On Wednesday we were able to visit the exhibition of paintings by Kostas Spanakis at the Megalo Arsenali in the Old Harbour of Chania. The artist himself was in attendance. There were a number of familiar canvases from the previous exhibition at the Polykentro in Voukolies in November 2021, while the newer ones pursued the same concept of placing female figures inspired by the Ladies in Blue fresco from the Minoan Palace at Knossos in modern situations.
While the pictures all use the same ingredients – the noble Minoan profiles topped with elaborate bejewelled coiffures, often associated with other figures from Knossos such as the Minotaur and the Prince of the Lilies – the images retain a vividness and freshness which must partly derive from the original source of inspiration and partly from the artist’s formation in comics and pop art. Also notable is the fact that their impact is shaped by the visual jokes which Mr Spanakis is fond of – the incongruity of showing the elegant figures as air hostesses, tennis players or taxi-drivers, but also the choice of titles which can affect their impact on the viewer.
The exhibition ends tomorrow, Saturday 18th May.
‘Ladies in Blue’, which was shown in the previous exhibition at Voukolies, establishes the artist’s basic concept, depicting the Minoan ladies as air hostesses.
‘Minoan Circus’ shows one of the Blue Ladies as a knife-thrower’s model, the thrower being the Prince of the Lilies – the name given by Sir Arthur Evans to a figure which was later discovered to have been an amalgam of fragments of three different frescoes at Knossos.
In ‘Minoan Subway’ the subject balances on an underground train next to a stylised map which echoes that of the London Tube or the Athens Metro. She is wearing one of Spanakis’s trademark dresses – an Yves St Laurent creation based on a painting by Piet Mondrian. The Woolmark symbol is used as a shorthand for the Knossos Labyrinth, from which Theseus was saved after slaying the Minotaur by Ariadne’s ball of woollen thread.
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Right: ‘Visiting BAUHAUS’; below: ‘Visiting CASABLANCA’. This pair of pictures inspired by the modernist architecture of the Bauhaus contains a private joke of the artist. After we queried the labels with him, he told us that the building depicted with the Bauhaus sign on it is actually in Casablanca, hence the title, while the other, whose palm trees might suggest a North African setting, is in Tel Aviv. See: “How Tel Aviv Became Home to 4,000 Bauhaus Buildings”, Architexturez.net
