Museikon_1_2017

A Glimpse towards the Inside (interview) | 149
Vase alese / The Chosen Vessels, painting from the private
collection of Cristina Bogdan and Dragoş Bogdan.
Robing in the light / Îmbrăcarea cu Lumină, oil on canvas.
Interior with icons – Constantin Cioc’s workshop.
cb: When you review an icon that you’ve already sent out
into the world – you’ve given it, sold it, placed it inside a
church or within an exhibition – does it still feel yours?
cc: I don’t sign my paintings, even less my icons. I do
admit I have a curiosity about my icons, about their road
throughout the world, because I keep feeling them as mine,
since they are the product of my hands. But once the icon
is made flesh, meaning the icon as image set on wood and
considered as completed, it no longer belongs to me and,
obvious, neither it belongs to the solicitor. The icon begins to
bear its own life, since it completely identifies with the saint
it represents and who is present unspoken, simultaneously
in both this world and the world beyond. The solicitor will
indeed worship this icon and treasure it as something valuable,
because he also has an existential reference to the
icon. But, how should I put this? The icon does not belong
to him. He will probably pass the icon as family inheritance
and, most probably, the icon will travel throughout time.
I cannot know if the icon made by my hand will possess
a patrimonial value in time, but I think it will still represent
something to the family where the icon is bestowed on,
to the house in which the icon lives and to the souls for
whom the icon is home.
cb: To an icon, how important is the model?
cc: To an icon, the model is extremely important. Practically,
the condition of the icon’s conservation throughout
time is the model itself. We need a prototype, precisely
because we had an archetype. And this prototype must be
kept, within all of his canonical data.
cb: Do you believe in icons ‘not made by human hands’?
cc: I believe in icons not-made-by-hands. And I also believe
in miracle-working icons. What kind of believer would
I be if I didn’t believe in them?
cb: Can the icon communicate to someone who does not
belong to the Christian culture? Can a man who enters a
church or an exhibition understand the icon, despite not
belonging to the spirit of the religion that hosts the icon?
cc: (stays silent) It is very difficult for someone from a
different faith than the Christian orthodox one (or Christian,
in general), to relate to an icon in the same way, because
he/she does not see and does not feel the same things
Christians see and feel. To that someone, the icon remains