Glossary

Nature. 'I'hanks to Prometheos and Hephaestos, or more likely to Chronos

AGlossary

almighty Time, we learned slowly

-the and steadily how to use our hands. First of all, we created out of the thicket (virginal nature) ... Space: Horon in

by Aristodemos Kaldis Aristodemos Kaldis, artist and art lecturer of the key to Modern Art, and outhor of "Not Just Myself but a Biography of Others".

PROLOGUE Thatglosso . . . tongue is more powerful than any weapon we all agree. At the snme time no one will deny that "the tongue although she has no bones, she breaks bones" Marketos' proverbs However the clarity of the pthongs and dipthongs that the tongue spouts can either help us to appreciate art with their articulation, or confuse us with the soundings of vagueness which many promoters of art utilize. Vagueness in reviews and criticism should be fought by those who sincerely believe in an objective appreciation ofart devoid of sympathies, empathies or antipathies.

There is no panacea for combatting these abuses. However, the method of

inviting painters and sculptors to express themselves is worthy of praise.

After all, Diderot, the friend of Parisian artists, tells us that we can learn from the most obscure painters and sculptors.

But, with very few exceptions, painters and sculptors cannot convey in a spoken or written form their reflections on art.

Therefore, willy-nilly, they need a writer to arrange or render their remarks without changing their substance. Person-

I feel that the more I talk on art the more I agree with

ally, as a painter, Simonides that:

Greek, Locus in Latin and Ghei in Japa-

or sin. Art appreciation or criticism very often enters the same theological realm of faith-that is, fanatical mysticism

nese.

expressed

room for another.

"The space first of all they measured

When we use logical words, we are often led into the barren fields of logic. On the other hand, if we resort to myths that are plastic words, we are transported on the powerful wings of imaginative faith-dogma. And dogma does not dissect, but reveals the beauty of a painting or sculpture. This apocallptic revelation

catapults us into the eternal space of ideas. Plato is right when he says there is no materialistic space, but a void. A pandehes . . . pondectis-that is, an all receptive vessel filled with dirty matter.

Artist and Appreciator: the human being is a self-proclaimed "logical animal". However, the artist being a Demiourgos-creator., succeeds through in-

tuition on ra-re occasions, in avoiding the pitfalls of logic. On the other hand, the appreciator has to make his own efforts, faithfully and with deep religiosity, until the work of art will reveal its inner

beauty without the help of the intermediary, the self-appointed judgethe critic.

To Oraion kai Kalon: the beautiful

LOGOS

its mystery or indulge in polemics we often enter into a blind alley as theologians do. The theologian of the Renaissance had a difficult time explaining to the awakening masses the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

These theologians were able to survive scientific onslaught on their dogma by grasping a quotation from Aristotle, the father of science. The Roman Catholics

quoted from Aristotle that the

Dokoumenon (what do you believe) is

tiag-Lethe-to not to err-

include or to discard;

Lanthano-erring. In reporting or

handling one has to be very, very infalli-

ble. Being infallible is an attribute re-

served for the Gods, not for common mortals. That is why it is more correct to say that this great artist or philosopher is less infallible than another who talks on art ex-cathedra.

TIME

(and not the thing that you can prove).

Chronos-time. There was no such thing as the fallible or infallible before

there is no guilt

human beings interfered with Mother

Arnphibolia-doubt,

so

ter?)

LIGHT AND CHAOS "The first man", Hesiod

says,

"walked into a thicket and cut a tree . . . part of it he used to warm himself, another part to cook his meals, and with what remained he played and he created a Xoannon-a wood carving .. . which the others worshipped."

The result of this clearing was the creating of a definite space-and simultaneously . . . Light was produced out of the chaotic thicket where the pitch darkness of Chaos prevailed prior to the

cutting of the trees.

Tirne in its long, illimitable course Brings forth to Light and buries all (Ajax) -sophocles Choos-where one is lost-Hanetai

ing abyss". (Tim 50 B and 51 A).

S

lethargy.

right, rather than the Apodeiktikon

Faith removes Arnphi

325).

Clearing more trees and leveling the ground they created a small spaceHorion in Greek, that is, a small village or hnmlet. When our alcestors cleared a larger area they created a big spaceIloro-meaning a large city. (Who but Hesiod can describe this process bet-

DESIGN

How many times, for instance, have you heard in lectures and discussions the word "Truth"? Without sounding pontifical, truth- Alithea in Greek-means to report, say or review something without error or lethargy. That is: not forget-

express

Iliad (Gama

make

in Greek or Heo. . . that is: pouring the unwrought matter, raw material. "Indigestible", Long. 15.5. Milton's "Void formless infinite", and Plato's "A yawn-

dogmatically, all criticism becomes superfluous. Like religious dogma, art is in wonder that when we resort to words to

. . ." says Homer in his

to

etc. are called, philosophically, positive elements of life. The clean, the sweet etc. arc Arnitika-negative. These virtues are denied to us by nature. The most that we can do is to be truthful.

TBUTII Alithea-fiuth, without

the metaphysical domain, so it is no

separate . ..

again'

painting.

If we follow the epigram

. to

Space ..

and the good are attained through effort.

No wonder then that the bitter, the dirty

Painting is a silent poetry,

and poetry is a chatting, talking

with its best poetic license.

SPACE

c

ch ema-D esign. At the - Shistorical of development,

he dio n

beginning

when the human being slowly comes out of the forest-thicket-life, he floats on m ake

-

shifts-designs, sh ape s, or in Greek and

schemes: Schedia

Schidram in Sanskrit. Design is a diagram, "the external appearance", in Plato's Republic (601,A)-like any textile design or bas relief on furniture or

on a wall. It is the intention or the pursuit of a goal which succeeds or fails in its plan or design. Design or shapes, being makeshifts, are not harmonies.

Harmony, synthesis, or composition is sn nmalgnm ofrelated designs or shapes,

with color and line, that are

joined together to form a harmony, a composition.

IIARMONY Harmos-peg. Harmony is derived from the Greek Harmos, meaning peg or

That's

water. that it specie

B. to

elements can contribute to over-recognition of an artist or sometimes to stifle his reputation, not totally eliminate it, because neither Rembrandi nor El Greco were corpses' They were there, but not so much publicized, but periodically they

ghteenth century, h, when theY tried Aegeans bY inter-

of water in another six hours. When I was there as a young man

of fifteen and sixteen, I was surprisid to see that many ships

with flat bottoms were still sitting down there. It was true, I

Thebes.

it becomes the same thing.

The other was Heraclitus (that you ought to know), and even the art of India with the Buddha of Pergamum artists which he carried along with him. (Later on, Napoleon did the

this condition.

For instance, we have in America today a highly permissive society, so the art world is in a high permissive way, to such an extent that everybody can jump in and make a line and

hi now she decided to Paint.

"You paint! What medium do you paint in?"

I don't use mediums; I use drawings'"

a great period of art, because there who went to Persia and his PeoPle miniatures; built churches even as far as China and influenced Chinese painting, which now for the first time used color, previously the Chinese always used black and white.

w di

that and hope I did it with mY exhibition."

"Did you sell any?"

"No, that's not the Point."

Two months later on, she met me and I asked her, "Did you sell any more, did you do anything with your work?" 'f aian't do much, but I was invited by three different col-

with the Muslims. There are mosartists built mosques as far away as gions sometime playing a great role in developing art.

Howevei, the Protestants destroyed all art, they were so pure that they didn't believe in art decoration of churches' ^Catholics andbrthodox believe in real decoration, and that is why we have all that richness of the Renaissance and other

n that par-

paintingey did the same thing because-like the son-in-law of Marx says in a nice, charming book which you young people should read, The Right To Be Lazy, a very attractive book-under the Catholics there

were 186 holidays, but the Protestants abolished most of them, abolished all painting in churches, and forbade work on Sunday, and took all of the joy away from the people.

Art flowers and blossoms when people have festivals. The festival is that which creates the situation in which something beautiful is seen that stimulates the artist. The painting has to be beautiful to the eye like Delacroix says, "Painting should be, first of all, a feast for the eye or it cannot be painting." I can go on and on and talk to you, but because the time is late and they are going to need this hall later on. I will start now and show you a few slides and we can talk while I show you. (applause) We see in the Nineteenth century where modern art came about. It was the big cataclysmic way in which everything changed in the life of the people, the discovery of estymigian and everything. The horse that was used-I chose Gericault and when you see this at the Louvre - I believe it is before Delacroix-I love this horse that is painted with beautiful texture. It doesn't have form, so that the abstract expressionists would like it. There is nothing new under the sun in painting.

The next is Monet's La Gare de St. Lazare, which shows you the engine at one of the old stations of Paris. When people

began to use the railroads and slowly travel over Europe, Africa, and India and the remotest parts of the world became accessible to the archeologists, art historians, and painters, who began to bring from all over the world all the beautiful things that the archaeologists and the anthropologists, the historians brought to enrich the museums, which in turn, stimulated many artists to create various forms.

Here is the prehistoric Egyptian pottery, and you see that it has a novel form, similar to that of the Aegean. It is the plasticity of all these genres. A man like Brancusi and others used that form. They call it pre-dynastic. These are pre-dynastic, too-in other words-before there were any organized dynasties.

Dynasty means an imperialistic kingdom which put an order to an anarchical society.

s, so

:$,*::#[i5fjr;'r""!lT

e holy ghost which is portrayed

with the sun and the rain. Do you know those churches? They have the eye and the sun over the separation of the main church from the table where they do the sacrament. So the Egyptians, the Jews and the Greeks are the first Christians and

religions are made by compromise of different races. Like today, the Communists and Socialists keep on compromising and the Catholics begin to compromise with the Communists for a better coexistence. This is another prehistoric animal. This is more Mesopotamian. . . .