Athens Splendor

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"WE HAVE THE POWER WITHIN US. WE JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE."

Clockwise from top right: We are happy to show you Greece, Caroline’s take on the iconic NY coffee cup; Olympic Games 2004; and Take a treat, a gumball machine full of Greece’s wonder ingredients.

Caroline Rovithi΄s art pieces will travel to Mykonos island this August for a solo exhibition at Skoufa Gallery in collaboration with the Mamush Gallery. During summer, more of her work will be presented at Oia Τreasures on Santorini island, My Crown Art Collection on Hydra island and at the Designers Room on Kastellorizo island. In Athens, the “All you need is Greece” collection will be exhibited at the Skoufa Gallery located in Syntagma and at the Mamush Gallery in Kifissia area. September has even more travel in store for her with an imminent Monaco event and a small film being produced on Olympos Mountain. Waiting for all that, you can now stream the small “All Υou Νeed is Greece” film on Youtube. We have the power within us. We just have to believe. What is it about Greece, as a country but also as specific areas and destinations, that inspires you most? The Greek sea, the sun, the light in the Cyclades, the traditional whitewashed houses, the ancient temples, the winding paths of Mount Olympus, the sunsets, which are so incredibly different from place to place across the country. Living in Greece and raising my child here gives me the strength and the motivation to continue using my brushes and my paint to make art that inspires and rouses and showcases the beauty of my country.  carolinerovithi.com / allyouneedisgreece.gr / @caroline_rovithi

ΟΣΔΕΕΤΕ, ATHENS, GREECE AND VAGA AT ARS, NY. ANDERS NORRSELL © THE EASTON FOUNDATION/LICENSED BY OSDEETE/

An Ode to Maternity

Louise Bourgeois’s Maman (1999) has been brought by NEON and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center at SNFCC’s Esplanade.

Louise Bourgeois, Maman (1999) at The Wanås Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden, 2006. C ollaborating for the first time, NEON and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) aim to bring contemporary art closer to everyone, while fulfilling their goals of revitalising public space and improving citizens’ daily life.

Maman, standing at over 10 metres tall, was created for the Tate Modern’s first Turbine Hall commission in 2000, and was subsequently cast in an edition of bronze, stainless steel, and marble. Bourgeois stated that the work was symbolic of her mother, a weaver and tapestry restorer. With ten eggs in its abdomen, the sculpture embodies ideas of maternal protection. However, the artist’s relationship to motherhood was ambiguous, contradictory, and complex. Dominating its surroundings and teetering on rangy, segmented legs, Maman also evokes fear and suggests entrapment. Bourgeois’s art was informed by her life, particularly her childhood years. She first made drawings of spiders in the late 1940s, and nearly 50 years later created the giant three-dimensional spiders for which she has become well-known. After studying geometry at the Sorbonne, Paris born Bourgeois changed her focus to art. In 1938, she moved to New York with her husband Robert Goldwater, an American art historian. In the mid1940s, she began her first sculptures, the Personages, a series of anthropomorphic but abstract figures carved out of wood. In the 1970s—after her husband’s death—and via the work The Destruction of the Father (1974), she reinvented herself as a pioneer of installation, an artform she explored further from 1991 until her death in her series of Cells. Today, her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among many others. In 2022, an exhibition of her paintings will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  Maman | Louise Bourgeois | 31 March – 6 November 2022. The Esplanade, Stavros Niarchos Foundation

Cultural Center.

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DIALOGUE I

Brice Marden Hydra Group II, 1979-1981 49.5 x 47.6 cm Oil on paper Collection of Helen Harrington Marden Photo: Alan Zindman © 2022 Brice Marden / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Marble spouted bowl with azurite inside. Early Cycladic II period (2700 – 2400/2300 BC). Photo: Irini Miari © Museum of Cycladic Art

In Dialogue

Brice Marden and Greek Antiquity is the new exhibition of the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.

As part of the exhibition series “Divine Dialogues”, this year the Museum of Cycladic Art invites American artist Brice Marden to present his work in dialogue with selected antiquities from the Museum’s permanent collections. The exhibition “Brice Marden and Greek Antiquity” is being held at the Stathatos Mansion and will run until August 29, 2022. This is the first museum exhibition devoted to this renowned artist to be held in Greece, and is organized by the Museum of Cycladic Art in close collaboration with Marden and curator and artist Dimitrios Antonitsis. Marden, now in his eighties with a career that spans six decades, continues to fascinate with the gestural simplicity of his paintings and drawings. His work draws from art’s long history, combining elements of Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, as well as ancient calligraphy and poetry. For 50 years, the artist has drawn inspiration from the Greek landscape and antiquity. His relationship with Greece dates back to 1971. Enchanted by the Greek light he and his wife and fellow painter, Helen, bought their first house on Hydra. Since then, they have spent a portion of almost every summer there together. The purity of Hydra’s landscape deeply affected Marden, who observes nature and creates. The exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art will include artworks from a wide range of Marden’s artistic output, revealing a resonance with the metaphysics of ancient Greek heritage. Paintings, drawings, and notebooks that highlight his sharp observation and unique abstract gaze, will be presented in dialogue with selected antiquities from the Museum’s permanent collections, inviting the viewer to interpret the visual vocabulary of this great artist.  “Brice Marden and Greek Antiquity” Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens | 20 May - 29 August 2022 | cycladic.gr

DIALOGUE II

Marble female figurine. Early Cycladic II period (2700 – 2400/2300 BC). Photo: Irini Miari © Museum of Cycladic Art

Brice Marden

Souvenir de Grece 8, 1974/96 75.6 x 57.1 cm Graphite, beeswax, collage on paper Collection of Helen Harrington Marden Photo: Bill Jacobson © 2022 Brice Marden / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Stories Drawn in Light

Master storyteller and photographer Christos Drazos talks about light, process and the multitude of reasons to be completely enamoured with Greece.

Interview by DESPOINA SAMPSON

FOUR SEASONS IN THE AEGEAN ISLANDS

Discover the magic of everyday life at this blessed land.

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FACES

People at the Aegean islands are so warm, gentle and creative. Their love for life is shown through the colors of their boats, their smiles, and of course their amazing mood.

People of Amorgos go from one village to another following traditional trails that their ancestors had been using for centuries.

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OVER THE YEARS, CHRISTOS DRAZOS HAS RETURNED TO THE CYCLADES AGAIN AND AGAIN, FOR WORK AND PLEASURE, TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIPELAGO’S DIVERSE LANDSCAPES AND REVEL IN ITS CLEAR, BRILLIANT LIGHT.

Photographer Christos Drazos started his career in Hotel Photography in 2000.

The ancient Greeks believed that every time a child was born, the three Fates would spin the thread of its life and weave its destiny. Maybe they were on to something. It would certainly explain the singular draw that Christos Drazos has always felt towards his craft. Fascinated by the idea of capturing the best aspects of any given moment and distilling that reality into a visual essence that speaks directly to the heart, by the time he was 13, Christos had resolved to become a professional photographer. He launched his career in the mid-90s and gravitated naturally toward hotel photography, a niche he was destined to conquer. Some two decades on, and having worked with over 250 of the finest boutique hotels and luxury hospitality brands in more than 10 countries, Christos is one of Greece’s most accomplished hotel photographers, renowned for his unique eye and a strong storytelling style that transcends form and light to capture the essence of his subjects. You are known for your ability to capture each hotel’s unique character. What’s your process? Do you plan the images in advance? A photograph is an open invitation to potential guests. It must promise and enchant, make the viewer want to live in and experience the moment the image depicts. You have to capture the holiday dream, and the photograph that most fully encapsulates this is your hero shot. You can sit at a desk and think about it all you want, but it doesn’t reveal itself until you’re actually there at the hotel. That’s why when I start a new project, I like to arrive at the hotel a day early and take the time to wander and explore, to spend some time there and connect with the place. Then shooting is about capturing that experience, conveying those moments to other people. Thinking back to your projects to date, which do you think has been the most challenging? I didn’t get into photography to make a living. I got into photography because it was what I always wanted. Some projects I take on because they pay the bills and some because they clear my head. As photographers, we are observers, and it’s good to take the time to turn that observation inwards, to your heart and your soul, and then bring that resulting ease and that energy to your commercial work. The truth is that there’s no routine in my line of work. Every new project is a unique challenge. My work takes me from the Baltics to the Red Sea, shooting back-to-back assignments across continents. How could I not be excited about it? I’ve been doing this for long enough that there’s no stress involved anymore. It’s all about the thrill in the challenge. So the bigger the challenge, the bigger the thrill. After more than two decades of photographing hotels in Greece and abroad, what do you think it is that sets our country apart as a destination? Greece’s biggest competitive advantage is its diversity. I’ve dedicated much of my life to photographing around the Aegean, and I’ve come to realise that no two islands are alike. The local culture and way of thinking differ from island to island. The cuisine can also vary dramatically, even though the islands are so close to each other. Some islands are arid, some show strong influences brought by those who migrated from the coast of Turkey, and some still carry the heritage of the period of Venetian rule. Greece is very diverse. It’s a small country but also many countries in one, depending on what you’re looking for. This wealth can never be taken from us, and we must build on it. There’s so much to discover that no one can just visit the country once, cross it off the list and move on. Greece is a challenge, an invitation to come back again and again and revel in all the different experiences. What about the light? The Cyclades have been known for it since antiquity. Have you ever seen anything like it during your travels abroad? A geologist once told me that there’s a scientific explanation for the light in the Aegean. It has to do with the large number of islands and the strong summer winds that keep humidity in check and give Aegean light its distinctive clarity. The only place that even comes close in terms of quality of light is the southmost region of Italy. As a photographer, I consider myself extremely lucky to have been born here. The light in Greece is sublime. It is such a joy to live in a country that is bathed in sunshine for more than 260 days a year. 

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As Christos says at his blog aegeanpan.com, living on an island somewhere in the Aegean Sea is like living on a star; it’s the strange feeling of being part of a constellation, yet disconnected at the same time.