“Movement and Problems. Galleries, exhibitions, challenges…”
Excerpts from art-critical texts by Greek women in the daily and periodical press in the second half of the 1950s.

The excerpts in the second section address the issue of modern Greek artistic identity, a topic widely discussed at the time. The interwar demand for a visual language that is both ‘authentically’ Greek and ‘validly’ modern resurfaces in the postwar years. It is linked both to the need to overcome a persistent succession of “academicisms”, as Vakalo observes, and to the anxious and risky attempts to conform to the Western aesthetic canon, as Ferentinou notes. In the early Greek postwar years, it was not only weak institutions and infrastructures in education, the art market, or exhibition and museum policies holding the country back in relation to Western art centres, but also an atmosphere of insecurity and indecision that manifested itself as a stance that combined pride with suspicion towards expatriate artists. In the period I examine, this concerned mainly those who settled in Paris and built careers from 1945 onwards, each with varying degrees of rootedness in the Greek art world. Their stylistic evolution, exhibition activity, and any commissions, sales, or distinctions they earned on the international art stage became reference points for domestic artistic production.

These real or imagined borders between the various ‘national’ art scenes, as well as between the centre and the periphery, are among the themes in the excerpts by Mylona and the painter Aglaïa Papa. The texts by Frosso Efthymiadi-Menegaki and Vasso Katraki (included in the third section) are also inviting reflection: on the one hand, the highly ethnocentric tone of the worldly, internationally connected sculptor; on the other, the anti-American undertone of the also recognised printmaker, who as the second postwar Greek woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, would receive the American Tamarind Institute Lithography Award in 1966. The demand for the safeguarding of a ‘national’ artistic language coexists with anxiety over a potentially ‘unassimilated’ and ‘unmetabolised’ imitation of Western models. In the same direction, the painter-printmaker Koula Bekiari worries that “rebellious” art may remain hermetic by cutting off monolingual audiences.

Another group of excerpts concerns the institutional infrastructure that, through its state and private mechanisms, supported the Greek art edifice of the time. Spurred by the mobility of old and new private galleries, art critic Elli Politi addresses the perennial question of ‘authentic’ artistic identity, along with its social and class implications, through the distinction between the “professional” and “amateur artist”.

Two writers that ideologically belong to the Left, author and photographer Elli Papadimitriou and Katraki, focus on the increasing influence of “extra-artistic” factors in the field of art: public relations, financial investments, the construction of the artist as an eccentric persona in the world of the spectacle, and the role of the “immensely rich, ignorant” elite as the clientele of the art market. All are identified as symptoms of a pathology that worsens as the centre of the postwar cultural dynamics shifts westwards, from Paris to New York.

Finally, research by the journalist Lena Savvidi on the danger of a brain drain within the ranks of the Greek Archaeological Service, a vital institution that shapes national identity, turns out to be strikingly timely. In her view, such an exodus would reflect the institutional and financial devaluation of archaeologists and curators of public collections and museums of ancient art.

The final section consists of four excerpts that may be considered early snapshots of aspects of today’s cultural condition. The painter and critic Diana Antonakatou focuses on the features that distinguish the layout of the modern “circular” theatre from that of the traditional stage. The body-centred nature of the former turns the “unprotected” body of the actor into the primary bearer of the performance’s meaning, according to an idea that would later become central in performance art.

Papa notes the dulling of the senses and the intellectual atrophy produced by the speed of modern life and the excessive attention to its material demands. Kleio Tripou-Bostantzoglou, later known primarily as the curator of her family’s historical-photographic archive, touches on the impact of film on the expansion of the past: she claims that camera technology and the art of the lens allow memory to be transformed from human, subjective, and fragmentary into mechanical, cumulative, and potentially limitless. Most importantly, she seems to ‘foresee’ an aspect of today’s internet: the global spread of immediately accessible information, conveyed through images and video, in a digital environment.

The section closes with a gesture in the direction of the notorious anything goes tenet of the postmodern condition: “Anything is acceptable, everything belongs to the present day, and everything may be beautiful and everything may be ugly”, declares journalist and publisher Eleni Vlachou in her critical overview of the confusion caused, in her view, in uncultivated and arrogant modern Greeks by the absence of standards and aesthetic guidance, but also because of the rupture with established hierarchies of good taste.

“The official establishment of non-figurative art has flooded the field of art with a multitude of works that call themselves abstract, but which in essence are far removed from the spirit of its core principles. Especially in these postwar years, when abstract expression became a kind of fashion, one finds a dubious overproduction that misconstrues its basic principles and adulterates its character. Faced with these unassimilated constructions, the public’s artistic sensibility gives rise to understandable confusion about the phenomenon of abstract art. One could even say that this confusion becomes a dilemma for even its most fervent supporters. For the question arises: does the new aesthetic vision contain within it the potential for universal expansion, or is it destined to remain confined to a category of artists who by inclination gravitate toward transcendental quests? […] In our century, when individual freedom is considered the supreme good, artists should realise that every attempt to miscast themselves is against the prevalent spirit. There are many artists who, after a long journey in figurative art, struggle to attune themselves and redirect their energy into worlds alien to their temperament and beyond their intellectual powers. Furthermore, many young people keen on overnight fame are experimenting with ideas that are derivative and, as such, put their own natural development on hold. The result is a parody of abstract art, lacking spirit and organic unity, which clouds the aesthetic appreciation of the most creative art of our time.”

— Efi Ferentinou (1915–1979), “Artistic Topics: Figuration and Abstraction”, Eleftheria newspaper, 19 March 1958 [in Greek].

“Before my last trip, messages had reached me through photographs, reproductions in art magazines, etc., about the many common elements in art today between even the most distant parts of the world. And it astonished me to realise how both spirit and language are essentially the same. Take, for example, last July’s issue of Zygos: On pages 5 and 7, one can see in the clearest possible terms how close the Spanish sculptor Chillida (first prize in sculpture at this year’s Biennale) is to Germany’s Koenig and Japan’s Shindo. The same conception of the architecture of form, the same geometric rhythm, the same perception of void and matter, the same form in different content. This was one of the reasons, among many other examples of such incidental coherence, that made me want to travel in order to see whether things are as they appear. So, it seems that there is little doubt that the language is common, perhaps because of international artistic exchanges of recent years or simply as a reflection of the spirit of the times.”

— Alex Mylona (1920–2016), “Thoughts and Conclusions After the End of the International Exhibitions”, Zygos, no. 35, October 1958, pp. 12–13 [in Greek].

“The creation of an artwork is not like the monologue of a hermit who is content to whisper to himself. On the contrary, it is an opening, an invitation towards someone else to share an emotion and an idea that the creator seeks to externalise through his work […] When we speak of a revolution in art and denounce the conservatism through which social institutions and the state view art, we often forget that for 40,000 years, from the first art made by Homo sapiens to today’s works of partial or total abstraction, humans (except perhaps in religious or magical symbols) could only see in the plastic arts the language of representational creation […] In these 40,000 years, human knowledge along with the technical means of artmaking have expanded, the external world has changed, but our souls and emotions are unchanged, for better or for worse, to the degree that we can still have primitif creators, some prehistoric, others contemporary […] However wise the expressive means of revolutionary art may be, they will fail to convey to the broad masses that ‘element of life’ which the creator wishes to express, until those masses have learned the language, or rather the innumerable languages, that we hear today in art.”

— Koula Bekiari (1905–1992), response to the inquiry “Art and Life: In what way do you see the element of life entering the artwork?”, Zygos, no. 48, November 1959, pp. 19–21: 20 [in Greek].

c

“Visual arts projects are again faced with a housing problem this year. Despite high demand, many well-known galleries have already shut down, and others are following suit. What is to blame? The public’s financial hardships, a lack of willpower, or is it professional inflation? Older, recognised artists attribute it to the inflation that has recently gripped the professional art world. Most painting, decorative art, and, more rarely, sculpture exhibitions are now held by mostly amateur artists. Many want to make known their particular occupation, their ‘hobby’, according to the word that is most commonly parroted in social circles. And it appears that these are the ones who are most active and are able to pay for exhibition spaces.”

— Elli K. Politi (1912–?), “The Visual Arts: Movement and Problems; galleries, exhibitions, challenges…”, Athinaiki newspaper, 26 November 1955 [in Greek].

“Whenever art has meaning, it also has responsibilities. Without responsibilities, it lapses into insignificance. Is it in art’s or the artist’s interest, even as an individual, to be so insignificant as to be irresponsible? To do as they please with impunity? […] Though art can jettison its responsibility to engage with ordinary people, it can still have dealings, but with the few ‘select’ people, the exclusive and the excluded, whoever they may be – critics, art-lovers, who mobilise their immensely rich, ignorant clientele through various extra-artistic means (parties, long beards, etc.). And because this immensely rich and ignorant clientele asks for nothing and needs nothing beyond irresponsible entertainment, it also wants art that is irresponsible and entertaining. Through this ‘elite’ and ‘eclectic’ intelligentsia on one hand and ignorant wealth on the other, we end up with a tyrannical symphony of incoherence. And now the other clientele of common people, equally ignorant, remains locked out even from the hope or desire for that wealth, though it essentially needs it, it needs art, in the same way it needs everything because it is never satiated by anything.”

— Elli Papadimitriou, “Commerce and Art”, Zygos, no. 38, January 1959, pp. 15–16: 16 [in Greek].

“Actually, I wasn’t completely uninformed when I arrived in Venice. I knew about the give-and-take between critics, art dealers, and artists that takes place within the ‘Biennale’. But I never imagined I would find myself in a kind of stock exchange: financial institutions behind the galleries and the collectors; galleries behind the critics and very luxurious art magazines, illustrated, funded by the galleries themselves; cheap vote-trading, politics, advertising, fabricated sales and successes. More than once, I wondered: What kind of freedom is the new art struggling for? Is it fighting for a dubious and abstract freedom sold purposefully and crudely, for a mere pittance? So that the incompetent and the mediocre may find the door wide open, pour in, and make themselves at home? Contemporary art resembles those deep harbours that can hold both great ships and small skiffs. One pores anxiously over this chaos and the decay that has afflicted all previously accepted values, trying to catch the new messages that our time brings into art. And one receives back nothing but the echo of our vanity and our emptiness. What has happened to artists? Have they poked out their own eyes, or have they become scoundrels? Art has drowned within its own materials, its textures, its frantic originality. Scarecrows to frighten away the birds…So this is what has become of humanity’s ancient longing and sorrow, its desire to be freed from nature?”

— Vasso Katraki (1914–1988), “Impressions from the 30th Biennale”, Zygos, nos. 56–57, July–August 1960, pp. 5–9: 5 [In Greek].

“It is difficult to find a public institution to which entry requires as much preparation and as many qualifications as the Greek Archaeological Service. […] Throughout his life and career, the Greek archaeologist, conscious as he is of having to measure up to his foreign colleagues who visit the country daily, constantly studies and researches the historical and artistic past, not as a mere admiring onlooker but as a creative investigator. And he offers the fruits of his efforts to society and to the State, whether through substantial discoveries, museum work, or even through works of popularisation in articles, books, guides. And yet one would think that the State is bent upon turning them away and towards other fields; at this moment it has become a test of endurance. […] It is outrageous that experts with such output should lag so far behind, and that their most urgent demand should be merely for their salaries to be brought up to that of schoolteachers – salaries that everyone already regards as meagre! […] With a sense of horror and sorrow I heard many of the young archaeologists currently in the Service wonder whether they should resign while there is still time and they are young and find, through their qualifications, other livelihoods. Others still are thinking of going to America, where several of their young colleagues have been invited and are now leading comfortable lives and are employed in top positions in universities and other institutions.”

— Lena Savvidi (b. 1928), “There will soon be no archaeologists left in Greece! Protect our Archaeological Service”, To Vima newspaper, 9 October 1957 [in Greek].

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“In contrast to the restrictive submissiveness of the Boîte Italienne (that rectangular box that opens towards the audience), whose painted backdrops are marvels of perspectival execution that create the impression of space, a type that continues to this day and in contrast to naturalism, which turned the stage into a faithful image of reality (even by bringing real horses and riders upon it), many new forms of theatre have arisen in our time. The circular theatre took its form from this specific reaction, as well as from today’s need for economy of space, rooted as it is in the fertile soil of the great traditions mentioned earlier. […] Here, abstraction and theatrical convention, once imposed by tradition and moulded by the actor’s astonishing skill, are precisely the source of the immense problems of this bare, circular space within which the actor moves unprotected, without the support of scenery or the cover of the three-sided stage. In our country, the circular theatre has gone to great lengths to accustom both actors and audiences to the new norms, though the latter still draw on the old tradition. Indeed, one could say it was forced to make certain concessions to both, replacing the starkly minimal scenic appearance of its first productions with richer, more defining scenic elements that threw the spotlight on the scenographic role and gave the actor support.”

— Diana Antonakatou (1920?–2011), “The Sets of Athenian Theatres”, Zygos, nos. 36–37, November–December 1958, p. 32, 50: 32 [in Greek].

“Many people in art have ‘banished’ reason and rallied behind the slogan that artists should create like children. But alas! We are no longer children. And just as I cannot lisp, neither can I paint like a child […] [Our time] has made today’s art so superficial. Our senses have been dulled. The pace of life, and the fact that people are short on time because of the precious hours they devote to the demands of living, means that they are unable to spend time thinking, giving rise to today’s painting, which is nothing but surface […] I appreciate genuine modern painting, and I like it. But I would like to know if it is sincere, whether artists from different countries would express themselves in the same way if they were separated by the Great Wall of China and had no contact with one another.”

— Aglaïa Papa (1904–1984), in I. Voutsinas, “Visual Arts: A Survey Among Artists; the painter Aglaïa Papa speaks”, Vradyni newspaper, 28 July 1955 [in Greek].

“If it is true that by shrinking distances the projectile, the airplane, and radio waves have expanded the present, then photography, with its capacity to record every visual moment, has expanded the past. It has created an accumulation of memory. No longer does every moment of humanity’s life belong exclusively to an almost unchangeable past, because the development and evaluation of that past no longer depend solely on our very limited human memory and limited testimony. Photography has given man an illusion of a pause within the flow. And space, too, is reduced in its essence through photography. Thus, man is led steadily towards possibilities of unimaginable omniscience. A time will soon come when anyone living within an organised society will be able to experience, without the slightest movement, the most extensive documentation possible on any subject.”

— Kleio Tripou-Bostantzoglou (1919–2014), “The Documentary Film and Athens”, Zygos, no. 6, April 1956, p. 10 [in Greek].

“Today, an immense freedom has left the world without guidance and has led to countless problems and difficulties. At this moment, there is no prevailing trend of taste, no rhythm has been imposed, and no submission to any particular style can be regarded as a mark of success, wealth, or good taste. The people who set these trends, the great and wealthy stars of society or the moneyed, have in one city a house adorned in the classical style, wrapped in brocade, full of furniture of various Louis periods and loaded with appropriately royal English silverware, while in another city they may have a cube of concrete, marble, crystal, and steel, their walls adorned with Modiglianis, and their silverware and furniture from Scandinavia. Anything is acceptable, everything belongs to the present day, and everything may be beautiful, and everything may be ugly. The great trap of this freedom has ensnared the fundamentally unprepared, uneducated, uncultivated, and, at the same time, egocentric and self-admiring Greek. The Greek home, the Greek shop, the modern one, is externally and internally among the ugliest in any civilised European city. I do not have in mind the humble Greek home in the village, but the affluent bourgeois home, the home of the person who, in other displays of taste, finds himself on an incomparably higher level.”

— Eleni Vlachou (1911–1995), response to the survey “Good and Bad Taste”, Zygos, no. 58, September 1960, pp. 36–37: 36 [in Greek].

coda

“The feminine sensibility in painting, not as perspective but in essence, is flat and for this reason always gravitates towards the decorative. I do not know whether this weakness – and I wish to remind you that I am a woman and this is a matter of great concern to me – is only found in painting, or whether it is a natural tendency that drives women towards works of somewhat lesser significance, in the current sense, of course. That is, are women able to arrive at an experience of the cosmic element, or are they bound by earthly limits? […] I digress, yet I need this digression to think this issue through by examining the feminine in poetry, which is chiefly erotic and again confined to a single level. I say this because women’s poetry has as its standard the lofty poetry of men. Yet if she turns the needle of her compass not towards the North but towards the South, advancing through her own values, she will again reach God. Schematically, we can say that if the path of men is love-self-awareness-idea-God, then for women it will be love-motherhood-life-God. In this way, we have the whole circle.”

— Eleni Vakalo (1921–2001), “Issues in Art: Women’s painting; Zongolopoulos and Leontaritou exhibitions”, Ta Nea newspaper, 19 May 1951 [in Greek].