"I feel at home here in this chaos because the chaos suggests images to me."
Francis Bacon
"A little corner of South Kensington moved to Ireland, his birthplace ... I think it would have made him roar with laughter."
John Edwards
The conviction that an artist's studio is the crucible of creativity is perfectly exemplified by the removal of Francis Bacon's London studio, some years after his death, to a museum in Dublin, the city where he was born. Over a period of three years, from 1998 to 2001, the delirious dereliction of Bacon's workspace was reconstructed with mind-boggling archaeological precision. It was a humongous 3-D jigsaw comprising more than 7,000 bits and pieces, all catalogued on a database.
At 4 by 8 metres (13 by 26 feet), it is a modern counterpart to the Holy House of Loreto, a room of 4 by 6 metres (13 by 20 feet) comprising rough brick walls and fresco fragments. Reputed to have been the Virgin Mary's humble abode in Nazareth, the Holy House was airlifted by angels to a basilica in Central Italy on 19 December 1294 (things moved faster back then). Both rooms are sites of pilgrimage in predominantly Catholic countries: the Bacon room is a destination for lovers of art, the Virgin room for believers in miracles. The preservation and homecoming of Bacon's studio are part of a much larger phenomenon. The big selling point – and queuing point – of a Modigliani exhibition in 2017–18 was a virtual reality headset tour of a simulated version of the artist's shabby Paris studio as it looked in 1919. It featured sardine cans, cigarette packets, empty bottles and a few paintings, but no hashish or humans. The conservation of famous artworks such as Rembrandt's Night Watch is increasingly enacted in situ and on camera; the museum or church is thereby turned into a studio, the restorers into stars of Warhol-style livestreams that can last for years. During Covid lockdowns, online studio ‘visits’ provided a vital window. This book traces a history of popular interest in the artist's workplace that extends far beyond romantic and Renaissance cults of the artist. Making sense of it all has required a certain amount of sleuthing and lateral thinking. Historic interiors are poorly and sporadically documented until well into the age of photography – and the camera often lies, and bores. A further frustration
Albrecht Dürer, “ The Draughtsman of the Lute”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
is that so many portraits of artists emphasize social status rather than labour and mess. But despite the patchy documentary record, it is still possible to construct a compelling narrative that identifies key examples, actors, trends and turning points. In the chapters that follow, I explore not only the internal architecture and contents of the studio but the activities and encounters, personal as well as professional, that take place there. The studio is not just a stage that offers a spectacle. It is a space that distils the magic and mystery of human creation, of body and mind working in harmony, often collectively. This is why so many poets and philosophers, starting with Homer and Socrates, have been drawn to studios.
In some respects the bare architectural bones of the studio are its least interesting aspect, since artists' needs are relatively consistent and straightforward, with variations for different media and genres. A goldsmith may need less space than a metalworker, a still-life painter than a history painter; the sculptor, weaver, printmaker and potter may need their studios to be on the ground floor. Most practitioners want sufficient dry and draught-free space, stable flooring, security, easy access, quiet neighbours, an even, diffused light and a consistent, tolerable temperature; the fires of inspiration will not burn brightly with a cold stove and oven. When Bernini carved the bust of King Louis XIV in a room in the Palais du Louvre on an ill-fated visit to France, he caught a chill because of broken windows, whereupon Cardinal Barberini advised him to wear a bearskin coat and cotton-wool wadding. Later on, the room became stiflingly hot when packed with visiting courtiers, adding to the sculptor's frustration and exhaustion. However, the most irksome studio visitors are insects and vermin; Bernini was dismayed to find mouse droppings staining his marble. More recently, Bruce Nauman's sevenscreen film projection Mapping the Studio (2001) showed a nocturnal mouse infestation to which his cat was blithely indifferent. ***
Many invaluable case studies of artists' studios have been published in recent years, and a couple of excellent brief general histories. But the overwhelming tendency is to focus on painters, with a few sculptors thrown in. While there is admittedly far more evidence available about painters' studios –often in the form of paintings of them at work – this bias gives a distorted historical picture by leaving out other makers. As far as possible I have tried to correct the imbalance, taking my cue from Diderot, who in the mid-18th century recognized artisans as essential workers deserving of more respect and better pay.
The Italian term studio – initially studietto and studium – was first coined in 15th-century Padua. It was the artistic equivalent of a scholar's study, or studiolo: a private room where the artist worked on a small scale, made drawings, modelled in wax and clay, kept study collections of drawings and plaster casts, and did some reading, writing and thinking. More prosaically, it could be the place where they did admin.
In England prior to 1600, the term workshop was used for makers of all kinds; then painters started using the imported term cabinet as well as closet and painting room Studio entered the English language
in the mid-18th century as a word for a sketch and then, around 1800, in the modern sense, as a term for the artist's premises. It was first applied to painters and sculptors, then photographers and even dentists, those hit-and-miss sculptors of human teeth. In France, atelier has been used indiscriminately since the Middle Ages for the workplaces of artisans and artists.
Although the term studio was appropriated by anglophone painters and some sculptors in the 19th century, in the 20th any claim to exclusive ownership was strongly resisted. The world's most influential art journal in the years around 1900 eschewed distinctions between the fine and the more functional arts. The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art (founded 1893) promoted the Arts and Crafts Movement. The term studio pottery was coined. There was a belief that studio-like processes – drawing, thinking, designing, model-making and so on – were essential to all forms of visual production if they were to be creative, and that craft knowledge and collaboration were vital for the fine artist. Over the last century, design studios (a term whose first recorded use was in 1894) have proliferated in all sorts of contexts, from fashion to the car industry. Hairdressing salons are a fascinating case that I will discuss in relation to the most famous studio of all, Warhol's Factory. By the same token, many modern painters have rejected the notional ivory tower exclusivity of the studio. Like Warhol, they have chosen to live and work in former industrial buildings; or, like Bacon, they have created carefully choreographed squalor, albeit with champagne flute in hand.
This semantic instability and imprecision reflects the fact that the artist's workplace is a porous, ever-changing entity that exists in a symbiotic relationship with artisans' workshops, monks' cells, scholars' studies and other indoor and outdoor spaces. Indeed, many artworks are made on site, from prehistoric cave painting to photography and street art. The perpetual yin and yang of opposing and complementary tendencies makes this a very rich topic.
There are distinct geographical limits to this history, because it is only very recently that fascination with the artist's studio has gone global. Depictions of the artist or artisan at work first appeared in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea: in ancient Egypt, Greece and, to a lesser extent, Rome. There was a resurgence of interest in Christian Europe during the late Middle Ages, with at least four saints being practicing artisans. This interest never waned. American artists joined the studio party while working in late 18th-century London. In Asia, by contrast, depictions of artists and artisans at work are extremely rare.
One explanation for this geographical concentration is that the creation myths of Mediterranean societies involve fabricator gods. God is most frequently an architect or sculptor, moulding humankind out of clay, as in the biblical creation story. In Egyptian myth, he is a potter. Some early Greek writers made him a painter, though this idea only really took off during the Renaissance, when God painted the whole world into existence.
The absence of imagery of artists at work does not denote a lack of sophisticated interest in the arts, whether theoretical or practical. Calligraphy and painting were popular and prestigious pastimes for
the educated elite in medieval Japan and China. Painting competitions were held, in which each side presented paintings in pairs for judgment. The most famous example of an eawase (picture contest) occurs in the seventeenth chapter of Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji ( c. 1000 CE), sometimes considered the first novel (overleaf). Genji, illegitimate son of the former Japanese emperor, is an accomplished painter and calligrapher, as is the current emperor. In the grand finale of the competition Genji submits his own autobiographical paintings, which have been made with spontaneity and emotion. They reduce male and female courtiers to tears.
But while there are some Japanese and Chinese depictions of men and occasionally women looking at pictures, there are very few of pictures being painted, or of Genji at work. This must be because, while the elite painters were supremely accomplished, they were not professional artists selling their work into a market, and there was little desire to draw attention to potentially undignified manual labour. Calligraphy is more frequently depicted, albeit at the still, pensive moment of luo bi, ‘lowering the brush', before the first stroke is made. It is largely in the low-status genre of portraiture that we find a few depictions of men and also women at work.
What we do have in abundance are exquisite porcelain paintbrushes, brush boats, brush rests in the shape of mountain ranges, ink-stones with fitted boxes. These were handed down and treasured through the centuries. The brush, ink, ink-stone and paper were considered to be wenfang sibao – ‘the four treasures of a scholar's studio’. The earliest surviving European painter's palette seems to be William Hogarth's from the mid-18th century, at the dawn of the romantic cult of genius.
The Artist's Studio: A Cultural History charts the evolution of the artist's workplace from ancient Greece – where the basic principles of the artist's studio were established – to the present day. The chapters are broadly chronological, comparing realities with myths. Mythical and divine makers, and some amateurs, are included; so too are craftspeople such as shoemakers and textile workers. We begin with Homer's riveting account in the Iliad of Thetis' visit to the palatial workshop built by the lame smith-god Hephaestus. She orders a new suit of armour for her son, Achilles. Thetis is the first in a long line of glamorous studio visitors, but Homer doesn't allow her any art chat. Socrates is revealed as the originator of the artist interview, conducting seminars in workshops in Athens. Ancient Rome's main contribution is the story of Pygmalion, where the studio becomes a private domain of erotic encounters between male artist and female statue or model.
In the Middle Ages I focus on the scriptoria or writing-rooms, where illuminated manuscripts were made, and on goldsmiths' workshops. The latter had to be open to the street, with ‘secret spaces’ banned to prevent the adulteration of materials. Cennino Cennini's private studietto in Padua, by contrast, was a very secret space; in an astonishing treatise, he idealized small-scale art made by well-toned, unhurried men in fine clothes. ‘Slow’ art starts here. Cennini stressed the importance of drawing, and momentous Renaissance innovations would follow: drawing from sculpture and the live model, and nocturnal drawing. Painting at night begins much later, above all with Picasso.
I reassess Leonardo's infamous contrast between the painter's luxurious studio and the sculptor's filthy workshop. Michelangelo would heroize precisely those aspects of the sculptor's profession that Leonardo derided, and was overtly anti-studio. This is reflected in a previously unrecognized drawing showing the young sculptor hard at work, performing Herculean labours.
As prints, drawings and plaster casts became more widely available, artists were able to form more comprehensive study collections – what I call the ‘systematic studio’. This coincided with the emergence of academies of art and their varied curricula. A key figure was Rubens, in Antwerp, who constructed bespoke studios and display areas with top-lighting. His magnificent home studio and garden became a tourist attraction, with visitors allowed to watch the great man and his assistants at work.
Watching the artist at work and learning how to draw or paint became popular pastimes in the 17th century, among women as well as men. Elisabetta Sirani in Bologna, a city noted for female artists, was one of the most adept operators. Women became important tastemakers. In Paris, Bernini was surprised to be visited by so many female courtiers; he also criticized the lavish decor in Louis XIV's bedroom for being too feminine in character, which his chaperone blamed on the king's mother. Vermeer's The Art of Painting seems to wallow in similarly ‘feminine’ taste.
Portrait painters such as Velázquez added to the studio spectacle by placing mirrors behind them while they worked, so that sitters could see themselves alongside the emerging image. This fashion coincided with the increasing availability of large mirrors and the rise of experimental science. The home studio of architect John Soane, stuffed with mirrors and a huge study collection, was a notable example of a new phenomenon: the artist's house as public museum, where genius presents itself to posterity.
During the 19th century there was a reaction against ‘feminine’ studio space full of casts, knickknacks, textiles, upholstered furniture and trophies of empire. Inspired by monks' cells and artisans' workshops, the studios of avant-garde artists were barely furnished and gave no indication of the artist's education. The ideal garret had no furniture at all. In France many artists such as David, Courbet and Matisse occupied former religious buildings. The 20th century saw the arrival of the ‘white cube’ and factory studio.
Finally, we explore the modern rejection of the static, solitary artist's studio in favour of more open and mobile alternatives. Portable painting boxes allowed 19th-century artists to go anywhere, as did Roger Fenton's ‘photographic van’ and Monet's boat studio. ‘Rooms with a view' were rented. More recently, artists have set up temporary studios in shops, offices, galleries – anywhere, really. As Marina Abramović says: ‘Good art is never made in studio. Good art I make in life.’
The word “nest”, in this context, stands for an artist's refuge, their wholly personal space of creation, as a space of redefinition and contemplation.
Lily Tsingos has discreetly and ritualistically penetrated into these “nests”, into the inner recesses of artists' inaccessible sanctums, with the aim of immortalizing their truths and legends in a wholly respectful manner. She recorded, with reverence, the sacredness of every atelier, as well as moments of creation, colour palettes, easels, drawings, notes, sketches, stored works, and the atmosphere surrounding them.
Despite being an art of silence, photography bears witness to untold stories, with every shot narrating the endless struggle of visual artists, the strain, the magic trajectory of creation, the joy of completion, at times the long arc from the inspiration behind a work to the final brushstroke, but especially the close connection between the artist and the space where they create. Tsingos has deftly channelled the communicative capacity of her art, choosing the right moment to take her photographs, creating what is essentially her own narrative through her personal artistic identity.
Artist studios, as multifunctional spaces, have been conveyed in tact by way of her lens, without any intervention or beautification, and have as such claimed a new existence, derived from her own perspective and aesthetic. After several painstaking and time-consuming visits to her artist friends' studios, the photographer – as a mediator – transfers the unseen reality, from artists' notes to their pictorial preferences, from void surfaces to palimpsests.
The selection of artists featured in this album was exclusively the photographer's choice, based on her long-standing and deeply personal relationships with specific artists.
The quality of Tsingos' shots is not accidental; it is the outcome of her experienced eye, since for many years now she sees and senses the world through her camera. Her familiarity with art, which she lives and breathes, began in 1976, when she settled in Brussels to study architecture, and since then it has continued evolving through architecture and the art of photography. “Artist and space” form the duality that stamps Tsingos' artistic practice. Given this dualism, for many years now she has felt the
need to investigate the relationship of an artist with their wholly personal space, their studio, that vital, functional and emotionally charged space in which the act of creation is essentially performed.
It is worth noting that this systematic photographic exploration and her in-depth study of artist studios is not a common photographic approach. Here, the photographer's motive is not so much to convey the images themselves but rather to capture, through her own expressive means, what introduces the viewer to the singularity of every artist's practice. Lily Tsingos neither records nor describes the spaces of artistic creation, nor is she interested in producing an inventory of a plethora of different studios. On the contrary, she chooses a limited number of workspaces that appeal to her: she selects the artists' studios, observes them, experiences them closely, watching the process of works coming into being, photographing them again and again, sometimes over a period of years. In the end, she becomes inspired by the spaces and their function, and creates her own visual work through her art and her unique objectivity, without altering the real but propitiously projecting the authentic. She photographs whole scenes or selectively captures fragments of artists' special spaces, those artists whom she knows well and dearly loves and with whom she maintains an informal but creative dialogue. Tsingos takes us on a journey through her own artistic sensibility and aesthetic, introduces us to the painters' truth, to the magic world of colour, of oil paint paste and the gradual formation of artworks, to sites of plastic transformation, where the white surface acquires substance, where the work of art is produced.
Travelogue
1992 The beginning. Vourkariani Art Gallery on Tzia: Alexis Veroucas' painting The Watermelon
Irresistible attraction. First contact with the art of new figuration. Strong desire to meet the artist and immerse myself in the depths of this art form. 1995 A visit to Rubens' studio in Antwerp. First sense of magic in an artist's studio. 1997 Athens Art Gallery at Dexameni. First meeting with the artist Alexis Veroucas and beginning of an important friendship. 1998 A visit to Brancusi's studio in Paris. A strong experience of the harmonic synthesis and interaction of works of art and artist's tools in the studio space. 1999 First visit to the studio of Veroucas on Pireos Street. Studio magic also exists in Greece and with great intensity. 2001 Acquaintance and subsequent friendship with Petros Karavevas. 2006 Through Veroucas begin frequenting group of painter friends with Irini Iliopoulou, Stefanos Daskalakis and Nikos Stefanos at its core. The circle of new figurative artists enlarges. 2007 Medusa Art Gallery in Athens. Encounter the work of Giorgos Rorris. When will I meet this artist?. 2008 Acquaintance and friendship with Ismini Kapandai and first visit to the enchanted house and studio of Vassos. Brancusi experience continues in Greece. 2009-2017 The magic of the studios comes to life before my eyes as a photographer. The circle widens. Different artists, different working environments, different works of art. Dimitris Nikolaidis, Roubina Sarelakou, Kyriakos Rokos. 2017-2024
Acquaintance and friendship with Timos Batinakis and Vassilis Papanikolaou. The project expands with multiple visits to studios and successive photo shoots and is based on the experience obtained in Daskalakis' studio where I first set up the mental scaffolding necessary for the photographic rendering of the art flourishing in studios. This scaffolding would not have expanded without the expert guidance of Louisa Karapidakis and the support of Roubina Sarelakou. Last but not least, acquaintance and friendship with both Giorgos Rorris and Michalis Madenis. This circle closes.
LILY TSINGOS
Tassos Vrettos
Testimonial
I've been following Lily's progress all throughout her “journeys”.
I'm very proud of the fact that in parallel with her photographic coming-of-age she has preserved her wonderfully characteristic “innocent” gaze that gives her work its unique identity...
Kunste)
(De Vrije Akademie voor Beeldende
Bonis
MICHALIS MADENIS
Born in Komotini in 1960. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1985-1990), securing a scholarship for each year of study from the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). His teacher in the first year was Triantafyllos Patraskidis followed by Panagiotis Tetsis, from whose studio he graduated with high honours. He then pursued graduate studies at the Free Academy of Visual Arts (Vrije Akademie voor Beeldende Kunste) in The Hague under Bob Bonis with Tetsis as supervisor; his first year he studied on a Royal Fellowship from the Dutch Government, and the next 2 years he studied on a grant from the IKY. He worked in the educational program of the National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum (2006-2017) as the head of children's workshops. His paintings can be found in the collections of the National Gallery, Hellenic Parliament, Bank of Greece, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Vorres Museum, Frissiras Museum, Historical Archives of the Museum of Hydra, Alexandroupolis Municipal Gallery, Konstantinos G. Karamanlis Foundation as well as in municipalities and communities, public and private collections in Greece and abroad. From 1990 to the present he has had many solo exhibitions and participated extensively in group exhibitions.
KYRIAKOS ROKOS
Born in Ioannina in 1945 with roots in Metsovo. His first teachers were Panos Sarafianos and Vrasidas Vlachopoulos. From 1965 to 1969 he studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in the studio of Yannis Pappas and plasterworkcopper casting in the studio of Nikos Kerlis on a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation. From 1972 to 1976, with a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, he studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in César's atelier and at the same time worked with Kostas Koulendianos. In Paris, he also studied lithography until 1976 under Georges Dayez. In 1972 he had his first solo exhibition in Athens at the Nees Morfes Gallery. In the period 1981-1983, he was professor of freehand drawing at Vakalo Art & Design College, while until today he is an emeritus professor and former head of the Department of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art at the University of West Attica, where he created the first sculpture workshop. He has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. His works can be found in the National Sculpture Gallery, the E. Averoff Museum in Metsovo, the Municipal Gallery of Ioannina, the Viannos Gallery “Savvas Petrakis,” the Museum of Engraving and Graphic Arts - Nicholaos Grigorakis, the Vorres Museum, the Pierides Museum - Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation, the National Bank of Greece and the Ministry of Culture, as well as in public spaces in Greece, abroad and in private collections. In 2022 he was awarded by the Academy of Athens for the body of his artistic work.
Cremonini
Beaux-Arts
École nationale supérieure des
STEFANOS DASKALAKIS
Born in Piraeus in 1952. He studied Painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts in the studio of Giorgos Mavroidis (1970-1974). He continued his studies in Lyon and in Paris (1978-1981). Later as an auditor he attended the studio of Leonardo Cremonini at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1982 he moved back to Athens. His works can be found in the permanent collections of the National GalleryAlexandros Soutsos Museum in Athens, the National Bank of Greece and the Bank of Greece, the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, the Teloglion Foundation of Art - Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the Kouvoutsakis Art Institute, the Frissiras Museum, the Sotiris Felios Collection, the Anthony and Asia Hadjioannou Collection, the Thanassis Michailidis Collection as well as numerous private collections in Belgium, France and Greece. He lives and works in Athens. In 2014 he was awarded by the Academy of Athens for his lifetime achievement in painting.
Γεννήθηκε
(1977-1981).
στην École nationale supérieure des Beaux-
Cremonini
Berggruen
Vieux Colombier,
IRINI ILIOPOULOU
Born in 1950 in Athens. She studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1977-1981). She continued her studies at the École nationale supérieure des BeauxArts in Paris, in the studio of Leonardo Cremonini until 1986. From 1987 to 1988 she lived in an abandoned theater in Paris, the Vieux Colombier, working on paintings influenced by its interior, which she exhibited in Athens in 1988, together with views of a dilapidated metro station. In 1990 she represented the Berggruen Gallery at the Salon de Mars in Paris. In the period 1990-1993 she painted landscapes in the South of France, vineyards and rice fields in Bordeaux and Arles. Her works can be found in the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, in the Maximou Palace, in the Kouvoutsakis Art Institute, the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation Collection, the Municipal Art Gallery of Agrinio, the Bank of Greece, the National Bank of Greece, the Alpha Bank Collection, Geniki Bank (Piraeus Bank), the Florina Museum of Contemporary Art, the Collection of the Hellenic Parliament, the Colas Foundation in Paris, as well as in many private collections in Greece, in other European countries, in Canada and Australia. She lives and works in Athens.
(2003),
και
(2008, 2013
(2013)
Galleria Grafica Tokio (2014, 2017) στην
GreeceJapan. com.
VASSILIS PAPANIKOLAOU
Born in Arta in 1968. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and was a student of professor Chronis Botsoglou.
He has had six solo exhibitions: Art Space 24 (2000), Ekfrasi Gallery (2003), Gavras Gallery (2008, 2013 and 2016),
“The other Arcadia” Foundation (2013) and at Galleria Grafica Tokio (2014, 2017) in Ginza, Tokyo in collaboration with the Gavras Gallery and GreeceJapan.com.
He has taken part in many group exhibitions. His works can be found in private collections and museums in Greece and abroad.
Φρυσίρα.
Το
In 2003 he won first prize in the Contemporary European Painting competition organised by the Frissiras Museum.
In 2016 his works were exhibited at The National Art Center, Tokyo.
He lives and works in Athens.
(1982-1987).
GIORGOS RORRIS
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux
Leonardo Cremonini (1988-1991). Συνεργάστηκε
Born in Kosmas of Kynouria in Arcadia in 1963. He studied Painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts under professors Panagiotis Tetsis and Yiannis Valavanides (1982-1987). He continued his studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Leonardo Cremonini (1988-1991) thanks to scholarships from the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation and the P. Bakala Brothers Foundation.
He taught painting at “Apopsi” Center for Arts and Letters (1996-2002) and since 2002 he has been collaborating with the art group “Simio” (Point), teaching a painting tutorial. In 2001 he was honoured with the Academy of Athens Award for Young Painters Under the Age of 40. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary distinction for his work by the Onassis Foundation.
In 2022 the President of the Greek Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou awarded him the “Golden Cross of the Order of Honour”. From his first solo exhibition in 1988 until 2017 he maintained a permanent collaboration with the Medusa Art Gallery. His paintings can be found in important private and public collections. He lives and works in Athens.
(1924 - 1990)
VASSOS KAPANDAIS
(1924 - 1990)
Studied Sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts and Archaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens. He had three workshops: Initially one in Moschato, on the estate of the Georgantis brothers, an old warehouse built with bricks where he sculpted the award-winning Lion for Kalavrita, then a high-ceiling warehouse on Lagoumitzi Street where, among others, he created Eleftheria, a statue that was erected in Chelonospilia, commemorating the start of the 1821 revolution and finally the workshop, above his house, where he worked for twenty years and created a very large number of works, sculptures in marble and bronze, medals as well as a huge number of drawings. A large part of his work consists of public monuments such as those erected in the area in front of the Hestia of New Smyrna - the Pergamon Memorial, Pontius Akritas, Victory Memorial (Epitymbia Nike), the Armenian Monument, the Memorial to Ayvalik, the Asclepian Serpent, Tombs, the Scouts of Aydin, Coasts of Asia Minor, Smyrna - and elsewhere such as the statue of Victory (Nike) which has been erected in Preveza, the Pontus Memorial in Chaidari, the Antonis Oikonomou Monument in Hydra and the Votive Column in the central Square of New Smyrna.
TIMOS
BATINAKIS
Born in Athens in 1968. He took his first drawing and painting lessons in the studio of Nikos Stefos. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1988 to 1993 under professor P. Tetsis. In addition to his painting instruction, he attended sculpture, iconography and fresco painting classes at the Athens School of Fine Arts on scholarships from the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). In 2007 he was honoured with the Academy of Athens Award for Young Painters Under the Age of 40. From 1993 to 1998 he worked as an assistant in N. Stefos' studio preparing candidates for the entrance exams to the Athens School of Fine Arts. From 1999 until the present he has been running a drawing and painting studio in Athens, while in 2018 he cofounded the workshop Study of Drawing & Painting for the systematic preparation of candidates for the Athens School of Fine Arts.
He has held three solo exhibitions (Ekfrasi Gallery, Genesis Gallery, Evripides Gallery) and has taken part in over 100 group exhibitions, as well as Art Athina 2015 and 2017. He has done extensive research on the technology of materials (paints, media, varnishes, preparations, etc.) used by the grands maîtres of the 16th and 17th centuries and based on his findings he manufactures the materials he uses for his paintings.
DIMITRIS NIKOLAIDIS
Σπούδασε
Παρακoλoύθησε
Foundation».
Studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He attended a seminar at the Hellenic Gemologists Association. He learned metalworking techniques from the painter/ jewellery maker Giota Kaliakmani and the silversmith/goldsmith Christophoros Prineas. He is engaged in the design and manufacture of jewellery and, at the same time, teaches in private workshops. He is a member of the international organization Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship. He has been awarded in a pan-Hellenic jewellery design and manufacturing competition organised by the KESSARIS Jewellery Company. He has exhibited his work in individual and group exhibitions.
PETROS KARAVEVAS
Born in 1963 in Ermoupoli, Syros. He lives and works in Athens. He studied painting in Lyon from 1994 to 1996 and in Athens at “Apopsi” Center for Arts and Letters, from 1996 to 2000 in the studio of Giorgos Rorris. He has held ten solo exhibitions (Athens, Thessaloniki, Syros) and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. His works can be found in important private and public collections such as in the Museum of Beaux Arts in Tula, Russia, in the University of Athens, in the Athens Club, in the Presidency of Democracy building, etc.. He lives and works in Athens.
(1969-1974).
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
G. Dayez (19741976).
ROUBINA SARELAKOU
Born in Athens in 1950. She initially studied under the painters P. Sarafianos, N. Nikolaou and Y. Moralis. She graduated from the Engraving Studio of the Athens School of Fine Arts with the painter/ engraver K. Grammatopoulos as teacher (1969-1974). She continued her studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris under G. Dayez (19741976). She has presented her work in many individual exhibitions as well as in group and international exhibitions in Greece and abroad. She taught Freehand Drawing and Colour for many years at the Vakalo Art & Design College. She was a founding member of the Art and Philosophy Association where she taught painting and engraving. In 1980 she was honoured by the Athens Academy for her engraving work. In 1985 she was awarded the Onassis First Prize for Engraving. Since 2010 she has been practicing metalworking techniques in the studio of painter/jeweller Dimitris Nikolaidis and with the silversmiths and goldsmiths Lykourgos Grypaios and Yiannis Roumanis. Her works can be found in public and private collections in Greece and abroad.
Atelier Delacroix (1932), Atelier de Cézanne (1952)-
Brancusi (Pompidou, 1997)
Francis Bacon (Hugh Lane
2001).
1995, Jean-François Bonhomme, Ghika.
Jean-François Bonhomme, Αθήνα 1993, Jean-François Bonhomme, Ghika. Φωτογραφίες 1989-1994
1997).
The artist at work
Prompted by the photographs of Lily Tsingos NIKOS P. PAISSIOS
In the final act of Romeo and Juliet , the tragic hero, exiled in Mantua, enters the apothecary's laboratory to purchase the fatal poison.
Shakespeare recounts:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuffed, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves, A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses Were thinly scattered to make up a show.
(Act V, Scene 1)
In popular imagination, the apothecary in Mantua with its deadly disorder is not much different from an artist's studio, even though the chaos that prevails there is creative, with all the inanimate objects seeming to call out to the painter or sculptor: Τu ex nihilo ad esse nos adduxisti
The studio emerges as a theme in the history of art as of the early Renaissance. It becomes the background in the artists' self-portraits (once being engaged in the Fine Arts has gained recognition and the worship of the genius and individuality of the artist begins), but it is only systematically autonomised in painting from the 19th century onwards, when the space in self-portraits takes on much more significance than the human figure, to reflect the artist's desire to demonstrate, mostly, the opulence of their studio. It is, of course, an indirect type of self-promotion in the fiercely competitive Art world: the wealth of the studio translates into the magnitude of the occupant's talent and by extension to the volume of commissions.
Some time later, studios turn into monographic museums – L' Atelier Delacroix (1932), Atelier de Cézanne (1952) – that would ultimately lead to monumental studio reconstructions like Brancusi's at the Centre Pompidou (1997) and Francis Bacon's at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin (2001). With the advent of photography, depictions of studios become easier and more frequent, but it isn't until
almost the mid-twentieth century that we see organised and extensive documentations of studios. It is worth mentioning, at this point, Brassaї and David Douglas Duncan for Picasso's studio, and relatively recently David Dawson for the studio of Lucian Freud.
The Greek bibliography on this topic is sparse and mostly pertains to photographic depictions as a necessary complement to the artist's environment (see indicatively Stelios Skopelitis, The Painter Yannis Tsarouchis , Athens 1995, Jean-François Bonhomme, Ghika through the lens of Jean-François Bonhomme , Athens 1993, and by the same photographer, Ghika. Photographs 1989-1994 , Athens 1997).
With a recent publication by MIET in 2016 The Artist's Studio edited by Mathildi Pyrli and Vasiliki Chatzigeorgiou with an introduction by Kostas Ioannidis, the bibliographical gap starts to fill in. Artist Studios - Chaos and Inspiration explores the subject from its visual side. For more than a decade, Lily Tsingos photographed (and continues, to this day) artists' studios with love and special solicitude. This publication only includes a selection of the best images, classified not chronologically but by artist. With these photographs as our guide we will visit each of their studios.
De Kooning, Bacon,
Michalis Madenis' studio p. 32
The main room in a 1960s apartment with auxiliary storage areas. What was formerly the reception room is now the heart of the studio, where a horizontal landscape painting dominates in the back (limestone rock formations cover the ground, leaving very little space in between). The studio is comfortable, neat (and tidied up for the occasion as Madenis usually works amidst creative chaos). In addition to the necessary studio equipment, there are two large easels and smaller tables accommodating his palette, paints and brushes. Along the longitudinal axis of the space and in the forefront of the photograph, a round table with a glass ashtray and drinking glasses: the spot from which the artist has sufficient distance to scrupulously examine his work.
An orgy of colours, powders of all sorts in wooden or plastic trays divided into square sections, captivates the viewer whereas they are just part of the artist's everyday reality. Used paintbrushes and others that are new become bouquets in round jars, against small works, tests and samples on paper. Cases with oil pastels, dry pastels and pencils become a fascinating sight, revealing not only the creator's love, but also the ease with which he switches between materials and mediums.
A lovely surprise is the round butcher's block, with scattered tools (a hammer, a pair of pliers) and paints in large tubes. Its presence here is curious, yet entirely justified: this truncated log is a kind of model that has appeared in many of Madenis' paintings. On the shelves of an open bookcase, another arsenal: stacked boxes labelled with their contents: colours, again, Pink, Magenta, Cadmium.
On the opposite wall, next to the austere decoupage self-portrait, multiple routes of colour make for a strange composition. These are the traces of the creator. This is where he's tried out his materials, directly above the tubes standing upright inside the boxes.
We make out, in fragments, works hanging over the sofa, beside a white built-in closet, and among them a portrait of Madenis' beloved teacher, the painter Panayiotis Tetsis.
In the vestibule, a bookcase with odds and ends and art books that reveal Madenis' predilections: Abstract Expressionism, De Kooning, Bacon, Bouzianis, but also Manet, Cézanne and Toulouse Lautrec.
Kyriakos Rokos' studio p. 50
We enter a high ceiling, ground-floor sculpture studio from the building's internal courtyard which is full of various large compositions by the artist.
Inside, on shelves suspended high above, directly below the ceiling are sculpted heads, busts, compositions in plaster. All wall surfaces are covered by almost every kind and style of relief, in plaster or bronze (for medals and monuments).
Above the work benches at arm's length hang the tools: scissors, chisels, cutters, pincers, pliers, tweezers, spatulas, wire brushes, rasps, files, knives, binders and various implements. Everything reveals Rokos' meticulous organisation, for the purpose of processing each work, from the initial to the final stage.
The negative plaster cast of a head (still bearing traces of its moulding in clay) is ready to receive the plaster for its positive copy, demonstrating tangibly how the artist himself performs all the successive steps necessary for creating his work.
A case painted blue hides all the favorite tools for sculpting marble: the large hammer, awls, claws, blades, pieces of sandpaper, and the hard crayon that he needs for drawing. Beside them, the canvas hat that protects the artist from the fine marble dust.
The space is full of maquettes, models of works and disjecta membra. Hanging on a wall, curved measuring compasses of various sizes, as well as a wooden one for lifesize measurements, and saws, different types of clamps, a lovely arsenal of art, ready to serve the processing of any material.
The entire studio, in addition to its creative aura, reveals the arduous labour of sculpture. The countless visual compositions created by the shapes of the tools and sculptures in the studio seem to be reflected in the creator's works themselves, where forms and objects of all kinds overflow or break open the sides of the geometric shapes that frame them.
Delacroix, Manet, Cézanne,
Stefanos Daskalakis' studio p. 70
Lily Tsingos' first photograph captures a part of the façade of a neoclassical house that still preserves something of its original colours. It functions as a preamble to the images that follow, from the interior: a narrow marble stairway leading to the first floor, and then the high-ceilinged rooms, crowned by the aura of the Attic light. Stefanos Daskalakis' studio is in a run-down area of central Athens, but the choice of space for a painter's workplace is excellent.
The entire storey is painted white. The hardwood floors, with the parquet varnish still evident in places, and the doors with the patterned glass exude the warmth of a family home from another time, even though the space now only contains the bare necessities for its current tenant/painter.
Painting easels, low tables and small items of furniture, palettes, containers for paint thinners and solvents, other containers for brushes of different types and sizes, rags, tubes, all of it creates an organised chaos.
A few pomegranates, ostensibly scattered – randomly and not randomly – on a table and, blurrier, on the floor, whole or split open, immediately draw the gaze of the visitor and the photographer alike. In a corner, the chair and atmospheric armchair have come from decades past and, in addition to their practical utility, we can see in Tsingos' photographs that they have also claimed their place in the painter's work.
On a wall, behind a jar of tufted paintbrushes, a private gallery/shrine, photographs of famed paintings. It is, perhaps, a moving tribute to those who still inspire Daskalakis: early Renaissance, El Greco, Titian (the crimson of Titian and of permanganate, Kavvadias' voice would whisper), Delacroix, Manet, Cézanne, Tsarouchis.
On the walls, on the floor around the work areas, even around the doorknobs, you can see the traces of the artist's concerted effort to create what he most desires with daubs of colour: intense aesthetic pleasure. This is the purpose of Daskalakis' art and this is what Lily Tsingos proves through her lens, when she captures him so engrossed in his work that he seems oblivious to the photographer's presence.
Irini Iliopoulou's studio p. 92
We are introduced to the painter's studio by a small work made with various materials (aquarelle, pencil, pastel) that demonstrate the creator's remarkable skill. That aesthetic wealth is also characteristic of her palettes with the various pigments drawing the viewer's eye. Even more, however, we are intrigued by the cloths she uses to blot up excess paint, and which become a delightful sight on the floor or in a small wastebasket.
The painter's personality is imprinted on the sitting area in the studio with the white sofa, the cushions, the table with a stack of books, the statue, the vase with flowers on the corner unit that has become a plant stand. Behind the sofa a large painting depicts the same sitting room from a different angle. The two potted plants outside the glass door of the studio have become tall leafy trees in the painting.
The space unfolds in a gamma shape, with a workbench opposite the sofa that is prolonged - towards the entrance to the unified workspace - by a large desk with drawers on either side, and a poster of a painting by Goya. There are large paintings on the walls that she is still working on, or that are drying, before they get stacked with the others on the right-hand side.
Landscapes with an explosive abundance of greenery reveal Irini Iliopoulou's love for nature. Images of carefreeness (the woman hanging in a hammock), play (the girl on a swing) and a plethora of flowers in bloom comprise their own "Ode to Joy." The same applies to her nocturnal "darker" works as well as the smaller formats which become a homage to Flemish still lifes.
(Schiele, Hockney).
Vassilis Papanikolaou's studio p. 112
The first image brings the viewer before a piano with the fall board open and a supremely poetic landscape painting propped against the music rack in place of a score. This declares at once the two great loves, painting and music, of Vassilis Papanikolaou, coexisting and flooding the space. In the corner, with the edge of a bookcase visible on the right, the shelf is full of boxes, bottles and jars with pigments, but in front of it rises the case of a musical instrument, while a cast of Donatello's Niccolò da Uzzano in plaster dominates the forefront. The idealistic coexistence of the two arts is manifest everywhere. In front of a wall featuring small, framed drawings, a low table covered by red silk fabric, and resting on top of it are two musical instruments and a Japanese katana sword.
Paintings leaning against a wall are half-hidden by the atmospheric chair in front of them, while Papanikolaou's innovative choice, to use newsprint instead of a palette to test his colours, in addition to being a good practical solution also gives the photograph an intriguing focal point. His raw material is powdered colours, but there is an economy of quantity and type, since his very personal colour range is spare and made up of the most basic colours.
That is the range we can see in the framed painting that follows. A reclining male figure, with his back propped up against a large pillow and his arms crossed over his chest, seems to be watching something on the television in a resigned mood and with a slight sense of frustration. The work is sensitive in its tones and gentle colouring, and conveys the qualities of what it describes with lines of exquisite accuracy.
The second equally wonderful pencil drawing is of a young smoker in short trousers with his head leaning against two pillows, brings to mind, in the way the line is rendered, the drawings of preceding artists (Schiele, Hockney).
In the final image, the artist with his guitar, in a room at the back, with a vague sense of Christmas. In the forefront, the viewer's gaze is drawn to the pale portrait of a young girl, captivated by something in front of her.
Giorgos Rorris' studio p. 124
An interwar two-storey building with faded ochre paint. Inside, the wooden staircase leads us to the main studio space, where traces of time are clearly visible.
Rooms bearing the memories of other times, where decay and decline, along with the traces of their old life, make for an atmosphere that's extraordinary, and so conducive to Rorris' anthropocentric works, most of which are full-length portraits depicted within the confines of this studio. There was nothing accidental about the creator choosing this place for studio that is simultaneously stamped by its current use and function.
In the larger room is the main studio space, where an empty easel is waiting to welcome a new frame. On a two-tier table on the right there are, at the level where the right hand can reach them, brushes of various sizes lying flat and more brushes in vertical holders, as yet unused. At the centre and in front of the easel is the artist's chair with its back to the viewer, and on the left, balanced on the arms of a canvas chair, a clean palette bearing, for the moment (frozen forever in time by Tsingos' photographs) a coffee cup. To the side, a large spotlight, and in the back two disparate chairs for the models (for either posing or resting). To the left, a large painting in black. Is it, perhaps, used as a background, or are we merely seeing the priming layer (ground) that he's prepared to receive a subsequent work?
On the wall opposite, in a prominent position, Courbet's famous painting L'Οrigine du monde (1866, Musée d'Orsay). Further down, pictures of works by Velázquez, two self-portraits by Rembrandt, and the head of Nefertiti betray the artist's aesthetic predilections from the history of art.
In another room, an extension of the main space, is an elevated platform with a director's chair, intended for a model. Behind it hangs a faded pinkish-purple cloth, which will serve as the background. The necessary spotlights, armchairs, easel, brushes, palettes and, on the walls, other works of art and photographs of artists, comprise the wholly personal universe of Rorris. Elsewhere, some of the artist's older works, as well as a handful of objects (bones, animal skulls, dried flowers). And behind it all, the creator at work.
Vassos Kapandais' studio p. 150
This series of photographs by Tsingos is the exception to an unwritten rule. In this case, she does not photograph the studio of Vassos Kapandais. She photographs the memory of the sculptor's studio since, in contrast to all other studios in this album, Kapandais is absent and the photographs were taken many years after his death (1990).
The starting point, here, is the edge of a garden. The marble head of Alexander welcomes the visitor, chiselled schematically on a prismatic circular section on slatepaved terrace. The residence flanked by pine trees, as well as the sculptor's studio unfurl their spaces before the viewer but pay attention: in the series of photographs published in this volume the viewer becomes an accomplice to Lily Tsingos' gaze.
In another section of the garden, closer to the entrance of the house, the famous helix from the fragment of an ancient Greek capital seems to emerge from the ground and the fine, white gravel. At the entrance to the house, from a small, elevated veranda with a metal dining table, a snake rises menacingly, its mouth wide open, carved in stone. This is the apotropaic house serpent, protector of the home, preventing evil from crossing the threshold.
On the left, the entrance to the studio. Sculpted heads, busts, female torsos, in various materials, plaster, bronze, terracotta, and alongside them ceramic masks, winged Nikes, small low reliefs as well as life-sized embossed reliefs, and sections of a large monumental composition cast in concrete and some other durable material. We can make out interventions in plaster on some of the faces that comprise it.
In front of this composition stands a sculpture easel, and on it an abstract female head in dark stone. On either side of the easel hang the sculptor's tools: simple compasses, curved measuring compasses of various sizes, plaster rasps, spatulas and a little further, monumental plaster cast busts.
The viewer is then led, via a spiral staircase, into the artist's home, where they are surprised by the bright colours on the walls of its rooms: the deep olive-green of the sitting area sets off the ochre-coloured sofa and chairs, draped over with throws. Against the wall of French doors two more upholstered armchairs and silver objects on the central coffee table. On the floor in front of the coffee table, on a rust-coloured rug with a geometric pattern, sits a brass lion with green patina of Eastern appearance. The anterior part of the sitting room, on the right, is occupied by a traditional dining table. To the left, another tidy space, the office. Here, the yellow walls are in harmony with the bookshelves, the writing desk, and the other furniture.
The walls are filled with various works, colourful drawings, engravings, ceramic plates, reliefs, and photographs.
Rodin
Dürer («Brustbild Einer Junger Venezianerin», 1505)
Rembrandt
Timos Batinakis' studio p. 172
The best introduction: the much-used cloth that every painter has nearby to wipe his stained (from brushes, tubes or the freshly-painted work itself) hands on.
Then, the tools of an immaculately organised studio. The bench and on top of it the wood storage case for tubes of paint. On the case, a large, oval palette and on the right jars with bouquets of used brushes. In the back, new brushes awaiting their turn. A few other brushes, wider and flat, are half-hidden by the painter's cloth that dominates the image.
The photos that follow reveal a large studio with several paintings, mostly portraits –double or triple – or full-length figures, animal carcases, fish and other compositions of objects. On the walls, a series of large drawings (charcoal) of clusters of trees. A poster of Rodin instructing a female model, Dürer's Portrait of a Venetian Woman (1506-07), and a self-portrait by Rembrandt, reveal Batinakis' artistic predilections.
The paintings and drawings of the lady in the kimono are reminiscent of Japonisme, the shift of 19th and early-20th century painters towards the arts of the Far East. Large paintings on several easels, as well as desks and benches with drawings or tools for processing pigments or other materials, show that Batinakis can go through the various stages of his work without having to prepare a particular space each time. The studio has been divided into separate corners, equipped with all the necessities: benches-tables, Dexion shelves loaded with all kinds of bottles, large and small, jars of linseed oil and other thinners, powder containers, and alongside them utilitarian materials, fine wire, rolls of paper, even neatly stored frames. Remarkable is the white paint mixing machine beneath the elevated loft. Its presence, however, has a simple explanation: Batinakis has been producing his own paints for years, and he also supplies his fellow artists with them.
Dimitris Nikolaidis' studio p. 192
Tsingos' lens bursts into the next studio, bringing the viewer along, to truly catch the artist at work. On the work bench, tools of all sorts. On the left a small vice, beside it pliers, tongs, tweezers (round and flat) and lilliputian files, a piece of wire for welding. Together, they reveal the object of the creator's practice: jewellery and microsculpture. The remaining tools gradually unfold before our eyes: the torch, fine drills, scalpel handles, small wooden processing bases, sheet metal, gold leaf, two lovely metal flowers, and an assortment of other materials only vaguely discernible in the deep, half-open drawer.
A captivating image: the tar container, where Nikolaidis bends and shapes the fine metal surfaces he requires, with etching needles of various types and sizes. A random but impressive composition is created by the reliefs and “craters” on the hardened tar. These are the imprints of the metal parts that were pressed into it, in order to gain the right shape and become jewellery.
Another type of allure is exuded by the wood, where small pieces of silver or gold will be melted by a blowtorch to ultimately become what the creator has in mind. We can see him here, engrossed in his work, at the various stages of sculpting a piece of jewellery. The top side of the wood, blackened and charred from use, is of particular aesthetic interest, cradling two shiny gold flowers, that seem to have fallen off the precious wreaths of the Macedonian dynasty.
Nikolaidis, however, also loves the transparent, light qualities of aquarelle. This is revealed by his much-used watercolour cases, as well as the result, a densely elaborated piece featuring the rusty hull of the SEMIRAMIS shipwreck off the eastern coast of Andros. And even though Nikolaidis might have been inspired by the real event, for one particular viewer, this author, Alexandros Baras' most famous poem comes to mind:
Once every week on a given day and always at the same hour, three handsome ships, the Cleopatra, the Semiramis and the Theodora, leave their berth at nine o'clock for Piraeus always, for Brindisi and for Trieste, always.
(translation by Yannis Goumas)
Petros Karavevas' studio p. 216
In a corner of the studio space, the creator's “fossilised” palettes welcome the visitor. They are literally built up in remains of colour that dried out because unused in his work and resemble exceptionally interesting painting compositions in themselves – glorious relics.
The hallway, with openings leading to smaller storage spaces, is lined with dozens of frames and takes us to the main studio: plain, bare, containing only the absolute necessities - an easel and a table with an array of tubes of oil paint. The most recent palette with the colours chosen by Karavevas for his subject is laid out on a higher, wheeled table along with the indispensable boxes containing solvents and brushes of various sizes. A low auxiliary surface with bottles containing solvents and mixers, varnishes and masking tape completes the artist's equipment. In a corner of the main space, on the floor, a yellow, richly patterned rug. On top of the yellow rug, a large painting seems to mirror it. It depicts, however, a lovely female body sitting in a wooden chair.
Roubina Sarelakou's studio p. 232
Sarelakou's studio is ruled by an exemplary organisation of space, with drawers and boxes to sort objects and stationary, as well as jewellery in transparent cases.
On the walls, large, framed engravings, black and white, bold, with flat rhythmical shapes, highlight this total chromatic congruence, out of which springs, like a flame, a cabinet in lacquered red, its open shelves brimming with an abundance of Indian ornaments.
Sarelakou's love for free geometric planes and linear elements is transferred to her jewellery and textiles, as well as the scarves that adorn her dressmaker's dummies.
All around, in a remarkable economy of space, are elegant tables/benches, with large block prints, perfectly ordered engraving tools, pristine printing cylinders, brushes and jars of ink.
In a corner of the room, looming over a fireplace loaded with logs, is a sculptural composition by Rokos, Sarelakou's partner, like a reminder of his presence in the engraver's life.
We can also make out, on the spotless, white work surfaces, silver boxes with geometric relief decoration and harmoniously arranged silk threads, while, elsewhere, elaborate drawings of leaves and flowers are laid out on large wooden surfaces.
Finally, Tsingos photographs the creator. She holds in her hands a creation in silver in which she has rendered with incredible sensitivity not only the texture and appearance, but also the wounds and decline of a slowly dying leaf.
STEFANOS DASKALAKIS
Photography and Painting
Photography catches people in the act. It immobilizes a gaze at the moment when all of human existence is concentrated in it. A photo can capture a face the instant some fleeting light allows it to reveal a completely unsuspected dimension of the person.
Elsewhere it can record material things such as the deterioration of a wall, a surface bearing the traces of time upon it, a trickling of paint on the floor in such a way as to emblematise human situations. Thus, how could a painter not be drawn or attracted to this art that has the power to fix and to convey with such vividness the world along with the human condition?
I felt photography was very close to me and that it accompanied me, sometimes affirming and sometimes guiding my efforts, especially during the period when my focus had turned to portraits and figures.
The study of human characters that I observed in photography led me to approach portraits and figures in a very particular way.
Many photographers have caught my attention for many different reasons. With her photos that made a powerful impression on me from the first time I saw them, Diane Arbus played a crucial role in the formation of a specific world in my painting. Arbus' work helped me to see how the “mythical” dimension exists everywhere and how the “trivial” daily routine, even in its worst displays of decadence, has a profundity so long as our eyes are open to it.
At first glance, her gaze seems to be tinged with hardness and irony yet very quickly Arbus shows us that even the most ponderous moments in life – even when they do not manage to avoid a kind of ridiculousness, when people are exposed in their attempts to strike poses like film stars – deep down those who can look beyond this, see how these personages in their poignancy acquire the dimensions of the heroes of great art.
Perhaps behind the awkwardness of people's behaviour she was able to see their struggle to hide their pain, desperation and hopelessness.
I look at photographs often. The work of a painter draws on myriad sources as numerous as are his longings. Besides the ‘baroque’ nature of the way Diane Arbus often composed her photographs, there is the style of another very different photographer with whom I feel a profound affinity.
The special ‘geometry’ with which August Sander revealed the Face of Our Time interests me equally. His detachment and stern gaze teach me the value of clean lines. The unadorned character of form, the reserved expressions, the guarded positions of the body and the total absence of any kind of narrative chatter confers on his photographs something of the merits of an ancient art.
I love Ansel Adams' photographs for the sense of the sublime and holiness with which he approaches nature at a time when painting appeared to have left it behind. It seems that a new medium such as photography can recapture things that had exhausted their potential in old idioms, like painting, and endow them with new perspectives.
With Edward Weston the abstract (or almost) sculptures of Brancusi turn back into female figures of flesh and bone without losing in the least the allure of the arabesque.
Painting often meets with photography while the inverse also holds true. The situations and the moods you observe while you are painting a person can also be encountered in a photograph.
It is interesting to observe how someone moves and gesticulates while they are talking and how they transform when they sit for a painting. Gradually they fold into themselves and withdraw from the clamour and commotion of the world. It is the privileged moment in painting. The person alone in his existential dimension. The person reflecting on himself.
I am looking at a photograph by the Manakia (or Manaki) brothers. It is a portrait of their sister Vassiliki with her husband Ioannis Polyoraios. I recognise that same gaze turned towards something else. The gaze that extracts them from their specific historical context and makes them contemporary with us, along with those who will come after us, and this silence and time that stands still, as a feeling, is reiterated in the mute tonalities of the clothes and the backdrop.
Photography interests me because it offers an exploration into the human psyche as well as an expansion of sensitivity. It is both an exercise and a pleasure for the eye. Painting and photography move along adjacent paths that intersect with a feeling of complicity.
August 26, 2023
Decay is a necessary and sufficient condition at a crossroads in life between two studios
Interview
Giorgos Rorris with Louisa Karapidakis, Lily Tsingos, Konstantinos Myrianthis
K. Myrianthis: The idea for this interview came to us from the experience that Lily and I had in Giorgos' studio as guests during the photo shoot, as engineers for some renovation work we were overseeing and when I sat for Giorgos to paint my portrait... there's an intense charm to this building, there's a charm to Giorgos and his work too, and given that the space will soon be vacated, we decided to chat about this building with him.
L. Karapadakis: This space has a thirty-year history and a very vocal silence.
G. Rorris: When I first rented the studio, I was thirty years old and capable of withstanding many severities, including, above all, the heat. I would work on the roof in the intense midday heat, from morning until 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening. The second hurdle was lowering the paintings down into the backyard by ropes so I could examine the works in the daylight... There is this wall in the house that I consider a stroke of luck, the light falls on it from the left and the fact that the light falls almost at the base of the wall means that it skims the surface of the painting with a slight degradation.Depending on the time of day, one notices different things. I mean, it looks different in the morning, at midday, in the afternoon, in autumn, in spring. I had to set up on the second floor, on the roof, in order to be able to paint the neighbourhood at an almost 360-degree angle, I painted all sides. I painted mostly the western side, because I would begin with an eastern light in the morning. I didn't want any shadows. I wanted to paint the effects of the sun on the wall surfaces, as they shone, with little shadow. The shadows, especially at midday in the summer, were very slight! It is here in this studio that I painted my first portrait. My friend Takis dropped by one Christmas eve for coffee. As we sat there, I looked at him and thought: there's my model! So I asked him “Do you have three hours to spare? Will you pose for me for three hours?” I felt very inspired during the process. And I think I liked how it came out. I then painted another friend, a woman, and realized that the work would not finish with the painting of her face... to make a long story short, that's how this room's first portrait came to be. The painting consists of seven pieces. Initially, we started with a small one, so as to include her legs. As she was sitting on the chair her legs were included afterwards, but we also wanted the arms which had been left out. We put another one to the side, her hand. After her other hand, we added the floor, but then there was too little floor, so we added some more to bring it forward. Then another piece was added to the right
so as to include the corner. The floor and the corner. In most of my work there is only one corner, not two. In only one, possibly the last one I did in this studio, a whole room, there are two corners. Yes, a corner is a symbolically charged element of the space. That is to say, dense.It also defines the sideways perspective. In other words, we have the front surface and the sideways surface. It determines the floor's vanishing points. The vanishing point of the perspective is usually there, on that wall. It is in this studio that I became who I am. To put it simply. In here. And this is reflected in the works and their evolution. At first glance and I'd say a bit of a cursory glance, there is no development in my work. I painted a person in this room in '97 and I painted someone in this room in '23, twenty-six years later. This, however, is a perspective that defines painting on the basis of what it depicts. But if we shift our attention to how it depicts it, here the evolution is evident. The walls, especially these ones, at first were completely white and harder. The hues that were later visible, or at least that I learnt to see, I was able to represent and to transfer onto the painting. In the beginning I didn't have the experience or the know-how, I hadn't found the various techniques for rendering the subtle hues that exist on those walls. Naturally, through the years the walls themselves became dirty. They also took on a very slight patina over time. This of course is also because I paint them, I treat them like dreams, though back then I saw them as mere walls. This is important. In many of my paintings suddenly the walls had acquired this duality, they were not only walls but also skies. They went through this strange transformation. Skies turned into walls. The walls in here are old and dirty, they have an element of sky in them. As if they were cloudy skies. That's how I see them. I don't see them as walls. I don't see them as merely intercepting the gaze. On the contrary, they bear an accumulation of elements. They have cracks, they have nail holes from photographs that I hung on the walls and tore off afterwards leaving fragments of the photos stuck there alongside spatters of paint and what have you. All of this I diligently tried to capture to the best of my abilities in some of my works.
Back then I was young, I was thirty-four when I began painting portraits. I didn't think I was telling a story. I wasn't portraying something that wasn't happening, I was just depicting a girl who was at the time posing for me in my studio. All she was doing was posing for a painting. However from the moment the figure was small the issue arose as to how to paint the person in relation to the walls. The room in which the sitter poses - we're painting here, not making a collage with a photograph of the room and a person stuck onto it. It was also necessary to paint the person's rapport with the room and against the room - as well as the hues of the person's aura reflected in the environment, on the walls in the air and around her. But also how the person herself reflects the hues of the room. Because she is not posing in her living room. Nor is she posing let's say in a bourgeois environment but she is instead posing here in this space. A space that has mice, that leaks in the winter, is cold and and in the summer is much hotter than it is out in the street... a house that is alive, as much as it can be alive through these works... You have to live in a new space for a whole year. Here I know the light very well and how it changes throughout the year. I know how its quality shifts towards the end of August or how the sun begins to enter the space as it moves southwards. In the new studio that I'm moving into... I don't know anything yet. I'll see things gradually, I'll work with spotlights... I'll only have a sense of the new space after a year has gone by.
My aesthetic sense came out of the patina of time, on objects... I read once something that I really liked, by someone who was interested in the etymology of the world ‘atelier’ in French. According to one version, it comes from the old verb ‘atteler’ which means to harness in a pair (to harness in order to plough). Meaning that you come to the atelier to pair. A pairing is created. A bond. And, of course, the Greek word ‘ergastirio’ is a space for work and a workspace is a place where objects undergo decay. Because working-processing the materials equals decay. This floor didn't look like this when I first moved in. On it there are layers of paint, in some places 5 millimetres or even a whole centimetre in thickness.
It's my belief that my models ended up loving this studio. They loved it once the painting was finished.... regardless of how friendly we'd become, they never set foot in the studio again. Because I believe that at the bottom of their hearts they realise they are no longer the centre of the gaze. When a model enters this space, I give her pride of place. Without a model I am unable to paint. I also have to say something else. By itself the studio without people does not interest me at all. Moreover, I have also never painted a space devoid of people. The fusion, the coexistence, is what produces the spark of attraction in my own gaze. I want to be clear on this. With my own gaze. As for me I won't paint the interior of the studio as it is. The model is the ruler of the space, so to speak. While the painting is going on, we will eat together, we will talk, listen to music, all this says "it is me." And the work that is becoming also knows that it is she. Herself. So she cannot return and be a mere visitor to a dilapidated space from which she departed a queen. Let's put it this way. The focus of the gaze. The centre of attention. Hereafter she will come if we meet someplace else. All the young women who posed for me in the past and who became friends always meet with me elsewhere, not in the studio. Only rarely, if ever, do we meet here. Never, and if they do, they will feel abashed. You can treat the space sacrilegiously, you can be blasphemous, you can be aggressive, you can be whatever you want to be. The only thing you cannot do is confront it with drowsiness and delicacy. It is a space of turmoil. Turmoil cannot prevail everywhere. The rest must also fall within α framework. To have a framework and within that framework turmoil can become logos (reason, thinking, thought). The organised logos of an image... At the same time, there are also all these adversities that become your shield. The studio is an environment in which the young women have felt free to reveal tremendous confidences...
I work with closed windows and doors. Reality, with its constant flux of things, the street, the square, the noise, events, news, happenings, all remain outside. Nothing comes in. In here we are alone.It is a spiritual space. We create an image and images have their demands. This is our work. So, possibly also because of the methods of psychoanalysis, which I don't practice, certain young women abandon themselves to free association, a sort of transport during which they say painful things. They discover things and unburden themselves somewhat. They leave in a better state. I will talk with the model and then she will leave and, in the end, I will want to see the work again. I need about eight hours.
I think anyone who works in a studio – imagine a gunsmith, if they were given the chance to speak they would tell all sorts of stories... We have the painting of Velázquez in his studio and we can see what happens in the studios of his day. All sorts of people visit him. People came and went, they
chatted with each other. There was nothing of what I have been saying, about this space that no one is allowed in when I work, also because the model is posing nude, but even if she weren't.
In the beginning very often I would come here just to read. I would sit here... I would come at 11 and leave at 7 in the evening. I wanted to come and sit in the studio to get used to it...
Almost despite yourself, you offer what you are unaware of having, which is your image... I should also say: in my studio there is a chaotic situation, but I need it. Here, all around me, there is a sort of anarchy. Because when I pick something up, I never put it back where it was, I put it somewhere else at random. I know that later at some point I'll find it again.
L. Tsingos: The imminent departure from the studio is a landmark event in the journey of an important painter like yourself, Giorgos. I am glad that you described to us in such vivid colours your complex relationship to this studio that you are about to leave, to your work and your models. I look forward to speaking with you again after at least a year, once the process of osmosis between your new studio and your life and work has set in.
Richard Bach,
LILY TSINGOS
Why I go to out of the ordinary
places
"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.”
Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
What might seem exotic to you, is merely different to me, something out of the ordinary... I do not go alone; I always carry my camera with me.
It is an escape from everyday reality, a gateway into a whole new situation, which cannot be easily interpreted through well-known and ordinary criteria. In this other place, the sense of finite time always competes with the desire to capture the image, and I feel armed and combative. I fight time, the speed at which my visual field keeps changing, the conditions around me - crowds, the sun, heat, cold, or rain, the challenge of delving into details without disengaging from the whole, and so much more - but I also resist the urge to immerse myself in the magic of what I see and neglect how I capture it. I see the outcomes of this battle later, and experience a lot of joy and sadness too, but the motives to enter this battle are there, in these exotic places, real or imagined, that can easily accommodate our dreams and desires. Using our imagination, we put together a composition of images from this alternative reality which supersedes rational thought, and hope that all of this can be captured in some of the photographs.
In the last ten years I have come to realise that exotic places can also be found right next to me, or you; they change over time, following their own course, and can be sought in places where the human mind relaxes its hold and surpasses space, often indifferently. It is not only in Asia, or Africa; we can discover such places right next to us, intertwined with people's spiritual activities, especially in art. Artists' studios, sources of chaos and inspiration, jungles with no wild animals, but with wild idiosyncrasies,
dark atmospheres and sunlight, hidden and remote secrets, glades full of exotic creatures that dwell there for hours on end and create art which will ultimately acquire its own essence and existence, and move beyond the sphere of the ephemeral. These are the nests of the exotic creatures. The messages and associations which form there, together with the awe at what is budding, are conveyed in the photographs and act as a catalyst for the photographer and the viewer to capture the plasticity of creation and the struggle with the ephemeral.
I have to admit that the feeling of curiosity is the most powerful motivation for me, in order to get out of myself, to meet foreign and different people - not just landscapes, civilisations, and religions - but also nests where art, and new situations incubate. I then feel that I can set up my models, in their own parallel realities, through my camera lens, and go back to my own harbour, raise my fishing nets and admire (usually) my catch. I like both leaving and returning to the harbour.
It often helps to have a vivid fairytale with pictures in order to convey complex social, historical and artistic phenomena. This used to be the role of painting (once in a while in the epic genre); today it is photography, videos and cinema. In artists' studios, photography may have a lead on this, for it has the capacity to dive deeply into unsuspecting worlds full of random details, built up over a lengthy period of time through the artist's engagement with their studio. These serendipitous details await their appearance in the next work, with the beauty and curiosity of the unexpected. Perhaps this could capture, fleetingly, both the chaos and the nascent inspiration...
Lily Tsingos was born in Athens in 1957. She studied architecture in Brussels (Institut Supérieur d’Architecture Victor Horta), worked in the Technical Department of the National Bank of Greece and mainly dealt with restoration and reconstruction projects of traditional and classical buildings, and she was also responsible for recording these studies photographically. At the same time, she worked in the private sector as an architect, had her own architecture office and executed several design and construction projects.
She is married to and collaborates with Konstantinos Myrianthis and they have a son Theseus.
A self-taught photographer, she has been exploring the art of photography for the past 50 years, inspired by all kinds of works of art, Eastern and Western cultures and human situations. She studies the history of cultures and art, is an amateur jeweller and has been following the teaching of painter-jeweller Dimitris Nikolaidis for the past thirteen consecutive years.
She always searches deeply for the hidden meaning attached to anything that is contrary to the ephemeral.
