#thomas thomopoulos

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Photos of Jupiter From the Latest Flyby of NASA’s Juno Spacecraft

Photo: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Thomas Thomopoulos © (CC BY 3.0)

[unknown-cosmos-and-space]

A recent image of Jupiter captured by Juno spacecraft.

Process on an image processed by Gerald - Enhancement of colors

NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Thomas Thomopoulos

More: missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/proces…

[greek-museums]

I went to the National Sculpture Gallery yesterday, here's some highlights.

The spirit of Copernicus (1877), by Georgios Vroutos.

Satyr playing with Eros (1877), by Yannoulis Halepas.

Nana (1896-1897), by Georgios Bonanos - inspired by the heroine of Émile Zola's Nana.

Centaur (1901), by Thomas Thomopoulos, who is also featured here on this blog, with a stunning sculpture of a broken angel at the cemetery of Anastasi.

Stout seated woman (1948), by Michael Tombros.

The Eraser (1980), by Gabriela Simossi.

The hunter (from the series States of Mind, 2002), by Pantelis Chandris.

And a sculpture by René Magritte, The Therapeutist (Healer) (1967, a gift by Alexandros Iolas, a known art collector and artist promoter of the Greek world.

[greek-museums]

Greek cemeteries

The cemetery of Anastasi (Cemetery of the Resurrection) in Piraeus, April 2015. The mourning angel, sculpted by the Cypriot sculptor Thomas Thomopoulos.

The mourning angel is supported on a pedestal that is emerging from an artificial mound, and it was erected to decorate the family grave of Κ. Koronaios. Thomas Thomopoulos must have sculpted the angel sometime between 1900 and 1920.

[greek-museums]

Greek cemeteries

The cemetery of Anastasi (Cemetery of the Resurrection) in Piraeus, April 2015. The mourning angel, sculpted by the Cypriot sculptor Thomas Thomopoulos.

The mourning angel is supported on a pedestal that is emerging from an artificial mound, and it was erected to decorate the family grave of Κ. Koronaios. Thomas Thomopoulos must have sculpted the angel sometime between 1900 and 1920.

And here is where I begin talking about half-hard penises. So avert your eyes, if you be modest...or faint of heart.

What I always found extremely fascinating in the rendering of this unusual funerary monument is the stain between the thighs that gives the impression of a half erected penis. Eros and Thanatos are not an unusual pair in funerary art, especially regarding greek tradition, but it always seemed to me too radical of a detail for a christian orthodox cemetery. The light usually did not permit me further observation, but today was a very bright and clear day and without a doubt there used to be a penis sculpted. The volume of the testicles can still be discerned even though the staining obscures the area. The main body of the penis however has been broken off. In my opinion this was done intentionally, either by the family that owns the grave, or even by order of the church, or the priests that roam the cemetery.

It seems though that the ghost of this erotic presence could not be extinguished and now by its absence it becomes even more present, especially on a spring day, where people come to remember the dead and receive the promise of resurrection. And this is the context that makes this particular piece of sculpture so sublime.

Just as ancient statues used to have their penises broken off by scandalized christians, so too this contemporary marble youth suffered a similar dismemberment. And yet its vitality is unrelenting, like a pagan spring god who dies to be reborn again. Run down by a slight tremor, the angel seems crashed, his body shy of giving in with his masculinity also pointing towards the insatiable earth, yet his wings are still erect and his spirit-that is his penis-is not defeated. He has not given in, he is you could say aroused just by being stricken with a reminder of “our” mortality.

I think it might be a little cliche to talk about the homoerotic tension, but it is very hard to ignore the “fantasy” that this statue seems to be made of. He is a dream youth, whose face, grief forbids us from seeing and so all the more “we“, the living viewers, are compelled to want to make him feel better. “We” want to console him and this “we” is in my opinion a pale reflection of the artist’s “I”. It’s by far the most “living“ statue one can encounter.

Grief for death, yet an untamed, naughty promise of life all merge in both the setting, the concept, the artistic intention and the historical outcome to make this sculpture my favorite thing ever.