Hydra is an artist's island, alright!
In 2003, it is fashionable to say that the visual arts are in crisis. After seeing a couple of exhibitions this season on the island, I am tempted to think so too. 
The island of Hydra is a microcosm, which facilitates the diagnosis of this contemporary vacuum in art, in all its various expressions. For the last five years the island has been, besides the place where one gets a vanity exhibition at a discount, a place where art on show is predominantly a mirror image of the general artistic vacuum. But art shown here gets the fate it really deserves: it falls harmlessly back into oblivion. 

“Oh Yeah? Who are you, Mister, to criticize what is shown on this beautiful island?”

Well I am (hopefully) a slowly…very slowly maturing visual artist. Hence it is bestowed upon me by virtue of my artistic identity to argue knowingly and critically for or against what I see. Maturity frees one from having to compromise or be “nice” for the sake of it. Getting older intelligently endows you with the pleasure of speaking your mind when you have to. Here it is then:

More than anybody I am fully aware of the truism that Art is difficult and the criticism of it easy. Indeed to me, my best work of Art has yet to come, it is always the next one. Am I too critical of my own work? No. Art is a quest, a research, an unfolding process and not an act frozen on canvas in space/time.
As said previously, a panegyrist I am not, neither a critic by trade nor an obtuse Kunst Historisches art historian attempting presumptuously to judge without qualifications in aesthetical appreciation of Art. It may be true that “value” in art is somewhat a subjective concept, nevertheless there are some rough guidelines common to us all which should help the quidam to feel if there is any significant form in a visual representation. 
There is no diploma to confirm that you can spot or possess the elusive sense of aesthetic. No art school will ever create an artist or a critic. You are born one or you are not. 
Visit the Municipal Art Gallery of Hydra.  It will put to rest your grey cells and sense of aesthetic as well. For any significant form, the ousia of Art, search..!

Do not look for any transcendental meaning behind the framed object hanging on the walls. What you see is what you get. In most cases flower pots and little boats.
Auto-censure or merely the intellectual void of the individual holding the brush seems to have presided over the creation. Any thought, which would be slightly controversial, has been banned. In the academic autochton spirit of bigotry and prudery any reference to human forms has been banished too…or is it that there is a lack of dexterity in drawing figures? But why thoughts have also been banished?  I don’t mean that artists should follow at any rate the age which is theirs and reflect on contemporary issues such as Genetic Art, Penrose aperiodic tilling, polychromy in  fractals etc.. No, it’s not necessary for one to go that far on a small Greek island, but on the other hand…merely emulating badly printed postcards is not what should be shown in the main Gallery of Hydra. It gives the island a bad name. 

Naturally, one should judge paintings within their own genre but what kind of a genre is this? To paint pretty paintings nowadays in earthy colours without the talent of a nineteen-century Corot in Italy, or the freshness of a French painter resident in Provence at the beginning of the century, should be confined to weekend daubers. The Impressionists at least were innovative, freeing themselves from academism with generous daubs of clashing paint. They used new chemical pigments recently discovered. Some of them lamented the fact that they were messy and could not draw figures but their shortcomings were their strength: they had a style, a style of their own. They became Cezannes… 
Mimicking 19/20th century masters should not belong to Hydra’s contemporary art scene. Leave it to department stores of Shinjuku. 
I sincerely believe that being a good copyist of nature is totally insignificant and irrelevant to Art today. One can now see, especially in the Far East, some astounding paintings, so realistic they make you doubt the medium. Is it oil on canvas or emulsion on paper? It’s amazing, but an original work of art it is not. In the age of digital cameras, verisimilitude is not enriching for the artist as it was during the renaissance but what lies behind it still is. It can be suggested in anyway the artist wants… but he must succeed on pain of having scribbled nonsenses on canvas. Capturing ideas, feelings, moods is what painting is about. Ut pictura poesis !
Painting by the sea en plein air is relaxing. Churchill did it, a great man but not a great artist. One could even say that it is a form of meditation or a state of nirvanic vacuity. What I ask here is - where does it show in the flowerpots, little boats and pretty flowery courtyards of the past couple of exhibitions at the Melina Merkouri Hydra municipal gallery?
 
 

Conversely, let us suppose that Hydra occasionally produces a few buyers of paintings, it seems that what is shown now is what the public wants on the island. So, what is the big deal here with criticizing pretty pictures?
It is a myth that Hydra attracts connoisseurs en masse. A summer resort is just a summer resort. Take a stroll along the port and you will see what is offered is what people like. Posters of Hydra in plastic frames, undercover nine-carat jewelry, little windmills playing Never on Sunday.

All of this brings us to the present exhibition of Kostas Aggelakis. It is what I would call a polite exhibition. It won’t shock anybody, it won’t enthuse anybody either. It is the work of someone who was once an art student, obviously. It employs all the tricks of the trade minus the drippings, which one sees duplicated ad infinitum in any gallery of suburbia. It is not very inspirational as the artist shows a romantic view of his messy atelier. One has a sense of déjà vu. 
There is an intended hint of miserabilism in the setting of his iconography. It is a very “south of the Balkans” kind of composition. The palette is borrowed from Lucian Freud. The brush strokes hesitant and some could also say generous, to be polite. The overall impression is of a work of art to decorate a kind of "Kulturiariko" dwelling in Athens or Ankara. It would give, at not great expense, the proud owner of the painting the varnish of a patron of the Art, having discovered Kostas. 
 
 

Perhaps it is useful to stress that the person in charge of who is to show at the municipal gallery or at the x-Yachting Club is the local carpenter Phyllis and of course the Mayor who judges according to two politically correct criteria. 
1 - it should not shock the electorate, right or the left.
2 - the rental of the gallery should benefit the community.

Well, the above might seem cruel. Truth often is. No need to be apologetic for Art’s sake. 
However I suspect that I am going to eat my words concerning  figurative art and this, with the next exhibition of the painter Adam Shapiro, a long time Hydra resident. 
 
 

On the basis of the elongated poster I saw, Adam appears to have captured what lies behind the picture. When not on Hydra, Adam lives in India. 
Unluckily for me I won’t be here to see it.
Lucky for you, isn’t it?

Michel Le Goff
07/17/03

PS. Where contemporary art is concerned Pan metron Ariston, measure in all things still applies. 
This is what was totally disregarded last year in Hydra by a Greek cutting edge art activist who organizes each year an exhibition sheltered at the local primary school.  This exhibition in meant to shock the bourgeoisie, an easy stunt. 
Supposedly “big names” of the art world showed there, away from the maddening crowds.. a very intimate affair indeed. 
Last year the artist-curator did not follow, by far, the precepts of Aristotle. He went overboard with a panegyric of pederasty, wrongly digested homosexuality and other kind of aberrations very hip, very New York, arty-farty. It was according to a well known Art publisher visiting the island, devoid of interest and actually repulsive. So much for the famous Hydra art scene. Not just anybody can become a Saatchi. Must put the brain to work first.
 
 

LeGoff.com
 

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Thanks to all. The article above generated a lot of answers; some warm comments for and some against. 
My mail box filled up mainly with what I would consider Arty junk mail . A few voiced sub-moronic opinions on figurative Art which retroactively proved that somewhere I was right. 
Some emails were quite courteous though and wanted to know what I would consider good figurative Art in Hydra. Though it is not what I collect. I am please to oblige. I just found among a folder of works on paper I have gathered over the years some work from a friend and neighbor of the 80s, the artist was Dick Hart They are watercolors painted in 70s/80s. Unluckily the best one are gone as I thought they were an ideal gift to my friends living in big cities.. 
 

In these poor photographs the sfumato effect is lost but one can still understand that there is more to those pictures than the obvious.. 

MLG