Art and the city
Whay can’t all galleries be English, let alone child, friendly?
I THINK the editor must have believed the stuff I wrote in my last piece about going on a Greek course when I first came here, otherwise why was nothing thought of sending me out to cover the exhibition of Greek masterpieces of the 19th and 20thcenturies at the Hellenic Bank Cultural centre in its excellent new exhibition space?
Off I went, in a lonely sort of way, having tried and failed to get a Cypriot artist friend to go with me. “I couldn’t go with you, sorry,” he said, hitting slightly the wrong tense, but then, his English is not as good as mine. Never mind that, though, his Greek is worse and when I got there I found he would have been completely the wrong person to have asked along anyway, as he lives on the wrong side of the green line. Art has no frontiers I hear you cry, well yes, as long as you don’t need to know what it is you are looking at.
When I inquired I was told there was not so much as a side of A4 in English, let alone Turkish, to assist the Hellenically challenged. Such a pity because without even counting tourists there are about 40,000 of us around in this forward-looking-new-EU member state, who even though we can’t rise to the intellectual challenges of reading Greek might still have the sensibility to appreciate a good picture. Some of us are even Cypriots, even Greek Cypriots! I am sure the Hellenic Bank did not really mean to exclude us.
This seems a well-curated exhibition of fine pictures, plenty of them not to my taste but no matter. All I can tell you is that it is clear from this collection that Greek painters over the period knew their old masters, about Picasso, Matisse and as for the modernists just about every “ism” seems to be represented. If you want to know more you have to be a literate Greek Cypriot or go with one, for there are plenty of (monolingual) captions and an attractive, free (monolingual) catalogue. My absolute favorite was No 2 – couldn’t quite work out the artist’s surname but he was called Nicholas and he produced a small masterpiece called, look, I am really sorry about my Greek, “The Carnival of the Athenians..something..something”. Small, murky and brown with red bits and shadowy figures in it, lit by diffuse daylight through a central draped window. It is a little gem and worth ten of any of the rest.
So I gave up and raced round to the Opus 39 Gallery to see if I could catch Arshak Sarkissian’s paintings before closing time Success: I caught not only the paintings but the artist himself and so had the chance of a quick chat before, this being Cyprus, we found we were all rushing off to the same concert. So I shall have to go back again with more time to decide which one to buy, hopefully before these sizzling paintings burn holes in the wall.
I am probably going over the top but really, he is the artist with some of the best actual and potential talent I have seen in Cyprus. He is both an autodidact and the son of a well known painter, which he considers a very fortunate combination and it certainly works for him. He can really draw – not something you invariably find in Nicosia’s galleries and has certainly done his time in the life room as you can see from several, largish very virtuosic – if a bit caricaturist – charcoal drawings.
The main series is of small exuberant figurative compositions in oils. They are strangely festive and dark at the same time with a strong sense of fantasy and a rather philosophical take on perspective. He is a confident colourist but what particularly struck me was this artist’s ability to capture facial expression — giving a strong internal dramatic life to all these pictures. And he can make the same thing work in terms of small paper and wire figurative sculptures which are just impossibly expressive. You expect them to start moving. For me, what really put him with the angels was the way he encouraged my children to play with them! I think I lost my objectivity at that point, especially when we discovered a shared enthusiasm for the Armenian Navy Band – the wackiest music on the planet.
So I urge you go and see this artist for yourself. Opus 39 Gallery always keeps some of his work (his exhibition finished yesterday). Arshak Sarkissian is off soon to show in the USA, France and London but he will be back. If he is painting like this at the age of 23 how will he develop? I will be one of those watching…
n Art by 19th and 20th century Greek artists. Hellenic Bank, Athalassa and Limassol Avenue, Nicosia. Tel 22 500809. Until June 18
