Art Museum

February 16, 2007

Athens, Greece.

I will fill you in on yesterday because I wrote so much the day before that I got tired, so I am doing it now.

Yesterday was a relatively ho-hum day, as far as the classics trip is concerned. First, we went to Lefkandi, which was an important site for understanding the Dark Ages (the ages when Homer was writing). We boarded the bus early in the morning and rode north, toward the island of Euboea, where we drove the bus straight onto a ferry, which was pretty cool. We were on a double decker bus that pulled right onto the boat. We disembarked the bus and walked around the ferry as it took the 20 minute drive across the narrow channel. The day was clear and blue and I was looking forward to walking around.

Lefkandi was kind of a let down, however. Not much remained on the site except the remains of low brown foundations, hidden in the grass. The scenery was enough to compensate, though. Next we went to a heroon, the remains of what might have been a burial ground/site of hero worship, whose form may have evolved into what was later the Greek temple. Toumazou told us the story that a farmer trying to plow the land got mad that the archaeological guys were trying to take his land away from him, so he ended up plowing half of the heroon down. Again, not much left here, but I thought it was interesting to try to construct the evolution of the temple structure.

Probably the most important site that we visited yesterday was the Etreria museum, which contained two Panathenaic Amphora. Given as prizes for the Panathenaia, these amphoras had a clear evolution in size and shape throughout time. However, the important thing to note about these amphoras is that they were dated to the 350s BC, and were Black Figure. However, the red figure amphoras had been in style since 525 BC, a full almost 200 years. Why did the prize amphoras retain black figure when all other types of amphoras had switched to the newer style? I think it probably has something to do with the connections of tradition and sports. The need to connect sports to a glorious past, and to unchanging glory throughout time may have something to do with the reasons for the maintenance of Black Figure. The images on the amphoras contain on one side an image of Athena Promachos (the spear bearer) and on the other side the event in question. Many many trophies depict the sport or event in question, but I will have to futher explore the connections between the notion of tradition and the style of images of athletics. Is this a unique pheonomenon on the amphoras, or does it hold true for sculpture or relief also? And what about modern stuff? Questions to be pondered.

The rest of the day was spent with reading, because I had not done any on the previous day, and sleep.

Today after waking up and rushing like mad to make the bus, we took a long bus ride to Marathon. Here, we got a big talk about war tactics and battle field stuff, which was very interesting to listen to. However, not much remains in Marathon. We could see the way that the battle may have been oriented, and the scenery from the top of the mountain was really nice.

However, the most impressive place that we visited that day we discovered completely by accident. The archaeological site we visited was almost an afterthought, it seemed like. This place was the temple of Rhamnous. This temple was dedicated to the goddess Nemesis, which was oddly appropriate because it had been sacked by the Persians, prior to their defeat at the battle of Marathon. It was also designed by the same architect that designed the Hephaisteon. The platform of the temple is inscribed with all kinds of old and new graffiti, including a pair of feet on the temple platform, and was left unfinished—some of the column drums lack their characteristic fluting.

But it was the area BEYOND the temple that was the most interesting. There is an ancient fortress that was barely visible from the temple complex. But once we ventured down the hill we saw the remains of this huge city complex, complete with walls and the remains of temples, that are scattered among the grasses and reach all of the way down to the water. We spent the better part of an hour walking around the place. We were in the footsteps of people’s houses, which boggled my mind. People conducted their whole lives here and now they were reduced to simple bleached and overgrown stone walls. What will be left when our civilization is gone? Will we have the same elegant ruins that they did? Somehow I doubt it.

This area is not excavated, and we needed special permission even to enter the fenced complex, so we were definitely out of the regular tourist stop. It felt like a different world, and one that I was happy to wander around in. Half of me felt that any minute Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia would come stalking around the corner and drop us into a fantasy-land. We were the only ones there—us, the sky, the ruins, and the sea. And that was all.

Upon returning from Marathon, I decided to grab Scott and venture out into Athens to see the city. We decided to venture back toward the Agora to look for the house of Fauvel. I was surprised at how well I could navigate the city by now, as large as it seemed. The monuments would pass by and we would remark on them and they would orient us to where we needed to go. Although we did not find the house of Fauvel we got to see a number of small shops and restaurants in the open air, as well as the Hephaestion, which was lit up brilliantly. Passing through a park and rounding about, we moved toward our ultimate goal: a small local museum called the Herakleiodon Museum.

Located on the other side of the acropolis from our hotel, the museum was nestled on this small foot-traffic-only street that was jam packed with open air restaurants that were completely lit up with Christmas-type lights and modern looking orange and red seating. We entered the small museum and went to see the exhibits on MC Escher, Victor Vasarely, and this Greek artist named Constantin Xenakis.

The museum, for its small size and limited number of artists, was actually a wonderful experience. The first pieces we saw were by this Xenakis guy. We stepped into a long white hall with tons of exhibition posters. The objects on the posters were fascinating: pictures within pictures, strange alphabets and paintings that looked like those magic eye things that you unfocus your eyes and stare at and hope to see an object in. We read several statements from the artist, who apparently works in semiology. He was born in Egypt but was a Greek and moved around a bunch throughout Europe a lot after he became a famous artist. We could see clear Greek and Egyptian influences in his work.

After passing through the exhibition posters we moved into the main gallery to see his actual works. Some of them are these very large paintings, which look to be done in some kind of acrylic and pen on occasion. Usually they have a flat color in the background, and the foreground seems to be covered with a stencil of different shapes that are repeated at varying intervals. Arrows, silhouettes of different people and vehicles are scattered at different registers on the stencil, which is repeated throughout the picture plane.

In addition to the paintings, he also displayed some 3d works. These looked like phone books which had scripts of different languages pasted over the pages. Some of the script looked like heiroglypic script, or the latin alphabet, and was repeated over and over again on the different pages of the books. On one such book, the names of various Egyptian gods, with the name of Seth obliterated. He made references to tons of greek myths, especially the Odyssey—trying to find a universal language for him was like trying to find Ithaca. The whole time I felt like I was on the brink of understanding the message, but somehow it was blurred or changed in a way that made the message enigmatic. But I suppose the whole point was not to understand, it was the process of encodement that was important. The universal language might not be understood yet, but the process of interaction between the artist and the seeker who is trying to connect with his message is what ultimately matters. The message depends on the artist, the signal itself, and what the viewer brings to the table. Time and time again we stood and said “yeah, this kind of reminds me of _____”, which then informed our interpretation of the piece as a whole. One piece had silhouettes of what looked like a chemistry set, or a bunch of arrows that pointed nowhere, or people walking, traffic signs. It almost reminded me of one of the late Rauschenberg paintings called Estate—a message with signs that still cannot be read. Or something very Borgesian.

Another interesting part of the exhibit was where we entered a room with a blacklight, with these brightly painted cones placed upon a metal circle. Underneath the metal circle a magnet moved around, and behind the circle was a concave/funhouse type of mirror. WE were invited to add or remove cones to the circle. After having placed the cones, they would move around and bounce, and the reflections in the mirror would look like the cones were merging and bouncing apart, or changing shape like a lava lamp.

The rest of the exhibit was filled with some very nice prints done by MC Escher. He is a dutch artists who deals primarily in the relationships between two dimensions and three dimensions, positive and negative space, and notions of infinity. He is the guy that will interlace patterns of birds or of fish or horses. My favorite print from this exhibition was a scene that moved from day to night—a mirror image scene of a landscape that was stitched together using the flight pattern of birds that merges into a patchwork of fields and finally down to a large river.

The last artist we saw was Victor Vasarely, which only had a few prints on display here. However, the display also had a computer program that allowed Scott and I to generate our own Vasarely, using different colors and patterns and shapes.

Scott and I left the museum VERY hungry, so we walked back along the Athenian Agora, examining the little shops and restaurants until we finally reached a small place that had gyros, tzatziki, and pasticcio (which is a kind of lasagna-type of pasta). We ran into three others of the group there, which was funny considering how far away we were from the hotel. It was the cheapest restaurant in the area, however, so I can understand why us poor college students would flock to it.

Scott and I had a nice dinner together—I really enjoyed having some one on one time with him. I feel like a lot of times its very easy to either settle in to spending a lot of time with a small group of people, or the whole crowd at once, which prevents you from getting to know everyone. Scott and I had Frisbee in common, but not much else, so I was happy to hear stories about his life and what he liked to do. The whole evening was very enjoyable.

After that it was a nice stroll back to the hotel (I was so proud of myself that I did not get LOST!) and some studying, and then finally sleep.