| The situation of Fine Arts in Greece (Seminar of the National Center of Public Administration and Local Government, Educational Institute, Patra, October 2006) |
Mihalis Papadakis, sculptor
President of ΕΕΤΕ
The stigma of Fine Arts in Greece
My speech will have three parts.
The first part will refer in general to the role of Art in the social history of man.
The second part will refer to the basic problems of the political attitude towards art in Greece, which shows how much its role is appreciated or underestimated.
And the third part will refer to what we suggest.
1st part
Painting and Sculpturing appear about 40000 years ago as an activity of homo sapiens sapiens (from whom we directly originate). At that time, homo sapiens sapiens, having just migrated from more temperate climates to south and central Europe, coexists with the man of Neanterthal for about 4000 years, before the latter disappears forever.
At a period during which half Europe is covered with glaciers, it is logical that the competition of the two groups be heavier from time to time. Nevertheless, the tools and products exchanges are proven by the findings. They have the same level of knowledge on tools. It is also proven that homo sapiens sapiens develops Painting (rock-painting) and microsculpture during this period, which he exchanges only within the communities of his group. The man of Neanterthal, as findings suggest, remained indifferent to these new products...
The thought of scientists today is directed towards the theory that this difference (in the findings there has been found neither another difference nor another reason) gave homo sapiens sapiens the lead to become the “winner”.
The appearance of Painting and Sculpturing (at least 1,5 million years after the use of fire and the tool) signals the consious passing of the thought to the area of abstraction and symbols. With Art, thought uses the material that is provided by empirical creation and the use of the tool, which was for a very long time the first objective form of abstraction. On the base of this abstaction that the tool represented, thought with the help of Art creates its own abstractions as “tools” of its own development. Painting produces symbols and writing. This way Art becomes a fundamental element in the evolution of knowledge until today, and like this of civilization until our days.
Inside the mental images, that Man socially creates for things with Art and Sciences, he detects/thinks the possibilities that serve his needs. His tools, and the tools of his thought, widen his possibilities to satisfy these needs and to create new ones.
Fine Arts play an energetic role in this procedure, and not only this. They play a leading role in this procedure.
Fine Arts, as a social function historically, do not represent the past, neither the facts and the feelings of our relationship to them, neither do they deal with the supposed personal visions of an individual sensitivity. Much more they don't try to satisfy the taste of the individual comsumer, as fashion wants to make them.
Fine Arts work very hard to reorganize the perceptive image of Man. They constantly embody the new data that Sciences and the social act in the social relations create and they detect the still invisible truths creating a new image, that imprints them. This way they inspire Sciences and social act towards the future. This is their creative contribution to the contemporary history of homo sapiens sapiens.
The tool combines the mentality of social man with nature. The abstactions of mentality have a direct relationship-application in nature.
Art combines abstractive mentality with the prerequisites of its creation –in mentality, as well as in nature–, and so it constitutes the most complete image of intuitive knowledge of nature, much before knowledge is split into the numerous objects of science. I will risk a definition, a schematization. Art is involved only with “irrational numbers”, science with “rational numbers”. Or, in other words: the intuitive knowledge of infinity concerns Art, and the knowledge of the definite concerns science.
It is not accidental that the irrational nature of harmonic ratios is a thorne for science (the only contradiction that prevents the formulation of a complete mathematical system of describing the world), whereas for Art it is its solid foundation.
2nd part
Having all this in mind, let's move to the second part, that involves the stigma of Fine Arts today through the political attitude towards them in our country.
I will be limited to four general issues, that have as a common denominator their relation to state institutions. They are connected, in other words, with the attitude of each political leadership, and with you as staff of materialization of each cultural policy.
a) The law of artistic decoration of public buildings was first created in 1989. It never worked, until the pressure for its application resulted in a new law, in 1997, that defined 1% of the formal expenses of public buildings to be given to artistic decoration. Until now, this hasn't started to be applied either.
Big contemporary public works, such as the Metro, the olympic works, spot buildings on the Egnatia Street etc are constructed wihout using the law. At the same time, in other countries, from the USA and Europe until Japan, it functions since decades and in fact at a percentage of 2-3 %.
In 2000, Mr. Haris Kampouridis calculated roughly that the 3 years since 1997 the artists, and Art of course, lost 80 billion drachmas to the benefit of contractors.
b) The second issue is the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece (ΕΕΤΕ) that coils up all the potential (the 5.000 officially recognized fine art creators in our country). It was founded in 1944 as a state institution, an advisor to the Ministry of Culture on national cultural policy, and until now it is dealt with, in general lines, as a “syndical organization” by all the governments, with all the consequences that this attitude has with unfulfilled governmental promises.
c) A third issue is the Aeolus law regime that rules the insurance, as well as the retirement of fine artists, with the government denying to take a serious look at the prerequisites for the existence of creators that serve Art until now.
With these three issues it is proven that there is a perception that civilization can exist without politics for artists, except, of course, for the politics for the distribution of the work of Art as a product!! …
d) And we arrive to the fourth, the most fancy and the most recent example of the “stigma” of Contemporary Art, to the management of Fine Arts in our country today, which is the National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜSΤ).
Until today, ΕΜSΤ functions as a franchise-branch of an aesthetic opinion that comes from international centers and so as the headquartes of falsifying the history of Art.
The only thing you have to do is visit the exhibition on the decade of ‘70, and you will “learn” that sculpture does not exist!!! I don't need to expand much, I will only say that the Panhellenic Exhibition in 1975 was dedicated to the memory of the prematurely lost in an accident Gerasimos Sklavos, who was nominated abroad as the biggest sculpture after the war, together with Giacometti.
For the ΕΜSΤ, there is no sculpture since the decade of ’70 and then on… , and this where? In Greece …!!! This is for sure an international first for our country!!!
Another thing that we “learn” from the exhibition of the ΕΜSΤ, or better from its catalogue, is that the application of democracy of the law of ΕΕΤΕ –that since 1975 until 1981 it was adjusted legislatively and mobilized the sum of artists then- happened against the will of the artists!!! A falsification of history at this level as well, at the level of written facts.
Don't forget that here we are talking about a state institution, with public money, the role of which is the scientific research of the fine art situation. The ΕΜSΤ, as a national institution (and not private) has to function using the sciences of Aesthetics, History of Art, Museology etc and to create the scientific background where, in addition, real research programmes will be conducted on fine art suggestions, so that scientific research is promoted worldwide, and not only at a national level.
Unfortunately, what has been happening until today, is the exact opposite. Due to the fact that political leaderships appreciate the success of the ΕΜSΤ taking into consideration the acceptance that the museum will have in the international Art Market, that is to say its adjustment to it, and not its real role in Arts (this does not promise fast and measurable results) they choose persons for the formulation of the fine art politics of each time that seem to promise the so called “success”. Such persons, of course, cannot “prove” their skills, unless they are connected to the franchise of tested “products”.
So, until the cultural programme of the ΕΜSΤ be made and realized by a mature scientific group, it has become the “bastion” of some people, that function independently with obsessions to personal manipulations and that don't hesitate to “contradict” even history. Naturally, these manipulations can be imposed only when they are connected to state policies and through these policies serve big private interests.
This is destroying for artistic creation, for the artists, for Art and our civilization, and not only at a national level.
At the base of this destroying practice, what is shown as Greece's Contemporary Art is just what mirrors chosen aesthetic views that are already launched by international centers.
3rd part
And so we arrive to the third part with what should be done.
a) As far as the artists are concerned, that is to say the rules of artistic creation, the government should firstly respect directly the existing institutions and laws.
b) The laws should be applied in the field of management as well. The national institutions should be research-scientific institutions of study and promotion of Fine Arts, and not spaces of promotion of private collections and of managers that act as middlemen.
Thank you.
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- Technoculture: Applied Aesthetics as a Substitute of the Work of Art, Arta 30/11/2013
(To be translated soon)
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