ANCHORITES AND PIRATES

An almost surreal depiction of the Aegean island of Greater Kalogero, lying roughly halfway between Andros and Chios, from the Isolario of Benedetto Bordone (1528). An utterly barren, virtually sheer volcanic rock with a total surface of just over an acre, Kalogero was the site of an anchorite monastery from about the 12th to the 17th centuries. The monks were largely dependent on passing ships for the means of sustenance, reaching them with a small boat which could be launched from up high by means of a counterbalanced crane. The line between entrepreneurial activity and brigandage being notoriously blurred in these waters, the monks are also believed to have regularly provided safe storage facilities for the local pirates.

Libro di Benedetto Bordone. Nel qual si ragiona de tutte l'isole del mondo, con li lor nomi antichi & moderni, historie, fauole, & modi del loro uiuere, & in qual parte del mare stanno, & in qual parallelo & clima giacciono. 

"VERY WELL, ALONE"

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx

FROM THE GLORY DAYS OF GREEK HIGH KITSCH

Two press photographs from the glorious summer days of Greek High Kitsch, the Colonels' Dictatorship of 1967-1974. Above, George Papadopoulos, junta leader now in the role of Prime Minister, visits a military unit accompanied by a phalanx of uniformed officers on the occasion of Easter Sunday (probably in 1968). In honour of the day, they are passing between two halves of a red easter egg painted with the message Χριστός Ανέστη, "Christ is risen". The looked-for audience response would have been to ponder the colonel's slogan, "Greece is risen", but the association with baby chickens is irresistible.

The lower photograph illustrates what was perhaps one of the high points of that profoundly tacky annual performance in Athens Stadium, the Celebration of Greek Military Virtue. An improbable number (fifteen or more) of the despised ESA military police cling to one another on a motorcycle, the topmost man waving a Greek flag disfigured by the dictatorship's soldier-and-pinioned-phoenix symbol. It is probably safe to assume that none of those involved saw anything remotely homoerotic in this and similar early works of performance art by the junta.