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FEW WORDS ABOUT THE ARTIST
Manos Ioannidis
For the theatricality of the face
Art is what is left
from the face of God
“… My first exhibition was in 1973 at the Art Room at Macedonia Hall of the Anatolia American College of Thessaloniki when I was assigned to decorate the classroom for my class’s graduation ceremony, where I made cartoons of all our teachers in dimensions each 100×150 cm. On cardboard with pen … “
This is what Manos Ioannidis from Thessaloniki says in a recent interview, a very special painter, who, having lived intensely, with risk and without awareness of danger, can transfer this life and these experiences to them equally intensely, sometimes aggressively and sometimes tenderly. , colors. Because there is no greater risk and more extreme risk of life than art itself. And Manos Ioannidis knows this well. He learned it from a very early age by watching his teacher at “Anatolia” George Parali, a mythical figure of the so-called School of Thessaloniki. Another similar one was my friend Costas Lachas.
Many consider art to be pleasantly painless. But the truth is that true art, regardless of evaluations or personal choices, if it is not painful, still does not want to be perceived as just “pleasant”. True art, which is not enough as a decorator, (wants to) challenge the established view of the world. He does not want to function as a photograph of this world but rather as an x-ray of it. Thus, the fanatical portrait painter Manos Ioannidis insists with his painting, in his best works in my opinion, on that other similarity that does not simply flatter but “reveals” the person being portrayed. With forms that, although often starting from a photograph and initially seeking realistic fidelity, nevertheless subvert or dissolve this very similarity of persons in order to highlight their invisible personality. The deepest is theirs. This is the case, for example, in portraits of his wife or artists he admires, such as Charlotte or Daly.
That is why I argue that while Manos Ioannidis himself considers himself a manic portrait painter, he is a deeply sensitive and perceptive psychographer. By means of painting of course. That is, it transfers to the painting surface not so much the face as the psyche of the depicted. Better, the deepest and most essential version. Through an explosion of colors that do not “say but mean”. Looking for our deepest face. What he never recorded, no photo. And which we certainly ignore as much as we have recorded it through countless photos. Who is our face after all? The photo of the sixth grade, the photo of the police ID, the degree, the other one, the wedding smile or maybe the one we took with wine and red eyes in a bouzouki shop at a mature age? Who is our face after all? Do we have one and only one person or many? Or, maybe none? And is our only face what art can save? In this case, painting, sculpture and not photography? Because that’s what it’s about.
Manos Ioannidis adamantly shows that the face (of us) is more of a free, improvised composition than a measured and measurable construction. Our face, whether we endure it or not, is more poetic arbitrariness than a logical and rational record.
But what does it mean to be portrayed? What does the desire, better, the hysteria of our time, mean with the constant immortalization of our face? What does selfie madness mean? Does it mean: I am immortalized, so I anxiously overcome death? Or, otherwise I abolish him, at least as far as I am concerned, as another painter and poet, Nikos Eggonopoulos, would say? Or, at least, do I postpone it? Does art have such power? Manos Ioannidis with his portraits, which are indirect references to his own life and his loves, which are also the proof of his devotion to painting, proves it brilliantly.
So here, above all, we have the ironic comment of a non-negotiable documentary-narrative painter in the so-called athematic or abstract art but also the reminder that a single person is enough to unfold a story. And that without a myth as a basis, even the most commonplace, there can be not only painting but no art form. Since art was and is what was insisted today by God … And His Face.
Manos Stefanidis
Manos Stefanidis
Art Critic and Art Historian, Author.
Professor of Art History at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens
Curator at the National Gallery.
