October 22, 2010 - January 15, 2011

The long-lasting relationship of Pavlos Mylonas with the Holly Mountain began in 1954, after his return from the USA, and remained vigorous and restless till his death, in 2005. He was writing on the same note in “Zygos”: “The monks are my friends, the great ones, those from the cells and the hermits; friends of mine also are the huge buildings and smallest hard-to-locate hermitages.

The forests, the trees, the rocks, the beaches are my friends. Every stone of every pavement […] knows me and greets me. “Close friends”, the mystical atmosphere of the Katholikon, the formalism of the formal reception room, the approachability of the Refectory. “Enthusiastic friends” the Paintings, the Architecture, the Manuscripts and generally each and every form of object and life that were caught by my antennas, in that Greek-Byzantine, Eastern-Romaic world that holds against death and time the most sacred and most beautiful part of the Medieval Hellenism”.

 

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During the first two years Pavlos Mylonas was going around alone “with his camera as a companion”, while in the third year he had devised a "study plan" and began to run with the band and record everything in small ‘trivial’ notebooks (fortunately preserved in the Archives of Modern Architecture). During this period he discovered the value of old despised engravings (18th -19th century) and the designs of Barsky (1744) to arrive soon upon the almost inaccessible archives of the Soviet Union where it was kept the material of Uspenskij and Sevastianov, that they first impressed, in the mid-19th century, the architecture of Mount Athos with scientific claims.
Later he started to have assistants on Athos and in the office, “design and order the countless documents”, a business extremely difficult and costly. “Unfortunately for my pocket, and fortunately for my soul, I started without barely thinking about it, a superhuman enterprise, that in some other place would be under the care of the government”, he writes with a dose of humor soaked with a stoic mood, but not without some bitterness. Part of the exorbitant costs had been covered in only two cases from the Psycha Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

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Finally, the laborious relation of Pavlos Mylonas with the place matured through the numerous visits and the in situ studies made by him and by groups of new partners, many of whom are currently recognized members of the Greek scientific and artistic community. The result was the creation of an impressive archive about Athos which completeness exceeds by far the simple architectural registration, as the rich material accumulated over five decades also emerges an anthropological dimension of the place as well.
As already shown, the interests of Pavlos Mylonas at Mt. Athos included everything, literally and without exception, and this exhibition aims to show some of the sides of that multilateralism, bringing to light design and photographic material, unpublished in its biggest part.The first part of the exhibition is dedicated to the architectural impressions and notes of Bishop Porphiri Uspenskij and General Piotr Sevastianov, material gathered by Pavlos Mylonas during his difficult investigations in the archives and libraries of the Soviet Union, Moscow and St Petersburg.
The parts of the exhibition that are dedicated to the work of Pavlos Mylonas include samples from the full range of his architectural work related to the research and the written documentation of the monumental treasure of Mount Athos, from the preparatory phases to the finished form of architectural drawings, ready for publication. Emphasis is given to unpublished material (design and photos) from the cloisters and hermitages, which are still the most unknown side of Mount Athos. Finally, a section of the exhibition is dedicated to the aerial photography, which took place thanks to the ingenuity and passion of Pavlos Mylonas, who’s highlighted here as an formidable master of the art of photography.
Besides highlighting the wealth of Mount Athos architecture and the work of the Architect, that is the self-evident goal, we want to believe that the exhibition will give inspiration to the students of the Polytechnic School and to the new generations of architects and civil engineers, but also will trigger the interest of non-specialist audience.      

Phaedon Chatziantoniou

 

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Pavlos Mylonas
Born in Athens in 1915, Pavlo Mylonas studied civil engineer and architect at the National Technical University and conducted postgraduate studies at Columbia University in New York for the period 1945-1949. In 1956 he obtained his professorship in the department of Rythmology in the School of Fine Arts where he remained until 1982. In 1987 he was awarded the Medal of Arts and Letters Academy of Athens, member of which he was elected in 1997.
Alongside his academic career he kept a private consultancy. Samples of his work are important buildings like: the Military Club of Thessaloniki, the Hotel Mont Parnes, the German School, etc. During 1966-1973, he restored the burnt wing of Vatopediou Monastery, while from 1976 until 1984 he was responsible for the restoration of the Church of Resurrection and the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
In the research about the Holy Mount Pavlos Mylonas spent much of his energy since 1954, when he began systematically to study the topography, architecture and daily life of the monks. The monumental edition of the German Archaeological Institute (2000), with architectural drawings and photographic documentation of the twenty monasteries on Mount Athos, gives only a faint idea of the achievement of Pavlos Mylonas on the peninsula of Athos. The main body of his valuable archive is currently stored in the Benaki Museum, while the artistic part of the archive is stored at the Academy of Athens.

 

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The difficult Athos of Pavlos Milonas
In the triple issue of the monumental four languages version of the German Archaeological Institute of Berlin entitled "Atlas of Athos” (Wasmut, 2000), Pavlos Milonas gathered the essence of his long-lasting Athonic adventure that started in 1954 and lasted until his death in 2005. The panorama of the architecture of the twenty monasteries on Mount Athos is a priceless gift, a leading benchmark from now on for all future researchers. Of course, those who knew the Holy Mount in the late decades of the last century it is almost incomprehensible how Milonas and his colleagues were able to carry out a project of this size and of such quality, under conditions that could hardly be worse.
Browsing through the issues of "Atlas", unwrapping the signs with the architectural designs, we admire the perfection of production and accuracy of performance, but the special weight of traveling there and the smell of adventure still escape us. The doggedness of the "purveyor" with which Milonas has vaccinated his colleagues, the ascetic dedication of this cosmopolitan in the deep understanding of Athos’ monastic community as a carrier of the Byzantine and folk tradition, recognizable face that is one also of the special Greek (anti)modernism, are elements not easily visible in the "Atlas".
We will need to sink to the ocean of material of his archive to understand that as he notes and records the multiple rhythms of the architecture of the large monasteries, Milonas, so with the same respect hugs the topography of the strict ascetic areas, with the same surgical precision he dissects even the most insignificant evidence of human presence in the Holy Mount’s desert, where the chains nailed on horrific cliffs are leading him, the difficult paths, the toothless stone pavements.
And Pavlos Milonas cannot but remind us here of Dimitris Pikionis (whom was a scholar), who wrote in 1935 for the blessing that comes as the footsteps of a man count the lonely path and the landscapes of the world unfold in front of his eyes of awe: “That deserted path is infinitely greater than the avenues of the big cities. Because in its every aspect, with its curves, with the infinite variations of the perspective of the space that shows, teaches us the divine essence of individuality that’s submitted in the harmony All”. And even those temporal lines written in 1927 for the folk art: “Our epoch is so poor that it is appropriate to stoop and pick up the last little crumbs on which the Form lives”, where “Form is the world - young in the eyes of the protoplast”.
Views of the difficult Mount Athos of Pavlos Milonas brings to light the part of the exhibition devoted to him, going back beyond the published material of the “Atlas of Athos”, that is now accessible to anyone interested in it. The organizers' intention was twofold: First, to show material of the most unknown and inaccessible areas of the Athos peninsula, material that although in most cases reached the stage of publication, however, not fortunate enough to be gathered in issues as continuation of "Atlas" as was the intention of Pavlos Milonas. And secondly, to bring the visitor inside the mind and the studio of the architect and to show the stages of passionate research and drawing up that consist the obsessive conditions for the inspired recording of a monument.

 

The Sevastianov mission
After four recognition trips to Mount Athos, Piotr Ivanovich Sevastianov returned in 1859, accompanied by an eight-member group of Russian, French, Bulgarian and Greek partners, to locate and capture sites, buildings, murals, icons, manuscripts and other objects in within the framework of a broad scientific research, but also to enrich his private collection of historic and artistic treasures. The mission was assisted by the knowledge and experience of eminent Russians who were already on Mount Athos, such as Porphyry Uspenskij , who was leading his second period of residence in the peninsula of Mount Athos, or the Russian archimandrite Antonin Kapoustin, who when Sevastianov arrived, was in the scete of Saint Andrew, known as the Saray.
 “The mission came to the scete having forty boxes of luggage”, Kapoustin noted impressed, completing the picture with exclamation comments on the adequacy of equipment was the latest technology of the era: “They made sketches, taking pictures, and comprised topographical and architectural plans [...] they had with them books and magazines, stereoscopes, microscopes, cameras, electric telegraph, hand-operated printing machine, lithography material ... “
Memorandum presented by Sevastianov to Princess Mary, sister of Tsar Alexander II (the imperial family were among the main contributors to the mission), shows that the group acquired 5471 copies and photographs, a number which does not include the architectural drawings. Of course, the memorandum makes no reference to icons and other artifacts from Mount Athos, which formed part of Sevastianov’s personal collection to be found today at the Hermitage and other museums in Russia (icons of the Pantocrator monastery of the 14th century, bemadoors from a cell in Karyes from the 16th century, etc.)
Sevastianov, like Uspenskij, was an avid collector, but compared to him, he gives the impression that had grown more in the spirit of scientific researchers, which, at least on the architectural themes of his archive, becomes obvious when we see the high quality color sections of Protaton or the lists of designs of the marble parts of the Byzantine iconostasis from the katholicon of Chilandari monastery.
In this exhibition, the Hall of Sevastianov mission includes both architectural issues completed as designs and pages from working notebooks with sketches and comments from in situ stadies. The selected material is organized into the following sections: a) pages from notebooks, b) plans and elevations of the church of Great Lavra, c) sections and perspective drawings of the temple of Protaton in Karyes d) details of stone reliefs from the Catholic of Chilandari, e) monasteries’ components.

 

Uspenskij’s travels to Mount Athos
The result of a visit that the professor of the University of St Petersburg Ishmael Ivanovic Sreznevski made after 1865, at Porfiri’s Uspenskij home, was a publication in which the professor of Slavic Studies described impressed the archive of the bishop, which contents occupied twenty carton-boxes! In an article, published in 1867, Sreznevski, characterizing Uspenskij as the archaeologist-historian of the Church, archaeologist-musicologist and archaeologist-geographer, mentioned that in this unique archive he saw Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Arabic, Coptic and Ethiopian manuscripts. Many of these were certainly from Mount Athos, where Uspenskij following the usual practice of many collectors of his time and taking advantage of the poverty and the ignorance of the monks of his time, had acquired for rather worthless amounts priceless manuscripts, or he had cut secretly pages from codices that he could not otherwise acquire. However, in many cases only fragments from Uspenskij’s work reached us in the present days, while the codices from which they came are lost.
Apart from this treasure hunt, which involved the instinct and the nose of the collector, Uspenskij also had the watchful eye of the researcher. And though not very refined on this side of his personality, he left behind a true gold mine of comments and information which, combined with other sources, is valuable for today's scientist researcher. The fact, indeed, that the presence of Uspenskij at Mount Athos coincides with a period of great building activity in most monasteries, gives to his descriptions the value of an undoubtedly valid evidence on the architecture of the place and accompanied by elaborated pictures of building complexes and details, showing himself a real pioneer of the architectural documentation of the Athonic world.
In this exhibition, the hall dedicated to Bishop Porphiri Uspenskij includes characteristic issues of publications, but also unreleased material from his notes organized into four main sections: a) the region and Karyes and Protaton b) facades of monasteries and scetea, c) architectural drawings of Katholika d) details of architectural parts and special architectural aspects.
 

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CURATORS

Anastasios Douros

Phaedon Chatziantoniou

 

EXCIBITION HALL

Mount Athos Center
Building Nedelkou, Egnatia 109

Thessaloniki Greece
tel: +30 2310 263308
 

HOURS

Monday - Friday

09:00 - 20:00