Beyond the Crisis: On Greece’s Burgeoning Art Scene

Much has been written about the fairly new Athens art scene, often suggesting that its current boom is a direct effect of the economic crisis.⁰¹ What seems to be overlooked, however, are the developments leading up to the current situation, and the underlying interdependency between Greek cultural politics, artistic activities and the broader social context, which stems from the mid-1990s when the Greek art world saw a slow but substantial transformation. It is the particular development of a diversity of art institutions – ranging from public museums to independent spaces, commercial galleries and critical journals – that has enabled the current resistance of the art scene to the crisis.

For example, in analysing the current situation, one first has to note that the Greek state started to support contemporary culture relatively late. Until the mid-1990s there was no sustained public funding, apart from that going to large cultural institutions such as the National Art Gallery or the national theatres and orchestras in Athens and Thessaloniki. Over the last two decades, these institutions provided space for more contemporary and experimental presentations, but only hesitantly. Whereas the public theatres opened up more willingly to less established forms of performance, state support for the contemporary visual arts in Greece has been more conservative and contemporary art has been widely dependent on private initiatives and capital. Until today, public funding has been lacking in strategy and investment especially to support smaller, independent non-profit art institutions. Hence, the commercial art galleries have played a major role in shaping the local art scene as well as in defining contemporary aesthetics in Greece. Although it would be far-stretched to say the practices of Greek artists has been driven by the market, the predominance of object-based art works, traditional media and compliant topics testifies to its influence in recent artistic production.⁰²

At the same time, it is the activity of the galleries that has enabled both the increasing participation of Greek artists in the international art circuit and the introduction of international artists to broader audiences in Greece. Before the mid-1990s, they served as barely the only public spaces for art discourse. The series of discussions ‘Hypothesis for a Museum of Contemporary Art’, organised at Desmos gallery in 1977, is a good example of the active role private galleries have played in Greece historically, as well as of the spirit in the artistic community during that period. While Greek artists synchronised with the sense of internationalism of the 1960s and 70s and partook in the redefinition of the artwork and artistic media,⁰³they were also intensely engaged with the needs of the Greek art scene as a periphery to Western art centres. The longing for institutional support of contemporary art may be considered antithetical to the spirit of Institutional Critique in other European countries and the US. Until very recently, such lack of diversity of art institutions has been held responsible for the marginal significance Greek artistic activities have played in the international art system.

Institutions with a wider public responsibility such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens and the State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA) in Thessaloniki, both founded in 1997, were comparatively slow in unfolding their activities and gaining the acceptance of local artists and art professionals. Although still facing serious difficulties concerning limited funding and space, their sustained and academically sound work has helped to introduce contemporary and, more importantly, critical art and theory to a broader public. In 2007, a series of events appeared to justify the euphoria in the artistic community:⁰⁵from the successful relaunch of the local art fair Art Athina⁰⁶ to the increasing activities in the Kerameikos/Metaxourgeio area (KM) and the inauguration of two biennials of contemporary art (the Athens Bienniale, held by a private, non-profit institution founded by the curatorial collective XYZ, and the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, organised under the artistic direction of the SMCA).⁰⁷

Alongside a boom in the commercial sector and increasing institutional support, throughout the last decade there has been a proliferation of independently-led activities around contemporary art and critical discourse. This was influenced by a growing number of young art professionals educated abroad, mainly in Great Britain, and who were instrumental in the organisation of group exhibitions in temporary spaces, the formation of artist groups and the circulation of low-budget self-published magazines such as Local Folk or later a, in connection with the Athens Bienniale. The artist collective Filopappou Group, for example, is a grass-roots, open collective producing mostly research-based projects. It held its first exhibition in 2001 at the Filopappou Hill in Athens, when it presented site-specific works by nineteen artists. The curatorial group Locus Athens, on the other hand, initiated in 2004, organised mainly event-based projects focusing on interdisciplinary, performative and experimental art practices, still underrepresented in an institutional context at the time.

Perhaps some of the most successful attempts at providing a permanent space for contemporary art on a self-financed basis are the spaces the Georgakopoulos brothers are involved in: the gallery cheapart launched in 1995; TAF – The Art Foundation in 2009; and the recently founded CAMP – Contemporary Art Meeting Point. Although cheapart is not taken seriously by many art professionals due to the occasionally decorative character of the work exhibited, it had a big share in opening the field of contemporary art to a broader public. While cheapart introduced a financial concept based on an annual commercial exhibition, demanding a fee from the participating artists in order to finance the rest of the programme, TAF is financially supported by the earnings of the café-bar located in the yard of the building.⁰⁹

Of course, the hopes that some of these organisations might have had of receiving government grants are unlikely to be fulfilled in the near future. And like in most of the world, for the commercial galleries it became apparent a few years ago that the easy times have passed. Most of them reduced their participations in international art fairs dramatically since 2008: galleries such as The Breeder are now taking part in LISTE 2012, while they had still been able to finance a booth at Art Basel two years ago. It is remarkable that the majority of them have not closed yet, especially since also the local market seems to have come almost to a standstill.

However, the current attack on private capital through the Greek economic and tax policies is severely endangering the vitality of the art scene. When art workers’ livelihood is deprived, sooner or later they will have to abandon their time-consuming dedication to the local art scene and maybe even emigrate to other countries with a steadier framework for working in the arts and better economic prospects.

So far, no mass closings of art spaces have taken place. Quite the contrary, new spaces, commercial and non-commercial alike, are opening and despite or precisely because of daily difficulties, there is still a desire for discussion and diversion. The emergence of a new spirit of cooperation and collective troubleshooting in order to overcome the challenging times is exciting, not only in the arts but in the society in general. How long this fragile solidarity will last and how resistant the local art scene turns out to be in a society with crumbling infrastructures, will presumably become apparent within the near future.