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The title "Storismata" alludes to an old term from the Greek artistic tradition. A "storisma" refers to the pictorial narration of a story, such as one finds in church frescoes. However, Christodoulou’s works do not merely illustrate the novel; in their own way, they offer a commentary on it. Each image engages in a dialogue with a specific paragraph of the book—ranging from "Loomings" (the first chapter) to the Epilogue (the novel’s conclusion). It functions as a second, visual translation of the text, bringing to the surface what Melville’s words deliberately imply.

A dreamlike and revelatory universe The world of "Storismata" operates with the irrational logic of a dream. Forms dissolve into one another. Figures emerge from rocks and waves. A ship’s prow transforms into a mask featuring whale teeth. An entire city is enclosed within the body of the leviathan. The compositions are built in layers, mirroring the very structure of Melville’s book: adventure, theology, philosophy, anatomy, and cosmology are stacked one upon the other. The viewer’s eye struggles to grasp their meaning while—one might say—scraping away at a precious palimpsest. 

At the center of this universe lies man’s primordial confrontation with himself. This is distilled in the figure of the whale—and above all in its eye, a gaze that recurs time and again throughout the works. That eye regards man from an abyssal depth, unmoved by the sheer awe he feels. For Ahab, the white whale is the wall he must pierce to reach whatever lies hidden behind the "pasteboard mask" of appearances. Christodoulou paints precisely this distance: a solitary harpooner in a boat raises his puny harpoon against a grey, impenetrable mass.

The whiteness of the whale—which, for Melville, evokes nothing but awe—becomes, in the painter’s renderings, the vortex of a void that sucks everything human into its center. This void is simultaneously a sacred symbol and an abyss—a "colorless concrete of all the colors" that threatens to swallow the world. Herein lies the apocalyptic tone of the series. The images do not merely recount a hunt at sea; they speak of hubris, of the limitations of human knowledge, and of the price paid for the obsession to grasp that which transcends us. 

A visionary creator of words and images

Christodoulou’s style calls to mind William Blake. The affinity lies in the visionary forms and the undulating, almost living lines, but it is also evident in the way the artist unites word and image. Just as Blake printed his own "illuminated" books, Christodoulou designed and printed—at his amateur press in Volos—the diptychs accompanying these stories. In these works, a passage from Melville, translated by the artist himself, is typeset using fonts and decorative elements he created. Text, translation, typography, and painting all spring from the same hand; they share a common, persistent reading.

 A few words about the artist 

Athanasios K. Christodoulou was born in Volos in 1943 and resides there. He studied law at the University of Athens and practiced law for 35 years. Alongside his legal career, he pursued a multifaceted body of work as a poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, publisher, and painter. He has written extensively on Seferis, Cavafy, Patilis, Dimitris Armaos, and others.

His engagement with Melville began in the early 1980s. The first bilingual volumes of "Moby-Dick" were released by "Zodio," a publishing house he founded himself. The complete translation was published in 1992 by "Gutenberg", followed by the first massive volume of a planned five-volume bilingual edition—a project that was, however, never completed. In 1997, he co-organized the first international conference of the Melville Society of America in Volos, alongside Professor Sanford E. Marovitz. His artistic interpretations of Melville’s work were exhibited at universities in the United States, such as Kent State University and Northern Kentucky University.