At the address 45 Agion Asomaton Street, in Psyrri, Athens, there is a restored neoclassical building that has something strange about it..

On the balcony of the first floor are two large, all-white Caryatids with their arms almost folded. The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most important of the 20th century, was impressed and captured them in black and white film in 1953, while the great painter Giannis Tsarouchis created two paintings with the central theme being this building. It also entered the novels of writers, became the backdrop for theatrical scenes and, of course, the topic for dozens of discussions of why they were placed there.

The urban legend of the capital even wants that the first owner of the property mourned the death of his two daughters, and to relieve his distress, asked for the placement of the statues on the balcony - although this is not confirmed. So what happens to the house on Agion Asomaton Street?

Who made them ?

The elegant house was built in the late 19th century, but we do not have an exact date. It is a typical example of Athenian neoclassicism and vernacular architecture of the capital. The Caryatids were created by the Aeginian sculptor Ioannis Karakatsanis (1857 - 1906), who became famous for his works depicting figures of the 1821 revolution. He is the one who created, among others, the statue of Athanasios Diakos in the city of Lamia and Ioannis Kapos on the height of the holy temple of Panagitsa, in Aegina.

The solution of the riddle - Who are depicted

The models after which the two caryatids were created are none other than the wife of the sculptor Xanthi and her sister Evdokia. The owner of the house was Karakatsanis himself, who lived there with his family. When he died, his family decided to sell the house. Thus was born the urban myth about the loss of the two girls, which their father could not cope with, so he turned to an artist to create their statues. A barber is responsible for this story.

The story of the barber

A barber named Panagiotis Kritikakos had his barber shop on the ground floor of the mansion. To attract people, he made up the fairy tale in his head. Soon he started passing it on to his customers. From time to time, the way the two girls died changed, but the core of the story remained the same and spread over the years. The truth, however, is that architect Karakatsani's wife, Xanthi, died in 1949 and her sister Eudoxia died a year later, after both had children and grandchildren. However, where the barbershop used to be, the Greek Mills Institute is now housed, while the offices of the Greek Olympics Winners Association are located on the upper floor. The entire building was expropriated by the Ministry of Culture in 1973 for archeological purposes, but was eventually listed in 1989 and was in danger of collapse until it was renovated ten years later.

Bresson's "Click" from 1953, which went around the world

From the beginning, the Caryatids on the balcony of Asomaton Street not only attracted the eyes of passers-by who looked, stood or waited to observe for a while, but also inspired a number of artists. In the distant year 1953, the internationally renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was in the Greek capital, considered one of the "fathers" of photojournalism and whose work has received worldwide recognition. He was 45 years old at the time. The black and white photo he took is excellent because it has a strong symbolism. He has captured the house with the two Caryatids at the moment when just below, on the street, two old women dressed in black pass by. The juxtaposition of the vitality of the young women with old age. As he puts it, "I suddenly realize that photographs can achieve eternity through the moment."

Kurtovic: This photo is the manifesto of mass tourism

The author Demosthenes Kurtovic has dealt with this photograph in detail in his book "Essays on photographs" (Opera publications, 1996). He states that any symbolic photograph, any photograph taken to project an idea, is essentially propagandistic. "The well-known photograph taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in Metaxourgio in 1953 is symbolic, that is, propagandistic. It is based solely on an ideological finding: the parallel between the plaster Caryatids and the two elderly Greek women passing. But what idea does the photograph symbolize? The answer seems simple and pleasant. The past is not dead. The simple austerity, the archetypal quality of the figures in ancient classical art is repeated in the form and movement of the two modern Greek women. The tradition continues. "In Greece today, you can see antiquity walking the streets alive."

He continues: "But are things as simple as the fans of this photograph think (for it seems that their admiration is a function of its optimistic interpretation)? Why do the two passersby embody the ancient beauty of the Caryatids? The Caryatids are young and slender - the two women in the photo are old and have thick, amorphous bodies. Why do two such figures conform to the ancient or ideal of beauty?

If we are guided by this objection, the parallel between the two plaster casts and the two living figures emphasizes not so much a similarity as a contrast. The present is a sad echo of the past. Beauty ended in ugliness, just as youth ends in old age. The Greece of today is the degenerate face of ancient Greece. This second interpretation, though more melancholy, is definitely more reasonable. But was Cartier-Bresson about to make such a trite remark? Of course, a great artist of photography is not necessarily an innovative thinker. However, we feel that we would be doing the famous photographer an injustice if we took such a narrow view of his inspiration. And the effect of this photograph seems to confirm this feeling of ours".

Why was the "click" so interesting

"So let's try to move forward," Kurtovic said. The correspondence between the two statues and the two women is true. It is the direct subject of the photograph. But what makes it so interesting? One can find infinite correspondences between inanimate objects and human figures without such similarities being mere whims of chance or paradoxical coincidences that mean nothing. Here, however, it is clear that something more is involved.

Let's look at the two women again, this time in a slightly different way. Let's see them not so much in relation to the two statues, but to the rest, to their "earthly" surroundings: the old barbershop, the dilapidated sidewalk slabs, the wall with the old plaster, the poor courtyard that can be seen from the open door.

What is it that dominates here? Everyday life and wear and tear. The two women walking by are not just two old women. They are part of an old, worn and anonymous world, a world that stands in stark contrast to the eternal youth, beauty and glory of the two Caryatids. We now begin to suspect the truth. The real subject of the photograph is neither duration nor decay, but demise. The world of the two modern Greek women is the imperfect image of a model, an idea. It derives its substance only from that idea and is interesting only insofar as it reflects it. If we remove the two statues from the photograph, what remains ceases to attract our gaze, ceases to exist as a photographic subject".

He concludes by saying that "the Platonism of this photograph is ominous. Not only because it seems to tell us that reality is a dull reflection of the imagination, thus nullifying the specificity of photography (reality transcends the imagination of the artist). But also because it highlights the essence of graphism ", a thing is only beautiful, moving, interesting, if it reminds us of something else that is generally recognized as beautiful, moving, interesting. Graphism, which looks for superficial similarities between the present and the past, offers the average person a transitory illusion of security and meaning in a world that seems as if it did not exist yesterday. It subjugates the modern to the classic, the new image to the old memory, just as some painters "paint" photographs to make them easier to sell.

Henri Cartier-Bresson 's 1953 photo is the ideological manifesto of mass tourism ".

Giannis Tsarouchis painted two paintings on the theme of neoclassical

The source of inspiration would be the property at Asomaton Street for the painter Giannis Tsarouchis, who created the painting entitled "The House with the Caryatids" there in 1952, which is now part of a private collection in London. Like Bresson a year earlier, capturing two human figures walking in the photograph, Tsarouchis placed a series of faces on his panel: a mother holding her baby in her arms, a young man in a white T-shirt, a sailor, another man, and a grandmother lovingly holding her granddaughter.

About twenty years later, in 1971, Giannis Tsarouchis created a second painting with this house and gave the work the neutral title "House in Agion Asomaton" (which is now also in a private collection). This time, although the classical past is married with the vernacular element, there are no people in the street in front of the petit bourgeois neoclassicism. The balcony with the Caryatids also dominates the backdrop created by the artist for the play "Ecclesiastes'' by Aristophanes, which was staged on the Lycabettus Theater in 1988.

Finally, the writer Costas Tachtsis included the house with the Caryatids in the fiction of the most famous work "The Third Wreath", published in 1962, as it was the house of the mythical Hecuba. Her father in the short story had rented the house and was a practical archeologist who wanted to bridge the gap that separated ancient Greece from the new.

What were the Caryatids?

In the literal sense, the Caryatids were in ancient times the daughters of Caryes, a town near Sparta built on the western slopes of Mount Parnon at an altitude of 950 meters. By "daughter" is not meant the female child of a parent, but a particular type of statue of the archaic period with a female form (the corresponding male form, of which most have probably heard, is called "kouros").

Sculptures representing a daughter (a variant of which is the Caryatid ) were used to support buildings, i.e. we would say they were a column form in the art of architecture. They were usually attached to facades, gates, cornices, friezes and roofs. Their torso was straight and slender, while the legs either remained closed side by side or one of them appeared a little further forward. The hands are usually sideways and downward, while their surfaces were painted with bright colors, which, however, disappeared over the years.

Source: newsbeast