The Image of the Icon in the Works of the Severe Style Artists

Abstract

The appeal to the artistic traditions of different eras – peculiar perception of the techniques of post-impressionism, the heritage of the Russian avantgarde, the search of the Soviet painters of the 1920s–1930s, as well as the art of Proto-Renaissance and Ancient Rus, became an important impetus to the creativity of the severe style artists. With artistic experiments and active use of various graphic lines, they skillfully combined the experience of ancient Russian art in their works; they used the icon and fresco painting traditions and primitivism painting together with modern patterns. Ancient Russian art and its primary embodiment – the icon, became the latent, not obvious dominant of the art of the severe style masters. The works of outstanding icon painters of the past (Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, Dionisius), who embodied a new, sublime understanding of man’s spiritual beauty and moral strength in their works, were the pinnacle of skill for representatives of this art movement. In Russian icons, the severe style artists were attracted by local colours, simplified composition and forms, and a “frozen” plot. They were even more attracted by their colour saturation, joyful power or harshness of pure colours. However, the connection with icon painting is not only in the technical aspects of painting. In the works of the severe style artists, as in the icon, emotional stress is focused on the inner life and is not expressed by external exaltation. The appeal to icon painting was not accidental: the artists felt the sad disappearance of the connection between generations, the tragic breakdown of age-old foundations, godlessness and… desperate longing for some other, unearthly Truth. All the complexity of the internal self-determination of the generation of the 1960s‑1970s is seen in these voices of the era. The severe style representatives tried to reveal the theme of Light and Meaning, as much as possible in the conditions of Soviet times. Their paintings showed the truth of this search. The severe style, a phenomenon that was so categorically assigned the status of something episodic, even fleeting, turned out to be compatible in different versions with philosophical and religious postulates that have been relevant at all times, with the national idea, with an attraction to eternity.