Painting in Contemporary Art
Between the Market and Museums: Greek Realities

Sasha Streshna reworks historically charged images, many drawn from school history textbooks dating to the Soviet times in which her parents lived. Her recurring themes centre on colonialism, coercion, and political or gendered dominance. Through systematic allusions to art history, Streshna expressionistically recasts her materials, covering her initial iconographic sources and spotlighting the potency of this gesture as a political act.

Through the strict discipline of the easel, Vasilis Zografos creates works that bring the viewing experience back to the fore; his austere framing, the materiality of his brushstrokes, and his complex colour palettes intimate rather than explain, transforming the familiar into something nigh-on metaphysical. Drawing on the traditions of representational art, his output constitutes a characteristic example of how painting can be relevant today rather than simply topical, of its time rather than of the passing moment.

Similarly, Eirene Efstathiou reshapes fleeting images drawn from current affairs and archival materials into paintings; the deceleration inherent in this process reveals new readings of the source photographs and showcases the value of materiality and duration, bolstering the power of painting to forge relationships with, and engender contemplative experiences in the viewer. In a time when myriad images circulate at breakneck speed, when images are worn thin by this process and endlessly replaced, Efstathiou’s paintings transform the ephemeral into durational experience. The painting acts as a surface for memory – a place in which to gather, not a place from which to disperse.

In all three instances, painting functions as a ‘visual intermediary’, slowing down the viewing process to illuminate its material, temporal, and emotional dimensions, serving as a counterweight to the digital fragmentation of experience. By going beyond surface representationalism, it creates a space of silent discourse and inner absorption where forms, objects, and spaces can co-exist in indeterminate yet dynamic interaction. The surface of the canvas becomes a mise en scène of quietude and proximity that invites viewers to pause, observe, and reflect. Such works demand an investment of time, of course, by both their creators and their viewers, and do not lend themselves to swift consumption of the image. An inner stillness is required and, perhaps in the case of less conversant viewers, a gaze that will do the work of decoding.

At the end of the day, within an artistic landscape in constant flux, painting is not simply a mode of representation but a space for thinking the image through – a way of understanding not just what we see, but also how we see. In the digital age, painting reminds us that vision is never neutral – it is an action, a choice, time spent.

The Greek case illuminates the relationship between institutional policy and painting in a noteworthy way. The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens | EMΣT, was founded in the early 2000s,12 at a time when international trends had already turned towards new media – video art and installations. Its collection was built without a long-term acquisition policy in place, shaped piecemeal and determined by shifting curatorial and aesthetic priorities. As is often the case with institutions that lack stable funding, the collection reflects – more than anything – the theoretical frameworks and concerns of each period, rather than offering a cohesive narrative snapshot of Greek and international art.

Painting, while present, has a limited place within the collection. Most such works owned by the museum were acquired through gifts and bequests from artists and collectors, and only rarely through targeted purchasing. Thus, we find works by major Greek painters of late modernism – such as Dimosthenis Kokkinidis, Pantelis Xagoraris, Rena Papaspyrou, and Sotiris Sorongas – that entered the collection thanks to the generosity of the artists themselves or their heirs. It is telling that even artists honoured with solo exhibitions at EMΣT, such as Bia Davou and Chronis Botsoglou, saw their works acquired as gifts rather than purchased.

The very few purchases made during the museum’s first phase focused mainly on new media, following international trends of the time that tied ‘contemporary art’ to video works, installations, and conceptual practices. This was not an arbitrary choice; rather, it was an expression of this newly founded museum’s need to put itself on the global ‘contemporary art museum’ map, distancing itself from the arts discourse that identified with painting and its ‘national’ character. Painting – associated in the mindsets of many with fine art schools, academicism, and more traditional aesthetics – seemed to stand in opposition to rhetoric on what was truly ‘contemporary’ and ‘international’ at the time.

This means that, from its very beginning, EMΣT harboured an inherent contradiction: as a national institution, it had a duty to showcase Greek artistic production, yet also to define itself at odds with this output, adopting the vocabulary of the international avant-garde. Person-centric in structure from the start, the museum was shaped in accordance with the vision and priorities of its successive directorates. From its foundation to the present day, EMΣT has been headed by three directors – Anna Kafetsi (1997–2014), Katerina Koskina (2014–2018), and Katerina Gregos (2021 to date) – each of whom spotlighted different aspects of the ‘contemporary’. Under Anna Kafetsi, the museum formulated its theoretical basis, with an emphasis on international terminology for conceptual practices; a series of major exhibitions showcasing work by Greek painters were indeed presented, but the purchased works were almost exclusively conceptual in nature or multimedia in approach. Under Katerina Koskina, EMΣT was consolidated as an institution, adopting rules of procedure for its governance and moving into the Fix building (the museum’s permanent home), though operating on a stringent budget. The collection was enriched at this time by numerous donations, including works by younger painters (such as Ilias Papailiakis, Savvas Christodoulides, and Vasilis Zografos), but these paintings were often not representative of their broader output. Once Katerina Gregos took the reins, the museum’s policy on gifts and bequests was completely overhauled. The museum would now assert its right to play an active role in its professional affairs: introducing guidelines for the fair pay of artists, curators, and academics, setting strict criteria for the acceptance of gifts and bequests, and launching a comprehensive programme for the purchase of new works. Despite such initiatives, painting still has a limited presence in the collection: between 2021 and 2025, out of 104 works accepted as gifts, only five were strictly paintings; and out of 109 works purchased during the same period, only one was a painting.

This percentage share is no accident; it reflects both the circumstances in which the collection was built and the priorities of contemporary art, which often emphasise works as processes, experiences, or ideas. It is my personal belief that the limited presence of contemporary Greek painters’ output in the collection does not indicate an underestimation of the medium but rather reflects the strategic efforts of successive museum directorates to align EMΣT’s acquisition and exhibition policies with international trends in the field. As such, the selection of works is not solely subject to aesthetic or historical criteria but also to the ways in which the museum formulates its mission statement in order to maintain its institutional legitimacy within a globalised framework.

From this perspective, the lack of painting in the museum’s collection can be viewed through the prism of what is called ‘collection lag’ – the time gap that lies between active artistic production and its official incorporation by institutional bodies. In the case of EMΣT, this gap appears to be bigger than at other institutions: artists create works, but their acquisition by the museum is delayed, resulting in a collection that does not fully reflect current output, especially when it comes to those media that demand contemplative engagement and an investment of time, as is the case with painting. This does not signal a lack of managerial purpose or vision; rather, it is down to constantly shifting administrative and political circumstances, limited funds, and adjustments that a museum still finding its feet must necessarily make, not only in terms of its collection but also its identity.

The educational role outlined in the EMΣT mission statement is also a factor contributing to this orientation. The museum sees itself as an institution for the education and cultivation of the public, seeking to communicate the themes of its exhibitions in ways that are engaging and clear. Video art, installations, and photography satisfy this educational logic more directly since they possess a narrative immediacy that facilitates the conveyance of complex concepts such as modern state formation, animal justice, and technological alienation. Painting, on the other hand, is marked by an interiority and a meta-language that demand time and attention – an active viewing experience – in order to reveal the depths of its meanings. And while painting, as a medium, might be more familiar to non-specialist visitors, its language is never so direct or performative as that of new media, and this is why it remains at the margins of museological narratives that strive both for learning efficacy and to kindle identification.

Today, however, in a time when the image has become a ceaseless stream and materiality is lacking, the absence of painting from the EMΣT collection is imbued with new significance. It is not simply an institutional gap; rather, it mirrors the museum’s own worries and concerns: how to remain contemporary when the very notion of ‘contemporary’ is changing. As noted by art theorists such as Griselda Pollock and Alison Rowley,13 the term ‘contemporary art’ functions more as a museological category than as a historical designation – it is a label that embraces whatever is current, without clear temporal or conceptual bounds.

The history of EMΣT is, to a large extent, the history of an institution seeking to define what is ‘contemporary’ anew, within a field in constant flux. Perhaps, however, what is truly contemporary corresponds not to what is new but to what endures; not to spectacle but rather to substance. In a time where the image is an unending flow, painting, with its slowness, its materiality, its silent persistence – is making a return, not as nostalgia but as a form of resistance. Because, at the end of the day, to paint today means to insist that art, and the institutions that house it, can still look deeply – can see and not just seem.