Page 103 - Studio International - November December 1975

Takis Musical Hanover 11974 Costas Tsoclis Stairs 1975
Pavlos Columns 1958

approaches to visual art communication which largely We hope that conclusions will be drawn from the
bypassed England, where until very recently all artistic juxtapositions involved in this show : the juxtaposition
direction was taken from America. between the neons of Chryssa and Antonakos (the two
In the sixteenth century Domenico Theotocopoulos, artists who were among the first ever to use neon in their
known to us as El Greco, travelled to Venice and the rest work) ; the intermedia) context of Takis ; the nouveau
of Italy and then to Spain, where he spent most of his life. realisme background of Vlassis Caniaris, Pavlos and
The importance of his Cretan background is denied by Costas Tsoclis, and the different ways in which their
few art historians. In the nineteenth century it was to work has developed from this point; the arte povera and
Munich that the aspiring artists of Greece inevitably 'actions' of Jannis Kounellis; the unique integration of
looked. Since the first World War, however, the centre of pop and minimal art in the work of Lucas Samaras.
gravity passed to Paris, and now no visitor of 'intellectual'
Paris can fail to be struck by the large number of artists as
well as musicians and writers from Greece that live there.
This exhibition, therefore, has ¾ double function from
an English perspective. Firstly, if we accept that Paris is
artistically further away from London than either New
York or Los Angeles, the exhibition will draw attention to
the work of artists and attitudes to art little known in
England. In this case even Lucas Samaras and Stephen
Antonakos are no exception. Indeed, only Takis has ever
had an exhibition in England before. Artists are first and
foremost individuals and any opportunity to make their
work visible in an appropriate context is something to be
welcomed.

But secondly, the exhibition will ask the question and
indicate possible answers as to what links these artists,
who, apart from the two 'Americans', all speak Greek as
their first language and who did not leave Greece until
at least their twenties. Even the two 'Americans' grew up Stephen Antonakos 5 Neons 1973
in ¾ Greek-American environment. As every visitor to
America knows, the ethnic background of at least first-
generation immigrants is of profound cultural
significance. We believe that ¾ quality difficult to define, but
nonetheless both Greek and twentieth-century, will
become transparent in the work and imagery of all these
artists in ¾ very subtle way. To quote Samaras again :
'Greece is my pre-history, my preliterate past, my
unconscious, my fantasy. America is my history, my
consciousness, my adult life, my reality'. The
exhibition at the ICA postulates that it is this kind of
double situation which can give rise to genuine tension
in art work.

Vlassis Caniaris Hopscotch 1975
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