Neohellenic Ecclesiastical Art and Aesthetics

Knowledge Deepening / Consolidation

Upon successful completion of the course students will be able to: 1. to understand the artistic conditions that led to neohellenic ecclesiastical art, 2. to develop their critical and analytical thinking in order to investigate the generative causes of artistic change through the political, religious, philosophical and economic contexts of the time, 3. to utilize the acquired knowledge in the further interpretation of the basic parameters of the research field in the history of neohellenic ecclesiastical art.

The study of neo-hellenic ecclesiastical art can offer new readings not only in art but also in the history of the ideas of modern Hellenism, as it presents a peculiar evolution, directly intertwined with the historical and political events of the place. After the creation of the Greek state, mainly in the urban centers, there is a shift to the western academic standards, while in the rest of the territory the old forms continue. Necessary conditions for the study of modern Greek ecclesiastical painting is the clarification of terms that characterize it as "popular", "academic", "Nazarene", etc., and their re-marking. The 20th century is marked by the tendency to return to iconography and the aesthetic values of Byzantine art, pioneer of which was the painter and writer Fotis Kontoglou. The "neo-Byzantine" style has prevailed since then in the consciousness of his students and followers, in an effort to create an art with a "national identity", according to the spirit of the time, and away from the spirit of academic style. The effort of modern hagiographers is to interpret and evaluate the modern ecclesiastical art culture on the basis of its own aesthetic and dogmatic norms and not on the basis of neo-idealistic aesthetic values. The course is structured in the following 13 teaching units: 1 Introduction. The last phase of post-Byzantine painting (1700-1830). The "Renaissance" movement of the Mount Athos. Monk Dionysios from Fourna of Agrafa (1670-1744) and his “Ἑρμηνεία τῆς ζωγραφικῆς τέχνης” (1728-1733). 2. From Western European Renaissance art to Baroque style. The Rococo style. 3. The action of the workshops of the 18th and 19th century. Kapesovites (1742-1841), Galatsians (1780-1860), Chionadites (mid-18th c. until the end of the 19th c.), Samariniotes (late 18th, 19th c.), Kolakiotes painters. Characteristics of the hagiographic production and aesthetics of the 18th and 19th century. 4. Peloponnesian and Athenian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. Cretan painters and the Ionian School of Painting. 5. The Greek state and its ideological choices. The School of Arts (December 31, 1836). Relationships between ecclesiastical-religious and secular painting. The "popular" and the "academic" ecclesiastical art. The neo-Byzantine style in architecture and Ziller. 6. The Neo-Renaissance painting of the Nazarene painters and the Italian-Russian style. The Iosaphaeans (1859). Theirsios, Zaits (mid-19th c.) and the "Westernized" ecclesiastical painting. K. Fanellis and Romanticism. Theophilos and Naif painting. 7. Ecclesiastical art and aesthetics in post-war Greece, the established Art Professional Chamber (1944). S. Papaloukas (1892-1957), K. Parthenis (1878-1967), A. Asteriadis (1898-1977), etc. 8. Byzantine art as an object of experimental research of modernist artists of the 20th century. Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), etc. 9. Fotis Kontoglou (1940-1965) and his students. The determination of national identity in ecclesiastical art based on the tradition. 10. S. Vassiliou (1902-1985), P. Regos (1903-1984), N. Eggonopoulos (1907-1985), G. Tsarouchis (1910-1989), etc. Byzantinism and the visual perceptions of Modernism. 11. The 1960s and the return to the Church Fathers and the Byzantine tradition. Modern orthodox hagiographers. R. Kopsidis (1929-2010), M. Vasilakis, etc. The timeless importance of Byzantine art. 12. Hagiography and religious painting. Religious iconography in modern art. The importance of religious symbols and collective memory. 13. The rediscovery of the criterion and the ethos of our culture in ecclesiastical art. Orthodox hagiography as a living artistic and spiritual experience.

Modern Greek ecclesiastical painting, hagiography, painters, modern Greek history, symbols and aesthetics.

29-07-2021