398 - The Time for Orthodox Art is NOW - The Symbolic World

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Jonathan Pegel.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the Symbolic world.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Sisters growing your father's your grace, christ has risen.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's good to see.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
You all this evening.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
We are going to go ahead and get started, so financy,
who lets sit on somebody else?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
And I know, it's really wonderful to see everything so full.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
It's my great pleasure to have.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
The honor of introducing my good friend Jonathan Pago.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
And we were talking a little bit before and I
was trying to decide how best to introduce him, and
I was like, well, one of my most embarrassing Jonathan's stories.
You know, there's also there's also you know, one of
the things that people ask me quite often is how
did you start working together? I mean, after all, I'm
from Texas, thank god, and he's French.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
And you know, and so and so. The quick story
that I'll tell is that several years ago I was.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
And the sort of person as most of you probably know,
I just I like to read really old, interesting, weird,
obscure things. And so I was reading these things and
I was posting about some of the stuff that I
was reading on the specifically something called the Sibiling Books,
which if you've watched our universal History videos, you go
back for the first couple, you'll you'll see some stuff
in there about them. Anyways, I was posting about this

(01:44):
in the Simbald Road community and I think Jonathan was.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Like, who is this guy?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Was he posting it? Like? You know?

Speaker 4 (01:49):
And so we started having a conversation about this, and
then eventually said, well, let's do a podcast, and then
the podcast turned into another podcast and into another podcast, and.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Then basically I sort of just moved in, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
And then and then, you know, several.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
Years later, now what it's been three or four years,
I guess since we started doing that series together. And
we've got a wonderful publishing company, the Symbolic World Press.
That's been one of the great joys and frustrations and
all of those things of my life is to work
up at with you. But we've got a table at
the back and there are some flyers that I think
some of you were handed when you came to the door.

(02:27):
Is anybody have a flyer? I meant to have one
to hold out somebody there We go, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
So there's some flyers you've gotten at the door.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
And I think we still have a few left, and
these just this has a little bit about our work,
including a QR code.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
So there's two things here that I just want to
call your attention to.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Jonathan won't do this.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
He's terrible at marketing.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Assad man, Come.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
On, my children have to eat. No. But I just
want to point to have two things. One is that
we have the next book in our Fairytalk life, and
we have the first two back.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
There at the table.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
If you haven't grabbed one already, please come by with
a few left.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
But the next book in our series is Rapunzel and
the Evil Witch, and this comes out sometime this summer, and.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
It's really beautiful.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
It is legitimately it's one of the most beautiful books
that I have ever read in my life, and I'm
just so excited about getting to bring it to all
of you.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
So there's a QR code here.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
There's going to be a kind of a shorter release
in the summer before the rest of the books arrive,
and so if you want to be in on that
first release, which is pretty limited, you can sign up
for early access there. The other thing is that we're
currently doing a course for the Symbolic World Press, so
some of you may know, we have courses on literature, medievalism,
the inklings, things like this, and so right now Jonathan

(03:47):
is teaching an amazing course. It's our Symbolism masterclass, and
it's really basically it's all the things Jonathan won't say
in public.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
You know. It really is kind of that though. I
know that some of you here are actually taking the
course right now, and there were some of the there
were some things like this last week. I was like,
oh wow, he said the thing.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know, it's anyway, it's great, it's really really great.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
And so we are actually offering a discount on that
as well.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
So if you stand us to our cook right here,
you can use the code DFW time to get ten
percent off of the constant back course.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
So anyway, get a flyer, check these things out, check
out our table in the back. And Jonathan over here.
Thank you, Richard, thank you all.

Speaker 5 (04:29):
Right, and so you're great for having fathers.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Thank you for the invitation.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
It is always a joy to come protect with, to
come to Data.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
I'm starting to starting to think of it a little
bit as my second home.

Speaker 5 (04:54):
I really enjoy coming here.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
And as Richard was presenting, I've really enjoyed my relationship
with him. You know when he said he was when
he said that he was reading the Sibilian Oracle, Because
the Cibilian Oracle is a very very strange and very
niche thing that not many people know about, but it
has it has a growth a very strong that' say,

(05:16):
importance in this idea of what we call universal history,
which is.

Speaker 6 (05:20):
The sense that some of the things that the ancients
were talking about were actually leading to Christ, and that
the early Christians and that the Church were able to
discern that even in some of the pagan works, with
some of the stranger aspects, they're able to say, oh wait,
this is weird, but it also simultaneous points to Christ.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
And so these are the things that interest us. But
today I'm willing.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
To talk to you about art. I'm going to talk
about a very particular moment in which we are now.
I want to say that we are in an extremely
excited moment. A lot of people who are coming here
know that so many people I know who are here
today are new converts, catechumen a lot of young people

(06:07):
who have discovered Orthodoxy and have seen in our holy
tradition a key, you know, and a key that opens
up so many.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Aspects of the world.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Of course our spiritual life, of course our movement, our
struggle towards salvation through united with God and to Christ,
but also something else, which is an entire network of
relationships of beauty.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
In terms of the visuals, in terms of the music.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
In terms of how these fit together, the architecture, you know,
and so all of these things come as this revelation
of something that we feel like we had slowly lost
in the West, something that had been there in the.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Early centuries but that was slowly eroded. And so we
have access to this whole language that is coming to us.
And when we discover this language, we.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Realize that it's not alien because some people say, oh,
you know, Orthodoxy, it's really interesting because it's foreign, it's Eastern,
you know, it's kind of spicy, it's the Oriental, and
there's a little bit of that which is true, and
some people are attracted to that maybe mystery at the outset.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
But once you start to live in the Orthodox.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Church and in the life of an Orthodox Christian, you
realize that this language is the language of Christianity. Like
I said, the one that was there in the East
and the West and was slowly eroded in the West,
and so it's a way back, not only in terms
of faith, but back to our own roots, roots that

(07:52):
we feel like.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
We've lost over time. And so it's an.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Exciting time because all this energy is coming into the
church and all this energy it's coming into the church
at a moment what we feel like the culture around
us is fragmented. We feel like our culture.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Music, cinema, everything is just running out right. The stories
are running out.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Nobody knows what story to tell, nobody knows what images
are important. Nobody is able to know what to listen to.
You know, we are the music has been reduced to
like mumble rap, like three beats that just are repeated,
you know, after one after the other. You know, the
cinema has been reduced to this basically propaganda.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
And so, you know, on the one hand, we are grieving,
but on the other hand.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
It is it is exciting because when something decomposes, it
becomes earth in which to plant a new seed.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
You know, when the darkness grows, then the candle shines brighter.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
And so it is an opportunity for creative people, for artists,
for people who want to be able to speak into.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
The chaos, to actually have a voice, and to actually make.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
A melody which has been drowned out for centuries audible again.
And not only for people in the church, of course,
firstly for us in the church, but also for people outside,
because there is something undeniable about beauty.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
That no one can stop looking at once they get.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
A glimpse of it. When somebody walks into a church
and walks under the dawn, I don't care where you're from,
I don't care what your background is. There is you
cannot resist the effect that it will have under r
And that is true of the music, and it is

(10:02):
true of the stories that we gather, the story of
the saints, the legends, even the weirder stuff that kind
of creaks in the margins of our tradition.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
All of these are an amazing network of things that we.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Can capture, all right, and so, but in order to
do so, we have to gross understand the state of
the world in which you're in and then understand what
does it mean, what is it that we offer as
an alternative.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
To the current state.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Like I said, we have to be able to understand
the state of culture and the state of art in
the contemporary world, because sometimes with all the best intentions
in the world, and even with all the beauty that's
around us and all the beauty that we're part of,
we still have certain diseases inside us. We still have

(10:55):
certain perverse ways in which we understand culture, we understand art,
we understand human.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Making, and we can, if we're not careful, we can
bring these into the church.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
And we can also bring them into our desire to
seek into the culture that's around us. So it's a
good idea to kind of do the first, do the
medical inquiry and give the diagnosis, and then after that
we can look at how what the what I believe
how Orthodox art and the Orthodox vision is a cure

(11:26):
for that disease. And so one of the things that
happened after the Middle Ages that led to us, and
it's a perverse element of some of the best art
that the West has produced, is the idea of the
artist and the public. Right, It's the idea of the
painter and the viewer, the performer and the public. We

(11:51):
have this notion, right, and so when we think of art,
we think of it in that way that we tend
to think of it.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
We think that, well, what is art?

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I will go to a concert and then I will
sit and then people will play music for me. Then
I'll applaud, and then I'll leave. But first of all,
there's nothing wrong with it. That is, that is fine.
But there is an issue in that, in that problem,
which is that at some point art becomes something like

(12:22):
a consumable, becomes something to consume. Art is a product,
just like a can of coke, or just like a hamburger.
I get Mike, I got my I got my popcorn,
and I got my movie, and I'm consuming this.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
So I am a I'm a I'm.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
A client, right, I'm a buyer. And now this is
the product that I'm purchasing in order to satisfy certain
needs that I have, whether it's to be distracted, whether
it's to be elated, or whatever it is that I
want to feel.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Right, And this is the way that you understand art.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Like everything, cinema, TV, all of that, all of that
falls into that category. Okay, And so the the the
image of this notion of art as a consumable. I
love this because with all these layers of consumables in
this in this image, it's like, you know, we're gonna

(13:20):
we're gonna have a great night of art and culture,
and we like go we go to the symphony play
Star Wars music, and so we have this beautiful experience
of listening to the.

Speaker 7 (13:31):
Music from a movie and you know, and it's it's wonderful,
like it's great, it's fun okay, and it falls into
ultimately this also.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
This sense of fashion. Right, art becomes a slave to fashion.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
And what you realize is that we are obsessed with
novelty and we are looking for novelty and we have
a really eye mind their vision of novelty, and you
have this sense confused novelty with that dirty word progress. Right.
Art has to move forward.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Art has to be new, it has to change, it
has to break boundaries and everything. But ultimately what you
notice is that really what it is, it's just fashion.
I think fashion is another word for acidea.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Right. Fashion is another word for distraction. Fascinating is another
word for the cycles of attention, right that you just
just you just have to keep like how can I
say this? Like the little thing has to come poke
out again and shake at you so that you look
at it and then you get bored, and then another
thing comes up and pokes it and you're like, oh,
and then then you get bored. And that's what the

(14:47):
meal of fashion in which you're in, you know. And
what's interesting, Like I said that there was a time
when this was could have been convinced, and.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
I totally understand how people kind of went into this thinking.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Oh, this new movement of art, this new style of cinema,
this new way of feeling it, this new type of music,
it is breaking round that has progressed, it is progressed,
and this new thing.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
But now they're at the moment where.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
We've seen now it's just all recycled, recycled, recycle, and
that whatever supposed novelty happened in culture happened for a
very short bursts of time, maybe at the beginning of
the till century, maybe a little bit.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
After World War Two, and then now we're just basically recycling,
you know. And so I watched my daughters all of
a sudden where jeans like certain the right, and I'm like,
wait a minute, but how did.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
The eighties come back? That? I thought?

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I was like the most it keeps you anting.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Nobody does that now, but like you have these weird
things that just keeps cycling back. They this, it's like,
but it is just still that sidia that it's progressing.
But now, because it's been such a long time that
this way of thinking has been in the world, we
can actually see its fruits. Right. And you know about

(16:09):
flash fashion, right, this idea of fashion that lasts literally
for like three weeks.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Right, Everybody goes on these websites and they like buy
the latest, latest thing, and then they wear it for
like two weeks and then if you still wear it
after that, and they're not cool anymore. Right, And it's
just like these really really fast cycles of the Kenchin.
But like I said, that is winding down because at.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Some point it just becomes a ridiculous You noted that
it's just a ridiculous carnival wheel that's just sitting faster
and faster, and that there is a very middle first
of all actual novelty, and that a lot of novelty
is really just like a little clown going like this
and shaking, you know, looking for scandal in order to

(16:54):
attract a tension, looking for some shocking thing that will
attract a tentip. It it's been in fact, wait, because
you know it's like the success the suggestion of sexuality
and like nineteen fifties rock and roll sounded really edgy
and really exciting. But by the time you're like wow,
and you just got like basically a script show on

(17:16):
stage and just like this disgusting behavior.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
It just makes you want to vomit.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Like you know, it's like it was like this idea
and I know this is pushing the boundary, like this
is so exciting, and now it's just like Okay, yeah,
thank you, but no, thank you enough, all right, you
need something.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
More than that.

Speaker 8 (17:35):
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(17:55):
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Speaker 2 (18:18):
So in that sense, there is also, like I said,
this idea that related to the notion of consumable that
I've already been talking about is the notion of art
ass revolution. And this is something that started to become
very prominent, of course in the early twentieth century, with
all the painting movements you had Picasso, Humanism, Surrealism, Futurism,

(18:42):
all of these artistic movements.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
That presented themselves not in continuation of what was there before.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Not as a taking forward of the flame in the
sense of a memory of where I come from, that
is being pass down to the person after me.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's no what we call tradition.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
But no, we're going to snuff out that flame because
that flame is herning. That flame is you know, it's oppressive,
because it stifles our creativity. We want to be free,
we want to do whatever we want. We want to
open up creativity in the most ways that we can,

(19:25):
and therefore we a vision are as revolution.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
And if you think about it, if you listen to
cultural commentary, it just creeps in all the time.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
People are always presenting our comany as revolution. But at
the same time, the revolutionary trope basically played itself out
in the early twentieth century. It was like a flash, right,
we went from an exciting revolution to this and it

(19:58):
happened in ten years super fast. Basically taking the most
sanger object, putting it in the gallery and saying this
is our this is of course send de Champ, said
de Chap's year low and to put out in the
gallery and see in nineteen seventeen, called the scandal, you know,

(20:20):
because it was so revolutionary, called the scandal.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
People broke it.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Sure, the artist was super happy, got attention. You know,
I'm breaking the rules. I'm part of the revolution. You know,
But what about like now, it's been one hundred years
since this happened, and now what right? Now? What we
just repeat this revolutionary gesture over and over and over.

Speaker 7 (20:44):
How did you how did you think we could get
You never thought we could get a tradition of revolution.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
We have a tradition of revolution where we're just constantly
turning this wheel and revolving anywhere. I just watched on
the plane here I actually wife for the other Bob
really movie.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
A complete unknown.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's a good movie, is definitely worth it, Like, look
at this he defied everyone to change everything, and in
the movie, that's how he's presented, you know, and it's
super interesting.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
I'm gonna spoil it for you.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Sorry, it's not.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
It's not like it's a big mystery, right.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
The whole movie is about how Bob Dylan gets trapped
in the world of folk music and he's kind of
looking at it to break out and to break out
of folk music and to move into rock so he
can change the world. And it ends where he's at
this folk festival. I think it's a folk festival.

Speaker 9 (21:37):
It's a folk music festival, and the people are photo
music festival, are just telling them.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Mister Dylan, this is a folk music festival. Like that's
the boundary of this place. If you want to come here,
like just play folk music. And he's like, oh man,
I can't do it.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
You know rules, I'm gonna break old rules.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
And it just I mean, I mean to me, it's
just so tired. It's like, are we still telling this
story after one hundred years? Breaking the world is not complicated.
It's like, you know, it's not it's not a big mystery.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
You have a you have a pattern and you break it.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
I don't understand why that's like a it's actual all right, Okay,
I'm gonna toss.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Everything here right now. I'm gonna show you that.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
I don't care about it. But you know, it's like,
okay it and it's such it's such a trump like
you know what it looks like. Rebellion looks like very clearly,
you know, just.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Do something different, but that look doing something different looks
the same.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
It ends up just all looking the same.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, It's like, you know, pump roar, where's a uniform?

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Folks? Like I can tell a pump roller from like
a mile away because he's doing he looks like every
other rebel in the history of rebels. Okay, so, but
it's really important to understand that, to understand. And the
thing is that it's still here today. This is an artist.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
His name is Away Away. He's probably one of the
most important visual artists right now in the world. He's
a Chinese artist. And here he is being an artist.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
He takes this beautiful vase, ancient you know, dynasty base
and he drops it and breaks.

Speaker 9 (23:22):
It, and that is his great act of revolution. This
wasn't made in nineteen seventeen. This is made like ten
years ago, fifteen years ago.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
You know. There's his most famous piece of art is him,
you know, flipping off the White House. If you seen
this thing, it's probably not. That's just a picture of
him flipping off the weapons. All right, that's it our mister,
A wayway, I guess, you know. But you have to
be able to attend to it. You have to be
able to notice it, because you'll hear it constantly. You'll
watch a movie and he goes, oh, this is this

(23:54):
has never been done before. This is the This is a.

Speaker 7 (23:57):
Complete new way, completely revolution on how things were done before.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
But that's it's not even possible anymore. It's like everything
in that sense has been done the revolution. One of
the things, by the way, if you want to notice
interesting enough in terms of the revolutionary trope, is that
because it's just been done over and over and over
and over.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Now, if you want to.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Make art that's revolutionary, you almost have to like remind
people of a world that was kind of orderly and
traditional and.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Then upend it. Right, So what are you doing.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
You're just like recasting the tradition and then upending it
and then recasting it and uphending it right.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
So it's it's a simple move, but it's one.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Which people think is the deepest aspect of culture, and
that brings us towards this type of thing. That also
brings us to this notion that you see now, which
is that decide of art as social engineering or art
as propaganda, because a lot of people intuitively at some

(25:03):
point realize that breaking things is not enough.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
That you can't just be breaking things. So people want
to say, well, I want to make art that builds something.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
I want to get it right. I want to make
art that participates in something, participates in the project, participates
in building something. But what we end up with Saturday
is something that war.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
It can to propaganda, and that has been in some ways.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
The case, especially in the past two decades, especially in
CAU culture, we've kind of seen propaganda infiltrate the world
of art in ways that make.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
It just boring because nobody likes propaganda.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Actually, you know this is this is after I actually
decided to choose a version that is a second fary
as poster.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
This is actually quite nice. It's not like it's not
the dribble of proper again, that we said, but you
can see that.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
It is fine art that is in the service of
a politician, right, that's fine art that's in the service
of politics, in the service of a social ideal. But
there are so many examples of this, and I decided
to choose the deepest one. So and it's also reinvented

(26:28):
everything about like fashion and consumable as well.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
It's all kind of layering into the same. And so
Kevin Smith.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Revamped he Man and for those I'm sure everybody who
knows who he Man is, he Man is a figure
of my childhood, expecting the internet, childhood with a toy
it was like kind of like this barbarian figure and
they have toys, get animations, and we got this mythical world,
you know, obviously downstream from Tokyo and all of that
kind of mythical imagination, and you know, it was campy,

(26:59):
it was fun, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
It was the way to sell toys.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
We get until they decide to revamp this, obviously because
now all the gen xers are adults with kids, so
it's like, can we need to make things for the
gen xers so that they.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Can buy it for the kids, and so that the
kids like it. You know, that's how it works.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
A lot of recycled ips are about that, like capture
the gen xers so they they buy for their kids.
And so he does this.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
He Man's a poster like right areas he mean, you know,
it's got the power. He's in the middle.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
But when you watch it, what they do is they
replace he men with a female character. This has been
a trope that's just been going on over and over
and over. It's like, you have this character, it's the
main character of Iraqi, and then you replace the character
in the Iqi with a female photagonist.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
And of course the reason you want to do this
is for revolutionary reasons. It is for or all of
these things that we know.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
But what it ends up doing because it's not natural,
because it's forced, because it's like trying to inject something
into a story that has its own coherence, is that
it looks fake and it's boring. Right. Can you have
a story with a powerful female protagonist, an interesting female protagonist?
Of course you can't eving stories like that.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Forever. We have stories in the Bible like that.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
We have great stories. It says that drove spices into
the heads of their enemy said in the Bible.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Right, So it's not that that doesn't exist. It's not
like we don't know about.

Speaker 10 (28:35):
That, you know.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
But if you try to inject that stuff into a story,
kind of force it on us, right, it just doesn't work.
It doesn't fit. And then we end up with a disaster,
which is something that nobody cares about it and that
has been for us to our great service because the

(28:57):
past fifteen years twenty years have been an increasing amount
of these propaganda type stories, this kind of effecting of
all the things that the gen xers cared about and
basically subverting them towards political means, making them boring, making

(29:17):
them uninteresting, keep barn.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
To lose money, losing money, losing money.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know, Disney is just losing money on every single project.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
That it's doing.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
They've bret Star Wars, they wreck they wrecked Marvel. Now
they've wrecked all the its that they own, trying to
inject their political ideology that's kind of activistic propaganda stuff,
and now nobody cares anymore. And so someone who reached
the end and I think this, I think this.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Is the end.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
I went to see this movie. I did. I went
to see it in the.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Cinema, and it was a very exciting thing to watch because,
yes it was born, yes it was injected with all
kinds of nonsense.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
The story didn't make any sense, but the reason why
the story wouldn't make any sense was fascinating, because this
Snowide movie is like two movies fighting when You Kill Me.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
When you're watching it, you can tell like there's two
movies in there, and they're douging it out.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Because they tried to make it into a propaganda piece
and then they showed it to people. People were so
disgusted by it, and the fander was freaking out, and
so they panicked, and then they put it off for
a year, and then people and they panicked again, and
they put it off for another year, and they refilled

(30:54):
all the entire thing, made it into like a three.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Hundred million dollars movie. And when you watch it, you
can see you can see that it's over right, because you.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Feel in it that they're like, damn it, we have
to reintroduce these things that we hate, is they're actually
part of the story. We actually have to have the
prince kiss. Oh my goodness, it's so frustrating for that.
And they put it here you watch it. It's funny
because it's like obviously that scene in the movie, in

(31:28):
the original, in the fairy Tale, and in the early
Disney version, that's the culmination of the story where the prince.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Calms into you dead right. It's a resurrection moment and
he kisses there and he brings her into the.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Kingdom of Ever. It's like the res a Christ. It's
like this beautiful moment in this movie.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
It's like, hey kisses her and she kind of sits
up and it's like, yeah, they put him in there,
but they really not on it.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
But like I said, it's a great sign. It's actually
a great sign of hope because it means that everybody
now knows that it's over. Now what do we do?
Everybody's panic. I have some insights into that world a
little bit through friends and to people that I know, and.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Nobody knows what they're doing, Nobody knows what to do.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Everybody's panicking, and everybody had all these studios, all have
products that are in production right now that they.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Know are going to fail, but they have no choice.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
They're already put the money in, they're already kind of
moving with it. Where the ball the balls already rolling.
They can't stop it, and they know by the time
that it's out that it's going to fail. And everybody's
scrambling to figure out what do we do? And so
this is it. This is an opportunity, and the question
is now, what or what does this have to do

(32:51):
with us? Now we offer an alternative. Now, the problem
with this alternative is that it's a very very deep alternative.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
It is one which in the sense of revolution, is
deeper than the revolutions that we've seen for a very
long time.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
In the sense of how transformative is it is extremely transformative.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
But it means that we have to also understand that
it won't.

Speaker 6 (33:26):
Be able to do the same things as the culture
that was there before us was able to do because
that we're not aiming for the same ideas.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Right. So, in the nineteenth century, Richard Wagner, who wrote
Crazy Insane Operas, was looking and a lot of the
artists were looking for the perfect work.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Of art, and they're kind of saying, what is the
most complete work of art?

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Right?

Speaker 6 (33:55):
And this is what Wagner called the Gazam's kunspan, which
is deciding the complete art is the total artwork and
There was.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Obviously argumentations about what is the most complete or what
is the art that contains the most in it, And
then Wagner can't.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Complete that it is opera And why was it?

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Opera?

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Was opera because opera has all the arts draws.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Together in one art, because it's composition, right, It's a
visual composition. It has music, it has a narrative, it
has a senter of architecture right in habiting space, etc.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Etc. And so he thought, this is it. This is
the perfect art because it brings everything together.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Some people have said after that, maybe the cinema is
actually design the Prince Fare, you know, because for the
same reason, because you can have you have the cinema
and you have the visual composition, right, you have the narrative,
you have the score, maybe you have even songs in it,
and it kind it is an extension of this vision
of opera into the culture.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Now, the question is what is it missing.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
It's missing one essential thing, very essential thing. Actually, it's
missing the thing that I hinted at at the outset.
It's missing participation. That's what it's missing. It's missing that
it's not me sitting.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
There watching the story, but that it's me in the story, right,
that's the dedans punta, And that's what liturgy offers because
in the literagy we have all this.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
We have music, we have a visual, We even have smell,
which they don't have in the in the in the UH,
in the opera.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
UH.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
We have the music, we have the architecture, we have
the smell, and we have all that can eat. You know,
we even use our chance where we eat the body
of Christ. So all of the senses, all of the
cultural references are all drawn together. But at the same time,
we are inside. We are not watching it from the inside.

(36:16):
We are not consumers. We are not the public, right,
we are in the in the liberty and so so.
And you can understand, like you know, for example, like
the the it's okay, like we.

Speaker 5 (36:32):
Have we have cues here.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
I've used in my trade too.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
But you can kind of understand the existence to pews
in the Orthodox tradition where they're saying, this is.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Not a show, folks, like this is your life. This
is your story.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
It's the story the thing that you're in. It's something
that you participated. You are an actor, obviously not in
the center theater, but you are an actor in the
grand story.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Okay, and so that changes a lot.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Now it doesn't mean that you have to condemn obviously
the more passive aspect of modern art. It doesn't mean
that now going to the movies is evil or that
you know, I don't know whatever, like listening to music
is bad. And I'm not suggesting any of that. But
what I am suggested is that understanding that and fully living.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
That is like a root for everything else. It's like
a foundation that is anchored in the highest thing that.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
If then it's going to move out into the world
and then participate in the more you know, secondary arts
like visual art and all the things that are find
that they exist. It creates this anchor which will help
to prevent the decomposition that you saw happen over the
last one hundred years, because you have to realize that

(37:54):
the way that it was set up in the story,
when it's already in a revolutionary way and.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
You can listen to him right, you can even here.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
I remember listening to some of the new atheists talking
about that, and someone asked them, you know about the
sense of mystery and the sense of of you know,
of narrative and all of these things that the atheists,
how do they get it?

Speaker 1 (38:16):
And they said, well, you know it's no good.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
We just get from art, you reading novels.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
We then we go to the museum.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
We do that, you know. And so it was presented
in the development as this great secular replacement for the libergy.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Right and some and some like.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
There's an interesting text by halabach To's the French communist
mid twentieth century, who wrote about going to the cinema
and he explained how the cinema had subverted the church
and he was still celebrating it like he was a
great He said, yeah, we did it. We created we
created a secular communion, you know, where we all come together.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
And the old cinema if you don't, if you don't remember,
you curtains.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
They could pull the curtains and there was like a light,
you know, the light was down and like the seats
were more like cinema seat, like like theater seats. And
with the sense of like this moment of awt of
wonder that we participated. And the thing is that if
that's not anchored in something deeper, what happened.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Is what happened.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
It just decomposes, It decomposes and decomposed and decomposes, and
then you're sitting at home in your pandoma watching Netflix
because that's the end of that, right, like you thought
it would be, We're all going to come together and
celebrate the greatest achievements of human life. And it's like, no,
you're gonna be watching some stupid reality TV show you

(39:38):
know at night.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
That's that's the end of that, right. It's like, it's
not what you thought.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
And so.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
I look at our fishes. Then means that we.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Need to embrace the kind of hierarchy also of understanding,
which is that we have to be able to know
and to remember or.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
To participate in this ba that the turgical art is
always the highest art. And why is it the highest art?
Because it is the art that is dedicated to God.
It's not dedicated to the human condition.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
It's not dedicated to the revolution, it's not dedicated to money,
it's not dedicated to all these secondary things which infect
the world of culture and affect the world of art.
It is the everything.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
It is the act of painting, It is the act
of singing.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
It is the act of making furniture, of making vessels,
it's the act of making clothing. It's the act of eating.
It's all the things that humans do now brought together,
and it offers to the highest.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
So it becomes a stable and real anchor for all
human here, for all human.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Making, for all human activity, and it holds it together
in the highest.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
And guarantees by our participation in it and our attention, right,
our memory or at.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Least the possibility of always remembering what is the highest
version of these actions, right, And it's not just about art.
Like when you sit at home and you eat as.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
A family, if you remember that the highest.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Eating is the one that you come take at the
childte here, and that your participation in your family meal
is downstreamed from that, and you pray before.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
You eat because you remember how it all lines up
in the right way. That it anchors that together. That's
true of all human activity.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Right, It anchers it and you can see, like if
you could just.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Pay attention to how history develop, you can see what happened.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Right. The artists.

Speaker 11 (41:52):
Move from writing and music to God, to writing opera,
to writing nationalistic type anthems or whatever, to writing pop
music to writing mumble rap, all.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
The way tumble down into just talking about nonsense.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
You know, and that's how that's how it falls. But
it's related in terms of a curve, right, And we're
lucky because we're at the end of it. So there
was any doubt at the beginning, and we don't have
to be angry at the people who let maybe let
themselves decisions at the time. Now it's like, come on,
we've seen where it leads, like we know what happens, right,

(42:34):
And so this idea that liturgical art is the highest art,
that it is the source you could say, of the
highest form in terms of the language, in terms of
the patterns that it invokes, in terms of the way
that it's strange things together, in terms of the storytelling

(42:56):
all of this stuff. And it doesn't mean that it's
the most but word am I going to use doesn't
mean that it's the most exciting.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
In the in the more mundane sense.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
And you have to be careful about that because the
highest does it mean that it's the most entertaining. Let's
say that way, so hey, it can be entertained, but
the highest thing doesn't have to be the most entertaining.
But if you anchor music, for example, in the society
in liturgical art, then you will have all the other

(43:27):
you'll have entertaining music, you'll have all kinds of things.
You'll even have bar songs. All of that stuff will exist.
But it'll it will stop. It will hold it together
so that it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Absolutely collapse into complete nonsense. Right, It will kind of
create this cohesion. And so liturgical art I think has
to be the highest art.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
It's orthodo Christian. It's not hard to come to church.
We venerated the ionist, we listen to the music, we sing,
we participate in. It doesn't mean that every artist has
to be a liturgical artist, not at all. That's a
really big danger for especially for Orthodox converts. Every Orthodox
convict with a little bit of creative inclination, how would
you feel an aconographer? Gaming? And glory to God if

(44:12):
that's for you.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
But it's not necessary. Not every person in the church
test to be an iconographer and so, but we still
have to recognize that that is the anchor and that
holds it together. This is an example I did.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
I put up an example of a reliquary that I
carved with an architect and designer and rule for the
Russian family, our family, and you can see that you
know it has a certain it has a function, it
holds the relics. It's not just a visual anking, not

(44:48):
something that you put in a museum. It actually serves
for real purpose. But it's also meant to be beautiful. Well,
may to be a celebration of the best.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Things that we can make.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
And if you want to understand, a lot of people
when they look at what I do, so people get
confused because you're like, what are you doing exactly, Jonathan?
You do this icon curving, but now you're putting out
comic books and graphic novels and T shirts, and it's like,
what is happening?

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Like what's the thing?

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Like what's going on? And I would say that if
you want to understand the the reason why I do this,
do this is because I am trying to see how
what I just been have been talking about, how I
can participate in its embodiment, which is, how can I
take the ten fifteen years that I to study orthodox iconography,

(45:46):
medieval art, medieval indugery, all the tropes of that, all
of the patterns in that language, and how now can
I apply it lower and lower on the hierarchy, let's say,
so that it reaches all the way into popular objects,
popular earth.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Now, how do we do that?

Speaker 2 (46:08):
That's one of the things that fascinated for the most, because.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Like I said, if the Orthodox, all.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Orthodox traditional countries, they don't just make icons.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
They have all kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
They have their own national legends, they have their bards,
they have their songs, they have secular images. All of
that is kind of part of the miss. So if
we're going to participate in a renewal and culture, how
do we now embody that right? And I think that
right now is what is exciting because as everything tumbles

(46:43):
and everything falls and everything kind of collapses, there is
now a you could say, an openness, an openness to
a new story, like a secret desire for a new story,
a secret desire for a new image, something that will revive,
not the revolutionary aspect, AH say it this way, a

(47:05):
desire to remember, right, a desire now to remember instead
of living this chaos of revolution because people don't know
who they are anymore?

Speaker 1 (47:16):
So how do I now remember?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
And this is what I think, in opposition to the
way I presented you with the vision of art the
modern world, I think that orthodox art can present free alternatives,
which is not art.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
As a consumable, but art as application, right. Art also
as not as.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Revolution but as celebration, right. And then also art as
a type of enlightenment. Enlightenment not in the modern enlightenment way,
but in the sense of bringing light to people, not darkness,
not cynicis not just the passions, but bringing something that

(48:07):
elevates that, right, it makes them.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
More than what they were before. And because like I said,
we're kind.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
Of at the end where everybody is confused and nobody
knows who they are, then people are also open and
curious about that.

Speaker 6 (48:21):
How do we do that?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
So of course liturgy answers all these questions people, that's
all that you know.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
But like I said, you know, here we are in church,
and of course.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Glory to God.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
That's the most important part.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
But then if we're going to speak out into the culture,
if we're going to participate in the cultural forum that
are around.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Us, what ways can we do it that we encourage
these three And.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
At least for now, the thing that I'm excited about
doing is kid's books.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
And again, a lot of people like Josh, why are
you bringing the kid's books and fairy pales and something?
Because I think that this is an immediate it's an
easy one.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
It's actually the easiest one.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
This is the easy one to do the harder ones later, the.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Easiest one because it's a children's book. A book for
children is a way you can access all three of
those right away. Because reading a book to a child
is participation. Right. You sit in the evening before a
child goes to bed, You sit in bed, You open

(49:21):
the book, and the parent reads the story to the child.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
They are engaging in a relationship, right.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
They are not just treating this as a moment of
performer and public but it is a true moment of
affection and neutrality that is being experienced. It's a little.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Liturgical experience, right, to read a story to a child.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
And so I thought, like, this is an easy way
to go about this is and move into this space
without without slipping too much.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
And so what do we do then to make it celebratory.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
It's the same. So let's take the old stories.

Speaker 7 (50:01):
Now.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
The old stories have been forgotten, not only for God,
they've been ruined for the past.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Like I said, doesn't even want to tell them anymore.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
They actually hate the stories that they're characters are.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
They hate the stories. There white they don't want to
tell it. They hate the beauty.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
They actually despise the stories that they've been characters of.
The thing is that those stories are a possibility of
remembering because they are even the fact that they have
been around for hundreds of years, if not millennia, they
hold in them something a little similar to our orthodox tradition.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
It's obviously not at the same level as the sacred.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Tradition, but it is a form of tradition, a form
of passing down, a form of remember right. The fairy
tales exist in this kind of vague medieval world, that
is the world of the ancients that is being brought
back and even remembered today, just in the same way
that we remember the lives of the saints, all these

(51:00):
martyrs in the early centuries, that we feel like we
are connected to them in our celebration, in our memory
of them.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
This is an easy way to do it.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
And like I said, how then to tell those stories
in the way that's enlightened Because in the past decade
the fairy tales have been told. But what is happening
in those fairy tales is that they've been told more
and more cynically. You know, with this weird kind of
perverse division in the story. I think Shrek is like

(51:32):
the best example, you know, where basically you have thiss
like mission mash of fairy tales and the higher herdings
of the story is to mock it and to turn
it upside down, right, And if you don't think that's true,
it's actually contained right at the very beginning of the story,
the very beginning of Shrek.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
I mean, we don't remember how it starts. It's kind
of little vulgar.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
But Shrek goes into the outhouse and he opens up
the fairy tale book.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Then he rips the page out and he uses it
to clean himself before he walks out.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
He basically wipes himself with the fairy tale.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
It's like, that's it, if you want, that's a beautiful,
kind of beautiful, ugly.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Little synthesis of all the storytelling that's been going on.

Speaker 12 (52:19):
During the past twenty twenty years or maybe more, you know,
And so you can see it how this kind of
cynical approach and so but it's cynicism, like I said,
like revolution.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
At some point it runs out because now we don't
even remember why we cared enough about the stories to
make fun of him. So now we're gonna keep making
fun of something, but we don't even know what the
value of it is that we're making fun of. So
now is the time to retell the story. And that's
what excites me right now, to say, can we retell
the story in a way that is celebration in him?

(52:53):
And I remember when I started studying the history of
art in the history of culture, I remember reading authors who.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Complained about using poetry, and they complained about it because
they said, the businessing poetry is only PANAGEI is Byzantine.
Poetry is just celebration.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
It's so annoying. It's like everything about it is always
celebrating something. It's like, you know, yeah, that's actually the point.
It's actually the point of art. It's what you know.
All Asian cultures, that is mostly the way they understood
the art. They understood that the celebration as a memory,
as a participation in the story that made us who

(53:38):
we are.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
So can we do that again?

Speaker 2 (53:40):
Now? I think the answer is, I think it's exactly
the right time to do that, you know. And we
also noticed that the children's books have also been completely
infected in every city way you think this is a joke.
This is not Joe.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
This is a real best selling children's books. So the
progressive of the future. It's eats, all right, So now
how do we do it in practice?

Speaker 2 (54:10):
This has been the thing that kind of I've been
asking myself, is how do we integrate at every level,
not just you take a fairy tale, you tell it
in a certain way, you tell it in a celebratory manner,
not in a physical way.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
You tell it in a way that hopes to be
able to enlighten the reader.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
One of the things I like about modern most postmodern,
naturally storytelling is that, like in Track, for example, one
of the thing that's interesting about it is that they
have a kids reading and they have an adult reading.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
You notice that in the.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Most popular kids movies they do that they have basically
a way for the kids to do it, and then
they have a way for the adults to do it.
You know, Sadly, the adults version is always like dirty
jokes that for some reason, it's like, I guess that's
a they think adults care about. It's just like some
kind of sexual innuendo. But I felt that's actually a
really interesting idea, Like can't we tell the fair tale

(55:08):
in a way that the child is hearing a story
that is just a beautiful, simple story that they enjoy,
but the adult.

Speaker 6 (55:14):
Is going like, oh my goodness, that's given the insight
into why this story is reported.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
And so that's the approach that we're trying to to
take to the fairy tales, like can we do it now?

Speaker 2 (55:25):
In terms of visuals, one of my great like projects
of my life, like going to my great fantasy, is
that I want to see the byzantine stylization in pop culture,
like I want to see the beauty of the icons,
the beauty of the way that things are represented brought

(55:48):
into pop culture, not in a way that's sacriligious, because
that could happen, like you could do it in a
way that we was sacriligious, but in a way that
it's perfectly adapted to the story and that points in
memory and participation back to the prototypes, which are is
the church. So we've been doing it for those who
saw this the white book that is out there, we

(56:09):
already had one pass at it, uh and the artist
head at Pollington who in the meantime, since you did
Snow White and also obviously converted to Orthodoxy and then
and then has.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Now been taking classes learning. I've been avm from such
an amazing artist and he just picked it up like
so fast. And so now in this in this new
book that's coming out in Bunzel, it's really like the
next levels. So I'm going to show you some of
those images. That's how I'm going to finish this. I
want to I want to give you the very first
glimpse at Rabunzel.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
We haven't showed these images to anyone before, I understand,
shouldn't see you for.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
The first time.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
So the key there came to us and this I
think it was Headed that found that there's a Russian
school of painting called the Palette school of painting that
when we're eving issues in Russia happened and the icon
paintings weren't allowed to paint icons anymore. They were kind
of like the troubles, and they didn't know what to do,
like how do we continue to live? What do we

(57:07):
think that the make What they started doing is they
started taking their skills and then applying them to secular subjects.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
And there's these amazing lacquered boxes that they would create
and they would sell the visitors like there was a whole.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Market for these things where they if you look carefully,
like you can see that the stylization, the way that
the clothing is made, the way that the faces are made,
the space. You know, yeah, downstream could say from icons,
it's not exactly icons, there's something more fantastical about it.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
There's something that's looser or something that they would never
dare do in.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Like an icon. But the memory is there, right, the
sense of participation, the sense of connection is there. Here
are a few.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
More images, and so you can see that the use
of space is very similar to the way that the
icons will painted. It's kind of vertical space.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Also, the capacity to show several scenes simultaneously in the
same image. These are actually like the type of visual
reprementation that medieval isant team are developed is very sophisticated, actually,
you know. And so taking that a sophisticated capacity to
inter interspersed narrative and to create different spaces, this idea

(58:32):
of showing the inside from the outside, creating architectural space.
And you see that also in icons, all of this
kind of movement into images that are.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Now fairy tale stories that are folks stories.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Sometimes history, celebration of important figures, and so here is
of course the fire Earth and the beautiful lack of
box of the firebird. So we decided, let's try to
take this style. But we're not and this is important

(59:11):
for all the artists here. Tradition is not pastiche right,
Tradition is not nostalgia.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Those two things are different.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
The idea is not to simply repeat things from the
past for the sake of repeating them.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
That is as dead as the revolutionary trope.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Right. The idea is to integrate the language. Right.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
You learn the language, you integrate.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
It, and then you apply it in a way that
is appropriate to the moment, to the space, to the image,
whether it's the music, whether it is in whatever.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
That is true living tradition, right.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
That is the souls of people being transmitted, that the bread,
the spirit of people being trans from one person to
the other, you know. And so we saw we also
want there's these beautiful nineteenth early nineteenth century, early twentieth
century kind of medieval revival style that happened in the West,

(01:00:17):
you know, these type of illustrations that have this medieval scent,
but they're also taken into attack realism and so here
is the battle of a Russian illustrator, Ivan Milidin, who
also is doing this in a vibrant but you can
see it's far more modern, and it's it's actually integrated
some elements of modernism, like the influence of Japanese print,

(01:00:41):
kind of how it connects this kind of vertical space
that that Russian iconography had developed.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
And so we're like, we want to make something that
is steeped in this.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Type of imagery but also has taken into account, let's say,
modern illustration and modern sensibilities.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
And so here is our first image.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
And so here is our witch, who's holding and she
holding he's holding the rapunzel, he's holding the cabbage in
her hand.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
So if you look at the floor, like the way
that the.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Planets are, the way that the smoke is made, right,
if you were paying attention, you notice.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
It's not the same as a kind of consense to it.
If you look at the smoke, you know, around the horses.
All of this type of of of integrating this imagery
into the story. And in terms of the who here
has read the snow white.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
This is the white books, and so one of the
things one of the insights that I had that I
wanted to bring into this story is I realized that
snow White and Rapunzel are like opposites, right, And so
snow White, you have this queen and there's a young

(01:02:16):
woman who is coming into coming to age, is become
beautiful and desirable. And so in the story of snow White,
the queen is jealous, jets the daughter from sends her
out into the wellness to be the prey, to be danger,
to be in danger, ultimately.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Trying to kill her. And in Rapunzel have the same situation.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
This young girl becomes beautiful, becomes desirable, but now the
witch puts her out in the tower, locks her in,
prevents her from having access in order to protect her
completely from the outside world so that she doesn't face
the abuse that snow White head to face.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
It something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
But you realize that it's kind of two abusive, as
you could say, two types of debuse, two extremes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Right, And so in our version we have the queen
in snow.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
White become the witch. In your pungel like move in,
it's the same character move in from one extreme to
the other, and her story will continue in your fairy
take series, but it gives you an idea of what
I mean by hoping to give people a little.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Bit of insight into these stories. The story is still
for like an eight year old, don't worry, just read it.
She will be totally fine. I don't explain any or
this is a story, no explanation, this is just the story.
And so here is another image of a hermit.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
And so for those who know orthodox art, you can
see the way that you've done the stone, the way
that Heather has done the stone work, and the cave.
All of these are tropes that you see if you
know the icon of Elijah, for example, the icon of
saints that are packing the page. We can move toward this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
This type of a dream. And what I'm all about
for the word is that you can.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Clearly recognize obviously the iconographic sentiy, but there's a there's
also a kind of looseness and fluidity which is more
akin to modern illustration, like there's a kind of there's
an ink, there's a kind of ink end feeling like
ink rush, and a lighting that is a little more vivid,

(01:04:25):
obviously than what you would see in an icon, a
little more where you have a scene the power, yeah,
you know, not also being afraid of of exploring or
having a more fantastical imagery. But you've also you've always

(01:04:45):
seen this in icons or in where you have the
sun in the moon as almost like as kind of
anthropologize characters.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
So we're bringing that in there as well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Ye have the funds in the how.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
I'm so excited about every time watch one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Can't believe we're gonna We're gonna publish this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
It's so excited. Psycho a little hint of what it
is that we're doing. But I would say the conclusion
to the talk is that this the time, like now
is the time, like right now, right now is the
is the time. There are opportunities galore.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Now. Then it falls back on the people that want
to do this because one of the problems that we've
had in Christian art, especially in America over the past
decade is a tolerance of mediocrity.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Call it that you've had the sense that, well, if
you make things that are.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Kind of Christian, we can accept that they are had boring,
kind of New yocre, and we'll kind of tolerate that
because we.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Love Jesus, you know, But that's definitely the wrong way
to go.

Speaker 13 (01:06:11):
I think it's very opposite of what it should be,
which is that we have the best stories, we have
the best music, we have the best visuals, we have
the best everything, Like we really have the Gazam's Kuncbia.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
We have the total and not only that, we're in
a moment right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Now, which unlike the ancients, we have access to all
of it from the first century until now.

Speaker 14 (01:06:39):
Like you can look at images from the very first
Christians all the way to today, but you can listen
to music from Middle Ages until now. You can all
of these things that we have. We have a storehouse.
The entire history is presented to us.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
On a platter, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
And despite that, so many artists.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Just lazy, like just lazy in the sense that they think,
again in this weird revolutionary nonsense, that they're going to
take it out of their own soul, if they're going
to come out the creativity out of their own like
imagination or whatever. That's nonsense. That's not the way it works.
Like it's it's handed to you by the those that

(01:07:21):
came before you. Right, it's a treasure that did it,
and you have to dive into it, you have to
study it. You have to learn it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
You have to become an expert.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
An expert.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
If you're a painter, become a good painter.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Learn to draw. Even if you paint icons, learn to
draw folks like learn to paint, learn to draw, learn
learn the music, learn the skills. Become the best that
you can be. Study the history.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Study art history, Study the history of cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
Study the history of music, study the history of the
things that you want to be involved with and know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Right and know that there is a way to save it.
There's a way to baptize these things.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
But that it doesn't It doesn't just mean doing it.
It means reconnecting it, remember it, bringing it back in
a manner that will be a continuity and a manifestation
of the memory of the true zam Kunz work right
of the liturgy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
So I don't know how to do it for all
the art, I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
It's actually an amazing time because this is you can
everybody has the opportunity now to experiment that and to
try to see how can I make Christian skateboards Like
I don't know, doesn't mean that you're gonna have images
I don't put I consent skateboards don't do that. But

(01:08:48):
is there something if I if I make something, if
I make an object and participate in the creation of
an object, is there a way that I can make
it beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
And kind of remembering of something, even if.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
It is more on the consumer side, even if it
is more on the passive entertainment side. Like I said,
I'm not saying there's anything wrong. It's a little bit
of that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
It's it's part of the world, right, But.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
If we can connect it back, that is the key
and where it's an exciting time too, because a lot
of artists are invertedd like we have. We have an
Martin Shaw here.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Manshaw is one of the best storytellers in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Like he is one of the best storytellers alive today
and he is now putting.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
That skill to the service of Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
He converted the worthabout I think now three years ago
and he is seeing how.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
To adapt his capacity as a storyteller into the Christian world.
But there are ways to learn from these people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Here, this icon probably San Justiniano. If you don't know him,
look him up if you want to be an economic
for he is an example of someone that is deeply, deeply.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
I vibed in the tradition of iconography, but also has
a d knowledge of our of Western art, history of illustration.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
He has just soaked in it, right, he has soaked
in the imagery.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
And now if he produces icons, he has a level
of subtlety and a level of understanding of color that
very few aconographers has. There are many more artists that
I could make how to win Laurs Read Lauris.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
It's for sale here.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
It's an astounding novel and it is exactly that like
is it exactly an attempt to take all the legends,
all of these wild stories from the past and connect
them in a manner that gives us a truly contemporary
novel that isn't pastiche that isn't nostalgia.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
That is truly that defends its space in the world,
in front of art critics.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
In front of social commentators.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
But it is a fully orthodox work of art. And
that's what's possible today.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
And that is what I don't know which of you
here has artistic inclinations, but I encourage you to do that.
And so those don't have artistic inclinations, you have to
support the artists. You know, because artists me catrens one
way or the other, like it's important, and it's important

(01:11:27):
for all of you. Know, there's a lot of clergy here.
You know. Icon reproductions are cheap. I know it's tempting,
get those laser printed icons. It's really tempting. I get it.
But if you want the life of the church, if
you want the culture, you want the art of the
church to be alive, you have to support iconographers and

(01:11:47):
everything downstream from that.

Speaker 5 (01:11:48):
So thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Everyone, Thank you for your talent.

Speaker 10 (01:11:54):
If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers
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398 - The Time for Orthodox Art is NOW

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}398 - The Time for Orthodox Art is NOW