Yannis Tsarouchis, illustration of the poem "Lovely White Flower" by CP Cavafy, 1964, gouache on paper, 10 1⁄4 × 15 1⁄4".
Between the ages of 23 and 24, Yannis Tsarouchis (1910-1989) painted two Cretans, 1933-34, a barely rendered double portrait full of blood. The man on the left is wearing high boots and a double-breasted uniform, with his arms resting on his friend’s shoulders; their hands are almost shaking together. The painting is quiet and happy-but obviously only a means to an end. . Next, Tsarouchis painted hope based on that work in 1934: it is a rough cubist composition composed of shadow patterns, trompe l'oeil canvases, and hands reaching out. "The word'hope' expresses my desire to create a naturalistic painting, freeing me from the fear of obsolescence and naturalism," commented Tsarouchis. "Some surrealist elements rescued me from these doubts."
That early, firm logic—the desire for the sincere expression of homosexual desires to collapse or be drawn along with the idioms of classical art and modernism—guided the Greek artist through his long career. . One can also read carefully that Tsarouchis was afraid of disappearing from relevance because he persisted and later repainted youth.
Yannis Tsarouchis, "Two Cretans", 1933–34, pencil and blood red on paper, 13 3⁄4 × 9 7⁄8".
Tsarouchis organized by Androniki Gripari and Adam Szymczyk for the three-year-old Chicago exhibition space Wrightwood 659, the first retrospective exhibition "Dance in Real Life" in the United States, tells this important story through a selection of about 200 works of art. story. The exhibition includes examples of portraits, personal snapshots and artist book illustrations, as well as the atmospheric stage sets he created for Maria Callas and Samuel Beckett, his landscape paintings and ruin paintings, as well as his communication with the elderly in his later years. pay tribute. Grandmaster.
Tsarouchis's paintings are designed to consider the masculinity and desire in loneliness, which are susceptible to the influence and reflection of repressive regimes.
Yannis Tsarouchis, Hope, 1934, oil on plywood, 23 1⁄4 × 12 5⁄8".
A full-length portrait of "Sailor in the Sun" from 1968-70, standing tense at the end of the corridor, attracts the audience to the exhibition. The artist’s biography hangs on the wall: photos taken in his childhood in Piraeus turned into photos of the adult artist dressed as a Byzantine monk or wandering among the greenery on the balcony of his Athens studio . Tsarouchis runs through all of this-in particular, he performed zeibekiko, an Anatolian folk dance characterized by a lively improvisation in a codified form. He saw this dance for the first time in Istanbul when he was a young artist when he was copying the Byzantine icon. The loose restrictions of the performers' body and limbs became a source of influence on their lives; he would perform, paint and paint for the dancers in the 1980s. In a group of such works, there is a piece of paper painted with artificial tiles by Tsarouchis for his model to pose. This prop is displayed on the floor behind the pillars. This prop-a black and white chessboard with jagged edges-can also be seen in the archive photos, where the way it is photographed, unfolded and held has some basic and performance Sexual things are held in place with paper tubes. The edge heralds the arrival of the postmodern classicism wave, and the grid is the inadvertent rib of Carl Andre.
Yannis Tsarouchis, "The Sailor in the Sun", 1968-70, oil on canvas, 88 × 41".
It is clearly presented that the theme of the sailor in the sun mentioned above appears stoic and attracts attention with the slightest opposition, with the thumb tucked into the belt and the hat tightly fastened to the chin. Looking at the adjacent row of dynamic male portraits and nudes painted by Tsarouchis between 1934 and early 1940, he was serious and determined, surprisingly serious. Some of them pose Spatharis in front of a cascading background of dense trees commissioned by the shadow puppet master Sotiris by Tsarouchis for his studio portrait. The paint treatment here is rough and turbulent: these people are well-defined but unbalanced, their muscles and folds in their clothes, and when they put on their clothes, they are often not painted. Their eyes are just a little bit, and their eyebrows flicker over them. The lifelike, restrained sailor in the sun seems to prove that when Tsarouchis becomes a mature artist, he can paint in two modes. However, it is clear throughout: Tsarouchis's paintings are designed to consider the masculinity and desire in loneliness, susceptible to and reflect on the influence of repressive regimes. Perhaps the sailor's uniform and painted background also aroused his interest: both are devices for fancy dress parties.
Although classical influence is clearly looming in Greece, under the rule of the far-right dictator Ioannis Metaxas, Tsarouchis has already experienced a particularly high revival that coincides with the wave of regionalism and nationalism. Grown up. The young artist's reactions with graphite and ink in the 1930s, and his sharp and sharp attempts to make sounds amidst daunting influences, heralded his unique style. Tombstone with letters, 1935, separates the side of the woman sitting in the tombstone of Hugesau, about. 410–400 BC; here, she curiously held the half of her face, a theater mask. Graffiti and dotted lines abound, and instead of the pyxis provided, or containers of jewelry and cosmetics, the man who reached out to hold her hand had a prominent erection. 200 ce Ludovisi Gaul's two 1936 paintings are tragicomic because of how they unmistakably turn a dying woman into a shaky penis. The crude form and sheer erratic nature of these paintings are reminiscent of John Alton, perhaps, and the looseness of Tsarouchis’s concurrent portraits hints at Matisse—despite the artist’s various historical backgrounds and the weight of personal desires that make most More shaken.
Yannis Tsarouchis, "The Winged Elf Buttoning His Panties", 1966, acrylic on paper, 15 3⁄8 × 11 1⁄8".
Tsarouchis began to add wings to his men in 1962, turning them into butterflies and representations of the goddess of love. His classicism is still erotic, although this is not to say that the original is not there yet. In 1966, Winged Spirit buttoned his underwear and was very quiet; by focusing on the secular and suspending the movement of the subject, Tsarouchis achieved a moment of peace and sincerity. Maybe we shouldn't stare. A small gouache from 1964 depicts an angel staring at the body of his childish lover in a coffin; this is one of many paintings the artist has added to CP Cavafy's collection of poems. Cavafy’s verse expresses its desire straightforwardly and without concealment: "When I walk down those notorious stairs... Our bodies perceive and find each other; / Our blood and skin understand it," Read at the beginning and end of "On the Stairs" (1904). As WH Auden wrote to Cavafy’s poem, “Love, there, rarely surpasses the passion of the body... At the same time, he refuses to pretend that his memories of sensual pleasure moments are unhappy or sinful Feeling destroyed." Sometimes, Tsarouchis himself seemed to work hard for this clear statement-but in turn, his cowardice, turning his back and looking away, told different aspects of Eros.
James Rondeau is Dean of the Art Institute of Chicago and Dean of Eloise W. Martin.
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