A monument to passion, Art Review

The art installed in his Athens home rivals that of a major museum, yet Dakis Joannou is much more than a collector. By Bettina von Hase. Photography by Salvatore Vinci.

The first thing you see when you walk into Dakis Joannou's Athens home is a Marcel Duchamp urinal, spot-lit on a pedestal. As the archetype of all that is radical and new, it sets the tone for the family house and sums up industrialist Joannou's 20-year passion, which has made him one of the few really important contemporary collectors in the world.

At 64, Joannou has become Greece's unofficial minister for contemporary art, not least through his highly respected DESTE Foundation. Created in 1983, DESTE has established a reputation for showing the finest international work alongside that of Greek artists, for whom DESTE runs an annual art prize of €10,000.

Silver-haired and in a black suit, Joannou cuts an imposing figure as he comes down the staircase to meet me. His living room is an art installation of museum quality, dominated by a life-size sculpture of a sexy African urban warrior by Liza Lou. The room is filled with artworks, including a Warhol Brillo box used as a coffee-table, Chris Ofili’s gigantic painting Afronirvana and Jeff Koons's Bourgeois Bust — Jeff and Ilona, a neoclassical white marble bust set against a timeless Athenian landscape.

The combination of ancient and contemporary is borne out by Joannou's latest project: an exhibition called 'Monument Now'. A curtain-raiser for the Olympic Games in Greece this summer, it is part of 'Athens 2004, Culture'. the official arts programme of the Games, which is staging two exhibitions: one classical, with pieces dating back to the Hellenic world of the original Games; and the other contemporary, featuring 250 pieces by 90 artists drawn from Joannou's extraordinary collection.

The word ‘monument’, Joannou explains, alludes to Greece's past and to timelessness, while 'now' suggests immediacy, something that's here today and gone tomorrow. 'Everyone was pleased with the title — the conflict the two words,' he says, Joannou has appointed five curators from three different generations — Dan Cameron, Jeffrey Deitch, Alison Gingeras, Massimiliano Gioni and Nancy Spector — to choose and install the show from his collection, the exact size of which is unknown. 'l don't ever want to have a static collection — you know, when someone says, "I have 2,985 pieces",' he says. 'Maybe the collection will always be shown as 250 pieces; it continues to be re-edited. I see absolutely no reason to restrict myself in any way, with any conditions. It's very democratic, I do whatever I feel like doing.'

Joannou's open-mindedness and determination have secured him a unique position in the frenzied, changeable climate of the contemporary art market. The level of his commitment is seen by dealers, curators and artists as both unusual and a steadying influence. Koons and Maurizio Cattelan — both long-time friends — became informal advisors on 'Monument to Now', and were present at meetings in Corfu, Venice and New York which were by all accounts congenial and fun, fuelled by Joannou's legendary qualities as a host.

‘Dakis is interested in the relationship between art and contemporary culture,’ says Deitch, who has curated several shows at the DESTE Foundation, the last — ‘Everything That’s Interesting Is New’ — in 1996. 'He goes for a strong visual image and a directness of communication. Some of the key works, like Koons. are almost like archetypes in Greek artistic tradition; they are iconic, and he is looking for icons as a way of communicating understanding of contemporary culture.

'The structure of "Everything That's Interesting Is New’” was tight,' says Joannou. ‘We had some older pieces for context. You need Warhol to understand Koons, Donald Judd to understand Haim Steinbach. It was important at the time to have that context, but now you don't need it any more, as the new artists then, like Koons, have become the older generation influencing today's younger artists. It’s moved on so much in 20 years, it’s amazing.’

'Monument to Now' is intended to amaze. It will be housed in a specially renovated DESTE space in central Athens. Joannou knows how to get maximum impact from a building; his company, J&P, builds cities and roads, mostly in the Middle East. He also owns three boutique hotels which will open in time for the Olympics: X-22, Twenty-One and the art-filled Semiramis.

Left to right: Chris Ofili, Pimping Ain’t Easy, 199, oil, polyester resin, map pins, paper collage, glitter and elephant dung on linen, 244 x 183 x 13cm; Rodin… The Thinker, 1997, acrylic, oil, polyester resin, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on canvas, 244 x 183 x 13cm; The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars, 1997, mixed media on canvas, 244 x 183 x 13cm; Inner Visions, 1998, acrylic, oil, polyester resin, glitter, collage, map pins and elephant dung on canvas, 244 x 183cm

“Koon’s reservations about art collectors ‘just came crashing down with Dakis’”

The show is an update to 'Everything That's Interesting is New', with less insistence on chronology, more on diversity, and with a focus on works acquired after 1995. Cattelan advised Joannou to install the work as he had done in his Athens house: a gradual progression from one room to another, ending in 'a great climax'.

Gingeras says the installation underlines the heterogeneity of the show. Monument to Now" is about the impossibility of capturing the moment. Everything is fair game. Imagine Dakis's collection — and indeed the show — as a house of cards that we have reconfigured. You could knock it down and rebuild it, each time with different meanings and connections in the context of new acquisitions. That is the perfect form for the exhibition: It's also the perfect form for the way Joannou lives with art in his house. 

It is rare to meet someone who so obviously enjoys being surrounded by overtly challenging work, whether it is Paul McCarthy's red rubber head Untitled (Jack), Tom Sachs' Two Boeing 767s, a reminder of 9/11; Robert Gober's Untitled, a disturbing sculpture of a boy emerging out of a man; or Noble & Webster's hairy Neanderthal couple Masters of the Universe. Joannou completely rebuilt his house around his collection, excavating a huge gallery below ground level and adding an outdoor space over the former swimming pool, where Koons's Balloon Dog was most recently on view.

There are spacious living quarters for him, his wife Lietta and his four grown-up children, all of whom have started collections of their own. Every available space is transformed by art — at the time of my visit there were about 60 pieces on show — and he changes the installation every three to six months. The works are counterpointed by Royere furniture, two wooden stands by Liagre, a Knoll table, Ruhlmann chairs, five Baroque statues atop a Frank cabinet, a Gehry dining-room table and chairs, and even two glass cases containing geometric vessels from 700BC, 'which we have put together in the past with modern pieces by Halley, Koons, Steinbach'.

Few other collectors foster such strong relationships with artists. Joannou is not merely a collector, but a collaborator, a commissioner of special projects. and a sort of father confessor. Working with artists was the chief reason he started collecting in the first place, having overcome his prejudice that it was 'like hanging trophies above your sofa'. It was Koons's One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank of 1985 which kick-started his passion. In return, Koons tells me that his reservations about collectors 'just came crashing down with Dakis'.

The US had already been an influence on Joannou; he lived there in the while studying civil engineering at Cornell and later at Columbia University. He still remembers the great shows by Warhol, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. After studying architecture at Rome University, he started work at J & P, got married and lived in Cyprus, London and Greece. Although Lietta is consulted, she insists he makes the decisions 'He wanted to call his boat Protect Me From What I Want [a sentence in Jenny Holzer's Survival Series] and asked all of us what we thought. We weren't so keen, but he went ahead and did it anyway!' she laughs.

Joannou now has the pick of the best work by the artists he collects in depth: Koons, Ofili, Noble & Webster, Cattelan, Robert Gober and, most recently, Verne Dawson. He has also started to buy contemporary drawings, gathering information in London and on hrs twice-yearly trips to New York, where he presides over the Guggenheim's International Director's Council.

When he's not travelling, Joannou invites friends to one of his three island homes in Hydra, Spetsai and Corfu which, like his home in Athens, are filled with artworks. 'Coming into Hydra is like coming into a harbour in Disneyland,' says Koons. 'They all tie their boats up, and have fantastic dialogues about art.' Even on holiday, life without art is unthinkable for Joannou.