Reviews
INSTEAD OF CRITIC NOTE
Evgenios D. Mathiopoulos Prof. of Art History Univ. Crete
Shortly after the mid-1970s an unexpected trend emerged in Western visual arts circles.
As it was said then “after the barren times of theorists without practice had come the time of practices without theory”.
And what was that practice?
Representation, which for almost half a century the avant-garde movements had so discredited.
Very quickly a representational painting spread to the most important international exhibitions and the best known galleries of the metropolitan art centers.
The big museums of modern art suddenly remembered the forgotten Bonnard, Baltis, Hopper, De Chirico of the second period and proclaimed them masters and classics of the 20th century.
Despite the initial declarations, the theory did not take long to appear to justify what seemed unjustifiable in the eyes of the until then dominant moderns.
The theory of “postmodernism” very quickly went around the world announcing the end of the era in which “Being thinks under the idea of the New”.
Eleatians and not Heraklitos seem to be winning the game. The idea that Nietzsche formulated in his book “The Joyful Knowledge”, the idea of ”eternal turning – return of the same” is the basis of the new dominant ideology.The “return of the same” is in terms the “return of the old” and the old in the visual arts is representation.
As they pick antiques in second-hand shops, in the same way postmodern artists rushed into history and since everything is free here, they began to plunder it.
Flemish naturalism, baroque, Greco mannerism, neoclassicism, even abstract art itself, were all picked and mixed to give new stylistic and eclectic acrobatics.
In these conditions, the road to realism seems dangerously trapped for the young visual artists.Postmodern representationalism is very close to their morphoplastic pursuits and is ready and able, if not to assimilate them, at least to treat them, retaining their small truth as one of its many facets.
In the works of Michalis Vamvakaris in front of me, I see the paths he wants to follow and I feel the need to encourage him in what he is looking for, while reminding him of the dangers.
How in painting one can easily reach “resemblance” as in this one after a lot of effort and labor, one may never arrive.
As it happens that the “resemblance” is similar and the “resemblance” is different… and from what I have understood the latter has always been the quality of the painting and its poetry.
ABOUT MICHALIS VAMVAKARIS
Dr. Dimitris Deligiannis Art historian Volos 1993
Michalis Vamvakaris is an artist who consciously chose to live far from the two major urban centers, Athens and Thessaloniki, in a provincial town, Volos, knowing very well the pros and cons of this choice.
A man of choices, Vamvakaris chooses the female form in a timeless theme.
His work of the three years 1990-93, which he exhibits in the “ALLI POLI” gallery in Thessaloniki, concerns exclusively the female form.
His female figures, whether seated or standing, are presented in a very strict manner, in frontal positions as they are known to us from antiquity, strongly reminiscent of archaic figurines. The setting of his forms in space is timeless. With the abstract mood that presents them, without supplementary elements to surround them, they thus acquire a priestly character with the intensity concentrated exclusively in the form.
The undefined surrounding space, the strict composition and the seriousness of these forms do not refer to any particular era. They belong to all times, they do not come from any. A person of design par excellence, Michalis Vamvakaris structures his designs purely architecturally, knowing where to place their axes, working with horizontal and vertical lines. It emphasizes and processes the prominent members, such as the chin, nose, forehead, illuminating them, while shading the rest. He works carefully on the faces and especially the eyes, which he renders circularly with strong sockets around the depressions.
When he paints a bust he is not at all concerned with the body, nor does he show any diligence in the treatment of the hands. When he uses color there is a lyricism to that use.
The woman as presented in the work of Michalis Vamvakaris is not a portrait. Even when the model exists, the form overcomes its individual characteristics and makes the woman – a symbol. Autonomous and solitary, it comes from the earth, from the infinity of time, dissolves into myriad lines of life and is recomposed through its own course.
So it is not the model from which the table is derived. It is the woman herself who creates the painting, composing her form.
In the women of Vamvakaris there is a latent relationship with those of G. Bouzianis, but with a noticeable difference. M. Vamvakaris does not consider women destructive, he does not try to shape her, he does not attack her. He personifies her with nature, because of course a kinship with Chr. Botsoglu because of the student-teacher relationship, but this reference is mainly about Giacometti’s drawings and paintings.
The women of Michalis Vamvakaris are independent, lonely, serious and modest, but mostly self-sufficient. They do not look at the world and the viewer evasively, but head on. Their gaze does not express any awe. It is simple and sure with the modesty and knowledge of the birth. They don’t care about impressions. THERE ARE!
Michalis Vamvakaris in his painting follows various trends, in a way that does not embrace one or the other. It is clear that his work moves more comfortably between impressionism and abstraction.From a thematic point of view, man and his attitudes in space are the main axis in his artistic pursuits.
In this Theme the painter invests the plastic values often with an emphasis of continuous study around the expression of the form.The atmosphere that dominates his works brings to mind examples of other expressionist painters, such as Bouzianis and the younger Botsoglou, who may have indirectly influenced the work of Vamvakaris.
It is of particular importance that Vamvakaris places the faces in a neutral space that is erased abstractly, so as to leave unaffected the human attitude and expression as something personal, ideal or even to a certain extent incomplete (NON-FINITE).
A remarkable feature that partially explains the aforementioned is the relationship between design and color, which is weighted in favor of the former, so that the characteristics of human expression can be highlighted.
Vamvakaris’ painting follows the continuum of a study which seems to tell us that the dialogue with the aesthetic integration on the canvas can never end.
INSTEAD OF CRITIC NOTE
CHRYSA DRANDAKI Art historian-sociologist February 2003
How could a protoleio, a student work of tests in color and composition, connect after a twenty-plus year course of creation, the past and present of Michalis Vamvakaris’ painting? As strange as it may seem, in viewing all of his works, some of which I was seeing for the first time, this study with its fragmentary style and bright color range, served as a myth to understand the passages of the evolutionary path and to reach the confidence of today’s style. Introduction and epilogue to this study of a creation that goes through the first tests in the study of key visual problems, to then selectively penetrate the human form, which dominates most of his work, and lead further to future investigation.
0 Michalis Vamvakaris creates in the climate of the searches of the artists of the “new performativeness”, who redefine and reinterpret the visual data of the past with obvious eclectic affinities choosing their own methods and narrative ways. This is how they reach the expression of their personal idiom and the essence of their work as a consequence of personal experiences, archetypes and choices.
It is ultimately about the redefinition of the image, and specifically for Vamvakaris the image of the female form, which initially offers security but very quickly it is realized that it is an image – fallacy, a metamorphosis of the real, which causes concern, reflection and anxiety with its ability to lead to the unknown of the inner world and to the psyche of the represented form. This image is the result of an anxious and persistent visual writing, which through the mesh of structural relationships, colors and lines, reaches the essence as a study of physiology and physiognomy of the female form, unrecognizable most of the time but existing, proposed as an ideotype.
The creative adventure of Michalis Vamvakaris reaches today, passing through various stages of search. His first studio works, from the end of the 70s, are characterized by experimentation in materials, composition, textures and themes, with alternations of light and dark variety of colors in the studies of landscapes, forms, objects and interiors with strong the structurality of the elements and, at the same time, the fragmentation and isolation of the color fields, which work in favor of the geometry of the composition. Since the mid-80s, while remaining thematically in the interiors with human figures or objects, the compositions are presented more dynamically with a gestural performance of color against a dark range.
Fast, expressionistic, violent compositions, where each object or human figure functions as an occasion to define or study the visual space, dominant of the work with the eventual absence of the present elements. Then, having apparently mastered key areas of his pursuits, he turns with a Gordian treatment to another painting. Breaking the bond with his previous creation, he penetrates into the innermost and dives into the depths of existence with an in-depth analysis of the human form. The painting space becomes neutral, incomplete or endless and the human form – above all the female form – becomes the target in full frontality, a battlefield the face alone, which challenges to explore and conquer the deeper relationship between logic and emotion or speech and soul. It focuses on this relationship by deepening it and getting rid of everything unnecessary.
The space is redefined with a geometric arrangement from which the form emerges – a face, hands or whole torso – to intensify in other places and fade out in other places. With a selective treatment and external rationalization, he represents with geometrical relations everything that is seen. He depersonalizes and decharacterizes it by proceeding to a strictly geometric structuring of the whole. The handling and use of color works rather secondarily with a range of deeper earth and gray colors earlier, brighter, bolder and contrasting in the later works.
At the same time, different ways of manipulating the lines, which do not describe with stability but structure the form to end up real and formless at the same time. Engravings in every direction, lines-fibers of a mesh-barrier towards the inside, lines, which sometimes seem to leave and sometimes to define, creating a chaos of linear relationships and structured color fields, which represent the human condition as it is and is not. Stripping the form of all material and carnal gives it expressiveness and spirituality, which is intensified in the last works with the choice of face-eyes-hands on a bright background. Frontal or profile image of a person detached from all references to the world, hermetically sealed entering his existence into the infinity of time.
Physiognomy idealist of a vibrating inner country, the country of the soul, behind the opposing forces, signifying the fragile and absolute simultaneity of existence, what will ultimately remain when appearances disappear and when external conventions fall away. Female figures distant, lonely, Kafkaesque existences, the portraits of Michalis Vamvakaris are the projection of the deep eternal relationship of man with the world.
In the art adventure of the century, the human form not only did not cease to be explored and moved, but on the contrary, it constantly refers to unspeakable relationships and revelations of a complex and dark world that, as a “black continent”, is difficult to explore. Now more than ever the “I and the other” of the prophet can show the infinite faces of the ego as a reflection of a multifaceted reality.