Zorthian. Oh, yes. And mind you, also these girls were supposed to be virgins. So sometime during the afternoon when they were there, the girl would sometimes suggest that he go and get some ice cream or something, or far away.

And while she was away, we would have the most amazing, wonderful sex. His name is Dabini Zorthian. We were married for 45 years. He was very energetic and alive.

He was in, we were at a bachelor's ball and he just filled up the room with his energy. As I said to my boyfriend that I was dancing with, look at that little man over there. He's having so much fun, he's having more fun than anyone, but I was very shy and inhibited. But so then my boyfriend suddenly, when the orchestra stopped, he stopped and he danced me over to where Shidair was.

And he said to Shidair, my girlfriend likes the way you dance and she wants to dance with you. He turned around and walked away. And I was so embarrassed, I would have run after him, except that I saw either face looking up at me with a big smile and eagerness. And so I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to go through this with this.

And so we had an amazing, exciting, wonderful dance. And he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, which nobody had ever done. So that was really exciting. I was 19.

This was in the middle of Los Angeles at the crystal room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was the spinster's ball. Some of my art comes from my experiences in my life earlier. All things I see that irritate me or make me very upset.

For instance, this one is called the Awakening. But my time, you know, every boy who reaches puberty, there's hardly ever exception to this. Falls in love with an older woman. I fell in love with my French teacher and I worked so hard and got good marks.

And then I knew she would do this and I'd say, I'd misbehave myself purposely because she would say, you come and sit right in front of me where I can watch you. And where you could watch her. And she used to have this.

It was in the 20s when short skirts were in the room. She crossed her leg and pointed it. It would just drive me crazy. Anyway, one day she said, Shahr, I want you to stay after school when everyone leaves.

And I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, so my heart was beating. And when everyone left, she called me like this and she said, Shahr, I know you like me. And I like you, but you're too young for me. But she said, I have just met this wonderful man

who I'm very much in love with and this summer I'm going to marry him. I haven't even told the principal, but I told you because I know you care. So for three days I couldn't eat, I couldn't drink. My mother thought I was sick.

So anyway, this is my period. I don't like the word naked. In fact, I tell my people, please, I don't want you to go around saying Zorthy. Surrounding himself with 12 naked girls.

They were nudes and technically they were not even nude because they had wreaths on their heads.