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.
INSTEAD OF CRITIC NOTE
MAGDA KOUMPARELOU
Art Historian
February 2003
Michalis Vamvakaris graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts (A.S.K.T.) in 1986, studying under Lefteris Kanakakis, Dimitris Mytaras, and Ilias Dekoulakos. However, his involvement with painting dates back much earlier. In his retrospective exhibition at the Giorgio De Chirico Art Center, he will present works showcasing his artistic creation from 1978 to the present day.
A restless and intense personality with diverse quests, as befits a genuine artistic nature and a true creator with principles and values, Michalis Vamvakaris has demonstrated a significant twenty-five-year journey in the artistic firmament of our country’s visual arts scene and abroad, creating a highly personal, mature, and substantial morphoplastic language. This language is the culmination of his personal explorations and reflections, which he passionately supported throughout his entire artistic path.
Before entering the school and during his studies there, he was preoccupied with the human form—either autonomous or in relation to space—and handled it in multiple ways: with realism and rigorous color study, with an expressionistic dynamic line, and with a deconstruction of form that frequently verges on abstraction without ever completely dissolving the figure.
After his graduation, and while never losing interest in the human form, there is a period in his painting characterized by intense reflections regarding landscape. However, this was not approached through the familiar “traditional” lens of classical landscape painters, but rather through experimentation regarding work on color and how it can be rendered via a color study and a completely abstract composition.
The same color-related reflection is present in the way he handles the human form during that same period. Operating abstractly, keeping only the essential elements—ideograms of the human figure—he plays with shadows and outlines using bold colors that evoke both the studies of Raoul Klee and the bright, intense colors of the Fauves.
Another subject that occupied him at that time was the object in its relation-position to space. He approached it with robust and dynamic drawing—a characteristic of his painting—dismantling the realistic form and rendering it in a purely chromatic manner.
A man of deliberate choices, Vamvakaris returned to the human form and its realistic rendering after 1990, daring to subvert the conventionally accepted progression where artists begin with realism and arrive at abstraction. Vamvakaris did precisely the opposite. He started from abstraction to settle, for the time being, into realism; not, however, in its familiar historical art form, but with a completely personal visual idiom. After 1990, and particularly during the three-year period of 1990–93, he dealt almost exclusively with the human form and chose a timeless theme that has existed since the dawn of art in every era: the female form. His figures, whether seated or standing, are presented in a strict manner, in frontal poses familiar to us from antiquity, strongly reminiscent of archaic idols. The positioning of his forms in space, presented with an abstract disposition and devoid of any supplementary surrounding elements, takes on a hieratic character, focusing all intensity exclusively on the form.
The indefinite surrounding space, the strict composition, and their solemnity prevent any reference to a specific era. It belongs to all eras, originating from none. A draftsman par excellence, Michalis Vamvakaris structures his drawings in a purely architectural manner, knowing exactly where to place his axes. Working with horizontal and vertical lines, he emphasizes and refines prominent features such as the chin, nose, and forehead, illuminating them while shading the rest. He carefully works on the faces and especially the eyes, which he renders circularly with pronounced sockets around the hollows. When painting busts, he is not concerned with the body at all, nor does he show any diligence in treating the hands; yet, when he uses color, a certain lyricism emerges in its application.
The woman, as presented through Vamvakaris’s work, is not a portrait. It lacks a personal character; even when a model is present, it transcends her individual traits to create woman-as-symbol. Autonomous and solitary, she emerges from the earth, from the infinity of time, dissolving into myriad lines of life and reconstituting herself through her own journey. It is not the model that gives rise to the painting. It is she herself who creates the painting by composing her own form. In Vamvakaris’s women, there is a latent relationship with those of G. Bouzianis regarding the expressionistic style, but with one distinctive difference: Vamvakaris does not view it as destructive, he does not attempt to dissolve her, nor does he attack her; he personifies her with nature, because she is nature. Solitary and self-sufficient. There is, of course, an affinity with Chr. Botsoglou due to a student-teacher relationship, but his reference fundamentally points to the drawings and paintings of Giacometti. In this series of female forms, Vamvakaris also engages with their sculptural rendering, using completely diverse materials such as plaster, iron, burlap, etc. Yet he does not simply place them in space; he creates environments with a modern perception and outlook that implies both the self-sufficiency of the female essence and the artist’s relationship with contemporary reality. He treats his sculpted female forms, whether standing or seated, painterly as well, using the same method; often, these constitute a combination of painting and sculpture, extending the canvas into a sculptural form.
From 1993 until 2001, he continued to primarily address the female form in his painting, while simultaneously working on male forms and landscapes. He approached male forms similarly to the female ones, and his landscapes with a color sensitivity and highly meticulous drawing, rendering the sensation rather than the objective reality. A characteristic feature of Vamvakaris’s latest female forms is the encasing of the head within a square outline, which prompts multiple interpretations and reflections concerning both the position of today’s contemporary 21st-century woman and his own visual explorations. What dominates Vamvakaris’s artistic creation, evident since his earliest works (two pencil drawings of a nude model from 1978), is the vast number of drawings he produces—not out of an inability to complete the subject he is working on, but due to a firm conviction regarding how vital drawing is. For this reason, his drawings exist as complete, self-contained works of signifiers and signifieds.
In his latest creations from the 2002–2003 period, Vamvakaris remains focused on the same theme—that of woman-as-symbol—with the only change being the manner of execution. He shifts his forms from a strict frontal posture to an equally strict three-quarter (profile-frontal) view. He models his faces using dark ochres, blacks, and grays, emphasizes their distinct features, and works with particular care on the eyes, which remain hermetically closed. In these female forms, the indefinite background of his earlier works is replaced by a monochromatic background, executed sometimes in warm earth tones and other times in cool tones, predominantly grays and blues.
A deeply anthropocentric painter in his subject matter, Michalis Vamvakaris has confronted the human form in many different ways through intense reflections and the inner agony that comes with engaging with such a timeless theme. He has created a visual language of his own, which, broadly speaking, could be said to belong to the realm of a peculiar realism, with elements moving between expressionism and abstraction without being strictly either.
A man of choices, both in his life and in his work, Vamvakaris remains an artist with deeply personal anxieties and quests; a painter possessing honesty and sincerity toward his own dialogue with vision and the art he has served for twenty-five years—and will continue to serve with the same absolute respect and consistency; a creator with a well-founded and profoundly philosophical perspective, shaped by personal choices and a deep knowledge of both art history and contemporary reality.