Michael Paraskos,
FHEA,
FRSA (born 1969) is a novelist, lecturer and writer on art. He has written several non-fiction and fiction books and essays, and articles on art, literature, culture and politics for various publications, including ''
Art Review
''ArtReview'' is an international contemporary art magazine based in London, founded in 1948. Its sister publication, ''ArtReview Asia'', was established in 2013.
History
Launched as a fortnightly broadsheet in February 1949 by a retired country ...
'', ''
The Epoch Times'' and ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...
'' 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
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
, and he is also known for his theories connecting
anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
and
modern art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
. He lives in
West Norwood
West Norwood is a largely residential area of south London within the London Borough of Lambeth, located 5.4 miles (8.7 km) south south-east of Charing Cross. The centre of West Norwood sits in a bowl surrounded by hillsides on its east, ...
in south
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
Education and employment
Paraskos was born in
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popul ...
,
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
, 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
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, where Paraskos attended a
secondary modern school in
Canterbury
Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of t ...
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".
After leaving school at the age of 16 Paraskos became an apprentice butcher at a
Keymarkets supermarket. After becoming a vegetarian, he left butchery and enrolled on evening classes at
Canterbury College of Technology to study for university entrance examinations. After this he went on to attend the
University of Leeds
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
and
University of Nottingham
, mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom
, established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status
, type = Public
, chancellor ...
, studying at Leeds under the novelist
Rebecca Stott
Rebecca Stott (born 1964) is a British writer and broadcaster and, until her retirement from teaching in 2021, was Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of ...
, and at Nottingham with the art historian
Fintan Cullen
Fintan Cullen (born 3 January 1954) in Dublin, is an Irish academic, educator and writer. Cullen is a professor at the University of Nottingham.
National Portrait Gallery Exhibit
He and Roy Foster co-created the exhibit ''Conquering England: I ...
. At Nottingham University he gained his doctorate in 2015 on the aesthetic theories of the anarchist poet and art theorist
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
.
After teaching as a visiting part-time lecturer at various colleges and universities, and for the
WEA from 1992 onwards, Paraskos was made head of Art History for Fine Art at the
University of Hull
, mottoeng = Bearing the Torch f learning, established = 1927 – University College Hull1954 – university status
, type = Public
, endowment = £18.8 million (2016)
, budget = £190 million ...
from 1994 to 2000. In 2000 he went to work in Cyprus as Director of the Cornaro Art Institute in Larnaca, Cyprus, also teaching in Cyprus at the
Cyprus College of Art
The Cyprus College of Art (CyCA) is an artists' studio group, located in the village of Lempa on the west coast of Cyprus. It was founded in 1969 by the artist Stass Paraskos; the current director is the Cyprus-based artist Margaret Paraskos.
...
.
After returning to Britain 2014, he worked at
SOAS, University of London
SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury ar ...
until 2017, whilst also working as a lecturer at the
City and Guilds of London Art School
Founded in 1854 as the Lambeth School of Art, the City and Guilds of London Art School is a small specialist art college located in central London, England. Originally founded as a government art school, it is now an independent, not-for-profit ...
. As well as 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
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
.
As a freelance reviewer of books and exhibitions, he has worked for ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...
'' magazine, and the London edition of the ''
Epoch Times'' newspaper. He has also reviewed art exhibitions for
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering ...
's ''
Front Row'' programme, and
SVT Television in Sweden, and appeared on
Tariq Ali's political and cultural magazine programme, ''Rear Window'', produced for
TeleSur Television, as well as on various radio programmes for the
Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation
Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation ( gr, Ραδιοφωνικό Ίδρυμα Κύπρου , tr, Kıbrıs Radyo Yayın Kurumu), or CyBC (ΡΙΚ, KRYK), is Cyprus' public broadcasting service. It transmits island-wide on four radio and two domestic ...
.
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. and his second, a satire on the
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
presidency and
Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the Withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time, GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 Central Eur ...
, entitled ''Rabbitman'', was published in 2017.
Anarchist art theory
Although he has never formally declared himself to be an anarchist, preferring instead the term
syndicalist
Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of pr ...
or
co-operator 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. 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!"
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
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
and ''Four Essays on Art and Anarchism'' (2015), a collection of four lectures turned into essays. He has also written monographs on the British artists
Steve Whitehead (2007) and
Clive Head
Clive Head (born 1965) is a painter from Britain.
Biography
Head was born in Maidstone, Kent, the son of a machine operator at Reed's Paper Mill in Aylesford. He was born to Swazi parents but developed vitiligo at a young age. Head had a preco ...
(2010). He has edited books by and on Herbert Read and other subjects, and is the author of one work of fiction, ''In Search of Sixpence'' (2016). This book is a semi-fictionlised account of the life and death of Paraskos's father,
Stass Paraskos, who died in 2014, but it is combined with a
Chandleresque detective story and other elements. Real life figures are also woven into the book, including
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
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, a satirical fiction based on an imagined
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
-like president, who also happens to be a rabbit, entitled ''
Rabbitman'', was published in 2017.
Cocktails
In 2015, responding to a call by the government-run
Cyprus Tourism Organisation
Tourism in Cyprus occupies a dominant position in the country's economy, and has significantly impacted its culture and multicultural development throughout the years. In 2006, the tourism industry made up 10.7% of the country's GDP and the t ...
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
The ouzini is a mixed alcoholic cocktail invented by the novelist Michael Paraskos as an alternative national drink of Cyprus to the ubiquitous brandy sour.
Using only native Cypriot ingredients, including Cypriot ouzo, the drink was invented ...
. This was picked up by local media, and promoted by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation. Following a suggestion by the Cypriot journalist Lucy Robson that the problem for the ouzini was that it lacked a compelling story, Paraskos included the ouzini in his 2016 novel ''In Search of Sixpence''.
[Michael Paraskos, ''In Search of Sixpence,'' (London: Friction Fiction, 2016), p. 384.]
Lists of publications
Books by Michael Paraskos
* ''The Anarchists/Οι Αναρχικοί'' (Nicosia: Εν Τύποις, Βουλα Κοκκινου Λτδ, 2007)
* ''Steve Whitehead'' (London: Orage Press, 2007)
* ''Re-Reading Read: New Views on
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
''
ditor(London: Freedom Press, 2007)
* ''The Aphorisms of Irsee'' [with
Clive Head
Clive Head (born 1965) is a painter from Britain.
Biography
Head was born in Maidstone, Kent, the son of a machine operator at Reed's Paper Mill in Aylesford. He was born to Swazi parents but developed vitiligo at a young age. Head had a preco ...
]) (London: Orage Press, 2008)
* ''The Table Top Schools of Art'' (London: Orage Press, 2008)
* ''Is Your Artwork Really Necessary?'' (London: Orage Press, 2008)
* ''Clive Head'' (London: Lund Humphries, 2010)
* ''Regeneration'' (London: Orage Press, 2010)
* ''Herbert Read: Art and Idealism'' (London: Orage Press, 2014)
* ''Four Essays on Art and Anarchism'' (London: Orage Press, 2015)
* ''In Search of Sixpence'' (London: Friction Fiction, 2016)
* ''Rabbitman'' (London: Friction Fiction, 2017)
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
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...
", 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
Dame Ingrid Mary Roscoe, (27 May 1944 – 28 June 2020) was a writer on English art and Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire from 2004 to 2018.
Biography
Ingrid Roscoe was born at Rugby School, Warwickshire in 1944 to Arthur Allen and Else, who ...
(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 201
References
External links
Michael Paraskos's websiteMichael Paraskos at Imperial College London
Interviews with Michael Paraskos
"A Minute with Michael Paraskos", in ''The Cyprus Mail'' (Cyprus newspaper), 7 September 2016"In Search of Art. After Nyne Meets Dr Michael Paraskos" in ''After Nyne'' (UK magazine), 17 August 2016Theo Panayides, "Sensitive, creative, heart on sleeve", in ''The Cyprus Mail'' (Cyprus newspaper), 8 April 2016Interview with Michael Paraskos, "A very personal journey", in ''The Cyprus Weekly'' (Cyprus newspaper), 21 November, 2015
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paraskos, Michael
1969 births
Living people
Anarcho-syndicalists
British art historians
21st-century British novelists
Writers from Leeds
Cypriot novelists
Greek Cypriot writers
British male novelists
Fellows of the Higher Education Academy