The Greek Miracle Catalogue: Politicians and Writers

The Greek Miracle exhibition catalogue appears to be the same as any other exhibition catalogue with its collection of forewords, essays, acknowledgements and stunning photographs of the objects displayed. However, it is unique in beginning with ‘Statements’ from the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Greece. There can be no possible doubt about the political importance to the United States and Greece of this exhibition and the ‘2,500th’ anniversary of democracy. The Greek Prime Minister Constantin Mitosakis comments that ‘only in Athens and the United States has democracy lasted as long as two centuries on a continuing basis’ and states that it is ‘fitting’ that the sculptures’ ‘first journey from their homeland’ should be to the US. President George Bush shares this sentiment, while making the exhibition of the sculptures from fifth century Athens on the anniversary of democracy have a global resonance. Considering the influence of the ancient Greeks on the Founding Fathers of America, Bush writes that:

Today, modern Greece stands as a valued partner in an alliance that has helped to defend and promote human rights throughout the globe while ensuring the collective security of Europe. It is my hope that each visitor to this exhibit will gain not only a deeper appreciation of ancient Greek sculpture but also a renewed sense of gratitude for our shared democratic heritage.

George Bush’s statement is dated July 2 1992 and he himself was about to begin fighting a presidential election in the US at that time, which he later lost to Bill Clinton. Bush’s oblique references to the role of Greece in NATO and their protection of ‘security of Europe’ draw attention to the allying of Greece with America in the Cold War against Communist Russia and Europe. This alliance had recently seen the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and its European allies, leaving America as the dominant global power. The ‘dawn of democracy’ is used to uncritically celebrate this alliance between Greece and the US, despite the many contentious issues that make the relationship problematic, such as the US involvement in the Greek Civil War after World War Two or support for the Greek military dictatorship in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Greek Prime Minister and the USA President

The magnitude of the exhibition is given further weight by the inclusion of a foreword by the two directors of the host venues Earl A. Powell III from the National Gallery of Art and Philippe de Montebello from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Powell and Montebello stress the importance of the image of man to Greek art and the influence on this image of political change and philosophical thought, arguing that there are ‘firm cultural grounds for seeing in the works of art a sense of measured action with full consciousness of its consequences’. The museum directors do not ground the exhibition within contemporary political history but rather re-direct attention to the impact of Athenian democracy on the development of Greek art 2,500 years ago and see this exhibition of fifth century figural art as representative of the traditions of western art history. Diana Buitron-Oliver continues this train of thought with her references to the eighteenth-century scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann, often described as the ‘father of art history’ and the opinions of the more recent classical art historian and archaeologist Bernard Ashmole.

Two of the ‘specialist’ essays are worth comment. The prominent classical art historian and archaeologist Olga Palagia wrote a chapter entitled ‘The Development of the Classical Style in Athens in the Fifth Century’. Palagia, a lecturer at the University of Athens and author of a book The Pediments of the Parthenon in 1993, placed the sculptures from The Greek Miracle within a greater artistic context. She drew on comparisons with sculpture in Egypt and the Near East and linked the sculptures displayed in a sequential development of art from the late archaic style of the late sixth century to the burgeoning of a new style c. 400 BCE. Palagia stressed the centrality of the visual perception of the human figure in Greek art and the importance of the ‘classical moment’ with the replacement of formulaic art by the ‘art of illusion’. Palagia’s emphasis on the ‘art of illusion’ replacing formula and mythology is a neat nod to the art historian E. H. Gombrich, whose chapter ‘Reflections on the Greek Revolution’ in Art and Illusion considered the centrality of the human figure in the achievement of Greek art in breaking mythical taboos to create greater mimesis in art.

Yale professor J. J. Pollitt positioned the objects from The Greek Miracle within the context of political reform and events in fifth-century Athens in his chapter ‘Art, Politics, and Thought in Classical Greece’. This chapter drew on Pollitt’s influential book Art and Experience in Classical Greece, which was first published in 1972 and relates the formal development of art to political and cultural history, using literary, historical and philosophical texts from the period as evidence. Pollitt is alone in the catalogue in emphasising the importance of vase painting in influencing the development of other artistic forms and also in drawing attention to the traumatic yet liberating impact of the Persian Wars and the Greek victories at Marathon, Salamis and Plataia. Pollitt considers the political use of certain myths and their sculptural rendition, such as the labours of Heracles on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. He argues that Athens as a wealthy and imperial power could fund the building programme on the Acropolis, which was influential on artistic creation in Greece.

The Greek-American writer Nicholas Gage wrote the ‘Introduction’ to the exhibition catalogue.

Gage, while acknowledging the influence of other Mediterranean cultures on the Greeks, stressed the importance of individual freedom and the equal distribution of political rights in Athens to create a ‘Greek Miracle’ in art, literature and philosophy. Nicholas Gage, born Gatzoyiannis in Greece in 1939, fled from Greece to America at the end of the Civil War between Royalists and Communists in 1949. Gage worked as an investigative reporter for The New York Times and while in charge of the Greek bureau, investigated the execution of his mother at the end of the Greek Civil War and what happened to her killers. This was published in 1983 as Eleni and was a best-seller and critically acclaimed. Eleni was turned into a film in 1985 and its anti-communist rhetoric attracted the attention of President Ronald Regan, who made a reference to it in a televised address after a summit meeting with President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Gage is therefore in a unique position to comment on ancient Greek democracy and its American ‘successor’ being a Greek-American, the survivor of a brutal civil war involving communists and a representative of the ‘triumph’ of the US capitalist political system. As a best selling and internationally recognized author, Gage’s involvement would also generate publicity for the exhibition. In his opening paragraph, Gage compares fifth-century Greek art and culture to a ‘new sun’:

Its light has warned and illuminated us ever since; sometimes obscured by shadows, then bursting forth anew as it did when our own nation was created on the model of the Greek original. The vision – the classical Greek ideal – was that society functions best if all citizens are equal and free to shape their lives and share in running their state: in a word, democracy.

The Canadian novelist Robertson Davies completes the catalogue’s essay with ‘Reflections from the Golden Age’ in which he considers how Greek art had been understood in the Western world since Winckelmann in the mid-eighteenth century and how every age has invented its own Greece. Robertson considered that the best way to consider ancient Greek psychology was to consider the importance of Greek religion and mythology rather than just simply reflect the ancient Greeks as ‘ourselves in fancy dress’. Robertson Davis was a writer who wrote plays and essays but was best known for his novels and in the 1970s wrote fiction that drew on Jungian psychology and painted satirical portraits of small town Canada. Davies finished his essay by emphasising the importance and accessibility of Greek art over Greek literature for most people and by extension most visitors to the exhibition.

Reviewers of the exhibition universally referred to the catalogue as ‘nothing to write home about’, ‘stereotypical’, intellectually ‘undistinguished and in a few instances positively xenophobic’. This in part reflected hostility to the ideological framework of the exhibition overall, the overt political message in the ‘presidential statements’ and the traditional (and nationalistic) attitudes imparted in the essays of the catalogue.