Paralympics of Eroticism

"Paralympics of Eroticism"

Oil on canvas

200 x 300 cm

2013

description to this picture:

Baron Pierre de Coubertin (French historian and educator,1863 - 1937),founder and head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC):

"faster---higher---stronger" (the actual phrase of the Olympic games in modern times and not "participation i.e. to be in it what counts";originally,crucial and pivotal were the fascination in peak and all-time performances were crucial and pivotal (even with the help of performance enhanging drugs).

The Olympics in ancient times were primarily a religious festivity which took place at Olympia every four years and was dedicated to the god Zeus (whose weapons/characteristics were thunder and lightning);the performances rendered were meant to demonstrate a sacrifice to him.Apart from those athletic competitions,artistic contests took place as well.

+ The order of columns in Greek temples i.e. their rate of proportion regarding the surface area is 6 : 13 (corresponding to the size of the tree individual athletes areas).

+ Apart from Phidias,there is also Polyklet who was one of the most distinguished sculptors during the High Classical period (480 - 450 B.C.) and who wrote his famous facial expressions of his figures are typically aloof and unemotional.Polyklet continued the persuit of the Greek sculptors of the ideal male body;the ideal body shape at the same time also being the most exact copy of nature.

He was possibly inspired by his faith in the ability of man and his spirit to perceive the nature of the Divine and that the gods were anthropomorphic creatures.He obviously strove to create a perfect image which might portray a god as well as and,at the same time,a human being.

+ Nike von Samothrake

perhaps by Pythokritos

around 180 B.C.

Marble;Height 245 cm

Paris,Louvre

The rotated pose,the swinging garment and the dramatic presentation of the famous Nike (Greek:"Victory") are finding their analogy at the Pergamon-Altar.The Personification of Victory,an original marble work (of around 2.45 m in height),can be iconographically traced back to certain forerunners such like the Nike of Paionios;they are similarly marked by a typically Classic style calmness and a Baroque style vitality.

In Nike of Samothrake is caught the moment of landing from flight up on high.The basis had been modeled after the shape of a bow of a ship.According to the statements of the excavators,the sculpture was standing in a water basin which was accompanied by a second water basin filled with rocks.This arrangement of Nike´s arrival on a boat is probably to be interpreted as a symbol for the "ship of state" as well as its journey over the wavy seas.This work,filled with effects,was accentuated further through its place of location: at the sanctuary high up on a cliff.

(High-performance) Sport activities are always compared with and,at the same time,evaluated;this basic attitude (and behaviour) is now,ever more so,being carried over in to more areas of life in gerneral.

Behind the mania of "having to rate each and everything" lies the urge ot man to evaluate his world - if there is no more God to do just that - and to (seemingly) regulate and control the course of his fate.

The pressure of having to perform and to commercialise has long since pushed the once rather private and certain cormer of eroticism far in to the world of public evaluating and judging.With the estranging and,at the same time,logical result that,in the end (result),man will become just that: a machine.Those supersex athletes mutate in to some puppets/marionettes,artificial and man-made hybrid creature,entirely dependent on technical appliances.

With this (obviously taboo-breaking/-loosening) sexualisation and pornographisation,this formerly for the human soul strengthening purpose in life (and,with that,the current divorce rates plus single households as well as the decrease in child births,) is being reduced to the technical/functional alienating idea that the ideal partner is a maschine i.e. man him/herself will become like that: we are all puppets on a string,artistic beings.Moreover,the marionette body inside the steril laboratory is a general metaphor symbolizing dependency and isolation of Man on and from technology,from modern medicine as well as from societal constraints.

At the same time,the puppets/marionettes can serveas the medium for one´s own imperfect Ego,as a possibility of the projection/mirroring on to an artistic (apparent) ideal.

The antic view of the world,of the eternal return/mirroring of the Divine in the human guise is transformed,in Late Capitalism,in to the public available of sexual allure so to increase financial capital.

During past epochs,fundamental basic needs for stability,orientation and identity found their stronghold and direction in man´s faith;today,man looks for this in the globalised publication and disclosure: since I do not receive love/value from the (now believed to the nonexistent) gods I shall have to deify myself (from attention-seeking to "celebrity" status).

This loss of the traditional "model of faith"(for example,Christendom with their prophets,saints/role models and moral ideals) is being compensated by,amongst others,sports and pornography: their (short lived) heroes/heroines describe/offer man new dramas and myths.

This hedonism,it being contamporary,egomaniacal and,for sale,can be taken on board and,at any time,ba abandoned much more easily and without obligation than traditional Faith.

Serenitas (lat.): calm equanimity with which the gods,here symbilised by three putti,look down from the Olymp and watch the warries of the mortals.However,the traditional idea of the gods as being guides is being inverted: the putti are here contributing to the general confusion.

Reference (of the frame) to the Greek theatre/tragedy/world of the gods: the certainty of the inevitable dependency of man in this world (be is run by "gods","fate",economic market,unpredictability in ine´s (private)life,health rishs or any other) is valid to this day: man cannot abscond from his/her fate.

The more so as,in this day and age,more and more people find semselves increasingly other-directed i.e. at the mercy of outside influences.