Back Tiina Veisserik Tiina-Helje Veisserik has studied architecture at the Art Institute of the Estonian Soviet Republic and art theory and art history at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. She has worked as an architect, as an icon painter, as a professor and the Head of the Department of Icon Painting and Restauration at the Estonian Art Academy. She has complemented her knowledge and skills in the field of icon painting in many foreign countries.
Lecture: Enviroment as an Icon
Monday, 26th of October 11.30
We will look at the environment as an icon from the Orthodox point of view. The semiotic perspective is also surpsisingly fitting.
Within the sensible environment of centuries 1-4, icon is formed as a shared creation of Christians. Such an icon is a symbol mediating the holiness of God, it is an order of serving God, an oral and written text. Viewable creation as an icon is rather a pictography – a symbol operating only alongside words (e.g. early Christian images found in catacombs).
From 5th to 15th century, icon as a viewable symbol, communicating the holiness of God, develops and perfects.
Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th century the sensible environment reigning in Europe breaks into icon painting both in Russia and in Greece.
20th century is a period of rebirth of icons. Estonia (Old Believers, Grigori Krug), Russia (Leonid Uspenski, matushka Juliana) and Greece (Photios Kontoglou et al.) all play a role.
Icon as a symbol created by human hands was shaped in accordance with the environment. True icons involves revelation and sustains a contact between the natural and the supernatural environment.
As the artificial environment grows -- as semiosphere is transformed into man made world of signs – into a man-centered closed matrix, the meaning of man as an icon mediating God’s holiness increases. The meaning and responsibility of unions of Christians, parishes as icons, grows.
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