The Stendhal Syndrome

It means feeling happy when seeing art. You can read more about it here.
It happened to me.
Last Sunday morning hubby and I went to visit the M Flea Market, an event organized twice a year by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art.
They sell lots of vintage clothes, decorative items and books in very reasonable prices.

 I loved going there.

We had a look around.

I managed to buy a couple of books I really wanted (I found a shadow puppetry book for hubby too of course!) and a couple of beautiful decorative items.

The glass thing is a lemon reamer by Canadian artist Annie Michaud. An orange porcelain bowl with a silver rim and a terracota tile handpainted and with a secret message at the back! Really loved those items!

Then I thought of visiting one of the temporary exhibitions in the museum as there was no entrance fee on that day.

First we looked at the permanent exhibition which we have seen many a time!

A Spatharis shadow puppet figure is there too!

And my favourite Theophilos.

And lots more Contemporary Art pieces.

There were huge installations too!

And some strange ones!

Afterwards we moved to the temporary exhibition which is dedicated to pioneer Greek painters of the 20th century and the paintings belong to Th. Karapanagiotis Collection. This is the first public presentation of this important collection. The exhibition is curated by Professor of History of Art at the University of Thessaloniki, Antonis Kotidis who says that the artists represent two trends that prevailed in the Greek perception of contemporary art, Modernism and 'Tradition'.

(Info taken from the museum site)

In the exhibition you can see paintings by Nikolaos Lytras (1883-1927)

Nikolaos Othoneos (1877-1949)

 Michalis Economou (1888-1933)

Spiros Papaloukas (1892-1957).

Theophrastus Triantaphyllides (1881-1955),

Konstantinos Parthenis (1878-1967),

Constantine Maleas (1879-1928),

The exhibition will be on till the end of May 2015.
Leaving the exhibition we passed through a corridor and I adored the curtains ....

...which proved to be an artistic installation too!
I love art! In another life I would have studied arts!

Hommage a Teriade

We had a very tiring week but a very happy one too!
 We had so much to do....
...a dermatologist's check up, a fridge repair and a thorough kitchen cleaning afterwards( I should have taken photos;it was a lot of work!), a general cleaning, sessions of laundry and ironing,coffee with a friend, a test preparation,paying of bills, a visit to another friend and school of course.
(We played with stickers at school)

 (And we roleplayed Midsummer Night's Dream)

But in the evenings it is MY SPECIAL CREATIVE TIME! So I also managed to make one felted stone, do some cross stitch, finish one book "An Anthology of Chinese short stories"
for the So little sleeping and so much reading 2015 Reading Challenge.

and almost finished "Animal Farm", listened to four old cassettes one of which was
Sounds of Canterbury (remembering the wonderful days I spent there years ago),
watched The American (oh that Clooney!) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (It received nine Oscar nominations but I didn't much enjoy it on the flight to the States so I gave it a second chance and I really liked it this time!)
And this weekend following my 2015 motto "Every weekend is a holiday" and since my cousin was visiting from Athens we...
.... had a dinner with the family at home, had a dinner out,

enjoyed talking with my cousin during long relaxed breakfasts,we walked the sea front under a glorious sun and the city centre window shopping and chocolate shopping at sokolatreia,

we had coffee meeting more relatives and watching the sunset,

and we also went to the Telloglion Museum for the exhibition  Hommage a Teriade.

It was really a very good exhibition with many famous paintings and some of my favourite folk painter Theophilos Hatzimihail. There is also an exhibition of  watercolours by Kostas Maniatopoulos, director of the Teriade Museum-library on Lesvos Island which was interesting too. And there was also an exhibition of works of art made for a competition.
On the way out we loved the new digital fun the museum acquired. You could take a picture with one of your favourite paintings and send it directly to your e-mail! Here are some we took!
Hubby and I in front of Konstantinos Romanides' painting "Tarsanas"(=shipyard)

 And I immitating "The Ancient Florist" by Theophilos Hatzimihail.

So now you know why it was a good week! Sorry for the bad Instagram photos. First my mobile does not take good photos and secondly I don't enjoy using hubby's old camera very much!I need a smaller new camera or a new better mobile! (Hint!Hint!)

A week in Athens. (Part C)

This is the last part of my Athens report!
On the last day of our stay on the Saturday we started in the morning at the city centre.
So we took the metro and came to the Parliament square.

 We walked up Kydathenaion street in Plaka looking up to the Acropolis.

 It is filled with little souvenir shops. I loved the rainbow range of these dresses which are very cool and comfortable.

 There were lots of machine made embroideries with olive trees branches.

 And a variety of little pottery bowls which I have also seen in Turkey and I thought they were Turkish here too.

First we visited the Folk Museum in Plaka.
Both hubby and I wanted to visit this small museum, he for the shadow puppet figures (yes again) and me for the embroideries!
The top floor is filled with various traditional costumes from various parts of Greece like these from Skyros island.

 I loved spotting cross stitch on them.

 Going down to my great surprise I saw this huge framed cross stitch piece. This is the info about it.
" A cross stitch embroidery on canvas for wall decoration depicting Neo Faliron at the end of the 19th century, made by Myrsini Melahrinou of the Alex. Valsamakis family of Skopelos island in 1896,donated by her son Kostis Melahrinos in 1984."
Neo Faliron is a seafront area in Athens.

 On the next floor there was jewelry in silver for women, brides and priests.

Then on the next floor there was a room dedicated to Theophilos the folk painter I had told you about on my trip to Pelion Mountain. This is the painting of Erotokritos and Aretousa.

 And that's part of the room all of its walls were brought here from Mytilene island.

Next was a temporary exhibition of embroidery from Karpathos island.

There wasn't much on the shadow puppet theatre but still it was interesting.

And the entrance hall was filled with more embroidery from all around Greece.

 This one is cross stitch!

After the museum we strolled the flea market at Monastiraki . There was lots to see but I couldn't afford anything!

and we finished up with a souvlaki at Bairaktaris restaurant opposite the Monastiraki metro station and the Ceramics museum seen in the photo. Unfortunately we did not have time to visit that one, too.

In the afternoon we visited more relatives and some came to say good bye at my aunt's house where we were staying. I so enjoyed meeting them all!
Apart from excellent memories and experiences and meeting relatives and fellow shadow puppeteers I brought back from Athens these three things.
Some plants from my aunt's balcony to plant here.

 Four cards with Nikos Hatjikyriakos Gikas paintings and a ruler with shadow puppets.

 And some sea glass my aunt collected, one rare red piece among them! I didn't spend much, did I?

I will be away from blogland  for a while so I will be wishing you a happy warm sunny July!