SURVIVAL of the ARTSY-est: Greece's National Gallery emerges from odd scandal
Yes art peeps, Greece's National Gallery is still standing after a major league brouhaha
Remember Piss Christ? We do. It’s hard to think of anyone who back in 1987 — the year George Michael came out with I Want Your Sex, by the way — who didn’t follow the drama over the National Endowment for the Arts’ funding of Andre Serrano’s particular contribution to the culture with bemusement.
Let’s face it, the Old World gave us the Virgin Mary, the new one gave us Madonna. Speaking of which, we were impressed that Lady Gaga name-checked Madge in her I-whatever-Radio award acceptance. Also speaking of which, did you hear the one about the Greek politician who vandalized some artworks in The Allure of the Stranger show at the National Gallery in Athens?
Drama, drama, drama. We don’t know much about the artist, but we understand he’s a Greek fellow based in that original den of sin and bad hamburgers called Paris. Anyway, following the furor over depictions that some might consider blasphemous we made a petite jaunt down to the gallery in Pagrati and, mais oui, can report that all is calm on the art front.
In fact, while searching for our favorite not-in-Paris Picasso (ed. see below), we found a new favorite, Head, by Francis Picabia. However, we were truly disappointed that the museum’s cafe had only one strawberry tart left (ed. is he kidding?) and that somebody else nabbed it before we could. We were also surprised that the newish museum still apparently has no restaurant (we are big fans of the indoor/outdoor restaurant across town at the Acropolis Museum). The gift shop is off to a good start indeed, but needs a reboot.
But those are quibbles. The National Gallery got some unwanted publicity because of aforementioned controversy, but it has now seemingly subsided.
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THE PICASSO DIARIES…
“Is Dora Maar around here somewhere?” I asked a security guard standing two floors beneath the glassy entrance atrium of the new National Gallery at Athens. Then I saw the faint outline of a grin break out from behind the guard’s mask and heard the lightly accented reply, “Right behind you.”
Well, there you are.
My first impression of Dora Maar came not from a museum but a big screen, thanks to her depiction in Alan Rudolph’s mostly forgotten film “The Moderns.” The 1988 movie was a sumptuous aperçu of 1926 Paris, and the vision of Pablo Picasso’s famed flame and muse acting like a boss in a smoky, if imagined, Left Bank café fired up in me an irrational passion for Paris. That eventually burned itself out, but it’s funny how in a split second a single, small painting can bring everything back.
Of course, the big news is that “Woman’s Head” is even on public display. Picasso created the painting, which I will not attempt to describe, in 1937 — the same year he painted “Portrait of Dora Maar.” That oil on canvas is one of the artist’s masterpieces and has a comfortable home at the Musée Picasso, but this smaller rendition has had a more adventurous journey in part because for a decade and until quite recently it was in a thief’s grasp.
In January 2012, a Greek construction worker stole “Woman’s Head” and a Mondrian painting from Greece’s former National Gallery. That the burglar did the deed with astonishing ease — reportedly in under seven minutes — was actually less of a scandal than the unfortunate fact he was Greek.
That is because Picasso donated the Cubist painting to Greece in 1949 to honor the country’s resistance to Nazi rule. The back of the canvas is inscribed with the words, “for the Greek people, a tribute.”
In 2021 Greek police finally tracked down both the thief and his quarry. Yet the drama did not end with the retrieval of the canvas, which the self-described Picasso enthusiast had wrapped in protective materials before hiding it outdoors, in a gorge south of Athens.
As the police were preparing to present “Woman’s Head” to reporters at a press conference, an officer adjusting the artwork on a shelf momentarily lost his grip, and the still-unframed painting slid unceremoniously onto the floor. The Greek muses must have been watching, because the painting was not damaged in the fall. That did not stop the Greek public and a comedian from having a field day with the episode.
Greece’s new National Gallery opened on March 24, 2001, not far from the American Embassy and just a day before the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution. “Woman’s Head” finally went on display late in October.
It did so without much fanfare, which is surprising for a painting that could probably command millions of dollars at auction, though it never will.
At that emotionally charged press conference the year prior, Greece’s culture minister, Lina Mendoni, told reporters, “This painting is of particular importance and sentimental value … as it was personally dedicated by the great painter to the Greek people for their fight against fascist and Nazi forces. It would have been impossible to sell.”
Now it is at home on a somewhat lonely level in the museum’s new Western European art wing. During my visit, I could not help but notice the painting’s proximity to a tableau by Eugène Delacroix titled, “Episode from the Greek War of Independence.”
The artist painted it in 1856, a year when the tribulations of the Greeks’ struggle for independence still loomed heavily in the drawing rooms and artists’ studios at Paris. With characteristic flamboyance, Delacroix depicts the hoof of a fierce-looking Greek fighter’s horse about to stomp on the shoulder of a slain Turk.
It’s no obvious vision of beauty, but a little reminder that civilizational clashes are part of the European tapestry. Not all fabric is light, right?
