Iconographer vladimir grig2/19/2024 Do you think there is something inevitable about this trajectory? Gould: Photios Kontoglou, generations ago, went through a similar arc, towards more archaic painting, and eventually painting like an ancient Roman. Reconstruction of apse frescoes, Santa Maria Antiqua, RomeĪ. We see this in the famous sixth-century icon of Christ from St. The period between the fourth and seventh centuries was a time when Christian iconography developed from the art of classical antiquity, and, in its best examples, had a unique balance between spirituality and classical beauty of its form. I personally favor this term to “archaic”, since it shouldn’t be confused with words like old or outdated. It is in search of this language that I decided to turn to pre-iconoclastic, even paleo-Christian iconography. On the contrary, we have to find the proper language in order to deliver the Christian message unchanged, but understandable. This is not about “changing dogma to suite our time”. Contemporary iconographers must also pay attention to such ideas and strive to develop a proper language which would be able to express them. Prevalence of one or another approach depends on dominating ideas which were important for the Christian thoughts of a given time and place. Both of these tendencies appear in the very beginning of Byzantine art, in 6 th -7 th Centuries, and could exist simultaneously since then. Popova, see the history of development of style in the Christian art as an alternation of two major tendencies in understanding of an image: Classical and Ascetic, or Dynamic and Static. It is obvious that Christian art changed with time – but that development is not progressive: one style is not “better” than another, and a new style does not denounce a previous one. While Archimandrite Zenon started with painting icons in a fifteenth-century Russian style, he later moved towards a classical style of twelfth-century Byzantine, and now develops his own style based on early-Christian art. I would compare an iconographic style with a language – as you grow, you learn new words, see new sides of the same subject, and you become more confident in your use of these words. I believe that iconography is an art, and that development of a style is required for every artist. Grygorenko: I am glad you noticed – it is true that my taste in iconography evolved over time, and I think this is normal. Zenon and other contemporary iconographers in this trend. Tell us about this, and to what extent you were influenced by Fr. Gould: Your style has evolved over time, apparently tending towards the archaic, and even Imperial Roman. After finishing murals in that church and a few others, my family and I decided to stay in Dallas.Ī. Grygorenko: Late Archbishop +Dmitri of Dallas, of blessed memory, invited me to Dallas twenty years ago to work in the newly built St. After a few years of self-study, I met Archimandrite Zenon in his remote skete near Pskov, and he taught me most of what I know. There were absolutely no iconographers at that time to teach me, so I had to study on my own, learning traditional methods from rare books and from a few restorers in state museums. I was baptized in the Orthodox Church in 1991, amidst turmoil created by the collapsing Communist empire, and began my Christian life as an iconographer. Initially, I researched iconography only as part of my studies of various spatial approaches in art, but eventually I came to the understanding that God is beauty, and the ultimate reason for the existence of art. Trying to answer these questions, I came across icons, which, being an atheist young man in an atheist country, I understood only as art objects. Before quitting my full-time job, I had to answer two important questions for myself, “What is beauty?” and “Why is art worth practicing? For nine years I studied traditional oil painting in the art studio at Dnipropetrovsk State University in Ukraine, along with my studies in mechanical engineering.Įven though I had a well-respected career in engineering prepared for me, I was thinking about becoming a professional artist. Grygorenko: I began painting icons long before my conversion to Christianity, which happened back in 1991. Gould: How did you first set out to be an iconographer? What led to this decision, and what was your initial artistic training?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |