IKEA still life #3

This is the third and final soft toy that we own from Ikea which represents food. It's a basket with fruit: an orange cut in half, an apple cut in half, a kiwi cut in half (of which one half has been lost), a slice of watermelon, a bunch of purple grapes and a peel-able banana.

I have stated in a previous post the benefits of having such durable, re-usable and realistic toys, in terms of the way they promote pretend play in a safe way and in terms of being there as a constant, a chance to play with the same items again and again, either learning by repetition or then reinventing a new way to play with the same items and use them each time in a different way. What then in contrast, the real fruits could offer, would be to feel each one as a whole and when cut -its shape, texture, colour, firmness, juiciness and so on- the smell and taste of them, their potential usages when raw or as preserves, jams, pickles and so on and their natural state, their impermanence and eventually their decay.   

The fruit that most conveys these notions for me is the "Vasiliko Syko", the King Fig. It is a variety of large, purple figs of an intense aroma and a rich, beautifully sweet taste. In many parts of Greece figs grow really well, especially in the South, and many times the trees are not even planted by anyone but have grown by themselves in people's fields and gardens. The trees have thick, grey-whitish branches which have prominent knots and strange angled twists. They look rather like an elderly man's long, heavy worked or arthritic fingers. The leaves of the King Fig tree are very large and also resemble a wide open human palm. They have a lovely powdery slate green colour with a very delicate layer of silver downy hair on one side. The whole of a young fig tree looks like stretched arms and hands open wide to give you very generously their fruit. An old fig tree looks like it cannot stand the weight of such a heavy load of fruit any longer, begging you to release it from it, to cut them off before the old knotted limbs succumb to the strain. And that is exactly what we did.

There was a time when I really thought you could spend a whole summer on an island in the Dodecanese eating for free. People had so much extra ripe fruit and vegetables that they were very eager to give it away, lest it went to waste. I remember a typical day, having gone to paint and then for a swim. The intense, burning heat which in the beginning you think you will not be able to stand even for a bit. But by the early afternoon it has gone into you so much that you feel half of your body has evaporated and although you are in a semi dried-out state, it feels like you have always been in the heat, it feels unimaginable that you have ever touched snow or that it even exists. The dragging of the leather sandals, the dried red earth from the path on the dusted legs, then the burning hot sand through the toes, throwing out clothes and dropping equipment and running to jump in the sea. The complete shock of the sea water that in contrast to the body temperature feels freezing. And then the complete and unreasonable need for the heat again. The long walk back and the weight of the equipment and painting having somehow doubled. The hunger in the belly hurting a bit. And then a King Fig tree!

On either side of the road there are fig trees but only one King Fig tree and I can see at least twenty figs. I need to climb an old rusty fence and then stretch and catch four of them. I put them in my top and jump down. I would give the painting and all my equipment just for one mouthful. The first King Fig is blood-purple and very very ripe. The white milk that comes out of the spot where I cut it oozes out. I peel the thick velvety purple skin to reveal the jewel inside. Red, ruby and glistening tiny bits, purple and golden flesh and the best dessert, the best fruit and the best taste in the world. On the way back an old lady shouts out and limply runs behind me to give me a whole bag of little tomatoes. Please could I take them as they are too many for her and they will rot. And nearer the village someone gives me two large courgettes. And just outside the house the neighbour gives me a bag of normal green figs as they will go to waste, he has too many. And the whole day of doing a painting I cannot even see any more outside because my eyes see only white lights, is suddenly worth it. Indoors I can start seeing it again bit by bit and I eat the second King Fig which was even better than the first.

With the real fruit in the basket, we smell and touch and taste them. And then we press them into a slab of clay to see their prints and shape transferred into another object.

I am not sure why after we have tasted and felt the fruit I am doing this, maybe to give them a second life, but I am very curious to see if the marks they leave behind are recognisable as those of the original fruits or if they will be very abstract in the eyes of a child. We leave a few fruit bits stuck on the clay slab, make a frame and then we poor some plaster into it.

While we wait for the plaster to dry Aretousa finishes eating and tasting most of the fruit, which starts to make me think this might be a step too advanced for her and the actual tasting and experiencing the fruit might have been enough. But I am wrong, as when the plaster is dried I am very surprised to find Aretousa completely taken by the fact that the fruits she had eaten and of which we have thrown the peels and uneatable parts away, suddenly reappear in the plaster mould. She can identify the apple and orange straight away and she runs her fingers through all the surfaces and textures. Then she does something I haven't thought of at all: she takes some of the stuffed Ikea fruits and matches them to the marks on the plaster. She puts the fabric kiwi in the hole that the real kiwi left in the plaster and she puts the fabric slice of watermelon on top of the watermelon relief.

The fruits which we were handling not long ago, now look like an ancient fossil or a prehistoric dig. I remember imagining as a kid when I was walking in the hot sand with my leather sandals and the dusty legs, how I could have been in ancient Greece and how similar it would have been for someone then, also dragging their sandalled, dusty feet and cutting ripe figs from a King Fig tree, just like I was doing. But that is not at all accurate and I would have been in a lot of trouble had I been cutting figs like that back then.

Apparently, we learnt at school, in early Classical Greece the police system was almost non-existent and as an alternative the government was relying on private individuals to bring breaches of the law to their attention, for a reward fee of course. But by the 5th century BC, many individuals started to abuse this system and brought to justice cases which were not genuine, just to collect the fee. Such people -false informers- are called in Greek Συκοφάντες, which literately means "fig revealers".  The word in English, Sycophant, has a different meaning, but in French it still carries the same meaning as in Greek. The story we were taught is that it was forbidden to steal figs from private gardens and also to export them, but as that was a common practice many individuals started to hide near fig trees waiting for a thief to appear and then inform the authorities of the theft. So they were called fig revealers. But many other explanations of the etymology of the word Sycophants exist and for a quick look see the link below.

http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-146.html