Christian Heinrich Siegel

 

Christian Heinrich Siegel                ΚΡΙΣΤΙΑΝ ΧΕΙΝΡΙΧ ΣΙΥΚΕΛ

Born 1806 in Germany                    Died 1883 in Athens

 

Row E right at the far end of the Protestant Cemetery

It is true that Christian Heinrich Siegel the first teacher of modelling and sculpture at the newly formed Athens School of Arts has not left much of a visible legacy (a huge sleeping lion in Nauplio and a sculpted grave in the First Cemetery) but his spiritual legacy is immense because he helped to mold  the aesthetic and the skills of the first generation of Greece’s sculptors. The details of his almost 50 years in Greece are sketchy but worth examining because his time in Greece offers a glimpse into the beginnings of the modern state. His life is typical of the optimism, skill sets, and entrepreneurship that characterized so many young Europeans who came to Greece to help create the nation and, hopefully, to make their fortunes. Like many artists-entrepreneurs of that era, Siegel would dabble extensively in archaeology, real estate, and business, in his case marble quarries.  Unlike many Germans, he chose to stay and even began to sign his name in the Greek fashion- ΣΙΓΚΕΛΟΣ, quite a compliment to his adopted country.

 

His Life

Christian was born in Wandsbek, now a district in the city of Hamburg, Germany in 1808. He travelled due north to study at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, modelled after the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and then one of the best Academies in Europe. Denmark was undergoing a cultural renaissance of sorts after the Napoleonic wars and this school would produce famous sculptors such as Herman Freund (1786-1840) and Bertel Thorvaldsen (1797-1838). The neoclassical style, in vogue at the time, would be absorbed by the young Christian and later by his pupils in Greece. He completed his studies in the Munich Academy under Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler and in 1837-8 back in Hamburg under Otto Sigsmund Runge.

 

The Danish Academy’s Seal

 

The European Academies and the spread of Neoclassicism

It is amazing in that pre-internet world, how interconnected and homogeneous the aesthetic ideals at these academies were and how easily ideas gravitated from one centre to the other.  Many students studied in multiple academies before graduation and, no doubt, this would have produced a kind of ‘old boys’ network valuable to students, not just for a shared aesthetic, but also because of the connections they made that could lead to those all important future commissions.

The Neoclassical style itself was partly a reaction against rococo excesses but was also fuelled by the intense contemporary interest in all things classical, especially classical sculpture which, literally, was being unearthed in Italy and Greece during that period. Students at European art academies were always tasked with copying these newly discovered forms which then became a part of their artistic DNA.  Neoclassicism, like classicism itself, placed emphases on clarity of contour, the idealization of faces and bodies, decorum in positioning, and an overall sense of repose which, all together, projected a sense of timelessness and the ideal.  The preferred attire was classical rather than contemporary. (1) The Venus de Milo, discovered in 1820, could be taken as a beau ideal for neoclassical sculpture.

 

Neoclassicism was a style that suited 19^th century Greece perfectly, not just because it was already popular in Europe and the natural heritage of the country, but also because one of the aims of the new state was to stress its connection with the ancient Greece and to present the modern state in an equally idealized form.

 

Greece gets a German King in 1832 and a lot of Germans Answer his Call

Greece’s fight for freedom had captured the imagination of Europe as did the investiture in 1832 of 17 year old King Othon, the son of Ludwig I of Bavaria. Greece provided opportunities for European artists and architects with the right connections, - connections which Christian Siegel had. His teacher in Munich was one of King Ludwig’s master craftsmen and Hans Christian Hansen (1803-1883), the Danish architect who would have such an early influence in Athens had been a student in Copenhagen during the same period as Siegel.

Siegel arrived in Greece in 1834, (2) to work with Hansen who needed artisans to decorate a building complex planned for land bought by Georgios Kantakouzenos at the corner of Millerou and Leonidou in what is today’s Metaxourgeio.  Siegel was in his late twenties and Hansen in his early thirties. Works were being sponsored by King Ludwig, and the many wealthy Greeks who had flocked to Greece from the diaspora to buy land and finance the reconstruction of the city. It was a wonderful time to be an architect or artisan; Athens was rising from the ashes of the War of Independence and had just been designated as Greece’s capital city.

 

A False Start in Metaxourgeiou

Kantakouzenos, a wealthy Phanariot, had bought this site for development  primarily because it would be near the proposed royal palace then planned in today’s  Omonia Square. He was not the only land speculator to be bitterly disappointed when the palace was actually built on the east side of today’s Syntagma  Square. The new Athens elite all wanted to build near that all important palace. As a result, the area where the Kantakouzenos complex had been planned became less desirable, and more industrial. The complex was abandoned for a time and then altered to later become the site of the silk factory that has given the district its name today. Its latest incarnation is as the Athens Municipal Art Gallery. (3)

 

 

1: where Kantakouzenos bought, 2: the proposed palace site, and 3: where it was built. These distances in today’s mega city seem small, but they were not considered small in the 1830s.

 

In any case, Hansen signed off the project almost immediately, angry that his original design was not being followed. He went on to greater things: the design and construction of the main building of the University of Athens and the excavation and reconstruction of the Acropolis’ temple of Athena Nike.

 Siegel remained in Athens, looking for work.

In 1838, he received a commission from King Ludwig 1 to erect a suitable monument to the Royal Bavarian Guards who had succumbed to typhoid in Nauplio during the terrible epidemic of 1833-4. (4)

 

 

Completed in 1840-41, and located in the Pronoia district close to the city centre, it is carved out of the native slate rock and is 8 metres long and three metres high.

 

I love this monument. I came across it on one of my first visits to Greece and had no idea what an immense lion was doing, snoozing in a suburb of Nauplio.  Its pose is wonderfully mournful, and those immense and relaxed paws are awesome yet somehow endearing as they hang over the ‘tomb’. Some have suggested that this lion was inspired the famous archaic lion of the island of Kea. It too was immense and carved from the living rock. But our feline’s true ancestor lives in Switzerland. He is the Lion of Lucerne, a memorial to fallen soldiers completed by Bertel Thorvaldsen in 1821. Bertel was nine years older than Siegel, more famous, and, like Siegel, a graduate of the Danish School of Fine Arts. His monument had clearly made an impression on Siegel. (5)

 

 

Thorvaldsen’s lion.

 

This early photograph taken by Carl Siele in 1910 gives you a better idea of the grandeur of ‘our’ lion’s situation and size. The effect is slightly hi-jacked these days by the children’s playground at its base. Still, the lion sleeps on....

 

1842 saw Siegel working on the decorative marble bits for the new palace of the King as well as taking part in the resurrection of some of the monuments on the Acropolis rock. It seems as if every philhellene did a little digging or resurrecting of the past during their careers.

At one time he apparently had a residence and workshop for modelling in the modified Kantakouzenos complex, the complex that had brought him to Greece in the first place. Another source has him living on either Piraeus or Menandrou Street, a neighbour  of Duchess of Plaisance, an early benefactor of the Athens school of Arts; another has him living in a garden home of the Austrian Consul. Siegel was not making a lot of money during his early career which might explain his many moves. His main sources of income were marble busts. In those days before photography, the wealthy liked to immortalize themselves and their families in marble.

 

The School of Fine Arts

His work must have appreciated though because 1847 saw him, at the age of 41, hired to teach modelling and sculpture at the Athens school of Fine Arts, a position he would hold until 1859. This school was responsible for turning Greek marble workers into accomplished artists. The school had first opened in 1836 on weekends only because its students, of necessity, had day jobs. It apparently taught the Greek language as well because some of its early students had not attended school long enough to gain literacy or had not attended at all. By 1840, it was offering daily classes.  The influence of this school and the art its graduates produced for buildings and public spaces in Athens would be impossible to over-estimate.

Siegel’s students read like a who’s who of 19^th century Greek sculpture:  the Kossos brothers, Demitrios (1819-1872) and Ioannis (1822-73), the Fytalis Brothers, Georgos ( 1830-73) and Lazaros (1831-1909) and, later,  Leonidas Drosis (1834-1882) who did so much of the sculptural decoration for the Athens university and is now considered the greatest exponent of neoclassicism in Greece. He would have been 15 when Siegel stopped teaching, but many began their schooling at that age or younger. In any case, Siegel was a major influence. (6)

 

Some Neoclassic Busts of the Era

 

Psyche by Ioannis Kossos

 

Queen Amalia of Greece by the Fytalis Brothers now in the National Historical Museum on Stadiou Street

 

The Fytalis brothers again in 1883

 

 

 

 Leonidas Drossis’ bust of Irini Mavrokordatos.

 

The Marble Trade

As you might expect of any sculptor in Greece, Siegel was fascinated by its storied ancient quarries, many of which were still producing.  Marble was big business in the 19^th century and there was an ever growing export market. Architects, diplomats, philhellenes and the artists themselves were eager to invest. Architect and town planner, Stamatis Kleanthis, already owned quarries on the island of Tinos in the 1840s. Siegel’s first investment was a quarry in Axinoi, on Tinos circa 1849-50.  He successfully presented some of this marble at an exhibition in London in 1851. The Prussian king was so impressed, he made a large order through Karl Kloebe, his consul in Greece. Kloebe and Christian went into the marble business together. This is all very vague because there are very few records of ownership during this period.  We do know that when Siegel died, Kloebe continued their business for a time.

Between 1850 and 1855, Siegel was often abroad, accepting European commissions and promoting Greek marble.

In 1857 he rediscovered the ancient marble quarries near Lagia (above the village of Dimaristika) in the Mani which contained the famous rosy rosso antico, quarried in Greece since Mycenean times.  Even today it is an out of the way spot. It must have seemed like the back of the moon to Siegel

 

The Quarry near Lagia. Visiting today is still an adventure.

1859 saw him investing in another Tinian quarry, this time with green veins.  Siegel could now boast red and green Greek marble, perhaps the rarest hues of all.

 

 

 

 

Siegel in the First Cemetery

 

Section 4, Number 102

 

In 1864, Siegel created the grave stele of Elisabeth Werberg in the First Cemetery. It is a bas relief, a version of the Mourning Spirit whose appearance in one form or another goes back to antiquity.  She (or he in some cases, with or without wings), was a favourite motif in the 19^th century and depictions go from severe neoclassical to downright romantic.  She holds a long torch upside down to symbolize the end of life. The mourning spirit and the extinguished (or extinguishing) torch can be seen over and over again in the First Cemetery. That little Athenian owl at her feet is a harbinger of death; the laurel it is perched on a symbol of a life well lived.  Siegel signed his name ΣΙΓΚΕΛΟΣ under the angel’s feet.  (ΑΘΗΝΗΘΕΝ ΕΡΓΟΝ ΣΙΓΕΛΟΣ)

If this angel is not a perfect fit into the neoclassical mould promoted at the School of Fine Arts, it does well to remember that funeral monuments were an important source of income for sculptors in Greece, and were made to please the tastes of the families of the deceased.

Siegel’s angel closely resembles in stance and expression an earlier and smaller Mourning Spirit on a tomb of the Malakates brothers.

 

The Damaskinos Family, Section One, Number 172: Same hair, same pose, but no owl or laurel.

 

A Fytalis brothers’ mourning angel in Section 4, Number 183 done in 1883 with an owl

 

It can be an interesting pastime to track down these mourning figures and their symbols while walking in the First Cemetery. Some sport owls, others lamps or wreaths.  All wear classical dress even if some of it is draped over a naked form.

 

 Siegel’s Last Years and another Lion

Siegel’s career may have got off the ground with a sleeping lion, but it was intended to end with a sitting one. The head and paws of the Lion of Chaironeia had been discovered by British travellers in 1820 who promptly reburied it in order to save it for the British Museum. Luckily that never happened. There were several efforts to resurrect the lion, some of which involved Siegel.

 

The lion had been erected by Thebes to commemorate their war dead (the Sacred Band) after their defeat by Phillip of Macedonin in 388 BC

 

The Greek Archaeological Society had considered a restoration in 1839 and had successfully petitioned King Othon for the task, assuring him that German donors would pay the bill. That plan fell through in 1843 after a Greek uprising forced Othon to grant the country a constitution.  This offended the donors. It seems they were willing to patronise only as long as they could also be patronising. They withdrew their money, their leader dismissing Greece as an ‘uppity mini country’.  German phihellenism had its limits!

Siegel submitted his plan for restoring the lion in 1856 but nothing happened, not even after the summer of 1879 when he travelled to the site with Lazaris Fytalis in another attempt to resurrect the beast. Siegel was in his 70s then and still going strong. He wanted to take part in the excavation of ancient Chaironeia as well as placing the lion back on its paws.  

 

The lion finally roared in 1902, and is a bit of a patchwork, not much of it Siegel’s.

 

Seigel died in 1883 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery under a monument he would surely have approved of.

 

 

 

 

                  

In an obituary at the time, his connection with the marble quarries in Lakonia and Tinos are mentioned. But his real legacy was the students he taught.

 

Footnotes

(1)   A dress code exception was made for heroes of the revolution such as Varvakis and Capodistria.

(2)  Some say 1835.

(3)  The site, or part of it, is now the Athens Municipal Gallery, and well worth a visit if only to explore the old building and the area.

 

The Old silk factory has had a stylish makeover

(4)  The Bavarian Guards who were sent to Greece, many of whom stayed on, have kind of slipped out of the national consciousness. They did not all die of Typhoid as the small Catholic church in the suburb of Palio Iraklio (an area set aside for the troops to live) testifies.

(5)  Or maybe on King Ludwig who perhaps wanted to outdo the one in Lucerne.

(6)  Whether or not the Malakates brothers from Tinos attended the school in its early days is unknown to me. They opened an Athenian  workshop in 1834 and were reputed to be self taught. But, either they picked up the neoclassicist aesthetic from the air, or they too were early weekend attendees.

 

Sources

Sources on Siegel are few and far between

https://slpress.gr/politismos/enas-germanos-glyptis-sto-metaxoyrgeio/ best article on him

Material on Chaironeia from https://berlinarchaeology.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ma-2008.pdf

 

 

Yannis Tsarouchis

 

Yannis Tsarouchis                                       Γιάννης Τσαρούχης

Born January 1910 in Piraeus                   Died July 1989 in Athens

                                      Section 12, Number 445
 

...this painter dared to look for Hermes not on mount Olympus but in the 'Olympus Coffee-House' (1)

Rather than merely recording an era, Yannis  Tsarouchis created art in which depictions of ordinary people and landscapes were transformed, becoming part of a larger mythological construct, illuminating what he himself called the ‘complex ingredients that compose ‘Greekness’. He was such a great artist that I was a little disappointed to find his grave tucked way back in Section Twelve of the First Cemetery rather than in the Plaza at the entrance reserved for ‘distinguished Greeks’.  No matter; his work speaks for itself.  Tsarouchis was articulate and self aware, never afraid to express and defend his own aesthetic and how it fitted into the broader history of art, especially the history of art in Greece.

He was the consummate alchemist, melding the Renaissance, impressionism, post-impressionism, Hellenic sculpture, Byzantine art, Greek folk art and more into the body of his work in a way that is both contemporary and timeless.   

He was fortunate in his early mentors and experiences. Many of his contemporaries had those same opportunities and yet, there is only one Tsarouchis.

 

 

His Life

Yannis Tsarouchis was born in downtown Piraeus at the corner of Louka Rallis street and King George Avenue at a time when the city’s streets were still lined with neoclassical houses.  His formative years (until the age of 17) were spent there. He was the second son of merchant Athanasios Tsarouchis and Maria Monarchides. His maternal aunt was wealthy Despina Metaxa whose husband was the brandy baron.  So, no silver spoon in his mouth but he did come from a comfortable environment where ambitions could be realized. By all accounts, he was a happy child whose earliest dream was to become an acrobat for the sheer fun of it.

His early artistic efforts reveal a young man eager to experiment in all the new genres, an eclecticism he would always defend on the grounds that ideological consistency should not dominate a painter’s development. His first public showings consisted of a set design and watercolours at Nikos Velmos’ Art Asylum in 1928 and 1929 when he was still a teenager.  Nikos Velmos was a self taught artist, actor, writer, anarchist and cultural iconoclast. He had opened the ground floor of his home at 21 Nikodimou Street in the Plaka to give young, often unknown, artists a chance to show their work and, at the same time, to snub his nose at the entrenched Athenian establishment with his periodical Fragkelio.  It was the perfect environment for budding artists to gather, share ideas, and foment new ones.  Tsarouchis’ contributions to the Art Asylum were well received.

 

 

The Velmos home is still there - a little bit of an older Athens, facing the Electra Palace Hotel.

In 1928 he enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts where he would study until 1935. He was extremely lucky in his mentors there who included sculptor Thomas Thomopoulos (1873-1937) and the modernist painter Constantinos Parthenis (1878-1967).

 

Parthenis posing with his portrait of Julia Parthenis

 

It was a busy time. Between 1930 and 1934 he worked at Parthenis’ studio and as an assistant to icon painter Photis Kondoglou (1896-1965), experiences that would have a tremendous influence on his own work.

 

 

Kondolgou (Κόντογλοu ) introduced him to the simplicity, form, and spirituality of Byzantine Hagiography.

 

The skewed perspective, two dimensionality, high seriousness, the sense of timelessness and even the ‘weightlessness’ of Byzantine icons were all elements that can be observed again and again in Tsarouchis’ work even if his subjects are secular.

 

 

1980:  Sailor seated at a Table with a Coffee Cup

In the early thirties Tsarouchis met Angeliki Hadjimichali  who taught him about folk costume and Eva Sikelianou who taught him weaving. These women were important in the new artistic movements in Greece after the Asia Minor catastrophe. Eva was married to poet Angelos Sikelianos and Angeliki’s home in the Plaka had become a focal point for the intellectuals of that era. These connections were a learning experience and a portal into the closely knit cultural world of Athens in the 1930s. It was during this period that many of the elements which would characterize his life’s work were already coming together.

 

                                     

                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Angeliki in folk costume on the left and Eva, being Eva, on the right

 

 

In 1934 he began working on stage design with director and innovator Karolos Koun (1908-87) who became a lifelong friend. Creating stage sets and costumes for theatrical productions in Greece and abroad would become a hallmark of his long career and may have made him better known to the Greek public than his paintings.

1935-6 saw him in Paris studying Renoir and the Impressionists. There, he met sculptor Alberto Giacometti, etcher Max Ernst, the Greek painter Theophilos and the very influential Teriade, art critic, patron of the arts, and publisher.

                                      Teriade (aka Stratis Elevtheridis from Mytilini)

 Before returning to Greece in 1936, Tsarouchis visited Pompeii  –  another influence to be absorbed.

In a short  piece like this one, so much has to be left out. Tsarouchis was a prolific artist, juggling many genres, subjects, and mediums to perfection. What follows is a small taste, presented in chronological order, along with his story.

His Work

The Thinker in 1936 is a reference to Rodin’s work of the same name. Instead of representing a majestic figure in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tsarouchis presents an ordinary young Greek man about town in a striped suit, lost in thought, a cigarette dangling from his right hand and his shoe resting casually on the bottom rung of his chair.  I love the way that Tsarouchis had to alter Rodin’s parallel treatment of the legs so that his young man could accommodate his legs to those notoriously uncomfortable coffee shop chairs!  (2)

 

 

1936: The Thinker

 

1937 Italian Nude Sitting in Profile

 

1938 saw his first solo exhibition in Greece on Nikis Street and his work presented at a Pan Hellenic exhibition at the Zappeion. During that same year, he designed the set for MarikaKotopouli’s production of Stella Violandis.

He was still only 28.

 1940 and the War

Tsarouchis fought on the Albanian front where his painting talent was put to work camouflaging a bridge!

 

On the Albanian Front

He experienced at first hand the terrible waste of youth that war entails. It would influence many of his later paintings which would depict young men, often with wings, in mourning, melancholy, or fatalistic poses. There is always a sense of sacrifice in these paintings.

During the German occupation, he made ends meet as best he could by creating stage designs and restoration projects.

Tsarouchis rarely painted current events, preferring the suggestiveness of the  symbolic and the mythic.  But one of his paintings is an exception of sorts. It depicts a situation in 1944 when Greek communists were being rounded up by the Nationalists and Security battalions. It is done in his own inimitable style.

 

 

          1944: The Arrest of Three Communists, First Days of the 1944 Uprising

After the war, he was back to work painting and creating sets for the National Theatre.

 

                                            1948: The apotheosis of Athanasios Diakos

The above was shadow theatre artist Evgenios Spatharis who had dressed in the part, holding the Greek flag, after a performance. Tsarouchis was a great fan of the shadow theatre. (This angel has a hair ribbon, de rigueur in the Orthodox iconic program for angels.)

 

 

1948:  Seated Sailor and Reclining Nude

                                      1949: Portrait of Miss N.A. With Two Roses

In 1949 he became a founding member of the Armos Group (3) of artists which held its first exhibition at the Zappeion where he showed eight works painted between 1938 to 1948.

1951 saw paintings dating from 1936-39 and 1948-50 exhibited at the Galleri d’Art du Faubourg in Paris, followed by a 1953 group show of Armos at the Zappeion. The Iolas Gallery in New York featured his paintings during this period. It was a connection that would make him financially independent.

The Neon (still there in Omonia square), the Parthenon and the Mavrokephalos coffee shops were featured in many of his paintings, venues habituated  by working class youths, and sailors who held such a special fascination for Tsarouchis.

 

1953-7:  Two are on display at the National Gallery in Athens

In 1958 he presented work at the Venice Biennali along with sculptor Antonis Socho and  painter Yiannis Moralis. The same year saw his paintings at the Guggenheim in New York and at the National Museum of Modern Art In Paris. That year he somehow found time to create the sets and costumes for Alexis Miniotis’ Medea starring Maria Callas. It would be fair to say that, by 1958, Tsarouchis had truly ‘arrived’.

 

 In 1959 Tsarouchis designed the set and costumes for Aristophanes’ The Birds directed by Karolos Koun. It was intended for the Herodes Atticus Theatre. The scheduled production was cancelled by presidential decree. Dressing the ancient priests as Orthodox priests had ruffled certain feathers in Athens. It was, however, a resounding success abroad.

 

The Birds

This was not Tsarouchis’ first run in with the authorities. His homoerotic themes made authorities uncomfortable.  In 1952 his painting of a Sailor on a Bed with a Naked Man was taken down from an exhibition in Athens at the insistence of the Royal Hellenic Navy which considered it an insult to their institution. (4)  Tsarouchis complied at the time because he feared that, if he did not, the police would come and destroy the entire exhibition. Such was the temper of the times.

Tsarouchis was gay, as were so many of the great Greek artists of the era.  Being gay in the art world in Greece was pretty generally accepted (except during bouts of authoritarian leadership) when more puritanical views prevailed in the broader society.

Times have changed.

 

1964: ‘Lovely White Flowers’ inspired by the Cavafy Poem (5)

 

1964-7: Flowers

Everyone has his or her favourite Tsarouchis. I am especially fond of The Offering of Two Winged Men. The scene is ancient and modern at the same time, and tantalizingly suggestive  –  pure Tsarouchis in every way from the butterfly wings to the stances, the facial expressions, and the nature of the ambiguous offering itself:

 

1965: The Offering of Two Winged Men

 

1966: Spirit Mourning

 

When the military dictatorship took over in 1967, Tsarouchis moved to Paris and continued to live there until 1975, painting and designing sets for La Scala and Covent Garden.

 

1969: The Four Seasons

While in France, he established an art academy for French and Greek students, giving them the opportunity to paint with live models, perhaps in memory of his own start at the Art Asylum.

 

 

1975: Set Design: a Delphic landscape for Euripedes’ ‘Ion’

After 1975, he divided his time between France and Greece until 1983 when he moved to Greece permanently.

 

1980: Portrait of a Young Woman with a Coral Necklace

In 1981 he had already established his own Tsarouchis Foundation at his home in Maroussi, to show his work and to encourage the study of the body of his work.

 

               The museum is at 28 Ploutarchou Street in Maroussi. Telephone 21 0806 2636

 

 

His Death

In 1989, while preparing the sets and costumes for a production of Euripedes’ Orestes he died suddenly at the age of 80. What a life! Tsarouchis must have known at least 90, percent of the cultural elite of Athens  (maybe more) and, in that interaction, everyone gained. His analysis of their work was as perceptive as it was fascinating. And he loved to dance. Greek people who perhaps knew nothing  about  his art,  knew that.

 

Dancing the Zebeikiko in 1955

 

 

Tsarouchis in costume as an archbishop a few days before his death

 His own words make a fitting epitaph:

I am an explorer, trying to find within my true faith, and in my work, the style that will be most in accord with my own self.

                                                                    It is a family Grave

Section 12, Number 445

 

 

The Map

 

Footnotes

 

(1)  the Tsarouchis foundation web page.

(2)  Rodin’s Thinker

 

 

 

(3) In 1949 Tetsis along with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Nikolaou, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yiannis Tsarouchis, established the “Armos” art group.

(4) In blog research one thing leads to another. Why are sailors especially associated with homosexuality?  Apparently it is an old trope referring to all those men cooped up on ships during long voyages. It has had a long run...

 

(5) Lovely White Flowers

He went inside the cafe where they used to sit together.
It was here, three months ago, that his friend told him:
'We're completely broke - so hard up, the two of us,
that we're stuck with the cheapest places.
I can't go around with you any more - it's no use hiding the fact.
I've got to tell you, somebody else is after me.'
The 'somebody else' had promised him two suits, some silk handkerchiefs.
He himself, to get his friend back,
went through hell rounding up twenty pounds.
His friend came back to him for the twenty pounds-
but along with that, for their old intimacy,
their old love, for the deep feeling between them.
The 'somebody else' was a liar, a real bum:
he'd ordered only one suit for his friend,
and that under pressure, after much begging.
But now he doesn't want the suits any longer,
he doesn't want the silk handkerchiefs at all,
or twenty pounds, or twenty piastres even.
Sunday they buried him, at ten in the morning.
Sunday they buried him, almost a week ago.
He laid flowers on his cheap coffin,
lovely white flowers, very much in keeping
with his beauty, his twenty-two years.
When he went to the cafe that evening
he happened to have some vital business there
to that same cafe where they used to go together,
it was a knife in his heart,
that dead cafe where they used to go together.

 

Sources

Here the English speaker is spoiled for choice, even on the internet. Tsarouchis was a prolific painter and art critic. A short entry like this one can only scratch the surface and hopefully create interest. A good place to start would be the website of his foundation: https://tsarouchis.gr/en/