“Kinyras, King and Hierophant”. Athena and Andreas Charalambides

The album “Kinyras, King and Hierophant” includes 12 lithography’s by Andreas Charalambides. The paintings are based on the poetical work of Athena Charalambides, which has the same name. The opus is based on the myth of Kinyras king of Pafos. Music is set on this poetical work from Anastasia Guy.

PREFACE

It has been my good fortune to become acquainted with Athina and Andreas Charalambides, the select artist couple from Paphos, during the time I was giving seminars on the subject of the literature of Cyprus, some of which were greatly assisted by Athina who was taking part in the choruses which were presenting Cypriot poetry set to music. I soon notices that her good looks and manners were resulting from the warmth of the quality of her husband’s love, the able and well-known painter Andreas Charalambides.

Last spring, I observed for a short time the production and the final form of the beautifully lithographed folio, a product of both husband and wife, which is now published in this present book. It is with pleasure that I have accepted the invitation Athina and Andreas to write the preface to this edition of the book.

Athina Charalambides recreations the fable of Galateia and Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor who fell in love with his sculpture Galateia, and begged the Gods to give it life, a request which was granted. The issue of their love was a daughter who was called Paphos. The beautiful Paphos, was married in a foreign land, and her son was called Kinyras, who in turn returned to Cyprus in order to come to know this mother’s birthplace. Charmed by the beauty of the place, he sets his fingers on his twelve corded lyre instrument and sings about his projected plans to build the town to which he will give his mother’s name, Paphos, and the temple we will erect for the Goddess of beauty, whose assistance he pleads whilst singing her praises. Kinyras dreams of Pythia, the Delphic oracle, who reveals to him that his dreams will come true in the Course of the coming centuries. He wakes up and commences his building of Paphos, with the blessing of the Gods, in the west side of felicitous Cyprus.

It is not clear whether the poem was written independently of an intention to accompany the corresponding paintings. My reply to this first questions: is poetry meant to accompany the paintings, or is painting meant to accompany the poetry? Word and painting: is this not primarily poetry? It is fact that he two go so well together, so much so, that it becomes an amazing perfection. Athina’s verses reflect with words the unique painting of the faces and colours of Andreas Charalambides. Athina’s poem sounds like a happy tale, brimming with love, light, beauty, joy and hope.

Many of the charms of the Cypriot land, like the herbs, the smells, the colours of nature are depicted by Athina’s quiet word. Everything is highlighted by respect for beauty, the beauty of the land, the people and the Gods. A lyrical way brings forward the Doric style that balances the abundance of adjectives with successive pictures. I don’t know how Andreas manages so well to paint his pictures through the words of poetry, succeeding for the word to accompany the picture, and the paintings to remain eloquent.

Verses that sound like a sweet and tender tale, full of adjectives and verbs in the present tense, as it is the usual style when reciting a myth, with perfumes and decorations which turn our memory back to indeterminate time, devotional and venerable pictures. I have observed once again that there are the ingredients, often used by today’s Cyprus’s poetesses.

The reader and observer has in his hand a truly marvelous literary and painted imprint, which I hope and pray with al my love to both contributors of the work, will have a fair journey.

Fotis Demetrakopoulos

Professor Athens University

WORD AND PICTURE:

A MARRIAGE THAT REVEALS HUMAN DESTINY

Where a tale mixes with history, there blossoms a light shining upon the mysteries of creation, like an existential necessity which is also aesthetic.

Necessities dictated by divine directives and interventions so that the dimension of reality may operate.

Then the inspiration that will nail down the myth and will revive the primordial model enters in order that will transform it into a manifestation of constant work for satisfaction of the humanistic element in the never ending demand of the spirit to impose itself on matter.

Through poetry and pictorial creation, as fundamental inspirations, an indestructible frame of procreation or visions of conscience is created which in turn builds the future support of historical progress of a place and of human society.

Athina Charambide’s verse and Andreas Charalambides with his palette invest in the toil of an ancient culture, born, consolidated and survived through the centuries, in their birthplace, Paphos.

Here is the start of the tale, its extension and its metamorphosis into history.

The two artists invest in this myth and in history by paint and verse. Therein lies the womb and the living substance of human existence. Therein lies the action of the creator who seeks for the borderland of the symbolic width of the myth and the aesthetic reality of history.

The past and future reunited, recreate the poetic relation of the supernatural with nature’s elements, moulds the ideal image, in order to serve art, as well as the aesthetic and poetic crystallization of the ideological superego in a harmonized navigation.

A co-existence of verse and paint, a marriage of verse and picture, union of inner and outer homogenous substance, a construction of poetical investment and pictorial peregrination in the area of a historical tradition, becomes the recitation of the tale mystic Kinyras.

The two artists who undertook such a task have moved within the confines of a lyrical environment that allows an aesthetic conversation, revealing an agonistic wish, a new passage to the world of human destiny and an exorbitant concentration to the duty of recording a truly ancient web of storytelling and a historical core.

They move to the edge of time, dig down to the sense of truth, decipher the symbols, concentrate tradition to the force of word and icon.

With an authoritative conviction, Athina and Andreas Charalambides, seal the historic journey of their birthplace.

Andreas Hadjithomas

Philologist – Art Critic