They said > Alecos Levidis

ALECOS VL. LEVIDIS

Nata's «tools»

IN 1951, NATA MELA got married to Aris Konstantinidis. Five years earlier she had completed her studies and in 1948 she had participated in the first post-war Panhellenic exhibition as well as in an exhibition of the 'Armos' group. She had already received various commissions and had assisted Pikionis in sculpting a burial 'stele' for Bishop Chryssanthos. In other words, she was, at that time, beginning her career as a sculptress. In the first four years of her married life to Aris she gave birth to their two children, Dimitris and Alexandra.
«At that time, I was a mother», she says, «nothing else mattered, only the children. I stopped working for ten years».

I would consider Nata's words rather an overstatement since, in my opinion, this period seems to have been a phase of reflection and incubation and not a fallow and artistically passive phase. It began in 1951-1952, after Nata's second collaboration with Pikionis on the monument to the Fallen Soldier set up at Leontion in Nemea; it ended in 1960 with her three-month stint as a student at the oxy-acetylene welding school in Palio Faliro. She then found herself on the threshold of a new creative phase, the beginning of her mature period.

Natalia herself says that the example of Koulendianos 'who had trained to work with oxygen' pushed her to go to school. Koulendianos and other artists who had settled in Paris after the war returned to Greece at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s, bringing along with them abstract art which had already monopolized the art centres of Europe and America for more than a decade. Both industrial iron - sheet metal, rods -and the observable structure of welding, match abstract sculpture well. Nata was fascinated by the technique but was not won over by abstraction. She experimented for a while, but soon declared that the game of the abstract form 'bored her'. In other words, abstraction was not conceptually stimulating for Nata. Commenting on her relationship with abstract art, she characteristically recalls an aphorism by Julio Kaimi who, facing an 'abstrait' painting once stated «It doesn't have a name, therefore it's nothing». Natalia distinguishes herself from the abstractionists and explains that she feels the need of a 'theme'.

The perseverance of the representational tradition in the visual arts in Greece does not derive from the fact that the country stayed on the outskirts of the Modernist movement, as it is often held, but, rather, from the fact that the Modernist revolution was accomplished through the work of the 1930s generation; this work has persistently remained representational even while joining art movements like surrealism and cubism. Nata has matured literally in the arms of the 30s generation. Her first flight from the conservative instruction of the School of Fine Arts and her need 'to make more progressive stuff' brought her to the workshop of Apartis, and to her apprenticeship next to Tsarouchis. Pikionis helped her transcend the conventions of the post-Rodin School which constituted Dimitriadis' and Tombros' legacy. Nata enjoyed the company of Engonopoulos, Moralis, Tsarouchis, Andreas Embeirikos and other writers, poets and artists from the 30s generation.

In 1942, while Natalia Mela was in the second year of study at the Dimitriadis workshop, Picasso, then living in the German-occupied city of Paris, composed a bull's head using an old bicycle saddle and handle bars; the former formed the head of the bull, the arms of the latter formed the horns. This was not the first time Picasso had used ready-made objects in combination with more traditional materials for the creation of a sculpture; neither was this piece the first one to be constructed out of ready-made objects exclusively. However, because of its aesthetic austerity and the effective transmutation of materials, this work became a typical example of this type of sculpture. It is still unclear to me whether, at the end of the 50s, Nata was acquainted with Picasso's work or with similar works by other artists. In any case, opening up a new phase in her creative course, and having been equipped with the know-how and a certificate in oxy-acetylene welding, she started assembling figures by using ready-made iron materials and tools. Athinas Street became the source of her materials; this was before it had been flooded with imported industrial tools. The tools picked out by Nata were 'gypsy-made'; in other words, they had been manufactured by hand by iron smiths who, at that time, were, to a considerable extent, gypsies. She praises some particular tools that she had brought home from a trip to Asia Minor.
«They all have the maker's name stamped on», she says; she then shows me two small sculptures, (plate no. l)
«These were created from tools I got from some Russian Pontians, I call them 'the Russians', don't they look like Russians, a little square, a little heavy?»
«So, you think», I ask her, «tools have national character?»
«Of course, tools do have national character!»

Aris Konstantinidis shared Nata's love of tools; he appreciated the aesthetics of shapes emerging out of their functional qualities. Nata looks beyond the shapes; she visualizes, invents stories, searches for themes. She remembers that she once asked Aris' opinion of a 'Warrior' (plate no. 2). Aris took the warrior in his hands and looked at him upside down.
«He's nice», he said.
«But you're not looking at him the right way up», Natalia replied.
«It doesn't matter», answered Aris. «He has a nice shape».

For Nata, however, it does matter; she is mainly interested in the theme. I ask Nata on what criteria she chooses her tools. The question surprises her and she replies in a hesitating way, «Ah... when they look like something...».
What a misleading answer! To what extent can a bike saddle and some handlebars really resemble the head of a bull? Or an axe and a compass resemble a wild goat? (plate no. 3) This is not a question of plain external resemblance. Recognition doesn't occur by means of simile, but through the power of metaphor.

Picasso's views on the use of ready-made materials in sculpture are illuminating: «It's not that I need the ready-made element, but I achieve reality through the use of metaphor. My sculptures are plastic metaphors. It's the same principle as in painting... I've said that a painting shouldn't be 'trompe l'oeil' but 'trompe l'esprit'. I'm out to fool the mind rather than the eye».

Let us look at the ways in which visual metaphor is made real in Nata's work. For the construction of the 'Sentries' (plates no. 4, 5) she has used a double-ended hoe. One end of the digging tool represents the body, the breast of the warrior, while the other end is a small axe used in cutting roots. In between lies the iron ring by which the wooden handle is attached to the tool. The ring and axe make up the head/helmet and the helmet's crest. Any similarity of the axe to a head/warrior arises, of course, from the power of metaphor. Hector in the Iliad is characterized as «κορυθαίολος», he, who carries a shining and multicolored crest on his head, a symbol of murderous impulse aimed at scaring the enemy. In Nata's warriors the crest is made of the blade of the axe. The involvement of functional objects in the production process of a work of art raises them from the simple, functional plane to that of associational poetry. This visual metaphor reaches the peak of its potential in the 'Archer' (plate no. 6). The head/helmet is composed of an axe used for splitting wood. The axe's particular shape – angles, cutting edge, curves – gives the feeling of a murderous tool. The entire 'Warrior' is a murderous tool: the pointed shape of the shovel/body/shield, the inflexible and wavy sheet of metal, the cloak, the wire/bowstring, the nails/arrows, all together compose an all over edgy and thorny figure. At the same time, comparison with the representation of warriors in the Attic Geometric pottery of the 8th century BC is inevitable. There also, the huge shield, the Homeric 'σάκος', covers the warrior's body; a head/helmet stands out above, two lean legs below and the spears at the side. Black figures on the curved, ochre surface try hard to come alive. Nata's sculpted figures, also black, move in space; they have acquired life; occasionally they also express emotions like the melancholy of the 'Sentry' (plates no. 4, 5). I have noted down the following brief abstracts from a conversation with Nata about the colour of her iron sculptures, «I have always respected the material... iron must be iron... Aris used to say that all iron should be painted black or in the typical red undercoat (μίνιο)... iron for me is a weapon... a weapon must always be kept clean». Indeed, black may be the 'natural' colour of iron or the habitual, the necessary and operational one, but colours have their own symbolic language which travels through time, and which is historically and culturally determined. In the Homeric poems, the great majority of colour references concern «μέλαν» (black) and «λευκόν» (white). Light and dark, pitch darkness; life and its opposite. Night is «κελαινή», «μέλαινα», «ερεβεννή»; the earth is also «μέλαινα»; death is «μέλας»; and so is Hades; blood is «μέλαν» and «κελαινόν». Nata says that she has always wanted to make Charon and Digenis. I don't know about Digenis, but this 'Warrior', this black, stiff, faceless figure, wrapped in night, how much more like Charon can he be? (plate no. 2)

By contrast, elegance, charm, the lithe movement of a 'Young Woman' (plate no. 7) is apparent in the twisted throat/stalk of an iron spatula as well as in the figure of the 'Girl' (plate no. 8) where a unique spatula or trimmer, despite its abstract character, manages to convey something of the naivety and the latent sexuality of that unripe age. The 'Three Graces' (plate no. 9), looking like the two-dimensional versions of Boetian bell-shaped clay figures, bring back to mind the black figures of Geometric pottery. Nata assures me that these references are completely conscious, as is the mythological origin of a considerable number of figures she has constructed.
«This is 'Oistros'» (plate no. 10), she tells me, showing me an enormous fly whose wings are made of those rakes that are used to rake up fallen leaves. «'Oistros'... Why 'Oistros'?» is my naive reaction. «Well, wasn't Oistros the horsefly sent by Hera to torment Io after Zeus had turned the latter into a cow with the aim of protecting her?» comes Nata's astounding reply. Nata never forgets to mention that her familiarization with mythology, folk legends and Greek history stems from the environment in which she grew up. A family environment closely associated with events and attitudes which accompanied and supported the establishment of the national state. Nata was nurtured by her mother and grandmother with narratives drawn from the world of 'Hellenism' rather than fairytales.

Attachments from a saddle, a tripod for the fire-place, window hinges, an iron balance, a spatula, guttering supports, form some of the tackle that make up Nata's first group of ready-made sculptures (plate no. 11). These must have been created, the sculptress remembers, around 1957-1958. I ask her what they are called. «As a group, I call them 'Goblins'» she tells me, and goes on to name them one by one: «'Satyr', 'Minotaur', 'Young Woman', 'Warrior'».

I think that in this first stage of her 'tool-works', the whole potential of the world that unfolds in her mature works may be traced. On the one hand, Nata's mythology, the demonic, the bestial, the Dionysian element, the erotic impulse, the threat of death and the liberating power of laughter; on the other hand, her craftsmanship, her love of materials and her inventiveness. The accumulation of diversity - «je prefere accumuler», says Nata, the visual metaphor, the daring. Myth and art, content and form, concepts and materials, communicate as a reflex and conjunction and take shape as sculpture which transcends formalism and condenses Nata’s cognition and lived experience. These elements coexist in pieces of work which, apart from stimulating our senses, also challenge our collective subconscious.

Alecos Vl. Levidis - January 2008

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