Prosopon Conference Online
A few months ago, we posted an article about a conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Prosopon School of Iconography and Iconology. The event took place in April of this year in Princeton NJ. They had 120 people attend, mostly from the US, but also from England, Estonia and Russia. For those nearby, there…
Continue reading »Ethiopian Carving
Since the post I wrote on Ethiopian art has attracted many comments, I thought I would share a few thoughts on Ethiopian carving. I had seen images of Ethiopian carving before my trip there and was looking forward to finding where they came from. It is in the city of Axum, where the fabled Ark of…
Continue reading »Is There Really a Patristic Critique of Icons
Gabe Martini has written a nice concise defense of icons in the Patristic record for the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy blog. It is a response to a Protestant article, but it shows nicely how thin the opposition to icons is in the Church Fathers. Gabe relies strongly on our own fr.Steven Bigham’s books and so I…
Continue reading »The Apocalypse Art Prize
“The first rule of art is beauty.” So begins “A Primer of Pictorial Devices in Medieval Painting” written by artist Gloria Thomas. The primer is a guide to competitors in the Apocalypse Art Prize. The prize is $10,000 and the deadline for entry is December 31, 2013. Complete information about the prize and how to…
Continue reading »The Amber Icons of Alexander Krylov
Alexander Krylov is a Russian master of amber. For several years he worked with a few others to recreate the famous “amber room”, the gift of the Prussian king to Peter the Great in the 18th century. It was known as “the eight wonder of the world”, but was looted by the Nazis during the…
Continue reading »The Ancient Churches of Spain
I would like to call attention to some of the ancient churches of Western Europe which predate the Great Schism. These churches offer a glimpse of Western Orthodoxy as it once was, and as such, offer us some suggestions for Orthodoxy in the West as it could be today. European churches of the 7th to…
Continue reading »Learning Icon Carving with Hexaemeron
Icon carving is an art which has been experiencing a great renewal in Orthodoxy all across the world. In the last 15 years we have seen several amazing icon carvers appear, with Aidan Hart in England, the Azbuhanov couple in Russia. The art of miniature carving has also been finding a quality it had lost…
Continue reading »Archetype and Symbol III: On Noetic Vision, Continued…
Lets now look at the nous as an organ of perception. In speaking of the soul, according to its different faculties, we tend to create a fragmented notion of it as consisting of mutually exclusive layers, rather than as an interrelated whole. Therefore, we tend to forget that the nous permeates all of man. Even…
Continue reading »Degraded Iconicity IV: Symbolic and Priestly Craftsmanship
This is post 4 of 6 in the series “Degraded Iconicity” Fr. Silouan Justiniano thinks through the effect of contemporary image culture and mechanical reproduction on iconography and our sense of the sacred. The Degraded Iconicity of the Icon: The Icon’s Materiality and Mechanical Reproduction Degraded Iconicity II: Uplifting Materiality and Symbol. Degraded Iconicity III:…
Continue reading »Archetype and Symbol II: On Noetic Vision
This is post 2 of 2 in the series “Archetype and Symbol” Fr. Silouan explores the possibility of creativity and the creative act within an Orthodox theological frame. Archetype and Symbol : Thoughts on the Creative Act Archetype and Symbol II: On Noetic Vision Archetype and Symbol II: On Noetic Vision Upon reading the…
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