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by Giorgos Mourelos |
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It is difficult to penetrate to the heart of the work of a contemporary painter, however familiar one may be with the freedom that characterises the art of today. And it is even more difficult to do so in the case of work which is authentic, which does not imitate that of any other artist, and which is not to be identified with any particular school. This does not mean, however, that it does not of necessity belong to the epoch when the painter is alive, nor that it does not respond to the emotional openings that this epoch provides. For it would indeed be inconceivable for the work of Apostolos Kilessopoulos to be ascribed to any other moment in the history of art. In Kilessopoulos' work
itself some guidance can, however, be found towards its sources, and certain
keys may be sought there to open
the door to a better
understanding of the artist's essential nature, as he is today. It will then
be realised that, behind the apparently non-representational form of the
compositions, there are to be found con-figurations suggestive of human
groupings scattered
at various points in the paintings. We have only to take the trouble to look
for them. The double approach will be attempted, as far as possible, in what follows. The representational substratum of Kilessopoulos' work mainly consists of various phases in the human agony, which is depicted as a struggle between two elements: those of the "self" and the "other". The presence and the absence of these two elements, their fullness and their emptiness, reveal the transient nature of the human configurations and show that in the final analysis, every approach made to love or to life leads in the end to separation and death. This dramatic quality, which is an inseparable part of Kilessopoulos' s work and lies at the heart of his inspiration, has been transformed into painting and is the stimulus for the explosion of colour which has become ever more characteristic of his art. The second reading of Kilessopoulos' work, that which sees it as purely pictorial, remains to be discussed. In an earlier paper on him, I have referred to the fact that his painting, seen in this way, emerges at one and the same time as rigorously structured, on the one hand, and as an allusive art, imbued with a delicate, personal lyricism, on the other. It seems that the word "lyricism "did not meet the approval of the artist, who believes that the dominant feature in his work is its dramatic quality. It is my opinion, however, that the one does not preclude the other. It is true that behind the clash of forms, although it may be latent rather than obvious in the more recent works, and behind the explosive dynamism, is to be found a drama of birth and death. The essential point is, however, that, alongside all that, the painter's use of colour suggests a magic reminiscent of a fine verse by Solomos, the Greek national poet: "The chasm opened by the earth-quake brims with flowers". This likening of colour-patches to flowers is certainly not meant to reflect the artist's own intentions; when repeated more than once, it should be taken a purely symbolic observation. For there is no question here of any intent to represent, but rather of a chromatic music woven the very fabric of the painting. Reference having already been made to previous papers of mine on Kilessopoulos, I shall mention yet another: namely my comparison of several paintings from a given period to star nebulae. I shall once again insist on this image, which is borrowed from contemplation of the night sky and from impressions gained from books of astronomy. Kilessopoulos' s recent work, which is now so far advanced and has become so clear, is no longer reminiscent, to my mind, of simple nebulae, but of cosmic explosions like those that formed the novae, or, still more, like that cataclysmic dispersal of matter throughout the universe which occurred with the initial Big Bang. The only difference is that here it is not the heavens which are inundated with successive waves of different types of galaxies and stars, but the surface of a picture, with its variety of colours and the internal struggle that takes place between them. Yet this struggle, like the heavenly phenomena, is, for all its dynamism, governed by a primeval equilibrium. For without balance no real work of art can exist. So, in the work of Kilessopoulos two different elements coincide: specific internal experience, on the one hand, and, on the other, purely pictorial achievement; yet these two factors are not independent of each other. It is only necessary that, using the quality and arrangement of the colours as a starting-point, the viewer should manage to see these two important factors in both their separate-ness and their unity. One more point should be made before concluding. Apart from the sense of magic induced by the artist's controlled outbursts of colour, there is another aspect of Kilessopoulos 'work which the writer also finds especially moving: that is to say, his drawings, with their interplay of black and white. In the past, more specific groupings of human bodies were to be discerned, and these continue to exist in his recent work, but much more vaguely. "Vaguely", since they have in time become transformed into freer, but more suggestive, plastic configurations. From these drawings a new world opens up before our eyes; it contains a mode of experience all its own, and draws the viewer into an ecstasy previously unknown. For the fact should not be glossed over however reluctant we are to believe it, confined as we are to-our conventional, everyday life-that Art is above all a revelation of another world, which is created by the artist, to be sure, but which in turn creates the artist. From the moment when he manages to put this world into his pictures, it will unfold before us and invite us to share in its secret meaning. Giorgos Mourelos Translated by J.R. Collins-Litsas |