Last sea walk of the season

On our penultimate day in Greece, I was going back home having been to an exhibition in Athens. Looking out of the window of the bus I saw that the whole bay from Edem to the end of Palaio Faliro was full of sailing boats.

It looked so fantastic, that I got off at the next stop and started walking back towards where I had come from.

It just looked so wonderful.

I then spotted some rowing boats too - it looked like they were racing

Seen through the chess players' pavillion

I like this photo: swimmers, then rowers, then the sailing boats and in the distance a cruise ship

and again

I moved on to the next promenade

There was a bazaar with food stalls raising money for Turkish immigrants

I bought myself a spinach pie, 

retraced my steps and took another bus to take me home. 

Misty morning

American Abstraction

American Abstraction at the Thysse- Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.

It was such a pleasure seeing these paintings, particularly those of O'Keefe.

Georgia O'Keefe, Shell and Old Shingle, 1926, (oil on canvas)

In the early 1920s O'Keefe produced isolated images of simple shapes found in nature such as shells, bones and flowers, in reaction to the excessive intellectualisation and insularity to which painting was being subjected at the time. 'We were shingling the barn and the old shingles, taken off, were free to fly around. Absentmindedly I picked up a loose one and carried it into the house and up to the table in my room. On the table was a white clam shell brought from Maine in the spring. I had been painting it and it still lay there. The white shape of the shell and the grey shape of the weathered shingle were beautiful against the pale grey leaf of the faintly pink-lined pattern of the wallpaper. Adding the shingle got me painting again'.

Georgia O'Keefe, From the Plains II, 1954, (oil on canvas)

The vastness of the plains of Texas is imposing, heightened by the horizontal format of the canvas and by the flaming colours of the sunset. O'Keefe commented on this painting that 'the colour is just plain colour out of the tube - red and orange to lemon - it shocks me so that I'm rather struck with it - I don't know what it will get to'.

O'Keefe has simplified and enhanced the abstraction of the image in order to provide a visual equivalent of her memories. 'My first memory is of the brightness of light - light all around you', she said on one occasion. Her obssession with the light, which had moved her so greatly in Texas, led her to spend long periods away from New York from 1929 onwards in radiant New Mexico, and she settled permanently in the small village of Abiquiu in 1949. In these remote parts the luminosity of her paintings became even more transparent. She also used increasingly large formats to adapt to the imposing scale of the desert landscape.

Georgia O'Keefe, White Iris No. 7, 1957, (oil on canvas)

As in her other paintings of flowers, O'Keefe depicts the iris as if viewed from a close-up camera lens. Also derived from the photographic framing technique is the manner of cutting off the subject-matter at the edges, a device that further adds to the abstraction of her compositions.

Close-up views of flowers were a frequent theme in O'Keefe's artistic output. These images have very often been explained from a gender perspective and nearly always interpreted as having a sexual significance. The painter systematically rejected what she considered an erroneous interpretation, as evidenced by the text she published in the catalogue of the exhibition held in the New York gallery in 1939, in which she stated: 'Well - I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't'. Wonderful!

Jackson Pollock, Brown and Silver 1, 1951

Pollock, one of the foremost practitioners of Action Painting, began to work on his first drip paintings in 1947. From then on, he firmly espoused the idea of automatism, an automatism derived largely from Surrealism. 'When I'm in the painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing', he said. Furthermore, with the invention of the drip technique, he gave up easel painting and for the first time avoided any direct contact between the artist and the canvas: 'I continue to move further and further away from the painter's usual tools like easel, palettes, brushes and so on. I prefer sticks, spoons, knives, flowing paint that I drip or a thick paste with sand, ground glass and other unusual materials'.

He has applied the brown paint straight from the tin, using sticks and dry paintbrushes and has approached the composition from all four sides.

As the painting is not signed, it is not possible to ascertain its correct position.

Willem de Kooning, Abstraction, 1949-51

In this painting, De Kooning reveals a new conception of painting based on gesture and colour - an accomplished style of his own that is far removed from any previous modern language. Despite being titled Abstraction, this composition is based on traditional pictorial motifs, and is infused with figurative references.

The iconography of death, present in the skull in the lower right corner and the symbolic representation of Golgotha in the ladder and post to the right of the composition, contrasts with the unusually distorted and brutal pink and yellowish flesh tones. The force and mobility of the planes and figures result in a confusing image of life and death.

Eating and drinking in Styra

Whilst we were in Nea Styra we stayed in Hotel Sunday, the modern building on the left of this picture. They did own the Neo-Classical building on the right as well, the ground floor serving as the bar of the hotel - I don't know about the rest of the building. It's a boutique hotel and it's wonderful - we loved our room.

This was the view from our balcony

We had breakfast here - at the front of the hotel, an area that was open when the weather is good, but could be closed off with glass in winter or when it got chilly.

We had our pre-dinner drinks here. As I said in my previous post, we walked to Kefala on our first day, saw this place, like dit, so came back in the afternoon. The next day we tried somewhere else, but did not like it as much, so, this place, Ammos, became our place every afternoon.

There were lots of other bars of course, but as it was the end of season, some had closed and some had this 'end of season' feeling. This place was perfect.

It was by the sea, which was an added bonus

with excellent views.

Dusk was lovely

and some people still went for a swim.

The other place we tried was Iliovasilema (Sunset) at the other end of the village.

When we first sat down, we sat behind this tree, to shield our eyes from the sun as it was shining directly on our faces

but then we moved to the table on the far right in this photograph

and watched the sun set

and then this weird black cloud moved in.

When we went to the village of Styra, we sat here, at this traditional kefeneion for our pre-dinner drinks

Our favourite place for lunch was this

Sarde...litsa which means little sardine, but it's also a play with words, too difficult to explain

it's right by the sea

This is the path right below where we sat, that leads from the bungalows to the village

 

and most days we had a visitor who sat on a branch right above my head

We also had lunch here, To Akrogiali, the Seashore

with great views, right ahead of us. We sat right at the back to be away from the sun, as did most people, but this couple obviously did not mind

On that first evening when we walked to Kefala we wanted to go and eat at Matina's, a favourite from the times when we used to come to Styra every summer, but it was disappointing - there was no one there, probably because it was the end of the season, but anyway, we did not fancy it. So, we went next door to Meidanis which was also deserted, only one other table was occupied, but we had good views of the village. 

O Nikos, (the spelling, I know) became our favourite for the evenings: the food was good, and it was always busy, which unfortunately, many places were not, due to it being the end of season

I had yet again, a visitor one evening, right above my head.

When we visited Styra we wanted to eat at Christos', a place we used to frequent quite often, where we had wonderful nights, where they served the best chips and where Ken talked about music with Christos, the owner. The place was still there, but it was not Christos' anymore, I should have asked what happend to Christos, as I should have taken some photographs of the taverna, but I did neither. So, no memories. Instead, I have posted a picture of the lit up church which is exactly opposite where we sat. 

This is a picture of the place I took earlier, and this is where we sat. Anyway, the place is now run by three women, the food was very good and we had a wonderful time.