New banknotes will be set in circulation 2018 onwards. The Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia has presented the sketches of the 3rd generation of banknotes. Pursuant to that, 1000 AMD will be dedicated to Paruyr Sevak, 2000 AMD to Tigran Petrosyan, 5000 AMD to William Saroyan, 10.000 AMD to Komitas, 20.000 AMD to Hovhannes Aivazovsky, 50.000 AMD to Grigor the Illuminator. 100.000 AMD banknotes will not be produced any longer.
The sketches of the banknotes have become a heated topic of discussion in social networks, many users, ridiculing them, have suggested their variants of banknotes with the images of them and famous people (Cher, Tigran Mukuchyan, Samvel Martirosyan).
Artist Sahak Poghosyan, for example, has noticed that the times for the banknote to bear the image of anyone have passed long ago.
Orientalist Vardan Voskanyan writes that Armenians in Facebook discuss the design of the new banknotes, and no one speaks about the fact that their amount is going to remain the same in salaries and pensions for the upcoming year.
The president of the Painters’ Union, Karen Aghamyan was asked about his opinion as a painter, of the design of the new banknotes, which will be set into circulation since 2018. “Money is not a painting first and foremost, its function is important. The significance of a banknote is to avoid fabrication. And viewing it as an aesthetic value, I can say I do not see anything bad in it. Perhaps it was possible to do it better, but it is not bad as well. Banknotes have precise color differences. 2000 dram’s existence will be useful”, explained the president of the Painters’ Union.
He also recalled the old Soviet banknotes: “The design of the Soviet roubles was something entering the international culture, everything was done correctly. They differed both in size and in color. It was very easy to differentiate between one rouble and three, five… For example, in case of Armenian drams, 1000 and 5000 look very much alike and they are often confused, it was an unacceptable mistake. As to the new banknotes, all drams differ precisely in color, which is already good. It would be good to make them different in size as well, inasmuch as there are countries where banknotes differ in size.”
Gohar HAKOBYAN
