Yannis Stavrou's solo show will be continued...

From the opening...

Yannis Stavrou's solo show "The Last Itineraries" will be continued at the "Arktos Gallery" (5 Herodotou St, Athens, Greece) until the 6th of December.

Visiting hours

Mon Wed Sat: 10.30 - 15.30

Tue Thu Fri: 10.30 - 21

Information

“Arktos Gallery” +30 210 7299610

Yannis Stavrou +30 210 6645664

"The Last Itineraries" by Yannis Stavrou...*

* The following article was published in the newspaper ATHENS NEWS on November 14, 2008, due to the artist's recent solo show in Athens, Greece:

An artist’s last itineraries

Armed with colour - his refuge from disheartening reality - painter YannisStavrou crystallises the beauty of days bygone

CHRISTY PAPADOPOULOU

The dark backdrop enhances Stavrou’s subject-matter, rendered in earthy hues

DESERTED buildings, rusting boats and solitary trees - remnants of the days of yore silently awaiting their death - rejoice in an instant of lustre in artist Yannis Stavrou’s paintings. Warm, earthy brushstrokes spring out of a black backdrop in an illusionary escape from the frustrations of daily life. Aside from a few shows between friends in the artist’s atelier, Last Itineraries - Stavrou’s latest exhibition - marks the 60-year-old artist’s comeback to Athens’ gallery scene after an absence of seven years.

Stavrou, who studied sculpture at the Athens Fine Arts School before painting won him over, points to a state of Babel on a national, political, social and cultural level. “I don’t identify with any of the modernday routines. Whatever I’ve loved, they spit at. Whatever I’ve spat at, they love. I find it hard to compromise and go on living out of habit,” the Thessaloniki-born, Athens-based artist told the Athens News.

In his trademark - but not untroubled - brainstorming manner, Stavrou expresses his despair over the ‘democratic’ levelling of talent in the name of equality, citizens’ incessant littering of public places, the time carelessly wasted on entertainment alone and the daily demise of aesthetic values.

“I’m no longer drawn to anything modern. I prefer to petrify things, to preserve their old air. I’m against facelifting. An old person, for instance, is beautiful as long as you have the eyes to appreciate that beauty,” he points out.

Throughout his oeuvre, Stavrou has been preoccupied with safeguarding glimpses of the urban landscape, which is threatened with extinction due to the dramatic changes inflicted on the city’s image from the 1970s onwards. “These images are cast in my memory and painting gives me the ability to revisit them, even if this is an illusion,” says Stavrou.

His sculpture-like iron ships waiting to embark on their next journey and the rusted cranes and deserted warehouses of his industrial landscapes bear echoes of Athens, Thessaloniki and Hydra - some landmark stops in Stavrou’s artistic itineraries.

Whether he is painting an almond tree in his yard, an old winery in Mesogeia or the Ladadika warehouses in Thessaloniki (references to locale in the works’ titles are not of key importance), theme is no longer a priority in itself. Rather than focusing on a house or a boat as such, Stavrou is more concerned about the colour of a roof tile or the hull of a ship. As Stavrou’s paintings move from sheer representation to a more impressionistic approach, colour - the artist’s refuge - determines and takes precedence over form. “Colour is to painting what melody is to music,” he says.

Generous layers of colour make for a luscious brushwork

Generous layers of warm, earthy colours - red, brown and black - make for a glistening, luscious palette as opposed to the matte effect of his paintings up till now. The richly-textured oils have a flavourful quality to them.

“They remind me of rich dishes that one craves but cannot indulge in due to old age,” says Stavrou. Despite its usual ominous undertones, the black colour holds a supportive role. “It gives my subject-matter a relief quality and enhances it by isolating all the surrounding dirt,” he says, pointing to his influence by Johannes Vermeer’s art and Flemish painting in general.

The economic crisis has not affected Stavrou’s work. “I’ve sold more works lately than I ever have,” he says.

“Consumerism has made its presence felt in the art market too, which is not necessarily a bad thing. These days many artists can make a living out of their art,” says Stavrou. However, the prosperity in collectors’ circles differs from a real love for art, he believes.

“Before the 1970s, it wasn’t unusual for poor students to cut back on their sandwich in order to acquire a work of art,” he says. And though he recognises many talented artists among the Fine Arts School’s graduates, he warns against their being disheartened as a result of being shunned from art galleries that in their majority make their choices based on trends and financial criteria.

* Yannis Stavrou’s Last Itineraries is on at the Arktos Gallery (5 Irodotou St, Kolonaki, tel 210-729-9610) through to November 30. Open: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday 10.30am-2.30pm; Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10.30am-9pm

ATHENS NEWS , 14/11/2008, page: A23
Article code: C13313A231

Yannis Stavrou-Solo painting Exhibition / 11-30 November 2008

YANNIS STAVROU- SOLO PAINTING EXHIBITION

«The Last Itineraries»

«ARKTOS GALLERY», 5 Herodotou Street, Athens 10674

11 – 30 November 2008

Opening: Tuesday November 11, 7.30 p.m.

An Open Letter to the Scientific Community *

Yannis Stavrou, Morning at port, oil on canvas

Published in NEW SCIENTIST , May 2004:

Our ideas about the history of the universe are dominated by big bang theory. But its dominance rests more on funding decisions than on the scientific method, according to Eric J Lerner, mathematician Michael Ibison of Earthtech.org, and dozens of other scientists from around the world.

*An Open Letter to the Scientific Community

Cosmology Statement.org (Published in New Scientist, May 22-28 issue, 2004, p. 20)


The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed– inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory.
In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, RAISE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF THE UNDERLYING THEORY.

But the big bang theory can’t survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory’s explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centred cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesise an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences.

Whereas Richard Feynman could say that “science is the culture of doubt,” in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific enquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method — the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang’s validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.

Signed:

(Institutions for identification only)

Eric J. Lerner, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (USA)

Michael Ibison, Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (USA) /Earthtech.org

www.earthtech.org

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0302273

http://supernova.lbl.gov/~evlinder/linderteachin1.pdf

John L. West, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute ofTechnology (USA)

James F. Woodward, California State University, Fullerton (USA)

Halton Arp, Max-Planck-Institute Fur Astrophysik (Germany)

Andre Koch Torres Assis, State University of Campinas (Brazil)

Yuri Baryshev, Astronomical Institute, St. Petersburg State University(Russia)

Ari Brynjolfsson, Applied Radiation Industries (USA)

Hermann Bondi, Churchill College, University of Cambridge (UK)

Timothy Eastman, Plasmas International (USA)

Chuck Gallo, Superconix, Inc.(USA)

Thomas Gold, Cornell University (emeritus) (USA)

Amitabha Ghosh, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India)

Walter J. Heikkila, University of Texas at Dallas (USA)

Thomas Jarboe, University of Washington (USA)


Jerry W. Jensen, ATK Propulsion (USA)

Menas Kafatos, George Mason University (USA)

Paul Marmet, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (retired) (Canada)

Paola Marziani, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, OsservatorioAstronomico di Padova (Italy)

Gregory Meholic, The Aerospace Corporation (USA)

Jacques Moret-Bailly, Université Dijon (retired) (France)

Jayant Narlikar, IUCAA(emeritus) and College de France (India, France)

Marcos Cesar Danhoni Neves, State University of Maringá (Brazil)

CERN 10-9-2008. Mysteries of the universe will be solved

Yannis Stavrou, Bleu Blanc Rouge, oil on canvas

The most ambitious experiment in history will take place tomorrow at CERN.

We present you the relative article from TIMES http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/
science/article4670445.ece :

It is the most ambitious and expensive civilian science experiment in history, based on the biggest machine that humanity has yet built. It has sparked alarmist fears that it might create a black hole that will tear the Earth apart, and it has triggered two last-minute legal attempts to stop it. And next Wednesday, after almost two decades of planning and construction, the project in question will finally get under way.

Beneath the foothills of the Jura mountains, in a network of tunnels that bring to mind the lair of a crazed Bond villain, scientists will fire a first beam of particles around a ring as long as the Circle Line on the London Underground. This colossal circuit, 17 miles (27km) in circumference, is the world’s most powerful atom-smasher, the £3.5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC), created at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. Some 10,000 scientists and engineers from 85 countries have been involved. In the years ahead it will recreate the high-energy conditions that existed one trillionth of a second after the big bang. In doing so, it should solve many of the most enduring mysteries of the Universe.

This extraordinary feat of engineering will accelerate two streams of protons to within 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light, so that they complete 11,245 17-mile laps in a single second. The two streams will collide, at four points, with the energy of two aircraft carriers sailing into each other at 11 knots, inside detectors so vast that one is housed in a cavern that could enclose the nave of Westminster Abbey. The detectors will trace the sub-atomic debris that is thrown off by the collisions, to reveal new particles and effects that may never have existed on Earth before.

The mountains of data produced will shed light on some of the toughest questions in physics. The origin of mass, the workings of gravity, the existence of extra dimensions and the nature of the 95 per cent of the Universe that cannot be seen will all be examined. Perhaps the biggest prize of all is the “God particle” – the Higgs boson. This was first proposed in 1964 by Peter Higgs, of Edinburgh University, as an explanation for why matter has mass, and can thus coalesce to form stars, planets and people. Previous atom-smashers, however, have failed to find it, but because the LHC is so much more powerful, scientists are confident that it will succeed.

Times Archive, 1984: Higg's boson sparks off excitement

An international team of 78 physicists were involved in the discovery of this elusive object

Related Links

• Journey to the beginning of time is nearly complete

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Even a failure, however, would be exciting, because that would pose new questions about the laws of nature.

“What we find honestly depends on what’s there,” said Brian Cox, of the University of Manchester, an investigator on one of the four detectors, named Atlas. “I don’t believe there’s ever been a machine like this, that’s guaranteed to deliver. We know it will discover exciting things. We just don’t know what they are yet.” The guarantee applies, however, only if the hardware works as it should, and the LHC’s first big test comes on Wednesday, when the first beam of particles is injected into the accelerator. That is a huge technical challenge. “The beam is 2mm in diameter and has to be threaded into a vacuum pipe the size of a 50p piece around a 27km loop,” said Lyn Evans, the LHC’s project manager, who will oversee the insertion. “It is not going to be trivial.”

Engineers will use magnets to bend the beam around the LHC’s eight sectors, until it finally begins to circulate. “That’ll be the first sight of relief, that there are no obstacles in the vacuum chamber,” Dr Evans said. “There could be a Kleenex in the chamber – we’ve had that before. Only when we get the beam around will we be able to tell it’s clear.”

Once the first beam is in – probably the one running clockwise, though that has yet to be decided – the team will insert the second, anticlockwise stream of particles. The first collisions, to test the detectors, should follow by the end of next week.

The next step will be to “capture” the beams so they fire in short pulses, 2,800 times a second. These will then be accelerated to an energy of 5 tera-electronvolts (TeV), generating collisions of 10TeV.The detectors should be calibrated by the end of the year and the collisions will then be ramped up to their maximum energy of 14TeV, generating the conditions that prevailed fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

One of the first scientific discoveries is likely to concern a theory called supersymmetry. Tejinder Virdee, of Imperial College, London, who leads the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector team, said: “What supersymmetry predicts is that, for every particle you have a partner, so it doubles up the spectrum. You have a whole new zoology of particles, if you like.”

Theory suggests that if supersymmetry is real, evidence to confirm it should emerge quickly from the LHC, possibly as soon as next year. “If it pops up it’ll be quite easy to see,” Professor Cox said.

Such a discovery might also help to explain dark matter, which is thought to account for much of the missing mass of the Universe. Only about 4 per cent of matter – galaxies and the like – is visible to our telescopes. “In this new zoology, the lightest super-symmetric particle is a prime candidate for explaining dark matter,” Professor Virdee said.

The search for the Higgs could take longer, though it depends on the particle’s mass and thus the energy of the collisions in which it might be found. If it is at the heavier end of the possible range, the discovery could take as little as 12 months. A lighter Higgs would take longer to find, as the particles into which it would decay would also be lighter and harder to track.

Other potential discoveries include evidence for the existence of extra dimensions beyond the familiar three of space and one of time, and the creation of miniature (and harmless) black holes, though these are less probable. “Most of us think we’d be very lucky to find these things,” Professor Cox said.

There are two more detectors. The LHCb will investigate why there is any matter in the Universe at all, while Alice aims to study a mixture known as quark-gluon plasma, which last existed in the first millionth of a second after the big bang.

From gluons to sparticles

Particle
In physics, this term refers to sub-atomic particles – entities that are smaller than atoms. Some, such as protons and electrons, are the constituents of atoms. Others, such as quarks, are the constituents of other particles. Still others, such as photons and neutrinos, are generated by the Sun. And yet more, such as the Higgs boson, are theoretical: predicted but still undiscovered

Hadron
This is more than an excuse for a geeky physics joke – “Is that your hadron, or are you just pleased to see me?” Hadrons are particles with mass, made up of quarks that have been bound together

Protons, neutrons, quarks and gluons
Protons and neutrons are the best-known types of hadron. Each is composed of three smaller units, called quarks, and gluons that stick the quarks together. Protons have a positive charge, while neutrons have a neutral charge

Higgs boson
A theoretical particle, which is thought to give matter its mass. First proposed by Peter Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, in 1964, it is sometimes nicknamed the “God particle”. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should confirm whether it exists. The theory suggests that other particles travel through and interact with a field of Higgs bosons, which slows the particles down and gives rise to their mass. The process is often likened to moving through treacle. In the early 1990s Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, then the Science Minister, staged a competition for the best explanation. The winning analogy was of Margaret Thatcher – a massive particle – wandering through a Tory cocktail party and gathering hangers-on as she went

Standard model
The orthodox theory of modern physics. It is based on two other theories – general relativity and quantum mechanics – and its main weakness is that it cannot yet fully describe gravity or mass

Quantum mechanics
The main principle of the standard model, which describes how particles and forces behave at atomic and sub-atomic scales

General relativity
Einstein’s theory describing gravity. It is exceptionally well attested, but not fully compatible with quantum mechanics

Supersymmetry
The hypothesis that all particles have an accompanying partner known as a “superparticle” or “sparticle”. There is good theoretical evidence for it, but it has not yet been confirmed by experiment

Dark matter
Only about 4 per cent of the Universe is made up of visible matter. Another 25 per cent is “dark matter” – which can be inferred from its gravity, but cannot be seen. The remaining 71 per cent is still more mysterious “dark energy”. The LHC could shed light on what dark matter is, possibly through discoveries about supersymmetry

Extra dimensions
We are all familiar with four dimensions – three of space and one of time. But some theoretical physicists suggest that there could be as many as 26. Most physicists find these every bit as hard to visualise as normal people, but they make mathematical sense

Honore de Balzac: The Human Comedy

Yannis Stavrou, Nocturnal, oil on canvas

Honore de Balzac, a master of ontology. A great novelist, maybe the best. A friend...

Some of his quotations follow:

Cruelty and fear shake hands together.

Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.

Does not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?

Doubt follows white-winged hope with trembling steps.

During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart, like a viper in its hole.

Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation.

Even beauty cannot always palliate eccentricity.

Even when exercising their greatest duplicity, women are always sincere because they are yielding to some natural feeling.

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.

Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.

Fools gain greater advantages through their weakness than intelligent men through their strength. We watch a great man struggling against fate and we do not lift a finger to help him. But we patronize a grocer who is headed for bankruptcy.

Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird.

For businessmen, the world is a bale of banknotes in circulation; for most young men, it is a woman; for some women, it is a man; and for others it may be a salon, a coterie, a part of town or a whole city.

For certain people, misfortune is a beacon that lights up the dark and baser sides of social life.

For the journalist, anything probable is gospel truth.

Generally our confidences move downward rather than upward; in our secret affairs, we employ our inferiors much more than our bettors.

Genius is intensity.

Admiration bestowed upon any one but ourselves is always tedious.

After all, our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Alas, two men are often necessary to provide a woman with a perfect lover, just as in literature a writer composes a type only by employing the singularities of several similar characters.

All genuinely noble women prefer truth to falsehood. As the Russians with their Czar, they are unwilling to see their idol degraded; they want to be proud of the domination they accept.

All men can bear a familiar, definite misfortune better than the cruel alternations of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive joy or sorrow.

Among fifty percent of your married couples, the husband worries very little about what his wife is doing, provided she is doing all he wishes.

An ounce of courage will go farther with women than a pound of timidity.

Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.

Are not poets men who fulfill their hopes prematurely?

Art's greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.

As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of Nature--in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing--he realizes that the simple produces the supernatural.

At fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist: a woman is all promise.

Authentic love always assumes the mystery of modesty, even in its expression, because actions speak louder than words. Unlike a feigned love, it feels no need to set a conflagration.

Bankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter.

Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

By and large, women have a faith and a morality peculiar to themselves; they believe in the reality of everything that serves their interest and their passions.

By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

By resorting to self-resignation, the unfortunate consummate.

Can you find a man who loves the occupation that provides him with a livelihood? Professions are like marriages; we end by feeling only their inconveniences.

Charity is not one of the virtues practiced on the stock market. The heart of a bank is but one of many viscera.

A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.

A Creole woman is like a child, she wants to possess everything immediately; like a child, she would set fire to a house in order to fry an egg. In her languor, she thinks of nothing; when passionately aroused, she thinks of any act possible or impossible.

A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.

A girl fresh from a boarding school may perhaps be a virgin but no! she is never chaste.

A grass blade believes that men build palaces for it to grow in. Grass wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble and it brings them down. This power of feeble life which can creep in anywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons.

A great love is a credit opened in favor of a power so consuming that the moment of bankruptcy must inevitably occur.

A husband can commit no greater blunder than to discuss his wife, if she is virtuous, with his mistress; unless it be to mention his mistress, if she is beautiful, to his wife.

A knowledge of mankind and of things that surround us gives us that second education which proves far move valuable than our first because it alone turns out a truly accomplished man.

A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.

A man wastes his time going to hear some of our eloquent modern preachers; they may change his opinions, but never his conduct.

A man who stops at nothing short of the law is very clever indeed!

A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe.

A married woman is a slave you must know how to seat upon a throne.

A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.

A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.

A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.

A woman filled with faith in the one she loves is the creation of a novelist's imagination.

A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.

A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

A woman questions the man who loves exactly as a judge questions a criminal. This being so, a flash of the eye, a mere word, an inflection of the voice or a moment's hesitation suffice to expose the fact, betrayal or crime he is attempting to conceal.

A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart.

A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders.

A woman, even a prude, is not long at a loss, however dire her plight. She would seen always to have in hand the fig leaf our Mother Eve bequeathed to her.

According to man's environment, society has made as many different types of men as there are varieties in zoology. The differences between a soldier, a workman, a statesman, a tradesman, a sailor, a poet, a pauper and a priest, are more difficult to seize, but quite considerable as the differences between a wolf, a lion, an ass, a crow, a sea-calf, a sheep, and so on.

...as I was young and easy at the mercy of his means *

Yannis Stavrou, Red Ships, oil on canvas

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to to the farm forever fled from the childless land,

Oh as I was young and easy at the mercy of his means,

Time let me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea

______________________________

* Dylan Thomas, from "Fern Hill"

FREE TIBET 2008

CHINA: THE WORLD'S BIGGEST PRISON

A comment on Beijing Olympic Games: Save Tibet - Join the international campaign for Tibet

..life is just that... a dream and a fear *

Yannis Stavrou, Evening at the Port, oil on canvas

A great writer / artist

*Joseph Conrad / Quotes

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.

He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites--and escapes.

Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

God is for men and religion is for women.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word.

The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself.

It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.

Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response, falls the shadow.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns.

All a man can betray is his conscience.

It is respectable to have no illusions - and safe - and profitable, and dull.

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still...

For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early, and the human race come to an end.

It's queer how out of touch with the truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.

the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual...

Yannis Stavrou, Green Apples, oil on canvas

Quotes By Paracelsus (1493 - 1541)

If we want to make a statement about a man's nature on the basis of his physiognomy, we must take everything into account; it is in his distress that a man is tested, for then his nature is revealed.

Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.

Medicine rests upon four pillars - philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics.

Often the remedy is deemed the highest good because it helps so many.

Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster.

Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.

The dose makes the poison.

The physician must give heed to the region in which the patient lives, that is to say, to its type and peculiarities.

Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow.

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.

What sense would it make or what would it benfit a physician if he discovered the origin of the diseases but could not cure or alleviate them?

What the eyes perceive in herbs or stones or trees is not yet a remedy; the eyes see only the dross.

Quotes by Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do.

Quotes by Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630)

I demonstrate by means of philosophy that the earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides; that it is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

The radius vector describes equal areas in equal times.

The squares of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.

Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.

Quotes by Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601)

I conclude, therefore, that this star is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor... but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world.

It was not just the Church that resisted the heliocentrism of Copernicus.

Now it is quite clear to me that there are no solid spheres in the heavens, and those that have been devised by the authors to save the appearances, exist only in the imagination.

When, according to habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy. There had never before been any star in that place in the sky.

With a firm and steadfast mind one should hold under all conditions, that everywhere the earth is below and the sky above, and to the energetic man, every region is his fatherland.

Quotes by Thomas Browne (1605 - 1682)

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

Charity But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

Death is the cure for all diseases.

Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.

Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven *

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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* William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven
* On the left, Yannis Stavrou, Portrait of a Young Woman, oil on canvas (detail)

Ortega Y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses *

Yannis Stavrou, Passenger Ship, bronze

The mass is the average man ... man as undifferentiated from other men, but as repeating in himself a generic type ... In those groups which are characterised by not being multitude and mass, the effective coincidence of its members is based on some desire, idea, or ideal, which of itself excludes the great number ... Their coincidence with the others who form the minority is, then, secondary, posterior to their having each adopted an attitude of singularity, and is consequently, to a large extent, a coincidence in not coinciding ... the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself- good or ill- based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else ...

The triumph of the masses and the consequent magnificent uprising of the vital level have come about in Europe for internal reasons, after two centuries of education of the multitude towards progress and a parallel economic improvement in society ... from this standpoint, the uprising of the masses implies a fabulous increase of vital possibilities, quite the contrary of what we hear so often about the decadence of Europe ... we live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself. He feels lost amid his own abundance. With more means at its disposal, more knowledge, more technique than ever, it turns out that the world to-day goes the same way as the worst of worlds that have been; it simply drifts.

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* from Jose Ortega Y Gasset's (1883-1955) book "The Revolt of the Masses"

The burned forest of Hymettos mountain...

Forest fires have destroyed a big part of Hymettos mountain - one of the most ancient mountains of our planet. Shame on us...
Hymettos, June 25, 2008, 3.00 pm

Emil Cioran: The Trouble with Being Born

Yannis Stavrou, On Black Background, oil on canvas

Citations from Emil Cioran's book "The Trouble with Being Born"

What will be the physiognomy of painting, of poetry, of music, in a hundred years? No one can tell. As after the fall of Athens, of Rome, a long pause will intervene, caused by the exhaustion of consciousness itself. Humanity, to rejoin the past, must invent a second naiveté, without which the arts can never begin again.


In certain men, everything, absolutely everything, derives from physiology: their body is their mind, their mind is their body.


Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.


To stretch out in a field, to smell the earth and tell yourself it is the end as well as the hope of our dejections, that it would be futile to search for anything better to rest on, to dissolve into. .


Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

Greece in colours...

Yannis Stavrou, After Rain, oil on canvas

Dedicated to the Greek Omogenia, to all Greeks around the world:

Greece of colours and nostalgia. Greek landscapes under the sun. The tender Greek nights. The moon of August. The olive groves. The sea. The ships, ancient symbol of the Journey. The Ulysses myth, a precious tradition for every Greek. Images of the soul. Memories that bring people of Hellenic backgrounds together...

Yannis Stavrou invites you to travel the Greece of colours and dreams; to search among the images and old values that vanish. The unique identity of the Greek landscape, the atmosphere, the taste of the moments that penetrate our existence are captured in his impressionist paintings.

Landscapes, cities, sea depictions, figures, portraits change roles following the paths of our common memory. Hellenism roots are rediscovered through colour, form, artistic inspiration...

Group Exhibition of Contemporary Art

Group Exhibition of Contemporary Art «ΤΙΩ ΕΙΛΑΡ» / June 4 - 18 2008

Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and video art, under the title «ΤΙΩ ΕΙΛΑΡ», will be exhibited at ELGEKA'S Company space. The opening of the exhibition will take place on Wednesday, June 4, from 8:00 pm.

The following international artists will participate: Amalia Theodorakopoulos, Annette Hilbrecht, Αngelina Voskopoulou, Anke Bauer, Bernd Schwarting, Christos Ponis, Dimitrios Psicas, Efi Funck, Franziska Mackensen, Guenter Beier, Ioanna Efthimiou, Ioannis Mavrikakis, Jean-Ives Klein, Karin Jarausch, Kostas Dikefalos, Markus Luepertz, Michael Franke, Moritz Goetze, Nicos Kouroussis, Nikos Floros, Oliver Jordan , Paula Lakah, Paul Kouroussis-Thubten Dawa Loday, Penelope Gatsas, Robert Weber, Rolf Zimmermann, Ruediger Giebler, Sarah Morin, S.M. Bastian, Siegfried Kaden, Stefan Budian, Stelios Gavalas, Stelios Sarros, Takis Kozokos, Tassos Bouras, Thanasis Lalas, Thitz, Thomas Baumgaertel, Ulrike Kappler, Vassilis Kalantzis, Villy Makou, Yannis Stavrou, Yannis Tzortzis.

Visiting hours: Monday – Sunday 17:00 – 21:00

Address: ELGEKA, 60 Ag. Theologou Street, Acharnes

GALLERY ART CARGO - ANGELA DIKEOULIA - CONTEMPORARY FINE ARTS - Tel. (+30) 6944267855

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Yannis Stavrou, Forest, oil on canvas

"...I attempted to put in his classification a new type of man who to-day predominates in the world: I called him the mass-man, and I observed that his main characteristic lies in that, feeling himself "common," he proclaims the right to be common, and refuses to accept any order superior to himself. It was only natural that if this mentality is predominant in every people, it should be manifest also when we consider the nations as a group. There are then also relatively mass-peoples determined on rebelling against the great creative peoples, the minority of human stocks which have organised history." - Jose Ortega Y Gassett

*The harbor is old...

Yannis Stavrou, Piraeus, oil on canvas

The harbor is old, I can’t wait any longer
for the friend who left for the island of pine trees
or the friend who left for the island of plane trees
or the friend who left for the open sea.
I stroke the rusted cannons, I stroke the oars
so that my body may revive and decide.
The sails give off only the smell
of salt from the other storm.

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* from Georgios Sepheris poem

Hydra

Yannis Stavrou, Hydra, oil on canvas

"Hydra saved its beautiful face from the catastrophic mania of our age by chance, I would say. Although some houses have been added, the initial picture is preserved; the simple and the wise architecture of the old masters, the stone constructions, the roofs..."

Nocturnal

Yannis Stavrou, Acropolis 1970, oil on canvas

"Shiny, misty or nocturnal images fascinate you through the aura of the light that surrounds the forms. Parthenon, the top ideal of classicism, stands on the Acropolis hill. The synthesis reveals a calm splendor shaping the ideas of harmony and apocalyptic light. The light of the nocturnal paintings becomes almost mystic due to the sensitive use of the oil material..." from a text written on Yannis Stavrou by the art historian Marina Pisperi.

Artists, their work & our age

An artist's irritable disposition is, more or less, common knowledge, even though most find it difficult to account for it. At the core of an artist's identity lies nothing else but his refined sense of "aesthetic beauty". This quality enables him to withdraw great ecstatic pleasure. The artist's aim - though not always a successful one - is to share this pleasure with his work recipient.

Parallel to this sense of what is "beautiful" is the exact opposite, that is perceiving the disproportionate and the ugly.

For an artist, there is no distinction between what is beautiful and what is right. Artists never see something ugly or evil where there is none, but they very often do so in places where a non-artist sees nothing disturbing. Consequently, artistic irritability is not associated with "inner sensitivity", as many would think, but equals a deeper than average insight with regard to all things fake or ugly. This insight is but another expression of the acute sense of what is right and balanced.

It can be safely said that a man who is not irritable is not an artist. You can figure by now that artists are the most solitary and isolated human beings in modern times. A few exceptions serve to confirm the rule. I'd better specify, that when I talk about artists in general I usually have painters in mind as I know them better.

In times when time and profit are overestimated and the universal utilitarian ideology threatens to become a national mania, there is not much room left for inquiring minds and products of artistic value. The truth is that artists and their work have become objects of hatred in the last two centuries. I still haven't be able to detect those dark minds that in the name of research (a work proper of a science), have doomed and twisted the potentials of a real artist to produce a work of artistic merit. Even non-experts are familiar with the growth of every single nonsense, failure, or secret envy to the expense of intelligence, capability and the ultimate act of sacrifice required by artistic creation. Entire volumes and libraries made their appearance in order to justify, promote, propose and finally impose items manufactured exclusively for 20th century's uncultured nouveaux riches. The value of a piece of art is set solely by its price.

Public relations with their superficial manifestations tend to violate and slyly substitute priorities and the old system of values as well as distort history by replacing the authentic with a fake replica. Genuine artistic creation - this wondrous quality requiring talent, hard work, self denial, truth and love - has been gradually reduced to nought. Unfortunately, you may come across an alternative version of these matters, praising generally well-known nonsense. Read them the other way round and you'll be right. Follow your instincts and common sense and express yourselves freely. Such phenomena can not be oversimplified. In this particular period we live in, it is high time that we reconsidered our troubles.

Not only artistic issues suffer under the burden of modern times. Man himself is a victim literally punished. Every Greek citizen pays the price of all kinds of "progress" and in his turn he makes the rest suffer too. Allow me to say with certainty that, in the name of a more widely represented democracy, modern man is bold and cheeky in setting free and showing of his inner self. What could be more horrifying than this?

And even more awesome is the passivity which paralyzes every natural reaction. We all stand speechless, allowing with an "illuminating understanding" successive violations. We all have a share of responsibility. We all, more or less, got carried away by a culture of suspicious origin, loading us with quilt for acts that were not our doing. We respond with infinite respect to all things evil. We recognize illegitimate rights and give up our own to save the monster.
In the name of "social policy" and "human rights", the all-corrupt face of impudence, insolence and selfish sufficiency grows stronger. It's strictly a democracy of rights and no obligations whatsoever. All that technology, democracy and "evolution"! So many "benefits" for nothing!

Yannis Stavrou, 2000

Thessaloniki...

Yannis Stavrou, Thessaloniki, oil on canvas

"...I was born and raised in the center of Thessaloniki during the 50s and 60s, at the corner of Tsimiski and P. Mela Streets -Diagonios.

I have painted my home town many times, trying to hold on to the main impressions, preserving them in my memory.

Through my paintings, I can only transmit some of the aura of this city; its magic, this harmonious unity both cosmopolitan and mysterious, the fogs of Thessaloniki... The privilege of that period's serenity offered me an exclusive sensation of the horizon (the skyline over the sea) and gave birth to my artistic profile."

About ships...

"...I paint the bow of the ships. In my eyes, this special feature is the dynamic element of their form, their identity. Should they be persons that would be their face, the feature that would reveal every hidden fold of their origin and behavior; the single part that would fight ferociously the defiant sea world...

...Ships have the significance of milestones both in my life and in my painting. Since my childhood, I became acquainted with these heavy, metallic beasts which roam tirelessly across the seas. I have loved them. I have created a bond with the mystic of their dark bulk in the evening, with their airy, yet imposing appearance through the morning fog..."

Yannis Stavrou

On Yannis Stavrou's Painting *

Yannis Stavrou, Sunday Promenade, oil on canvas

Glass Eyes, Resurrected Gazes

“There is a glass eye that dreams of me”, Giorgos Themelis

In what terms can we discuss painting today? First of all, we have to choose between the world of shapes - the sovereignty of art - and the world of reflections. By reflections I mean the kingdom of shadows which feign existence due to the short-lived and accidental power provided by the medium itself. I’m obviously referring to the glass eye of television, juxtaposing it to the still - but not motionless - images of painting. As time goes by, I have come to realize that an irreconcilable battle has been raging in me. There are those works of art I have loved, which come from the past and rightly aspire to inhabit our future. And there is television’s overweening sorcery which pretends to authority without, however, exorcising vulgarity. This is why I said before that we have to choose. I meant to say that, in modern times, painting is above all an act of resistance of the gaze. This is a silent, and yet valid, protest against the overflow of unthinkable and thoughtless images which keep nibbling on our time and conscience. These images reach us following orders from above; I have no doubt anymore. In order to weigh us down politically and ideologically, a host of latter-day Metternich’s of sold-out images have first to trivialize our aesthetics.

The question is how - and against what - can a painted canvas resist? Is this act of resistance possible, when the depicted theme is, for instance, a ship sailing away in dark waters or a city bathed in morning light, authorized to expiate it and censure it for its nocturnal life? First of all, each painting constitutes a form of visual expression which requires above all the viewer’s gaze, his mind, devotion and, if possible, his heart. This secret moment of communion, which could last from a minute to an eternity, comprises in it the elements of a holy drama. In this religious rite the presence of a divine power is not obvious but the ensuing miracle is. This is why I referred earlier to a resurrection of the gaze. Nowadays the art of painting is often used as an alibi for education or power. In certain other instances, it is recruited to serve the costly purposes of interior decoration. And why not? Has anyone ever been harmed by the squandering of beauty? Besides this, painting which respects itself knows how to carry those who trust it along paths of self-awareness to islets of maturity. It has the power, like any other art form, to make its fellow traveler a much better person and to return his time regained. And this is quite an achievement. The wisdom acquired derives from intuition and as such entails a feeling of delight which has no rival. This very pleasure of the gaze invigorates our entire being.

This is how I approach the painting of Yannis Stavrou. He is the nostalgic advocate of a different Thessaloniki, the orderly tracker of those small treasures that lie hidden in the pockets of daily routine.
I see his paintings as a challenge for an inner voyage, an opportunity for a resurrection of the gaze - a prolongation of real life. His compositions are structured around two opposite poles: tenderness and a sturdy rhythm; a sense for detail and understanding of the whole; a kind of sentimental escape to mirthful images, as Kosmas Politis would put it, and a preoccupation with form, represented in an unadorned and solid fashion. His paintings keep alive the memory of those places he fell in love with in the past or create novel seas for new journeys.
Here plasticity is achieved via abstractive processes, and elsewhere a tiny light - one catalytic brushstroke - unveils a well-hidden secret. His heavy blues are electrified with orange iridescences and his reds never leave his blacks or dark greens unaccompanied. This is how it goes: what is sweet should always come out of what is bitter, and vice versa.

Stavrou’s art is guided by his perseverance in striving for a self-sufficient visual language and by his grasp, empirical and therefore true, of modern Greek painting - from Papaloukas to Tsarouchis and from Spyropoulos to Tetsis - until he finds his own style, Clive Bell’s ‘significant form’ or Cassirer and Panofsky’s ‘symbolic form.’ In other words a character of its own which will mark his work regardless of the period it was created. Let me not baffle you with any further technicalities. The robustness of Yannis Stavrou’s painting lies in that it can be enjoyed without the aid of theoretical crutches and critical witticisms.

Manos Stefanidis, art historian-critic (2006)