https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=sx0D4BRxmsU
I just want to ask about you as a Christian iconographer and an artist. I know, correct me if I’m wrong, I understand in Orthodox tradition, icons, even in the Catholic tradition, icons are seen as a window into heaven and each symbol of the hand or each color is seen as a theological expression and any change or innovation of that could be even seen as heresy. So how do you as an artist kind of break those boundaries of innovation, express yourself and how do you move forward with that art? Yeah, so I think that some of what you said, I think has been vastly exaggerated in terms of just how strict it is. And I think and I understand why, you know, it’s like I think that some people who felt like most contemporary art was just anything goes and that there was no rule, rhyme or reason and no meaning, then looked back at medieval art and saw, wow, these things have patterns, these things have meaning, these things have a sense, and then they just want to hold on to that. But the reality of traditional iconography is that it is extremely variable. There’s a lot of variation, variation in styles, variation in tropes. Now, it’s not an absolute variation. There are there are limits and there are tropes, there are patterns that you have to follow in order for it to be recognized by the community in which you’re trying that you’re trying to serve. And so that’s probably the best way to understand it. It’s almost like you could understand it like, you know, English has certain grammatical rules. And if I if I don’t use those grammatical rules, then people won’t recognize that it’s English. And so if I make an image and I’m like, well, you know, I want Jesus to have a pumpkin head. Well, I’m sorry to tell you that no one will recognize that as Jesus and therefore it will be seen as heresy. And so so it’s so there is a so there is a way in which we recognize something as belonging to the tradition. But you’d be surprised to what extent there is variation. And I think that the way that I see it is that innovation is neither good nor bad. Innovation is a neutral thing. Innovation has to serve a purpose. And when innovation serves a purpose, usually the strange thing that happens is people recognize it. People recognize it as being traditional, having been traditional the whole time. They have a they have the feeling that that they’ve seen it before, but they haven’t. So it’s like I’ve created images which absolutely never existed before in the church. But I’ve never had anybody complain because they say the spirit in which I did it, the reason for which I’ve done it was was in order to with love towards the community. It’s like I don’t want my purpose isn’t to like show you that I’m like, you know, all attention to myself, show you that that I’m better than you, that I’m smarter, that I, you know, I thought of this new thing that I want to kind of shove into your face. It’s like, no, I want I want to serve this community. I want to participate. And so a good example would be. So, for example, in the Orthodox Church, we have an image of the of the resurrection. So we have an image of Christ going into death and saving Adam and Eve. Right. It’s like it’s you see you see Christ holding Adam and Eve. He’s like pulling them out of death. And so and so then we also have the image of the crucifixion of a cross. And so at some point, I started making crosses that had that image on it. And and I’d never seen that ever. And I don’t think that actually exists, but no one ever said anything. It was totally fine. And so priests started wearing crosses with this image on it. And like no priest in the history of the world had ever worn a priest with that image on it. But it was totally fine because it’s like I’m not I’m not putting a cat there. But I’m not putting Justin Bieber. I’m I’m I’m I’m doing something which is like it’s like it’s like a it’s like a poetic reformulation of something you already participate in. It’s like it’s like, oh, wow. Yeah. An image of of of the descent into death on the cross. Like maybe they don’t even think it. They just see it. And it’s like, yeah, that makes sense. So I think there’s a lot of that where it’s a lot of the problem that modern religious art has had is that it doesn’t it acts out of the sense of genius, like the sense of of trying to keep up with the times. It’s like it’s not acting with the desire to to integrate and to make something participate in the community. But if you do that, you’d be surprised at what you can do. You can actually do quite a bit. You