Sculpture (d): Possible faces
Interpretations of Ancient Greek Mythology
My sculptural work focuses on two related themes: the "Human Head", and the interpretation of "Ancient Greek Mythology". The first theme is about the formal variety, tension and expression in sculpted heads, more or less abstracted, in shapes, planes, lines. The sculpture is not assigned to existing persons.
The second theme - also related to heads - I call "(Im)possible faces". It is a contemporary interpretation of mainly Homeric protagonists who stand for essential ideas and concepts, which are elementary in our most basic experiences.
Kalliope, immortal inspiration
Kalliope is one of the nine muses. Muses are the goddesses of art and science. They are daughters of Zeus, the supreme god, and of Mnemosyne, one of the six Titanids and the personification of memory.
Kalliope had two sons: Linos, relatively unknown, and Orpheus. The father of Orpheus is Oiagros, king of Pieria in northern Greece, although Apollo is also mentioned.
Zeus begot the nine muses in nine nights at Mnemosyne:
Erato: song and the lyricism
Euterpe: flute playing
Kalliope: heroic epic, philosophy and rhetoric
Clio: historiography
Melpomene: tragedy
Polyhymnia: rhetoric and sacred songs
Terpsichore: dance, and lyric poetry
Thalia: comedy
Urania: astronomy
A temple in which the Muses are worshipped is called "Mouseion" in Greek. The term "Museum" is derived from this.
Sculpture, mixed techniques, 2025
64 x 33 x 25 cm
Kalliope, immortal inspiration
Homer (ca. 800 – 750 BC) begins both the Iliad and the Odyssey by invoking a Muse. Hesiod (ca. 750 – 650 BC), the author of the Theogony, a list of gods and goddesses, also begins his work with a similar call. Later we see that Virgil (70 – 19 BC) also invokes the Muses to help them tell his story about Aeneas. Still later we see this phenomenon in the work of other great authors, such as: Dante (1265 – 1321); Chaucer (1343–1400) Shakespeare (1564–1616); Milton (1608 – 1674). The Muses are sources of inspiration.
They were not easy to get along with, those Muses. To secure their position, they competed with the daughters of the Macedonian king Piërus, for example, who also had ambitions as muses. That ended badly for these women, they were turned into magpies.
Hekabe: heirless and robbed dignity
Hekabe was the chief wife of the Trojan king Priam. She had nineteen children with him, including Hektor, Paris and Kassandra. Due to the Trojan War, she lost her husband and children and was taken into slavery.
In Homer's Iliad (ca. 800 – 750 BC), Hekabe is mentioned six times, for example when she begs her son Hektor not to fight with Achilles (XXII.86), and when she mourns because Hektor was killed in this battle (XXIV.748-759). She calls Achilles "a hard-hearted man whose liver I would like to clamp between my teeth and eat" (XXIV.210).
With Euripides ((ca. 480 – 406 BC) Hekabe was the protagonist of two tragedies. In "Trojan Women" Euripides tells how she is taken into slavery by Odysseus. In the tragedy "Hekabe", he tells how she loses her children Polyxena and Polydoros and how she takes gruesome revenge on Polymestor, the murderer of Polydoros (she kills his two sons and gouges out his eyes). Agamemnon agrees with her and punishes the blind Polymestor. Polymestor then predicts a sinister ending in which Hekabe turns into a dog and drowns.
Hekabe is the personification of good matriarchal political governance, as well as the personification of suffering of women and children because of disastrous patriarchal exercise of power, often resulting in wars and other forms of violence.
Mixed techniques, 2025
95 x 36 x 30 cm
Hekabe: heirless and robbed dignity
The story "Kassandra", daughter of Hekabe and Priam, by the East German author Christa Wolf (1929 – 2011) is about a socially critical and a feminist interpretation of the developing patriarchy in Troy. Initially, Hekabe was the influential wife of Priam, but she gradually lost her influence due to a growing controlling state apparatus and a rigorous security service led by the officer Eumelos. The comparison with the East German system of the DDR is clear.
Finally Hekabe lost het husband and her children. Hekabe is the personification of good matriarchal political governance, as well as the personification of suffering of women and children because of disastrous patriarchal exercise of power, often resulting in wars and other forms of violence.
Mixed techniques, 2025
95 x 36 x 30 cm
Hekabe
Hekabe
Kalypso, hidden temptation
Homer's "Odyssey" begins with the invocation of the Muse. The poet asks the Muse to tell why Odysseus, after all his adventures and dangerous journeys, and in spite of his ardent desire to return home, has been prevented from doing so for seven years by the nymph Kalypso, who wants to marry him. She promises him immortality and eternal youth. The Gods take the Muse's request to heart and also think - except for Poseidon - that enough is enough. The divine messenger Hermes is sent to put pressure on Kalypso to let Odysseus go. Which happens.
Kalypso is the daughter of Atlas, the Titan who, because of the lost battle with the Olympian gods, was punished to carry the celestial vault on his shoulders. Kalypso was exiled to and hidden on the island of Ogygia. Once every few years a hero would pass by, with whom she would fall in love, but with whom she could not build a lasting relationship. Odysseus was such a hero. He remained under her spell for seven years and, according to Hesiod, they had two sons together.
Mixed techniques, 2025
110 x 40 x 30 cm
Kalypso, hidden temptation
The fate of Kalypso and Odysseus is a motif that is often used in art. Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 – 1625), for example, painted the couple in the entourage of the cave on the island of Ogygia. The Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827 – 1901) painted the melancholic Odysseus gazing over the sea, with the tempting Kalypso in her cave. The German painter Max Beckmann (1884 – 1950) painted an expressive scenery of Kalypso, who tries to seduce Odysseus, who stares ahead.
Alkinoos: a friend at the end
King of Phaeacia (Scheria).
After his more or less forced stay of seven years on the island of Ogygia, with the nymph Kalypso, Odysseus is shipwrecked again with his raft and arrives half dead on Scheria, the land of the Phaiacs. The king's daughter Nausikaa finds him, takes care of him and sends him to her parents Alkinoos and Arete. Odysseus is kindly received by the warm and wise royal couple, but he seems to have lost his memory. Little by little, the events of the past are coming back to him.
Sculpture pair 2025:
Alkinoos, 32 x 27 x 37 cm
Arete , 29 x 25 x 32 cm
Arete: a friend at the end
Queen of Phaeacia (Scheria).
The story of the Odyssey is told in a kind of flash-back technique. It is a frame narrative, stories within a story, as it is often used in literature. Homer, if he was the author, describes in a retrospective the stages of the Odyssey. For Odysseus, it is his last station, before he is brought back to his country Ithaca by his newly won friends..
Sculpture pair 2025:
Alkinoos, 32 x 27 x 37 cm
Arete , 29 x 25 x 32 cm
Alkinoos
Arete
Elderly Hera
The Greek gods and goddesses were apparently immortal and possessed eternal youth. My "elderly Hera", the wife of the supreme god Zeus, does not fit that image. On the other hand, beauty is a relative concept and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't automatically have to be linked to youthfulness. Based on my own age I am biased, of course.
Immortality is a kind of "wishful thinking". It is our own projection of the desire for eternal life. We know it doesn't exist, but that doesn't stop many of us from desperately believing in it - against our better judgment - and the costs associated with the desire for an afterlife. To believe is not always cheap. Sacrifices must be made.
Eternal youth is of course connected with and also depending on immortality. The divine Ancient Greeks thought they had the patent on it. That was apparently a mistake. Who hears or sees a Greek god or goddess today? They have silently disappeared into oblivion, exchanged for others, for as long as that lasts for them too. Actually, that "god stuff" can be satisfied with me. I bring them back again from their dark existence, but they pay their price for it in the form of my self-willed interpretations, and finally they must accept that it is the people who make the gods, not the other way around.
Hera, Juno as the Romans called her, was a powerful and also very beautiful goddess. She was one of the three goddesses who competed in the case of the "Paris judgment", to win the golden apple for the most beautiful. Although Hera did not win, because of the false machinations of Aphrodite and the venality of Paris, she was prominently on the shortlist.
Sculpture
Mixed techniques, 2025
29 x 25 x 32 cm
Aphrodite,
cunning beauty
Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. She was born at sea out of the silver foam on the water that had landed there after her father Uranos was castrated with a diamond sickle by his son Kronos. Aphrodite floated on a shell to the beach, blown by the winds Zephyr and Aura. The Tuscan Renaissance painter Botticelli (1445 - 1510) created an iconic painting of this "shell tour".
Aphrodite is married to the crippled god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus, after a successful blackmail attempt by the latter on his mother Hera. The lover of Aphrodite was Ares, the god of war. With him she had seven children: Harmonia, Deimos, Phobos, Eros, Himeros, Pothos and Anteros. She maintained relations too with Dionysos, Hermes and also with a mortal, the Trojan shepherd prince Anchises. From this last connection Aeneas was born, one of the few who was able to flee to Italy after the destruction of Troy.
Aphrodite was one of the three goddesses, together with Hera and Athena, who competed for a golden apple "for the most beautiful", which a disputed goddess had thrown into the company during a divine wedding. She won by bribing the only juror, Paris, a disowned son of the Trojan royal couple Priamos and Hekabe. All in all, this led to the war for Troy, which is another story.
Sculpture
Mixed techniques, 2025
60 x 35 x 28 cm
Worpsweder Hades
Hades is the god of the underworld. The dead end up there, sailed across the river Styx by Charon, the ferryman. At least, if they are properly buried and have a coin under the tongue, an obol. After all, only the sun rises for nothing, even with the ancient Greeks.
Hades is the brother of Zeus. Actually, he belongs to the Olympian gods, but he hardly ever leaves his realm of the dead. Except when he kidnapped Persephone with a lot of noise and thunder and made her his bride.
Hades must have an immeasurable empire. For so many centuries, the deceased have been given their place there. His empire probably extends under the entire surface of the earth and perhaps also in different layers. His territory could also be located under the surface of the German artists village Worpswede. I strongly believe he even bumped his nose there. I have found his nose there on my walks in the "Teufelsmoor". If that isn't rock-solid evidence!
Sculpture
Mixed techniques, 2025