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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2019

The Archive and Atelier of the Gilliéron Artists: Three Generations, a Century (1870s-1980)

Résumé

The proposed paper aims to address the topic of re-use of the Aegean past in the 19th and 20th centuries, under the scope of the politics of preservation of the material cultural heritage. The artists Émile Gilliéron - father and son- contributed fundamentally to the early phases of discovery, interpretation, restoration, replication and propagation of knowledge concerning the ancient civilizations unearthed in Greece between 1876 and 1939. The quantity and high quality of their work led the artists to process the major finds, museum objects and replicas of educational character. They can both be considered as pioneering Conservators of Antiquities in Greece. Renowned as collaborators of excavators like Schliemann, Evans or Pernier, the list of their missions is much longer, comprising numerous institutions, projects or archaeologists. Their most famous creations concern Bronze Age artifacts (Minoan or Mycenean), but there is hardly any style of Art, from Neolithic to late Byzantine, which is not to be found amidst their repertoire. Their missions range from Greece to Egypt, Asia Minor and Italy, at least. The Gilliéron artists have repeatedly attracted scholarly attention, mainly from Bronze Age specialists, an interest due to their intime relationship to the major excavation sites of Crete and the Peloponnese. This does not mean that their influence and contribution to later phases of Greek Archaeology is less significant. The Gilliérons have to be considered under a diachronic gaze, in order to be fully understood as a phenomenon. Concerning ancient Art (whether ‘Aegean’ or ‘Greek’), their work has visually shaped the perception of their contemporaries, as of later generations. They are part of the History of the Archaeology of Greece. Hardly known is another artist, of the third generation: Émile’s son, Alfred (1920-2010). Having lost direct contact to the archaeological milieu, he continued the art of his ancestors on the free market, transferring the archaeological motives towards the growing industry of tourism. The use, reuse and adaptation of motives, shapes and themes launched by his elders in the late 19th and 20th centuries, turns Alfred Gilliéron into a vivid link between the age of pioneering discoveries and the age of “consumption” of the Aegeans. His creative span is contemporary to the establishment of mass tourism, from after WW II to the entrance of Greece into the European Union in the early 1980s. Since 2015, the French School at Athens (EFA) is in possession of the Archives of three generations of Gilliéron artists, as of the material rests of their artistic atelier, preciously preserved by the descendant of the fourth generation, Émile Gilliéron (III). This ensemble comprises artistic equipment, molds, impressions, original replicas or later generations of copies, in several materials (galvanoplastic replicas, bronze, plaster, clay, wood etc.), of a multitude of periods, styles, themes, categories and sizes. In combination with the archive, it is a conserved heritage of unique originality as a source of knowledge, concerning the history of Archaeology in Greece. The present paper aims to present the Fonds Gilliéron of the EFA to the scientific community, and to point out the major axes of research that can/will be launched in the near future.
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hal-03059425, version 1 (12-12-2020)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03059425 , version 1

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Christina Mitsopoulou, Olga Polychronopoulou. The Archive and Atelier of the Gilliéron Artists: Three Generations, a Century (1870s-1980). ΜΝΗΜΗ / MNEME. Past and Memory in the Aegean Bronze Age, Elisabetta Borgna, Ilaria Caloi, Filippo Carinci, Apr 2018, Venice, Italy. pp.725-729. ⟨hal-03059425⟩

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