Difference between Russian and Greek style.

Difference between Russian and Greek style.

I got to know Russian icons better after a trip to the Golden Ring. But I have not yet been rectified from Greek to Russian painter, as the guide wanted.

What technically separates the Russians from the Greeks is the transparency. The large color area of a red or green garment, for example, is set up transparently, by superimposing more than ten transparent layers of paint. This gives an unpredictable cloudy pattern, which you also seem to be looking through. You think: what am I actually looking at? Eventually you also look at the white priming of the board. That is a particularly beautiful effect and Greek icons do not have that. Those all have opaque areas of color. With the Russians, though, the first, second and certainly third lights if there are any, are more opaque than the ground plane. The lights are different from the Greek ones, and worthy of a separate study. The lights can be quite bright, then they shine, but they are narrower.

Then Russian icons further have the indication of the volume of the cloth by means of all the little spiral lines. It is about lineation. Shading is not meant here, rather lines that combine to form the beginning of a spiral. If at the edge of a garment the lines are forked close together, the eye understands that the rug is rounded here. Greek icons, on the other hand, indicate roundness by lighting from the first to the third light, and the ground color takes on the role of shadow. And so the icons of the Cretan school have quite a lot of shadow: about 50% of the surface.

Furthermore, the Russian icons have a different color range or palette. Many icons have indeterminate colors like umber, amber, brown, and pastel shades or hard green, red backgrounds. Greek icons, on the other hand, have ground planes that correspond more closely to lights, in that a red light entails a red ground plane (and vice-versa), green a green, blue a blue, brown a brown. At least the Cretan school requires this. Russian painting, according to me and the Russian authors, arose out of the specific periods of North Greek painting (namely, the Palaeological and Comenian styles), and in these there was so little uniformity that it is not surprising that Russian painting a) is also so divergent and b) thus so different from Crete.

The fourth difference between Russian and Greek is the timeline. From the fourth century there were icons, I think first in Palestine. Byzantium also used the imagery (the term is iconography) of Hellenism (300 B.C. to 300 A.D.) and of Classical Antiquity (800 to 300 B.C.). During the Byzantine iconoclasm (725-853), Russia was still pagan, even until 988, when Kiev became Christian as the first and most important principality, during the Macedonian dynasty in Byzantium. So Russia did not have the roots of Byzantine painting in it, only a snapshot adopted and further developed. The decline sets in Russia in the 16th century, and in the Byzantine regions at the latest in the 17th century.

The fifth difference concerns the expressionism of Russian design versus the realism of Greek. The head-body ratio is 1 : 12 in Russia, 1 : 8 in Greece. To the eye, this unnatural Russian design reflects the spiritualization of man very well. On the iconostasis, these tall figures bow in body language that says humility, submission, humility, surrender: Góspodi pomiluj, Lord have mercy. And maybe there's a little Russian melancholy in there, too. The Greek icons depict supernatural portraits in utter realism. The saints are depicted as blissful people with an inward gaze.

We Greeks will have to look to the Russians to learn. To give our own painting that touch of holiness and psychological depth that the Russians are known for. A role also plays in understanding the artistic means the Russian employs. And I think we need to draw from our own arsenal handed down to us by the Greek tradition to create, like the Russians, something beautiful and timeless.