Language: Greek
Defense Date: 2021
Institution: Athens School of Fine Arts
Supervisors: Konstantinos Ioannidis, Areti Adamopoulou, Andreas Ioannidis
Completing a PhD dissertation is more than fulfilling a long-term goal—one that, over the years, can feel at times almost within reach, only to recede once again. Beyond the discipline it requires, it cultivates a way of thinking and a methodology that continue to shape one’s approach to the world and to future endeavors. For me, the presence of Logos, the many forms of language, and the ways they appear within and alongside the work of art have remained lasting concerns, returning persistently and continuing to shape my thinking.
More specifically, my PhD dissertation explores the relationship between Logos and art, as exemplified in the work of four Greek artists—Constantinos Xenakis, Nausika Pastra, Pantelis Xagoraris, and Bia Davou—who can all be seen as representatives of a new artistic current that emerged in Greece during the 1970s.
Following the delineation of the semantic and philosophical origins of the term Logos, this study examines the way in which the different nuances of the word are embedded in the work of the selected case studies. Through a chronological analysis of their artistic trajectories, whose starting point are abstract expressionist gestures, the analysis focuses on their gradual shift toward artworks with an explicit language-centered, semantic, and mathematical-technological orientation, viewed within the context of the production and perception of the arts in Greece in this given time period. More specifically, it asks whether the specificity of Greek culture responded to certain principles of conceptual art, which fosters the notions of process and system, and forms of communication that addresses the audience directly, thus suggesting the possibility of the viewer to take a different role.
The choice of applying different methodological tools in each chapter—tools that are informed by textual studies (such as certain fields of linguistics), as well as by the sciences of mathematics and physics—is defined by each artwork’s context and attributes. In this way, the presence of Logos is further established, either as an expressive means and a set of distinctive features within the artwork itself, or as a body of critical notes that accompanies and annotates the artistic practice.
Logos is thoroughly scrutinized as a language, in extension of the movement of conceptual art in the 1970s, or as a myth, which in its methodological function creates a series of systems and codes for the understanding of dominant patterns and the reflection of varied social conventions. At the same time, Logos is perceived as part of argumentative reasoning and a direct consequence of an inductive, rational process that resonates with ancient Greek philosophy; whereas at the same time, it takes the form of mathematical meta-language and mathematical coding. This form is related to technology and cybernetics, a scientific discipline that drew the attention of the artists during the same period.
Summing up, this research draws a connection between the work of these four artists and that of other representatives of the international artistic scene, who have also expressed similar concerns in an attempt to challenge dominant artistic institutions. The study concludes by identifying the ways in which this new art renegotiates audience perception, not only by critically assessing the artistic legacy of the past, but also by creating its own myths in the present.
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