THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409160090
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
A FEW YEARS BACK, John Perreault, a leading New York art critic, posed this question to the mainstream art world: ``Why has the spiritual content - one might also say the spiritual nature - of art been repressed in modern times?''
Perreault sees art as an essentially spiritual endeavor. With such a statement, he's bursting misconceptions about the self-centered and self-abusing nature of contemporary artists.
While some fit that description, many more find that the art process expands awareness. As a result, many artists feel a deep connection to the world around them.
For some, art can be a vehicle for realizing the presence of God within. That is the path Norfolk artist Thomas Xenakis has been on in recent years.
Xenakis recently received a prestigious Fulbright scholarship to study Byzantine icons in Greece. The grant pays for a six-month stay, but Xenakis plans to make the funds stretch for a year. He leaves for Greece in two weeks.
His research topic: ``The Synthesis of the Greek Byzantine Iconographic Tradition With Contemporary American Secular Art: The NeoByzantine.'' While there, he'll be affiliated with the School of Fine Arts at the University of Salonica.
A show of his icon paintings - both spiritual and secular - is on view through Friday at the Pungo Building Gallery at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach.
On one side of the gallery are a dozen or so icons, painted with egg tempera in the traditional manner with gold leaf and stylized renderings. He paints Greek words and letters into the images.
Recently, a security guard came in declaring that he had seen the same icons in the mid-1980s in Crete. To Xenakis' amazement, the guard was certain he was looking at antique icons.
As it happens, Xenakis' family came from Crete, a major source for icons.
This is Xenakis' first show of these sacred icons. He is not making clever commentary on sacred art. This is sacred art - sincerely created, imbued with spirit and intended to invoke veneration from an Orthodox worshiper.
Iconography translates as ``the writing of a picture,'' he said, noting that icons often conveyed Bible stories for largely illiterate populations.
His sacred images are not entirely traditional. Xenakis painted ``Christ the Life Giver'' onto wood, the traditional material. But it's a wooden bread board. The artist is alluding to the idea of Christ as ``the living bread which came down from heaven.''
Across from the sacred imagery are less traditional images voicing Xenakis' contemporary concerns about greed, violence and other sins.
One such work is ``Eros (Desire) or The American Vita Icon.'' The tradition off which he plays is the vita icon - typically, a large central image of Christ, surrounded by many smaller scenes from His life like a filmstrip.
Here, Christ has been replaced by George Washington, of dollar bill fame. ``We really worship St. George,'' declared the artist.
Icon painting is a tradition that extends as far back as the sixth century, said Dr. Gary Vikan, director of Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. Vikan will lecture on ``Icon: Sacred Image, Sacred Power'' on Feb. 22 at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, in a free talk sponsored by the Norfolk Society of Arts.
``Most of the themes and techniques and functions of icons have not changed'' in all these years, he said.
``Icons spring from a very deep spirituality and belong to a long and wonderful tradition. I think it engages people's primal spiritual nature, no matter what their spiritual inclination.''
In the last decade, ``there probably has been significant growth in this specialized area of art and spirituality. . . . I think it's symptomatic of a search for spiritual values.''
The standards by which icons are collected and admired are not the standards of the traditional fine arts, he said. The faithful are not concerned about whether it's painted or reproduced, on wood or metal. The focus is on the representation.
``People are very careful to note you don't worship an icon. You worship what the icon represents.''
Though schooled in art, Xenakis is a self-taught icon painter. He learned the painstaking egg tempera technique from a book. Same with the gold leafing, which symbolizes the divine light.
The gold is bought in very thin, small sheets. ``The first time I held one of those sheets, I was chewing gum. It got sucked into my mouth, and it stuck all over the gum and my lips.''
In the 1970s, he studied art at Brooklyn College and at the School for Visual Arts in his native New York. In 1980-82, he earned a graduate degree in medical illustration at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, then moved to Norfolk to practice those skills at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
While continuing in that field, he became more involved in fine arts. He taught gifted high school students since 1990 at the Governor's Magnet School for the Arts, and he began to exhibit.
Through art, he purged personal baggage, then began delving into his spiritual identity. He was raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church in New York, and remembered telling friends that he'd love to paint icons someday.
Such interests make him feel ``very anachronistic, out of time.''
He began to see icon painting as ``one of the great double disciplines. It's both a spiritual and a creative discipline.''
In 1996-97, he'll be passing along that dual discipline as artist-in-residence at the Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. After that, he plans to return to Norfolk.
Meanwhile, Xenakis will continue at his task, striving to release his ego and be with one with God as he paints scenes of Mary and the baby Jesus.
It's a daily involvement for Xenakis, who keeps a tiny reproduction of an icon in his wallet, and once asked a Greek monk: ``When I sit on my wallet, am I defacing Christ?'' MEMO: The Pungo gallery is open weekdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., or by appointment.
Free. Call 427-7249 for more information. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MARTIN TICKNER
Icons like this one by Thomas Xenakis are on exhibit through Friday
at the Pungo Building Gallery at TCC in Virginia Beach.
Thomas Xenakis recently received a Fulbright scholarship to study
icons in Greece.
by CNB