The scene must have been almost comical. She was remembered by Dimitris Daskalopoulos presenting together with his partner, Irini Paris, the book “Reflections of the collector”, which they signed in Greek as well as in English in the Tate Modern auditorium on October 10, a typical London day when the weather changed two or three times times. You see, the former head of BSE and Vivartia, Greece’s largest dairy-based food company, a passionate collector of contemporary art, had decided to install in the company’s boardroom an installation by Damien Hirst entitled “Lovers ( Spontaneous. Devoted. Compromised). They were four glass-fronted cabinets that had transparent jars of formaldehyde, in which floated the entrails of two cows.
At each meeting, the members of the Board of Directors they were anxious to arrive early to grab the chairs that had their backs turned to the work of the most successful artist of the 1990s. “And all this in a company that became famous for cow yogurts,” commented Irini Pari, who sweetly declared : “I fell in love with Dimitris and in our conversations I constantly asked him: why did you start the collection, what was your motivation, what did you want to achieve? I wanted to learn, to understand. This is how the book was born”, which beyond a story about the collection is a love story of two people, a dialogue about life and art. I listened to them from the front seats of the room and thought how nice it is to be able to speak with humor and freedom about something often as demonized as contemporary art, especially in Greece.
Of course, it was not a whim of Daskalopoulos to put Hearst’s installation there. It was his intention to surround himself with art so that he could converse with the works, look at them from the point of view of their timelessness and existential dimension, hear what they whisper (or scream) about the human condition. He did not see them as an investment, certainly not as a political position, even if that was the aim of their creator. Never as his property. And so he decided, when he felt that the conversation with them was complete, to donate 350 to four museums around the world so that they would be accessible to as many people as possible. Our own EMST, the Guggenheim, the Tate Galleries, and the MCA Chicago shared this precious endowment. Having followed the creation of Tate Modern since its building was a derelict power station, I felt a huge thrill to see Kaniaris’ works alongside those of Joseph Beuys in the exhibition organized to showcase the donation. And the name of a Greek collector as a benefactor to a museum who once wrote about Kounellis (thankfully not anymore) “Greek Born Italian Artist”.
In my eyes (but not only in theirs) Daskalopoulos embodies in the best way the modern Maikaian and sensitized citizen (of the world). He founded the independent research and analysis organization diaNEOSis with documented proposals for the modernization of the country, created NEON which made a decisive contribution to educating the Greek public about contemporary art, highlighting at the same time landmarks and places in Athens, strengthened EMST with projects and curatorial positions, reached the radiance of our country in the international artistic scene with the brilliant example of its beneficence. In his office, as he told us, he had put a work by Tom Friedman. It says ‘Ego’, but when you look closely the word disappears. In his case, he also disappears when you look at him from a distance.
2024-10-21 20:58:00