Contemporary Art as Theophany
To-day in England we think as little of art as though we had been caught up from earth and set in some windy side street of the universe among the stars. Disgust at the daily deathbed which is Europe has made us hunger and thirst for the kindly ways of righteousness, and we want to save our souls.…
Continue reading »The Two Russias : Leviathan and The Island
To anyone who thinks that the Lives of the Saints have little practical application to our everyday life, I humbly beg to differ. To prove my point, I would like to offer some personal reflections on the new Russian film Leviathan, a film that would seem to be almost irredeemably bleak. But if considered in…
Continue reading »Byzanfest, an Orthodox short-film festival.
Chris Vlahonasios is the founder and director of Byzanfest, the first online festival of Orthodox short films. He is also a blogger at Orthodox Filmmakers and Artists. I interviewed him about how all of this came about and about his view of the possible relationships between Orthodox arts and film. Along the way one…
Continue reading »The problem of art in Anglophone Orthodoxy: a review essay
Recently, an online exchange about public outreach efforts with respect to various aspects of Orthodox music and music of Orthodox composers led the following comment by a discussant: What exactly is so “Orthodox” about any kind of pure music? […] [T]o associate any composer with the Church is an empty exercise, since music has only…
Continue reading »Woodwork for a Coptic Church in America
I have recently had the pleasure of making an altar set for a Coptic church. This project was somewhat of a challenge for me because the Coptic Church and her liturgical art is not my area of expertise. I had to learn about both the liturgical implements and the historical styles of woodwork unique to…
Continue reading »New Georgian Chant Tours
Our friends at Georgian Chant have announced two new tour itineraries this summer that sound quite wonderful. Here is their press release: Trip of a Lifetime In celebration of our tenth season, our team has split our original package tour into two separate tours. With so much to do and see, these new selections offer…
Continue reading »On the Gift of Art…Part IV: Challenges After the Clash
This is post 4 of 5 in the series “On the Gift of Art… But, What Art” Fr. Silouan explores points of contact and departure between traditional visions of art and contemporary art as we know it today. On the Gift of Art… But, What Art? On the Gift of Art…Part II: The Traditional Doctrine…
Continue reading »A New Hieratikon – The Typographical Design of a Liturgical Book
Editor’s note: This article is offered to us by Hierodeacon Herman regarding his design for a new liturgical book. This book represents one of the first significant applications of the Orthodox Illustration Project, sponsored by this journal. All the graphic ornaments used in the Hieratikon come from the Illustration Project, being drawn or edited by Scott Patrick O’Rourke,…
Continue reading »The Picture and the Frame
“A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.” —Leopold Stokowski It is a curious thing that most of the earth, most of the time, is completely silent—forests, mountain ranges, deserts, prairies, glaciers, oceans, the vast expanse of the sky: all totally silent save perhaps for the call of a bird…
Continue reading »Georgian Master Iconographer: Amiran Goglidze
Like many of the first generation to rediscover the icon in the 20th century, Amiran Goglidze learned iconography by restoring churches. He finished art school (painting college of I. Nikoladze) in 1971, but then also continued to study restoration and conservation of monumental art (Tbilisi State Academy of Painting) from 1971-1977. He was brought very close…
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