" Something more than technical perfection
The charm of illusion and the various methods used to stimulate the imagination are among the vital ingredients of art. They form the basis of much-of the painter's artifice, as long as he refuses to let himself be led astray by the delusive appeal of the ersatz. Art is not needed for the purpose of making reproductions based rigidly on the principles that govern the "real" world. It is not a window looking out on to everyday reality, and therefore a work of art is neither an antecedent nor a sequel nor another version of that reality, A work of art is a new object created by the will of the artist and the fact of coinciding with what pre-exists. Amidst the infinity of coincidences, the creator's artistic will is always insatiable and the painter's world of objects is free of emotional entanglements and available for continuous renewal. The value of the artist's efforts, which are aimed at achieving a better understanding of the world, lies in this autonomy and self-sufficiency of the artistic object; but one of the prerequisites of the artist's efforts is that there shall be no trace of naturalism. In art, fortunately, dreams are not subject to deterministic laws of cause and effect. The artist's freedom is unbounded: the end alone justifies the means.
I have put down these thoughts in the belief that they may perhaps lead us towards a sounder approach to the work of Tassos Kouris by minimizing the initial sense of shock and astonishment aroused not only by his choice of subject matter but also by his superb technical mastery, which, taken as a whole, one might almost describe as a magnificent immoderation. True, all that hard work, that meticulous attention to detail, those endless hours he spends on his paintings, are not a virtuosic end in themselves. His knowledge of classical painting and his undisguised love of the Pre-Raphaelites provide this "maniac for technique" with something more than a tool: they give him the power of creative transcendence, whenever that helps him to attain what he is striving for. But at the same time they are two more components of his artistic identity.
No one can deny that the kind of mastery exemplified by flawless technique and meticulous workmanship is one criterion of artistic merit. It is from the Pre-Raphaelites, in particular, that he has drawn his love of beauty and the sort of realism that finds expression in minute attention to detail. But Kouris uses the showy externals of beauty, and of preoccupation with technique, in absolute conjunction with the content of his painting-In other words, it could be said that his technical mastery has its meaning and its justification in what he paints, rather than in the way he paints it. His work does not obey the logic of a landscapist or a portraitist or a painter of still-life. It is dramaturgic painting. His pictures lay no claim to the kind of realism that properly belongs to a Nikon or a Canon, nor do they provide a substitute tor it They neither copy nor simulate objects, even though the viewer has no difficulty in naming the objects as constituent elements of the pictures. On the contrary, they boldly proffer their own alternative visual reality, their own alternative visual mythology, which is right outside: the range of Ptolemaic anthropocentricity or Aristotelian logic. His versions of places, people and things, in all their,; various combinations, know no numerical limits, since: it is only through chance, accidental discovery or some unexpected turn of events that: the endless chain of associations can put an end to these versions or interpretations of the visual narrative. Kouris' artist's license is unlimited and provocative, because it is made with the materials of a perpetually self-negating logic which nevertheless does not cease to perform an evidential function.
Anyone who repudiates the conventional reality in his art will sooner or later have to put forward some alternative reality, which, by the very nature of things, will be not only unconventional but also — almost inevitably — formalistic. Faced with this danger of humdrum repetition, Kouris offers not one but an infinite number of realities, all equally "real", equally probable and equally captivating. These, however, are not innumerable ver sions of the reality of the absurd or of Surrealism, but of another, imaginary, reality, which is highly desirable for art in its poetic dimension.
I think it is not difficult to detect in Kouris' paintings a striving to depict time as the archetype and essence of eternity, which every creative artist has always aspired to do; a hopeless striving — which may equally manifest itself in movement or in immobility — to express eternity by means of the fleeting present. In Kouris' paintings time seems to be trapped in its very stream, and its apparent motionlessness makes it visible. You can put out your hand and touch it. His seas are calm, his skies never threatening; objects coexist in an alliance that disarms all rationalistic determinism; bodies are "contained" in their void, or their presence is inferred from their impact on the surrounding space. Faces seem to have their gaze fixed on some point undefined in space or time; they know no emotional turmoil; they are ignorant of memory and death. They seem to be saying, with Borges, "Our life would be much poorer if it were not everlasting." And this is true insofar as the ephemeral is a constituent element of eternity.
All the time that Kouris is painting, he is searching avidly for his artistic style, his artistic origins, his artistic spirituality. Every new picture of his amounts to a confrontation with his own artistic calibre. He brings to mind the words written by the French critic Philippe Sollers about Poussin: "The sole end he has in view is painting, in the modern sense of the word, that is to say striving for a perfect work which will invalidate all that have gone before." The only fixed point of reference that one can discern is his birthplace, Corfu, which is the almost invariable setting of his work, a setting sometimes explicit and sometimes merely hinted at — a geographical matrix that has molded his art. This may, perhaps, be the origin of his somewhat theatrical approach to spatial arrangement, which conveys a "stagy" atmosphere in as much as everything is exaggerated and larger than life, though never melodramatic. And his pictures possess all the lyricism of a deliberately subdued melancholy, always discreetly suggested by his rich, almost musical, tonal values.
One point that deserves our special attention is that although Kouris' work is unquestionably modern, his techniques are based on those of the great classical school and of Baroque and the Pre-Raphaelites. He adheres to the classical principles of unity and integrity of shapes, equality of lighting, closed forms and smooth gradations of color. There are times, however, when he dramatizes landscapes, submerging some of the forms in shadow. " Then the color tones will be analyzed even more minutely on the surfaces of objects by means of successive layers of paint, often transparent, revealing subtle qualities and palimpsest relationships of the subjects depicted, which are enwrapped in, or emerging from, a cocoon of white.
Kouris is a genuine neo-romantic who recounts in a lyrical way, but with a realistic purpose, the validation of his imaginary reality: a projection of the past into the future.
DIMITRIS HARITOS"
"...The whole image comes instantaneously to my mind… As a whole. As a real Dreamscape… Then starts the refinement, but not the betrayal of the initial idea… The backdrop (usually my beloved Corfu), the composition, the meticulous under painting, the main painting and last, the lights…"
Tassos Kouris
The charm of illusion and the various methods used to stimulate the imagination are among the vital ingredients of art. They form the basis of much-of the painter's artifice, as long as he refuses to let himself be led astray by the delusive appeal of the ersatz. Art is not needed for the purpose of making reproductions based rigidly on the principles that govern the "real" world. It is not a window looking out on to everyday reality, and therefore a work of art is neither an antecedent nor a sequel nor another version of that reality, A work of art is a new object created by the will of the artist and the fact of coinciding with what pre-exists. Amidst the infinity of coincidences, the creator's artistic will is always insatiable and the painter's world of objects is free of emotional entanglements and available for continuous renewal. The value of the artist's efforts, which are aimed at achieving a better understanding of the world, lies in this autonomy and self-sufficiency of the artistic object; but one of the prerequisites of the artist's efforts is that there shall be no trace of naturalism. In art, fortunately, dreams are not subject to deterministic laws of cause and effect. The artist's freedom is unbounded: the end alone justifies the means.
I have put down these thoughts in the belief that they may perhaps lead us towards a sounder approach to the work of Tassos Kouris by minimizing the initial sense of shock and astonishment aroused not only by his choice of subject matter but also by his superb technical mastery, which, taken as a whole, one might almost describe as a magnificent immoderation. True, all that hard work, that meticulous attention to detail, those endless hours he spends on his paintings, are not a virtuosic end in themselves. His knowledge of classical painting and his undisguised love of the Pre-Raphaelites provide this "maniac for technique" with something more than a tool: they give him the power of creative transcendence, whenever that helps him to attain what he is striving for. But at the same time they are two more components of his artistic identity.
No one can deny that the kind of mastery exemplified by flawless technique and meticulous workmanship is one criterion of artistic merit. It is from the Pre-Raphaelites, in particular, that he has drawn his love of beauty and the sort of realism that finds expression in minute attention to detail. But Kouris uses the showy externals of beauty, and of preoccupation with technique, in absolute conjunction with the content of his painting-In other words, it could be said that his technical mastery has its meaning and its justification in what he paints, rather than in the way he paints it. His work does not obey the logic of a landscapist or a portraitist or a painter of still-life. It is dramaturgic painting. His pictures lay no claim to the kind of realism that properly belongs to a Nikon or a Canon, nor do they provide a substitute tor it They neither copy nor simulate objects, even though the viewer has no difficulty in naming the objects as constituent elements of the pictures. On the contrary, they boldly proffer their own alternative visual reality, their own alternative visual mythology, which is right outside: the range of Ptolemaic anthropocentricity or Aristotelian logic. His versions of places, people and things, in all their,; various combinations, know no numerical limits, since: it is only through chance, accidental discovery or some unexpected turn of events that: the endless chain of associations can put an end to these versions or interpretations of the visual narrative. Kouris' artist's license is unlimited and provocative, because it is made with the materials of a perpetually self-negating logic which nevertheless does not cease to perform an evidential function.
Anyone who repudiates the conventional reality in his art will sooner or later have to put forward some alternative reality, which, by the very nature of things, will be not only unconventional but also — almost inevitably — formalistic. Faced with this danger of humdrum repetition, Kouris offers not one but an infinite number of realities, all equally "real", equally probable and equally captivating. These, however, are not innumerable ver sions of the reality of the absurd or of Surrealism, but of another, imaginary, reality, which is highly desirable for art in its poetic dimension.
I think it is not difficult to detect in Kouris' paintings a striving to depict time as the archetype and essence of eternity, which every creative artist has always aspired to do; a hopeless striving — which may equally manifest itself in movement or in immobility — to express eternity by means of the fleeting present. In Kouris' paintings time seems to be trapped in its very stream, and its apparent motionlessness makes it visible. You can put out your hand and touch it. His seas are calm, his skies never threatening; objects coexist in an alliance that disarms all rationalistic determinism; bodies are "contained" in their void, or their presence is inferred from their impact on the surrounding space. Faces seem to have their gaze fixed on some point undefined in space or time; they know no emotional turmoil; they are ignorant of memory and death. They seem to be saying, with Borges, "Our life would be much poorer if it were not everlasting." And this is true insofar as the ephemeral is a constituent element of eternity.
All the time that Kouris is painting, he is searching avidly for his artistic style, his artistic origins, his artistic spirituality. Every new picture of his amounts to a confrontation with his own artistic calibre. He brings to mind the words written by the French critic Philippe Sollers about Poussin: "The sole end he has in view is painting, in the modern sense of the word, that is to say striving for a perfect work which will invalidate all that have gone before." The only fixed point of reference that one can discern is his birthplace, Corfu, which is the almost invariable setting of his work, a setting sometimes explicit and sometimes merely hinted at — a geographical matrix that has molded his art. This may, perhaps, be the origin of his somewhat theatrical approach to spatial arrangement, which conveys a "stagy" atmosphere in as much as everything is exaggerated and larger than life, though never melodramatic. And his pictures possess all the lyricism of a deliberately subdued melancholy, always discreetly suggested by his rich, almost musical, tonal values.
One point that deserves our special attention is that although Kouris' work is unquestionably modern, his techniques are based on those of the great classical school and of Baroque and the Pre-Raphaelites. He adheres to the classical principles of unity and integrity of shapes, equality of lighting, closed forms and smooth gradations of color. There are times, however, when he dramatizes landscapes, submerging some of the forms in shadow. " Then the color tones will be analyzed even more minutely on the surfaces of objects by means of successive layers of paint, often transparent, revealing subtle qualities and palimpsest relationships of the subjects depicted, which are enwrapped in, or emerging from, a cocoon of white.
Kouris is a genuine neo-romantic who recounts in a lyrical way, but with a realistic purpose, the validation of his imaginary reality: a projection of the past into the future.
DIMITRIS HARITOS"
"...The whole image comes instantaneously to my mind… As a whole. As a real Dreamscape… Then starts the refinement, but not the betrayal of the initial idea… The backdrop (usually my beloved Corfu), the composition, the meticulous under painting, the main painting and last, the lights…"
Tassos Kouris
more about the artist and his work here
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