Dmitry Mironenko Biography

Oksana Golovko is the same saint in different ways-either in monastic robes, then in military armor, or even in a mining mantle, clearly not from the time of this saint ... How is this possible? The icon painter Dmitry Mironenko is about the main and not the main issues that faces a modern icon painter about how to experience a professional and spiritual crisis without loss.

Dmitry Mironenko, the icon painter - modern icon painters reproach that they follow the old examples without creating anything new. What do you think about this? In fact, those who work with the icon are not up to it. The icon painter follows the wide highway of the tradition that our predecessors prepared. Everyone walking along this road can choose their own path without touching the other - there is enough space for everyone.

But there are questions from the outside: why should icon painters repeat the already done? Why don't they come up with a new one? Imagine a great musical work, for example, one of the Brandenburg concerts of Bach. All this music is well known and, I am sure, love, finding answers to our pressing experiences. But different performers will perform this work in completely different ways, introducing their personal experiences, their temperament, their skill-both conductor and musicians.

Is it possible to say that these performers, investing their talent and their soul, are completely deprived of the opportunity to realize their talents in the performance of this work? Moreover, some can even perform as no one performed before them. But if they suddenly decide to change the score, make or delete any of the Bach written, the listeners will simply leave the hall.

Behind every gesture, behind every hill in the icon - a lot of meanings. Trying to bring something from yourself, you can take out the most important thing, but for some reason, as soon as it comes to church arts, pressure is immediately undergoing: “Change, say something from yourself! And then, here we are talking about a spiritual topic, and not just art. Behind each gesture, behind each fold, behind each hill in the icon - a lot of meanings.

And just to change all this in order to say your new word, at least recklessly. Trying to specially introduce something from yourself, you can take out the most important thing. To raise the question in this way - to try to quickly decide what the centuries go to. No need to rush, do not expect from modern icon painters and from modern icon painting here and now something new.

Maybe it is, but we are unable to make out this: a large one is seen at a distance. It is possible if the Lord gives humanity time, and he will have a future that, after, for example, those icons that are written today will be perceived as characteristic of the turn of the XX - XXI centuries - according to certain signs that we now, from the inside, cannot be seen.

This is a gradual, unable process. Among the icon painters who have been working in the field of church art for many years, there are bright personalities, on the example of which this is clearly noticeable. There are people who have a transition from apprenticeship slowly, but still occurs. In general, it seems to me incorrect to talk about copying in the icon. It is about something else - about the reverent following the reference monuments.

Yes, they are recognized in student lists at the first stage of almost each of us, but then the work of the icon painter acquires an individual character. And in any case, any icon turns out to be unique: each icon painter misses a well -known image through himself, his heart, puts his spiritual issues and aspiration into it, using the skill that he has at the moment.

There is no need to repeat the requirements for the icon painters that are more suitable for artists, do not have requirements for the icon painters that are more suitable for artists. It is more important for the artist to realize himself, to express his position - human, civil, sometimes political through creativity. If the icon painter begins to set such tasks, he no longer has the time and desire to think that on this subject he prescribes the church in a particular image.

Then he himself stands in the place of the church and decides: “I will do this, this element will take this element at all - it bothers me - and I will replace it with completely different.” The church is careful about iconography, very slowly adjusting it, sometimes they go to this for centuries. Because this is not a matter that requires haste. If the icon painter begins to rush to say something “new”, he involuntarily plunges into a state of stress.

I know such icon painters - they even speak quickly, with hesitation, they really do not like when they disagree with them, and begin to be angry. Because if we begin to think, how to create something of our own, special, we plunge into the vanity of this world. So I am a supporter of consistent, gradual iconographic, stylistic, plastic changes in accents in church art. They have always been, eat and will be.

But, I repeat, it should be a natural process. And this process should occur in the entire church community. Cathedral, if you want.One saint - different images - among icon painters and art historians are discussed about whether modern materials in icon painting can be used. But at the same time I am guided by exclusively pragmatic meaning - today we do not have enough knowledge about how this material will behave after a long time.

Many of them appeared 20, 15 years ago, some appear literally before our eyes, and it seems careless to me to take them and immediately use them in work. I am a restorer by education and I can testify: what was done, years old, by natural materials, is durable. Whether it will live for so long recently gained colors - we do not know. Although they are convenient in work, and in their optical properties they are often little inferior to traditional materials.

And yet, although I do not use it myself, I do not condemn when other icon painters take these materials for work. I think that if such materials were available to masters of antiquity, they would use them and did not come up with theological arguments why it was worth it or not to do: they used what was in the arsenal of mankind. They thought about something else.

And today the accents have shifted. We focus on the secondary, as if specifically so as not to solve the main problem of the icon painter. The image of God, and this is the task of almost a cosmic scale - to accommodate into the space of the icon board. If you realize this, it will no longer be up to a “high problem”: what do you write - acrylic, oil or egg tempor?

We focus on a secondary one, so as not to solve the main problem of the icon painter why the topic of the author’s icon is so alarming: I suspect that the emphasis on the personal in icon painting is not close even by the principles of Orthodoxy. One step - and you have sinned, already pride. And so with this you have to constantly fight, track, discontinue. And if it doesn’t work, and even pour oil into the fire: “Come on, create something of your own, unique, unique” ...

It turns out that all this spiritual abuse was unnecessary? And this is not at all about freedom. After all, the icon painter, who is in the obedience of the mother-of-church, is completely free. He can realize these talents by God without bending, but freely, without even breaking his head over this nonsense. How to be a modern icon painter when he thinks how to write a specific saint?

At one time, I defended the dissertation on this subject - it is dedicated to the iconography of St. Alexander Nevsky. And, working on the topic, I saw how the iconography of this saint was transformed over the centuries: he could be portrayed as a monk, as a prince, and as an emperor in a mining mantle, and as a warrior in a raincoat and armor. And in each iconography there is a different message, the general is only the iconography of the face.

And each iconographic program of the image has its own argument - for example, during Peter I, the iconography of the saint was prohibited in the monastic image, and the type that could be called the “imperial” appeared: a mining mantle appeared on the saint’s shoulders, and he tried on knightly armor. And when I need to write today the image of St. Alexander Nevsky, I choose iconography, depending on the place where this image is intended.

For example, I wrote the icon of this saint for a chapel aboard the Alexander Nevsky underwater atomic boat. This is a warship, and officers and sailors, going on a hike, cannot be sure whether they will return to the shore or not. Naturally, St. Alexander Nevsky is closer and more understandable to them in the iconography of a warrior, an invincible commander. If I write a saint in monastic clothes, they will not recognize him.

And, for example, when in the monastery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Schimona Barnabas asked me to write the image of this saint, I did not even have doubts what iconography to choose. When it was required to write the image of the saint in Trinity to the Alexander Nevsky crayfish, a prototype of the imperial period was chosen, when the saint is depicted in military robes and a minnostaeva mantle.

The choice is justified by the fact that the painting of the Trinity Cathedral, built in the style of classicism by the architect Starov, are made in an academic manner, and it was this iconography that turned out to be more appropriate. After all, he did not wear ancient robes during his lifetime, but walked, being a secular man, for example, in a frock coat and a tie, like John Kovsharov, the legal adviser of the Alexander Neva Lavra, he was shot with Metropolitan Benjamin.

But with the iconography of the saint is easier: episcopal vestments, if you want, portray in an ancient style, you want - in the synodal. And how to portray the holy martyr John? In a frock coat, how did he always go, or as a Roman patrician in chiton and gimmia, or just in a white shirt to the heels with a cross in his hand? But will we recognize it in the last options?

After all, iconography should strive to ensure that believers recognize the saint on the icon and at the same time understand the program message - what does the image of the saint tell us this? Or, for example, the righteous Fedor Ushakov, not so long ago reckoned with the saints.In the century when he served the Fatherland, it was strange even according to modern concepts of fashion - tight -fitting white leggings, boots and a short tunic with scurry.

It is very difficult to write in the canonical icon of a saint, dressed in this fashion. We, icon painters, helps out, for example, the presence of a cloak that the admiral was relied on. That is, this is just the iconographic solution that helps the icon painter preserve the historical truth and not to get out of the space of the traditional icon and traditional Orthodox ethics.

The icon painters have many problems, but they are terribly interesting - for example, how to write saints whose iconography has not developed. And when you think about them seriously, no longer up to the “author” icon. The iconography of the new martyrs will once turn out, you just need to stop striving for this to happen today, so that some icon painter will take, sat down, thought and make.

A bit too much for one mortal, sinful person. But the cathedral of icon painters, stretched in time, will develop iconography. Do not hesitate. We will bring something, icon painters living today, something-our students, something-students of students and so on. So the image will appear, as, for example, the image of Ksenia of St. Petersburg and many other saints manifested itself.

Those who advocate to write this saint with their eyes closed come from the logic of earthly truth.