The Earth as Lover,
Not Just Mother.

Navine G. Dossos
Crete and Ireland, July and August 2023

This essay begins in a grove of palms trees that grow in a gorge close to the sea in Southern Crete.Here the sweet water and the salt water mix, and the air is full of moisture. I am camping with myfamily on a riverbank, and there are no other people around as the evening light fades and the sound ofthe cicadas starts to die down. But I am sure I can hear the distant sounds of a group of women on thesame riverbank, perhaps a few dozen metres from where I am sitting. There are older women washing, children playing, nursing mothers, and pregnant women all in a familial group, all enjoying the sweetwater and the shade of the Cretan Date palms, naked and natural among the Oleanders.

But there are no women here with me. I am alone with my child and partner, who are off exploring the rocks upstream. The vision is a distant echo of one shared with me by the artist Aristeidis Lappas manymonths ago of an encounter he had on this very riverbank. Coming across these women was thecoming to life of many ideas that he had been exploring about the role of the Mother Goddess andsocieties where women had parity but did not dominate, as made tangible in the scholarship of MarijaGimbutas, Carol P. Christ and Miriam Robbins-Dexter, in particular. It was the beginning of anongoing engagement with the feminine aspect inherent in all life—not limited to sex or gender alone.And it also situates Crete as a place of great importance in the formation of Lappas’ relationship tonature, to mythology and to himself as an artist.

Seven Days in New Crete is a solo presentation of new works by Lappas that takes its name from the1949 future-utopian novel by the poet and critic Robert Graves. The exhibition, like the book, exploreshow mythological personalities and personal mythologies intertwine in narrative forms that span thepast, present and future. In this novel, a poet is ‘transported’ into the future by female magicians and inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic world. They have chosen to return to ways of life closer to the Earth, rejecting technology and worshipping the Triple Goddess in the form of Maiden, Mother, and Crone.There is no poverty in New Crete, and war is no more than a one-day event of village football. Poetryand magic are at the heart of the religious and ritual life of this society. The text is a wondrous act ofworld-building, breathing life and narrative action into the non-fictional but still rather idiosyncraticwork Graves had been doing in The White Goddess: A Historical Grammer of Poetic Myth (1948).

In the same way that Graves uses the novel form to place himself as a character in an experientialversion of his critical writings, Lappas questions his own relationship is to Greek culture, politics andnotions of belonging through painting. Anyone familiar with the artist’s practice will know how deeplysteeped in Greek mythology his work has been and of his ongoing search for personal meaning in thesepowerful archetypes. Lappas invites us to join him in the lived experience of mythology—to get under the skin of the stories, to go in search of their psychological and sensual dimensions, and to recognise glimpses of oneself as the viewer in the desires, taboos, and tragedies of their subjects.

Asterion in Torment is a large sculpture of the Minotaur, a figure whose actual name was Asterion, meaning “star-like.” His existence as half man and half bull brought such shame and danger upon Cretethat he was kept shut up in a labyrinth. Having no other sustenance, he devoured the human beings whowere sent into the maze to satisfy his hunger. Lappas is part of a long (and very male) lineage ofpainters who have adopted the Minotaur as a symbol of masculinity, sexuality and insatiability, and we cannot look at this sculpture without thinking of Pablo Picasso’s many interpretations of the theme. But the difference in Lappas’ ungainly beast is that when we look into its screaming maw, we find no teeth.It is a baby beast, just born and abandoned. We see a being that, despite its size and reputation, is infact a lonely and desperate soul, lost in a labyrinth and to himself. He is crouched, trying to stand upand struggling to do so, not unlike the many newborn animals that lollop about on legs that have beenbent double in the womb for so long. The power of the sculpture is not in its brute strength but in itsoutsized and undeniable sense of being still vulnerable.

Lappas takes us earlier into this particular myth to Pasiphaë Giving Birth. This is an image we don’t encounter often in art or literature: we are faced with a woman labouring alone with her infant in abreech position, one of the hardest and most dangerous presentations. This is Asterion’s own mother, Pasiphaë, who, married to King Minos (with whom she very likely ruled in parity in this matricentricculture of Ancient Crete) became the focal point of Poseidon’s vengeance when the king refused tomake the annual sacrifice of a bull as that year’s animal was too beautiful to imagine killing. As punishment, Pasiphaë is made to feel an unquenchable desire for this bull and eventually, despite herself, mates with it and becomes pregnant with Asterion.

Lappas—like Graves in his interpretations of the Greek Myths—takes this moment to expose thecruelty and misogyny of this story that undermines the legacy of Pasiphaë by involving her in an act ofbestiality that brands her, rather than her power as a ruler or for her magic arts. That the 18th-century Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, is salaciously remembered in history as enjoying sex with horses rather than for leading her country into full participation in the cultural and political life of Europe shows us how women are sabotaged by gossip in order to remove their power. But in thispainting, we see Pasiphaë as a powerful and dignified woman, giving birth unaided to a child shewould have to abandon almost immediately. The painting shares something with Paula Rego’s Abortion Series, whose overtly confrontational works express her deep resentment of the authoritarian regime inwhich she grew up oppressed. Lappas’ painting comments on the role of mother as more than just apassive vessel in a story not about her. It is a strong and even unsettling image but one full ofcompassion. And at a time when Greece has over 50% of its births delivered by planned Caesareansection, by doctors who have detached from the ancient role of midwifing through delivery, thispainting celebrates the nature of birth as the act of passage that it is for every parent and child.

The figure of the part-human, part-animal continues in Owl Goddess (Passage), in which Lappas works with another deeply ancient image of the Sacred Feminine. The Owl is a bird often associated with thefemale aspect due to its elongated shape that is similar to the uterus. This Owl with her vulva exposed, is the Goddess as Taker and Regenerator of Life. She belongs to the darker lineage of images of theSacred Feminine that are not all flowers and fruit, babies and diaphanous gowns. She is in a sororitywith the Hindu Goddess Kali, and they hang out together at Da Derga’s hostel. Old Irish and Greektexts describe the act of anasyrma as a woman’s lifting up her skirt to boldly display her genitals inorder to frighten off an enemy. It is a magical and erotic act of exposure that might make us think againabout Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866) and wonder what that painting would havelooked at if the model had a head. Would she be looking at you with just a touch of menace? The Goddess Drawings reflect the incarnation of the Sacred Feminine through many different symbols,some of which might be familiar to us, like the moon, and others less so, like the wall or the grave. But what at first might appear to be a mix of unconnected image in fact are all things in the world thatmanifest the energy of the Goddess in her role as Protector and Provider.

These large figure paintings all share a common background that becomes the foreground and indeedthe focus of Forest Paintings (I-V). A Sacred Grove is a designated area of trees with a special religiousimportance, and they appear all over the world, from olives to banyans. These are often sites of magicaland ritual ceremonies and can be considered the temples of nature before the formalisation of coveredarchitectural space for such rites. Seven Days In New Crete takes place in just such an imagined groveand, very likely from the tonalities and the artist’s proclivity, in the half-light of a full moon. ForestPaintings (I-V) make the forest itself the subject, with all its complexity, interconnectedness anddensity. We are absorbed into the heady mix of flowers, fruit, leaves and branches that envelop us, reminding us of the abundance of nature when she is cared for.

Trees have always been part of mythology, often representing the notion of permeability andtransformation. Trees contain stories that stand outside the realm of human exceptionalism. And—toparaphrase Richard Powers, author of The Overstory—their stories are warnings to call us back intokinship. These paintings are here to remind us that our destinies, our bodies and our souls arecontingent on and intertwined with nature. These are perhaps Lappas’ most strikingly poignant images, given their creation over the very weeks and months that Greece is experiencing major forest fires aswell as ever-decreasing governmental support for experienced and thoughtful forms of protection ofthese wild places. While many have chosen to show images of destruction as a means of shocking usinto caring for these wooded landscapes, these paintings celebrate the very essence of theseecosystems, their bounty, ability to communicate, heal and survive. And what better way to encouragedeep ecology than to present not just the grief but also the joy and love of Mother Nature herself?

The Gift of Shamhat is a crossover between cultural myths, where Lappas moves from the Hellenisticto the Babylonian world, which is further explored in many of his most recent paintings. We encounterthe bull again, so familiar a figure in his work on the Minotaur, but here a placid and gentle animalunder the caring hand of a female figure holding fruit. This is not Pasiphaë under an unwanted spell butShamhat, a fascinating and under-developed character from the epic poem of Gilgamesh, whose role isto facilitate another kind of birthing: that of self-knowledge through erotic encounter.

In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest and richest poems of all time, we meet oneof the first epic heroes of fables (after whom the poem is named) but also one of the first sidekicks orsupporting characters in his beloved friend Enkidu. Like the Minotaur, Enkidu represents a wild energythat requires taming and the ‘prostitute’ Shamhat (“The Voluptuous One”) is sent from the city into thewild to 'civilise' him: "She unclutched her bosom, exposed her sex, and he took in her voluptuousness."

Shamhat is known as a harimtu in Sumerian, and scholars such as Julia A. Assante have done importantwork undoing the damage done by Herodotus, who asserted, ‘The foulest Babylonian custom is thatwhich compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite [Ishtar] and have intercoursewith some stranger at least once in her life.’ There is no historical evidence of this custom and manynow agree that it can be put down to Greek propaganda against their Eastern neighbours, via a narrativethat once again makes women the receptacle for societal shaming.

Terms for certain social and clerical classes of women in Mesopotamia were also mistranslated as “prostitute.” The harimtu was not a prostitute but a woman who had chosen not to marry and to existoutside of the patriarchal family structure, which was considered a completely normal choice for awoman to make in her life. In the poem, Shamhat is there to initiate a series of events that eventuallylead to Endiku’s death, but as Assante suggests, it is conceivable that she was chosen for this role notbecause she was a prostitute but because she was the most beautiful single woman around and wouldnot fail to arouse him. Involving any woman other than a harimtu (such as a married woman or a man's daughter) would have been inconceivably complex in the time of the writing of Gilgamesh.

Healing Through Love is a series of erotic scenes—glimpses into the six days and seven nights sharedby Shamhat and Enkidu, as the temple priestess uses her training as an Iniatrix in sex as a form ofhigher-order spiritual engagement. But like many ancient texts that arrive to us only in fragments, whathappens in those six days and seven nights in Gilgamesh is not known. Here Lappas inhabits the blankpage left by historical loss and imagines this sacred alchemical journey as Enkidu transforms frombeast to tragic companion worthy of Gilgamesh. But Shamhat is not a conduit or vessel here, she is anenabler and actor of power, and without the knowledge that she imparts, this pivotal transformation cannot happen. And as a viewer of thus cycle of paintings, we experience not just the sex act but alsothe tenderness, the knowing of another person, the sharing and the love that is fundamental to this weekof sexual education. Shamhat’s sexuality is not just about being unbounded and carefree but perhaps most importantly also a form of nuturing that extends to her grooming, clothing and feeding of Enkidu during their time together.

Through this process of sex as transformation, Enkidu grows detached from the animal world andbecomes human and thus able to enter the city of Uruk. There he meets Gilgamesh, and Enkidubecomes his dearest friend and adjunct in the dubious adventures that follow. The painting Wrestlerscan also be read through this narrative of the poem, in which their first encounter was a bout ofwrestling that ended in a tie and led to their mutual respect and kinship. The painting homes in on thedeep love between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, which, as in many stories that explore the love betweenmen, is a grey area as to what kind of love that might be—brotherly, platonic, romantic or evenspiritual. Like the poems by the 13th century Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi about his love for his lost friendShams, it is in the tragic loss of this connection and the death of his beloved Enkidu that brings aboutGilgamesh’s quest for immortality.

Mound of Flowers is in the shape of a human face as the fertile earth from which sumptuous flowersspring. We experience it as something we look down upon, as it lies horizontal instead of the usualvertical axis of meeting a face. It is the incarnation of Earth as Lover, or Earth as Resting Place. We meet it in the same way that we come upon a grave, where a body lies in the earth. This sculpture is keyed to the cycle of life and death that mythology speaks of: the earth is matter that has transmuted from one living form—through death—and become another matrix in which new life might grow.

In Mound of Flowers, we are reminded of the intimacy between sex and death, that all life is dependentupon death and the transformation of matter from one type of living, to the means of growth ofsomething that follows it. From earth we are made and to earth we shall return. We also understandthis in Gilgamesh when Enkidu’s death triggers the hero’s journey and his own eventual spiritualtransformation. Something beautiful is able to grow out of loss when, as the environmental activist andBuddhist scholar Joanna Macy tells us, we honour our pain, see with new eyes and go forth.

All matter is alive and part of a perpetual cycle of reintegration. And mythology is one of the placeswhere this knowledge is perpetuated, even if we have lost touch with its deeper connections to thecycles of the Earth. Perhaps what Lappas is trying to speak to is the loss of connection we as humanshave suffered as we distance ourselves from nature and her cycles of birth, life, death and regeneration.As we become ever more atomised and embroiled in the continuous paroxysm of self that focuses onpower and control over our pleasure and pain.

We understand that Lappas himself is on this journey back to kinship with something that has roots andleaves and solidarity with all life. They exude a feminine essence that he has found existing in theworld around him but also crucially in himself. The work weaves scenes from mythology with scenesfrom his own life and we aren’t always sure what we are being faced with – a fiction or a glimpse ofautobiography. We feel keenly, however, that he is putting something of himself on the line in these new paintings, facing the fear of removing the archetypal/mythological masks we all find ourselves wearing. He is finally letting himself be seen. And as viewers of his work, we are being asked to shareand participate in his search for selfhood through the form, colour and light that spill out of paintingsthat speak to deep parts of us that perhaps we need to connect with in ourselves too.

Close

Aristeidis Lappas

Works

Texts

Archive

About

Contact