The Hour of the Magician

In May 2017, an article, published by the American magazine The Brooklyn Rail, argued that The Enigma of the Hour, painted by Giorgio de Chirico in 1910, can be considered the very first conceptual artwork in the history of art. According to Paolo Baldacci, de Chirico’s ambition was to ‘translate’ a thought or philosophical concept into artistic forms, and he succeeded in doing so before Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.

There is no doubt that Ilias Papailiakis’ work derives from the painting The Enigma of the Hour. If de Chirico pioneered because he understood that painting is a system by which the artist projects concepts, and not just emotions, Papailiakis can be proud that he creates work-systems that are studies of balance, size, and quantity.

The exhibition The Hour of the Magician, which is held at the Castle of Naxos, includes new works through which Papailiakis tests the possibilities of his new idiom of his painting. By studying the range of this idiom, the artist enters a more spiritual state in a space that is more extroverted and has to do with the game. The relationship of the game and the self with the animal, companionship, co-existence and consent, are some of the concepts that the painter tries to attribute to his new works.

Leaving aside the eroticism and the element of rupture that it contains, Papailiakis turns to a theme with biblical references. His new works essentially constitute an ontology, which is developed in more detail in the next section he has started working on. The exhibition in Naxos is important for two main reasons: first, because it marks the transition to a new scale, since here the artist presents the largest painting he has painted to date. With the Toy Factory (2021) Papailiakis – who is a master of the technical part of painting – solves the problem of large scale, size. As the artist comments: “How can I make an oil painting myself, without helpers, without anyone else touching it? What is my limit in this regard? And this project is a good step for what I consider to be my limit. This painting is 4×3.5m. Time will tell”. The title of the work balances the biblical reference “I began to make the fifth day of creation where God creates the fish and birds. But because all this is biblical – I’m in the biblical circle – I was seeking to find a title that would take me out of this feeling, of this area or meaning” says Papailiakis.

The Toy Factory  is accompanied by six smaller artworks, measuring 2x2m. each. Their titles are not captured a posteriori but arise while the artist is working on the works: The Sunset at the Palace; Boy with a Balloon reads a Book; Life in the Countryside; The Hour of the Sun; The Hour of the Magician; and The Aquarium. “What I really like about these works and which I clarify”, adds Papailiakis, “is a way to be descriptive in the title and general in the image. That is, how can one create an image that is much wider than the title suggests? I don’t want there to be a coincidence of the title and the image. I would like it to be in a dialogue”.

In the work that gives the title to the exhibition, the artist paints a warrior accompanied by his ‘ship’, a water carpet that could also be a fish or a boat. Papailiakis has captured the warrior in a moment of movement while he leans downwards. As he himself reveals, in this painting there is the influence of the sculptor Alexander Calder, that is, a game with the balances, something which interests him a lot in this series of works. On the other hand, Boy with a Balloon reads a Book is very close to Picasso’s quests in the painting The Three Dancers. In each work of this section, there is the relationship of the figure with objects. And in each work, there is always a horizon depicted in different ways. “It’s a very fundamental part of this work. In other words, all this goes somewhere because horizon means soil/ground. Watery, earthy, I don’t know, but soil/ground,” says the artist. Indicatively, in The Aquarium, which refers to Noah’s Ark, the figures observing the cetacean (?) above their heads they step on such a horizon-soil/ground.

The exhibition in Naxos is also important for another reason: the artist presents the sculpture Six Studies on the Cycladic Solid, which may have been realized in 2022 but he has been working on it for about 25 years. The project consists of two long narrow wooden tables on which six 40x30x30cm glass boxes are placed. In essence, with this sculpture, Papailiakis captures in three dimensions the analogical system with which he works his paintings. Each box, which has the same dimensions but different partitions and markings, are versions of this system. For the artist-creator of these images, system means “something in relation to something else. A height relative to a width. A depth relative to a nearby point. This is a system in my head”. The transparency and fragility of the glass boxes seem to be part of this system. Everything hangs on a thread, on a delicate balance. Closer to the work of a conceptual artist rather than a painter, the Six Studies on the Cycladic Solid confirm the relationship of The Hour of the Magician with The Enigma of the Hour. “These paintings are not made if you are not conceptual, if you have not understood the two-dimensional space, the conceptual dimension of the painting space, of the two dimensions. The horizontal and vertical. These works are composition. That is, they come from the analysis. And I have the pleasure of being able to compose. Because I could only stick to the analysis”, states emphatically the artist.

On the other hand, Papailiakis’ sculpture is connected to the Cycladic figurines that he had the opportunity to study – and better understand – at the Archaeological Museum of Naxos. “I think these Cycladic ones I’m looking at are also a system of about depths, widths and heights. And not just the figures. The big shock is the built islet of Daskalio next to Keros. Its scale, its steps. Because they left not only figures, but also a settlement. And the settlement is exactly like the figures, that is, again it is a development that concerned me a lot. In Naxos I saw very carefully the Cyclades in the museum. I hadn’t seen them in Athens. I couldn’t see them. I don’t think the museums of Athens, the Cycladic and the Archaeological are to blame, but I couldn’t feel them. In Naxos, I don’t know, was it the light? The wind blowing from the open windows? That I saw so much together, stacked, dusty, turned upside down? It also played a role that I saw a lot lying down. Here they usually display them upright”.

The Hour of the Magician reveals the system of an artist who is ready to take on the big scale. The images he presents at the Castle of Naxos are original and -dare we say- new. “They are original, I don’t know if they are new”, Papailiakis is quick to clarify. “But being original is not of little importance. New means durable, it means things that will be tested when we are gone”. For the time being, let us be content with the contemplative images that we have in front of us.

Christoforos Marinos

Art historian and curator

Translated by Rena Sacha