Хипервизантијски парадокс: Зашто је могуће / потребно говорити о стилу савременог црквеног сликарства у Србији?
Hyperbyzantine Paradox: Is it Possible/ Useful to Analyze the Stylistic Aspects of Contemporary Serbian Church Painting?

Author(s): Todor Mitrovic
Subject(s): Visual Arts, Theology and Religion, Eastern Orthodoxy
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: neobyzantine painting; medieval painting; Tumane Monastery; style
Summary/Abstract: Throughout second half of twentieth century, the renewal of medieval style in (Serbian) church arts was focused to mass-production of popular, utilitarian and naïve icons, without aesthetic capacity to attract a slightest dose of attention of academic community. The lack of need for any kind of stylistic change is established as a distinctive feature of such an artistic production, and confirmed through tacit consensus of Church and community of inquiry that the questions of style and aesthetic achievements of ecclesiastic art are already resolved on some intangible cognizant level. Paradox which inspired research of the nature of such a consensus is based in fact that it has been gained from totally opposite conceptual positions: (1) Church would argue that achieved stylistic and aesthetic solutions should not be questioned because they are made through renewal of the highest attainable artistic/theological achievement in the history of visual arts; (2) on the other hand, contemporary artists, art historians and wider academic community (with critical aspirations) would agree that achieved stylistic and aesthetic solutions should not be questioned because they do not display any of the recognizable characteristics of artistic (creative) production. However, under the surface of this bizarre (but very stabile) convention, it is possible to recognize fresh, underground artistic streams which are suggesting that – throughout the last decade of 20th and on the beginning of 21st century – Church art in Serbia can be approached on completely different aesthetic and cognitive level. In this research author makes an attempt to reveal those unexplored artistic streams, and to show that their iconic products can be analyzed through dynamic, inventive, developmental (…) categories, usually related to the set of cultural activities denoted with the term arts.

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