Treatise on the Real
The True Reality of Art
In life, the only reality
is the feeling of life.
In art, the only reality
is the consciousness of art.
— F. Pessoa, Without Masks
The instinctive gesture of a visitor to Angelos Panagiotidis’ Olive Grove was to extend their hand toward the olives. Because, just as art employs mixed techniques, these olives could very well be edible. They are true in any case, as they preserve all the essence of the olive and an authentic art—unwrinkled by time and immune to adversity.
Just as Zeuxis deceived the birds with his painted grapes, Angelos Panagiotidis, with these olives, has managed to deceive not only city dwellers but even his own mother, a farmer, who was the first to see them and feared they might “shrivel” before the exhibition. The reasons are obvious and evident, even in photographs, which attest to the sculptor’s deep knowledge of his subject. Yet here, fidelity is not a goal but an experience—an act of translating nature into art, initially through a visual perception that leads to both reception and tactile invitation. Ultimately, every true sculpture contains a smooth surface that invites the viewer’s touch, thus embodying the exhortation of Henry Moore, who famously suggested that museum signs forbidding touch should be replaced with ones encouraging it.
“Please touch”—especially the fruit of these bronze olives, where the deep connection between the artistic and the natural is most apparent, chosen for complete identification. The overall composition is governed by the naturalistic idealism of Greek aesthetic perception. At the same time, it exemplifies an exemplary homage to the “written truths made real through art,” echoing Heraclitus: “Art, imitating nature, seeks to do the same.”
The “imitation” of nature—both archetypal and ever-renewed—is another dimension deeply intertwined with the aesthetic philosophy of the ancients and the artistic inquiry of the Renaissance. It is remarkable that Angelos Panagiotidis, driven by Greek instinct and personal experience, continues this grand tradition through his own artistic journey, embracing the dynamic power of naturalism and its tendency to select the most beautiful from all that it perceives. “From many, he gathers the finest and from each, the most beautiful.”
No translation is needed for this text, nor does his work require interpretation. His sculptures are already eloquent—they form a treatise on the real. And the olive tree is the most beautiful of trees. Our ancestors said so, and children still say it, even if they have grown accustomed to foreign images.
Critics have already spoken: Angelos Panagiotidis is a master of matter and a re-creator of the natural, ensuring that his works never lack the transition from hands and sight to the mind—and vice versa. This grove of sculpted bronze olive trees is an “installation” as traditional as it is modern, so profoundly expressive in its simplicity that it needs no further words—only those immortal ones of antiquity:
“The branch of the gray olive, which nourishes our children,
Neither young nor old, nor any general shall ever destroy,
For the watchful eye of Zeus, the olive’s protector,
Always guards it well.”
By slightly paraphrasing Sophocles, we replace the general with the art critic, as a safeguard against any dismissive gaze or malevolent intent that might devalue this sacred olive grove.
In the burning, cloud-laden Athens of the Olympic summer,
May a branch from these olives cool our aspirations,
And crown, in glory, our faith in true art.
In the true reality of art, things do not seem to be divided into the real or the imaginary, but into the skillful and the unskilled. They are justified in the consciousness of history—of children and poets of every kind.
If, in life, the only reality is the feeling of life,
Then, in art, the only reality is the consciousness of art.
— Dr. Vivi Vasilopoulou
Archaeologist & Art Critic