I prepare all my work in the older orthodox fashion, using real gold, but have recently experimented with the newer academic style. Many people know a famous Russian painter Vasnetsov who painted icons in so called Academic style. He and other painters of his time invented a new style for Russian icons. They took an original canonic style icons and changed them to something new for that times. By adding more realistic details. Doing icon more realistic . Him and many other painters were inspired with this new technique. And they invented this style: Academic icon. And along with that a Nationaly-Romantic Modern Style appeared in other artistic areas at the time. So called Academic icons became very popular in Russia. People made many copies of them, some of them were good, some were not... But it became a Tradition. Even Orthodox Church didn't mind this kind of changes in Traditional Canonic Icons. Vasnetsov was so talented in it... and also Surikhov , Nesterov and many others... that people didn't even dare debate ( or condemn ) this icons too much... And majority of people just accepted them. Working on the same kind of icon I caught myself on thinking that I automatically do everything opposite of what Vasnetsov was doing. I take an Academic icon and change it more to Canonic style. ASSIST with areal gold automatically made the icon more flat then it supposed to be in Academic style. And you can see some other details of Traditional Canonic influence on the icon... So looks like I do something completely opposite of what Vasnetsov and Surikhov were doing: I gradually turn the icon back to being Canonik again...This icon is some kind of a step to something new... Probably a new style will be born... I should admit with some sorrow that our modern times don't even have our own style of icon painting... Modern icon painters copy anything: they copy Greek, Byzantic, Russian styles, they copy Adrey Publyov, Theothan Greek, Vasnetsov etc. There are styles in icon painting such as 15th century, there are special characteristics for 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. A style of every century can be easily recognized by an expert by specific signs common for all icons of certain period of time... But there is no such a thing like STYLE OF 21th CENTURY. Style of 21th century is a eclectic, it's a mixture of styles, it means " everybody paints how he wants". Of course I don't dare to think that I created a "new style of a century" ... :) But probably my own style is coming out...
But ... wait! ... I should give some credit to modern Greek icons... They call them: "Late Greek Style"... I should admit that Greek Christians managed to create their own MODERN style common for all their society... Russians are just probably still on their way to it... Oh! And one more important moment: I think that a common style of society can be created only together with buyers, only together with people who order icons. Buyers have no less influence on icons than painters. When you work with buyers long time you start to understand what they love in icons and even know it ahead of time... So they do have some influence on final result too ... because most of all the icon is painting particularly (exactly) for them... And finally exactly they will pray on this icon, with sincere spiritual gratification. Thank you Natalia.
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