Alexander V. Markov

This article examines an essay by the greatest Greek poet of the twentieth century, Odysseas Elytis, The Divisor K in Modern Painting. The essay refers to the type of imaginary museum accompanied by a curatorial text. Elytis highlights and justifies the metaphysical line in the development of art, which he draws from the hieratic art of ancient civilizations and contrasts it with the procedural line in art, to which he includes both representational and non-representational art of inner experience. Elytis does not use any special terminology, but only generates a phenomenology of affects that distinguishes the metaphysical art he likes from the procedural art.

A number of methodological tools are involved to reconstruct Elytis's position. First, his thought belongs to a specific post-Byzantine tradition in which the argument is constructed not as a constitution but as an arc of demonstrative persuasion, with elements of iconicity. Second, the movement of his thought largely reproduces the principles of Grounded theory in sociology, where the application of qualitative methods at all stages calls for the displacement of concepts with images. Third, Elytis, who was familiar with French speculative thought and psychoanalysis in the first half of the twentieth century, carries out operations comparable to those of Lacan and his followers as well as to the post-structuralist understanding of seduction.

The application of such tools has made clear the conception of Elytis's imaginary museum. First of all, Elytis combines the notion of the imaginary from French theory with a depiction of the museum as a house, a building, a structure, as opposed to a laboratory, that is, he applies an institutional critique. Further, Elytis treats the subjects of modernist art not as a deformation and transformation of reality in art, but as a search for equivalents, thereby bringing together the norm of Orthodox iconography as a direct representation of the otherness and the norm of the Paris studio (like Picasso's studio) as a constant fabrication in different techniques of equivalents of the artist's experience, the relentless production of correspondences to the artist's experience in different materials. Finally, Elytis applies a mathematical code that can construct the unity of the artistic process of the modernist era - and this version of unity may well be in demand by contemporary art history and art criticism as well.

One of Winckelmann’s most enigmatic judgments about ancient painting is examined from the point of view of contemporary theories of auto-communication and the mask of silence. Winckelmann suspected the ancient painter Parrhasius of lacking painterly effects, which caused his grace not to manifest itself in everything, despite the impeccability of his talent. The authors argue that Winckelmann proceeded from different modes of considering ancient art, not only direct contemplation but also ecstatic peeping. For him, what was essential was not only what glitters with perfection, but also what catches the eye. We apply the method of contextualising Winckelmann’s legacy. Winckelmann, in describing antique sculpture, was at the same time equal to the practical ways of describing drawing (‘disegno’) and to the theoretical parameters of characterising the expressiveness that prevailed in the era of Mannerism. In doing so, he did not speak of Mannerism; Mannerism remained the null signifier or blind spot of his system. This allowed him to ideologise drawing as an expression of pre-established harmony. But as soon as he confronted the obscure points of ancient art theory, he introduced dynamics, the interactive spinning of plastic choices, which makes him a forerunner of contemporary art with interactive space installations and the poly-screen. Winckelmann’s mimetic theory included an ecstatic element comparable to later theories of ecstatic or affective experience. This allowed him to characterize ancient painting in a consistent way, discovering its pathetic character. Nowadays, his ideas are essential for understanding the switching of modes in the contemplation of painting, from mere fascination to enhanced performative communication.