Michael Paraskos

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Michael Paraskos
Born1969
Leeds, Yorkshire
OccupationNovelist, lecturer, art critic
NationalityCypriot, British
Alma materFrank Montgomery Secondary Modern School, Canterbury College of Technology, University of Leeds (B.A. and MRes.), and University of Nottingham (Phd.)
PeriodContemporary
Genre
Nonfiction, Metafiction, Satire

Michael Paraskos,

Art Review, The Epoch Times, The Guardian newspaper and The Spectator magazine. In the past, he has reviewed art exhibitions for BBC radio, curated exhibitions, and taught in universities and colleges in Britain and elsewhere. He has a particular focus on modern art, having published books on the art theorist Herbert Read, and he is also known for his theories connecting anarchism and modern art.[1] He lives in West Norwood in south London
.

Education and Employment

Paraskos was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, the youngest of five children, to his Cypriot father, Stass Paraskos, and English mother, Winifred Mary Pepper. As a child, his family moved to Kent, where Paraskos attended a secondary modern school in Canterbury[2] Paraskos claimed in The Guardian newspaper that those who attend secondary modern schools "are condemned to a lifetime of social exclusion and crippling self-doubt".[3]

After leaving school at the age of 16, Paraskos became an apprentice butcher at a Keymarkets supermarket.[4] After becoming a vegetarian, he left butchery and enrolled in evening classes at Canterbury College of Technology to study for university entrance examinations. After this, he went on to attend the University of Leeds and University of Nottingham, studying at Leeds under the novelist Rebecca Stott, and at Nottingham with the art historian Fintan Cullen. At Nottingham University, he gained his doctorate in 2015 on the aesthetic theories of the anarchist poet and art theorist Herbert Read.

After teaching as a visiting part-time lecturer at various colleges and universities, and for the

University of Hull from 1994 to 2000. In 2000, he went to work in Cyprus as Director of the Cornaro Art Institute in Larnaca, Cyprus, and also taught in Cyprus at the Cyprus College of Art.[5]

After returning to Britain in 2014, he worked at

SOAS, University of London until 2017, whilst also working as a lecturer at the City and Guilds of London Art School. Still teaching at the City and Guilds of London Art School, he is now a Senior Teaching Fellow and head of adult education at Imperial College London’s Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication.[6]

As a freelance reviewer of books and exhibitions, he has worked for

TeleSur Television, as well as on various radio programmes for the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation
.

As a writer, he has published fiction and non-fiction extensively. His first fiction work, a novel entitled In Search of Sixpence, was published in 2016.[7]

Anarchist art theory

Although he has never formally declared himself to be an anarchist, preferring instead the term

co-operator,[8]
Paraskos's work has intellectual connections to anarchist ideas, and he has personal connections with anarchist circles.

In 2006, Paraskos wrote an article for the Cypriot art newspaper ArtCyprus entitled 'Portrait of the Artist as a Terrorist' in which he used the theories of Francesco de Sanctis to argue that art creates new realities by destroying old ones.[9] Although de Sanctis was not an anarchist, in Paraskos this statement, equating the creation of a new reality through the artistic destruction of an old one, seems to have sparked a particular interest in the relationship between anarchism and art. This was further developed in 2007 when Paraskos published an essay on his father, the artist Stass Paraskos and the painter Stelios Votsis, in which he argued that their series of collaborative paintings, begun when both artists had reached their 70s, represented a kind of "anarchist commune" on the canvas. Notably, Paraskos ended this essay, written in Greek and English, with the slogan "Ζήτω η αναρχική επανάσταση!", or "Long live the anarchist revolution!"[10]

Paraskos's first novel, In Search of Sixpence, was described by the critic Paul Cudenec as an example of anarchist literature, with its "dizzying hall of mirrors, where reflected moments bounce around in a loop and end up staring each other in the face." This is an anarchist approach to literature, according to Cudenec, even if the subject matter might not seem overtly anarchist.[11]

Fiction and non-fiction books

Michael Paraskos is the author of a number of non-fiction books on art. These include Herbert Read: Art and Idealism (2014) in which he explores the ideas of the British anarchist art theorist

Chandleresque detective story and other elements. Real life figures are also woven into the book, including Ezra Pound and Mariella Frostrup
. These elements, which undermine the division between fiction and non-fiction writing, form what Paraskos has described as a kind of disruptive anarchist literature, although the subject matter of the book is not overtly concerned with political anarchism.

A feature of both Paraskos's fiction and non-fiction writing is the place of the author in the writing. This is clear in the personal elements of his novel, In Search of Sixpence, where Paraskos is a character in his own novel, but in his non-fiction writings on Herbert Read, Steve Whitehead and Clive Head Paraskos also frequently refers to himself and uses personal anecdotes that have the effect of personalising the texts and rooting them in Paraskos's own experiences. His second novel, called Barfrestone was published in February 2024.

Cocktails

In 2015, responding to a call by the government-run

Cyprus Tourism Organisation for ideas to promote Cypriot food and drinks to foreign visitors to Cyprus, Paraskos suggested a new cocktail using only Cypriot ingredients, called the ouzini. This was picked up by local media,[12][13] and promoted by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation.[14] Following a suggestion by the Cypriot journalist Lucy Robson that the problem with the ouzini was that it lacked a compelling story,[15] Paraskos included the ouzini in his 2016 novel In Search of Sixpence.[16]

Lists of publications

Books by Michael Paraskos

Books including chapters by Michael Paraskos

  • New introduction to Herbert Read, To Hell with Culture (London, Routledge 2002)
  • 'Herbert Read' in Chris Murray (ed.), Key Thinkers on Art (London, Routledge, 2002)
  • New introduction to Herbert Read, Naked Warriors (London, Imperial War Museum Publications, 2003)
  • Various entries for Antonia Bostrom (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Sculpture (London, Routledge, 2003)
  • "The Prick of Conscience Leatherette Sofa", in Pippa Hale (ed.), Pipa Hale at the Patrick Studios, Leeds (Leeds: ESA, 2005)
  • "The Curse of King Bomba: Or How Marxism Stole Modernism", in Hana Babayradova and Jiri Havilcek (eds.), Spiritualita (Brno: Masaryk University Press, 2006)
  • "Herbert Read and Ford Madox Ford", in Paul Skinner (ed.) International Ford Madox Ford Studies vol. 6 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007)
  • "ME THN EYKAIPIA", in Ludmila Fidlerova and Barbora Svatkova (eds.), Mimochodem (By the Way), (Brno: Masaryk University Press, 2009)
  • Various entries in Ingrid Roscoe (ed.), The Biographical Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009)
  • "Bringing into being: vivifying sculpture through touch", in Peter Dent (ed.) Sculpture and Touch (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014)
  • 'Tea-trays and longing: Mapping Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus onto Cyprus' in Michael Paraskos (ed) Othello's Island (Mitcham: Orage Press, 2019)

Reviews and discussion of work by Michael Paraskos

  • James Ker-Lindsay, Hubert Faustmann, The Government and Politics of Cyprus (New York: Peter Lang, 2008) p. 40, n.19
  • Carissa Honeywell, A British Anarchist Tradition: Herbert Read, Alex Comfort and Colin Ward (London: Continuum Publishing, 2011) p. 49f
  • David Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow (London: PM Press, 2012) p. 350f
  • Pierluigi Sacco, review of Is Your Artwork Really Necessary? in Flash Art (Italian art magazine), no. 303, June 2012
  • Jordi Costa, "La ficción en tiempos de inmediatez", in El Pais (Spanish newspaper), 28 August 2017 [1]

References

  1. ^ "Anarchist Studies Network Conference 2.0 'Making Connections'" (PDF). Anarchist-studies-network.org.uk. Retrieved 18 January 2017.
  2. ^ Panayides, Theo (8 April 2016). "Sensitive, creative, heart on sleeve". The Cyprus Mail. Nicosia.
  3. ^ "Letters". The Guardian. London. 20 October 2015.
  4. ^ Michael Paraskos, In Search of Sixpence (London: Friction Press, 2016) p. 220
  5. ^ Michael Paraskos (ed.), Re-reading Read: New Views on Herbert Read (London: Freedom Press, 2007), p. 219.
  6. ISSN 0049-7878
    .
  7. ISBN 9780992924782. ASIN 0992924782
    – via Amazon.co.uk.
  8. ^ Michael Paraskos, Four Essays on Art and Anarchism (London: Orage Press, 2015) p.8
  9. ^ Michael Paraskos, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Terrorist', in ArtCyprus, No. 1, Spring 2006, p.3
  10. ^ Michael Paraskos, The Anarchists/Οι Αναρχικοί (Nicosia: Βουλα Κοκκινου Λτδ, 2007)
  11. ^ Paul Cudenec, Anarchism, art, time and reality in Network 23, online publication, 16 December 2021, https://network23.org/paulcudenec/2015/12/16/anarchism-art-time-and-reality/
  12. ^ Michael Paraskos (19 April 2015). "A perfect sundowner to replace the tired old brandy sour". The Cyprus Mail.
  13. ^ Masha Salko, "Ouzini", 30 April, 2015, Moi Ostrov,
  14. ^ "Meet Ouzini, the all Cypriot cocktail!". Cyprus Tourism Organisation. 2015. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  15. ^ Lucie Robson, "A good story will be the Ouzini's strongest ingredient", in The Cyprus Weekly (Cyprus newspaper), 1 May 2015
  16. ^ Michael Paraskos, In Search of Sixpence, (London: Friction Fiction, 2016), p. 384.

External links

Interviews with Michael Paraskos

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