Reading Guide for: Powell, E. 2017. â€å“when the Ancient Greeks Began to Write,ã¢â‚¬â Archaeology

"Ancient Greece as inspiration for Greek design", presented in: Re-Imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Civilisation", International Conference, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman & Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 27-28 June 2011.

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Ancient Greece as inspiration for Greek pattern

Artem is Yagou

Resorting to ancient Greece in lodge to gain legitimacy is a widespread and well-studied neohellenic phenomenon, which reflects the peripheral and insecure status of gimmicky Greece. Several recent academic symposia and publications accept recorded and analysed the obsessive preoccupation with antiquity in many areas of Greek life and cultural production. ⁱ  In modern times, Greece’s illustrious by has been considered to be a priceless treasure, simply besides a heavy burden for the people to bear and this has left visible traces in every aspect of guild. ^two

The term “Greekness”,ÂΕλληνικότης ,Âwas introduced in 1851; its exact pregnant remained nebulous and open up to various interpretations. ^three  It might perchance be described as an intangible essence expressing the spirit of the Greek people. Historians, particularly Paparrigopoulos, were decisive in formulating the concept of the continuity of Greek culture and its development through three distinct but interconnected periods: Antiquity, Byzantium, and Modern Times. The ascension of national historiography in the 19th century ensured that these periods would be conceived and described every bit a coherent whole, whose youngest representatives were the modern Greeks themselves. ^iv  This conception of Greekness was afterwards institutionalized and reproduced through various mechanisms, public educational activity in detail, and was securely internalized by Greek citizens. ⁵

The Greek state had a significant advantage in its attempt to shape a national identity, the availability of what Gellner terms “an old loftier culture”, that is the civilisation of ancient Hellenic republic. This one-time high culture had been an invaluable asset for the formation of the Greek state in the first place, and information technology was also crucial for attaining an early on political sense of ethnicity. ^vi  However, it may be argued that the overemphasis on ancient glories and cultural achievements of the distant past acted as a stumbling block to the evolution of modern Greek culture. Already by the stop of the nineteenth century, the French writer Théophile Gautier, having travelled extensively in Greece, observed: “In these classical lands, the past is so alive that it leaves hardly any space for the nowadays to survive.” ^vii

My contribution to this briefing deals with pattern, an increasingly significant domain of modern life and civilisation. The obsession with antiquity has been expressing itself in the field of Greek design during the 20^th century and into the 21st, through the extensive apply of pompous, populist and commercialized references to aboriginal Greek civilization. Artifact-inspired elements are meant to infuse modern design with fourth dimension-honoured prestige and quality; still, they generally pb to formalist results. I volition prove selected examples of Greek design and advertising for mass-produced objects which draw their inspiration from antiquity and try to seduce through the evocation of ancient Greek glories.

An early example comes from Antonakopoulos Brothers, a visitor producing ceramic tiles and bathroom ware in the mid-thirties. ^viii  The ad re-create is very plain, information technology only provides factual information near the firm, such as twelvemonth of establishment, capital and addresses. The text is enclosed in a neoclassicist frame consisting of ii Ionic columns on the left and right, linked at both ends by two decorative bands of meander motifs. The lack of textual caption implies that the image “speaks for itself”: the connection to the ancient Hellenic tradition is obvious to viewers, and conveys an impression of diachronic beauty and prestige.

Parallelism, but also hyperbole is at work in the ad of 1954 for Elviela sports’ shoes^Ânine . The text reads: “As the Hermes by Praxitelis is considered to exist a symbol of ideal dazzler, then the products with the Elviela logo are symbols of unrivalled technical perfection.” This facile parallelism is emphasized by the oversized “as” and “so” in singled-out handwritten-like blazon. A thick, curved arrow directs the gaze of the viewer from the elegant Hermes head to the logo of Elviela, “the brand of trust” as the bottom-line states. The connection between the aboriginal masterpiece and the contemporary, casual, cotton wool cloth and plastic shoe is clearly far-fetched, but the layout and rhetoric of the ad makes it expect less so. In a culture saturated with references to a glorious artifact and manifestations of continuity betwixt past and present, such a connection is inscribed on the commonage unconscious equally something natural and perfectly acceptable. ^x

Another example of the omnipresent and e'er appropriate association with antiquity is provided by the Diana cigarettes ad of 1956, where the goddess Diana becomes a brand name and her image gives an aura of high status to the product advertised.^Âxi

A Keramikos advertisement published in 1962 shows a tea and coffee set probably copied from a similar foreign product. The product acquires a luster of “Greekness” through the use of the meander motif. This is an like shooting fish in a barrel solution to a design problem; in fact this is non three-dimensional design but merely superficial decoration.

In the Metaxa advertisement of 1967, the product is placed side by side to tourist-market place dolls in folk dresses and set against the background of the Acropolis. The copy reads: “Incomparable â€" the Glory of Greece… the Brilliance of Metaxa”. A Doric column stands for the “I” in “Incomparable”. The mixture of modern Greece and artifact appears obvious and without need of explanation. Equally Roland Barthes has shown for successful ideologies, Greekness renders its beliefs natural and self-evident: this is the way the world is. ^xii

Similarly, diverse bottles designed for the tourist market place exploit the antique iconography in a rather grotesque manner, which lacks originality. Such objects may be attractive to some people, equally this image from the collection of an American design professor implies, but their aesthetic or practical value remains questionable. ^xiii

The designer of theÂOlympian Zeus table of 1984, made of white Dionysos marble and crystal, claims that he was inspired by his walks around the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens and by the landscapes of the painter Mytaras, scattered with cleaved columns and with a flying Nike in the background. The end result appears overstated and impractical; its formalist inspiration and execution do non fulfill in a satisfactory manner the demands and standards of contemporary lifestyles. ^xiv

In a similar vein, an armchair in French Empire manner simplified for mass product by upmarket manufacturer Varangis, incorporates as a decorative element a small head of Aphrodite, copied from a fourth century B.C. figurine. The description of the product in an advert published in 2002 is based on a vague notion of eternal Greekness and implies attachment to a rather confused equally well as static formulation of history and tradition. ^xv

All previous examples suggest that public opinion has internalised an aesthetics of easily recognisable “national” symbols and expects them to exist reproduced by contemporary design.My interpretation of such examples, underpinned past discussions with Greek designers, is that, in many cases, Greek designers lack the conviction to create new forms and to develop novel products for contemporary needs without resorting to aesthetic clichés related to aboriginal Greece.

As Calotychos highlights in his assay of Greek cultural politics, at that place is a “Greek propensity for wielding a symbolic narrative over more than pragmatic strategies”. ^sixteen  He notes in particular that “this tendency to prioritize abstract narratives, of which the classicizing diverseness is a privileged mainstay, over more immanent ones constitutes part of what Nicos Mouzelis has termed the ‘formalism’ of Greek society. ^xvii

Indeed, many of my design examples appear as metamorphoses of formalism, as the visual manifestations of a static conception of history. ¹⁸ Objects of pattern become expressions of essentialism, in other words of a conventionalities in a Greek “essence” which exists from fourth dimension immemorial; in such a context, popular culture needs legitimization from a “high” civilisation. Such objects are also manifestations of what Billig describes as “banal nationalism”, through which the nation is taken for granted and continuously “reminded” to citizens equally something natural and unquestionable. ^nineteen  Identity is presented as a fixed entity, as an essence, not as a process of becoming. ^xx  In this way, nations are “naturalised”, captivated into a common-sense view aboutÂthe way the world is, and invested with moral values and a “treasured uniqueness”, which drag the national over other social groupings. ^xxi

Futhermore, similar many areas of gimmicky Greek pop civilisation, design soapbox is loaded with a rhetoric of populist and nationalistic overtones, a rhetoric by which citizens of the country are bombarded. Accept for example, equally Calotychos mentions, “[…] the metaphors of tabloid journalism that e'er signpost any Greek news item with talk of ‘burdens’, ‘tragedies’, ‘glorious legacies’, and ‘ancestral voices’”. ^xxii

Yet, the fresh arroyo by the Athens-based design consultancy Hellenic republic is for Lovers shows that a different way is possible. Its playful, ironic, even provocative accept on ancient Greek iconography and culture exemplifies a more than creative re-thinking and re-imagining of the past.

The descriptions of the consultancy’s antiquity-inspired designs on its website are characteristic of its unconventional and satirical approach:

Amen tableware: At present that you've bought that cookbook, it's fourth dimension to buy the plates to go with it.

A is for Amen to the Hellenic culinary revolutionaries.

Zeus: Left or right handed, a letter of the alphabet knife to rip through hatemail with the stealth and fury of Zeus!
Bachelor in solid or silverâ€"plated brass.

A gear up of dumbbells in solid brass, which come up in weights of one.five and 3 kilos, are entitled “Build your myth”, a pun on the Greek National Tourism Organisation campaign with the slogan “Live your myth in Greece”. The promotional arroyo is again humorous:

Is your demanding demigod lifestyle hard to cope with?
Does everything experience like a Herculean task?
It’s probably time to start pumping atomic number 26 Ionian way!

A range of trade under the title Demi God:

If it's set in stone it must be right.

A pot coaster choc-a-bloc with semi-divine attitude.

Let that marble slab take the estrus and exit of the kitchen.

Another merchandise range entitled No sleep till Hades:

Waking upwards before getting to sleep, rocking the party eight days a calendar week, common cold kicking information technology live while yous're working nine to five, no faking, coin-taking.

Three skateboards make fun of modern Greeks’ obsession with ancient heritage. They were originally designed for the"7ply Projection" organised by Propaganda Rolling Company, a Thessaloniki-based skateboard business firm. The commencement skateboard, from 2007, is made of marble and is entitled Ridden in stone:

California? Nosotros don’t think so.
As with everything cool, skateboarding originated in aboriginal Athens.
Information technology is common knowledge that Socrates himself used to ride a longboard downwards the Agora.
Greece is for Lovers accept the relic to show it.

The second, Tougher than leather, designed in 2008:

How old schoolhouse can y'all go?

Strap on this leather beauty and pose your cred abroad. Socks optional.

The 3rd 1, Claymate, a ceramic skateboard, handmade in crimson earthenware:

Beware of Greeks, bearing no gifts, fully clad in Claymates, playing dirty tricks.

And finally:

Hermaphrodite: You wanna feel a scrap like Male monarch Nero and burn down down some ancient stuff?
Our gear up of candles will help you do just that, in great manner.

Who is going down in flames kickoff? Hermes or Aphrodite? Youdecide.

The members of Greece is for Lovers merits that their inspiration does not come up straight from antiquity, they rather make ironic meta-comments on the way gimmicky Greeks perceive antiquity. They land that their main source of inspiration is daily life in Athens, equally they experienced it in the eighties and nineties; their work is very much most the malls in Athenian suburbs, considered by many as an abomination, but which Greece is for Lovers cherish as part of their youth culture and memories. Their designs make references to tourist souvenirs rather than to the ancient ionic columns themselves. They do non necessarily adore antique civilisation, but they consider it function of their heritage in a more than indirect style, through the tourist paraphernalia considered to exist kitsch and which they endeavour to re-innovate, to think of in a dissimilar way. Thus, what may announced initially as antiquity-inspired is in fact stemming from and expressing a contemporary, urban culture.

Their approach is clearly less conventional and more than multi-layered than older design examples shown earlier. However, the members of Greece is for Lovers themselves acknowledge the complexities and pitfalls of their arroyo. Having become well-known and successful through their fresh, humorous and critical take of various clichés, they acknowledge that this may lead to stereotyping and hinder further artistic development; such piece of work might get predictable and lead to stagnation; they are smashing to explore other directions in the well-nigh future. In whatever case, their approach indicates a manner in which contemporary Greek design could move beyond the uncritical adoration and glorification of a respected past and employ user-centered strategies which are meaningful to a range of modern audiences.

To sum upwardly, though by no means the only approach followed past Greek designers today, the continuing preoccupation with a formalist formulation of ancient Greece remains in place and enjoys a high level of acceptability by the consuming public. ^xxiii  This formalist approach may take been psychologically useful in certain periods of modern Greek history, every bit it has instilled a sense of pride into locals. Withal, judging from the perspective of a fast-changing global society in the twentieth-first century, the overall balance is questionable. ^xxiv  Equally Mazower argues, “Nation-states construct their own image of the past to shore upwards their ambitions for the future. […] Simply today the old delusions of grandeur are being replaced by a more sober sense of what individual countries can accomplish alone. Equally modest states integrate themselves in a wider world, […] the stringently patrolled and narrow-minded conception of history which they once nurtured and which gave them a kind of justification starts to wait less plausible and less necessary. Other futures may require other pasts.” ^xxv

To conclude, I debate that, with few exceptions, inspiration from antiquity has acted every bit an unnecessary and outdated filter and has been having a detrimental outcome on Greek design. Design approaches founded on a superficial appropriation of ancient Greek iconography accept get empty shells and should not be encouraged, especially in the electric current circumstances of the country. From my perspective, resorting to antiquity in order to legitimize or elevate whatever aspect of modern Greek life is a major regression; it trivializes the present and undermines the time to come.

………….

Endnotes

i “Uses of Artifact by Mod Hellenism” symposium, Moraiti (2000/2002), international conference on “Antiquity, archaeology and Greekness in 20^thursday century Greece”Moraiti (2001/2003) and Benaki (2007), Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archæology, and National Imagination in Greece, Oxford University Press, 2007; Yalouri (2001); Calotychos (2003); Egrapsan gia tin Acropoli (2009); Koliopoulos and Veremis (2002), Liakos (2005).

iiMaria Nicholas, “A Cursory History of Modern Greek Advertising, 1950-1999”,ÂΗΥΦΕΝ 2Î", 7-36.

iii Stefanos A. Koumanoudis,ÂCompilation of New Words Created by Scholars since the Fall of Constantinople, Hermes, 1998 (start edition 1900), 355. [In Greek] See likewise: Tziovas, 35-37, and Michael Herzfeld,ÂOurs Once again: Sociology, Ideology, and the Making of Mod Greece, University of Texas Printing, 1982.

iv Alexis Politis,ÂRomantic Years â€" Ideologies and Mentalities in Greece of 1830-1880, EMNE-Mnemon, 1998, 30-47. [In Greek]

vConstantine Tsoukalas,ÂDependence and Reproduction: The Social Role of Educational Mechanisms in Hellenic republic (1830-1922), Themelio, 1992. [in Greek]. Nikolaos Mouzelis,ÂMod Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment, (Athens: Exantas, 1978) [in Greek] (English edition: London: MacMillan, 1978).

vi Ernest Gellner,ÂNations and Nationalism, Blackwell, 1997, 85.

vii Théophile Gautier,ÂL’Orient (first volume), Charpentier, 1884, 120.

viii Antonakopoulos business firm advertisement of the 1930s,ÂHistorical Archives of the National Bank of Hellenic republic, Series XXXIV, iv-025. [In Greek]

ixPhilemon Papapolyzos and Costas Martzoukos, Hellads â€" Hellenic republic through Advert 1940-1989, Athens: Omikron, 1997, 63. [In Greek]

x Gallant, 72-74.

xi Papapolyzos and Martzoukos, 73.

xii Alan Aldridge,ÂConsumption, Cambridge: Polity, 2003, fourscore.

xiii Victor Margolin drove.

xivDesigner A. Triantopoulos. Θέματα Χώρου και Τεχνών(Design and Art in Greece), 20/1989, p. 166.

xv ‘Greekness means continuous questioning […finally, inventiveness]’, Varangis piece of furniture company advertisement,ÂBHMAgazino, no 108, three Nov 2002. [In Greek]

xvi Calotychos, three.

xvii Calotychos, 4. Meet also Nikolaos Mouzelis,ÂΝεοελληνική Κοινωνία : Όψεις Υπανάπτυξης, Athens: Exantas, 1978, p. 313 (Original edition:ÂMod Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment, London: MacMillan, 1978).

xviii Avdela emphasizes the role of the Greek educational system in creating, reproducing and consolidating a static, ethnocentric view of history in which the Greek nation and its civilization are understood as natural, eternal and unchanging entities. Efi Avdela, ‘The Educational activity of History in Greece’,ÂJournal of Modernistic Greek Studies, Volume 18, 2000, 239-253. ‘The symbolic brunt of the past becomes […] the primary feature of the national identity and the yardstick by which everything is evaluated: the present, the past, the self, and others.’ Avdela, 247.

xix Michael Billig,ÂBland Nationalism, Sage, 1995.

xx Edensor, 24. Edensor as well quotes Ingold and Kurttila who claim that tradition should non be understood as a reified gear up of endlessly repeated practices, passed on equally cultural heritage, but equally noesis acquired through flexible practice. Tradition thus undergoes continual generation and regeneration […]. Ibid, 55.

xxiSee Edensor, 11 (emphasis in the original) and 38.

xxii Calotychos, iv.

xxiii Every bit noted earlier in this paper, classicist, nationally-inspired design approaches often operate in combination with other strategies, e.g. purely modernist approaches, as illustrated by the case of the ION chocolate products in Prototype [4]. Today, the Varangis article of furniture visitor is a characteristic instance of a design philosophy and practice claiming to express modernity and Greekness at the same time (see Note 52).

xxivThalia Dragona, Büşra Ersanli, Anna Frangoudaki. ‘How Greek and Turkish Pupils Perceive History, Nation and Democracy’ in: Thalia Dragona and Faruk Birtek (eds),ÂGreece and Turkey â€" Citizen and Nation-Land, Alexandria, 2006, 342-343 [in Greek]. English edition: Faruk Birtek and Thalia Dragona (eds),ÂCitizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2005.

xxv Marking Mazower,ÂSalonica Metropolis of Ghosts, Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, Harper Perennial, 2005, 474.

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