A Lesson on Art - The Best from Greece

Posted on: 08/Jan/2010 A Lesson on Art

PRESENTATION OF THE TEXT WRITTEN BY ART HISTORIAN MARINOS KALLIGAS ABOUT YANNIS PAPPAS AT HIS EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES AT VENICE BIENNALE

Image: "The Lesson of Anatomy" , by Yannis Pappas. Acrylics on canvas.
Photos by Y. Koutsouradis

The Venice Biennale is undoubtedly a best location today where now and then art is installed to be seen – a way rather different as we have used to live with art until about the 19th century. However effective temporary art exhibitions might be - as a way to experience art, I present here a text of 1978, (of the many written for people to 'understand' the artistic product), which in any case makes real sense and it is more than timely today the year 2010. It is by the renowned art historian Marinos Kalligas, but its views reflect clearly those of Yannis Pappas, a leading figure in the art of Greece, who was also a professor of sculpture for about 25 years at the only Art Academy of the country then.
The text of Kalligas (translated then from Greek – and also a bit difficult for the layman), is extracted from the general catalogue of the then Venice Biennale, which catalogue had also a second text by Marina Lambraki-Plaka presenting the individual works of Yannis Pappas in a more thorough manner. The text of Kalligas speaks about tradition and continuity, sculptors and painters, talent and keeping ones roots on their blessed soil.But who else could write so but a Greek? Here is the text:

“Sculpture was for many centuries considered an art of equal rank with painting. However, at the time of the Renaissance at its highest point, certain questions of theory were raised about this issue and there were those, it seems, who took the view that sculpture was superior to painting on the grounds that it employed a more durable medium, while others maintained that the difficulty of its execution rendered it the nobler art. Various other arguments were brought to bear; for example, that sculpture is less delusive than painting and consequently mirrors Truth more accurately. All this is discussed in detail in a letter from the famous painter Bronzino (1504-1572) to Benedetto Varchi (poet, philosopher, historian, etc. 1502-1565), written around 1546. With the passing of time, however, such debates have lost both their urgency and their significance. In our own time sculpture has, perhaps, lost something of the importance which it had when it adorned the pediment of an ancient Greek temple or wrought a huge statue of the god for the interior, or when, in the Middle Ages, it decorated the facade of Gothic cathedrals, and, later still, when it furnished fountains for thoroughfares, statuary for gardens, or Karyatids or a Hercules for palaces. Apart from this, sculpture today is frequently deprived of its original autonomy and has to work on equal terms with the other arts. There can be no doubt that nowadays interest in sculpture in its traditional form is at a discount. This fact may perhaps be explained by the – possibly misguided - belief that sculpture does not lend itself to the expression of the political convictions which many trends demand of art at present.

Innovation in design is looked for, together with experimentation in materials hitherto considered largely unsuitable for art. It is fashionable to use materials drawn from everyday life - from the most prosaic aspects of everyday life - on the principle that in this way art and life can draw closer to one another. Some seek to give expression in art to a world external and remote from man, sometimes with a rabid northern romantic passion, and sometimes with a calculated sobriety, logically pursued, as if to complete some full circle which starts out from sentimentalism and tends to end, by a process of cerebration, at the outright denial of man - at the absolute. There are, however, artists, as well as thinking people, more generally, whose quest is simply for clear principles such as economy and immediacy of expression; but in putting these into practice they become eclectic and affected and thus frequently pass beyond the goal. Eventually, without disregarding the value of tradition or what the achievements of the past have to offer, they too become remote from man. They deny nature. It should not, however, be thought, as some do think, that their works become incomprehensible and unapproachable.
Even those who have most distanced themselves from humanity still conform, I imagine, to the principle: "l am a man - and nothing human is foreign to me.”

There are some artists who sometimes do not fully appreciate the "gift" which they have received - something which they carry with them without ever having learnt it; because as Poussin (1594-1665), speaking of talent, so happily expressed it a little before he died: "There are elements in art which cannot be learnt, which constitute, however, the essence of the artist's craft". Those who have been given a genuine, rich gift, so that in reliance on that and with knowledge they can rise to the heights; those to whom it is given, that is, to become the instrument of Art rather than attempting to force Art into being an instrument of themselves; these are the artists who advance boldly and succeed with ease in breaking the rules and giving a new meaning - their own - to whatever form they have chosen to give to their work: these are the artists who will be vindicated. These are the few, the leaders. For every nuance which points forward is of value. It is a promise - and perhaps an opening for the future. In our times another element in artistic creation, which has, of course, always been present but which has usually remained neglected and hidden, has become more strikingly apparent. In the past, for example, artists' drawings tended to remain the material of private archives. They were not known to the public. Exhibitions of drawings are a later development. This has to do with the fact that in the past, interest centred almost exclusively on the subject of works of art, and it was only later that their constituent elements were examined and the process ofcreation was studied. Today, moreover, we find painters exhibiting sculpture and sculptors exhibiting paintings, and this tendency is spreading to other branches of art.

One could term this factor in artistic creation - which is becoming more apparent in our times - "catholicity", meaning that the artist expresses himself equally, or almost equally, in different basicbranches of art, "Multiplicity", anyway, is a general phenomenon in contemporary art.

One such "catholic" artist is the representative of Greece at this years' Biennale – Yannis Pappas. Poet, visionary, and prophet of contemporary trends, he nevertheless knows how to honour the great teachers who have gone before; he is the conscious executor of thetestament of Rodin, who demanded "respect for tradition" and "the discernment of that which is great and eternally fruitful". Pappas has had the wisdom not to pull up his roots from their native soil - that blessed soil which once cradled the art of sculpture in Europe.

Marinos Kalligas, March 1978"

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