ACROPOLIS DRAWING REPORT

Did you know that you can’t draw on the Acropolis in Athens? Apparently, you need a drawing license.

I learned this while we were on the Acropolis last week. We were on the east end, and I noticed someone proceeding to draw the Parthanon. They were using a water filled acrylic brush, which is a media type which I have not yet reviewed. I snapped the photo above of the general scene. Then, a guard came up to the drawer and asked them to stop. The guard was very nice about it.

So I asked the guard, why can’t you draw up here? Their answer was that you need a special license, and they were not clear how you get one. They explained that years ago, you could draw or paint. Then they abolished painting, as they were concerned about both oil and water media spilling onto the marble: at that time, you could still draw with either a pencil or a pen, but no chalk. Then, a few years ago, they abolished any sort of drawing at all.

Which seems amazing. Here we have the absolute foundation of Representational Spacetime, the foundation of Western seeing, and you basically can’t sit there and draw it anymore. Is this the beginning of a War On Drawing?!??!?

As the drawer was putting their media away, I told them that I admired their desire to draw in front of the Parthenon. They laughed it all off and responded that they might try to find a more remote corner of the Acropolis and try to carry on. That’s the spirit!

We have reported at various times about other en situ drawing scenes:
–Drawing Plein Air
–What I’m Talking About

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I will tell you this. As I have mentioned before, I can’t stop myself from getting instantly pissed off when someone tries to tell me that I can’t take a photo of something. (Ask me about getting chased out of a Porto parking garage because I took a photo of the ultra cool skylight system.) So if I had carted to the Acropolis a drawing set, got there as soon as it opened, as we did, sat down to draw in my sketchbook, and then if a guard would have told me that I couldn’t do that? There would probably have been more than spilled watercolor on the marble.