However, how will you overcome the harsh dependence on the original? A poet once said: “Beauty is happiness from grasping a form…” and “Spirit creates form,” as many theologians say. On the other hand, it is an unworthy goal for an artist to keep producing carbon copies of the old examples all his life, even though you can’t go without them for quite some time. At one moment I felt that the ancient icon art has said it all. I don’t see anything that can become a game-changer in icon painting. However, we also have to understand that, if an iconographer is an active member of the Church, that is good enough! The iconographers of yesteryear and today are fully engaged and keenly attuned to the current situation in the church life. We can be inspired by the works of the fathers from previous centuries. There may no longer be heated arguments, but the Church dogmas are indisputable. It’s true that iconographers of old times were inspired by theological thought and even the heated disputes of their contemporaries. And you are up to another cycle of learning. Then, the next moment, when you glance back at the ancient icons, you suddenly realize how much deeper they are than your previous understanding of them. I can speak for myself that, at times, you think that you have already grasped certain elements of the art and even mastered them. This may take anywhere from twenty to thirty years.
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We are learning, if I may say so, the ABCs of icon painting, because in order to speak the “language of icons,” we have to first master it. It is somewhat different in modern icon painting. New influencers would appear, because the icon painting, apart from the Word of God as the main source of inspiration, was also inspired by contemporary theological writings. I shouldn’t say it was a process of development (since that usually means a gradual advancement from basic to more mature stages), but rather that it existed in various forms historically framed within this or that historic epoch. Generally speaking, the process of simplification in icon painting started even earlier than that, but beginning from the end of the last century we witnessed the widespread return to Byzantine and Old Russian icon painting.Īncient icon painting, from the first centuries of its history to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was developing in its own, peculiar way. It caused well-known iconographers to pursue other art forms. Affordable lithographic images of icons became widely available from as early as the middle of the nineteenth century and this lowered the bar in iconography so much that it gradually became a craft. On the other hand, it is unlikely that the blind imitation of the ancient forms can become the ultimate goal for a modern iconographer. It is great to study the icons of great masters, learning the wonderful principles of their aesthetics and artistic concepts, or even adopt some techniques. This process has its own benefits and drawbacks.
The apprenticeship of today rather presents itself in the fact that we thoroughly examine the examples of the ancient icon painting and strive to emulate them. Does apprenticeship still exist in modern church art? I mean, when you can literally recognize the work of the certain master’s apprentices, as well as pinpoint it stylistically (in the same way as we speak of “Dionisy and his studio”)? John of Kronstadt Cathedral in Hamburg (Germany), the church at the Russian Pilgrim’s Residence at the site of Baptism of Jesus Christ (Jordan), the churches in Diveyevo, and others Sophia Cathedral (Veliky Novgorod), the Trinity Cathedral of St. Among some of his projects are the wall paintings in the crypt of the Holy Hierarch St.
#Becoming an iconographer how to#
In our conversation with iconographer Anatoly Aleshin, the instructor of the Icon Painting School of Moscow’s Theological Academy, one of the leading specialists in the area of fresco painting, we discussed why it is incorrect to speak about the icon painting canons what inspires today’s iconographers in the absence of heated theological disputes of old times, and how to decorate a large church in two months. A conversation with Anatoly Aleshin, iconographer.
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