The suffering and struggling man

The concepts of 'suffering' and 'struggle' are central to my painting and sculpture, especially in my work related to Greek mythology. These concepts have gradually emerged in my work, at least in some of it. I was not out to theme them. In fact, I thought I was far too optimistic to accept these themes as a guideline for my work. It was the Dutch scientist, researcher, publicist, curator, and art collector Dr. Lex van de Haterd who made me aware of the central place of these concepts in my work. At first, I rejected his interpretation. Of course, my work deals with tragic figures from the literature of Homer and other Greek authors. I believed that it was not so much the tragedy that attracted me, but that I was mainly interested in a contemporary and aesthetic depiction of the myths and the people I found there.

However, when I reflected on it further, I had to admit that the core of my work is indeed the suffering and struggle of mankind—in the desire for attention and prestige, in the fear of being overlooked, but also in the willingness to sacrifice and devotion. This suffering and struggle manifests itself particularly clearly in people's striving to transcend the boundaries of human existence, to stretch the beginning and end of existence, and to influence the human condition. In these myths, the boundaries between life and death are regularly crossed, and people are willing to go to great lengths to improve their otherworldly perspectives.

Hesiod, the compiler of the Theogony—a kind of family tree of the Greek gods who lived in the period from about 750–650 BC—writes about the suffering and misery that befalls people. He speaks of the children of the night. Night gave birth to the inescapable hour of death, fate, sleep, reproach, and pain. Night also gave birth to retribution, deceit, and seduction, as well as devastatingly advancing old age and filthy strife. Other children of Night are recurring troubles, hunger, heedlessness, torments, lies, and slander. Yes, indeed, Hesiod also wrote about beautiful things, such as the children of the sea, the shining moon, the sun, and the dawn, and of course, the Muses.

"Suffering" and "struggling" are not necessarily polar concepts. To suffer means to be in pain, to be sad, or to be sick. In line with this is the struggle to get back on top, to become healthy and happy again. People's suffering and struggling are confronted with faith and doubt, with certainty and uncertainty, with values and dignity, but also, of course, with unreliability and subterfuge, with deceit and negligence, with contempt and hatred. Nothing human is alien to us, not even to Greek gods and heroes.

Priam, the last king of Troy, is torn between his pride and humility. Cassandra, his daughter, a prophetess and priestess of Apollo, despairs over the curse that prevents her prophecies from being believed, ultimately leading to the downfall of Troy. Odysseus is perhaps the most cunning warrior of Greek antiquity, yet at the same time, he is above all else a suffering man—a man of sorrow who, despite his successes, loses all his companions and is relentlessly confronted with himself at the end of his journey.

Medea of Colchis, daughter of Hecate, niece of Circe, and granddaughter of Helios, was cast in the role of a repulsive person by Euripides. She struggled and suffered, and she gained a bad reputation. However, the German writer Christa Wolf describes her as a victim of a patriarchal power structure, of slander, and of the spread of fake news. The observer's perspective is influential. Being attracted to a particular sculpture, painting, or drawing, or reacting dismissively to it, is—in addition to the way it is made—mainly related to the biography of the observer.

In addition to the themes of 'Suffering' and 'Struggle', but also very related to them, I am concerned in my work with the duality of roles of being a perpetrator, or a victim. These roles can be united in one and the same person. Greek mythology has many examples of these contradictions, such as Agamemnon or the Minotaur—for many artists, this dichotomy has been a challenge and an exciting motif even in the centuries after the heyday of Greek culture. Pablo Picasso's Minotauromachie, for example, is a famous and complex depiction of duality in the person of this ancient bull-man, but also of Picasso's own situation and experiences.

The protagonists in my work are defined by the names I have given them, taken from ancient myths, but they are not fixed in their original context. The concepts they represent are universal. War fanatics, such as Agamemnon, can be found everywhere in history—and unfortunately also in the present day. They personify violence, ideology, and misbehavior. Andromache, for instance, is Hector's suffering wife. She represents the tragedies of so many women through all kinds of violence. In my portrait, she is a universal wife and mother, and a victim of political intrigue and ideology. Yes, she could even be a Madonna. And Laertes, the former king of Ithaca, and father of Odysseus and Ktimene, personifies grief. The goddess Persephone represents the eternal processes of descent and ascent, rise and fall. In this case, it leads back to her abduction by Hades to the underworld (Kathodos) and her happy periodic return to her mother Demeter (Anodos). These are concepts—which are widely used in cult communities—that are closely related to the concepts of "flowering" and "dying", as well as the changing of the seasons. And what about Briseis, kidnapped by Achilles after he killed her husband, father and brothers, to make her his concubine and slave. Briseis is the personification of all women who are victims of brutal violence. In fact, she is the main character in Homer's drama, the Iliad, which covers 51 days of the ten-year war for Troy.

"Troy" is a metaphor for "suffering and struggle," as well as for "romance and degeneracy." In the Iliad, Homer describes 51 days of the ten-year battle between Greeks and Trojans across an epic of 24 books. The epic originated in the eighth or seventh century BC. The battle for Troy, on which it is based, took place a few hundred years earlier. The battle was fought because, as the story goes, the Trojan king's son, Paris, kidnapped the wife of the Spartan king, Menelaos. The various Greek kingdoms committed themselves to retrieving Helen and punishing Troy. Troy was a rich and powerful city, thanks to its position on the important trade route between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. The kidnapped woman was a romantic pretext to give an act of war a semblance of justification. In fact, the war between the Greek allies and the Trojans arose because the Greeks wanted to eliminate the powerful and competitive trading position of the free state of Troy.

Tragically, there is nothing new under the sun. Terrible wars are still raging today for economic and ideological reasons, using far-fetched justifications. We are still confronted with descriptions of inhuman suffering. In times of war, human dignity is often sidelined. Achilles—the great Greek hero—defeats Hector, the idol of the Trojans. For Achilles, however, Hector's death is not enough; he dishonors him in front of his family and his people. Tied behind Achilles' chariot, Hector is dragged through the dust and humiliated.

The story of Helen turns the Iliad into a dramatic heroic saga. Its romantic aspects still appeal to us today. The Dutch poet Jean Pierre Rawie wrote: "I have loved a woman who would deserve a second Troy..." However, the inhumanity of war silences romance, especially when one is confronted with the tragedies of current wars. The Iliad is, above all, a warning that no one wins in war—everyone loses. Not only goods and chattels, but all human dignity.

In my paintings and sculptures, I have depicted Hector several times, at different stages. In two sculptures, I depict his transience, symbolizing the demise of a human being, the degeneration of humanity, and the downfall of a dynasty. It is not pretty; art is not always beautiful.

The following examples also show the dark sides of human existence. They are about two strikingly similar situations regarding political opportunism, masculine preoccupations, patriarchal dominance and violence. It is about two couples who have many similarities in their tragedy: Iphigenia and her mother Klytaimnestra, and Persephone and her mother Demeter. Mothers and daughters, at the mercy of the power strategies of husbands and fathers. Iphigenia is lured to Aulis by her father Agamemnon, the Greek army commander against Troy, under false pretenses, to be sacrificed to a goddess he had apparently insulted. The goddess, Artemis, punished Agamemnon by the absence of favorable winds. The grumbling mob of soldiers threatened to become a mutinous gang and the army commander gave in to that menacing mob. Persephone, the second example, was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld and the brother of her powerful father, Zeus. Her distraught mother desperately searched the world for her abducted daughter. Here again, the father played a despicable role. Both stories are steeped in sorrow.

A cultural cradle
Despite all the misery described above, ancient Greek culture was a civilization in which all facets of being human and living together—both good and bad—were developed. It was a society where attempts were made to explain the incomprehensible and where systems were available to regulate human coexistence. We view this culture as one of the cradles of Western civilization. Ancient Greek culture has a major influence on how we think and live; nevertheless, we must put that influence into perspective. Every society is the result of many developments that have influenced and changed it, and will continue to do so.

To the ancient Greeks, and more specifically to the inhabitants of Athens, we owe the oldest known democracy. After a period of tyrannical rule, the Athenians ousted their last tyrant around 510 BC. From then on, important political decisions in the city were made by an assembly, the Ekklèsia, consisting of male citizens aged eighteen and older. Women, slaves, and immigrants were excluded. It was, therefore, only a very relative representation of the population.

Moreover, this young democracy proved to be vulnerable, unbalanced, and intolerant of freedom of opinion. For example, this democratic movement could not prevent the philosopher Socrates (470–399 BC) from being condemned to death and executed. Pericles (495–429 BC) was the most influential and longest-serving democratic leader. Major influences on Athenian democracy included the poet and legislator Solon (636–558 BC) and the reformer Cleisthenes (570–507 BC). Democracy in Athens lasted until 322 BC and eventually collapsed at the hands of the Macedonians. “Alles van waarde is weerloos” ("Everything of value is defenseless"), wrote the Dutch poet Lucebert in 1974 in his poem "The Very Old Sings," and democracy is no exception to this.

Greek culture itself was influenced by many other cultures, e.g. the Egyptian. Many elements of Egyptian culture can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, who in turn were overtaken by Roman culture. The Romans had a long period of prosperity, which eventually gave way to an emerging Christian-oriented Western model of civilization that now also seems to have fallen into a state of decline. We seem to have once again entered a phase between cultural periods: a phase of transformation, an in-between period, in which a dominant group within a culture loses influence and meaning and clashes with emerging groups. 

Mythology is a system of transmitted stories and beliefs about essential aspects of being human. Through myths, man tries to make the world understandable. Myths are not static, they change with people and with their cultural environment. Culture is the way in which people organize their environment, in which they shape the variety of ways in which they interact with each other and the way in which they regulate and control their mutual behavior. Culture is determined by the norms and values of groups of people, by morality and by sanctions that punish and correct when things go wrong. Stability exists in societies when there is a largely shared culture. If there is a great deal of cultural diversity, with many partial interests, then confrontations arise between groups of representatives of those partial interests. The ancient Greeks showed us that, and also how things can go very wrong in a clash of interests. 

Decadence

In dominant cultures, we see the developmental course of emergence, great prosperity, and a phase of decadence that announces the end, or the transition to another system. Decadence is a process of continuous refinement until a limit is reached, after which the decay of values, norms, and systems sets in. The developments that lead to cultural decline are influenced and strengthened both internally and externally. Internally, this decline is driven by extreme regulatory models, increasing polarization, the deterioration of manners, a hardening of public and political debate, violence in society, intolerance, the blackmail of governments by organized interest groups, overregulation, a self-reinforcing bureaucracy, a failure to sanction transgressive behavior, an exploding tax burden, a degenerating performance culture, an increase in indulgence and entitlements without strings attached, and a tendency towards an ochlocratically oriented deterioration of democracy.

Externally, the end of a great cultural period is influenced by epidemics, globalization, acts of war, and natural disasters. This is often accompanied by the onset of population flows between countries and continents.

Western society currently seems to be entering a phase of social, cultural, economic, political, and administrative change, along with a catastrophic and mainly self-inflicted process of wars and global climate change. All this, moreover, in a context in which it is possible to inflict devastating damage to Earth and humanity through the use of nuclear weapons. We seem to have passed the last frontier, entering a phase of decline. The Dutch author Arnon Grunberg, in his essay "Friend and Enemy" (Prometheus, Amsterdam, 2019), defines decadence as the impossibility of crossing another border.

Decadence is related to a disconnection between responsibility and involvement, or a lack of ownership. Conflicts arise that are no longer manageable. Greek mythology is full of such situations and could be considered a signpost to prevent them, or at least to understand them. With a nod to mythology, you could speak of a phase of "Agamemnonization" if there is a disconnection between stakeholders at different layers of responsibility, or worse: if you could speak of arrogance or helplessness. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, was the army commander in the war of the Greeks against Troy. Euripides described the dramatic fate of his daughter Iphigenia at Aulis, caused by her father. Homer also describes the dubious aspects of his character in the Iliad.

Calchas, the priest and prophet, is, of course, the root cause of the sad fate of Iphigenia. Although he acts as a messenger of the elusive gods, his demand for retribution can also be seen as a power struggle between the commander-in-chief and the priestly caste. The priest Calchas and Agamemnon are symbols of the eternal struggle for power between the clergy and the aristocracy. The representatives of religion—the priests, prophets, and seers—consider it their divine task to mediate between the upper and the lower world, between supposed and invented gods and common mankind. For that mediation, they demand gifts, sacrifices, and prestige. The perpetuation of their position of power undoubtedly requires faith, imposed by force if necessary.

In Western society, but not only there, relationships between people seem to be drifting apart. Politics is not always the solver of problems; unfortunately, it is too often the cause of them. Greek mythology has shown us where human dignity ends, but also where it begins, or triumphs. Mythology is a mirror held up to us. Even though we hope to recognize gods and heroes in the reflection, it is best when we see traces of human dignity.

In my work, I try to look at a mythological past with different eyes, so that the lessons we learn will protect us from the mistakes we committed, and so that the future does not become an insurmountable, dystopian perspective. Ultimately, myths are about ourselves, our possibilities and habits, our relationships with each other, and about who and how we want to be, in good times and bad. That's why we must keep telling these stories, over and over again. We are ultimately responsible for our own actions, each for himself. You can take responsibility, you can share it, but you can never lay it down.

Myth as signifier
Artists, at least some of them, are Promethean activists. They are forward thinkers. They see what is still hidden and convert that into images. They are pointing in new directions. And among artists there are, as in any profession, afterwards-thinkers: Epimetheans, those who embrace the usual without questioning it. It is a classic mental divergence. Prometheus, the Titan, stole the fire from the gods because he understood its necessity for the development of humanity. This was in spite of the explicit prohibition of Zeus, accepting that he would be severely punished. All this stands in contrast to his brother Epimetheus, who accepted without any hesitation the beautiful Pandora as a bride bestowed by the gods, and with her the ailments and calamities of her dowry that would bring people considerable damage, suffering and despair.

Rob Riemen, a Dutch essayist and founder-director of the Nexus Institute in Tilburg (NL), states in his collection of essays "Nobility of the Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal," published in 2009 by Atlas Publishers in Amsterdam, that fire is not the gift of the gods for the development of humanity, but language. It is language that allows us to name and know the world and through which we are also known. Every poet knows that, according to Riemen.

Myths are the oldest traces of the human mind. The experiences of mankind are anchored in language and can be told. I sympathize with Riemen on this issue and would like to go one step further. I believe Prometheus stole "the ability of meaning-making" and "imagination" from the gods. Being able to give meaning to, or derive meaning from something, is what makes humans nearly divine. In a mythological sense, you could say that the ability to imagine and to give meaning to something is what brings mankind as close as possible to the Olympic gods.

Meaning-making and meaning acquisition become visible in art: through language, through images, through movement, through sound, and through sculpture. Imagination is the driving force. That is why art is such an essential value in human existence. It makes us creators. That is why Zeus, the supreme god, was so terribly tormented that Prometheus gave the power of meaning-making and imagination to people. It enabled them to make their own gods, as magnifications of all the good and evil qualities within themselves. And Zeus knew what he was talking about; he too is a figment after all.

Myths are conceivable, often paradoxical representations of the unthinkable. They describe a supposed reality. Myths are about a continuous process of searching for an acceptable balance between reality and desire, between emotion and rationality, between transience and immortality, even if this search is usually not based on logical arguments. However, the illogical is not necessarily unrealistic, certainly not within the imagination.

Reclaimed Mythology

Greek mythology is the cradle of many aspects of contemporary Western culture, while simultaneously serving as a mirror that reflects both human achievements and depravities, past and present. Although ancient Greek culture exerts a major influence on how we think and live, we must put this influence into perspective. Every society is the result of numerous developments that have shaped and changed it from all directions, a process that will undoubtedly continue.

In her study "How the World Made the West" (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2024), Josephine Quinn, a Cambridge professor of ancient history, demonstrates how deeply intertwined cultures and civilizations truly are. Exploring the very notion of "Western civilization," the researcher provides an overview of four thousand years of history in which cultures developed and influenced each other through encounters and confrontations. "Western civilization," she argues, would not exist without its Islamic, African, Indian, and Chinese influences.

Through myths, we experience profound human emotions. Myths take us straight to core values—something we perhaps need now more than ever to understand what is happening to us today. Myths are eye-openers; they make the essential visible, transparent, and hopefully more manageable. As Oleg Ferstein, drama director, photographer, performer, and teacher, noted (Instagram feedback on my sculpture "Stages of Persephone," May 10, 2022): "I'm sure it's time to turn our attention to mythology, and not just Greek mythology. Mythology is a perfect mirror for humanity to look at itself—to recognize the origins of the depth of stupidity and obscurantism that we have been unable to rid ourselves of for thousands of years."

Another theater director, the Greek Themis Moumoulidis, writes the following in his commentary on the performance of his version of Iphigenia in Aulis in Epidaurus, Greece, in 2022 : "after twenty years of the peloponnesian war, euripides seems to be asking: "is a paradigm shift possible"? two and a half thousand years later, and as we experience the first symptoms of a dystopian future, which we have lost, we still wonder, "is a paradigm shift possible"? the question cannot be answered. perhaps one day civilization will shed its inherent, deadly discomfort. perhaps one day progress will cease to associate itself with barbarism. maybe someday... until then, we can only tell the same story over and over again, in all tones and in all ways, through the filter of our own time... "

That's what I try to do: telling the story over and over again, within my capabilities, in sculpture, paintings, and poetry, and looking for answers to the question: Is a paradigm shift possible? Those who re-read the old stories with a mild eye, those who are willing to place the roughness in the perspective of time, those who are receptive to the plasticity of the world of ideas and the imagination of our ancestors, can gain a better understanding of the development of our current coexistence. In this sense, after all these years, the stories and the iconography of Greek mythology are still a source or a reason for a better understanding of what is happening today. I try to look at possible mythological faces with different eyes, with memories, perspectives and expectations regarding the future and human development. I try to look back to see ahead. I believe that is the core of my work.

Too many Troys

Boys and girls they were, with much to prove,
a bit spoiled too, and fearful of the day,
with grander dreams than any man could weigh,
despite their fate and its unpredictable moves.

Young Odysseus feigned his madness, yet he failed,
 like great Achilles, masked in maiden’s lace;
 frail ruses born of losing sight of what they face,
 for which with years, or with their lives, they paid.

The city fell at last, fire consumed it raw.
 Winners who remained: deeply scarred and burned,
 no heroes now, they homeward finally turned.

Homer told of the suffering that every mortal saw.
Had he, through stories, for lasting insights yearned?
Each Troy since then showed that we have nothing learned.