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Dancing Lines: At Home with Yannis Dimitrakis Athens creeps across the Attic Peninsula slowly with each passing year, absorbing history both recent and ancient in its immense sprawl. Following Greece's successful bid for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, toll roads on par with American turnpikes sped up the integration of surrounding villages into the Athenian metropolitan area. Unlike traditional suburbs, however, these villages are ancient in origin, as old as Athens itself, and just as storied. Their citizens take great pride in their illustrious history, and will gladly regale the young American student with tales of ancestral glory from the Greek War of Independence to the Peloponnesian War for hours on end, given the chance and enough espresso. Most Greeks outside of Paiania know it as the village where the new Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport is located. Spending any time in the village, barely half an hour outside Athens's center by bus, visitors will be inundated with historical, anecdotal, and apocryphal evidence of Paiania's contributions to Greek culture. A souvlaki shop in the main plateia is named Liopessi, the village's traditional name from medieval times following an influx of people who spoke Romanian dialect. Demosthenes was born here before moving to Athens to practice oratory, foreshadowing the modern Paianian's penchant for storytelling. A Paianian was responsible for the Olympiakos football club's defeat of Brazil in the 1970's thanks to a well placed kick to Pele's shin, according to the local legend constantly retold in the café run by the soccer hero's son. The café patrons, reclining with chilled cappuccinos in front of them, are also quite forthright in declaring the superiority of Paianian bugaza , a crème-filled pastry that becomes addictive very quickly to the unprepared palate. “Greekness” is a tricky concept to define given the discontinuities and external influences on Greek culture and history, but the shifting ideas of what it is to be Greek are pervasive in Dimitrakis's wildly varied work. In Athens, reminders of Greece's fragmented history stand everywhere. The Parthenon towers above the city, producing images of democracy and the birth of Western civilization. Tourists venture to the top of the Acropolis to see the glory of ancient Greece, but the Parthenon's crumbled roof calls attention to its medieval use as an ammunition dump by the Ottomans, its naked frieze recalling Lord Elgin's removal of the Parthenon Marbles to Great Britain. Just below the Acropolis, the Areios Pagos is known both as the Hill of Ares, the chief homicide court of ancient Athens, and as the hill on which St. Paul first preached Christianity. Cape Sounion's Temple of Poseidon sits in ruins at the tip of the Attic Peninsula, where Lord Byron carved his name on one of the columns. Byron did so in 1823 as he journeyed to Greece to aid the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, an act that has made him a national hero even today. Official tour guides and historians in the employment of the Greek government mention all these things within the same breath, creating a patchwork history that connects classical, medieval, and modern Greece. The narrative incorporates important Greek institutions such as Christianity and allies such as Lord Byron into the Greek identity while attempting to marginalize and eliminate the undesired influences of the Ottoman Empire. Greek cultural eclecticism is inclusive of the Western tradition it so proudly helped create as it attempts to marginalize Islam and Turkey . A well-kept secret in Paiania lives a few blocks away from the main plateia , a piece of living history I first discovered hanging on the walls of the home in which I was staying for the summer. Yannis Dimitrakis, born in 1958 in Paiania, has been a fixture in the Greek art world since his first exhibition at the local Vorres Museum in 1982. Since then, Dimitrakis has journeyed outside of Paiania, working in France and Italy for a period of time, showing at the Venice Biennale, but it is his home and homeland that he finds most inspiring, and most appropriate. The Vorres Museum holds works by Dimitrakis from throughout his career in its permanent collection. His early black-and-white style is recognized throughout Greece. While he does not travel much farther than his studio or the plateia , Dimitrakis's newest sculptures adorn the walls of both friends and patrons. I arrived at Dimitrakis's home for dinner after an invitation precipitated by a mutual friend. History, or rather the manufacture of history, was present everywhere in his house which seamlessly blends into his workspace. Samples of his earliest work are mounted on the kitchen wall, faces imposed on rocks glaring down at the table. “My first forays into art imitated the work that [poet Yannis] Ritsos was doing with painting little stones,” he tells me, frying two or three octopus tentacles in preparation for dinner. “I did not want to desecrate the stones, however, but rather accent pieces and elevate them to something new, a piece of art.” A concern for nature and natural progression is present throughout his work. Dimitrakis exhibits an inherent ability to riff, absorbing his surroundings and rearranging them to produce something distinctly his. Dimitrakis's most famous work epitomizes the synthesis of external influence and historical pride that characterizes modern Greek culture. “Bullfighting” is equal parts Francis Bacon and black-and-white noir comic art. There are no shades of gray, only a steady progression of highest contrast black-and-white bull and human figures, disfigured, compressed, and abstracted. “Paint doesn't last. The Parthenon is white and pure now, but it was once painted vibrant colors, as were most statues in ancient times. Now it is all gone. I started using Chinese ink because it never fades, which makes it particularly striking, and the reason I primarily worked in black and white.” The drawings in “Bullfighting” are infected from conception to execution with the presence of Dimitrakis's heroes and peers. In the early 1980's, Dimitrakis spent time in Paris with a group of artists that created a traveling multimedia show called “Lorca the Greek.” “[Federico Garcia] Lorca's poetry and writing had been translated and became widely available and influential in modern Greek culture,” Dimitrakis recalls. “It started to be considered a very important part of Greek cultural life as it became more available. Some people were completely unaware that Lorca himself was not Greek, which was one of the reasons the show was put together.” Following his stay in Paris, Dimitrakis returned to Greece, where he began to work on a new exhibition. “I was particularly struck by a lament by Lorca titled ‘The Lament for Ignatius Sanchez Mehias.' It is about how one of Lorca's male friends returns to the bullfighting stadium just for Lorca at age 34. He is unprepared, however, and is killed. I have never seen a bullfight or been to a stadium, but I was so moved, that it became the conceptual framework for my first large exhibition, entitled ‘Bullfighting.' Instead of focusing on the mortal combat between bull and man, however, I looked to the acrobatics men would perform with bulls on Minoan Crete, leaping over their horns as a test of courage and strength.” The figures in “Bullfighting” are acrobatic indeed, shifting and walking across the paper, creating rhythms from disfigured anatomies. Dimitrakis owes this style to Yannis Xenakis, a composer and friend who worked on “Lorca the Greek,” as well. Xenakis's music and method of composition led to Dimitrakis's drawing method, possessed of the spontaneity and unpredictability for which he so admires Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell. “The act of drawing for me is an engagement in choreography,” he explains. “After I moved away from working with stones and looking for rhythms in nature, I began to draw to music. Soon, I found my drawing began to follow the music, and I was translating the rhythm and the score into visual art.” Francis Bacon resonates not only in “Bullfighting,” but in Dimitrakis's person as well. “Bacon is someone I have identified with for most of my life. I come from a very similar background as Bacon and share many childhood experiences with him,” he explains. “His work with Pope John Paul is particularly influential. I find that the morphing and transfiguration of anatomy are very fine ways of addressing concrete sexual identities and rigid ideologies.” Vassilis, Yannis's brother, has joined us for dinner at this point, and laughs at his older brother, sparking a heated argument happening too fast to follow. The sexual identities of both brothers and their relationships to the rigid ideology of the Greek Orthodox Church lie at the root of the quarrel. Both brothers are gay, and while Yannis scorns the Church, Vassilis proudly informs me that if it were not for his sexual preference, he would be a priest. Yannis, deep into yet another bottle of vodka, has visibly disengaged from the conversation and withdrawn into himself, focusing on the jazz coming from the radio and the Olympiakos soccer match on the television. Luckily, Vassilis insists I come with him for a tour of the house that the two share. He is more of a docent than a host, and leads a tour through a veritable museum of Dimitrakis's history and future. Sketches of his father, jazz greats, and religious iconography are taped to the wall. A small office space contains a shrine erected by Vassilis and Yannis's murals of altered horse figures climbing the walls and the ceiling like a Grecian urn. Everywhere, Yannis's art creeps off canvas and paper alike to engulf the room. Vassilis is uninterested in the interior, however, and pulls me through the labyrinthine house into the courtyard, stopping in front of a familiar shape: a Greek Orthodox church. The small one room prayer spaces are everywhere, no more than quaint huts fitting the Byzantine Rite and a handful of people. It is still under construction, but the backyard structure is unmistakable. “He is building it for me,” Vassilis tells me in complete sincerity and respect for his brother. The gravity of his tone is only intensified as he stands me in front of the granite and marble altar under construction, giving me an imaginary tour of the incomplete building. Yannis is building this church for Vassilis. The Greekness of this brotherly, traditional gesture struck me beneath the unfinished roof. Back inside the house, Yannis was still clearly sour and in no mood to discuss what Vassilis had obviously shown me. He cooks more octopus for us as Vassilis explained that seafood is so abundant right now because the summer is a fasting period. Yannis grunts, rips off a piece of tentacle, and returns to the table. I ask him about his latest work, canvases reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg's combines, adorned with bone-like sculptures and surrounded by English phrases reminiscent of a country Western. “The words are there for how they look, for how they change,” he tells me, dismissing any interpretive significance. “They are random bullshit progressions that just happen to make sense sometimes, or never at all. I'm interested in all kinds of grammar.” The night is late, and Vassilis appears to have dropped the last straw. The United States is on my mind, as I am leaving in less than a week, so I ask him about a potential visit to Cambridge. This time it is Yannis who laughs. “I have never been to America, nor will I in the future, probably,” Yannis tells me. “I am home in Paiania, and hope you are, as well.” While talk of Yannis and his art has clearly come to an end, dinner continues. We have been at the table for most of the night and some of the morning, and there is no ending in sight for our meal. Despite the small size of our party, there is a great commotion in the kitchen as jazz, match highlights, and Vassilis's inebriated shouting fill the room. I am unsure whether it is Vassilis's never-ending dinner conversation or the empty bottle of vodka that has induced Yannis's red-faced quietness. I have no choice in what I eat, as Vassilis instructs me in what to eat and how to prepare it. When he arrives at the vlita , I finally get a word in edgewise. I ask him whether the greens are best served with lemon or vinegar, as I had experienced numerous explosive disagreements concerning the dish. Vassilis snorts, laughs a derisive laugh, and launchs into a diatribe concerning “the fools who would dare use anything but salt and lemon juice.” He turns to Yannis, who has clearly had enough of his brother, as he must every night they spend together. “I work with my hands,” the artist, chef, and builder mutters, “while his mouth never seems to stop working.” back to Winter 2007 Table of Contents |