I am, and I am steadfastly greater in despair
and black,
the well-known flower-minded one with syllabic scent.
In works of art, balance
is a form of humility.
An era where ethereal fragrances freshly harmonize
and unbridled abandon reigns,
the night nurturing cubs: a whitening baroness,
and over there,
that old moon,
like a rugby ball.
—Nikos Karouzos, Prehistoric Manuscripts, I (excerpt)
Attempting, in turn, to speak "from memory" about the ink works of my friend Andreas Georgiadis, I cannot help but identify their rare artistic values—the hidden textures and the endless improvised dialogues between light and shadow that assert their poetic presence with strength. This is achieved in an era where the sensual aesthetics of vision seem crushed by the compulsion for disruption.
The watery realms of Georgiadis plunge into time, baptized in absence and decay, invoking the possibility of escape—sometimes into an indeterminate and suspended monochromatic universe, and other times into the grains and dense specks of a dazzling fissure of light where "the day is more piercing than the sob between tears." (1) For the artist’s intention is precisely this: to render vision significant once again. To "measure" the hours of the day slowly, preserving their ebbs and crescendos, immortalizing their infinitesimal minor and major moments until they fade into darkness, ultimately meeting the nurturing night.
At the edges of Georgiadis’ dense explorations hover the beneficial lessons and notes of great masters who "educated" his interplay with light. This aligns with Gombrich’s view that "throughout history, artists learned more from the painting tradition by studying the works of their predecessors, making significant discoveries through them rather than by directly observing nature. The history of representational art is closely tied to a series of pictorial inventions, where the ability to read an image relies on practice and persistent meticulousness."
In the history of painting, shading defines shape, while shadow describes space and atmosphere. However, excessively precise shadow renders the work descriptive. By contrast, its suspension creates a different dimension. Realism in painting is less about exact depiction and more about how the artist underscores truth.
During the late winter and early spring months of 1892 and 1893, Claude Monet stationed himself opposite Rouen Cathedral, in a location offering a view of the church facade. Setting up a series of easels before the window, he attempted to capture the building at different times of day, seizing its appearance from the first moments of dawn to the last light of dusk. For a significant period, Monet painted the successive phases of time in parallel, switching from one canvas to another as the light shifted continuously. In 1894, he revisited the works collectively, finalizing them. For Monet, the central theme of these paintings was not the depiction of the stone structure’s form but the flowing representation of changing light.
Centuries earlier, Michelangelo Buonarroti created both literal and allegorical depictions of the moments of the day. In the Sistine Chapel, Light separates from Darkness as God’s figure divides the sky into two distinct sections. In the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici, the two pairs of sculptures (Day/Night and Dawn/Dusk) are rendered as reclining nudes. Day and Night emerge from a deep dreamlike state, their melancholic forms exuding a mysterious introspection. Although the exact symbolism of these works remains uncertain, many historians suggest that Michelangelo sought to express the human emotions potentially associated with these moments of the day, linking them symbolically to life and death.
Leonardo da Vinci employed sfumato, creating unprecedented synergies between light and shadow. As Gombrich notes, this technique allowed forms to merge seamlessly and, most importantly, left much to the imagination. Baroque artists explored the enigmatic qualities of dusk and night, producing works with dramatic lighting contrasts and skillful chiaroscuro, epitomized in the art of Caravaggio.
In pieces like The Night Watch, Rembrandt capitalized on the benefits of darkness, selectively illuminating elements in the foreground of the composition, essentially transforming shadow into light. Centuries later, the hours of the day became a central focus for Vincent van Gogh, whose unrelenting obsession with the shifting natural light of the day led to the creation of hundreds of works and sketches in Southern France. Yet, he was equally captivated by the dark light of night, as demonstrated in The Starry Night (1889), one of the most iconic nocturnal paintings in art history.
This exploration continues in works like Pierre Bonnard's The Game of Croquet, Alberto Giacometti's The Palace at 4 a.m., and a series of masterpieces by Edward Hopper. Hopper's works, such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Cape Cod Afternoon, Office at Night (1940), and Nighthawks (1942), stand out as independent negotiations of different times of the day, capturing their subtle variations in atmosphere and emotion.(2)
Continuing beyond the eternal quest for the distant luminous point, the agile and shifting Punto Luce that traverses the inscrutable plains of his painted landscapes, Andreas Georgiadis pushes the boundaries of his personal journey. He ventures into the depths of an imaginary aqueous world where the predetermined conditions of solitude and isolation—reminiscent of his admired Caspar David Friedrich—serve as therapeutic artistic catalysts. Balancing on a sphere teetering between reality and intellect, Georgiadis' unseen wanderer roams amidst blurred fragments of verdant meadows and watery strips of land and sea. These scenes are not without references to the poetic haze and the beneficial non finito characteristic of another favorite artist, Michalis Economou, as they seek the elusive edges of a dream that continues to slip away from memory.
This desolate land of Georgiadis—the aqueous cityscape of the imagination—engages in a perpetual dialogue with a suspended, ominous sense of inevitability. It strongly evokes Venice, a beloved destination of the artist. In 19th-century literature, Venice was likened to a "virgin forest," a place where the "wild" natives coexisted with the "botanist explorers" described by Walter Benjamin. (3) When asked about this connection, Georgiadis replies with something I already understand deeply, having long immersed myself in his art: "Venice is primarily the lagoon—a conceptual, aqueous space, a potential environment capable of hosting all impossibilities!"
"When I began painting the lagoon outside Venice," Georgiadis continues, "I was deeply interested in showing how a city can exist and breathe so close to water, essentially being one with it. Gradually, I began depicting a fantastical city, one of my own making—a land where everything connects and dissolves through the aqueous element, inevitably imbued with a sense of destruction, much like in Thomas Mann's novels. Yet, within all these works, there is also a sense of anticipation: whatever is to come will emerge from the sea, whether it is good or bad.
When I take a piece of paper in my hands, I start from nowhere. Or rather, I start with escape. I imagine a journey, conjuring up a mutable environment of splashes, stains, and colors. The first strokes dictate the continuation—they are like the opening words of a book, and so I strive for them to be decisive, almost dramatic. However, once I begin applying colors to the paper, I no longer aim for something specific. Often, the ideal work emerges on an older one, its space gaining substance through previous erasures. I preselect the palette but embrace the randomness, as everything is subject to revision during the painting process: suddenly, the sun becomes the moon, and the sea turns into a piece of a tree…"
"Most of the works were created at a specific time of day, mostly in the afternoon, though I equally seek the subtlety of certain nocturnal scenes. I love the feeling of stillness just before darkness sets in, the sensuous violet twilight, the awareness that it was day before and will soon be night."
"In all the works, there are certain key elements—elements that recur to speak of that place that remains unchanged, even as it transforms—the private realm of my dwelling, which I strive to depict with small, imperceptible nuances. The image of stairs descending into the water, a pavement beneath which the sea flows—I think I carry these within me from my childhood strolls along the Thessaloniki promenade, even though I encountered them again in Venice. Boats and stakes, as well as the symbolism of a solitary house on a deserted island, certainly lead there. Boats transport you to another world, safeguarding the possibility of immediate escape, if necessary—whatever they may be. Stakes, I would say, align with human existence, marking an unseen presence, sometimes less and sometimes more powerful and dominant. Elsewhere, a fluid winter sunset in Aegina resides, a piece of dense, impenetrable mist over the forlorn lagoon of Mesolongi. The works are interconnected, much like geographic memories are interconnected in the end. In these images, the subconscious operates quite clearly. That's why I try not to think too much when I begin a piece; I believe the 'why' matters less to me than the 'how.'"
"It is thus the how of Georgiadis that intersects with silence and shadows, sketching without apparent causality a land imbued with a metaphysical, uniquely weighted, ink-hued landscape. Speaking of things above and beyond us. Engaging with the distant horizons of the living and the dead, the lost children and the silent adults who inhabit the dreamlike webs of the painter's subconscious. Immersed in the element of water, which symbolizes both life and oblivion. Reinventing a different aspect of human presence where the atmosphere is infused with a paradoxically comforting bittersweetness, and solitude sustains a fertile contemplation of things beyond reality, perhaps even beyond the imaginary.
Shaped by inexhaustible designs of light, tonal color, and shadow, the world of Andreas Georgiadis is rendered as a fluid, pulsating, and paradoxically recognizable outline, much like Kazuko Mende describes. As a pragmatic and living illusion, akin to Gombrich's descriptions. 'In representational painting,' Mende notes, 'the depiction of light and shadow remains vital for rendering the illusion of space. In reality, even when the expression of shadow and shading is imprecise, people can still recognize the depicted object, even with the help of its contour lines alone.' (4) In his work Art and Illusion, Gombrich explores the connections between perception and art. He examines issues such as imitation of nature, the function of tradition, the power of perspective, and the interpretation of expression, arguing that no artist can replicate what they see: 'An artist cannot copy a sunlit meadow; they can, however, suggest it through a private vocabulary where tonal systems of image shaping and texture highlights play a critical role. A painter does not examine the nature of the physical world but rather the nature of our reactions to it. Since a living organism never stops examining its environment, there is no true distinction between the perception of things and illusion. When an artist's skill meets the viewer's ability to perceive cues, a two-dimensional painted field transforms into a three-dimensional space, bridging the vast chasm between the image and the physical world. Indeed, the true miracle of the language of art is not that it enables the artist to create the illusion of reality. It is primarily that, in the hands of a capable creator, the image becomes transparent and self-sufficient. By teaching us how to see the visible world anew, it allows us to penetrate the invisible realms of the mind, provided we, as Philostratus says, truly know how to use our eyes.' (5)"
1. Paraphrase of the line by Louis Aragon: "Le jour est plus poignant qui point entre les pleurs" from the poem Les yeux d’Elsa.
2. Colleen Carroll, Times of Day in Art, Arts & Activities, September 2008.
3. Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Verso, 2002. See chapters The Solitary Stroller and the City and Paris, or Botanizing on the Asphalt.
4. Kazuko Mende, Light and Shadow in Painting (Concerning the Expression of Shadows in Western Painting), Journal for Geometry and Graphics, Volume 5 (2001), No. 1, p. 53.
5. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, 1960.
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