Dimitris Yeros at his studio

    Edward Lucie Smith at Dimitri Yeros's StudioWhen an artist works in two different genres, one naturally looks for the links between the two different kinds of art he makes. Dimitris Yeros is a very individual painter, with an instantly recognizable style. He is also an immensely skilled photographer, whose images of the nude have the flawless poise of Greek classical sculpture.

    One might expect, perhaps, that the paintings would resemble the photographs, but this is not the case. At times they seem like the product of two quite separate artistic personalities. There are, of course, things that they share. The chief of these is their affiliation to Surrealism. A nude young woman will have a torso wreathed in ivy, and her skin will be adorned with snails.

    An equally nude young man, seated behind a table, will studiously ignore the pea-hen perched at one corner. Not all the photographs are like this. Some are celebration of the athletic male body, with no additional accoutrements.

    Some are penetrating informal portraits of literary and artistic celebrities. These testify to the breadth and variety of Dimitris Yeros’s friendships.

    Where else but on his Internet web site would one find the American artist Jeff Koons cheek-by-jowl with the great Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez? A recent series, still in progress, consists of images that comment on the poems of Cavafy, often using contemporary celebrities as surrogates for the now-departed poet. Whatever their subject-matter, the photographs have complete technical control, and an unerringly extroverted sense of style. When one looks at Yeros’s paintings and at the prints related to them, the situation seems very different. The link to Surrealism is still there – in fact, it is even closer.

    But the paintings are introverted where the photographs are extroverted. They have nothing to do with the sensuality of the body, fascination with which plays such an important role in many of the photographs. The paintings are concise emblems – each is a summary of an emotional state. Certain basic images recur – birds, for instance, and fish – but these are reduced to their most basic, diagrammatic form. When human beings are portrayed, they too are diagrammatic. Yeros’s typical ‘running men’ remind us of the men in bowler hats that regularly appear in paintings by Magritte. They are never individuals, but cloned versions of a bourgeois everyman. Why does this contrast exist? Photography, as an artistic medium, is dependent on the external world. That is to say, the photographer has to find something – some body, some place, some incident in the external world – that he wants to portray. Of course, he can to some extent create these incidents.

    The snails and the pea-hen, included in two of Yeros’s photographs that I have just described, did not arrive of their own accord. He had to imagine their presence, find them, and then use them for his own purposes. Paintings do not require this process of discovery and compilation – or only sometimes, not invariably. Yeros’s paintings are snapshots of his own psychological condition – but to make them he does not need a camera. He only has to look into himself, with an unblinking gaze. This cool consideration of the self is certainly something that Cavafy would have sympathized with, though he offered his own results in such a different form.

    EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH

    Click on a photograph to enter the corresponding Gallery

    Portraits For A Definition Of The Nude The Theory Of The Nude Photos On Cavafy
    Portraits For A Definition
    Of The Nude
    Theory
    Of The Nude
    Photos
    On Cavafy
    Return To Arcadia Lesbos Diary Antiquities Without Luggage
    Return To Arcadia A Lesbos Diary Antiquities Whithout Luggage

    Shades Of Love - Dimitris Yeros

    Book "Shades Of Love" Out now in Greece (January 2011 for the rest of the world). Click on the image to see some excrepts from the book. Price: €60 + postage

    The book Shades of Love was in 2011 on the shortlist for the ten top books honored by the American Library Association.

    Lesbos Diary Frontpage Footer

    A Lesbos Diary

    Published by Throckmorton Fine Art, New York 2020

    Zoom Magazine - Dimitris Yeros

    Click here to see samples from the portfolio on Dimitris Yeros as they appeared in the 2011 July issue of ZOOM magazine.

    Eyemazing Magazine fp

    Click here to see samples from the portfolio on Dimitris Yeros as they appeared in the 2012 March issue of EYEMAZING magazine.

    Dimitris Yeros Photographing Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    Dimitris Yeros Photographing Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    Published by Kerber Photo Art

    © 2017 Dimitris Yeros