Yannis Stavrou, Olive Grove in Attica, oil on canvas
Greek archetypes...
The colors and shapes of the Greek landscape...
The aesthetic view of Pericles Giannopoulos...
Pericles Giannopoulos
The Greek line & the Greek Color
(from ELLOPOS.NET)
So, the strength of Light, its penetration, the transparency of the air, the most clear writing of the Line is impressive. On every height you climb, you see a whole world. Through your sight you have the sense of everything that surrounds you.
All, from the biggest to the tiniest: Appears. Everything, however small it is, wants to be seen, the way a Greek man takes a walk. And so, all want to be seen and they are seen, so much so that after the sun fall a slim tree standing inside the shadowy eastern wall of Acropolis, painted like lines of hair on the background of a lighter air, speaks and tells... to the walker of the Zappeion square until the eighteenth afternoon hour: I am seen too, myself .
This natural, most clear writing of the line can be nothing else than the fundamental basis, the undeterred Need, towards which all Arts either wanting or not are going to conform. Leaned in this natural base, the mind will create the kind of Line writing, mainly in Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and in all the Arts whatever, in entirely all the subjects of life. And this line, naturally and necessarily, will be the most clear.
And this is the outmost characteristic of the Greek line. And only this would be enough to bring in, as consequences for the technical line, a plethora of other characteristics, about which is not to be said here. This is it and faintly: The only ruler of the Arts is how the thing is seen. Well, here everything shows up. Therefore, all lines, even the slightest ones. Voila the Need for a delightful line to be everywhere and to come from everywhere. It shows up: therefore, it is possible to get thinner and thinner infinitely. Here is the Need of delicateness. It seems to beat badly every exaggerate swelling, every overloading. Here is the need for the lack of plethora, of volume, of weight. Everything seems bright fully. Here it is, how by means of the slightest weavings of the line is possible the description of mind states and passions. It shows up: here is the entire kindness by means of the fewest heavenly lines.
Now, how are they written? In what way they write their nature? How do they express their personality? What do they write? What express and what they say and sing all the matters of the soils, rocks, ups and downs, of the hills, all mountains, until those over the ocean, until the heaven touching outer lines that the eye encompasses, - except of the camel-lined Lukabettous, which sometimes raises in the way Ararat does, which is geologically strange and holds its strange personality, like Christ does in our churches?
What is it, how is it, what does all this cosmic material shout? Nowhere blackness, nowhere ferocity, nowhere fight, nowhere hate, nowhere cruelty, nowhere sharpness, nowhere choler, nowhere pessimism, nowhere massivety, nowhere volume, nowhere knot, nowhere weight, nowhere crowd, nowhere mixing, nowhere confusion, nowhere God-mania, nowhere heavy philosophy, nowhere sadness, nowhere despair, nowhere grieving thoughts.
Everywhere light, everywhere day, everywhere agreeability, everywhere fewness, relaxation, tidiness, symmetry, harmony, everywhere beautiful lines, Ulysses' cleverness, the litheness of a young man; everywhere calmness, charmness, hilarity; everywhere the plaything of Greek wisdom, hilarious mood, Socratic irony; everywhere philanthropy, love; everywhere desire, passion of song, of kiss; everywhere passion for matter, matter, matter, everywhere Dionysus' pleasure, passion for drunkenness, thirst for beauty, cradling of eternal happiness; everywhere the blowing of heroic air, strong air, the power air of youth and vigor and everywhere the blowing of the blue mood of beauty, beautiful despair, the crying of Adonis dying. And everywhere blows the air of bright heroic song tides the limbs and the same time the air of flute untying the limbs with lust. And everywhere blows the air that bears Venus' lamentations together with strong Satiric oxide.
All the rocks, hills, mountains, stand one by one, like beautiful women of the people humbly meditating, like mothers holding in their embracement beautiful children, like Byzantine Virgins leaning a bit their head in a serious love; like the young sitting on the elders' feet, like young women lying their head on their lover's knees caressed and meditating.
No matter what Hymettos is, or Ardittous, or Aigaleo, or Parnis - even this very Pentelikon which looks like the strength of an Arcadian adolescent - even with the snowy top dawning to the rosy dome, all beautifully decorated simply tell like sculptures, like tomb figures: we are beautiful. In perfect lack of raisings and appeals and jumps to heavens, they watch down in attention and worship the earth. Even this very Pentelikon being like Artemis walking down a mountain, watches down, like old temples with their airy wings sloping, like statuses, like Byzantine domes, like Greek saints, the decorated, pleased, shining, hilarious, like seeing before them a nicely set table and smelling roasted lamb.
It is clearly, one only Line, getting up gently, getting down tenderly, waving in big calm waves, getting up harmonically, getting down symmetrically, writing in its way nice curvings, sometime raising in nervous adolescent litheness to a kiss of high air and lightness of sea-gull returning again to a soft rhythm of hers.
It is only one line, like our old art, where all buildings seem brothers, though none resembles the other, all statuses like twin brothers and none like the other, like our Byzantine art, like the country songs, that are mainly one song and none entirely alike, like our ground which is one in total and in every step unlike, like the Greek who is one in total and in every step never the same, proving even our very whole nature, of which a basic feature is: the unity of the important characteristics and the infinite variety of the secondary ones...
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