Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania: Nostalgia for Paradise Lost [1st ed.] 9783030562540, 9783030562557

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MODERNITY, MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE

Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-) Communist Romania Nostalgia for Paradise Lost

Maria Alina Asavei

Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe Series Editor Catharina Raudvere Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

This series explores the relationship between the modern history and present of South-East Europe and the long imperial past of the region. This approach aspires to offer a more nuanced understanding of the concepts of modernity and change in this region, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Titles focus on changes in identity, self-representation and cultural expressions in light of the huge pressures triggered by the interaction between external influences and local and regional practices. The books cover three significant chronological units: the decline of empires and their immediate aftermath, authoritarian governance during the twentieth century, and recent uses of history in changing societies in South-­ East Europe today. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15829

Maria Alina Asavei

Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania Nostalgia for Paradise Lost

Maria Alina Asavei Department of Russian and East European Studies Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

ISSN 2523-7985     ISSN 2523-7993 (electronic) Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe ISBN 978-3-030-56254-0    ISBN 978-3-030-56255-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

  

Christian Paraschiv in ateiler, 1980, courtesy of the artist

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Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of incessant intellectual exchanges with artists of different ages and alignments, historians, political theologians, anthropologists and political theorists. It was developed in several years, and it is intended as a contribution to illuminating the under-explored relationship between political art and religion. I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable support of the Orthodox Christian Studies Centre at Fordham University that provided me with funding as a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellow in 2018–2019. Further support was provided by the PRIMUS/HUM/12 (Beyond Hegemonic Narratives and Myths) at the Institute of International Studies, Charles University in Prague. I am thankful to my department (Russian and East European Studies) for the freedom of research. The constant support of several academics and friends was pivotal to this book project. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Caterina Preda, Katerina Kralova, Jiri Vykoukal, Alexis Bushnell, Jake Maze, Andrei Stavila, Alexandra Oprea and Jiri Kocian for their constant support and constructive input. I am also extremely lucky to have exchanged precious information on religious thought and prophetic imagination with my former students, especially with Mohamed Mutasim and Zafer Nahhas during the summer schools in Tbilisi (Georgia) and Amman (Jordan). Last but not least a huge thank you goes to the visual artists and musicians who granted me permission to publish images of their artworks: Ion Grigorescu, Christian Paraschiv, Ciprian Mureşan, Marian and Victoria Zidaru, Dragoş Alexandrescu, Dan Acostioaei and Octavian Nemescu. vii

Praise for Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania “This book offers a fascinating window into art production in the former Eastern bloc that transcends existing artistic labels and genres. Through this comparative analysis of pre- and post-1989 resistant religious art in Romania, Asavei invites the reader to re-evaluate ‘religious’ art that is usually pigeonholed into categories of pre-modern/secular or anachronistic ‘folk art.’ Applying an impressive command of theoretical approaches, the author draws on multiple disciplines to explore the religion-politics-art intersection as it emerges in specific historical moments and places. Particularly, the book illustrates the quest for deeper meanings and higher ideals that are present in art resistant both to communist totalitarian contexts and a post-1989 capitalist consumerism. This book is both smartly and accessibly written. It will be a gem for social science and humanities scholars alike.” —Susan C. Pearce, East Carolina University, USA “Asavei’s book is a carefully documented study of the interactions among art, politics, and religion in the context of communist and post-communist Romania. I applaud Asavei’s effort to make visible the ways in which Romanian artists have drawn on spiritual resources to respond to oppressive regimes and totalizing ideologies. Such a study will likely inspire other researchers to explore art-driven practices of resistance in other geographic and cultural areas.” —Iulian Vamanu, University of Iowa, USA “The particular question tackled in the book, which is also the main source of its originality, is the extent to which the Orthodox cult and the art built around it, situated in between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ of world art at the time, in its various guises, paradoxically both served and subverted the communist regime. The book answers this through a number of concrete cases that are analyzed in detail, with the help of a solid, up-to-date, interdisciplinary theoretical apparatus (coming from art history, politics and the historical context of the time).” —Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, University of Bucharest, Romania

Contents

1 Art, Politics and Religion in (Post-)Communist Romania: An Introduction  1 2 On the Varieties of Cultural Resistance During Romanian Late Communism 35 3 Godless Religious Art of Romanian National Communism 63 4 Art, Nature and Ecologies of Transfiguration during Romanian National Communism 89 5 Spiritual Ecologies and Meta-Byzantine: Music During Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s Regime111 6 Contemporary Aesthetic Mysticism and Religious Revitalization Movements137 7 The Body in (Post-)Communist Art: A Site of Salvation and Resistance185 8 Religion Inspired Art and Politics: Neo-Orthodoxism as Neo-Traditionalism?211

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9 Art as Resistance to the “Religious Affair” and Consumerist Religion in Post-­Communist Romania249 10 Looking Forward: Looking Back Through the Three Lenses of Art, Politics and Religion285 Index303

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4

Recomandarea UAP a Artistului Bâşcu Dumitru/UAP recommendation of the Artist Bâşcu Dumitru (file 28/1961). (Source: Central Historical National Archives of Romania) 8 Răspunsul dat de UAP cercerii artistilor bisericeşti de a forma o asociaţie/UAP’s answer to the Church Painters Artists Association Request (file 57/1969, f.91). (Source: Central Historical National Archives of Romania) 10 Cenaclul UAP Târgovişte/UAP Cenacle Târgovişte (file 42/1972). (Source: Central Historical National Archives of Romania)66 Aurel Nedel, Burebista and His Masterpiece (1988). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 78 Octavian Nemescu, Portrait (1980). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 121 Octavian Nemescu’s three graphic variations of the score for Metabizantinirikon (2017). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 124 Octavian Nemescu, Score for Non-Symphony. (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 126 Marian Zidaru, Heruvim Ucis/Killed Cherubim (2011). (Source: Custody of the artist) 140 Marian Zidaru, The Victim Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani (2011). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 158 Marian Ziadaru, Wandering Angel performance at Museum of Art Craiova (2018) (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 163 Victoria Zidaru, Hortus Deliciarum (2018). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) 169

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2

Victoria Zidaru, Palatul Mogoşoaia/Mogoşoaia Palace (2010). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Victoria Zidaru, In Fire (2018). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Ion Grigorescu, Porţi şi Vicleşuguri/Gates and Ploys (2017). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Ion Grigorescu, Patru Scene/Four Scenes (2006). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Criprian Mureşan, Monks (Video Still, 2011). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Unknown Author, Vreau și eu să fiu artist/I want to be an artist too. (Photograph by the author) Dragoş Alexandrescu, Exercising Failure 1 (Video Still, 2013). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Dragoş Alexandrescu, Exercising Failure 2 (Video Still, 2013). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Ciprian Mureşan, Incorrigible Believers (2009). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Dan Acostioaei, Blowing in the Wind (2015). (Source: Courtesy of the artist) Dan Acostioaei, Logos (2004). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

171 173 198 227 257 259 266 267 271 295 296

CHAPTER 1

Art, Politics and Religion in (Post-) Communist Romania: An Introduction

1.1   Introduction Apart from the churchgoers and devotees of sacred icons, there is a less explored category of contemporary cultural artefacts of religious inspiration that populate the public cultural sphere of the former Eastern bloc. The producers and consumers of these peculiar cultural productions are devotees of a post-traumatic contemporary aesthetic mysticism. These movements constitute veritable countercultures where religiosity and resistance to current hardships overlap in the spiritual-political mission of salvation. As Tara Isabella Burton noticed, the advent of contemporary aesthetic mysticism “is a general post-liberal cast: a sense that classical and contemporary liberalism—and its handmaiden, secularism—have failed, not just as a political project but also as a cultural one. The ‘modern world’ … is devoid of mystery, of sanctity, of a conception of a greater and metaphysically meaningful Good.”1 What must be disentangled is the extent to which religious cultural expressions not only fuel die-hard nationalist sentiments, nativism, indigenism, right-wing messianic populism and homophobia, but the other side of the coin: namely the alternative narratives according to which religion-inspired cultural expressions foreground human rights activism through the mediation of religious and spiritual–inspired “arts of resistance.” While there is a burgeoning amount of academic work on how right-­ wing populism, homophobia, or Romaphobia’s culture war employs © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_1

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religious tropes to get rid of “the Others,” the use of a Christian artistic imagination toward the opposite end has received much less attention. What Theodor Adorno called “the lost unity between art and religion” beyond the “late phase of enlightenment and secularization” has to be further investigated by bringing to the forefront contemporary revivals of various instances of aesthetic mysticism employed to political-critical ends.2 Against this background, this book focuses on the spiritual and religion-­ inspired contemporary art that can function as a form of resistance, directed against both the dictatorship of Romanian national communism and against the dictatorship of the consumerist society and its global market, dependent on a capitalist economy of images. In addition, it explores the critical, tactical and subversive uses of religious motifs (and Orthodox Christian aesthetics) in those contemporary art pieces that confront the religious “affair” in post-communist Romania. The volume does not exclusively deal with the relationship between religion-inspired art and politics during and after the fall of the communist regime in Romania, but rather focuses on the relationships between art, politics and religion from a variety of entangled configurations (e.g. political art and religion, religion-­inspired art and politics, politics and religion vis-á-vis the contemporary arts). I contend that art, politics and religion interact in various ways and to various ends—both during Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s dictatorship and after its collapse—and these different kinds of concatenation can be regarded as multifarious configurations of resistance to the dominant status quo of any specific given moment. Thus, this volume will explore different trajectories of resistance, as well as the practices of domination that triggered the specific type of resistance. In line with Paul Routledge’s theorizing about the spatiality of resistance, this book aims to tackle the resistance(s) to dominant power, and their elastic boundaries, focusing on how “practices of resistance cannot be separated from practices of domination.”3 Thus, religion-inspired art production is not essentially a resistance practice but it can be approached as such when it is mobilized through specific spaces and times. Art of religious and/or spiritual descent can function as a practice of resistance if we understand the concept of resistance according to its spatiality and temporality and not through an essentialist understanding of the term. One of the most long-lasting artistic semi-movements that display religious tropes, symbols and thematic clusters in their cultural production is the Prolog art collective. The group was born in 1985, during the harshest

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years of Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s National Communism and it was known in the era under the label of “Neo-Byzantinism.” After the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, Romanian art critics and historians re-baptized the artists associated with the Prolog group, calling them “Neo-Orthodox” or even “Neo-Traditionalists.”4 In 2015, the Prolog artists celebrated 30 years of incessant cultural activity and organized a retrospective group exhibition titled “90  ×  30” (at the Roman Gallery in Bucharest). It is not without significance for the main argument of this book that the artists associated with this religion-inspired movement held dissimilar, if not conflicting views, on the resistance potential and intention of their cultural production. While Ion Grigorescu—a renowned artist associated with the Neo-­ Orthodox movement—claims that there is incompatibility between combat (oppositionality) and Christian Orthodoxy because “an Orthodox does not fight anything,”5 Valentin Scărlătescu—one of the artists associated with Prolog—posits that the artistic production of the Prolog group is “resistance combat.” In his view, the artists associated with the Prolog group perpetuated to this day the resistance potential of their art. He poignantly points out that “resistance has to continue because the reasons that have triggered its necessity are not over. Perhaps today’s resistance is more important than our past resistance.”6 However, it is of utmost importance to state from the beginning that some thematic clusters and topics of religious descent that emerged during late Romanian communism were recuperated and multidimensionally developed after the fall of the regime. At the same time, there have been noticeable splits and changes of direction, as well as multifaceted instantiations of the artists’ prophetic activism. While the Neo-Orthodox group, Prolog, had a rather peripheral status in relation to the culture of national communism, after the collapse of the regime, it became a mainstream artistic phenomenon at the national level, managing to acquire art galleries’ spaces, publishing houses and the support of fractions within both the Romanian official art world and the Romanian Orthodox Church. In addition to these waves of institutional support, a growing number of Neo-Orthodox artists have succeeded to secure an increasing number of art/religion lovers who regularly attended their individual and group exhibitions. All these aspects culminated in the Neo-Orthodox semi-movement’s good reputation and notoriety among their detractors. This does not mean, of course, that all of the artists

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associated with the Neo-Orthodox milieu shared the same religious, artistic or political agendas. As this study will demonstrate, various ruptures, schisms and sets of concerns typify the artistic-political agenda of the individual artists who are grouped within the label “Neo-Byzantine” and “Neo-Orthodox.” There are also certain existential concerns that have contributed to the group’s cohesion and longevity. The increased prominence of the members of the Prolog group (as well as of other artists associated with the Neo-Orthodox semi-movement) is also reflected in the increased number of exhibitions after the fall of the communist regime. During the Ceauṣescu era, in 1976, the artist, Sorin Dumitrescu, who would later on be associated with the Prolog (together with Ṣerban Gabrea), launched a double exhibition of ambient art at the Ion Mincu Architectural Institute in Bucharest. The unprecedented cultural event is described in Romanian art history as the first conceptual art approach of the sacred.7 Other art exhibitions by the Prolog artists that focused on the dimension of the sacred were: the first exhibition of Neo-­ Byzantine conception titled, Prologue I Tescani, at the Căminul Artei Gallery (Bucharest, 1985) and Prologue II at the same gallery in 1986 and 1989 (both curated by Paul Gherasim). After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the number of religion-art focused exhibitions proliferate not only in the capital but also in other cities of Romania. Little attention has been given in academic studies of religion and politics to the relationship between religion-inspired art and political resistance during the communist regimes in Central and South-East Europe. Recently, Dušan Bjelić explored from a post-colonial and geo-­ psychoanalytic perspective the scholarly production—literary and philosophical—of several post-communist, Balkan born and Western bred intellectuals (e.g. Julia Kristeva born in Bulgaria and Salvoj Žižek from Slovenia). Dušan Bjelić claims that Kristeva and Žižek’s writings universalize the crisis of the post-Communist Balkans, the so-called Balkan madness, turning this intellectual/philosophical exercise into a process of self-Orientalization.8 Roland Boer also elaborates on the work of Žižek and Kristeva and points out that through their writing they actually betray “a residual socialism,” despite the fact that both of them “search for redemption, of both personal and social forms,” seeking a “way to salve the ravages of capitalism.” In this narrative of salvation, Žižek has “recovered a militant Leninist Marxism through Pauline Christianity” while Kristeva’s Christianity functions as “substitutes for a sidelined Marxism.”9 Both Boer

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and Bjelić focus on the redemptive platform of the two Balkan thinkers, suggesting that the invocation of psychoanalysis in the writings of both is a way through which “Christianity may be read as compensations for a lost socialism.”10 Longing for the “lost socialism” in a religious register might also allude to the revolt of the “incomplete” or “in-between” identities of those who inhabit the former East’s space. These ontological regimes of indistinction (of the neither-nor type) of the Eastern European subjectivity occasion self-cultivation and re-creation of renewed identities from the bottom-up. Then, as Anamarie Iosif Ross has pointed out, the traditional, religious modes of engagement, as revealed in some Neo-Orthodox artists’ work, “which might have been thought obscured with the advent of modernity and capitalism are being reinterpreted and made new, as people continue their vast ranging searches for freedom and personal fulfilment in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.”11 Thus, this nostalgia for lost social formats, identities and sense of belonging can be regarded as form of resistance (i.e. against “the ravages of capitalism”). However, the boundaries of resistance can be elusive. Thus, resistance, or better put, resistances—can take various shapes, in accordance with constantly changing configurations of power. This book addresses various configurations of the practices of resistance through religious art in light of the entanglement between practices of domination and practices of resistance. Unlike Kristeva and Žižek, the artistic formats analysed in what follows do not long for the paradise lost of the socialist era. Although many of them are also concerned with redemption of the soul—and function as practices of resistance—the paradise longed for is a different one. After resisting communism’s “Godless culture” some of the artists associated with the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox group have re-­ shaped the trajectory of their opposition—after the collapse of the regime—when the practice of dominance changed. Some of them professed their distrust against what they called “cultural colonization” of Romania by the “global catechism” of Western values (Sorin Dumitrescu), while others have seen post-communist Romania as the holy place where the Orient and the Occident meet (Marian and Victoria Zidaru). As mentioned earlier, during late communism the artists associated with this religious/spiritual milieu were called “Neo-Byzantine,” while after the fall of the regime, the label “Neo-Orthodox” takes precedence in the vocabulary of the art critics. Since both labels connote the same thing, I will use the terms interchangeably. While during the communist era the

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artistic production of religious inspiration was marginal due to the cultural dogmas of Nicolae Ceauṣescu, after the fall of the regime, in the 1990s and even later, some of the artists of Neo-Orthodox (former Neo-­ Byzantine) formation gained momentum, quickly becoming mainstream in the post-communist Romanian cultural sphere.12 As Alice Mocănescu argues, “just to prove the vigour of this movement, I should add that this trend has remained highly fashionable even after 1989, the artists involved—regardless of generation—grouping in a distinct team of artists, having their own exhibitions’ place with periodical exhibitions and most often generally positive reviews.”13 In addition to that, the Christian Publishing House Anastasia (founded by the artist and art theorist Sorin Dumitrescu) has always been a venue for academic discussions centred on the religious art of post-communist Romania. For better or for worse, the artistic production of the different generations of Neo-Orthodox artists had been politicised to varying degrees after 1989, “in the sense of participation in ‘pro or anti-European integration’ debate or ‘the Orthodox values against the Western corrupted culture’ dispute.”14 Alice Mocănescu poignantly argues that these clashes may actually substantiate “the latent and not fully exploited political side of the movement in the communist period.”15 Consequently, this volume focuses first on those formats of contemporary religious art produced in communist Romania that revisited and reconsidered traditional Christian Orthodox discourses, motifs and narratives to political-critical ends: namely, to re-establish the so-called true spirituality of “truly” spiritual art against communist nationalism (1965–1989). Thus, this volume aims to explore two types of political art. On the one hand, it focuses on religious art of Byzantine inspiration imposed from above, the so-called autochthonous Byzantine art that baked the official style of communist nationalism and the traditional, “authentic Romanian folk ethos.” Communist ideologues supported cultural production of Byzantine descent on the grounds that the authentic “national folklore” encapsulates “Romanian essence.” What communists did not expect to encounter in their attempt to engineer national folk culture is that the Byzantine aesthetics imbricated in artapopulară (folkloric art) is painstakingly in the service of theology as well. On the other hand, this book explores the “unofficial” religious art that employed religious symbolism—mostly of Christian Orthodox descent but not exclusively—combined with conceptualist, intermedial, transmedial and experimental practices and techniques. In addition to these, this

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study will also explore the continuations, ruptures and transformations of the relationship between religion, politics and the arts after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Like other former socialist countries from the former Eastern bloc, the communist regime did not encourage or support artistic production of religious or spiritual inspiration.16 Yet, unlike in other such countries, Romanian communist authorities tolerated, to a certain extent and under certain circumstances, the production of sacred art. This aspect is mostly overlooked in the academic literature on Romanian communism and its relationship with religious culture. The academic consensus on the matter is, more often than not, that Romanian communist tutelage forbade any kind of cultural production of religious or spiritual descent. Yet, as the renowned artist Ion Grigorescu recalls, “I’ve never heard of similar movements in Russia. But I must also say that in Romania there has always been painting activity in the churches even in the socialist times. But that was not the case in Russia or Serbia where it was forbidden. In Romania we were able to continue the tradition, we kept on painting large surfaces.”17 The archival funds of the Central Historical National Archives of Romania (for the periods from the 1950s to 1970s) in Bucharest also reveal that Byzantine icons were considered “art objects” and their commercialization, both inside the country and abroad, was actually possible through a network of state supported shops called Consignat ̣ia, as well as via the Fondul Plastic (Artistic Fund).18 In an archival document dated August 1970, the State Committee for the Ministry of Commerce of Art and Culture points out that Byzantine icons can be commercialized—like any other art goods, such as paintings, sculptures, carpets and textile pieces—on the condition that the vendor issues a detailed invoice and a distinctive stamp for those pieces merchandised outside the country.19 However, another archival document (dated 1972) states the opposite: namely, that religious art cannot be merchandized (ANIC, fond UAP, file 42/1972). What the archival documents disclose is of utmost importance for the present study. Foundul Plastic [Plastic Fund] (established in 1949) was an entity affiliated with the Romanian Artists’ Union (UAP). The main function of this state institution was to guide artists in different ways (to find studios, to pay artists’ pensions, to help them sell their artworks and so on). Although the Plastic Fund had “nothing” against commercializing religious art, the Romanian Artists’ Union (UAP) declined the membership request of a group of Orthodox Church painters in September 1969

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on the grounds that the Union exerts ideological control on artists and artistic matters, and the Church painters’ activities did not comply with the mission of the UAP. However, in the official answer of the State Committee for Culture and Art and the UAP, the group of Church painters were told that they can form an Artists Association, albeit affiliated with the Patriarchy of the Orthodox Church of Romania and not with the Union.20 Another archival document reveals that the UAP recommended a painter (Comrade Bâşcu Dumitru)—a member of the union—to undertake a technical expertise of the Church Lunguleţu paintings. The recommendation also displays the address and telephone number of Dumitru Bâşcu (Fig. 1.1).21 As revealed in archival recordings, the party state art institution known as Uniunea Artiştilor Plastici [the Romanian Artists’ Union] displayed an ambivalent position vis-a-vis artistic production of religious inspiration. In the same vein, the Union of Composers of communist Romania allowed the Madrigal choir to perform religious carols abroad in order to create a

Fig. 1.1  Recomandarea UAP a Artistului Bâşcu Dumitru/UAP recommendation of the Artist Bâşcu Dumitru (file 28/1961). (Source: Central Historical National Archives of Romania)

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positive image of the country, while at the same time forbidding their production and performance within Romania.22 As in the previous example from visual art, “the double standard of the Romanian state regarding Madrigal’s repertoire of religious music is readily seen in the case of the choir’s recordings of Romanian carols which were marketed internationally but prohibited within Romania.”23 This ambivalence on the subject of religion and ideology was backed by Nicolae Ceauṣescu himself who, on the one hand, was “one of the few remaining communist leaders in Eastern Europe who believes in the feasibility of creating the ‘new socialist man and woman’ through ideological indoctrination, while on the other hand, the party leader recognizes the enduring importance of religion for the masses and the need to enlist church leaders in his quest for personal and regime legitimacy.” (Fig. 1.2).24 Leaving aside that there is no comprehensive academic study on the relationship between art, politics and religion, a contribution of this study consists of an interdisciplinary approach. This volume combines theories and methodologies from political theology, arts and politics, political theory, contemporary history, history of religions, art history and theory, modern dictatorships study and memory studies. Along these lines of investigation, this book deals with contemporary art of religious and spiritual inspiration. For the sake of clarity and for the purposes of this book I delimit religion and spirituality as follows: religion is a cultic or non-cultic major system of belief and worship, while spirituality is “any system of belief that is private, subjective, largely or wholly incommunicable, often wordless, and sometimes even unrecognized. Spirituality in this sense can be part of religion, but not its whole.”25 As art historians posit, “contemporary art” refers to the art movements (the so-called neo-avant-garde) since the 1960s (the post-war) to present day.26 Matthew Biro made this point clear demonstrating that “as suggested by the reception of the neo-­ avant-­garde movements of the 1960s, works produced through avant-­ garde methods quickly came to be treated as precious, autonomous objects, and as the subsequent history of contemporary art since the 1970s reveals, neo-avant-garde art continues to flourish.”27 One of the mantras of the neo-avant-garde art movement was to bring art back into life while modernist autonomist theories of aesthetics had isolated it. Thus, merging life and art praxis had been neo-avant-garde’s highest mission. Reconnecting art and life was regarded as a rupture in the symbolic order of what art was supposed to look like at that moment in time. However, as Hal Foster points out “A reconnection of art and life has occurred, but

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Fig. 1.2  Răspunsul dat de UAP cercerii artistilor bisericeşti de a forma o asociaţie/ UAP’s answer to the Church Painters Artists Association Request (file 57/1969, f.91). (Source: Central Historical National Archives of Romania)

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under the terms of the culture industry, not the avant-garde aspects of which are appropriated by spectacular culture in part through its neo repetitions. This much is due the devil, but only this much.”28 The Neo-avant-garde and culture industry—at least in Western Europe and the United States—are both related and dominated by new ways of cultural production.29 These new means (sometimes commercial and sometimes non-commercial) have not avoided religious culture either. Still, as some contemporary social scientists argue, “religion has always been expressed and experienced through contemporary forms of culture, and thus its manifestation in popular culture can be interpreted as a sign of the vitality rather than the demise or superficiality of contemporary religions.”30 This means that contemporary cultural producers might dare create artefacts of religious inspiration outside traditional religious contexts, as well as outside traditional art contexts. While the study of religion and art/popular culture can also focus on cultural cohesion and continuity with the past, this volume will mostly delve into religious presence in art and popular culture as a way of disentangling authority and cultural tensions. While for centuries art was ritualistic and religious in nature, contemporary art and religion appear for many present day art historians and theorists—who prioritize the notorious institutional definitions of art—as divergent cultural fields.31 Until recently, religious and/or spiritual art pieces produced by artists, religious people, or artisans were not considered suitable artefacts by the contemporary art world. This neglect has been justified on the grounds that typically these cultural formats lack conceptual sophistication and political vigour (which appear to be crucial criteria in contemporary art production and evaluation). James Elkins further elaborates on this argument in his book suggestively entitled On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art.32 This disconnection, or even hostility, between contemporary art and religion is also signalled by Rina Arya, who points out, following Elkins, that there is a “suspiciousness that each side exhibits about the other; on the one hand, theologians do not want to have anything to do with contemporary art, while on the other, the art that is produced in churches is of no interest to the art world.”33 Indeed, many museums and contemporary art galleries had shown little interest in this sort of cultural production, grounding their lack of interest on considerations about contemporary arts’ autonomy from religion, and artists being educated in secularized academic environments.

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On the one hand, art of religious and/or spiritual descent, regardless of its medium or means of production was approached theoretically, more like “Outsider Art”, “Amateur Art” or “Art Brut.” Along these lines, these artistic expressions were regarded as cultural productions that occur alongside, or in opposition to, the endorsed artefacts of the conventional art world. It should therefore come as no surprise that art of religious inspiration has more often than not been exhibited in religious community centres, monasteries, or ethnographic museums and not in contemporary art institutions. From a theoretical standpoint, art of religious and spiritual ancestry has received the same consideration as those in categories such as “lesser” or “outsider” arts, such as “visionary art”, “naïve art”, “spiritual art”, “psychotic art”, “sacred art”, “mediumistic art”, or “art of the mentally challenged”—usually being pigeonholed as belonging to folk and popular rather than to art proper. Moreover, when contemporary artists tackle religious topics, they often approach them in a sarcastic, subversive, or critical manner. Over the past three decades, the relationship between religion and contemporary art has revealed many times that art pieces exploring religion and religious beliefs do so in a critical manner, dismissing institutionalized faith for manipulation, obscurantism, brain washing, censorship and oppression. This critical art often resorts to mockery and contempt to accomplish its critical function. Many works of contemporary art have been criticized for insulting religious people and their strongly held beliefs. Yet, not all pieces of art that tackle religious topics aim to provoke taboos of Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Contemporary artists Bill Viola, Mark Wallinger and Ana Maria Pacheco—to name but a few—refigure the sacred in “good faith.” These new expressions of the sacred are also used “as a political example of one who speaks ‘truth to power’ and to draw attention to the troubled political history.”34 Recently, a few art institutions, both in Eastern and Western spaces, have started to show more interest in spirituality and/or religion outside of the thematic cluster of critical art as disclosing religious machinery. There are at least a few instances of a nuanced view of religious and spiritual art; in 2000 The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, hosted the temporary exhibition Faith: The Impact of Judeo-­ Christian Religion on Art at the Millennium; Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is one of the world’s leading museums that display interfaith subjects; the exhibition Traces du Sacré, showed at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008, which put the sacred

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back in the cathedrals of contemporary art; and public art produced since 2016 by the contemporary artist Antonin Kašpar in the capital of the Czech Republic reveals new layers of meaning one might discover from encountering unconventional crosses and thrones exhibited in the public space. The curators of one of the first contemporary art exhibitions dealing with religious issues at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art argues that the exhibition: “is built firmly on two presumptions, as are the great religions: that we are, as flesh and blood mortals, transient beings; and that there is a higher order or plan towards which we aspire. For thousands of years art and religion have mutually claimed these truths as their own, often in service of each other.”35 However, the separation of religion and art since aesthetic modernism on the grounds of either the autonomy of the aesthetics or the autonomy of art has left art of religious inspiration outside of both aesthetics and its politics.36 This book aims to rectify this view, illuminating how artists and other cultural producers can refashion the meanings and purposes of religious and spiritual art to political ends. Such art employs spiritual coping strategies that endorse the restoration of humanity’s highest ideals from wreckages, authoritarianism, metaphysical isolation and social, political and economic injustice. This palliative care combined with advocacy for social change and justice remains consistent in some of the artists’ practice from the communist period to present day. As the artist, Ion Grigorescu, who is most well-known for his political art against dictatorship, aptly remarked, “‘After the Revolution a new generation of exhibition-makers and critics questioned my Christian faith. ‘Are you really an active Christian?’ The Christians, the believers, were always seen as somewhat bizarre and out of date. Perhaps I wanted to go against the flow, to show that you can be a messenger of faith also in contemporary art.”37 By bridging the political, the aesthetic and the religious, this study will address a lacuna scrutinizing those formats of artistic production of religious inspiration that reconsider and revisit traditional Eastern Christian Orthodox (and other world religions) discourses, motifs and narratives to political ends. The nostalgia for Paradise Lost, mentioned in title of this book, refers to a peculiar form of longing for a spiritual state of humankind that can also be invoked as a cure or revitalization of the soul against a background of perennial uncertainties, political violence and economic precariousness. At the same time, the work of Neo-Orthodox artists is also triggered by a repository of institutionalized “cultural memory”, materialized in

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rituals, myths, texts, ceremonies and artefacts. As Adrian Velicu argues, in the case of the official narrative about Romanian cultural identity, what is customarily understood through cultural memory appears to have a composite structure. Accordingly, Romanian cultural history focuses on two cultural and religious strands that are presented as concatenated: the Eastern Christian Orthodoxy and “the Latin legacy (linguistic and supposedly ethnic).”38 Orthodoxy is a significant religious feature that is fused with Romanian cultural identity, and therefore it is consolidated through cultural memory. At the same time, as Velicu argues, the Christian Orthodoxy and the Latin cultural legacy are sometimes understood as conjoined spiritualties: Eastern Orthodox Spirituality and Western Latin Spirituality. Although not everyone accepts this approach, exploring one or more strands of what constitutes cultural memory by going back in time may be worthwhile, at least for understanding “a process that is far from being concluded.”39 The “spiritualization” of artistic production starting in the late 1980s was regarded as an “existential alternative” to the communist era’s prerogative.40 The artists associated with this artistic milieu were called “Neo-­ Byzantines” during the communist era with a certain political purpose. However, this label was conceptually purged of its religious (Christian) connotations and became understood as part of the cultural legacy of Romania (of Byzantine descent) and the spices of the so-called national specificity endorsed by the cultural policy of the moment. As national communism endorsed the return to Romanian traditional, folkloric culture as a path towards fostering a “national style,” it came as no surprise that certain Byzantine elements served this political enterprise. Before engaging with the intricacies of this subject matter, it has to be stated from the beginning that engaging with political resistance entails a theoretical survey of “both what constitutes the political and its various and varying forms of resistance.”41 There is a considerable amount of theoretical frameworks of both categories from a variety of disciplines ranging from philosophy, political science and cultural studies, to legal studies, sociology and psychology. Not all theoretical considerations falling under the categories of “the political” and “resistance” are scrutinized in this book; however, both help to illuminate the distinctive relationships among art, politics and religion. The category of “the political” is envisaged differently during dictatorship and in the ambiguous transition period to capitalism and liberal democracy. Similarly, the concept of “resistance” has taken many forms and shapes

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throughout communism and post-communism, which denote opposition to diverse official policies and states of affairs. At the same time, resistance during communism and after its collapse stemmed from different sets of concerns unique to these differing regimes. Resistance depends, in other words, on the type of regime it is directed against, as well as on the various understandings of the political. The multifarious manifestations of the political occasion diverse scales of resistance to power. Analysing the individual cultural resistance of religious/spiritual descent can illuminate how the concept of cultural resistance depends upon the system it is resisting. Thus, the main questions this book aims to answer are: What kind of resistance against national communism’s cultural dogmas have been revealed through artistic practices of religious/spiritual descent? To what extent have religious and spiritual beliefs and their cultural materializations played an emancipatory role during communism? To what extent does the cultural memory of the “Old” Man resist the totalizing amnesia of the “New Man” ideal imposed by the communist ideology? Can this peculiar type of artistic production foster a certain spiritual awakening where the redemption of the soul is interpreted as a meta-discursive, political strategy in withdrawing from both communism and the dictatorship of the consumerist society? This volume builds on a theoretical framework elaborated by Stephen Duncombe (2002). He theorizes a model of cultural resistance, expounding three areas: the political awareness of cultural production, the social unit (individual, society) and the outcome (from endurance to revolution).42 Accordingly, “Cultural resistance is the practice of using meanings and symbols, that is, culture, to contest and combat a dominant power, often constructing a different vision of the world in the process.”43 Applied to the instances of artistic production analysed in this volume, cultural resistance is understood as a pursuit of shaping one’s spiritual identity and holding on that identity in the face of tyranny and oppression. This process of fashioning one’s identity via cultural production entails what Alain Badiou defined as a “militant rhetorical positionality characteristic of any revolutionary discourse that aims at radical change in the order of things.”44 It is exactly this rhetorical positionality according to which Christ’s death and resurrection is the only deep truth while “The rest, all the rest, is of no real importance.”45 Thus, the Neo-Byzantine artists’ resistance through culture against communist dictatorship had been a combat of positionality rather than a direct intervention in politics as usual. However, this very positionality deemphasized the importance of the communist doctrine to

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the level of being “of no real importance.” In a transcendent world view where only the deeper truth made sense, the communist emphasis on the creation of a completely new man, in line with communist ideology, was “of no real importance” for the Neo-Byzantine artists. To date, resistance through religious/spiritual cultural production has been an underexplored topic. Although these formats of religious/spiritual cultural production disclosed subjective intentions to distance themselves from the ideological prescripts of the oppressive regime under which the artists lived and created, they were seldom overtly oppositional and transgressive. This does not mean, of course, that religious art cannot be transgressive or subversive. The artists associated with this milieu, strived to refashion their own identity against all odds. As Juliane Fürst argues, “dropping out” in the former Eastern bloc, as in the West, was part and parcel of a “search for authenticity, while in turn the state of ‘authenticity’ or ‘authentic life’ included the notion of dropping out.” She draws on the Marxist concept of “alienation” to elaborate on countercultural milieus both in the West and in the East, positing that the search for “authenticity” in the West (as a reaction against capitalism) has a correspondent in Eastern Europe, namely the search for “truth” (especially the deeper, more genuine truth of one’s existence). Alexei Yurchak also disentangles various meanings of “truth” from Russian political, religious and scientific vocabulary and distinguishes between Pravda (factual truth) and Istina (deep, existential truth). The pursuit of a deeper truth in the artistic production of the Neo-­ Byzantine/Orthodox artists can thus be interpreted through the lens of “dropping out” cultures as “a search for something uncorrupted, purer, and truer”—in short more “authentic.” As this volume will argue, the Neo-­Orthodox artists dropped out in spirit as a moment of truth and personal redemption was rendered through artistic expressions that epitomized both resistance as firmness and durability, as well as resistance and subversion. The resistance dimension of the Neo-Byzantines’ cultural production discloses the genuine search for an authentic, self-fashioned self, as opposed to the homogenizing “New Men” of socialist ideology. As political scientists convincingly argue, “In their quest to possess the soul of the individual, Communist mythoplasts promoted the new, Socialist culture. More specifically, their fundamental purpose was to edify the New Man, the guarantee of the Socialist future for the country.”46 Just before his death in 1989, Ceauṣescu insisted that “All the arts are called to build the new man, inspired by the process of edifying him.”47Against this

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background, the self-fashioned identity proffered by the Neo-Byzantine artists undermined the systematic effort of the Romanian communist ideologues to change the consciousness of the citizens in which “leadership is seen as an expression of the relationship between leaders and followers.”48 Thus, dropping out of communism in spirit reverberated as a subversive act of non-alignment with the politically manipulated myth of the New Man, as well as an unusual form of refusal to follow the leader of the moment. This form of rebuttal has been intended as a form of disengaging with hegemony because the truth perorated by it was “of no importance” in the economy of one’s existence. The Neo-Byzantine artists’ goal was not only to re-acquire the status of “Traditional Men”—who lived prior to the communist era—as opposed to the “New Man”, but rather to effect a radical change in the order of things. Although past oriented, as a return towards the epiphany of Paradise, their artistic creation tackled the urgencies of the present, namely to opt out of a communist designed reality. In the same vein, by refusing the New Man’s deleterious process of the amputation of cultural memory, the artists associated with the Neo-­ Byzantine collective displayed an artistic committal memory whose epiphany of the sacred juxtaposed the Godless world of soul engineering in nationalist fashion. I argue that the Neo-Byzantine artists needed this cultural memory work as a way of symbolizing where they belonged and where they were coming from. This positional situatedness vis-á-vis a radical change in the order of things is regarded as twice daring: in the context of the international art world and in the context of the Romanian national communism. Thus, the Neo-Byzantine or Neo-Orthodox artists proffered a convoluted political-­artistic operation by both distancing from the neo-avant-garde while embracing its experimental techniques. By returning to an obsolete model of visual and technical rigour grounded in the religious manner of the Byzantine tradition, their art might have looked totally passé and even tedious to the Western art world and its institutions. Contemporary art marked by religious symbolism was not on the list of notable cultural events of the post 1960s international art world. At the same time, their artistic practice from the communist times appeared as a form of spiritual revolt and moral autonomy. Their double daring positionality put forth “a type of cultural resistance, even though it was neo-traditionalist and oriented towards the past.”49

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The present volume also elaborates on a dichotomy that appears quite often in Romanian theoretical art and art historical studies, namely the opposition between Neo-Orthodox Art and Neo-Avant-Garde Art. According to this line of thought, Neo-Orthodox Art cannot be assimilated by the artistic Neo-Avant-Garde because the artistic production associated with this milieu forgoes experimental innovation, preferring instead a ritualist return to a certain rigour in art making typical to the Byzantine cultural tradition. Romanian art historian, Magda Cârneci, makes this argument clear stating, “The choice of the neo-Byzantine artists could be seen like a regression, a turning back to an obsolete representationalism marked by an outmoded religious symbolism.”50 Codrina Laura Ioniṭă also posits that “at a more superficial glance, these Romanian artists seem to be totally out of sync with their times. While in the 80s ‘progressive’ European currents bring fourth conceptualism (focused on performative elements, from installations, receipts and telegrams), in Romania Prolog (and others) use traditional oil on canvas and paint corners of the garden, sunny streets, house walls, flowering bushes, fields striped with furrows and other corners of the world around us.”51 Romanian art historians and critics after 1989 seem to prioritize the view according to which there is a “progressive polarization between the reinvestment in the sacred (in adequate or interpreted iconography) with the attributes of the right solution (read ‘salvation’) for the Romanian spiritual identity, on one side, and the offensive of the ‘new media’, now free to conquer an extended public, also in accordance with our efforts to get to the post-industrial society, on the other side. The usual label is ‘Neo-Orthodox art vs. Neo-Avant-Garde.’”52 Yet, is there really a dichotomy between Neo-Orthodox/Neo-Byzantine Art and Neo-Avant-Garde Art? Art theorist Adrian Guṭă explores this hypothetical dichotomy through the lens of postmodernism and refuses to interpret this label (“neo orthodox art vs. neo-avant-garde”) through the paradigm of the old clash between ancient and modern in art making. In line with his argument, the point this book makes is that there is actually no clash between old (Byzantine) and new (experimental, neo-avant-garde) art making, but rather there is an ethical re-evaluation of the visual codes of representation. Accordingly, as Guṭă puts it, “A present reconsideration of Byzantine and post-Byzantine codes of representation on the background of revaluation of the sacred could be interpreted as a sui-generis revision of art history with ethical accents.”53

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The artist Marian Zidaru is the best exponent of this tactical move. He seems to endorse the view that the art piece is not just an object but a working symbol which maintains an experiential relationship with the perceiver (the spectator) of art. No less significant is the fact that not all Neo-­ Orthodox artists gave up experimental innovation for the sake of restoring past representational models. Moreover, many of the Neo-Orthodox works analysed in this book employ avant-garde techniques that do not rely on medium specificity to convey religious symbols and metaphors. Neo-avant-garde’s activism directed against old styles of art making can also be detected in some Neo-Orthodox works of art. Yet, what these Neo-Orthodox works of art display is a postmodern paratactic, “a four-­ fold vision of complementarities, embracing continuity and discontinuity, diachrony and synchrony,”54 and not a unilateral oppositionality directed against “ancient,” supposedly Byzantine type of representationalism.

1.2   Reflections on Methodology The arguments of this book are substantiated with evidence from academic sources, as well as with a detailed survey analysis of different primary sources: the catalogues of several art exhibitions where the Neo-Orthodox artists exhibited their work after the fall of communism, artworks in various media, archival material from the archival funds of the Central Historical National Archives of Romania (for the period 1950s to 1970s), video interviews with various artists associated with the Prolog art group, artists’ private letters, diaries and other unpublished manuscripts from the digital database of the project Cultural Opposition: Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries: Connecting Collections, articles in Romanian cultural magazines from 1975 to present day, musical scales, photographs, semi-structured interviews and discussions (among others). Methodologically speaking the material under discussion in this book is analysed through a tri-conceptual lens: “prophetic activism” (Tom Block),55 “spaces of resistance” (Paul Routledge)56 and “theology of transfiguration” (John Chryssavgis and Bruce Foltz and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew).57 While the exploration of the relationship between religion, art and politics is undertaken from the angle of the social unit understood as individual artist and artist collectives as producers of culture and cultural production (artworks of various genres and media), one of the limits of this study is the choice not to address the perspective of the public (the

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recipient/consumer of artistic production). The rationale behind this choice is that unlike many other types of cultural production that resist hegemony and critique from various forms of injustice and oppression by relying on the public’s participation, art of religious inspiration is many times, first and foremost, a matter of interiority; an inland dropping out of le spectacle vivant. For many of the artists and artist collectives associated with this spiritual milieu the artistic objects they create are entrenched in a prayer mode. Although prayer can be also public, the artists’ disdain of what the status quo of the moment decrees reality to be is a dropping out mostly in spirit. Thus, their creation is rather a one-on-one communication between artist and God that does not preclude the ethical witnessing of contemporary social and political concerns that can turn into collective memories shared with others who attend to the artists’ practices. Anchored in qualitative research, this volume employs the interdisciplinary resources of the relatively new field of art and politics. As Frank Möller posits, “Analysis of politics and art is essentially pluralistic and multidisciplinary, and pluralism and multidisciplinarity come in many forms.”58 More often than not, art can be interpreted through the lens of the political because art is many times a political discourse, and even more so when we deal with religion-inspired art produced within the conceptual frameworks of secular contemporary culture. Religion-inspired art, just like any other form of art, is frequently produced in a network of power relations. From this positionality art can affirm relations of power, it can avoid any interference with power, or it can resist it. Shall we label this cultural production as “political”? The answer to this question depends, of course, on what understanding of the political we employ. We shall also disentangle “the political” and “politics.” The political can be defined in several ways, but at least two understandings illuminate the argument I aim to put forth in this book. First, the political is a phenomenon having to do with “social relationships involving authority or power”. Second, the political is an entity defined by the two key concepts theorized by Chantal Mouffe; namely hegemony and antagonism.59 By hegemony Mouffe means “the process by which the views, values or interests of a section of society come to dominate society as a whole by occupying the place of the official, accepted, authorized and legitimated thought,” whereas antagonism comes to mean “A we/they relation between enemies who want to destroy each other.”60 Depending on the context, artworks can be interpreted in their engagement with the political, as well as “vehicles with which to transcend the political.”61 As I argue in this volume,

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religion-inspired art in both late communism and post-communist Romania can be interpreted as form of political communication that reveals a form of resistance to one hegemony or another. Thus, contrary to the common opinion, religion-inspired art is not understood in this book as a vehicle “with which to transcend the political” for the sake of the transcendental. Since my exploration focuses predominantly on art pieces (photographs, videos, paintings and so on), the artworks will be examined through the lens of the interdisciplinary method of critical visual analysis.

1.3   Looking Ahead This volume is structured as follows: the first chapter introduces the landmarks in the study of arts, politics and religion in communist and post-­ communist Romania, focusing on the theoretical and methodological background of a twofold underexplored relationship: political art and religion, and religion-inspired art and politics. The main argument put forth in the introductory chapter is that art, politics and religion intermingle in various ways and to various ends—both during Romanian national communism and after its collapse in 1989—and these different cultural productions of religious and spiritual inspiration can be regarded and interpreted as manifold configurations of resistance to the dominant status quo. Against this background, the cultural production of religious inspiration alludes to a peculiar form of cultural memory—longing for a spiritual state of humankind (a symbolic, atemporal Paradise Lost)—that can also be employed as a therapy or revitalization of the soul against a background of atomization and alienation of modern lifestyle, perennial uncertainties, overlapping injustices, political violence and economic precariousness. In line with the main argument of the volume, the second chapter focuses on the varieties of cultural resistance during Romanian late communism. The chapter provides an outline of the ongoing debates about the meaning, content and politicality of “cultural resistance,” a concept that gained momentum in the post-communist Romanian public discourses. The main argument of this chapter is that “cultural resistance” is multifarious and for its assessment, we need to focus on the analysis of the form and content of cultural practices and artefacts, and not on political resistance alone. To this end, this chapter elaborates on several types of cultural resistance, without the pretension of offering an exhaustive list. Thus, the first section deals with the conflicting meanings and uses of

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“cultural resistance” in post-communist Romania. The next section explores a form of “cultural resistance,” understood as critical complicity with the official canon of cultural production. The last two sections are devoted to “cultural resistance” through (religious) art collecting and resistance through art of religious inspiration. Chapter 3 addresses the controversial topic of artistic production of religious descent (mostly of Byzantine heritage) accepted by the communist nationalist canon. Against the main narrative—according to which communists did not support or tolerate any religion-related cultural production—the chapter scrutinizes the cultural policy of late communist Romania which selectively supported certain works of Byzantine inspiration. The rationale behind that was that these artworks could supposedly contribute to the valorization of the ancient Romanian heritage that was part and parcel of the process of consolidating national communist culture. Thus, what I call in this chapter “Godless religious art” of Romanian national communism was rendered as an indispensable cultural production to support the communist’s protochronist ethos of the moment, disregarding the fact that the “ancient materials” and symbols this cultural style employed were of Christian heritage. To support this argument, the chapter focuses on the flourishing of Bizantinology, especially after 1965 (including the state-supported research stays at the Mont Athos in Greece by Romanian musicologists), and the return to traditional, folkloric culture of amateur artists that was considered the “national style,” and within which certain Byzantine elements served the political enterprise of the moment. In addition, the chapter provides an analysis of how the communist national culture and its focus on the “Byzantine” heritage, combined with the protochronist ideology that idealized Romania’s glorious past, employed stylistic elements from Byzantine iconology in the official portraits of Ceauṣescu, as well as public murals produced during the communist era. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on spiritual/religious inspired art’s ability to foster ecologies of faith where nostalgia for a nature sanctified by the sacred prevails. In the theoretical register of prophetic activism (Tom Block), this ecology of faith encourages the projection of imaginary futures, places and spaces of dissent, as well as imagined non-places where life might again be bearable and liveable. In line with this conjunction between ecological concerns and faith, artists associated with the Neo-­ Orthodox movement created a type of cultural production where nature is revealed in loving intimacy with God. This ecopoetic love is exhibited

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through an artistic discourse that envisions the future in light of a longing for a lost paradise where vegetation took central stage. Following this argument, Chap. 4 focuses on the communist renderings of nature in both popular culture and art. The first section focuses on those instances where nature is represented in visual arts and musical production as hypostatization of “green patriotism” and “autochthonous nature.” I contend that these official renderings actually de-naturalized nature. In this vein, the representations of nature had less to do with natural life as such but rather with an ideologization of what the natural environment was supposed to entail and symbolize. Thus, the personification of nature in official artistic production acquired educational (and propagandistic) value through the lens of national communism. The second section of this chapter addresses those instances when artists engaged with nature in their art, paralleling, complementing, or questioning certain art movements from the West (e.g. land or earth art, ecological art and so on). Their artistic production focused on nature in a way that did not necessarily take into consideration the official canon. The third section zooms in on several instances of religion-inspired art from the 1970s to the 1990s the main concern of which was to re-establish the archetypal bond between nature and human beings. Unlike the artists who dealt with “mere nature” as a counter-narrative to the “national nature” of communism, for Neo-Orthodox cultural producers, nature is not only “natural” but impregnated with God’s presence. The artists associated with this return to nature as one of the main topics of their artistic endeavour strove to bring back the resources of ancient spirituality and Cosmic Christianity to address environmental issues from a Christian Orthodox point of view. Thus, this return to nature can be interpreted as a form of political resistance filtered through a theology of transfiguration (John Cryssavgis et al.). Chapter 5 extends the analysis of the bond between nature and art of religious inspiration to the musical production of the composer, Octavian Nemescu. He created a Meta-Byzantine style, regarded by various categories of critics either as an inconvenient deviation from historical Byzantine musical canons (the Byzantine purists’ critique) or as an inopportune digression from national communism’s cultural policy. Nemescu’s musical creation—developed in line with the slogan “Take down the concert halls!”—attempted to de-institutionalize musical creation, as well as performance and to revive the Ur-foundations, rituals and archetypes of all musical traditions. This case study illustrates that the return to humans’

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spiritual bond with nature can be understood as a form of “prophetic activism” and spiritual awakening, whereby the Meta-Byzantine style has been deployed as a discursive strategy. These musical creations do not only epitomize the synthesis of two musical cultures (Eastern and Western) or of two religious styles—traditional Romanian, local oriented and ecumenical Meta-Byzantine—but also politically re-evaluate the sacred. Both instances of artistic production (visual and musical) are forms of spiritual awakening through sacred art produced during the national communist era of Nicolae Ceauşescu. In Chap. 6, the analysis of religion-inspired art is extended to revitalization movements. The chapter surveys Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s prophetic artistic activism, both during communism and after the fall of the regime in 1989. Their art of religious descent is usually associated with a religious revitalization movement (called “The New Jerusalem”), rendered as heretical by the official Orthodox Church of Romania. The Zidarus’ corpus of religious art reveals a constant search for ethical amelioration and social justice in the contemporary world. Currently, Marian Zidaru’s art is either understood as a form of “offensive nationalism,” or as a dissident instance of religious art that rather conforms to popular Christian Orthodoxy than to the dogmatic one. Against these interpretations, the argument put forth in this chapter is that the Zidarus’ art revisits and refreshes the meanings of “religion” being triggered by a peerless form of artistic prophetic activism. The artists do not seem to be troubled by marginalization and exclusion, and rather, confront with artistic and spiritual humbleness the new post-communist cultural hegemony that inclines to dismiss their artistic production considered “too parochial” and “too traditional.” Zidarus’ “confrontation” of the new hegemony is not essentially oppositional but rather existential in nature. At the same time, their corpus of religiously inspired artistic production is not culturally and politically acceptable for the custodians of national art, because of its radical and non-dogmatic religiousness. Thus, on the one hand, their atypical “proto-Orthodox Christian” art is tough to assess and pigeonhole by the contemporary art world and its institutions because contemporary art and religious practice are regarded as distinct cultural fields, which exist alongside but do not usually overlap. Apart from the fact that religious art is taken to be the domain of amateur culture and folk taste—whereas contemporary arts deal with experimental, political and conceptual formats—contemporary art often times engages in religious affairs critically, in order to dismiss it for obscurantism,

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parochialism, backwardness and primitivism. On the other hand, the Zidarus’ religious ardour and declared monarchism distanced them from the nationalist official institutions of culture, too. As such, how should we assess the artistic creations of these radical prophetic activists of our times who display their politics through visuals instantiations of their “personal use” Paradise? Chapter 7 is dedicated to the body’s instantiations in art of religious inspiration. The main argument put forth is that human body is rendered, in the artistic production under scrutiny, as a multidirectional instrument for both salvation and resistance to oppression. The artistic renderings of the human body analysed in this chapter display a vision of the physical body as a site of religious rituals and sacraments but also of the realization of the highest human potentiality for freedom and salvation of the soul through “self-care” that does not preclude the care for other human beings. Besides the connection between the human body and “the body of Christ” which is transparent in many of the art pieces examined in this chapter, there are other cultural productions on the Romanian contemporary art scene that envision the physical body as a site of subversion, while other artworks reveal the impossibility of the very same body to replicate the mystical one. Without pretensions of engaging this convoluted topic from a theological or political theology perspective, the main aim of this chapter is to disentangle the means and meanings of bringing art to the forefront of the physical body in its various instantiations and discursive functions, in light of both political and religious concerns. Chapter 8 surveys the Neo-Byzantine (or as it is called after the fall of communism, “Neo-Orthodox”) stylistic tendencies recuperated in the post-communist Romanian cultural-political sphere. To this end, the most representative artists of the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox group, Prolog, will be explored. The first section argues that some styles and thematic clusters of religious inspiration (of Neo-Byzantine descent) that emerged in the 1980s as a peripheral cultural phenomenon in relation to the official culture of Ceauṣescu’s national communism were recuperated and developed after the fall of the regime, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. The second section critically explores the Prolog art group’s odyssey as reflected in recent Romanian art history and art critical discourses. It particularly focuses on the Prolog artists’ cultural routes, from the beginning of the group in the 1985 to present-day Romania. This exploration includes a critical survey of what was called during communism “Neo-Byzantinism,” as well as its moves towards the

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post-communist denominations of “Neo-Orthodoxism” and “Neo-­ Traditionalism.” Thus, this chapter asks whether these denominations accurately reveal the Prolog artists’ set of concerns. Chapter 9 engages with political art and religion in post-communist Romania. As presented in the previous chapters, after the collapse of the communist regime, some artists from the Neo-Byzantine group Prolog continued their spiritual quest through art’s intermediation, while others (the younger generation of Romanian contemporary artists) employed the “religious” thematic clusters and tropes in their work, yet, for different ends and on different grounds. These contemporary artists also employ the thematic clusters and the repertoires of religion and spirituality in order to challenge it (or at least to challenge “institutionalized religion” or the so-called religious affair in Romania). Thus, the all-too-familiar Byzantine icons, crosses, as well as other religious symbols and visual memorabilia are employed in de-familiarized contexts and approaches. Through this process of de-familiarization, irony and sarcasm, the viewer and art consumer are faced with an unexpected, critical-political perspective through the art’s mediation. Thus, this chapter surveys artistic productions from post-communist Romania where the religious symbols, rituals and practices are envisioned and employed with the aim of redefining the spiritual as a form of cultural and political resistance to various hegemonies—from the communist nationalist hegemony to the neoliberal hegemony, the hegemony of the art market and the hegemony of institutionalized religion. Finally, Chap. 10 presents the conclusions by putting forward both the main findings of the study and the aspects that need further investigation. The relationships between art, politics and religion can lead to different, even antagonistic ends, both during Nicolae Ceauṣeascu’s national communism and after its collapse in 1989.

Notes 1. Tara Isabella Burton, “Behind Weird Christian Twitter, millennials bent on rebelliously orthodox belief,” Religion News Service, 8 November 2019. https://religionnews.com/. Available at: https://religionnews. com/2019/11/08/behind-weird-christian-twitter-millennials-bent-onrebelliously-orthodox-belief/ (10 December 2019) (Burton 2019). 2. Theodor Adorno, “Theses Upon Art and Religion Today,” The Kenyon Review 18(3) (1996): 236 (Adorno 1996).

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3. Paul Routledge, “A Spatiality of Resistances: Theory and Practice in Nepal’s Revolution of 1990,” in Geographies of Resistance, ed. Steve Pile and Michael Keith (New York and London: Routledge, 2009), 70 (Routledge 2009). 4. See for example Constantin Prut, Dictionar de Artă Modernăsị Contemporană (Iaṣi: Polirom, 2016) (Prut 2016) and Sabina Crisen, “National Identity and Cultural Self-Definition: Modern and Post Modern Artistic Expression,” East European Studies 55 (1999):16–17. https:// www.wilsoncenter.org. Available at: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/ default/files/CRISEN55.pdf (28 October 2018) (Crisen 1999). 5. Ion Grigorescu answered the questions addressed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Suzanne Pagé and Mircea Cantor for the Romanian art magazine Arta. During this interview the artist claims that although the artistic production of the Neo-Orthodox group, Prolog, was not intended as an art of resistance against the system, “it is true that people might have perceived it that way.” For the entire interview see Hans Ulrich Obrist, Suzanne Pagé and Mircea Cantor, “A Conversation with Ion Grigorescu,” Idea Artă + Societate 23 (2006): 58 (Obrist et al. 2006). 6. Carmen Anghel’s interview with Valentin Scărlătescu for Galeria Romană, “Grupul Prolog: Artaca o Miṣcare de Rezistenṭă” [The Prolog Group: Art as Resistance Movement], Galeria Romană, 9 January 2016. http://galeriaromana.ro/. Available at: http://galeriaromana.ro/grupul-prolog-artaca-o-miscare-de-rezistenta (25 November 2019) (Anghel 2016). 7. See for instance the “Chronology of Visual Arts staring with 1965”, in Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 216–217 (Soros Centre for Contemporary Art 1997). 8. Dušan Bjelić, Normalizing the Balkans, Geopolitics of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry (London: Routledge, 2011) (Bjelić 2011). 9. Roland Boer, “The Search for Redemption: Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek on Marx, Psychoanalysis and Religion,” Filozofija I Društvo 18(1) (2007): 174 (Boer 2007). 10. Boer, “The Search for Redemption,” 153–176. 11. Anamarie Ross, “Cradle, Manger, Granary: Carving the Body from the Nation Sacred Flesh,” Journal of Religion and Society 8 (2006): 11 (Ross 2006). 12. To mention just several examples of successful Neo-Orthodox artists after the fall of the regime, Horia Bernea founded the successful National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest in 1990. The celebrated art history professor, artist and from 2006, member of the Romanian Academy of Science, Sorin Dumitrescu, founded and ran the religious art

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gallery, Catacomba, (after 1990s), as well as the Christian Orthodox publishing house and cultural foundation, Anastasia. 13. Alice Mocănescu, National Art as Legitimate Art: National between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania (2012). https://help.it. ox.ac.uk/web/personalwebpages/personalguide. Available at: http:// users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/papers/Alice_Mocanescu.pdf (22 January 2020) (Mocănescu 2012). 14. Ibidem. 15. Ibidem. 16. Excepting Bulgaria where Lyudmila Todorova Zhivkova (Socialist Bulgaria’s Minister of Culture and Todor Zhivkov’s daughter), encouraged alternative religious and spiritual practices as state policy. 17. Obrist et al., “A Conversation with Ion Grigorescu,” 58. 18. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives], Instrucṭiun iprivind vînzarea obiectelor de artă prin magazinele Consignaṭiesi ale Fondului Plastic [Instructions Regarding the Commercialization of the Art Objects through Consignaṭie and the Artistic Fund], source ANIC, fond UAP, file 17/1970, ff. 21–22 (ANIC 1970). 19. Ibidem. 20. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives], Instrucṭiun iprivind vînzarea obiectelor de artă prin magazinele Consignaṭiesi ale Fondului Plastic [Instructions Regarding the Commercialization of the Art Objects through Consignaṭie and the Artistic Fund], source ANIC, fond UAP, file 57/1969, f. 91 (ANIC 1969). 21. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives], LOCO, fond UAP, 28/1961, f. 31 (ANIC 1961). 22. Sabina Păuṭa Pieslak, “Romania’s Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige,” Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2&3) (2007): 233 (Pieslak 2007). 23. Ibidem. 24. Trond Gilberg, “Religion and Nationalism in Romania,” in Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, ed. Pedro Ramet (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989), 342 (Gilberg 1989). 25. James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004), 13 (Elkins 2004). 26. Neo-avant-garde art movements encompass Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Installation, Nouveau Realisme, Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, Land Art, Performance, Fluxus, Neo-Dada, and Situationism. This list is far from exhaustive. 27. Matthew Biro, The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimer Berlin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 21 (Biro 2009).

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28. Hal Foster, “What is Neo about the Neo-Avant-Garde,” October 70 (1994): 20 (Foster 1994). 29. The term “culture industry” has been theorized by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory thinkers. It refers to a new mode of cultural production that enforces popular culture in capitalist societies. In this framework, TV, media, music and film production function as an industry meant to conquer and standardize all artistic creation for the sake of easy consumption (mass consumption). 30. Lynn Schofield Clark and Seth M. Walker, Popular Culture and Religion in America. Oxford Research Encyclopedias (2018: 1). https://oxfordre. com/. Available at: https://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378e-457?rskey=olDRjI (13 February 2020) (Clark and Walker 2018). 31. Institutional definitions of art remain influential and date back at least to George Dickie’s theories of art. There are two versions of Dickie’s institutional definition of art, from 1974 and from 1997. The 1974 institutional definition of art posits that a work of art is “1.) An original artifact, and 2.) A set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the art world).” (George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (New York: Cornell University Press, 1974), 431 (Dickie 1974)).The 1997 definition points out that “A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an art world public. An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art. A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them. The art world is the totality of all art world systems. An art world system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an art world public.” (George Dickie, Art Circle: A Theory of Art (Chicago: Spectrum Press, 1997), 97 (Dickie 1997)). 32. James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004) (Elkins 2004). 33. Rina Arya, “Spirituality and Contemporary Art,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedias (2016). https://oxfordre.com/. Available at: http://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/ acrefore-9780199340378-e-209. (2 December 2018) (Arya 2018). 34. Alastair Sooke, Does Modern Art Hate Religion? BBC Culture, 21 October 2014. http://www.bbc.com. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140602-does-modern-art-hate-religion (07 December 2018) (Sooke 2014).

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35. Harry Philbrick, Faith: The Impact of Judeo-Christian Religion on Art at the Millennium Catalogue (Ridgefield, CT: The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000): 16 (Philbrick 2000). 36. For Jacques Ranciére, the “politics of aesthetics” refers to overcoming a narrow regime of identifying and understanding the arts as separated from politics. The French philosopher argues that what ties aesthetics to politics is “the power of a form of thought.” See Jacques Ranciére, The Politics of Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2004) (Ranciére 2004). 37. Ion Grigorescu quoted in Anders Kreuger, “Ion Grigorescu: My Vocation is Classical, Even Bucolic,” Afterall, 41 (2016): 24 (Kreuger 2016). 38. Adrian Velicu, “Cultural Memory between National and Transnational,” Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 3 (2011): 1–4 (Velicu 2011). 39. Ibidem. 40. Magda Cârneci, ArtelePlasticeînRomânia: 1945–1989. Cu o addenda 1990–2010 (Iaṣi: Polirom, 2013), 134 (Cârneci 2013). 41. Sampada Aranke, “Political Resistance,” Oxford Bibliographies, https:// doi.org/10.1093/OBO/9780190280024-0054. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190280024/ obo-9780190280024-0054.xml (14 February 2020). 42. Stephen Duncombe (ed.), Cultural Resistance Reader (London: Verso, 2002) (Duncombe 2002). 43. Stephen Duncombe, Cultural Resistance, https://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/full/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosc178. 44. Olga V. Solovieva, Christ’s Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018): 7 (Solovieva 2018). 45. Alain Badiou quoted in Solovieva, Christ’s Subversive Body, 7. 46. Mihai Bocarnea and Bramwell Osula, “Edifying the New Man: Romanian Communist Leadership’s Mythopoeia,” International Journal of Leadership Studies 3(2) (2008): 199 (Bocarnea and Osula 2008). 47. Bocarnea and Osula, “Edifying the New Man,” 204. 48. Idem, 198. 49. Magda Cârneci, “The 80s in Romanian Art,” Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 62. 50. Ibidem. 51. Codrina Laura Ioniṭă, “Religious Themes in Contemporary Art,” in Multiculturalism and the Convergence of Faith and Practical Wisdom in Modern Society, ed. Ana-Maria Pascal (Hershey: IGI Global, 2016), 202. 52. Adrian Guṭă, “Notes on the Romanian Arts of the 90s,” Moscow Art Magazine 22 (1998). 53. Ibidem.

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54. Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn, Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1987), 45. 55. Tom Block, “Prophetic Activist Art: Art Beyond Oppositionality,” International Journal of the Arts in Society 3(2) (2008). 56. Routledge, “A Spatiality of Resistances.” 57. John Cryssavgis, Bruce Foltz and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Nature, Environment and Creation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 58. Frank Möller, “Politics and Art,” Oxford Handbooks Online. https://www. oxfordhandbooks.com. Available at: https://www.oxfordhandbooks. com/view/10.1093/ (11 January 2020). 59. Chantal Mouffe, On The Political (London and New  York: Routledge, 2005), 16. 60. Chantal Mouffe, “Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces,” Art and Research 1(2) (2007). http://www.artandresearch.org.uk. Available at: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html. (17 May 2019). 61. Möller, “Politics and Art.”

References Adorno, Theodor. 1996. Theses upon Art and Religion Today. The Kenyon Review 18 (3): 236–204. Anghel, Carmen. 2016. Grupul Prolog: Artaca o Miṣcare de Rezistenṭă [The Prolog Group: Art as Resistance Movement], Galeria Romană, 9 January 2016. http://galeriaromana.ro/. Accessed 25 November 2019. http://galeriaromana.ro/grupul-prolog-arta-ca-o-miscare-de-rezistenta. Aranke, Sampada. 2017. Political Resistance. Oxford Bibliographies. https://doi. org/10.1093/OBO/9780190280024-0054. Accessed 14 February 2020. h t t p s : / / w w w. o x f o r d b i b l i o g r a p h i e s . c o m / v i e w / d o c u m e n t / obo-9780190280024/obo-9780190280024-0054.xml. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives]. 1965. Instrucṭiun iprivind vînzarea obiectelor de artă prin magazinele Consignatị esi ale Fondului Plastic [Instructions Regarding the Commercialization of the Art Objects through Consignat ̣ie and the Artistic Fund], source ANIC, fond UAP, file 57/1965, f. 91. ———. 1970. Instrucṭiun iprivind vînzarea obiectelor de artă prin magazinele Consignaṭiesi ale Fondului Plastic [Instructions Regarding the Commercialization of the Art Objects through Consignat ̣ie and the Artistic Fund], source ANIC, fond UAP, file 17/1970, ff. 21–22. Arya, Rina. 2016. Spirituality and Contemporary Art. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. https://oxfordre.com/. Accessed 2 December 2018. http://oxfordre.

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com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/ acrefore-9780199340378-e-209. Biro, Matthew. 2009. The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimer Berlin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bjelić, Dušan. 2011. Normalizing the Balkans, Geopolitics of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. London: Routledge. Block, Tom. 2008. Prophetic Activist Art: Art Beyond Oppositionality. International Journal of the Arts in Society 3 (2): 19–25. Bocarnea, Mihai, and Bramwell Osula. 2008. Edifying the New Man: Romanian Communist Leadership’s Mythopoeia. International Journal of Leadership Studies 3 (2): 198–211. Boer, Roland. 2007. The Search for Redemption: Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek on Marx; Psychoanalysis and Religion. Filozofija I Društvo 18 (1): 153–176. Burton, Tara Isabella. 2019. Behind Weird Christian Twitter, Millennials Bent on Rebelliously Orthodox Belief. Religion News Service, 8 November 2019. https://religionnews.com/. Accessed 10 December 2019. https://religionnews.com/2019/11/08/behind-weird-christian-twitter-millennials-bent-onrebelliously-orthodox-belief/. Cârneci, Magda. 1997. The 80s in Romanian Art. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. ———. 2013. ArtelePlasticeînRomânia: 1945–1989. Cu o addenda 1990–2010. Iaṣi: Polirom. Chryssavgis, John, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. 2013. Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation. New York: Fordham University Press. Clark, Lynn Schofield, and Seth M.  Walker. 2018. Popular Culture and Religion in America. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. https:// oxfordre.com/. Accessed 13 February 2020. https://oxfordre.com/ religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/ acrefore-9780199340378-e-457?rskey=olDRjI. Crisen, Sabina. 1999. National Identity and Cultural Self-Definition: Modern and Post Modern Artistic Expression. East European Studies 55: 1–22. https:// www.wilsoncenter.org. Accessed 28 October 2018. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/CRISEN55.pdf. Dickie, George. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis. New York: Cornell University Press. ———. 1997. Art Circle: A Theory of Art. Chicago: Spectrum Press. Duncombe, Stephen, ed. 2002. Cultural Resistance Reader. London: Verso. Elkins, James. 2004. On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge. Foster, Hal. 1994. What is Neo about the Neo-Avant-Garde. October 70: 5–32.

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Gilberg, Trond. 1989. Religion and Nationalism in Romania. In Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, ed. Pedro Ramet. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Guṭă, Adrian. 1998. Notes on the Romanian Arts of the 90s. Moscow Art Magazine 22: 1–12. Hassan, Ihab. 1987. The Postmodern Turn. Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture. Ohio: Ohio State University Press. Ionit ̣ă, Codrina Laura. 2016. Religious Themes in Contemporary Art. In Multiculturalism and the Convergence of Faith and Practical Wisdom in Modern Society, ed. Ana-Maria Pascal. Hershey: IGI Global. Kreuger, Anders. 2016. Ion Grigorescu: My Vocation is Classical, Even Bucolic. Afterall 41: 22–37. Mocănescu, Alice. 2012. National Art as Legitimate Art: ‘National’ between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania. https://help.it.ox.ac.uk/ web/personalwebpages/personalguide. Accessed 22 January 2020. http:// users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/papers/Alice_Mocanescu.pdf. Möller, Frank. Politics and Art. In Oxford Handbooks Online. https://www. oxfordhandbooks.com. Accessed 11 January 2020. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/. Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On The Political. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2007. Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces. Art and Research 1 (2). http://www.artandresearch.org.uk. Accessed 17 May 2019. http://www. artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html. Obrist, Hans Ulrich, Suzanne Pagé, and Mircea Cantor. 2006. A Conversation with Ion Grigorescu. Idea Artă + Societate 23: 56–64. Philbrick, Harry. 2000. Faith: The Impact of Judeo-Christian Religion on Art at the Millennium Catalogue. Ridgefield, CT: The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Pieslak, Sabina Păuṭa. 2007. Romania’s Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige. Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2&3): 215–240. Prut, Constantin. 2016. Dictionar de Artă Modernăsị Contemporană. Iaṣi: Polirom. Ranciére, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Continuum. Ross, Anamarie. 2006. Cradle, Manger, Granary: Carving the Body from the Nation’s Sacred Flesh. Journal of Religion and Society 8: 1–12. Routledge, Paul. 2009. A Spatiality of Resistances: Theory and Practice in Nepal’s Revolution of 1990. In Geographies of Resistance, ed. Steve Pile and Michael Keith. New York and London: Routledge. Solovieva, Olga V. 2018. Christ’s Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Sooke, Alastair. 2014. Does Modern Art Hate Religion? BBC Culture, 21 October 2014. http://www.bbc.com. Accessed 7 December 2018. http://www.bbc. com/culture/story/20140602-does-modern-art-hate-religion.

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Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. 1997. Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Velicu, Adrian. 2011. Cultural Memory between National and Transnational. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 3: 1–4.

CHAPTER 2

On the Varieties of Cultural Resistance During Romanian Late Communism

2.1   Introduction In one of the first anthologies dedicated to contemporary art after the fall of communism, the exhibitions organized by the Neo-Orthodox art collective Prolog during communist era are understood as a form of “cultural resistance,” even though the group’s modus operandi was rather “traditionalist” and nostalgic about the past than revolutionary and forward-­ looking.1 In order to set the framework of the analysis of the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox art semi-movement, I will elaborate on the various connotations ascribed to the concept of “cultural resistance” in the Romanian cultural public sphere after the collapse of the regime in 1989  in what follows. The debates about cultural resistance gained momentum in post-communist Romania in light of a broader political discourse focusing on the urge to rehabilitate the image of the country and of its allegedly submissive citizens.2 Undoubtedly, the phenomenon of cultural resistance cannot be quantified, yet, as Ioana Petre argues, “The historical assessment of the nature of ‘cultural resistance’ during Romania’s communist period … is interlinked with disagreement over the meaning of the word ‘resistance’ itself.”3 Unlike Czechoslovakia, Poland or Hungary, Romania cannot invoke notable actions of civic courage directed against the communist dictatorship.4 Nevertheless, notable Romanian intellectuals have claimed, after the fall of the regime, that many cultural producers (artists included) © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_2

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professed “subtle ways to sabotage the system, and therefore to take an oblique political stance; in other words, a masked way to oppose the regime.”5 Since the fall of Ceauşescu’s regime, the public discourse has been eager to outline and identify various instances of “cultural resistance” during Romania’s communist period. The heated debates surrounding this issue usually tend to emphasize mainly two types of cultural resistance: resistance as opposition (cultural production that went against the totalitarian regime) and resistance as survival (cultural production that did not take a stance against the regime but aimed to preserve individual autonomy in spite of all constraints to it). The second type of resistance through culture is particularly pervasive within the discourses of the intellectual circles of post-communist Romania. Many philosophers, artists, writers and other cultural producers have followed the interwar philosopher Constantin Noica and argued that intellectual life under Ceauṣescu’s dictatorship was possible, paradoxically, because it was hypothetically impossible. One of Noica’s disciples, Horia Roman Patapievici—who was also the former general president of the Romanian Cultural Institute between 2005 and 2012—emphatically claimed that he survived communism by reading books, watching art movies and discussing them with his best friends in terms of artistic value and their philosophical ideas. In the same vein, his colleague Gabriel Liiceanu posits that in a dictatorial regime, “Where it is the spirit that is mostly at threat, culture becomes a way of transgression and, by this very fact, it becomes political in nature.”6 The argument he puts forth in one of the most read books of the post-1989 generation is that culture under oppression can function as a strategy of survival against “massification” (mass culture) and as a “preparation for regeneration.”7 The intellectual regeneration Liiceanu talks about is actually in line with Constantin Noica’s belief that troubled and difficult times (especially economically scarce times) lead to good, reputable intellectual production while prosperity inhibits creativity and intellectual curiosity. Horia Roman Patapievici also seemed to embrace this creed when he claimed that he once heard Noica saying, “A good book is written with a cheap pen. What is true in any event is that a life of achievement is led with modest intentions.”8 Although these claims might look questionable for some Romanian intellectuals, the post-communist mainstream intelligentsia fully embraced this type of discourse.

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2.2   Conflicting Discourses on Cultural Resistance in Post-Communist Romania According to recent cultural and political history studies, the most pervasive form of cultural resistance under the tutelage of the Romanian Communist Party consisted of literary productions, which emphasized existentialist journeys, absurd situations, oneiric happenings, dissident behaviours or spiritual awakenings. As Nicoleta Sălcudeanu points out, “The phenomenon is not unique and is not the exclusive privilege of Romanian literature. It was common among writers living in totalitarian regimes who believed in redemption through their writing.”9 However, he goes on to explain that “in the absence of the kind of direct political resistance witnessed in other Eastern bloc countries, it was primarily only the artist who was left to challenge the Romanian regime, doing so indirectly through culture.”10 The so-called cultural resistance to dictatorship cannot be identified exclusively in literary works. Visual artistic productions, music and performing arts, as well as fashion and design, are all areas of creative impetus where the producers of “unofficial” culture opposed the regime and its cultural policy in a variety of ways. Yet, when we attempt to address the topic of “cultural resistance,” we might want to also clarify what the word “resistance” connotes. Lucian Maier introduces the Romanian contemporary artist Dan Perjovschi’s art project titled “Cultural Resistance” by claiming that the artist “goes along the lines denoted by the two basic meanings of the word resistance: on one hand, it is about reluctance, about opposing something, and within this dimension the project opens critically to the contemporary society; on the other hand, it is about resistance as firmness, durability…”11 I will return to this distinction later, especially to illuminate the second meaning and to employ it in my analysis of the artistic production of the Neo-Orthodox cultural producers. Ioana Petre also conceptualizes cultural resistance during Romanian communism in terms of “transgression” and “shying away.” From this perspective, she wonders whether what Romanian intellectuals—like Gabriel Liiceanu—call “resistance through culture” is truly resistance (subversive opposition to power) or rather a form of euphemized submission.12 I find this interrogation of the utmost significance because we should go beyond consensual understandings of resistance through culture/art if we want to illuminate an exhaustive account of the cultural and political fallings out of communism. Furthermore, it has to be

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acknowledged that the meaning and scope of official, unofficial and semi-­ official culture and art was modified throughout the communist era. For instance, “In the 1950s, abstract art could have seen as a gesture against socialist realism, but by the 1980 it was tolerated in official exhibitions.”13 Meanwhile, some thematic foci—such as “socialist reality”—remained constant throughout the communist regime, while the official requirement to portray the communist leader of the country has mostly been the focus of the official art production during Nicolae Ceauṣecu’s regime.14

2.3   Cultural Resistance as Critical Complicity with the Official Canon As in other socialist countries from Eastern Europe, the official canon of cultural production—the Soviet-backed Socialist Realism—had been implemented in Romania as well, beginning in early 1948. Contrary to those claims that Socialist Realism was imposed from above and consisted of rigid thematic clusters, Geoffrey Hosking argues that “the official [Soviet Socialist Realist] doctrine was essentially non-committal, a more or less empty shell whose content was to be provided by the writers themselves. Socialist Realism may have been imposed by politicians, but it was created by writers.”15 In the same vein, the ground-breaking research on Romanian Socialist Realism (1948–1960s) by the art historian Mirela Tanta has skilfully demonstrated, against Romanian art’s historical orthodoxy, that unlike other Socialist Realisms from the former Eastern bloc, the socialist cultural canon had a second wind during Ceauṣescu’s rule.16 According to Tanta, the Romanian official visual art under the influence of Ceauṣescu’s cultural policy after 1965 can be read as what she calls “Neo-Socialist Realism.” In this interpretative framework, the visual language of the second wave of Socialist Realism relied on the rhetoric of kitsch and irony and was readymade of a failed ideology. Thus, as she puts it, the official demand to paint the truth of communism actually and unexpectedly “exposed the procedural mechanics of the failed ideology from inside as: paternalistic, prothocronistic, Neo-Stalinist, and dynastic communism. This is the most interesting moment because it shows the spectacular failure of Neo-­ Socialist Realism to make politics and art one.”17 Along similar lines, Caterina Preda also points out that, beginning in the 1970s, a new form of official art entitled “socialist neorealism” or “Ceauṣescu realism”

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monopolized the official art scene of communist Romania, deifying the Romanian past and enlisting the dictator “in a noble hereditary line, in sync with the protochronist trend of the early 1980s.”18 However, this does not mean that the earliest forms of familiar Socialist Realist iconography did not make it to the new official art commissioned by Ceauṣescu’s regime. There is little research done to explore those instances of cultural production which pretended to obey the communist cultural canon by instantiating, in fact, a form of critical complicity. Some artists have used the rhetoric and visual language of the official art (by mimicking submission to authority and its cultural policy) to actually disengage with the authority and the requirements of official art. Their cultural production is neither oppositional (transgression) resistance nor survival (shying away) resistance. I see these forms of cultural production as instantiating a “double language” or a “grey zone” of collaboration with power and distancing itself from power at the same time. From a certain perspective, the complicity/resistance interplay in artistic production displayed during dictatorial regimes might look self-limiting, unethical and politically dubious. However, tricking the communist system in some instances functioned as effectively as beating or opposing the system. As Mihai Botez convincingly argued, “Of course, for many Western intellectuals, such strategies seem strange if not disgusting. In principle I am ready to agree with them, adding my sad wish that they will never be compelled to learn such an art.”19 This art and politics of mastering a double, sometimes Aesopian language of cultural production revealed instances of semi-official accepted art that was neither entirely transgressive nor all heartedly in line with the communists’ cultural policy. Not being unequivocally subversive art, the semi-official productions managed to find a place to be displayed for the larger public. At a superficial glance, an instance of a grey area in the visual arts has been unveiled by those works that consisted of a communist-­ oriented, politically committed nature in terms of subject matter and the modernist and experimental nature in terms of execution. It would be, however, inaccurate to claim that the artists of the communist era were forced by the communist state apparatus to paint homage to Nicolae Ceauşescu or portraits of the dictatorial couple (Nicolae and Elena Ceauṣescu). The artists decided themselves, according to their own interests, consciousness and financial needs, whether they wanted to accept the State’s commission to paint homage portraits for different occasions or

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not. Still, not all artists were solicited to paint homage portraits of the leader but only those accredited as “portraitists” by the regime. When a visual artist wanted to paint a portrait of Ceauşescus, he or she was not compelled to create a standardized one but had the option to select from various photographs of the leader that most “fit” his or her favourite artistic technique. Thus, the mammoth collection of “official” portraits of Ceauṣescus have been produced in diverse styles and techniques.20 Correspondingly, the stylistic renderings of Ceauṣescu’s personality cult stored in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest range from Neo- Socialist Realism, Pop Art, Neoclassicism and Impressionism to Op Art and Kinetic Art. These degrees of freedom in choosing the artistic style and technique are sometimes not acknowledged by the former official painters of Ceauṣescu’s portrait.21 The public statements put forth by some former official painters of Ceauṣescu after the collapse of the communist regime reveal a need to justify their tedious cultural production as a burden imposed from above. In the first retrospective exhibition of Socialist Art—“The Museum of Painting” (Bucharest, March 2005)—painter Ion Bitzan displayed a large, undated canvas entitled Homage to Nicolae Ceauşescu. The peculiarity of this quasi-subversive “homage” lies in the utterly unconventional manner in which Ceauṣescu is represented. Contrary to the canonical portrait of the communist leader, Bitzan’s Ceauşescu appears freakily alone in the middle of a blue immensity that might pass as an endless sky, heaven or whatever other ontological in-betweenness. His facial expression reveals sadness, concern and probably illness. Contrary to the typical portrait of the late “Golden Era,” Bitzan’s homage seems to suggest that the “communist hero,” the “Genius of the Carpathians,” the “Danube of Thought,” the “Oak tree” and the “Builder and Architect of the Romanian Nation” was in fact a mere human being, not so everlastingly young and not so powerful or charismatic. As Mirela Tanta also posits, “Nothing grounds the leader; no symbols of power populate the desolate background; instead the pale blue engulfs his body. The suit does not fit; his body seems bloated and it is cropped above the knee.”22 For me, the uncanny solitude around the communist leader obliterates all the visual clichés according to which Ceauşescu has been displayed in art as everlastingly young, good-looking, surrounded by his beloved miners or innocent children, receiving gifts and flowers from factory workers and peasants, visiting schools, factories and mines, hunting bears or greeting footfall players and gymnasts after a world championship.

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In spite of the oddness of the message, Homage to Nicolae Ceauşescu had been accepted by the communist authorities responsible for art on the grounds that the portrait of the leader can function as good official art. However, as argued above, Bitzan’s Homage to Nicolae Ceauşescu can be read as an ambivalent visual artefact: both in a propagandistic note and as an ironical modus operandi of what was intended to subvert “Ceauṣecu Realism” style as such. The artwork reveals an “unfamiliar” Ceauṣescu set against an uncanny background, and the manner of representing the leader was seen as a matter of stylistic and aesthetic choice from the artist’s side. At first glance, Bitzan’s painting seems to conform to the communist cultural canon, and this might be the reason why the artwork passed the communist cultural emissaries’ censorship apparatus. The artist Ion Grigorescu recalls that Bitzan’s painting of Ceauṣescu discloses a type of documental realism that reveals things and states of affair tale e quale, avoiding poetization. This artistic approach is regarded as a critical attitude against the official canon that infiltrated the content of the artwork through the bare and ugly realism put forth in depicting the country’s leader. Ion Grigorescu asks rhetorically why the viewer cannot look at Ion Bitzan’s paintings and grasp the same embellishments and beautification of the leader as in the art of the courtier artist Sabin Bălaṣa. He adds that other official artists provided their paintings of Ceauṣescu with a certain aesthetics of proportions and geometry while Ion Bitzan and Vladimir Ṣetran impregnated their work with “the ugliness of the newspapers of that time.” He then refers to the fact that both Setran and Bitzan used to paint the dictator’s portrait taking press photography of those years as a model. He adds, “Like the quality of the printing of those newspapers, rough, ugly and cheap … It was like propaganda, of bad quality. They also worked on cheap paper and used ugly, dirty colours.”23 Before concluding his discussion about Ion Bitzan’s alleged critique of the communist canon, Ion Grigorescu posits that he realized Bitzan’s official portraits of Ceauṣescu might transport a critical meaning and message in the subtext, but he could not detect these disparaging aspects during the communist era. The possibility of interpreting the painting in this critical manner only occurs in the present. In Ion Grigorescu’s own words, “Now when I see again Bitzan’s works I am surprised” might mean that we need a certain temporal and stylistic distance to actually identify as critical or oppositional an homage painting that, at the end of the day, might look like a poorly completed homage.

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However, Bitzan’s Homage to Nicolae Ceauşescu in fact instantiates a form of critical complicity with what “Ceauṣescu Realism” was supposed to entail. By mimicking submission to authority and its cultural policy, this art piece actually disengaged with authority and official art’s requirements. What is more is that the visual rhetoric employed in this anti-homage artwork functions as an “ambiguously coded site of resistance.”24 The fact that the artist was willing to invest Ceauṣescu’s official portrait with his own stylistic and symbolic critical imagination reveals a cultural zone where the act of resistance is neither oppositional (transgression) nor survival (shying away) resistance. The critical complicity at stake in this example shows an instance of individual artistic agency that did not conform and, at the very same time, did not overtly oppose the regime. By relying on a subjective political imagination, the artist created art outside the Socialist Realist canon, even resisting this canon. Yet, this resistance has been camouflaged by the official canon itself. Those who research the period under scrutiny here seldom acknowledge this dimension of resistance as euphemized submission to the official cultural dogmas of Romanian communism. Ioana Preda convincingly points out that “an assessment of the ‘cultural resistance’ phenomenon should focus on cultural facts and their significance within the totalitarian construction—and not on the political gestures of cultural actors. For example, an active protest of a dissident man of culture—unless manifested through cultural expression—does not represent, in my view, a form of cultural resistance but a form of political resistance.”25

2.4   Resistance Through (Religious) Art Collecting Another under-researched dimension of cultural resistance to dictatorship is the field of private art collecting. Typically, academic studies on cultural resistance to Romanian communism focus either on cultural artefacts/ practices or on the producers (blacklisted artists and cultural producers). Besides the focus on the production of resistant culture, more attention has to be paid to the consumer of this culture. Communist ideologues declared their aim in cultural production, and especially in artistic production, and the artist was to be the ruler, “the producer”—that is, of the working class—over the consumer. Similarly, the art market and the typical (Western) system of art consumption were dismissed on political grounds.

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An economically and politically totalitarian state was expected to become “a total work of art” (to use Golomstock’s formula), and this was unerringly what constituted the avant-garde project from the very beginning.26 However, in Boris Groys’s interpretation, these utopian demands of artistic avant-garde were actually never satisfied, and, for this reason, they remained just a foundation for criticism of the reigning consumerist society.27 Amy Bryzgel argues that in former socialist countries from behind the Iron Curtain, “There was no art market to speak of; for the most part the state was the sole patron of art, and no commercial gallery system existed. The government maintained control over artistic production, and only painting and sculpture were considered legitimate forms of visual art tolerated by the authorities.”28 Although the rules of art consumption, as well as a system of a Western-style art market, hardly existed in communist Romania, this does not mean that art collecting did not subsist in the second public sphere. Valentina Iancu pointed out that the taste for art and collecting started to develop in Romania starting in the nineteenth century.29 During the takeover of communism, however, art collecting started to decline. Various Romanian outlets reported that private art collections were confiscated by communist rule on the grounds that those artworks were of “national interest” and should belong to the state since it was the guardian of “national culture.”30 Mihai Pelin addresses the reasons for the deterioration of art collecting during the first phase of the communist era in his book Deceniul prăbușirilor (The Decade of Breakdowns).31 His main argument is that art collectors did not merely disappear but rather the phenomenon of art collecting switched from being a benefit of “celebrity” and visibility to a clandestine practice. This view is also shared by Valentina Iancu, who posits that during Romanian communism, “There was no legislative regulation on grounds of which confiscation could be carried out, and nationalization never included artworks. There were talks of donation that were made under pressure, but this certain aspect still remains a dilemma for Romanian historiography … However, there existed collections created in the times of Communism but secretly. What this system changed fundamentally—through repression and fear—was the mentality of the art collector.”32 In addition to this, the status of art collector was also converted from “an important pillar in the evolution of art into an obscure aficionado about whom, year after year, a lot less was known. For the fear of confiscations or that of persecutions? One thing is

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certain: this suspicious attitude, this clandestine character which was imposed remained a legacy for the collectors even after 1990.”33 Perhaps the most significant private collection of contemporary (religious) art achieved during Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s communist era is the surgeon Sorin Costina’s impressive collection of art and artefacts (1970–1990). The Sorin Costina collection is comprised of the most reputable contemporary Romanian artists, such as Corneliu Baba, Henri Catargi, Horia Bernea, Ștefan Bertalan, Ion Grigorescu, Paul Gherasim, Florin Mitroi, Paul Neagu, Ion Dumitriu, Florin Niculiu, Sorin Dumitrescu, Constantin Flondor, Alexandru Antonescu, Ilie Boca, Ioana Bătrânu, Andrei Chintilă, Gheorghe Berindei, Alexandru Chira, Florin Ciubotaru, Andrei Ciubotaru Aurel Cojan, Miron Duca, Șerban Gabrea, Ion Gânju, Ion Alin Gheorghiu, Ruxandra Grigorescu, Ion Iacob, Mihai Hora, Mircea Ionescu, Gheorghe Ilea, Istvan Kancsura, Matei Lăzărescu, Iosif Krijanovsky, Marcel Lupșe, Teodor Moraru, Gheorghe Mircea, Georgeta Năpăruș, Ion Nicodim, Barbu, Sorin Neamt ̦u, Nit ̦escu, Ion Pacea, Horia Paștina, Christian Paraschiv, Ciprian Radovan, Simona Runcan, Teodor Rusu, Mihai Sârbulescu, Ștefan Sevastre, Andrei Rosetti, Liviu Stoicoviciu, Eugen Tăutu,Vasile Tolan, Dorel Tulcan, Elena Tulcan, Vasile Ulian, Marian Zidaru, and Vasile Varga.34 In the digital database of the project Cultural Opposition: Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries: Connecting Collections—an international research project that focuses on collections of primary sources about cultural opposition in Eastern Europe—Sorin Costina’s private art collection consists of 28 sculptures, 687 graphic works, 230 paintings and 132 ornamental art, folk art, applied art and other artefacts. The impressive collection thus comprises more than 1000 aesthetic objects in total. In an unpublished manuscript (dated May 1989), the surgeon recalls how he became an art collector.35 According to his testimony, his passion for visual art triggered his impetus to collect it. Most of purchased artworks were stored in his house in Brad, Hundeoara County (in southwestern Transylvania). Most of the works that comprise his private art collections were found in Bucharest artists’ studios. In the unpublished manuscript from May 1989, which can be consulted online in the digital database of the Courage Connecting Collections project, the art collector wrote down information about the artworks purchased, such as the exact acquisition date, price, where the artwork was exhibited in the past, the content and style of each work, what kind of frame would fit the piece best and so on.

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The collection has many religiously inspired works signed by various members of the Neo-Orthodox group Prolog. In Sorin Costina’s collection there are more than 70 artworks signed by one of the prominent artists of the Neo-Orthodox artistic movement, Horia Bernea. The collector declared that he took a lot of inspiration from Horia Bernea’s art and professional friendship. In addition to Horia Bernea’s works, the art collection is comprised of works of religious and spiritual inspiration signed by other significant members of the Neo-Orthodox movement, such as Ion Grigorescu, Paul Gherasim, Sorin Dumitrescu, Constantin Flondor, Cristian Paraschiv and others. Actually, the illustration of the entry on “Sorin Costina Art Private Collection” in the digital database of the Courage project displays a wall from the collector’s house covered in paintings of religious inspiration. One can unmistakably identify some of Horia Bernea’s Prapori (Christian Orthodox ceremonial banners used for liturgical processions), which can be regarded as a gesture of resistance to the communist requirement from Romanians to “sacrifice” their bodies— on May 1st (Workers Day) and August 23rd (Liberation Day)—on choreographed columns of docile anatomies and “red banners—on the altar of the Great Leader’s madness.”36 Another celebrated artwork of the Neo-Orthodox artist Horia Bernea that can be seen in Sorin Costina’s collection is Triptych (1978–1979). The three art pieces from Triptych are entitled: Self-portrait (1979), Processional Banner (1978) and Food with Candles (1979). While Processional Banner (in Romanian, Prapori) refers to religious, Orthodox processions that mark an important event in the life of the church, the painting Food with Candles alludes to Orthodox religious services (e.g. commemoration of the death) where food and lighted candles are offered to mourners during a memorial meal that is supposed to pay respect to the dead. Although not everything from Sorin Costina’s art collection, which holds more than 1000 objects, pertain to religious or spiritual interpretations, many of them do. Apart from its significance for Romanian art history, the Sorin Costina contemporary art collection also stands as an instance of cultural resistance to communist cultural policies that hoped to regulate not only cultural production but also cultural consumption. The selected works forming this art collection reveal the conceptual and aesthetic subtleties of an art consumer who did not buy into the regime’s expectations of what counts as “beautiful” and “good” art, as well as “state aesthetics.” The communist regime could not change the mentality

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of Sorin Costina in regards to his aesthetic tastes and conceptual preferences for religiously inspired art (among other genres detested by the regime). Miliṭia (the name of the police during communism) operated a three-­ hour search in the collector’s house on 3 December 1986 to investigate “the possible illegal basis of the collection of art stored in Brad at the home of Dr Sorin Costina. Under Law 18/1968 regarding the control of the provenance of goods not acquired through legal means, the possessions of any physical person could be checked if there were ;data or indications,; meaning information collected through informers, pointing to ‘an evident disproportion’ between the estimated value of a person’s possessions and the income legally obtained by that person.”37 The conclusion of the Militia’s report was that there was not an illegal basis of the art collection. Two years after the intrusion of communist police in the collector’s private life, the prolific intellectual and philosopher Andrei Pleṣu wrote an article about the Sorin Costina Art Collection for the magazine Arta. The article published in 1988 was entitled “Un Colecṭionar de Destine: Sorin Costina” (In English, A Collector of Destinies: Sorin Costina).38 This demonstrates that, at least in Sorin Costina’s case, the art collector’s condition during late Romanian communism was not necessarily one of a clandestine practitioner of art collecting (as Mihai Pelin has argued about the earlier stage of communism). It is also true that Sorin Costina was not an art trader or dealer but a contemporary art consumer par excellence. Thus, as Simona Vilau and Valentina Iancu argue in their Introduction to art collecting in Romania for the Eastern European Collections website, during the 45 years of communism, “There had been no art market, and no official art trades, only individual stories, and divergent points of view.”39 One of these “individual stories” is Dr. Sorin Costina’s passion for collecting art, and religiously inspired art particularly revealed through an avant-garde aesthetic setup. This practice of collecting can be regarded as a form of cultural resistance in the context of the monopoly of the communist regime, whose allegedly tripartite division (producers, distributors and consumers of art) was actually abridged to the state (state artists, state supported art shops and commissions of guidance as the main consumers of communist culture).

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2.5   Resistance Through Religion-Inspired Art Some artists engaged in cultural activities that appeared dangerous to the ideologues of national communism, such as creating art of religious/political inspiration that incorporates dissenting potentialities. Unlike the broad academic consensus, according to which “resistance through culture” consisted of producing non-politically aligned art (artistic autonomy), the instances of religious art analysed below reveal a dimension of resistance through culture that is not merely of a “survival” or “shying away” type. The artworks of religious inspiration scrutinized in this section cannot be assessed through the lens of the autonomist aesthetic theories of “art for art’s sake”; instead, they testify to the politically instrumental value of the artistic production of religious descent that transgressed the official canon. Although the artists associated with the Neo-Orthodox group Prolog (e.g. Horia Bernea, Marin Gherasim, Paul Gherasim) are mostly credited for the production of this type of cultural dissent of religious ancestry, there are other cultural producers overlooked by mainstream art historical studies dedicated to art and politics under state socialism. It would be a misapprehension to classify their artistic gestures as pure aestheticism (art instead of politics) because their art did not only resist the official canon but also reclaimed a type of religious/political experience meant to disclose the limits of the totalitarian model. To put some flesh on these theoretical considerations, Marian Zidaru’s 1988 installation piece strikes as a powerful criticism of the late communist regime. The installation suggestively entitled The Supper (In Romanian, Cina) reveals a sculpture consisting of 12 chicken heads aligned symmetrically, both from the left and right of a chicken heart.40 Both the title (The Supper) and the presence of the 12 chicken heads in the proximity of a heart recall the biblical episode of the Last Supper, known by Christianity as the basis of the Eucharist. Most Christians agree that the Eucharist (from Greek Eucharistia, thanksgiving) is a ritual that commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ in the company of his 12 apostles. The wine and bread of the Eucharist is at the heart of the Christian Liturgy “which, according to doctrine, really transmogrifies into Christ’s body and blood.”41 Marian Zidaru’s The Supper (1988) is an expressive example, in my view, of cultural resistance to communism that cannot be mistaken as resistance in the sense of keeping one’s personal integrity by creating art pour l’art. On the contrary, by employing the means of religiously inspired

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art, Marian Zidaru resisted the communist’s austerity policies from the 1980s that stipulated the rationalization of food consumption. Starting with 1981, Romanians had to face the scarcity of food products as well as the excruciating cold during winter. Under these gloomy circumstances, Romanians had to master what Michel de Certeau “has referred to as ‘the art of making do, with what the system provides.’”42 As Jill Massino posits, this “making do” became “a true art form” eliciting women’s imagination to cook meals for their families from “inferior meat trimmings” and “chicken silverware” (the wings, heads and claws of chickens), “adidas” (pork hooves) and “the Petreuṣ brothers” (two scrawny chickens named after the Maramureṣ folk musicians who performed drunk on TV.’43 The scarcity of food is remembered in many diaries and autobiographical writings: “I recall my daily diet being bread and milk in the morning; a sandwich with lard, or butter, or marmalade, for lunch and bread with fried potatoes or cabbage or soups, for dinner. On Sundays, my family had a chicken or other meat in soups or stews. And my mom baked a cake for sweets. Try this diet for a month. One benefit is that you might lose weight.”44 Marian Zidaru’s The Supper hints at the harsh change in Romanians’ eating and cooking habits by disclosing the sacrifice they had to undertake by starting to be creative about the “art” of cooking “chicken silverware.” Thus, The Supper employs the sacramentality of the Eucharist and its elements of sacrifice to disclose the harshness and unbearable everyday life of Romanians during late communism. Similar to other political artworks produced during the communist era (e.g. Blood-Stained Christmas exhibited at the Village Museum in Bucharest in 1985), The Supper can be understood as belonging to one of the recurring thematic clusters of Marian Zidaru’s corpus of religiously inspired art, where the emphasis is put on the value of sacrifice.45 In The Supper, the artist addresses both the sacrificial theme and the hope of seeking by displaying an anatomical heart that balances the two rows of chicken heads. Thus, the sculpture both celebrates life and confronts the misery of daily existence under oppression, but “above all it is the celebration of the Eucharist that keeps hope alive within the Christian community.”46 Keeping hope alive was also a survival mechanism that disregarded the ultimate truths of communism. Surprisingly, sculptural forms pertained to unexpected expressions of the political. Although sculpture is a media of artless versatile, monumental sculpture gained momentum in late communist Romania. At first glance, sculpture was prioritized over other ornamental artefacts to

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beautify the country’s villages and cities. Another reason for the widespread preference for outdoor sculptural ensembles was the omnipresence of geometrical and abstract elements in the majority of public art sculptures, which made them appear “ideologically safe” in the eyes of the communist leaders.47 To look “ideologically safe” meant that, unlike other art genres that might have displayed the propensity to criticize the system through various means, sculpture looked inelastic and “site specific” enough to allude to criticism or to eschew the vigilant eye of the Committee of Guidance (cultural bureaucracy). In this vein, open-air sculpture camps were popular after the 1970s.48 Sculptor Adrian Ioniṭă discloses his “Radiography of a Pillow” in an article published in 2012. His monumental stone sculpture of a pillow (produced in 1984 during the open-air Stone Sculpture Camp in Timisoara city) was displayed in one of the city’s public spaces, on the bank of the Bega River, for 30 years. In 2014, The Pillow (Adrian Ionit ̣ă’s work) and another monumental sculpture, resulting from the Sculpture Camp Timiṣoara entitled The Throne (Neculai Băndărau, 1984), were both removed to make room to urban modernization. The local newspaper Opinia Timiṣoarei reported about the event, and the succinct conclusion was that the removal of the two statues was just temporary in order to make room for a bike path.49 Adrian Ionit ̣ă’s sculpture The Pillow was a site-specific art piece that was supposed to reflect on the main theme of the Sculpture Camp. Since the art camp took place on the bank of the Bega River, the chosen thematic cluster was “water.” The communist cultural emissaries saw The Pillow as a representation of a “water pillow.”50 The artist, however, points out that his pillow was a prayer pillow because it carried traces of his own two knees in the shape of a tear imprinted on the plaster.51 In Christian Orthodox practice, the “kneeling prayers” are part of the Liturgy. Standing on your knees for long prayer sessions can be painful, and some churchgoers use pillows to put underneath their knees to alleviate the discomfort. When the sculptures, allegedly focusing on the “water” theme, were ready to be exhibited in the public space of the city, Adrian Ioniṭă’s Pillow and Neculai Băndărau’s Throne were displayed facing each other at one of the pillars of the Traian’s bridge on the bank of the Bega River. Adrian Ioniṭă insisted on having his praying pillow displayed near the Metropolitan Cathedral. Later on (in 2012), he recalls a documentary done for an American TV channel by Ted Koppel, where the first image was from above Timiṣoara (the city where the Romanian anti-communist revolution begun in December 1989), revealed the Metropolitan Cathedral and The

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Pillow on the same vertical axis. Correspondingly, the sculptor posits that the images of the Cathedral and The Pillow, mirrored in the Bega River’s water, create the optical illusion that The Pillow undergoes a movement of translation under the Cathedral’s base. It is exactly this visual prophetic scenario that the artist cherishes most when he claims that “this is precisely the idea for which it [the Pillow] was made: prayer is the foundation of faith and hope for a restored life. It was 1984, in a world that was already showing signs of exasperation that will culminate with the 1989 Revolution.”52 Adrian Ioniṭă’s interpretation of his work of sculpture does not entirely concur with the art critic Coriolan Babeti’s perspective, according to whom, “The Pillow stands for the trace or photography negative of two giant knees in praying posture which pay their sacrificial homage to water. Water is the element with which the artist identifies himself here.”53 Approached from the perspective of the reception (the public’s apprehension of the outdoor sculpture), it seems that the enigmatical pillow unveiled her political stance and symbolic weight in the days of the anti-communist protests in December 1989 when people lit candles on it.54 Other illuminating instances of religiously inspired contemporary art consisted of various rituals expressed through means of artistic performance. For instance, in September 1983 a group of artists from Timiṣoara performed a ritualistic action on the bank of a river from Southwest Romania. The artistic action entitled Smoke (1983) was performed by Călin Beloescu, Josif Kiraly, Doru Tulcan and Constantin Flondor on the bank of the Timiṣ River. Art historian Ileana Pintilie argues that Smoke can be “understood as a purifying and evil-exorcizing act. Fire and smoke were used to burn certain images, some having an emblematic character of personal identification.”55 In the same aesthetic-political register, Kiraly and Beloescu performed a series of artistic performances entitled Easter Actions (1983) near the Prislop monastery. These religiously inspired artistic pieces and practices are rarely mentioned, if at all, in the studies dedicated to “alternative art” under communism. When art of religious descent happens to be addressed in Romanian academic scholarship, more often than not, these studies refer to Neo-Orthodox painting.56 Perhaps the paintings of ethnographer and artist Horia Bernea are the most mentioned artworks of the Neo-Orthodox group. This is not surprising since the artist is notorious for both blending traditional and conceptualist elements in his art of spiritual inspiration and acting as the first director of the re-opened Museum of the Romanian Peasant (1990–2000).

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This particular museum has a convoluted history, being re-opened on the premises of the former Communist Party History Museum in Bucharest as an act of symbolic and historical restoration. The first permanent exhibition in the newly established Museum of the Romanian Peasant was titled The Cross (1993). Gabriela Cristea and Simina Radu-Bucurenci elaborate on the exorcism of the memory of the communist past in this particular museum directed by Horia Bernea, demonstrating that, “As the analysis of monuments dedicated to the victims of Communism shows, the cross was a typical symbol of anti-Communism in the 1990s. However, it would be an over-simplification to say that this is the reason why the cross became the organizing principle of the museum.”57 It is worth mentioning that Horia Bernea’s curatorial decisions were not unproblematic. Some Romanian historians rightly suspicioned that “the Christian dimension that was suddenly re-discovered in the Romanian peasant can thus be traced to an interwar (extreme) right-wing tradition. However, the discourse that the Peasant Museum was proposing, at least at the time of the opening of ‘The Cross,’ was very much ahistorical.”58 Thus, the debates on the mission and content of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant are still going on. The main critique emphasizes the piquant nationalistic flavour displayed by the museum’s curators who promote the Romanian Christian peasantry to “real Christianity” and the status of “authentic man.”59 Horia Bernea was not alone in supporting the “bucolic nostalgia” rhetoric (to mention Neamṭu’s formulation), according to which “the peasants are the only true heirs of Christian spirituality.”60 Equally problematic is the very name of the museum. As Stelu Ṣerban puts it, “Although the museum’s collections contain thousands of objects of popular culture belonging to various ethnic groups living in Romania, these groups were simply ignored, and the name of the museum was The Romanian Peasant Museum.”61 Although Horia Bernea, Sorin Dumitrescu or Marin Gherasim’s religious art is usually invoked in relation to the “alternative” (religious) culture to the communist canon, there are other instances of religiously inspired art waiting to be disclosed as well as having their politicality scrutinized. Relevant examples can be detected in the memories and post-­ memories of those who have either aesthetically experienced first-hand or have mediated memories about art of religious inspiration politically produced during late communism. A relevant example in this vein is the London-based writer of Romanian origin Ana Codrea-Rado’s testimony for The Paris Review (2017). She recalls her memories about her

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grandfather, the visual artist Gheorghe Codrea, the established designer who from 1956 worked for the Romanian National Opera in Transylvanian (Cluj Napoca).62 The designer married the daughter of an Orthodox priest, and this was enough for communists to expel her from the university. In his position as set designer of the Cluj Napoca’s Opera, Gheorghe Codrea was expected to produce stage designs that would fit the bill of national communism. The design stage and choreography in late communist Romania were ideologically dominated by the “socialist modernity” combined with the “folkloric source.” One of the spectacles of the Romanian National Opera in Cluj Napoca performed in 1973 displayed a little-known opera titled Zamolxe by Liviu Glodeanu. The libretto narrates the legend of a pagan spiritual leader— Zamolxe—who was the acclaimed divinity of the Thracians and supposedly served as the supreme God of the Geto-Dacians (the supposed ancestors of Romanians along with the Romans). This spiritual leader is described as “a priest and a messenger of god, a partner of the king, and living in ‘certain cavernous place’ meeting only the king and his own attendants.”63 In line with the communist nationalist propaganda proffered during the 1970s and 1980s, Dacian ancestorhood was a topic addressed in both history textbooks and cultural production. Correspondingly, the glorification of Zamolxe was also part of the canon of communist nationalism on the grounds that “the Dacians were monotheistic. And this is the reason the local population was easily converted to Christianism by the Apostle Saint Andrew.”64 Liviu Glodeanu’s libretto Zamolxe was exposed to various interpretations: some musicologists argue that the text was written at the intersection of mathematics, music and theology,65 while others read it as “a dense philosophical meditation on freedom, philosophy, and rejecting the status quo.”66 According to Anna Codrea-Rado, this reading of Liviu Glodeanu’s text sparked Gheorghe Codrea and the Cluj Napoca Opera’s director Ilie Balea’s interest in a politically loaded set-design sketch for Glodeanu’s Zamolxe.67 Codrea found images of some historical relics; old ceramic figurines from 1400 BC, supposedly from the same period when the supreme God of the Geto-Dacians is said to have lived, that he took as the main inspiration for his sketch. The final image managed to embody a religious symbol whose visual perception was not direct. As the niece of Codrea recalls, “It’s there, in one of the central images of the production, that you could see a flouting of communist values hidden in plain sight. What at first glance looked like a benign, albeit peculiar-looking, figure, revealed

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itself, upon closer inspection, to be a crucifix. ‘Yes, the cross appears,’ my grandfather told me. ‘Of course it was intentional.’”68 Yet, this instance of critical-political art, as well as all religious-political art examined in this volume, ought to be understood “as ‘crevices and cracks’ in the official culture,” (as put forth by Seremetakis) or as micropractices of resistance and not as organized rebellion against the status quo.

Notes 1. Magda Cârneci, “The 80s in Romanian Art,” in Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 62 (Cârneci 1997). 2. Adrian Marino underlines that one of the first debates on cultural resistance during communist rule took place in 1991: Adrian Marino, Politică si Cultură: Pentru o Nouă Cultură Romaneasca [Politics and Culture. For a New Romanian Culture] (Iaṣi: Polirom, 1996) (Marino 1996). 3. Ioana Preda, Resisting through Culture in Communist Romania, Master Thesis in Cultural Policy and Management (Warwick: University of Warwick, 2012–2013), 11 (Ioana Preda 2012–2013). 4. Notable anti-communist civic initiatives in other former socialist countries of Eastern Europe are Charta 77 (in Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992); Polish Labour Union founded in 1980 (in Polish Solidarność, Solidarity) and the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet style communism in 1956. 5. Ioana Preda, Resisting through Culture, 7. 6. Gabriel Liiceanu, Jurnalul de la Paltinis [The Palitinis Diary] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1991), 6 (Liiceanu 1991). 7. Ioana Preda’s translation from Gabriel Liiceanu’s Jurnalul de la Păltinis (The Păltiniş Diary) in Ioana Preda, Resisting through Culture, 6. 8. Horia-Roman Paptapievici, Flying against the Arrow (Central European University Press, Budapest, 2003), 6 (Patapievici 2003). 9. Nicoleta Sălcudeanu, Rezistența prin Cultură sau Cultura Tolerată [Cultural Resistance or Tolerated Culture,] in Anuarul Institutului de Cercetări Socio-Umane “Gheorghe Șincai” al Academiei Române [The Yearbook of the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute for Social Sciences & the Humanities of the Romanian Academy, 2016] 19: 178 (Sălcudeanu 2016). 10. Norman Manea, On Clowns: the Dictator and the Artist (Grove Press, New York, 1992), 30 (Manea 1992). 11. Lucian Maier, Dan Perjovschi: Rezistent ̦a culturală [Cultural resistance], Protokoll Studio Cluj: Ideea. http://www.idea.ro/. Available at: http:// www.idea.ro/revista/?q=en/node/41&articol=537 (23 April 2018) (Maier 2018).

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12. Ioana Preda, Resisting through Culture, 8. 13. Caterina Preda, Art & Politics under Modern Dictatorships: A Comparison of Chile and Romania (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 253 (Caterina Preda 2017). 14. This does not mean that only Ceauṣescu’s regime encouraged the portrayal of the leader in artistic production. To a much lesser extent, the kind of visual homage to the leader was also present during Gheorge Gheorghiu Dej’s rule (1947–1965), especially after the 1950s. 15. Geoffrey Hosking quoted in Joel Crotty, “A Preliminary Investigation of Music, Socialist Realism, and the Romanian Experience, 1948–1959: (Re) reading, (Re)listening, and (Re)writing Music History for a Different Audience,” Journal of Musicological Research 26(2) (2007), 151 (Crotty 2007). 16. According to Mirela Tanta’s convincing exploration of what she calls “Neo-Socialist Realism” (1970–1989), “The Soviet Union had long ceased to impose Socialist Realism throughout its sphere of influence when Nicolae Ceauṣescu began reintroducing Socialist Realist tropes into the Romanian visual arts in 1965.” Mirela Tanta, “Neo-Socialist Realism: the Second Life of Socialist Realism in Romania (1970–1989),” in The State Artist in Romania and Eastern Europe: The Role of the Creative Unions, ed. Caterina Preda (Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 2017), 231 (Tanta 2017). 17. Idem, 232. 18. Caterina Preda, Art & Politics under Modern Dictatorships, 173–179. 19. Mihai Botez quoted in Andrei Pleşu’s article “Intellectual life under Dictatorship,” in Representations 49 (1995), Special Issue: Identifying Histories: Eastern Europe before and after 1989 (California: University of California Press), 64 (Pleşu 1995). 20. The National Museum of Contemporary Arts in Bucharest preserves many of them. 21. For instance, Cristian Ionel claimed in a local magazine that the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party accredited only certain artistic techniques as appropriate to render the leader’s greatness. Cristian Ionel mentions serigraphy as one of the acceptable techniques. See Mădălin Sofronie’s interview with Cristian Ionel, “Pictorul care i-a facut peste 1000 de portrete lui Nicolae Ceauṣescu. Tablourile erau facute pe o panza facuta de meṣteṣugarii cizmari,” Adevărul, 15 March 2015. https://adevarul. ro/. Available at: https://adevarul.ro/locale/slobozia/pictorul-i-a-facut1000-portrete-nicolae-ceasescu-tablourile-erau-facute-panza-folosita-mestesugarii-cizmari-1_5505a0c3448e03c0fd942d8d/index.html (Sofronie 2015) (15 September 2019). 22. Tanṭa, “Neo-Socialist Realism,” 244.

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23. Magda Radu, “Interview with Ion Grigorescu,” Măr turii XXI, 2012, min. 15:52 to 17:15, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UNmjf3yWIJ8 (Radu 2012) (14 February 2020). 24. Tanta, “Neo-Socialist Realism,” 232. 25. Ioana Preda, Resisting through Culture, 14. 26. Igor Golomstock, L’art Totalitaire [Totalitarian Art] (Paris: Carré, 1991) (Golomstock 1991). 27. Boris Groys, “The IRWIN Group: More Total than Totalitarianism,” in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, eds. Laura Hoptman and Tomaš Pospiszyl (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 288 (Groys 2002). 28. Amy Bryzgel, “Special Issue: Artistic Reenactments in East European Performance Art, 1960–present”. Artmargins Online, 26 January 2018 (2018). https://artmargins.com/. Available at: https://artmargins.com/ artistic-reenactments-in-east-europe-introduction/ (30 October 2019) (Bryzgel 2018). 29. Valentina Iancu, “Collections and Art Collectors in Modern Romania.” Samizdat, 2 April 2014. http://www.samizdatonline.ro/. Available at: http://www.samizdatonline.ro/collections/ (26 October 2019) (Iancu 2014). 30. Ibidem. 31. Mihai Pelin, Deceniul prabusirilor (1940–1950): Viet ̣ile Pictorilor, Sculpturilor ṣi Arhitecṭilor Români intre Legionari ṣi Staliniṣti (Bucharest: Compania, 2005). 32. Iancu, “Collections and Art Collectors in Modern Romania.” 33. Ibidem. 34. The list of artists from Sorina Costina’s collection is displayed in the following project: Cristina Petrescu and Cristian Valeriu Pătrăşconiu, “Costina, Sorin. How I Became a Collector, in Romanian, 1989.” Unpublished Manuscript. The Horizon 2020 Project ‘Courage Connecting Collections’ (2018). http://cultural-opposition.eu/. Available at http:// cultural-opposition.eu/registry/?search=Romania&lang=en&uri=h ttp://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/ n171589&type=masterpieces (24 January 2020) (Petrescu and Pătrăşconiu 2018). 35. Ibidem. 36. Mihail Neamṭu, “The Seasons of Life and the Practice of Wisdom,” in Memory, Humanity and Meaning, ed. Mihail Neamṭu and Bogdan Tătaru-­ Cazaban (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2009), 33 (Neamṭu 2009). 37. Cristina Petrescu and Cristian Valeriu Pătrăşconiu, The Horizon 2020 project Courage Connecting Collections (2018). Available at http://cultural-

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opposition.eu/registry/?uri=http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/ individual/n16487 (24 January 2020) (Petrescu and Pătrăşconiu 2018). 38. Andrei Pleṣu, “Un Colecṭionar de Destine: Sorin Costina,” Arta 7 (1988): 12 (Pleṣu 1988). 39. Simona Vilau and Valentina Iancu, Art Collecting in Romania. Eastern European Collectors (no year provided). http://www.knollgalerie.at/ blog/. Available at: http://eec.knollgalerie.at/einleitungrumaenien. html?&L=1. (Vilau and Iancu, no year provided). 40. The artwork can be consulted in the catalogue Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 322. 41. James D. Herbert, “The Eucharist in and beyond Messiaen’s Book of the Holy Sacrament,” Journal of Religion, 88(3) (July 2008): 331 (Herbert 2008). 42. Michele de Certeau quoted in Jill Massino, “From Black Caviar to Blackouts: Gender, Consumption and Lifestyle in Ceauṣescu’s Romania,” in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, eds. Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 242 (Massino 2012). 43. Ibidem. 44. Dumitru Sandru (Escape from Communism, 2013), quoted in Ina Ghiṭă, “Altering Cooking and Eating Habits during the Romanian Communist Regime by Using Cookbooks: A Digital History Project,” Encounters in Theory and History of Education 19 (2018): 149 (Ghiṭă 2018). 45. As I will elaborate later on in this volume, Marian Zidaru’s sculptures reunited under the title Blood-Stained Christmas (1985), allegedly having artistically foreseen the dramatism of the Romanian anti-communist revolution from December 1989, when more than 1000 people died for freedom and democracy right before Christmas time. 46. Dermot A.  Lane, “The Eucharist as Sacrament of the Eschaton,” The Furrow 47 (1996): 467 (Lane 1996). 47. Adrian Ioniṭă, “Două simpozioane de sculptură din Banat. O analiză la persoana întâia.” [Two Symposiums of Sculpture from Banat. An Analysis in the First Person]. In Scurt istoric al simpozioanelor de sculptură în lume. Tradiṭie ṣi Postmodernitate: 200 de ani de artă plastică in Banat [Short History of Sculpture Symposiums in the World. Tradition and Postmodernity: 200 Years of Plastic Arts in Banat], 140–145, eds. Andrei Medinski, Doina Antoniuc, Violeta Zonte, Ioan Szekernyeş, Andreea Foanene, Adrian Ioniţă (Timiṣoara: Graphite Publishing House, 2012), 141 (Ioniṭă 2012). 48. The first National Camp of Sculpture took place at Măgura Buzaului in 1970, followed by Open-Air Wood Sculpture Camp at Deta in 1983, the Stone Sculpture Camp at Timiṣoara in 1984 and many others.

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49. Dana Constantin, “Două sculpturi puse pe malul Begăi acum 30 de ani, în Timiṣoara, înlăturate cu buldozerul” [Two Sculptures Installed on the Banks of the Bega 30  Years Ago in Timiṣoara Bulldozed]. Opinia Timiṣoarei, 7 October 2014. https://www.opiniatimisoarei.ro. Available at: https://www.opiniatimisoarei.ro/doua-sculpturi-puse-pe-malulbegai-acum-30-de-ani-la-timisoara-inlaturate-cu-buldozerul-cine-n-aavut-loc-de-ele-si-unde-au-ajuns-foto/07/10/2014 (30 November 2019) (Constantin 2014). 50. Ioniṭă, “Două simpozioane de sculptură din Banat,” 143. 51. Ibidem. 52. Idem, 144. 53. My translation from Coriolan Babeti, “Art critical comments on Timiṣoara’s Sculpture Landscape”. 1984. Published online by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest: 18. http://taberedesculptura.mnac.ro/. Available at: http://taberedesculptura.mnac.ro/index_html_files/79.pdf (15 October 2019) (Babeti 1984). 54. Ioniṭă, “Două simpozioane de sculptură din Banat,” 144. 55. Ileana Pintilie, “Punctele Cardinale ale Miṣcării Artistice Timiṣorene,” Tradit ̣ie ṣi Postmodernitate: 200 de ani de artă plastic in Banat (Timiṣoara: Graphite Publishing House, 2012), 51 (Pintilie 2012). 56. See for example Alexandra Titu, Experiment in Arta Românească dupa 1960 (Bucureṣti: Ed. Meridiane, 2003) (Titu 2003); Magda Cârneci, Artele Plastice in România 1945–1989 (Bucharest: Editura Meridiane, 2013) (Cârneci 2013); Mihail Neamṭu, “The Seasons of Life.” 57. Gabriela Cristea and Simina Radu-Bucurenci, “Raising the Cross: Exorcising Romania’s Communist Past in Museums, Memorials and Monuments”, in Past for the Eyes: Cinema and Museums in Representing Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989, eds. Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008), 275–305 (Cristea and Bucurenci 2008). 58. Ibidem. 59. Stelu Ṣerban, “Crossing the Border in the Museographic Discourse: Ideology and Marketization,” Revue Études Sud-Est Européennes LVII (2019): 71 (Ṣerban 2019). 60. Mihail Neamṭu presents a similar argument about the theologian Dumitru Stăniloae’s religious nationalism in “Between the Gospel and the Nation: An Introduction to Dumitru Stăniloae’s Ethno-Theology,” in New Europe College Yearbook 2005–2006 (Bucharest: New Europe College, 2009), 255 (Neamṭu 2009). 61. Stelu Ṣerban, “Crossing the Border in the Museographic Discourse”, 68. 62. Ana Codrea-Rado, “Making Art in Communist Romania,” The Paris Review, 15 December 2017. https://www.theparisreview.org. Available

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at: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/15/making-artcommunist-romania (14 February 2020). 63. Ion Grumeza, Dacia Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe (Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2009), 69. 64. Lucian Boia (Istorie si mit in constiinta romaneasca, 1997), quoted in Mihail Nejneru, Continuities and Changes of Europe in Romanian National Discourse, Mater Thesis in European Affairs (Lund: Lund University, 2017). 65. Claudia Nezelschi, “Liviu Glodeanu’s Zamolxis, at the Confluence of Music, Mathematic and Theology,” Artes 11 (2011): 29–34. 66. Ana Codrea-Rado, “Making Art in Communist Romania.” 67. Ibidem. 68. Ibidem.

References Babeti, Coriolan. 1984. Art Critical Comments on Timiṣoara’s Sculpture Landscape, Published Online by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest: 18. http://taberedesculptura.mnac.ro/. Accessed 15 October 2019. http://taberedesculptura.mnac.ro/index_html_files/79.pdf. Bryzgel, Amy. 2018. Special Issue: Artistic Reenactments in East European Performance Art, 1960–Present. Artmargins Online, 26 January 2018. https://artmargins.com/. Accessed 30 October 2019. https://artmargins. com/artistic-reenactments-in-east-europe-introduction/. Cârneci, Magda. 1997. The 80s in Romanian Art. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960, 52–68. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. ———. 2013. Artele Plastice in România 1945–1989 [Plastic Arts in Romania 1945–1989]. Bucharest: Editura Meridiane. Codrea-Rado, Ana. 2017. Making Art in Communist Romania. The Paris Review, 15 December 2017. https://www.theparisreview.org. Accessed 14 February 2020. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/15/ making-art-communist-romania. Constantin, Dana. 2014. Două sculpturi puse pe malul Begăi acum 30 de ani, în Timiṣoara, înlăturate cu buldozerul [Two Sculptures Installed on the Banks of the Bega 30 Years Ago in Timiṣoara Bulldozed]. Opinia Timiṣoarei, 7 October 2014. https://www.opiniatimisoarei.ro. Accessed 30 November 2019. https://www.opiniatimisoarei.ro/doua-sculpturi-puse-pe-malul-begaiacum-30-de-ani-la-timisoara-inlaturate-cu-buldozerul-cine-n-a-avut-loc-deele-si-unde-au-ajuns-foto/07/10/2014. Cristea, Gabriela, and Simina Radu-Bucurenci. 2008. Raising the Cross: Exorcising Romania’s Communist Past in Museums, Memorials and Monuments. In Past for the Eyes: Cinema and Museums in Representing Communism in Eastern

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Europe after 1989, ed. Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor. Budapest: Central European University Press. Crotty, Joel. 2007. A Preliminary Investigation of Music, Socialist Realism, and the Romanian Experience, 1948–1959: (Re)reading, (Re)listening, and ­(Re) writing Music History for a Different Audience. Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2): 151–176. Ghit ̣ă, Ina. 2018. Altering Cooking and Eating Habits during the Romanian Communist Regime by Using Cookbooks: A Digital History Project. Encounters in Theory and History of Education 19: 141–162. Golomstock, Igor. 1991. L’art Totalitaire [Totalitarian Art]. Paris: Carré. Groys, Boris. 2002. The IRWIN Group: More Total than Totalitarianism. In Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, ed. Laura Hoptman and Tomaš Pospiszyl. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Grumeza, Ion. 2009. Dacia Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe. Lanham: Hamilton Books. Herbert, James D. 2008. The Eucharist in and beyond Messiaen’s Book of the Holy Sacrament. Journal of Religion 88 (3): 331–364. Iancu, Valentina. 2014. Collections and Art Collectors in Modern Romania. Samizdat, 2 April 2014. http://www.samizdatonline.ro/. Accessed 26 October 2019. http://www.samizdatonline.ro/collections/. Sofronie, Mădălin. 2015. Pictorul care i-a facut peste 1000 de portrete lui Nicolae Ceauṣescu. Tablourile erau facute pe o panza facuta de meṣteṣugarii cizmari. Adevărul, 15 March 2015. https://adevarul.ro/. Accessed 15 September 2019. https://adevarul.ro/locale/slobozia/pictorul-i-a-facut-1000-portretenicolae-ceasescu-tablourile-erau-facute-panza-folosita-mestesugarii-cizmari1_5505a0c3448e03c0fd942d8d/index.html. Ioniṭă, Adrian. 2012. Două simpozioane de sculptură din Banat. O analiză la persoana întâia. [Two Symposiums of Sculpture from Banat. An Analysis in the First Person]. In Scurt istoric al simpozioanelor de sculptură în lume. Tradiṭie ṣi Postmodernitate: 200 de ani de artă plastică in Banat [Short History of Sculpture Symposiums in the World. Tradition and Postmodernity: 200 Years of Plastic Arts in Banat], ed. Andrei Medinski, Doina Antoniuc, Violeta Zonte, Ioan Szekernyeş, Andreea Foanene, Adrian Ioniţă, 140–145. Timiṣoara: Graphite Publishing House. Lane, Dermot A. 1996. The Eucharist as Sacrament of the Eschaton. The Furrow 47: 467–473. Liiceanu, Gabriel. 1991. Jurnalul de la Paltinis [The Palitinis Diary]. Bucharest: Humanitas. Maier, Lucian. 2009. Dan Perjovschi: Rezistent ̦a culturală [Cultural Resistance], Protokoll Studio Cluj: Ideea. http://www.idea.ro/. Accessed 23 April 2018. http://www.idea.ro/revista/?q=en/node/41&articol=537.

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Manea, Norman. 1992. On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist. New  York: Grove Press. Marino, Adrian. 1996. Politică si Cultură: Pentru o Nouă Cultură Romanească [Politics and Culture: For a New Romanian Culture]. Iaṣi: Polirom. Massino, Jill. 2012. From Black Caviar to Blackouts: Gender, Consumption and Lifestyle in Ceauṣescu’s Romania. In Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, ed. Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger. New York: Oxford University Press. Neamt ̣u, Mihail. 2009a. The Seasons of Life and the Practice of Wisdom. In Memory, Humanity and Meaning, ed. Mihail Neamṭu and Bogdan Tătaru-­ Cazaban. Bucharest: Zeta Books. ———. 2009b. Between the Gospel and the Nation: An Introduction to Dumitru Stăniloae’s Ethno-Theology. In New Europe College Yearbook 2005–2006. Bucharest: New Europe College. https://www.ceeol.com/. Accessed 14 February 2020. https://www.ceeol.com/search/journal-detail?id=675. Nejneru, Mihail. 2017. Continuities and Changes of Europe in Romanian National Discourse. Master Thesis in European Affairs. Lund: Lund University. Nezelschi, Claudia. 2011. Liviu Glodeanu’s Zamolxis, at the Confluence of Music, Mathematic and Theology. Artes 11: 29–34. Paptapievici, Horia-Roman. 2003. Flying against the Arrow. Budapest: Central European University Press. Pelin, Mihai. 2005. Deceniul prabusirilor (1940–1950): Vietị le Pictorilor, Sculpturilor ṣi Arhitecṭilor Români intre Legionari ṣi Staliniṣti. Bucharest: Compania. Petrescu, Cristina and Cristian Valeriu Pătrăşconiu. 2018. Costina, Sorin. How I Became a Collector, in Romanian, 1989. Unpublished Manuscript. The Horizon 2020 Project ‘Courage Connecting Collections’. http://cultural-opposition.eu/. Accessed 24 January 2020. http://cultural-opposition.eu/registry/?search=R omania&lang=en&uri=http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/ n171589&type=masterpieces. Pintilie, Ileana. 2012. Punctele Cardinale ale Miṣcării Artistice Timiṣorene. In Scurt istoric al simpozioanelor de sculptură în lume. Tradiṭie ṣi Postmodernitate: 200 de ani de artă plastică in Banat, Ed. Andrei Medinski, Doina Antoniuc, Violeta Zonte, Ioan Szekernyeş, Andreea Foanene, Adrian Ioniţă, 47–54. Timiṣoara: Graphite Publishing House. Pleṣu, Andrei. 1988. Un Colectị onar de Destine: Sorin Costina. Arta 7: 10–12. Pleşu, Andrei. 1995. Intellectual Life under Dictatorship. In Representations 49, Special Issue: Identifying Histories: Eastern Europe Before and After 1989. California: University of California Press. Preda, Caterina. 2017. Art & Politics under Modern Dictatorships: A Comparison of Chile and Romania. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Preda, Ioana. 2012–2013. Resisting through Culture in Communist Romania. Master Thesis in Cultural Policy and Management. Warwick: University of Warwick. Radu, Magda. 2012. Interview with Ion Grigorescu. Măr turii XXI, 2012, min. 15:52 to 17:15. Accessed 14 February 2020. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UNmjf3yWIJ8. Sălcudeanu, Nicoleta. 2016. Rezistent ̦a prin Cultură sau Cultura Tolerată. [Cultural Resistance or Tolerated Culture]. Anuarul Institutului de Cercetări Socio-Umane “Gheorghe Șincai” al Academiei Române [The Yearbook of the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute for Social Sciences & the Humanities of the Romanian Academy] 19: 178–186. Ṣerban, Stelu. 2019. Crossing the Border in the Museographic Discourse: Ideology and Marketization. Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes LVII: 63–76. Tanta, Mirela. 2017. Neo-Socialist Realism: the Second Life of Socialist Realism in Romania (1970–1989). In The State Artist in Romania and Eastern Europe: The Role of the Creative Unions, ed. Caterina Preda. Bucharest: Editura Universităt ̦ii din București. Titu, Alexandra. 2003. Experiment in Arta Românească după 1960. Bucureṣti: Editura Meridiane. Vilau, Simona, and Valentina Iancu n.d. Art Collecting in Romania. Eastern European Collectors. http://www.knollgalerie.at/blog/. Accessed http://eec. knollgalerie.at/einleitungrumaenien.html?&L=1.

CHAPTER 3

Godless Religious Art of Romanian National Communism

3.1   Introduction After a relative thaw in church-state relations (1965–1977), starting in “1979 religious persecutions in Romania w[ere] on the rise again … Between 1977 and 1989, twenty two churches and monasteries were demolished and fourteen others were closed down or moved to disadvantageous sites behind tall apartment blocks.”1 Yet, although the Orthodox Church “went through some persecution and rather heavy clergy collaboration with the communist secret police and the party state, after 1989 it managed to position itself as one of the country’s most important political and social actors.”2 Recently historians and social scientists have started to access new archival evidence revealing unsettling cases of clergy collaborators with the communist regime. This chapter scrutinizes the cultural ideology of late communist Romania that selectively approved works of Byzantine inspiration. The rationale behind allowing the creation of certain Byzantine styled artworks was that these tolerable artworks would contribute to the valorization of ancient Romanian heritage that was part and parcel of the process of consolidating national communist culture. Thus, what I call in this chapter “Godless religious art” of Romanian national communism was rendered as an indispensable cultural production to support the communist’s protochronist ethos of the moment, disregarding the fact that the “ancient materials” and symbols this cultural style employed were actually of Christian heritage through and through. © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_3

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To support this argument, the chapter focuses on the flourishing of Bizantinology, especially after 1965 (including the state-supported research stays at Mount Athos in Greece by Romanian musicologists), and the return to a traditional, folkloric culture of the amateur artists who were considered to be working in the “national style,” within which certain Byzantine elements served the political enterprise of the moment. In addition, the chapter provides an analysis of how the communist national culture and its focus on the Byzantine heritage— combined with the protochronist ideology that idealized Romania’s glorious past—employed stylistic elements from Byzantine iconology in the official portraits of Ceauṣescu and public murals produced during communist era. In a significant interview Christian Paraschiv, one of the initiators of the Neo-Byzantine art group Prolog (founded in 1985), the artist recalls that during the notorious regime of Romanian national communism and the “de-churching” policies the artists associated with the Prolog group were surprisingly allowed to take photographs with churches if the cross on the roof was not visible.3 Taking this declaration as a point of departure, this chapter aims to illuminate the instances and underlying motives of why certain religion-inspired art was accepted or tolerated by the communist cultural ideologues, while others did not pass the censorship’s machine. As revealed in the archival recordings of the Central Historical National Archives of Romania in Bucharest, the official state art institution, known and active even today as the Romanian Artists’ Union (Uniunea Artistilor Plastici, UAP), manifested an ambivalent political position when it had to engage with artistic creations of religious or spiritual inspiration. On the one hand, the UAP declined any kind of support or recognition of artworks of religious or spiritual descent. The archival sources demonstrate support for this claim. An instance of outlawing religious art production is disclosed in a document emitted by the UAP Târgoviṣte (Cenaclul UAP Târgoviṣte, dated 26 September 1972).4 The president, Brădut ̣ Covaliu, states that in accordance with the instructions he received from “the superior assemblies,” it was strictly forbidden to evaluate, exhibit, or merchandise in shops or art galleries, both in Romania and abroad, any type of religion-inspired art. The “religious art” category included “icons made on wood, glass, cloth, ceramics, metal etc., crosses, and candle holders engraved with religious images or symbols, greetings cards illustrated with religious themes or any other hints to these kind of subjects.”5 The most severe sanction for artists who would disregard these

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guidelines was their exclusion from the UAP and Fondul Plastic (the Artistic Fund) (Fig. 3.1). On the other hand, the same archival resources reveal that Eastern Orthodox Christian icons (known as “Byzantine art”) were categorized by the UAP as “art objects” (obiecte de artă) and their commercialization was in fact possible through a network of state-supported shops called Consignat ̣ia and the Fondul Plastic (the Artistic Fund).6 The archival record shows that the guidelines for merchandising art objects, released by The State Committee for the Ministry of Commerce and Culture in 1970, referred to icons among other art objects (such as textile pieces, vessels, paintings, sculptures and so on). Another archival document also discloses that icons (as any other art object) were allowed to be commercialized only if the object was granted a special receipt.7 In addition to this piece of information, we find out that the “art objects” could leave the country under certain circumstances. The state-­ owned art shops called Consignat ̣ia were expected—according to these guidelines—to exhibit large, visible posters that would display information about the rules of art commercialization in the Romanian language, as well as in French, English, Russian, German and Italian language. Interestingly, we learn that icons (religiously inspired artefacts) were created, allowed and their production encouraged to enter the international circuit of the art market. This quasi-openness towards certain sacred art (called in this book “Godless religious art”) of the cultural emissaries of communist Romania demonstrates that not all art and cultural production was purged of religious and/or spiritual elements. So far, the predominant narrative about the recent past is that during the Ceauṣescu regime, “religious and spiritual practices became one of the first targets to be reformed under communism, the goal being their elimination from public life. This happened during several attempts: first inspired by the Stalinist model, then reflecting the moral Puritanism that Ceaușescu became so enthusiastic in exploring after his 1971 meetings with the Chinese and North Korean officials.”8 Most historians of Romanian communism advance the above view. This does not entail, however, that religious practices did not proliferate in the second public sphere. For instance, religious marriage and its Christian Orthodox ritual were not completely banned by the regime, though it was definitely discouraged. Reflecting on the disparagement of ancient traditions and religious practices in socialist Romania, Irina Falls poignantly argues that “Regular worship in churches and religious ceremonies of baptism,

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Fig. 3.1  Cenaclul UAP Târgovişte/UAP Cenacle Târgovişte (file 42/1972). (Source: Central Historical National Archives of Romania)

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wedding, and death were frowned upon and thoroughly discouraged, especially if one wanted to advance in any profession.”9 In a similar vein, Pavel Suian posits that communist party officials and regular communist party members “who did not dare to go to church, secretly, often requested a priest to come to their home for a religious wedding ceremony.”10 Although this practice is briefly addressed in a few written sources, the visual testimony can be analysed only in private family albums and scrapbooks. The photographic memories are sometimes complemented by handwritten synopses on the side, which complement the visual document. These offer various clues regarding the interpretative key a viewer needs to access to make sense of what the visual record reveals about Romanian’s religious everyday life. Unlike Bulgaria’s socialist past in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Minister of Culture, Lyudmila Todorova Zhivkova, infused the cultural policies with state-sponsored religiosity and spirituality (dukhovnost), Romania, in the same period, delegitimized most cultural-religious practices, but conceded some elements of religious symbolism in the national cultural canon.11 The cultural policy in Romania did not foster a religious-­ aesthetic utopia, as in late socialist Bulgaria, but supported the selected works of Byzantine inspiration. Thus, godless religious art of Romanian national communism was rendered as a necessary cultural production to support the protochronist ethos of the moment, disregarding the fact that the ancient materials and symbols this culture style employed were actually of Christian heritage.12 One of the most convincing arguments in this respect is unpacked by musicologist Sabina Păuţa Pieslak, who demonstrates how the state employed music for protochronistic and nationalistic purposes, in spite of the fact that “for centuries, music education and documentation had been the domain of the Orthodox Church.”13 As odd as it may seem at first, communists needed Orthodox Christianity to articulate an argument about the longevity and importance of the Romanian culture in the “whole world” (sic!), or as Păuţa Pieslak posits, “How could the Socialist state argue for the longevity of the Romanian nation when this endeavour could suggest that Romanian culture was rooted in Christianity?”14 However, what communist ideologues recognized is that even the iconic paintings of the Byzantine style have a pregnant national character. Research in art history demonstrates that the specificity of Romanian church painting—in both icons and frescoes— rests in the inclusion of realistic and folkloric elements into the religious imagery.15

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This strong national component precedes the communist ethos and its predilection for folkloric culture since many frescos and icons in Orthodox churches and monasteries display folkloric content, distancing to a certain extent from the iconographic Byzantine conception of sacred art. Thus, some Orthodox icons in Romania comprise both Byzantine iconographic elements and features from the “autochthonous” (mostly popular, folkloric) culture. The folk element counted as the stable feature of Romanian cultural and artistic production. As Gheorge Cosma pointed out in 1974, “The folk spirit of the traditional Romanian art, of the authochtonism of our artistic expression itself is dominated by the same specific characteristics, in its folk and modern artistic forms as well. The creation of the artist of the past could not be innovative apart from this spirit. Byzantine, Gothic or Renaissance-like, the expressive line has always been moulded according to the sensibility needs of our people and of its ancient art.”16 What this critical art position emphasizes is the idea that “our people” and “our ancient art” (which is allegedly folkloric in nature) always shaped and precast the expressive line of the art styles, including here the Byzantine style. At the same time, religious practices of Romanians continued more or less as usual. Moreover, as Anca Șincan argues, “continuing the tradition of the interwar period, the state’s building of national ideology during the 1960s took into consideration religious motifs and the pantheon of Romanian saints, and figures of Romanian church history made their way into the national canon.”17 She also points out that Western anti-­ communist campaigns overlooked the grey zones “in which the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the communist regime was negotiated at a central level and renegotiated at the local level.”18

3.2   Officially Accepted Art of Byzantine Inspiration During National Communism The Romanian communist musicologists interpreted Johan Sebastian Bach’s music as “progressive,” “humanist,” “revolutionary” and even “popular” (in the sense of being accessible to the masses). To mention just one example, the religious symbolism of Bach’s “Passions” was mocked and minimalized. Valentina Sandu-Dediu analyses the ideological mechanisms of “cleaning” Bach’s music of any religious/sacred traces in Romania communist musicology. She claims that musicologists during Ceauṣescu’s “Golden Era” had been inspired by Georgi Hubov’s monograph

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dedicated to Johan Sebastian Bach (written in 1957) and depicted the musical creation of the great German composer as purged of any occurrence of God or saints. As Sandu-Dediu points out, although after 1965 all literary translations from the Russian language ended (due to Ceauṣescu’s gradual distance taken from Moscow), those books already translated from Russian before 1965 became a sort of archetypal model of musicological critique in a socialist fashion. This musical theory had also been reflected in the musical production of the 1970s and 1980s. Students of the Music Academy used to practice polyphonic choral music of religious inspiration—especially in Palestrina’s church music style on eight voices—retaining the polyphonic dimension of performing but excluding the religious text.19 Interestingly, the religious and spiritual invocations of God were constantly purged both from the artistic production and art theory of the communist era, while at the same time, Bizantinology (the study of history, music, literature, visual arts and architecture of Byzantine descent) flourished, especially after 1965. The communist state encouraged and financed musicological research on old Romanian Byzantine musical manuscripts preserved at Mount Athos (in North-Eastern Greece).20 In the same vein, in 1965 the Annals of the University of Bucharest published an article authored by Eugen Stănescu and Gheorghe Zbuchea entitled “Biazntinology at the University of Bucharest” (Bizantinologia la Universitatea Bucureṣti).21 The interest in the Byzantine sources of Romanian culture and history is also revealed in a study published in 1971, by Alexandru Elian, in Theological Studies (Studii Teologice) entitled, “Byzantinology in the Romanian Theology’s Areas of Interest.”22 In spite of ideological purging of theological thought, the journal Theological Studies (affiliated with the Orthodox Church of Romania), continued to publish articles dedicated to “Romanian theology.” However, even in the magazines and journals associated with the Orthodox Church of Romania, the articles dedicated to religion had a strong nationalistic dimension. As Ṣtefan Adreescu points out, the very existence of these publications was encouraged by the communist status quo on the grounds of a need to attest that “freedom of worship” (liberatea cultelor) was alive and well in the “Golden Age” of communism.23 However, the content of these publications did not escape the censorship machine of those times. Even the printed version of a journal was supposed to receive the green line in order to be further disseminated among theology students.24

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The interest in Byzantine heritage was not restricted to “Romanian theology.” Choral ensembles, architectural structures, theatrical performances and visual arts that displayed “the great treasure of Byzantine” and old Romanian culture continued to be supported by the communist regime. For instance, the famous Madrigal choir used to interpret songs that did not necessarily praise the Party and its leader directly and was still supported. The repertoire included “Renaissance music, early Romanian music (usually associated with the Byzantine chant of the Christian Orthodox Church), contemporary Romanian works, and Romanian folk melodies, including carols, which were harmonized and arranged for choir by Romanian composers.”25 The emphasis on the Byzantine chant was also displayed by the Madrigal choral ensemble in various concerts performed outside the borders of Romania. Interestingly, the communist rule applauded the positive image of the country disseminated through singing by the Madrigal choir that “gained further official support from 1966 when it performed at the early music festival ‘Ancient Music of Eastern Europe’ (Musica antiqua Europae orientalis), in Bydgos zcz, Poland.”26 This return to the “ancient roots” of the Byzantine tradition as a source for the artists and cultural producers was not at odds with the cultural policies of the moment. As Sandu-Dediu argues, the Union of Composers of the Socialist Republic of Romania “permitted the albeit-partial recovery of not only lay instrumental and vocal corpuses, but also codices of religious music, both Byzantine and Gregorian.”27 The musicologist Nicolae Gheorghiṭă, who claims that Ceausescu’s nationalism was materialized in cultural formats that included the sacred chant, also puts forth this line of argument.28 However, the sacred chant was not understood by the communist officialdom as a Christian Orthodox cultural expression of faith in God, but as a significant occasion for Romania to affirm its “ancient” roots. Correspondingly, some state-sponsored choirs (like the Madrigal ensemble) performed Romanian carols (colinde) for radio and TV programs around Christmas time. However, the carols performed publicly within the country’s territory were purged of Christian content. Yet, the same Madrigal choir was allowed to perform and even commercialize LPs with religiously inspired carols abroad. For instance, in 1980 the Romanian Christmas Carols LPs of the Madrigal Chamber Choir, conducted by Marin Constantin, comprised songs that referred directly to the Nativity Scene, Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ such as Today, Christ Appeared to us (Dumitru G Kiriac), Three Shepherds (Titus Popovici), Jesu Little’s Cradle (Valentin Teodorian), Jesus and the Lord of High (Gheorghe Cucu), Up at

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the Gates of Paradise and Colindit ̣a (Emil Montia), Down in Bethlem (Nicolae Lungu), Adoration of the Magi (Vasile Popovici), The Holy Virgin is Walking About (Nicolae Ursu), Let’s Praise the Lord (Gheorghe Cucu) and The Lord be Praised (Nicolae Lungu). Carols are religious or folk songs associated with Christmas. The corpus of Romanian carols, “Summing around 5000 carols in many variations contains just a small number of religious carols (around 300 songs) which actually deal with the Themes of the Nativity of Christ.”29 Yet, singing carols is a very popular practice in Romania around Christmas time, and the custom involves carollers going from house to house carrying a steaua, “a box of five sides with paper front and back on which is a picture of the Virgin or other religious subject. A candle within illuminates the picture.”30 Irrespective of the content of the carols sung, steaua that accompanies the singers always displays a Nativity related theme. During Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s rule, the singing of carols was employed for protochronistic and nationalistic purposes. To this end, the state faced a dilemma: “how to project Romania’s musical ‘ancientness’ within a socialist ideological framework when the ‘ancient’ materials were decidedly Christian.”31 Păuṭă Pieslak points out that “music critic Paul Anghel suggested that by singing carols, Madrigal allowed Romanians to hear the music of their ancestors and regain a part of their history … for Anghel the colinda represented ‘an ancient pagan song of fertility and joy’ that extended Romania’s history prior to the arrival of Christianity in the Romanian lands, during the fourth century, C.E.”32 The purging of carols of their Christian message is interpreted by Pieslak as an instance when “the central figure of Christ in swaddling clothes is not replaced with Lenin, but with Ceauṣescu, whom the state controlled media would increasingly portray as a demi-god.”33 In this vein, traditional carols sung around Christmas time were purged of dogmatic Christianism content. However, in some cases, authorities accepted a certain “popular theology” that focused on rites of passage. This folkloric cultural production of religious inspiration was thought to solidify “national specificity” in cultural production. In the winter of 1968, on Christmas Eve (the night of 24 to 25 December), students and citizens alike gathered in large crowds in the streets of Bucharest to sing Christian carols. Communist authorities referred to Christmas as the “National Folkloric Festival” (in Romanian Sărbătoarea Folclorică Natională) and the spontaneous Christmas carolling conflicted with the cultural ideology of the moment.34 This

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apparently apolitical youth counterculture was interpreted as “a conscious form of resistance to the regime.”35 Although there is no consensus regarding the politicality of carolling, one of the carollers, Ana Ṣincai, was arrested and kept captive for 3 months. She was also hospitalized in a mental institution (‘Hospital Number 9’ in Bucharest) for “disturbance of public order and good manners.” Historian Stejărel Olaru argues that Theology students who took possession of the main squares initiated the carol singing in the streets of Bucharest.36 As pointed out by Pieter Dhondt and Florea Ioncioaia, the nocturne festive event comprised carnivalesque features, such as traditional folk songs, chanting, dancing and making fun of the regime.37 The event managed to gather a significant number of young people, between 800 and 2000, and according to some historians, was political in character against the Ceausescu administration, even though it was generated by religious music. Witnesses of these events recall today that, in reality, the nucleus of the young protesters was formed in Club 303 in Bucharest, where there was a carol show that night. These kinds of clubs existed at that time where one could hear good quality folk or rock music.38 Cezar-Paul Bădescu and Adrian Cioflâncă conducted interviews after the fall of the communist regime with Ana Ṣincai, supposedly the main “instigator” of the carolling event in 1968. As Ana Ṣincai declares, at that time she was a third-year student at the Film and Theatre Faculty in Bucharest.39 This declaration reveals that Theology students actually did not exclusively initiate the carolling performance on the Christmas Eve. Ana Ṣincai also recalls that she urged her fellow carollers to go and sing carols to Nicolae Ceauṣescu, so he would realize that they had no callous intentions since it was the eve of the “national folkloric festival.”40 Cristian Vasile also elaborates on the topic of the spontaneous carolling on the Christmas Eve of 1968 and contends that students took advantage of the fact that the communists approved certain artistic performances on the eve of the so-called national folkloric festival, and started to gather in the streets of Bucharest holding lit candles and a Christmas tree.41 Chanting Christmas carols about Jesus Christ’s nativity in the company of lighted candles was not the type of artistic performance accepted by the regime during the “national folkloric festival.” The carols sung were not about “national specificity” and Romanian pre-Christian rituals of passage to a New Year, and as such, it is precisely this non-alignment with the official cultural policy that disturbed the status quo of the moment.

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The communist regime enforced a series of cultural policies with the main purpose being to prioritize “national specificity” in cultural and artistic production. Paradoxically, this political strategy even made some room for Byzantine elements in official artistic production on the grounds that religious (Orthodox) symbols were part and parcel of the Romanian mass culture (artisans’ culture), and they should be accepted on the condition that they would bridge the gap between artisans and professional artists. In this framework, “Theoretically forbidden borrowings from religious art were tolerated by those in power as long as they backed the official trend of communist nationalism.”42 This return to traditional, folkloric culture was considered the “national style,” and certain Byzantine elements served this political enterprise. As musicologist, Anamaria Mădălina Hotoran, indicates, “The communist propaganda valued the autochthonous, folkloric music and they sometimes included and tolerated the Byzantine tradition in this area, especially after 1965, without referring to it as ‘religious music.’”43 This is not as startling as it might look at first glance, since the style of most of the official art pieces representing Ceauṣescu “recalled the post-Byzantine style of the votive portrait in the mediaeval church or the icon painting.”44 Alice Mocănescu further elaborates on this issue suggesting that “A different device employed in order to establish a link with the past was that of circulating certain images typical for the description of the mediaeval leaders. Whilst the term voievoid was not utilised to designate Ceauṣescu, the metaphors used to describe him were sometimes taken from the Byzantine panegyrics.”45 In a similar vein, the church’s music was constantly censored while folkloric, rural music of Byzantine inspiration was tolerated in the name of “national specificity.” The folk-inspired nationalism was supported by a generous number of choirs whose programmatic music was supposed to enhance the values of Socialist Realism: “The development of the Cultural Revolution in the Rumanians’ People’s Republic is reflected in the unprecedented flowering of folk art … Over 3,500 choirs, 4,200 song and dance ensembles, nearly 1,000 folk orchestras and over 7,000 singers demonstrated their art. An event of this kind was impossible in the old Rumania which had, in all, two folk theatre groups and 156 choirs. In the past, the Rumanian people sang songs of sorrow, of their hatred for the Boyars and capitalists. Now the new songs express their aspirations for peace and creative labour, love for their homeland, for the USSR and for Comrade Stalin—the great liberator and friend of the Rumanian people.”46

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As stated earlier, as odd as it looks at first glance, in a totalitarian regime in which religious aspects was severely impeded, musicological research on Byzantine music was accepted and even encouraged on the grounds that this sort of musical production contributed to the “valorization of the old Romanian musical heritage as a fundamental source for composers and the creations dedicated to the masses, which were supposed to identify with the people and its new aspirations.”47Musicologist, Nicolae Gheorghiţă, fully unpacks this argument by employing compiled statistics and archival research on the works published on Byzantine music between 1957 and 1990. He demonstrates that the research into Byzantine music and archaic Romanian folk music prevailed during communism. The most conspicuous example he puts forth is that the state financed musicological research on old Romanian Byzantine music manuscripts preserved at Mount Athos (in Greece). Nicole Gheorghiţă’s research paper displays a photograph dated 1984 where the reader can spot the university professor, Sebastian Barbu-Bucur, holding a manuscript at Mount Athos while posing for a photographer.48 This photograph is a post-witness of how the Romanian communist nationalist regime employed a double standard when it came to musicological research into sacred chant. Furthermore, Sebastian Barbu-Bucur’s research at Mount Athos had been financed and encouraged by the same communist hegemony that previously disallowed travel to Greece and evicted the young Orthodox monk Barbu-Bucur two decades earlier from his monastery. The very same Sebastian Barbu-Bucur, “while a student at the Conservatory had been expelled for handing out crucifixes to his fellow students.”49 Other empirical research also reveals that although religion and religiously-­inspired representations were forbidden in the cultural public sphere—in line with the cultural policy of the communist regime—monasteries, but also two public Fine Arts Faculties (in Iaṣi and Bucharest), taught wall and icon painting.50 Nut ̣a Drăghici-Vasilescu investigated the changes in icon-painting style and content in Romania from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present day, conducting empirical research in monasteries, iconographers’ painting studios, and churches. A segment of her exploration focuses on interviews with iconographers who were active in the field of icon painting during Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s regime. She points out that the results of her research proved the opposite of what she assumed at the beginning, namely that the so-called official art, practiced and disseminated during Communism—for example, art that employed Realist Socialism—“would have had a direct impact on icon and

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wall painting in the Church.”51 On the contrary, Drăghici-Vasilescu points out that during her research she observed that the icon-painting profession did not have any kind of political interference with the official style. She argues that icon-painting regulations were left in the care of the Patriarchate and the church. Thus, we cannot speak of icons with socialist-­ realist features, and “moreover, in addition to this policy of noninterference, the state also allowed new churches to be built. However, there were notably fewer iconographers during this Communist period.”52 Yet, at the very same time, those responsible for the communist ideology attempted to employ the language of propaganda, “to artificially replace forms of natural/traditional discourse and this was mostly the case of religious terms even if the results were nothing but surrogate of communication.”53 Gina Necula unpacks this argument with textual evidence, analysing those instances where communist “wooden language” replaced traditional religious terms and expressions in a desperate attempt “to manipulate people by detouring them from their natural speaking habits and making them speak an artificial, unfamiliar language meant to make people re-learn speaking and thinking differently even if they are still fed the illusion of continuing using their own language.”54 Similarly, poet Dan Verona recalls how political censorship during Ceauṣescu’s era mutilated his poems, especially in those places where the words “God,” “church” and “candle” appeared.55 The censors asked all writers to soften their use of religious vocabulary. In this vein, Dan Verona recalls a particular censor (a tough one) who, out of various poems, “crossed the words: God, church, disaster (forbidden as a hint to the disaster in our country).”56 As the poet revealed after the fall of the communist regime, the chief victory against censorship was when he could save the word “God” from appearing non-capitalized (“god”): “During the first proofreading I changed the letter here and there, so in the book it also appears capitalized in a few places.”57 Paradoxically, while writers and poets who addressed religious or mystical topics in their writing constantly complained that their literary works were censured and purged of any presence of God or saints, some iconographers revealed a narrative about the communist past that oftentimes did not even mention the omnipresent danger of political censorship. Does this mean that communist authorities did not find Byzantine icons ideologically dangerous in the same way and to the same extent that literature and poetry were supposed to be threatening?

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The Faculties of Art in Iaṣi, Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest taught icon painting and religious mural painting without restrictions and many iconographers did not even bother to display their work. Marius Tudoran, an iconographer from Iaṣi who also painted Byzantine icons during national communism, claims that “The canonical aspect of the church/icon-­ painting was, probably, an insignificant detail for the Communist authorities.”58 Perhaps the most striking declaration is put forth by an Orthodox priest (Archdeacon Gabriel Sibiescu), who unequivocally pointed out that, “It is curious that people say that the Communist regime wanted to interfere, in one way or another, with the requirements of our profession. I am not aware of any such thing, perhaps because I am a member of the clergy, and [also] because the area of my painting work was only in the Episcopal diocese of Buzau (sic!).”59 The same iconographer and Orthodox deacon also argue that contrary to the common view, communists ignored iconographers because [during Communism] all of the problems which belonged to the Church’s life, at both the administrative and the pastoral level, were taken care of by the Orthodox Church herself [not by the government.]60 Research on Byzantine heritage increased, not only in the domain of music but also in visual arts. In this vein, the head of the Brukenthal Museum’s ethnography section, Cornel Irimie, “conducted field research on several aspects of peasant culture in villages located in various parts of Transylvania throughout the 1960s. The research concluded with the writing of studies as well as with the acquisition of many icons painted on glass.”61 Together with a group of researchers, Cornel Irimie has managed to collect 474 icons on glass from Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s communist era for the ethnography section of the Brukenthal Museum. It seems that “Irimie’s leading position within the institution and the authority he enjoyed nationally in the field of ethnology made local authorities turn a blind eye to these activities. Irimie argued that the icons on glass created in monasteries or in eighteenth—and nineteenth—century peasant handicraft centres, which he rescued due to his acquisition policy, were part of the national artistic heritage.”62

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3.3   Dacian Ruler Burebista as a Military Saint Mural Startlingly, communist national culture and its focus on “Byzantine” heritage, combined with the protochronist ideology that idealized the past of the country, even employed some stylistic elements from Byzantine icon paining to the public murals. The murals produced during the communist era were purposed to convey historical narratives from ancient times through visual tropes that referred to “Romanian heroes” and primus inter pares. For example, a famous mural mosaic (Burebista and His Masterpiece) that decorates a panel block of flats in the centre of the city of Orăsṭ ie depicts the ancient leaders of Dacia (a province of the Roman Empire comprising the regions of the modern Romania). The artist, Aurel Nedel, following an assignment of the Romanian Communist Party, produced the 130 meters of mosaic in 1988. The Dacian heroes depicted in this huge mosaic remind the viewer that ancient Romanians (Dacians) were here before Romans and that this is their land. Through the theory of cultural and historical protochronism put forth by the communist ideologue, Edgar Papu, in one well-known cultural magazine, Secolul XX, in 1974, the dominant view endorsed by the communist regime was that Dacians can be regarded as autochthonous rioters that resisted “imperialist” Rome and the Roman Empire. The Dacians— commanded by the king Burebista—depicted on the Orăsṭ ie mural mosaic visually resemble the military (heroes) saints from religious icons of Byzantine inspiration. Like the military saints depicted in some icons (e.g. at the Church Curtea de Argeṣ), the mosaic depicting Dacians also carries a political (nationalist) message (e.g. defeating the nonbelievers—defeating the enemy). Some Dacians in the Orăsṭ ie mosaic are represented on horseback (like some military saints such as in Saint George Killing the Dragon) while others stand facing their leader (Burebista). All of them are represented as elongated figures recalling stylistically the difference between the painting of saints from Orthodox icons and the realist painting of the human figure in laic art. Thus, as Evan Freeman points out, “The heavenward trust of the narrow, tall iconostasis may call for extremely elongated figures; the heads than look disproportionately small for the bodies, the shoulders are unnaturally narrow, which emphasizes the ascetic emaciation of the whole image.”63 Like the Orthodox canon of depicting human figures in religious art, the protochronist mosaic focuses on the essentialization of the figure and

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Fig. 3.2  Aurel Nedel, Burebista and His Masterpiece (1988). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

not on the realistic anatomical features as such. In the same vein, the mosaic does not pay attention to the geometrical proportions, but rather employs a geometry of idealization that exceeds nature. Although visually and stylistically there are striking similarities between this official communist art piece and the Romanian iconography tradition, the communist cultural emissaries would not concede that the mural mosaic employs stylistic and conceptual elements from this tradition (Fig. 3.2). The Dacians depicted in this gigantic mosaic are also accompanied by folkloric decorations at the bottom of the art piece. The red-brownish decorative element resembles the “living fire” from Romanian folk legends, as well as the mythological “sacred fire” of the Dacians. Remarkably, as Drăghici-Vasilescu’s research demonstrates, the specificity of the Romanian church painting—unlike other Byzantine-inspired iconographic styles—has a strong national character, “including of folk and realistic elements in icons and frescoes.”64 Thus, “In spite of the Byzantine influences, all these accomplishments can be viewed as signs of Romanians becoming aware of their national identity, with their art beginning to be distinguished as a specific national art.”65

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Like some orthodox icons and frescos that can be found in Romanian monasteries and churches (Drăghici-Vasilescu mentions Voroneṭ, Plumbuita and Moldovit ̣a Monasteries), the mosaic entitled Burebista and His Masterpiece (Orăsṭ ie, 1988) exemplifies a strong nationalist character where the military saints from Orthodox icons are replaced with autochthonous insurgent-heroes who fight against the foreign enemy (Imperialist Rome). Both the Burebista mosaic and the well-known Byzantine-inspired icons that represent military saints convey a political message. As Drăghici-­ Vasilescu argues, “Romanian icon-painting has a very strong national character. The icons, and especially frescoes in that country, even though not intended for this purpose by the iconographers themselves, (or, at least, not always intended), sometimes played, beside their educational ‘function’, an ideological one—to convey a political message.”66 National communist culture conceded certain religious motifs, as well as the presence of “autochthonous” Romanian saints (e.g. Saint Andrew, the First-Called Apostol of the Romanians) as part of the nation canon. It comes as no surprise, then, that according to statements of the Consultative Council of Denominations (1987) “The Romanian nation [popor] was born Christian. Ever since its creation from Dacians and Romans, it was Christian. Romanians were not Christened by others and their Christianity is affirmed in the Orthodox Church. There is archaeological proof of existing Christianity all over Romanian territory ever since the 1st century A.D.”67 Thus, Dacian ancestor-hood was a topic dear to the communist ideologues who aimed to incorporate it into “national culture.” By the same token, “For many the Geto-Dacian ‘heritage’ has become equal to the pride of being Romanian. The deliberate exaggerations from the Golden Age [i.e. the Ceauşescu period] and other times have become deeply rooted in the collective memory.”68

Notes 1. Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Church, State and Democracy in Expanding Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 138 (Stan and Turcescu 2011). 2. Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan, “The Romanian Orthodox Church,” in Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Lucian N. Leuṣtean (New York: Routledge, 2014), 212 (Turcescu and Stan 2014). 3. Medeea Stan, “Interviu cu Christian Paraschiv, artist vizual: ‘In Occident, a trebuit să încep prin a înțelege sistemul: ce este un cont bancar, ce sunt

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impozitele,’” [Interview with Christian Paraschiv, visual artist: In the West I had to start by understanding the system: what is a bank account, what are the taxes] Adevarul, 24 June 2017. Available at: https://adevarul.ro/ cultura/arte/interviu-christian-paraschiv-artist-vizual-In-occident-trebuit-incep-intelege-sistemul-cont-bancar-impozitele (16 February 2020) (Medeea Stan 2017). 4. ANIC, fond UAP, file 42/1972). 5. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives], “Cenaclul UAP Târgoviṣte” [The UAP Cenacle Târgoviṣte] (26 September 1972), source ANIC, fond UAP, file 42/1972 (ANIC 1972). 6. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives], “Instrucṭiuni privind vînzarea obiectelor de artă prin magazinele Consignaṭie si ale Fondului Plastic” [Instructions Regarding the Commercialization of the Art Objects through Consignaṭie and the Artistic Fund] (1965), source ANIC, fond UAP, file 17/1970, ff. 21–22 (ANIC 1970). 7. ANIC, fond UAP, file 17/1970, ff. 21–22. 8. Alexandra Coţofană, “Documentary Film and Magic in Communist Romania,” Open Theology 3 (2017): 202 (Coţofană 2017). 9. Irina Falls, “Family and Child Education in Communist Romania: Consequences of the Duality of Values and Behaviors,” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 1(13) (2011): 36 (Falls 2011). 10. Pavel Suian, “Marriage in Romania.” In Marriage and quasi-marital relationships in Central and Eastern Europe: from the 2006 Vienna Colloquium on Marriage, eds. Lynn D. Wardle and A. Scott Loveless (Provo, UT: BYU Academic Publishing, 2008). 11. According to Veneta Ivanova, Lyudmila Todorova Zhivkova (Socialist Bulgaria’s Minister of Culture and the daughter of the communist leader Todor Zhivkov) supported alternative religious practices as state policy. Veneta Ivanova claims that “Inspired by her Eastern religious beliefs, she sought to ‘breed’ a nation of ‘all-round and harmoniously developed individuals,’ devoted to spiritual self-perfection, who would ultimately ‘work, live and create according to the laws of beauty.’ Spirituality (dukhovnost), which she conceived as the ‘spiritual development of the individual’ and the ‘renewal of the spiritual powers of the nation,’ was the cornerstone of her vigorous domestic and international cultural politics.” (Veneta Ivanova, “Occult communism: Lyudmila Zhivkova’s alternative religiosity as state policy in Communist Bulgaria,” paper presented at the conference Anthropological Legacies and Human Features, European Association of Social Anthropologists, 20 July 2016) (Zhivkova 2016). 12. Protochronism is a Romanian cultural-political term referring to Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s obsession to ascribe an idealized past to the Romanian nation.

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As Katherine Verdery points out, “During the 1970s and 1980s, increasing numbers of Romanian writers and literary critics were drawn into an argument over an idea called “protochronism.” This idea encouraged critics and literary historians to look for developments in Romanian culture that had anticipated events in the better-publicized cultures of Western Europe.” See Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 12 (Verdery 1995). 13. Sabina Păuṭă Pieslak, “Romania’s Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige,” Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2&3) (2007): 232 (Păuṭă Pieslak 2007). 14. Ibidem. 15. Nuṭa Drăghici-Vasilescu, Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania from the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. PhD thesis in Theology (Regent’s Park College Trinity: University of Oxford, 2004) (Drăghici-Vasilescu 2004). 16. Gheorghe Cosma, “Arta contemporană” [Contemporary Art], Arta 5–6 (1974): 6 (Cosma 1974). 17. Anca Șincan, “From Bottom to the Top and Back: On How to Build a Church in Communist Romania,” in Christianity and Modernity in Eastern Europe, eds. Bruce R.  Berglund and Brian A.  Porter-Szücs (Budapest: Central European University, 2010), 192 (Șincan 2010). 18. Ibidem. 19. Valentina Sandu-Dediu, Octave Paralele (Bucureṣti: Humanitas, 2015), 35 (Sandu-Dediu 2015). 20. Nicolae Gheorghiṭă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant? Research on Byzantine Musicology in Totalitarian Romania,” Studia Musicologica 56(4) (2015): 324–342 (Gheorghiṭă 2015). 21. Eugen Stănescu ṣi Gheorghe Zbuchea, Bizantinologia la Universitatea Bucureṣti [Byzantinology at the University of Bucharest]. Analele Universitaṭii Bucureṣti. Istorie [History Annals of the University of Bucharest] 14 (1965): 111–123 (Stănescu and Zbuchea 1965). 22. Alexandru Elian, “Bizantinologia in Preocupările Teologiei Româneṣti” [Byzantinology in Romanian Theology Studies]. Studii Teologice II(XXIII: 5–6) (1971): 23–30 p. 348 (Elian 1971). 23. Ștefan Adreescu, “Revistele Bisericeṣti—loc de refugiu al istoricilor români în perioada stalinistă” [Church’s Magazines—Romanian Historians’ Refuge during Stalinism]. Memoria—Revista Gândirii Arestate 31(2): 28–30 (Andreescu 2017). 24. Ṣtefan Adreescu, “Revistele Bisericeṣti,” 29. 25. Păuṭa Pieslak, “Romania’s Madrigal Choir,” 220. 26. Idem, 227.

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27. Valentina Sandu-Dediu’s argument is explored in Nicolae Gheorghiṭă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant?,” 340. 28. Ibidem. 29. Dan Alexandru Streza, “The Religious Carol in Transylvania: Function and Symbol,” Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 8(1) (2016): 76 (Streza 2016). 30. Ruth Heller, Christmas its Carols, Customs and Legends (Chicago: Schmitt, Hall &McCreary, 1948), 42 (Heller 1948). 31. Păuṭa Pieslak, “Romania’s Madrigal Choir, 232. 32. Ibidem. 33. Sabina Păuṭă Pieslak, “Lenin in Swaddling Clothes: A Critique of the Ideological Conflict between Socialist State Policy and Christian Music in Cold War Romania,” Current Musicology 78 (2004): 26. 34. “Colindul, manifest anticomunist” [The Carols, Anti-Communist Manifesto]. Televiziunea Română [Romanian Television], 17 Decembrie 2014. http://www.tvr.ro/. Available at: http://www.tvr.ro/colindulmanifest-anticomunist_10580.html#view (16 February 2020). 35. Pieter Dhondt and Florea Ioncioaia, “Christmas Carolling in Bucharest and Campfire Singing in Iaṣi,” in Student Revolt, City, and Society in Europe: From the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Pieter Dhondt and Elizabethanne Boran (London: Routledge, 2017), 240 (Dhondt and Ioncioaia 2017). 36. Stejărel Olaru, “Un concert de colinde din iarna lui ‘68,” [A Carols Concert from the winter of 1968]. Dilema Veche 411: 29 December 2011 (Olaru 2011). 37. Dhondt and Ioncioaia, “Christmas Carolling,” 2017. 38. Stejărel Olaru, “Un concert de colinde.” 39. Adrian Cioflâncă, “Cum am devenit instigatoarea numărul unu” [How I became the number one instigator]. Ziarul de Iaṣi, 18 December 2016 (Cioflâncă 2016). 40. Ibidem. 41. Cristian Vasile, Viaţa intellectuală şi artistică în primul deceniu al Regimului Ceauşescu 1965–1974 [Intellectual and Artistic Life in the First Decade of Ceauṣescu Regime: 1965–1974] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2014) (Vasile 2014). 42. Alice Mocănescu, The Leader Cult in Communist Romania, 1965–1989: Constructing Ceauṣescu’s Uniqueness in Painting. PhD Thesis in History (Durham: Durham University, 2007) (Mocănescu 2007). 43. Mădădalina Hotoran, “The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation and its Relevance for the Romanian Composers of the twentieth Century.” The Psaltic Art as an Autonomous Science 1, (2015): 240 (Hotoran 2015).

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44. Alice Mocănescu, The Leader Cult in Communist Romania, 190. 45. Ibid., 30. 46. Anon, “Songs of Peace and Happiness,” For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy, September 14, 1951. Quoted in Joel Crotty, “A Preliminary Investigation of Music, Socialist Realism, and the Romanian Experience 1948–1959: (Re)-Reading, (Re)-Listening and (Re)-Writing Music History for a Different Audience,” Journal of Musicological Research 26 (1–2) (2007): 151–176 (Crotty 2007). 47. Nicolae Gheorghiţă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant? Research on Byzantine Musicology in Totalitarian Romania.” Studia Musicologica 56(4) (2015). 48. See Plate 5 in Nicolae Gheorghiţă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant?,” 338–339. 49. Ibidem. 50. Drăghici-Vasilescu, Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania, 40. 51. Idem, 265. 52. Ibidem. 53. Gina Necula, “Religious Terminology Facing Communist Ideology,” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 63 (2012): 49 (Necula 2012). 54. Idem, 56. 55. Dan Verona, “The Nightmare. Poetry,” in Censorship in Romania, ed. Lidia Vianu (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998), 169–189 (Verona 1998). 56. Idem, 181. 57. Ibidem. 58. Drăghici-Vasilescu, Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania, 251. 59. Drăghici-Vasilescu’s interview with Archdeacon Sibiescu, in Drăghici-­ Vasilescu, Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania, 249. 60. Idem, 251–252. 61. “In the Romanian Art, in Romania, 1967. Manuscript,” in Cristina Petrescu and Cristian Valeriu Pătrăşconiu, The Horizon 2020 project Courage Connecting Collections (2018). Available at http://culturalopposition.eu/registry/?uri=http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/n16487 (24 January 2020) (Petrescu and Pătrăşconiu 2018). 62. Ibidem. 63. Evan Freeman, “Flesh and Spirit: Divergent Orthodox Readings of the Iconic Body in Byzantium and the twentieth century,” in Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition, ed. Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis (New York: Routledge, 2018), 206 (Freeman, 2018).

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64. Drăghici-Vasilescu, Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania, 262. 65. Idem, 94. 66. Drăghici-Vasilescu, Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania, 262. 67. Consultative Council of Denominations (1987), quoted in Simina Bădică, “I Will Die Orthodox: Religion and Belonging in Life Stories of the Socialist Era in Romania and Bulgaria,” in Ageing, Ritual, and Social Change: Comparing the Secular and Religious in Eastern and Western Europe, eds. Peter Coleman, Daniela Koleva and Joanna Bornat (London: Routledge, 2016), 47. 68. Zoe Petre quoted in English by Cătălin Nicolae Popa, “The significant past and insignificant archaeologists. Who informs the public about their ‘national’ past? The case of Romania,” Archaeological Dialogues 23(1) (2016): 28–39.

References Andreescu, Ṣtefan. 2017. Revistele Bisericeṣti—loc de refugiu al istoricilor români în perioada stalinistă [Church’s Magazines—Romanian Historians’ Refuge during Stalinism]. Memoria—Revista Gândirii Arestate 31 (2): 28–30. Arhivele Naṭionale Istorice Centrale—ANIC [Central Historical National Archives]. 1965. Instrucṭiuni privind vînzarea obiectelor de artă prin magazinele Consignatị e si ale Fondului Plastic [Instructions Regarding the Commercialization of the Art Objects through Consignatị e and the Artistic Fund], source ANIC, fond UAP, file 17/1970, ff. 21–22. ———, “Cenaclul UAP Târgoviṣte” [The UAP Cenacle Târgoviṣte] (26 September 1972), source ANIC, fond UAP, file 42/1972. Bădică, Simina. 2016. I Will Die Orthodox: Religion and Belonging in Life Stories of the Socialist Era in Romania and Bulgaria. In In Ageing, Ritual, and Social Change: Comparing the Secular and Religious in Eastern and Western Europe, ed. Peter Coleman, Daniela Koleva, and Joanna Bornat. London: Routledge. Cioflâncă, Adrian. 2016. Cum am devenit instigatoarea numărul unu [How I Became the Number One Instigator]. Ziarul de Iaṣi, 18 December 2016. Coţofană, Alexandra. 2017. Documentary Film and Magic in Communist Romania. Open Theology 3: 198–210. Cosma, Gheorghe. 1974. Arta Contemporană [Contemporary Art]. Art 5–6: 13–16. Crotty, Joel. 2007. A Preliminary Investigation of Music, Socialist Realism, and the Romanian Experience 1948–1959: (Re)-Reading, (Re)-Listening and

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(Re)-Writing Music History for a Different Audience. Journal of Musicological Research 26 (1–2): 151–176. Dhondt, Pieter, and Florea Ioncioaia. 2017. Christmas Carolling in Bucharest and Campfire Singing in Iaṣi. In Student Revolt, City, and Society in Europe: From the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Pieter Dhondt and Elizabethanne Boran. London: Routledge. Drăghici-Vasilescu, Nuṭa. 2004. Changes in the Phenomenon of Icon-painting in Romania from the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. PhD Thesis in Theology. Regent’s Park College Trinity: University of Oxford. Elian, Alexandru. 1971. Bizantinologia in Preocupările Teologiei Româneṣti [Byzantinology in Romanian Theology Studies]. Studii Teologice II (XXIII: 5–6): 23–30. Falls, Irina. 2011. Family and Child Education in Communist Romania: Consequences of the Duality of Values and Behaviors. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 1 (13): 33–37. Freeman, Evan. 2018. Flesh and Spirit: Divergent Orthodox Readings of the Iconic Body in Byzantium and the twentieth century. In Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition, ed. Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis. New York: Routledge. Gheorghit ̣ă, Nicolae. 2015. Nationalism through Sacred Chant? Research on Byzantine Musicology in Totalitarian Romania. Studia Musicologica 56 (4): 324–342. Heller, Ruth. 1948. Christmas: Its Carols, Customs and Legends. Chicago: Schmitt, Hall & McCreary. Hotoran, Anamaria Mădălina. 2015. The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation and its Relevance for the Romanian Composers of the 20th Century. In The Psaltic Art as an Autonomous Science (Proceedings of the 1st International Interdisciplinary Musicological Conference 29 June–3 July 2014, Volos, Greece), eds. Konstantinos Charil, Karagounis and Georgios Kouroupetroglou. Department of Psaltic Art and Musicology: Academy for Theological Studies of Volos. www.researchgate.net. Available at: file:///C:/01.%20Documente/02.%20Downloads/IMC2014Proceedings. pdf. (07 February 2020). Ivanova, Veneta. 2016. Occult Communism: Lyudmila Zhivkova’s Alternative Religiosity as State Policy in Communist Bulgaria. Paper Presented at the Conference Anthropological Legacies and Human Features, European Association of Social Anthropologists, 20 July 2016. Mocănescu, Alice. 2007. The Leader Cult in Communist Romania, 1965–1989: Constructing Ceauṣescu’s Uniqueness in Painting. PhD Thesis in History. Durham: Durham University. ———. 2012. National Art as Legitimate Art: National between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania. http://www.ox.ac.uk/. Accessed 7

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February 2020. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/papers/Alice_ Mocanescu.pdf. Necula, Gina. 2012. Religious Terminology Facing Communist Ideology. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 63: 49–57. Olaru, Stejărel. 2011. Un concert de colinde din iarna lui ‘68 [A Carols Concert from the Winter of 1968]. Dilema Veche 411: 29 December 2011. Pieslak, Sabina Păut ̣ă. 2004. Lenin in Swaddling Clothes: A Critique of the Ideological Conflict between Socialist State Policy and Christian Music in Cold War Romania. Current Musicology 78: 7–30. ———. 2007. Romania’s Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige. Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2&3): 215–240. Popa, Cătălin Nicolae. 2016. The Significant Past and Insignificant Archaeologists. Who Informs the Public About Their ‘National’ Past? The Case of Romania. Archaeological Dialogues 23 (1): 28–39. Sandu-Dediu, Valentina. 2015. Octave Paralele. Bucureṣti: Humanitas. Șincan, Anca. 2010. From Bottom to the Top and Back: On How to Build a Church in Communist Romania. In Christianity and Modernity in Eastern Europe, ed. Bruce R. Berglund and Brian A. Porter-Szücs. Budapest: Central European University. Stan, Lavinia, and Lucian Turcescu. 2011. Church, State and Democracy in Expanding Europe. New York: Oxford University Press. Stan, Medeea. 2017. Interviu cu Christian Paraschiv, artist vizual: ‘In Occident, a trebuit să încep prin a înt ̦elege sistemul: ce este un cont bancar, ce sunt impozitele,’ Adevarul, 24 June 2017. Accessed 16 February 2020. https://adevarul. ro/cultura/arte/interviu-christian-paraschiv-artist-vizual-In-occident-trebuitincep-intelege-sistemul-cont-bancar-impozitele. Stănescu, Eugen and Gheorghe Zbuchea. 1965. Bizantinologia la Universitatea Bucureṣti [Byzantinology at the University of Bucharest]. Analele Universitaṭii Bucureṣti. Istorie [History Annals of the University of Bucharest] 14: (111–123). Streza, Dan Alexandru. 2016. The Religious Carol in Transylvania: Function and Symbol. Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 8 (1): 76–84. Suian, Pavel. 2008. Marriage in Romania. In Marriage and Quasi-Marital Relationships in Central and Eastern Europe: From the 2006 Vienna Colloquium on Marriage, ed. Lynn D.  Wardle and A.  Scott Loveless. Provo, UT: BYU Academic Publishing. Turcescu, Lucian, and Lavinia Stan. 2014. The Romanian Orthodox Church. In Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Lucian N. Leuṣtean. New York: Routledge. Vasile, Cristian. 2014. Viaţa intellectuală şi artistică în primul deceniu al Regimului Ceauşescu 1965–1974 [Intellectual and Artistic Life in the First Decade of Ceauṣescu Regime: 1965–1974]. București: Humanitas.

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Verdery, Katherine. 1995. National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press. Verona, Dan. 1998. The Nightmare Poetry. In Censorship in Romania, ed. Lidia Vianu. Budapest: Central European University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Art, Nature and Ecologies of Transfiguration during Romanian National Communism

4.1   Introduction This chapter focuses on the return to nature as a motif present in many Neo-Orthodox artists’ work. The argument put forth is that this nostalgia for humans’ spiritual bond to nature can be regarded as a form of spiritual awakening from political, social and economic devastations. To substantiate this claim with evidence, I will analyse works of art from the Nicolae Ceausescu era, which display both spiritual and ecopoetic concerns. I argue that this spiritual/religious inspired art fostered ecologies of faith where nostalgia for a nature sanctified by the sacred prevailed. In the theoretical register of a prophetic activism, this ecology of faith encourages the projection of imaginary futures, places and spaces of dissent, as well as imagined non-places where life might again be bearable and liveable.1 Ecologies of faith (or spiritual ecologies) refer to the spiritual dimension of all issues related to environmentalism. Roger Gottlieb poignantly argues that religious morality and its implementation displays rituals, ceremonials and other performative practices that assist humans to express their worries, grief and despair, but also to celebrate what is left on the planet.2 In line with this concatenation between ecological concerns and religious faith, artists associated with the Neo-Orthodox movement created a type of cultural production where nature is revealed in the loving intimacy with God. This ecopoetic love is exhibited through an artistic discourse that envisions the future in light of a longing for a lost paradise where © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_4

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vegetation took central stage. Thus, this artistic discourse on nature reframes “the shape of human identity and vocation in relationship to the world and to God’s promised future.”3 To unpack this argument, the first section of this chapter elaborates on the communist renderings of nature in art and popular culture. This section will focus on those instances where nature is displayed or talked about in visual arts and musical production as hypostatizations of “green patriotism” and “autochthonous nature.” I contend that these official renderings actually de-naturalized nature. In this vein, the representations of nature had less to do with natural life as such but rather with an ideologization of what natural environment was supposed to entail and symbolize. Thus, the personification of nature in official artistic production acquired educational value through the lens of national communism. In other words, nature had been mastered by the artist to make room for forced industrialization and national exacerbated feelings. At the same time, nature had been humanized in order to acquire educational (ideological) value. All these ideological requirements to portray a natural environment in a certain nationalist light led to a rigid repertoire of cultural productions that dealt with nature as the main topic. The second section of this chapter addresses those instances when artists engaged with nature in their art, paralleling, complementing or questioning certain art movements from the West (e.g. land or earth art, ecological art and so on).4 Their artistic production focused on nature in a way that did not take into consideration the official requirements. Although this direction, which emerged in Romania in the late 1970s, cannot be regarded as a cultural ecologist movement per se, it did touch upon nature as such, as well as on its vital role in the life of humans. The artists who dedicated their works to these topics circumvented—purposefully or not—the official requirements to depict “autochthonous nature” mastered by the New Man of communism. The third section zooms in on several instances of religiously inspired art from the 1970s to the 1990s whose main concern was to re-establish the archetypal bond between nature and human beings. Unlike the artists who dealt with “mere nature” as a counter-narrative to the “national nature” of communism, for the Neo-Orthodox cultural producers, nature is not only “natural” but impregnated with God’s presence. The artists associated with this return to nature as one of the main topics of their artistic endeavour strove to bring back the resources of ancient spirituality and Cosmic Christianity to address environmental issues from a Christian

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Orthodox point of view. Thus, this return to nature can be interpreted as a form of political resistance filtered through a theology of transfiguration.5 By not buying into the system’s expectance to display in cultural production “autochthonous nature” and “green patriotism,” the artists leniently associated with the Neo-Orthodox milieu managed to produce an art were the beauty of the nature speaks volumes of both communion with God and ecopoetics. Taking the beauty of divine creation instantiated in the natural world as a starting point of departure, the artists’ return to nature, as both subject matter and space of work, can be regarded as nostalgia for a paradise lost at the hands of national communism. At the same time, their art can be analysed through the lens of environmentalism as a form of spiritual responsibility. Unlike the anthropocentric Western Christianity (where the duality of human beings—nature and man is above nature–still persists), Eastern Christian Orthodoxy regards nature “primarily as symbolic system through which God speaks to man, an essentially artistic approach that precluded the development of modern science and technology.”6 Gaining theoretical support from Jurretta Jordan Heckscher’s abundantly substantiated claim that “Orthodox Christian history is not only relevant but transformative” in dealing with natural environments and moral and ecological crises, this chapter explores the extent to which the artistic approach of the Neo-Orthodox artists’ visions of nature shielded God’s paradise on earth as a “space of expectations” against the communist regime’s “green nationalism” and “green industrialization.”7

4.2   Communist Renderings of “Nature” in Art and Pop Culture The emblem of Communist Romania (in place from 1948 to 1989) used to be displayed on the national tricolored flag (red, yellow, blue) and on the coat of arms. Without much variations throughout the communist era, this emblem illustrated a landscape consisting of fir trees, a mountain ridge, a rising sun and an oil platform. All these elements were encircled by stocks of wheat tied together. During Romanian communism, the official emblem comported only three alterations: from January to March 1948, the emblem consisted of a landscape showing a generous rising sun, a tractor and an oil drill; from 1948 to 1952 the tractor vanished and a red star was added together with the fir trees and the mountain ridge; finally

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in 1965, the emblem suffered the last change until the regime’s fall in 1989. This last alteration referred to the change of the message from the ribbon (from Romania as a People’s Republic to Socialist Republic of Romania). What is telling for the purpose of this chapter is the use of certain elements from the natural environment to stand for national symbols (i.e. fir trees, mountains, rising star and wheat). During the Nicolae Ceausescu era, in every first class of a school circle (including kindergarten), pupils were told by their teachers that “our national emblem” epitomizes the natural richness of our country. The wooden language of propaganda aimed to disseminate the message that the Socialist Republic of Romania was the most desirable place on earth and the best possible country where the benefices of industrialization complemented without divergences the natural richness of “the ancestral lands.” In other words, Romania emblem connoted the unproblematic communion between nature and industry set against the rising star of socialism. In the view of the cultural emissaries, nature should be rendered in arts and cultural production as an organism that belonged to a social class and possessed national consciousness. From kindergarten to high school, children thought that the forest was “the Romanian’s brother.”8 However, as Adrian Cioacă and Mihaela Dinu argue, reclaiming the forest as a helper of Romanians was not necessarily a communist prerogative: “Forest offered to the people, directly or indirectly, shelter, food (fruits, mushrooms, edible plants, venison, honey, among others) fuel, and especially raw materials for manufacturing household tools.”9 Yet, this humanization of nature—regarded as an animated helper affectionately called “brother”— received ideological undertones during the communist era. From the common parlance saying “forest is the Romanian’s brother,” the area of the forest’s humanization extended to its supposedly patriotic feelings and unconditional love for the Party-State. Starting with 1948 the topic of the patriotic renderings of nature started to occur during various communist art workshops. To mention only one example, in the preamble of the first communist Annual State Exhibition of Art—that took place in the winter of 1948–1949 in Bucharest—the artists of Timiṣoara were invited to take part in a workshop organized by the Ministry of Arts. One of the topics addressed on that occasion was “How can artists approach the landscape in their art?” The minutes of this meeting are currently recorded and preserved by the Central National Historical Archives in Bucharest (ANIC). In line with these requirements, the natural landscape in communist art

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was supposed to reveal patriotic significance. In the same vein, nature was not supposed to appear as “mere landscape” but to awaken trust, joy and the love of life.10 In a recent study on literary criticism, Eugen Negrici also points out that writing literature about “ordinary” nature under communism was not well regarded by the state on the grounds that writing about nature can be prone to intimism, religiosity and apolitical ruminations.11 As the cultural emissaries feared apolitical art, the expectation from writers was to treat nature as a “class enemy” that has to be defeated and its wilderness tamed according to the requirements of agricultural production from the newly established agricultural cooperatives for production (CAPs).12 Eugen Negrici mentions briefly that in some literary artworks, nature was displayed as a hard working “Comrade” as in Nina Cassian’s propagandist poem Tovaraṣul April (Comrade April). This personification of nature continued during Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s “Golden Era.” Thus, the humanization of nature acquired educational value through the lens of national communism. Ion Manolescu puts forth the main tenets of the communist discourse on nature. According to him nature in communist visual art and literature had a mythological, lyrical and a pragmatic dimension. The mythological dimension glorified country’s past where nature played a critical role in defending the Romanian nation in front of the foreign invaders. The lyrical dimension refers to the humanization of nature that reverberates the Communist ideals; finally, the pragmatic aspect took into account the communist economic narrative where nature appears as a paradise of inexhaustible resources.13 Accordingly, nature is rendered as “a massive fuel tank, hostile to the foreign visitor, plundered by the bourgeois establishment and ‘scientifically’ certified later in socialism and Communism. The thematic cliché of green patriotism (geography as a passive, yet efficient, weapon against the mischievous and covetous outside ‘invaders’) is merged with the one of social molestation (the generous nature, yet abused by the despotic guardian) and the more ostentatious one of the safeguarded homeland (nature, forced by both the imperialist invader and the bourgeois exploiter, finds refuge in the protecting arms of the salt-of-the-earth worker.”14 However, for the purpose of this volume, it has to be stated that Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s national communist doctrine employed a discourse on nature inherited from the Stalin-era in which nature was mastered to make room to forced industrialization and was humanized in order to acquire an “educational” (read ideological) value. This paradoxical approach occasioned cultural productions and discourses that often displayed an

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autochthonous nature that was rendered sometimes artistically through artificial environments (like green oil platforms surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains). The political instrumentalization of nature had been pervasive, and in consequence, nature was not supposed to be rendered artistically as such—as mere, plain nature—but transformed and mastered by the New Man and his quest for agricultural and industrial progress. Thus, “national nature” was the main topic of various pieces of artistic production and omnipresence in the Nicolae Ceauṣescu era’s pop culture. For instance, soft pop music had been used as an instrument of educating the Romanians’ attitudes towards the so-called autochthonous nature. Florin Bogardo (1942–2009)—a famous composer and soft pop singer— was well-known to the Romanian public for his pop songs about Romanian ‘ancestral warm land,’ primeval forests and wildflowers. In a song composed in 1971 by Florin Bogardo (with lyrics by Nicolae Tăutu) entitled Iubirea Mea, Pământul Strămoṣesc (Ancestral LandMy Love)—part of the album released by the Electrecord on Vinyl 7” format called Cincinalul în Patru Ani ṣi Jumătate (A Five Year in Four and Half Plan15)—Florin Bogardo sang about Romanian ancestral land that is regarded as ‘a house with large open windows’ where all Romanians can live in harmony with nature, ancestors and their historical past. Some lyrics refer to an old Romanian tradition of planting fir trees on sepulchres. The evergreen coniferous tree is associated in Romanian folk poetics with eternal life but also with the virtue of courage. The fir tree is invoked in birth, wedding and funeral rituals.16 As Alina State Mihaela points out, the folk Romanian traditions reveal the symbolic union between the coniferous tree and the human being from birth to death. She points out that in certain regions of Romania, midwives plant “brother fir trees” in the courtyard of a house where a child was born. Then, the fir tree appears again in one’s life as an ornamental device used for wedding ceremonies. Finally, when somebody dies, especially a young person, the brother fir tree is planted on her grave. In some folkloric areas of Romania, the fir tree “is cut and laid and the bedside of the deceased …the custom of confession by a fir tree also demonstrates the importance—deeply rooted, even before Roman times—of the fir tree in the Romanian imagination. To avoid the cutting of an entire tree, the custom is reduced to the taking off a branch, which is decorated with sweets and cakes that are shared at the burial feast”17 Otilia Hedesan also briefly touches upon the symbolism of the fir tree in the Romanian ethos, stating that the

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coniferous tree represents a bridge that the soul of the deceased must pass in order to access the other world: “A bridge that is sometimes made in haste, favoured by a cosmic fir tree that is willing to bend, and to renounce its verticality for a while, in order to facilitate the soul passing ‘as on a bridge’ to the field of eternity.”18 The song composed and performed by Florin Bogardo in 1971 (Iubirea Mea, Pământul Strămoṣesc) clearly refers to the Romanian folkloric tradition of planting a fir tree on the deceased’s grave (starting at minute 2.12″ until the very end of the song). However in this pop song, the tree is not invested with the symbolic dimension of the bridge that the soul must pass towards the afterlife of so many religious and spiritual traditions. The lyrics created during the communist era rather underline the fir tree’s property of remaining evergreen (as reflected in the line: ‘Plant on my grave fir trees that do not wither’). This natural feature of the fir trees facilitates the everlasting capacity of revealing through song for the Romanians’ adoration for the country. This undelaying message is directly displayed in the line of the song which reads ‘Plant on my grave fir trees that do not wither’/To be able to continue my panegyric to my beloved Romanian land’). Thus, the symbolic fir tree invoked in this communist song only alludes to the ethnographic findings’ meanings of the evergreen coniferous from the Romanian folkloric culture. In fact, the invocation of the fir tree adds up to the same green patriotism paradigm backed by the official culture in the earlier stages of the communist tutelage. As in other soft pop songs from the communist period, in Iubirea Mea, Pământul Strămoṣesc the ancestral land of the country is addressed directly in an animistic way, as if the geographical and vegetal elements would have agency. The same patriotic animism is put forth in the notorious pop propaganda song Magistrala Albastră (The Blue Canal). The song addresses the masses with a cheerful message about one of the darkest spots from the Romanian version of state socialism: the building of the Danube-Black See canal in Southern Romania (a 64 kilometres long highway) with the sacrifice of thousands of deaths. The construction of the so-called Blue Canal (actually a labour camp) took a very lengthy time (it was started in 1949 and it partly ended in 1984). The song Magistrala Albastră was composed for the official inauguration of what has been called in a post-communist fictional novel “the canal of death.”19 The notorious propaganda song was composed by Vasile Vasilache and sung by two celebrated Romanian pop music singers of the 1980s: Mirabela Dauer and Dan Spătaru. The personification of the Danube-Black Sea canal was the masterpiece of Storin

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Aurel (the poet who wrote the lyrics for Magistrala Albastră). Mirabela Dauer and Dan Spătaru’s stardom also contributed to the intense dissemination of the song throughout the official media channels and beyond. As Maria Bebis posits, “The song starts in rather animistic way, with the singers addressing the Danube River directly. The personified river is informed of ‘a new dawn’, a new way that would take its waters straight to the Black Sea. In the second stanza, there intervenes the human element ‘we.’ Presumably, by ‘we’, ‘Romanians’ are meant.”20 Addressing the Danube River directly, as in the other soft pop song about the “ancestral land” from the previous example, actually de-naturalizes the natural. The same “green patriotism” was also put forth through visual art production. The painting entitled We Had Heroes, We Have Heroes (anonymous, 1976, courtesy of the collection of official art of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest) displays an uncanny representation of the bound between nature and heroism. From an artistic point of view, the painting does not follow any sense of proportions. The viewer is faced with a huge soldier green helmet placed in the middle of a mountains landscape. The foreground of the paintings consists of a poorly painted blue, placid sky whose depthless does not impress. Although here are no clouds on the serene sky, the atmosphere feels quite oppressive. The painting exhibits two peculiar details: the soldier helmet is larger than the mountains and hills that surround it and an odd looking flower—most probably a red rose—keeps growing from the helmet towards the cloudless sky. At a closer look, the viewer realizes that the red rose that grows from the helmet has actually the same shape as Romania’s map. Thus, the object that grows from the halmet can be invested with a certain ontological indistinction: it is neither a red rose nor Romania’s shape on the map. At the same time in can pass as either of them. Taking the title of the painting as a key to interpreting the meaning of this bizarre looking piece of official art, we might understand this visual production as a homage to the Romanian soldiers who fought for Romania’s Independence in 1877. The hegemonic narrative during the communist regime about the so-called heroic Romanian army developed further through countless materializations in the commemorative practices and platforms supported by the status quo of the moment. As Silviu Hariton points, out the cultural artefacts associated with the memory of the participation of the Romanian heroic army in the 1877–1878 so-called Our War of Independence actually “correlates with a period of

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intensification of public celebrations in Romania and the appearance and spread of war monuments. All these cultural artefacts contributed to the articulation of a warrior culture that served as an instrument for further cultural mobilization for war where war monuments played a major role.”21 The painting We Had Heroes, We Have Heroes clearly attempts to honour the memory of the Romanian soldiers in a visual and conceptual manner that connects the discourse on nature with the discourse on patriotism. Illustrative in this sense is the visual reference to rocks (mountains) and patriotism. The “sturdiness” of the Romanian soldiers is rendered visually through the green vase-like soldier helmet that appears as a geological formation right in the middle of a mountain landscape. At the same time, the red rose looking like the map of Romania that grows from the soldier’s helmet connotes green patriotism at the expense of the natural roses whose tales of mere existence could not convince the communist authorities to exhibit them as worthy art about nature.

4.3   Ecological Art Despite the communist ideological discourse on nature, some artists who created art about nature during Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s “Golden Era” positioned their cultural productions as a form of resistance against the de-­ naturalized “national nature.” Yet, I would not claim that this opposition to the official discourse on nature can be regarded as a cultural ecologist movement, nor that the artists who explored these topics employed a critical stance programmatically. Some of the artists who dealt with “ecological topics” organized exhibitions where the concerns for natural environments took center stage. One of the first group exhibitions dedicated to “mere” nature and to its liveliness had been organized in 1981 by the art critic Coriolan Babeṭi together with two artists—Ion Grigorescu and Paul Gherasim—who will be associated later on with the Neo Orthodox/Neo Byzantine movement. The exhibition was suggestively entitled Omul ṣi Natura, Locul si Lucrurile (Man and Nature, Location and Things) and displayed at various locations, such as Bastion Gallery, Foto A.A.F. Gallery and Art High School, in the South-Vest Romanian county Timiṣoara. In the same year (1981) and one year later than other art galleries—Victoria Gallery in Iaṣi and New Gallery in Bucharest—organized a workshop and an exhibition entitled Om, Oraṣ, Natură (Man, City, Nature).22 The art historian Magda Cârneci points out that “this was one of a series of

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exhibitions organized in the last decade by such art critics as Dan Hăulica, Mihai Driscu, Anatol Mândrescu, and Anca Arghir (this series ended with the symposium—exhibition Man and the City organized by Mihai Driscu, Dan Hăulică in Iaṣi in 1985).”23 At about the same time (1981), Florin Maxa produced the short film on 16 mm Grădina (The Garden) where he presents his personal views on nature. Another important set of artistic actions that took place outdoors and reflected on the environment were organized by the international artist collective Messaggio Terra starting in 1960s in Milan (Italy). The Romanian “ecological group” associated with the Messaggio Terra movement included Decebal Scriba, Wanda Mihuleac, Mircea Florian, Ṣtefan Mânciulescu, Christian Paraschiv, Radu Procopovici and Andrei Oisteanu, among others. Olivia Nit ̣iṣ describes this international collaboration as follows: “Artists around the world would collect soil that would travel to different parts of the globe putting together an interactive project in which all participants were connected symbolically through the samples of soil provided from different locations on Earth by their peers. The Romanian artists decided to develop an action on the banks of Dâmboviţa river on the place where all the waste garbage and blood from slaughterhouses were unloaded, sending the soil from this particular spot worldwide as a way of purification.”24 One of the pioneers of this environmental art direction was the artist Ṣtefan Bertalan, who as early as 1972 performed an artistic action called generically Oraṣul (The City) on the shores of the river Timiṣ from Timiṣoara. The artist performed his actions in a natural ambiance, outside the white cube of the art galleries and employed exclusively natural materials—such as sand, minerals, manure and grass—to complete his art piece.25 Another remarkable piece that is seldom explored in the post-1989 art historical studies is Doru Covrig’s 1975 participatory sculpture installation Copacul (The Tree). Copacul is a sculpture in stone created outdoors in a natural habitat. It is both created in plain air and exhibited outside the gallery space. One photograph from the catalogue Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 reveals the final product: a tree made out of stone and exhibited on the ground, on a plain surface. On each branch sit down one of Doru Covrig’s friends.26 The art piece problematizes the interaction between man and nature via artistic mediation. The interest in the intersection between the human body and the environment is also reflected in Wanda Mihuleac’s films from the 1980s. In Bodyscape (land art

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performance from 1982), Wanda Mihuleac shows how “the body covered with moss is breathing and slowly moving. The human body perfectly integrates the environment without disturbing it. The human body is part of an ecological system that requires a sensitive understanding of life and its mechanisms.”27 The same symbiosis between artist and nature is revealed in another work of Stefan Bertalan, I have lived 130 days with a Sun Flower (1979). Living a sunflower’s vegetal life was not only an intimate route of understanding the vegetal reign but also a political strategy of temporality dropping out of state socialist reality.28 In the same ecological register, Aniko Gerendi performed an environmental action in the fields in 1989 (called Tangaj). However, we have to keep in mind that although all these examples of visual art dealt with ecological and environmental topics and concerns that managed to overcame the official discourse on nature, this type of artistic production was not necessarily defined as such (i.e., ecological art or environmental art) in the context of the communist cultural and political states of affair.

4.4   Nature Is Not Merely “Natural” in the Neo-­Orthodox Artists’ Renderings The academic studies dealing with post-1989 changes on the discourse on nature—from an artistic perspective—focus mostly on literature. From the perspective of literary discourse, some literary writings produced after the collapse of the communist regime in Romania can be interpreted in an ecocritical key. Ecocritical art refers to the various ways of engaging with nature and environmental concerns in one’s artistic practice. However, there is no academic consensus on what ecocriticism really means and does. A very general definition would be that ecocriticism is ecological criticism materialized in artistic practice.29 Initially, this type of critical inquiry focused exclusively on literary studies.30 Recently, ecocriticism has extended its realm to engage with other artistic formats and media, as well as with a plethora of social, political, gender and economic issues ranging from ecofeminism and political ecology to biocultural perspectives on poverty and postcolonial studies.31 One of the very few Romanian academics who deal with this topic in their research is Emanuel Modoc. He interprets literary productions that tackle the post-communist heritage advancing the argument according to which investigating nature writing, or any discourse where nature is the

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main focus, by engaging “an ecocritical perspective could be seen as both a productive and a fruitless endeavour.”32 This pseudo-scepticism put forth by Modoc is justified by “a methodological obstacle: no matter how hard one tries to find pertinent associations between the Romanian literary space of this period and the suite of ecocritical trends that emerged since the 90s in the West, an unavoidable truth that all we can find in this respect is subscribed to a profound ideologisation and exploitation of nature as an ‘ideological asset’ remains evident.”33 Olivia Nit ̣iṣ advances a different argument based on her research on visual arts and eco-feminism. She claims that actually before 1989, we can spot several attempts to approach environmental concerns through a gender lens—that is, in Wanda Mihuleac and Ana Lupaṣ’s artworks—while “the contemporary situation in the last decades, with a few exceptions that are to be discussed, seems to be reflecting a void.”34Apparently, there are also exceptions like the artist Marilena Preda Sânc, who is one of the very few post-1989 artists who deal with ecological concerns in their art.35 This chapter will not answer, however, the question of whether we can talk or not about an alignment of the Romanian artistic production to the Western ecocritical trends after the 1990s. What it aims to illuminate is a rather different aspect: the pre-1990s artistic directions where nostalgia for humans’ spiritual connection to nature is momentous and prevalent. These natural-cultural feelings and commitments can be interpreted as a form of prophetic activism and spiritual awakening from moral, political and social wrongs. In line with this argument, the claim I put forth is that the spiritualized discourse on nature from the arts, in the period that preceded the fall of the Ceauṣescu regime can contribute to a certain branch of an “ecology of transfiguration,”36 where religious faith and spiritual responsibility towards nature overcome both anthropocentric and practical ecocriticism grounded in evolutionary biology and other natural sciences.37 The official discourse on nature, as well as the artistic renderings displayed in line with the party’s expectances regarding how “nature” should be illustrated, left some artists and cultural producers with a persistent feeling of nostalgia for gazing at ideologically uncontaminated representations of nature. Perhaps it is not without significance that the first exhibition of the Neo-Orthodox—or, as called before 1989, “Neo-Byzantine”-group Prolog, organized in 1985  in Bucharest at the Căminul Artei, was entitled Florea de Măr (Apple Blossom). The fragile white flower was regarded by the artists and their public as a promise of

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the return to the Garden of Eden. The founding members of the Prolog group were the artists Paul Gherasim (the group’s mentor), Horea Paștina, Mihai Sârbulescu, Christian Paraschiv and Constantin Flondor. Later on Ion Grigorescu, Horia Bernea and Sorin Dumitrescu joined them. Beside this stable nucleus, other artists collaborated or shared their creativity and sets of spiritual concerns with the group: Florin Niculiu, Ioana Bătrânu, Mircea Tohătan, Afane Teodoreanu, Gheorghe Berindei, Ion Nicodim, Dan Mohanu, Valentin Scărlătescu, Ruxandra Grigorescu, Simion Crăciun, Matei Lăzărescu and Vasile Varga. Apart from their persistent engagement with religious and spiritual concerns, all the artists associated with Prolog returned to nature whose presence in their art was regarded as a symbolic structure through which God reveals the truth to man. One of the founding members of the Prolog group, Constantin Flondor, posits that the return to nature as one of the tenants of the group’s artistic preoccupations started with Paul Gherasim (one of the founders of the Prolog artists collective).38 Some of the artists associated with the Prolog group demonstrated a steady interest in artistic experimentalism (e.g. Ion Grigorescu, Constantin Flondor), and as a consequence, many of their works combined postmodern techniques of art making and traditional topics and artistic moods. In this vein, for Constantin Flondor, “true painting” started only after he exhausted all the experimental attempts, including his restless passion for artistic constructivism.39 His appetite for geometrical forms and mathematics crystallized in artworks about nature. The geometry of vegetal structures, translated into apple blossoms, nettle leafs and honeysuckles, became a sacred geometry in his art where the vegetal regnum imitates the perfection of the Creator. Mathematics and Geometry are not for Constantin Flondor means to express the perfection of nature but rather tools that direct towards a lyrical abstraction of nature as Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ). The artist states that “although my sensibility for geometry in art has not disappeared, I decided to return to nature and to the unmediated contemplation of it, involving the sky and the earth and the joyfulness of all these aspects given by God.”40 The same revalorization of nature in art is displayed in Horia Paṣtina’s series of paintings entitled Grădini (Gardens) from 1980s. For some colleagues of the same generation of artists, these paradisiac gardens might have looked both outdated and “traditionalist” (in the derogatory sense). From a certain perspective, this view was not completely gratuitous. The Neo-Orthodox artists’ aesthetic ethos consisting of paintings of gardens, flowers, hills and delicate sunsets might have

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appeared backward-looking and uninteresting to those colleagues whose main modus operandi was filtered through artistic experimentalism, neo-­ Dada, situational aesthetics and other neo-avant-garde trends. Magda Cârneci describes the artistic climate of the 1980s as one where the “unofficial” art tendencies were “moulded by an optimistic and pragmatic search for knowledge,” as well as other features such as “the rejection of traditional expressive media and methods, such as painting and iconic representation; the experimentation with new artistic methods and materials, some originating in scientific techniques or industrial technologies.”41 In this non-official atmosphere of assiduous experimentation with both materials and techniques, the paintings about nature produced by the Neo-Orthodox artists in the 1980s appeared as messages in a bottle of how to save your soul. As Andrei Pleṣu posits in the Catalogue of the Prolog’s Exhibition in 1989, nature is for all these so-called Neo-Orthodox artists a “space of expectances.” Nature was rendered in their art as that state and space of belief that something is going to happen. However, the Prolog artists “refuse the hysteria of searching, as well as the vanity of the prompt and spectacular encounter. The artists learn how to wait…the responsible and assumed act of awaiting is the core of spiritual life.”42 The philosopher Andrei Pleṣu also addressed the topic of nature in conjunction with art and spirituality in other articles written during the late stages of Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s regime. For example, in an article for the magazine Arta from 1987, he points out that nature is always a “meeting place” of art and spirituality.43 One year later (in 1988), nature is understood as a “waiting space.”44 Nature, as rendered in the Neo-Orthodox artists’ pieces, does not only fulfil an aesthetic or “ecopoetic” purpose but restores the resources of spiritual awakening to address environmental issues from a religious (Eastern Christian Orthodox) point of view. Thus, the representations of nature are filtered through a theology of transfiguration where gardens are not mere outdoor spaces, where plants and other forms of nature developed, but spaces of strong beliefs that something is most likely to happen. This prophetic dimension of the Neo-Orthodox art about nature is not trigger by a hedonist nostalgia for a paradise of pleasures and delight but rather by a Christian Orthodox ascetic search for simplicity and primordial paths towards deeper truths. Painting gardens and apple blossoms was not a way of defying communist tediousness but rather a strategy of

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apprehending the art of active contemplation through which dropping out of the Godless world of communists made perfect sense. By dealing with natural environments and moral/ecological crises, this peculiar artistic production regards nature predominantly as a symbolic space through which God speaks to humankind. At the same time, nature is also one of the many “drop-outs” where one goes to achieve self-­ transformation after the regime did its best to transform the citizens’ spirits into slaves or so-called New Men. One of the reasons why their contemporaries might have perceived the Neo-Orthodox artists’ paintings about nature as impersonations of resistance against the system is that nature escaped the ideological order of the communist tutelage. As Ion Grigorescu poignantly points out, “An Orthodox doesn’t fight anything. But it is true that people might have perceived it that way. Because in the Prolog movement we promoted certain ideas such as the return to nature in painting with a symbolism that the people here have instantly associated with a religious-like symbolism.”45 By the same token, Ion Grigorescu posits that “here in Romania we can find extremely open people to the art which is close to nature and religion, because Romania is like that: Orient. In Greece or Cyprus it is the same thing… I don’t know personally Bulgaria or Russia but it is very likely that one could notice the same kinds of things.”46 Other intellectuals made similar points following the Romanian anthropologist and historian of religions Mircea Eliade who advanced a view according to which nature is impregnated with sacredness.47 As pointed out by Ion Cordoneanu, “Cosmic Christianity refers, according to Mircea Eliade, to a new religious development, which characterizes South-Eastern Europe, where the Christological mystery is projected over the entire nature, with emphasis on the liturgical dimension of human existence in the world.”48 What the Neo-Orthodox artists disclosed in their art and public confessions is that “nature is never only ‘natural’; it is always fraught with a religious value.”49

Notes 1. Tom Block’s concept of prophetic activism refers to overcoming the polarizations between us and them in art that is politically concerned. A prophetic activist art is that form of cultural production that envisages the future through the lenses of universal, humanist values of universal appeal (such as love). For more on this conceptualization see Tom Block,

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“Prophetic Activist Art: Art beyond Oppositionality.” International Journal of the Arts in Society 3(2) (2008): 19–25 (Block 2008). 2. Roger Gottlieb, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (London: Oxford University Press, 2006) (Gottlieb 2006). 3. Jennifer Ayres, “Cultivating ‘Unquiet Heart’: Ecology, Education and Christian Faith.” Theology Today 74(1) (2017): 57 (Ayres 2017). 4. Land art refers to those artistic practices that take the environment as the main artistic medium and concept. The art movement emerged in the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic. For a detailed history of land art movement see Ben Tufnell, Land Art (London: Tate Publishing, 2007) (Tufnell 2007). 5. For more on Orthodox Christian views on ecology of transfiguration see John Chryssavgis, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013) (Chryssavgis et al. 2013). 6. Jurretta Jordan Heckscher, “A Tradition that Never Existed. Orthodox Christianity and the Failures of Environmental History,” in Chryssavgis et al. 2013, 137 (Heckscher 2013). 7. Ibid., 146. 8. This is a notorious apophthegm of folkloric inspiration. 9. Adrian Cioacă and Mihaela Dinu, “Romanian Carpathians Landscapes and Cultures,” in Landscapes and Societies: Selected Cases, eds. Peter Martini and Ward Chesworth (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 267 (Cioacă and Dinu 2010). 10. Dan Drăghia, Dumitru Lăcătuṣu, Alina Popescu, Caterina Preda and Cristina Stoenescu, “Ideologie, Propagandă ṣi Norme de Creaṭie Artistică” [Ideology, Propaganda and Artistic Norms], original source: ANIC, fond UAP, file 11/1950, ff.126–129. In Uniunea Artiṣtilor Plastici din România în documente de arhivă [Union of Visual Artists in Romania in Archival Documents], eds. Dan Drăghia, Dumitru Lăcătuṣu, Alina Popescu, Caterina Preda and Cristina Stoenescu (Bucharest: Editura Universităṭii Bucureṣti), 113 (Drăghia et al. 2017). 11. Eugen Negrici, Literatura Romana sub Comunism: 1948–1964 (Bucureṣti: Cartea Româneasca, 2016) (Negrici 2016). 12. Ibidem. 13. Ion Manolescu quoted in Emanuel Modoc, “Nature Writing in Romania during the Post-war and Post-Communist Period.” Metacritic Journal of Comparative Studies and Theory 3(2) (2017):78–79 (Modoc 2017). 14. Ibidem. 15. Cincinalul in Patru Ani ṣi Jumătate (“A Five-Year Plan done in Four and Half Years”) song referred to a Stalinist invention (the “Five-Year Plan”)

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meant to organize the achievement of industrial production in advance for five years. The song Cincinalul in Patru Ani ṣi Jumătate “was an urge to work harder and better which sounded like a bad joke, a cruel thing to say, if we are to consider the pathetic state the country was in.” See a detailed analysis of the song in Maria Bebis, Translating and Analysing Songs: Three Songs in the Context of Communist Romania. Master Thesis in Translation, Interpretation and Intercultural Studies (Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma di Barcelona, 2009), 37 (Bebis 2009). 16. Mihaela Alina State, “The Vision of Death in Romanian Culture,” in The World of Bereavement: Cultural Perspectives on Death in Families, eds. Joanne Cacciatore and John DeFrain (London: Springer, 2015), 121–131(State 2015). 17. Ibid., 122. 18. Otilia Hedesan, “Bridges and Ritual Values: A Case Analysis: Brodice,” in From One Shore to Another: Reflections on The Symbolism of the Bridge, ed. Sanda Bădescu (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 144 (Hedesan 2007). 19. Ana Suciu, Consolations in E Major (Bloomington: Booktango, 2015) (Suciu 2015). 20. Bebis, Translating and Analysing Songs, 44. 21. Silviu-Radian Hariton, “Nationalism, Heroism and War Monuments in Romania 1900s–1930s,” in New Europe College Yearbook 2010–2011 (Bucharest: New Europe College,2011), 198 (Hariton 2011). 22. See for a chronology of these art events: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 210–225 (Experiment in Romanian Art, 1997). 23. Magda Cârneci, “The 80s in Romanian Art”, in Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 54 (Cârneci 1997). 24. Olivia Niṭiṣ, “Gender and the Environment in the Romanian Art Before and After 1990,” The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 8(2) (2013): 72–73 (Niṭiṣ 2013). 25. For a detailed art historical account on Ṣtefan Bertalan’s work see Ioana Pintilie, Drumuri la Răscruce (Timiṣoara: Triade, 2010) and Coriolan Babeṭi, “The Bertalan Case: The Artistic Experiment as an Exercise of Neurotic Sublimation,” in Primary Documents, A Sourcebook for Eastern European Art since the 1950s, ed. Laura J. Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl (New York: MOMA, 1999), 53–56. 26. Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, Experiment in Romanian Art, 27. 27. Niṭiṣ, “Gender and the Environment,” 72. 28. I developed this argument in my chapter entitled “Art and ‘Madness’: Weapons of the Marginal during Socialism in Eastern Europe”, in Maria-­

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Alina Asavei, Dropping out of Socialism: the Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, ed. Josie McLellan and Juliane Fürst (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 63–83 (Asavei 2016). 29. Paul Lindholdt, Explorations in Ecocriticism: Advocacy, Bioregionalism, and Visual Design (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015) (Lindholdt 2015). 30. For more on ecocriticism see Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1996) (Glotfelty and Fromm 1996); Dana Phillips, “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology,” New Literary History 30(3) (1999): 577–602 (Phillips 1999); Serenella Iovino,“Posthumanism in Literature and Ecocriticism,” Relations Beyond Anthropocentrism 4(1) (2016): 11–20 (Iovino 2016); and Michael Cohen, “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique,” Environmental History 9(1) (2004), 9–36 (Cohen 2004). 31. For a detailed account of all these issues see Hubert Zapf, Handbook of Ecocriticim and Cultural Ecology (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016). 32. Modoc, “Nature Writing in Romania”, 74. 33. Ibidem. 34. Niṭiṣ, “Gender and the Environment,” 69. 35. Idem., 76. 36. For a detailed exploration of the concept of “ecology of transfiguration” see Chryssavgis et al., Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration. 37. “Practical ecocriticism” refers to grounding the literature on ecocriticism in natural sciences (especially in evolutionary biology). For more on this position see Glen A. Love, Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology and the Environment (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2003) (Love 2003). 38. Valentin Iacob, “Pictorul Constantin Flondor: Pentru mine floarea de măr inseamna învierea,” [Painter Constantin Flondor: For me the apple’s flower means resurrection]Formula AS, 1213, 2016 (Iacob 2016). 39. Beside Prolog, Constantin Flondor was part of several artist collectives (“111”, and “Sigma Group” from Timiṣoara, Romania). With “111” he participated in 1969 at the Nüremberg Constructivist Biennale. His experimental art about nature consisted of scientific studies on nature translated into artistic formats. 40. Constantin Flondor quoted in Iacob, “Pictorul Constantin Flondor”. 41. Cârneci, “The 80s in Romanian Art”, 52. 42. Andrei Pleṣu’s text for the Catalogue of the Prolog’s Exhibition (1989) quoted in Mihaela Modoveanu, Stravezime/Prolog/Inviere, https://www. sensotv.ro/arta-plastica/eveniment-6904/stravezime-prolog-inviere/. (Pleṣu 1989).

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43. Andrei Pleṣu, “Natura ca Loc de Intâlnire” (Nature as Meeting Place), Arta 4 (1987): 11 (Pleṣu 1987). 44. Andrei Pleṣu, “Natura ca Spatiu de Aṣteptare” (Nature as Waiting Space), Arta 3 (1988): 17 (Pleṣu 1988). 45. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Suzanne Pagé and Mircea Cantor, “A Conversation with Ion Grigorescu,” Idea Artă + Societate [Idea Art + Society] 23 (2006): 58 (Obrist et al. 2006). 46. Ibidem. 47. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959). 48. Ion Cordoneanu, “Cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade’s Hermeneutics of Mioriţa: The Possibility of a Cognitive Perspective on the Sacred in Traditional Romanian Culture.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 63 (2012): 129–135. 49. Mircea Eliade,The Sacred and the Profane, 116.

Bibliography Asavei, Maria-Alina. 2016. Art and “Madness”: Weapons of the Marginal during Socialism in Eastern Europe. In Dropping out of Socialism: the Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, ed. Josie McLellan and Juliane Fürst. Lanham: Lexington Books. Ayres, Jennifer. 2017. Cultivating “Unquiet Heart”: Ecology, Education and Christian Faith. Theology Today 74 (1): 57–65. Babet ̣i, Coriolan. 1999. The Bertalan Case: The Artistic Experiment as an Exercise of Neurotic Sublimation. In Primary Documents. A Sourcebook for Eastern European Art since the 1950s, ed. Laura J.  Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl. New York: MOMA. Bebis, Maria. 2009. Translating and Analysing Songs: Three Songs in the Context of Communist Romania. Master Thesis in Translation, Interpretation and Intercultural Studies. Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma di Barcelona. Block, Tom. 2008. Prophetic Activist Art: Art Beyond Oppositionality. International Journal of the Arts in Society 3 (2): 19–25. Cârneci, Magda. 1997. The 80s in Romanian Art. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Chryssavgis, John, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. 2013. Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation. New York: Fordham University Press. Cioacă, Adrian, and Mihaela Dinu. 2010. Romanian Carpathians Landscapes and Cultures. In Landscapes and Societies: Selected Cases, ed. Peter Martini and Ward Chesworth. Dordrecht: Springer.

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Cohen, Michael. 2004. Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique. Environmental History 9 (1): 9–36. Cordoneanu, Ion. 2012. Cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade’s Hermeneutics of Mioriţa: The Possibility of a Cognitive Perspective on the Sacred in Traditional Romanian Culture. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 63: 129–135. Drăghia, Dan, Dumitru Lăcătuṣu, Alina Popescu, Caterina Preda, and Cristina Stoenescu. 2017. Ideologie, Propagandă ṣi Norme de Creatị e Artistică [Ideology, Propaganda and Artistic Norms], Original Source: ANIC, Fond UAP, file 11/1950, ff.126-129. In Uniunea Artiṣtilor Plastici din România în documente de arhivă [Union of Visual Artists in Romania in Archival Documents], eds. Dan Drăghia, Dumitru Lăcătuṣu, Alina Popescu, Caterina Preda and Cristina Stoenescu. Bucharest: Editura Universitătị i Bucureṣti. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm. 1996. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Gottlieb, Roger. 2006. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology. London: Oxford University Press. Hariton, Silviu-Radian. 2011. Nationalism, Heroism and War Monuments in Romania 1900s–1930s. In New Europe College Yearbook2010–2011. Bucharest: New Europe College. Heckscher, Jurretta Jordan. 2013. A Tradition that Never Existed. Orthodox Christianity and the Failures of Environmental History. In Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation, ed. John Chryssavgis, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. New York: Fordham University Press. Hedesan, Otilia. 2007. Bridges and Ritual Values: A Case Analysis: Brodice. In From One Shore to Another: Reflections on The Symbolism of the Bridge, ed. Sanda Bădescu. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Iacob, Valentin. 2016. Pictorul Constantin Flondor: Pentru mine floarea de măr inseamna învierea. Formula AS, 1213. Iovino, Serenella. 2016. Posthumanism in Literature and Ecocriticism. Relations Beyond Anthropocentrism 4 (1): 11–20. Lindholdt, Paul. 2015. Explorations in Ecocriticism: Advocacy, Bioregionalism, and Visual Design. Lanham: Lexington Books. Love, Glen A. 2003. Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology and the Environment. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press. Modoc, Emanuel. 2017. Nature Writing in Romania during the Post-War and Post-Communist Period. Metacritic Journal of Comparative Studies and Theory 3 (2): 73–92. Negrici, Eugen. 2016. Literatura Romana sub Comunism: 1948–1964 [Romanian Literature Under Communism: 1948–1964]. Bucureṣti: Cartea Românească.

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Niṭiṣ, Olivia. 2013. Gender and the Environment in the Romanian Art Before and After 1990. The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 8 (2): 69–86. Obrist, Hans Ulrich, Suzanne Pagé, and Mircea Cantor. 2006. A Conversation with Ion Grigorescu. Idea Artă + Societate 23: 12–23. Phillips, Dana. 1999. Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology. New Literary History 30 (3): 577–602. Pintilie, Ileana. 2010. Ștefan Bertalan. Drumuri la Răscruce. Timiṣoara: Fundat ̦ia Triade. Pleṣu, Andrei. 1987. Natura ca Loc de Intâlnire [Nature as Meeting Place]. Arta 4: 11. ———. 1988. Natura ca Spatiu de Aṣteptare [Nature as Waiting Space]. Arta 3: 17. Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. 1997. Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. State, Mihaela Alina. 2015. The Vision of Death in Romanian Culture. In The World of Bereavement: Cultural Perspectives on Death in Families, ed. Joanne Cacciatore and John DeFrain. London: Springer. Suciu, Ana. 2015. Consolations in E Major. Bloomington: Booktango. Tufnell, Ben. 2007. Land Art. London: Tate Publishing. Zapf, Hubert. 2016. Handbook of Ecocriticim and Cultural Ecology. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

CHAPTER 5

Spiritual Ecologies and Meta-Byzantine: Music During Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s Regime

5.1   Introduction This chapter focuses on the spiritual musical production in communist Romania. The composer Octavian Nemescu has created a Meta-Byzantine style, regarded by various categories of critics either as an inconvenient deviation from historical Byzantine music canons (the Byzantine purists’ critique) or as an inopportune digression from the National Communism’s cultural policy. His musical creation—developed in line with the slogan “Take down the concert halls!”—attempted to de-institutionalize musical creation as well as performance and to revive the Ur-foundations, rituals and archetypes of all musical traditions. I argue that this return to our spiritual bond to nature can be regarded as a form of prophetic activism and spiritual awakening, whereby the Meta-Byzantine style has been deployed as a discursive strategy. Octavian Nemescu elaborated on an environmental musical aesthetics along with the developments of the artistic neo-avant-garde from the visual arts. Like visual artists, musicians also created and placed their cultural productions in the middle of nature as installations charged with the vigor and heartiness of the surrounding places. These living installations were perceived as instantiations of an archetypal music which displayed a ritual-like aura. Yet, these creations do not only epitomize the synthesis of two musical cultures (Eastern and Western) or of two religious styles—traditional Romanian, local oriented and ecumenical Meta-Byzantine—but also © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_5

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politically re-evaluate the sacred. Both instances of artistic production (visual and musical) can be regarded as forms of spiritual awakening through sacred art produced during the alleged “Golden Era” of National Communism in Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania.

5.2   Neo-Byzantine Art: The Byzantine Revival Movement As convoluted as it is, the term “Byzantine Art” broadly refers to the early Christian cultural production created during the cultural and political influences of the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire (500–1450). However, we must also admit that the overwhelming majority of artistic productions by the Byzantines were created in the service of the Christian church, having the church as the main supporter and sponsor. Thus, as André Grabar posits that since the “Church was the main sponsor of Byzantine art, important changes either in the content of this faith or in its ritual would have created modifications in ecclesiastical art.”1 Art historians and cultural sociologists alike describe Byzantine art as a move away from realism and naturalism. The main characteristic of this art style is its rigor for how the Divine is represented. Thus, the power of symbolism takes precedence over the realism of representation. Byzantine artists were not supposed to be innovative or use their imagination as a way of knowing the divine, but rather “they were attracted to the works of art of their distant ancestors, and that in coping, imitating and gaining inspiration from these works they gave their own paintings and sculptures the imprint of the classical tradition.”2 The best known and the most popular form of Byzantine art is the Christian Orthodox icon (ikon in Greek). Byzantine iconography abounds in symbolism, especially in relation to the revelations of the New Testament. The most familiar icons represent Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection as well as his mother, the Virgin Mary. However, this form of Byzantine artistic production does not aim to emphasize any artistic merits or aesthetic responses from the viewers because the “Orthodox doctrine held icons to be sacred truth revealed by God. As a result of this doctrinal status, icons were much more than familiar elements of the cultural frame—they carried tremendous emotional significance for viewers fluent in their symbolic language.”3 In the same vein, Byzantine music has been perceived as the voice of God. It is a peculiar form of monophonic music that appeals to the

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believer’s ears and soul in communion with others. Byzantine music is not a private, devotional activity but rather an obligation to participate in song as part and parcel of the liturgical ceremony, “particularly in the saying aloud or chanting of hymns, responses, and psalms. The terms chorós, koinonía, and ecclesía were used synonymously in the early Church.”4Entirely vocal Byzantine liturgical music is perceived as exotic and mesmerizing by the listeners, observers and participants of the ceremonies of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Emily Laliotis describes the impact of Byzantine music on her after she visited a Greek Orthodox Church as a “greeting from the past.” She notes: “When I walk into my Greek Orthodox Church on any given Sunday service, I am greeted by the sound of the past—florid melodies backed only by the single-note drone of another chanter. The exotic sounding notes echo in the cavernous cathedral as incense lightly stings my nose. Suddenly, from out of nowhere booms an organ, plunking out a major chord for the slightly out of tune choir that begins to sing in harmony. These two types of liturgical music seem to be at complete odds with one another, and yet, each holds a significant place in the Greek Orthodox tradition.”5 Dimitri E. Conomos points out that Byzantine liturgical music emerged at the confluence of two musical traditions of the city and the desert: “In the primitive psalmody of the early Egyptian and Palestinian desert communities that arose in the 4th to 6th centuries, and in urban centres with their cathedral liturgies full of music and ceremonial.”6 From its inception, this peculiar sacred music was intimately related to the sounds and smells of nature. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, “the Byzantine” has started to be regarded as a method of Modernity.7 Maria Taroutina makes this argument clear by bringing in evidence from various disciplines and modern or contemporary artistic trends that “embraced Byzantium on a variety of formal and conceptual levels.”8 Since my chapter deals with music as a form of artistic production—in the context of political oppression where artistic modernism was forbidden—I elaborate on the meanings and purposes of the Neo-Byzantine revival in the Romanian context of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. In the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the Neo-Byzantine revival is defined as “a style incorporating certain Byzantine features.”9 Academic approaches of the “Neo-Byzantine” style usually refer to painting, architecture (religious buildings) and visual culture. This artistic dimension of the visual artifacts consists of a fusion of different artistic and religious traditions. It is not uncommon to label

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“Neo-Byzantine” those religious buildings that combine, for instance, traditional Russian Orthodox architecture with Eastern Roman stylistic features or Islamic architectural patterns with Roman art. For Byzantine purists, the Neo-Byzantine style is an inopportune deviation from historical Byzantine art. Regarding Byzantine liturgical music, the purists object to any deviation from the traditional canons on the grounds that chanters and not choirs nor instrumental tunes encapsulate the authentic Christian Orthodox faith and orthopraxy.10 However, there are views which do not see the mixture of Eastern and Western musical techniques and aesthetics as problematic and detrimental to the traditional Byzantine liturgical music. On the contrary, some studies demonstrate—based on substantiating the main claim with appropriate evidence—that “Western music acts as a religious technology that simultaneously drags Byzantine Chant to the present and attempts to preserve the past.”11

5.3   Romanian Neo-Byzantine Music For huge segments of the Romanian population, the official institutional religion—Eastern Orthodox Christianity—is intermingled with the formation of national identity.12 The Byzantine cultural legacy is firmly institutionalized in the Romanian historical canon. As part of this legacy, liturgical music (of Christian Orthodox descent) is known in Romania as sacred medieval Byzantine music. As Dimitri Conomos points out, “Byzantine music is purely vocal and exclusively monodic. Apart from the acclamations (polychronia), the texts are solely designed for the several Eastern liturgies and offices.”13 These characteristics were also prevalent in the Romanian Orthodox Christian cultural context for centuries. Some recent studies illustrate that “the sacred music of Byzantine tradition has common areas with the Romanian folklore, which is bound by its monodic nature, origin and living space, as well as by the similarity of modal, rhythmic and architectonic solutions.”14 Correspondingly, two types of religious music have been recorded on Romanian territory: the music of the church and monasteries, which circulated as records in religious manuscripts, and folkloric, rural music transmitted orally.15 In both cases, the repertory of songs is “remarkably free from the influence of art music.”16 The Romanian Orthodox Church’s officialdom strappingly rejected any attempt of “harmonizing the liturgical archaic melodies, arguing that it could lead to an impure style and that these melodies couldn’t and shouldn’t be transcribed in the European notation.”17 Although in other

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Western European countries, many composers had already taken inspiration from liturgical Orthodox music for their instrumental musical production, this development emerged with less frequency in the case of Romania. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Byzantine melos started to be employed by the Romanian composers in their choir music. As the musicologist Bianca Țiplea Temeş argues, this incorporation of Byzantine tunes in modern choral music did not deflect attention from Byzantine music’s purely vocal core. In other words, this development was not seen as a deviation from traditional Byzantine music. In her study dedicated to the musical and iconographic decoding of a well-known Christmas Oratorio composed by Paul Constantinescu, she notes that “Paul Constantinescu has been acknowledged as the first Romanian composer who challenged the Byzantine melodic heritage by transferring it to the complex universe of the symphony orchestra.”18 Paul Constantinescu (1909–1963) modernized the Byzantine chant and integrated it into the tonal harmony. In both of his oratorios—the Easter Byzantine Oratorio (1946) and the Christmas Byzantine Oratorio (1949)—Constantinescu achieved a “synthesis between the autochthonous Byzantine melodic heritage with its modal style on one hand, and the vocal symphonic genre and the tonal harmony of the western musical tradition on the other.”19

5.4   Byzantine Music and the Folk-Inspired Romanian Communist Nationalism During the era of Romanian communism (1948–1989), the disdain and censorship of sacred music was one among other infringements of religious freedom. Soon after the imposed abdication of the last king of Romania (Michael I), the Academy of Religious Music and Dramatic Art was closed down.20 The communist party attempted to censor all musical pieces that had religious titles. Musicologists were also precautious and self-censored those scholarly analyses of Byzantine music, avoiding religious vocabulary at all costs. Accordingly, the musicological studies written during the communist era circumvented religious terminology such as “Virgin Mary,” “Jesus Christ,” “Holy Spirit” and the like. By the same token, Romanian musicologists were expected to use the formula

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“Byzantine music,” “Medieval music” or “Gregorian music” instead of “religious Orthodox music” or “ecclesiastic music.”21 Paradoxically, according to recent musicological research, the communist crusade against sacred music “obstructed the transmission of Byzantine chant and imperiled its survival in the Romanian Orthodox Church, an institution which, in comparison with other denominations, enjoyed a certain degree of tolerance from the part of the regime, although the price for this was obedience to the Party and vocal approval of its policies.”22 Nicolae Ceauşescu orchestrated a systematic campaign against religion. During his rule as the General Secretary of the Communist Party (1965–1989) and as the President of Romania (1974–1989), he launched an anti-religious campaign and demolished more than 60 Orthodox Churches and monasteries. This de-churching politics was on the rise mostly after 1977. Previously in 1968, “Ceauşescu acknowledged the role the Orthodox Church had in the development of modern Romania, and in April 1972, he allowed his father’s funeral to be conducted according to Orthodox ritual and be broadcast live on national radio.”23 Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu argue that from 1965 to 1977, Ceauşescu softened his anti-religious campaign and even financially supported the restoration of those monasteries and churches of historical and cultural value. However, the rehabilitation of the previously imprisoned priests and monks along with the restoration of those churches considered part of Romania’s cultural heritage were backed to actually strengthen Ceauşescu’s “position domestically by appealing to nationalism, which the church considered its turf.”24 All these cultural-political developments, both the teaching and transmission of the traditional monodic chant in the Romanian Orthodox Church’s environments was severely limited to only few chanters who kept singing it in a few monasteries. However, this practice was not the rule but rather the exception. The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church also contributed to this dramatic decrease in traditional monodic liturgical musical practice by passing—since June 1952—a decision according to which all Holy Liturgies throughout Romania should adhere to “the ‘joint chanting’ of the members of both the clergy and the congregation i.e. of every participant in the religious services and above all due to the institutional promotion by the local Orthodox Church of a single, reduced, and simplified repertoire, a process known as uniformisation of church music.”25 This unprecedented decision was supposed to “unify” all Romanian believers from across the country. While communists bulldozed

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churches and monasteries, musicological research on Byzantine music was state supported and reinvigorated on the grounds that this is part and parcel of old Romanian cultural heritage and linked with the masses and their aspirations.26 Contemporary Romanian musicologists reveal that the research into archaic Romanian folk music and Byzantine music prevailed during communism as a result of Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s ambition to foster a culture where “national specificity” triumphs.27 As Nicolae Gheorghit ̦ă pointed out “In an atheist society, such as the communist one, all forms of the sacred were anathematized and fiercely sanctioned. Nevertheless, despite these ideological barriers, important articles and volumes of Byzantine—and sometimes Gregorian—musicological research were published in totalitarian Romania. Numerous Romanian scholars participated at international congresses and symposia, thus benefiting of scholarships and research stages not only in the socialist states, but also in places regarded as ‘affected by viruses,’ such as the USA or the libraries on Mount Athos (Greece).”28

5.5   Meta-Byzantine Style as a Discursive Strategy for Spiritual Awakening As Will Apel notes, “The development of art music in Romania is relatively recent.”29 To a large extent, many compositions from the twentieth century embraced a nationalist style influenced by Romanian folk music. The avoidance of Western art music is also the norm in sacred music. Romanian sacred music relies on the “correspondence between the liturgical and the folklore music in the four states or idioms of the Byzantine melos: recitative, irmologic, stichiraric or papadic, and the musical expression which lies between declamation and singing can also be met in the case of the aforementioned genres.”30 Western musicologists underline that religious music of Romania was “gloomily Byzantine until it began to incorporate local folk styles.”31 Since Paul Constantinescu’s Neo-Byzantine music was more mystical than nationalistic in its nature, his oratorios were rarely performed during Ceauşescu’s rule. The Romanian communist cultural ideologues also despised artistic modernism on the grounds that musicians were expected to create music for the masses (for proletarians) and not for those who were trained to understand and appreciate the aesthetics of modernism. The Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists promoted

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exclusively traditional Romanian folk music, prioritizing those native compositions which addressed as many people as possible (here including Romanian peasants).32 Paul Constantinescu’s Byzantine oratorios were not easy “accessible” for the masses because they were “a synthesis between the structure of J. S. Bach’s passions and the content of the Romanian orthodox liturgy, between the autochthonous Byzantine melodic heritage with its modal style on one hand and the vocal-symphonic genre and the tonal harmony of the Western musical tradition on the other.”33 Perhaps the most difficult part to stomach for the communist authorities was the Western musical influences and their potential for the alienation of the masses and a distraction from the party’s rhetoric. Accordingly, the president of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania, Matei Socor, posited that “Western music was ‘undergoing a process of decadence,; that Paul Hindemith promoted mysticism, and that Olivier Messiaen composed music ‘expressing the end of the world,’ in other words music that was pessimistic and consequently formalist and at odds with the mobilizing and optimistic spirit of socialist realism.”34 Against this backdrop, the neo-avant-garde composer Octavian Nemescu (born in 1940 in North-East Romania) created a sacred music of experimental descent in opposition to the folkloric (national) repertoires. He wrote chamber, choral, electro-acoustic, meta- and imaginary music which was grounded in “collective & individual rituals that require not only hearing but also the other senses: visual, olfactive, gustatory and tactile. The timing of these rituals starts from seconds and evolves to minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, decades and centuries.”35 Together with Lucian Meţianu and Corneliu Cezar, Octavian Nemescu founded a so-­ called resistance group of musicians. They called their artist collective OCL—Octav/Cornel/Lucian—and their main agenda was to resist the main enemy of music represented by “backward people that exclusively cultivated folklorism and ran the Composers Union.”36 As Octavian Nemescu explains, the OCL was formed by students who used to make a pseudo-official music for the exams—just to pass—while they were following other aesthetic and political trends in their private life. In the composer’s own words, “Sometimes there were scandals at the exams, and we were getting threats that we would get kicked out and sent to labor work. That was the ultimate sanction.”37 The songs of communist Romania—inspired by the folk ethos—often referred to natural landscapes and simple rural lifestyles in communion

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with God. Bart Plantenga argues that most of these shepherd-harvesting songs have an incantatory feature: “The songs of remnants of a time when people still (rightly) believed that music influenced nature (herds, crops). They include periodic insertions of high-pitched yelps and yodel-like calls performed by one or two soloists.”38 However, all of this folkloric tradition was gradually engineered by the communist party to serve its imposed national mass culture (artisan’s culture). Octavian Nemescu’s philosophy and practice of music circumvented this compulsory nationalist return to origins and folk ethos, prioritizing instead the revitalization of the primordial origins of humankind whose traces can be noticed in all musical traditions. At the same time, although his musical creations formally embraced the Western neo-avant-garde, they did not attempt to oppose musical traditions by instantiating completely innovative musical forms but rather to revive the concept of archetype through artistic-mystical creation. As the composer posits, he was interested in spiritual recoveries through music, especially regarding the recuperation of “incipit (seen as an archetype of the beginning) and of the phinalis (as archetype of the end of time). This was seen as a reaction to the music without start and ending.”39 Other spiritual recoveries included the different hypostases as Ascensio and Descensio (Nemescu calls these ascendant and descendent vertical lines “energetic archetypal stairs”), the vital pulse (called by Octavian Nemescu “the iambic energetic pulse”) or the Trinity (“the major triad”) and “the primordial murmur”. His philosophy of music met with the enthusiasm of the neo-avant-­ garde contemporary artists from the visual sphere. Perhaps the most expressive instance of this encountering is represented by the composer’s collaboration with the visual artist Wanda Mihuleac (born 1946). Both of them shared a set of environmental and spiritual concerns, which gave birth to several ecological art installations in the 1960s. Wanda Mihuleac created ecological art under communist Romania that was inspired by the Land Art (Environmental Art) movements born in the United States and Great Britain in the 1950s. In line with these trends from contemporary art, she conceived and developed (out of natural materials) structures and living artifacts whose existence was supposed to integrate them into the natural landscape. The sculpture-like artifacts’ construction relied on the object’s expansion towards the environment. In this way, the artwork incorporated the natural environment while the natural environment incorporated the art. Yet, as Istvan Eröss convincingly argues “Eastern

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European artists can be described by the creative behavior of the ‘little gesture’ (Ulrich Bischoff ) that does not cause a fundamental change in the environment, it only comments and interprets it providing an opportunity for us to see it from a different perspective. This can be explained, in addition to the limited financial means and the lack of gallery networks, by the suffocating political atmosphere and the escape from the official culture politics” (Fig. 5.1).40 Wanda Mihuleac invited Octavian Nemescu to co-author an environmental art installation by Plumbuita Lake in Bucharest with his music. The installation consisted of a site-specific and ephemeral massive spiral whose trace is currently only photographically recorded on one of Octavian Nemescu’s vinyl LPs titled Gradeatia/Natural (engineered at the Electrecord studios in Bucharest, 1982). Both Nemescu and Mihuleac conceived of this Spiral as the epitome of an authentic connection between human beings and nature. Unlike the folkloric, state forged relationship between Romanians and the natural environment (which according to the propaganda machine of the moment was the most picturesque in the whole world), this artistic collaboration demonstrates that the authentic link between nature and human beings transcends geographical, national and cultural barriers. Unlike other typical art installations displayed in interior spaces, the three dimensional Spiral has been placed outside the traditional exhibition spaces in the natural environment by Plumbuita Lake in 1965. This art installation had been conceived as an interactive spiritual environment, which is where Octavian Nemescu’s music came in.41 The composer created ambient electro-acoustic music with noises from nature (including cricket sounds). At the same time, a violinist was performing inside the spiral. He recalls that they used to say, “Take down the concert halls!’ We were very radical, ‘Take down the institutionalized art galleries and museums!’ all of these barracks that came with Renaissance, and return to ancient rituals where magic was most important.”42 This visual and musical revival of old mystical practices combined with neo-avant-garde ecological art in public spaces has been acclaimed by numerous public groups formed by philosophers, mathematicians, artists, engineers and writers. In a 2016 interview, Octavian Nemescu points out that in spite of the politically dark cultural atmosphere, the public of their installation piece came to attend it in large numbers. Supposedly, several buses were packed with people who came to attend the installation.

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Fig. 5.1  Octavian Nemescu, Portrait (1980). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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Not surprisingly, the members of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania were not very open to embracing this kind of avant-garde music with peculiar mystical influences. As Octavian Nemescu remembers, “They hated these approaches. We were calling them ‘peasants,’ they were only interested in music of folklore. We had many obstacles.”43 Unlike the Byzantine music of folklore inspiration accessible to the masses irrespective of their eagerness to engage with it, Nemescu’s sacred music had a formative dimension developed in a “non-spectacular, ritualistic atmosphere (addressing it only to people ready, prepared spiritually to receive some messages), as a chance to reinvigorate the old mysteries and as a modality from awakening from the biological, mental and spiritual sleep.”44 Octavian Nemescu’s musical renderings tend to transfigure the Byzantine chant up to the point that it transcends any similarities with the canonic chants. The most persuasive example in this respect is his Metabizantinirikon for Saxophone and Magnetic Tape (soprano saxophone, clarinet, tenor saxophone alto saxophone, viola, violin and fixed media) written in the darkest of communist times in 1984. The musical pieces were described as “spectacular, intimate pieces for practicing in a period of nine months.”45Although Octavian Nemescu was a disciple of Paul Constantinescu, he initiated an innovative approach of the Byzantine melos. By adhering to neo-avant-garde experimental music, his Meta-­ Byzantine eclectic style intentionally distorted melodic linearity in an attempt to convalesce the universal archetypes obliterated by both political and institutionalized religious canons. With Metabizantinirikon for Saxophone and Magnetic Tape, “two melodies of Byzantine essence are being born, sound by sound, in the high and low register of the magnetic tape, on the static electronical background of the crickets and birds’ noise and in a quasi-folkloric spirit.”46 However, this meta-polyphony does not appeal to local folk styles by invoking the picturesque features of “Romania’s natural beauty” but rather aims to create a meta-language where the insects’ noise (murmur) reveals the mystery of origins that do not correspond to a geographical and cultural location. The melodic linearity is transcended by uninterrupted background murmurs unifying world spiritualities in an ecumenical, meta-stylistic polyphony. Thus, Metabizantinirikon attempts to revive archetypal models of time and duration by overlapping linear time, horizontal time and circular time. These temporal renderings are understood as ritualistic enterprises

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envisaged through a “multidirectional musical speech from the temporal perspective… or the poly-temporality: the synthesis of the linear time, continuous or non-continuous, with the circular one closed or open in a spiral, and with the non-temporality.”47 For Metabizantinirikon, the archetype of circular time is displayed in three graphic variations of the score, the egg, the snail and the seashell, whereas the archetype of the horizontal time is rendered as cricket and bird sounds.48 Visually and spatially, “The pages of the score can be arranged by the performer in the form of a cross, symbolizing the polyphony of different times and an ascending ladder, a symbol of the whole world, beyond the space-time particularities, unifying all the spiritualities in a transcultural level of the unique and absolute transcendental conscience” (Fig. 5.2).49 In 2017, Octavian Nemescu elaborated on his own interpretation of the cross-like graphic variations of the score of Metabizantinirikon. He claims that his score has the form of the human body where stratum A (the lowest part of the score) refers to the naturalness and visceral instincts, stratum B addresses the cultural area of the human body where the lungs, heart and arms are located, and stratum C (the upper part of the score) “stands for the transcultural and post-performance approach to, and practice of, this opus.”50 Each stratum displays melodic lines meant to occasion appropriate feelings, emotions and vibrations. Correspondingly, the lowest part of the score (stratum A) generates natural impulses of fight or flight. The middle stratum displays the archetypal times of the egg, the snail, and the seashell, as well as the cultural emotions of encountering these symbols. Finally, the upper part of the score occasions synaesthetic effects in the sense that the senses of the listener are joined. According to the Romanian composer, the visual, olfactory, auditory and gustative senses are translated into the imaginary music of the Metabizantinirikon. The concept of “imaginary music” is of the utmost importance in Octavian Nemescu’s musical renderings of the sacred. This is not so startling. As we know, the human being knows the world through imagination. As the analytical philosophers of mind Amy Kind and Peter Kung argue, imagination “is put to two different and seemingly incompatible kinds of uses,” namely the instructive use and transcendental use. The instructive use refers to imagination’s competence “to enable us to learn about the world as it is.” The transcendental use of imagination is that faculty of knowledge which allows us to supersede this world through daydreaming and pretending.51 Both forms of imagination are forms of knowledge production and depositaries of these epistemic resources. Yet,

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Fig. 5.2  Octavian Nemescu’s three graphic variations of the score for Metabizantinirikon (2017). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

the instructive imagination has an ethical dimension which might be employed not only in knowing the world as it is but also to envision the world as a healthier, bearable and liveable place. This prophetic dimension of instructive imagination has a considerable weight in Octavian Nemescu’s spiritual music. As Miron Ghiu argues, “When defining ‘meta music’ or ‘imaginary music,’ Nemescu is an advocate of looking from above, from the top of the mountain. Imaginary music is like an inner song, reverberation of music within the performer that also becomes his own composer, his own producer for an intimate music.”52

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Thus, Metabizantinirikon was not supposed to be performed for the Orthodox Church’s Liturgy nor for music halls to aesthetically please the connoisseur listener. As the composer posits, “Those who have played or listened to this work in its performed variant or its CD recording, and who wish or need to practice certain fragments in order to improve their own being, a purpose that thus transcends the mere ‘aesthetic reason’ of music, have the possibility of gradually reaching the upper spheres and circles of area C, in their ascending vertical order.”53 This illustrates the refusal of art for art’s sake in Octavian Nemescu’s Metabizantinirikon and his incessant focus on individual practice and imaginative listening as a matter of interiority and spiritual awakening along with an alleviation from political, moral and ecological catastrophes. All his musical creations start from a spiritual, cosmological premise and “involve synthesizers and samples from nature.”54 At the same time, nature is never only “natural” for the Romanian contemporary composer. His musical work does not only refer to “the aesthetic, recreational or hygienic values attributed to nature, but also to a confused and almost indefinable feeling , in which, however, it is possible to recognize the memory of a debased religious experience.”55 The ways in which Octavian Nemescu’s music from Metabizantinirikon enhances our spiritual bond to nature has been interpreted through the lens of Mircea Eliade’s theory of “cosmic Christianity.”56 According to the Romanian historian of religions, “cosmic Christianity” refers to a spiritual phenomenon specific to South-­ East European countries, loosely called “the Balkans.” In this geographical and cultural area, the Christological mystery of death and resurrection of Jesus is “projected over the entire nature, with emphasis on the liturgical dimension of human existence in the world.”57 Joseph Muthuraj also claims that Christianity is understood in a cosmic dimension in Mircea Eliade’s work because the human being is longing for its reunion with God and with “a Nature sanctified by the presence of Jesus… This nostalgia has social and political dimensions, as it is for the restoration of Nature from wars, devastations and conquest.”58 Octavian Nemescu aims to reconnect these spiritual energies among human beings, the cosmos and nature through a meta-style of music (the so-called Meta-­ Byzantine). Like Mircea Eliade’s “Cosmic Christianity,” Octavian Nemescu’s Christian (Byzantine) foundation of his music refers to a tradition of revealing the sacred and mystery of existence through nature rather than through the ecclesiastic representations of God in the canonical Eastern Orthodox manner. This philosophy of religion is also embraced

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by visual artists Alexandru Chira and Gheorghe Ilea, who moved in the 1980s to the countryside to practice traditional agriculture as a form of art. This artistic practice interprets “the courtyard of the farm as ‘the church of remembrance’ whose priests are the farmers, the actual artists of nature.”59 By the same token, inspired by the murmur of nature, Octavian Nemescu cultivates certain patience for details in his work. At the same time, his creations cannot be performed just anytime or anywhere. On the contrary, as the artist claims his “electronic works are conceived for certain times and places. Natural-Cultural must be played at dawn on the top of a mountain, necessarily there. Sonathur is destined to be heard in a garden with trees in bloom at sunset. Another work of mine, called Finalpha, must be played before a storm, on windy, cloudy weather. Still pursuing this preoccupation, I have recently completed The Cycle of the Music of

Fig. 5.3  Octavian Nemescu, Score for Non-Symphony. (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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the Hours, works composed for each of the twenty-four hours of the day” (Fig. 5.3).60 We have to keep in mind that Metabizantinirikon was composed during a period described as “scarce in prophecies.”61 Moreover, the Meta-­ Byzantine style of the Metabizantinirikon attracted a considerable wave of critique, both from the Byzantine purists or ecclesiastical judges and from the communist cultural ideologues who regarded it as an inopportune digression from National Communism’s cultural policy. The Byzantine purists imputed to Meta-Byzantine style that it disseminates “a view from above” upon the acoustic Byzantine space. This inconvenient deviation from the historical Byzantine chant canons was not regarded well. Yet, I argue that what the Meta-Byzantine style attempted to illuminate was not a way of opposing the communist cultural policy imposed on musical production but rather a different form of activism, a prophetic one. Although created during the artistic (neo)-avant-garde decades of the 1960s and the 1970s, Octavian Nemescu’s music is not an oppositional type of activist art which polarizes into “us” and “them” or “friends/ allies” and “enemies” categories. As the proponent of this concept and modus operandi argues, prophetic activist art refers to those creations based on medieval prophecies about “the greatest human ideals—truth, justice, peace—and against ignorance, war and abuse.”62 Thus, Octavian Nemescu’s Meta-Byzantine style is not necessarily about taking sides for or against ecclesiastic institutions or political parties’ canons. The composer militates and develops a conception of an activist prophecy that follows “the new paradigm demanded that he or she propose concrete steps to help remake the society in the moral, caring image of a spiritually conscious world.”63 To enhance the caring model of a spiritually awakened world, the oppositional models of activist art would not help because these paradigms only solidify people into “friend” and “enemy” positions. Instead, the new paradigm of prophetic activist art I propose to interpret Octavian Nemescu’s music through provides the spiritual energy to overcome dichotomies and oppositionality in light of more universal human values. As Tom Block argues, “Medieval prophets such as Moses Maimonides, a Jew, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, Muslim and St. Francis of Assisi, a Christian all believed in an activist prophecy, in which a socio-political role was demanded of the prophet, instead of their simply providing societal oversight.”64 Yet, these activist prophecies shall not be understood as “defeating hegemony” by means of symbolic violence.

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On the contrary, an activist prophecy shall work towards beauty, truth and good. Beauty of the spiritual communion between the human being and nature is by no means an aesthetically pure beauty (pulchritude vaga in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical vocabulary) whose judgment is grounded in the perceivers’ aesthetic pleasure alone, apart from any concept or function that the piece might perform. The Metabizantinirikon— as well as other compositions created by Octavian Nemescu—do not occasion aesthetic, free judgments of taste in listeners because their beauty is not pure but dependent on its prophetic activist function.65 This way of understanding beauty in Octavian Nemescu’s music takes us back to the pre-aesthetic era (before the eighteenth century), when the extrication between function and beauty had been inconceivable. Listening to music for pleasure is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the aesthetic era, music had been performed in various contexts (festivities, religious rituals, battles) to serve a variety of functions. Outside of these contexts, little attention had been given to listening to music purely for beauty or disinterested pleasure. Although the early stage of Octavian Nemescu’s musical career was marked by an opposition style of cultural resistance to political power— the OCL group—his later works could be interpreted as a form of prophetic activism and spiritual awakening towards the enhancement of humanity’s bond to nature, where nature is understood as a materialization of the spiritual in our lives. Octavian Nemescu’s music is artistically dependent on its prophetic activist functions. Thus, it can be argued that through this Meta-Byzantine musical style we can picture nature and humanity in action. This concatenation fostered ecologies of affect where a nostalgia for a nature sanctified by the sacred prevailed.66 In a prophetic activist register, this ecology of affect encourages the projection of imaginary futures and places, as well as non-places where life is bearable and livable. By simultaneously reviving the Ur-foundations, rituals and archetypes which ground the spiritual foundations of humanity, the Meta-­ Byzantine music composed by Octavian Nemescu can also be understood as a form of spiritual ecology. The visual correspondence of Octavian Nemescu’s music rendered in Wanda Mihuleac’s conceptual, ecological art installations from the 1960 illuminates the privileged moment when human beings understands that nature is not only “natural” but a transfigurated presence of God. This ecology of transfiguration still marks Octavian Nemescu’s musical creations after the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. His art employs spiritual coping strategies

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which sustain the restoration of humanity’s highest values and ideals from totalitarianism, devastations, metaphysical lonesomeness and the social, political, economic and epistemic injustices of a never ending transition period to democracy and capitalism. His prophetic activism of musical descent is at the same time a form of cultural memory and nostalgia for a primordial religious experience camouflaged by cultural formats and natural sounds.

Notes 1. André Grabar, The Art of the Byzantine Empire (New York: Graystone Press, 1967): 28 (Grabar 1967). 2. Ibid., 78. 3. Gloria Calhoun, Saints into Soviets: Russian Orthodox Symbolism and Soviet Political Posters. Master of Arts Thesis (College of Arts and Sciences: Georgia State University, 2014): 41. www.scholarworks.gsu.edu. Available at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&co ntext=history_theses. (07 February 2020) (Calhoun 2014). 4. Dimitri E. Conomos, A Brief Survey of the History of Byzantine and Neo-­ Byzantine Chant https://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/. Available at: https://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/History.htm. (20 February 2019) (Conomos). 5. Emily Lalitos, “Becoming Byzantine: Modernization and Tradition in the Liturgical Music of the Greek Orthodox Church, Relics”, Remnants, and Religion: An Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies 3(1) (2018): 1–36 (Lalitos 2018). 6. Conomos, “A Brief Survey”. 7. For more on this approach see Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as a Method in Modernity, eds. Roland Betancourt and Maria Taroutina (Leiden: Brill, 2015) (Betancourt and Taroutina 2015). 8. Betancourt and Taroutina, Byzantium/Modernism, XI. 9. Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Available at: http://www.oxfordr efer ence.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100228165 (12 February 2020). 10. The concept of orthopraxy refers to the way of conduct (practice) of a religious behavior. 11. Emily Lalitos unpacks this argument by providing evidence of how the modernization of traditional Byzantine liturgical music in the United States Orthodox Churches actually preserved the past. For more supporting evidence, see Emily Lalitos, “Becoming Byzantine”, 3.

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12. For an all encompassing exploration of the link between religion and national identity formation in Romania, see Gavril Flora, Georgina Szilagyi and Victor Roudometof, “Religion and National Identity in ­Post-­Communist Romania,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7(1) (2005): 35–55 (Flora et al. 2005). 13. Conomos, “A Brief Survey”. 14. Mădălina Dana Rucsanda and Maria Cristina Bostan, The Sacred Music from the Byzantine Tradition and the Romanian Folklore (n.a), http:// www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2011/Brasov2/MCBANTA/ MCBANTA-38.pdf (Rucsanda and Bostanna) (12 February 2020). 15. Ibidem. 16. Will Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music (Massachusetts: The Belknap of Harvard University Press, 1969), 743 (Apel 1969). 17. Anamaria Mădălina Hotoran, “The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation and its Relevance for the Romanian Composers of the twentieth Century,” in The Psaltic Art as an Autonomous Science (Proceedings of the 1st International Interdisciplinary Musicological Conference 29 June‑3 July 2014, Volos, Greece), eds. Konstantinos Charil. Karagounis and Georgios Kouroupetroglou (Department of Psaltic Art and Musicology: Academy for Theological Studies of Volos, 2015), 239. www.researchgate.net. Available at: http://speech.di.uoa.gr/IMC2014/ pdffull/241-251.pdf. (07 February 2020) (Hotoran 2015). 18. Bianca Țiplea Temeş, “The Annunciation in Paul Constantinescu’s Christmas Oratorio: Musical and Iconographic Decoding”, Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai, Musica 55(1) (2010): 166. (Temeş 2010) 19. Hotoran, “The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation,” 239. 20. King Michael was forced to abdicate on 30 December 1947 and the Academy of Religious Music and Dramatic Art was forced to cease functioning in August 1948. The newly instituted communist power aimed at implementing the Stalinist reform in education. Part of this reform— imposed by the decree 173/3—was to purge the religious references from Romanian communist culture and education. 21. For more considerations on this issue see Nicolae Gheorghiţă, “Musicological Research on Byzantine Music during Romanian Totalitarianism,” Revista Muzica (7) (2015b): 55 (Gheorghiţă 2015b). 22. Nicolae Gheorghiţă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant? Research on Byzantine Musicology in Totalitarian Romania,” Studia Musicologica 56(4) (2015a): 328 (Gheorghiţă 2015a).

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23. Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-­Communist Romania (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 24 (Stan and Turcescu 2007). 24. Ibidem. 25. Nicolae Gheorghiţă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant?,” 328. 26. Ibidem. 27. Ibidem. 28. Ibidem. 29. Will Apel claims that “although some Western influence was noticeable in the second half of the eighteenth-century, it was not until de end of Turkish rule (1822) that German and Italian music became influential.” Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music, 744. 30. Mădălina Dana Rucsanda and Maria Cristina Bostan, “The Sacred Music from the Byzantine Tradition”. 31. Bart Plantega, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling around the World (New York: Routledge, 2004), 120 (Plantega 2004). 32. Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania is a professional association of musicians of Romanian descent. This association was founded in 1920. Its main purpose was to support and popularize Romanian music. 33. Hotoran, “The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation,” 240. 34. Octavian Lazar-Cosma quoted in Nicolae Gheorghiţă, “Nationalism through Sacred Chant?,” 329. 35. Octavian Nemescu’s website. Available at: http://www.nemescu.ro/en/ biografie.php (13 February 2020). 36. Miron Ghiu, “A Short Journey through Imaginary Music with Octavian Nemescu,” Revista Arta, 30 September 2015. Available at: http:// revistaarta.ro/en/column/a-short-journey-through-imaginary-musicwith-octavian-nemescu/ (13 February 2020) (Ghiu 2015). 37. Laura Marin’s interview with Octavian Nemescu in the cultural magazine The Attic—“Octavian Nemescu on Romanian Avant-Garde Music,” 22 November 2017. Available at: http://the-attic.net/features/2174/octavian-nemescu-on-romanian-avant_garde-music.html (20 February 2020) (Marin 2017). 38. Plantega, “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo”, 120. 39. Octavian Nemescu’s website. Available at: http://www.nemescu.ro/en/ biografie.php (13 February 2020). 40. Istvan Eröss, “Rediscovering Nature in Eastern European Art”, Internationaler Waldkunstpfad, 2012. Available at: http://2012.waldkunst.com/redner/istvan-eroess (20 February 2020) (Eröss 2012).

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41. According to artistic theoretical definitions, an “art installation” is a threedimensional, mixed-media, site specific construction. Its main purpose is to transform the viewer’s perception of space. It is often designed for interior space. Unlike other typical art installations, Wanda Mihuleac’s ecological installations have usually been displayed in the nature. 42. Miron Ghiu, “A Short Journey through Imaginary Music with Octavian Nemescu”. 43. Laura Marin, “Octavian Nemescu on Romanian Avant-Garde Music.” 44. Octavian Nemescu’s website. Available at: http://www.nemescu.ro/en/ biografie.php (20 February 2020). 45. The Living Composers Project: Octavian Nemescu. Available at: http:// www.composers21.com/compdocs/nemescuo.htm (27 December 2019). 46. Hotoran, “The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation,” 247. 47. Octavian Nemescu’s website. Available at: http://www.nemescu.ro/en/ biografie.php (13 February 2020). 48. All the scores for Metabizantinirikon can be consulted on the composers’ personal website at: http://www.nemescu.ro/en/partituri.php (13 February 2020). 49. Irinel Anghel, quoted in Hotoran, “The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation,” 248. 50. Octavian Nemescu, “Metabizaninirikon (1984): Practicing Music at Transcultural Altitude,” Revista Muzica8 (2017): 32. 51. Amy Kind and Peter Kung, Knowledge through Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) (Kind and Kung 2016). 52. Miron Ghiu, “A Short Journey through Imaginary Music with Octavian Nemescu”. 53. Octavian Nemescu, “Metabizaninirikon (1984)”, 32. 54. Miron Ghiu, “A Short Journey through Imaginary Music with Octavian Nemescu”. 55. Mircea Eliade, “Chapter 3. The Sacredness of Nature and Cosmic Religion”, in Mircea Eliade, “The Sacred and the Profane.” Available at: https://www.hermetik-international.com/en/media-library/rosicrucianism/mircaeda-eliade-sacred-profane/03-chapter-3-sacredness-nature-cosmic-religion/ (13 February 2020) (Eliade). 56. Mircea Eliade developed his theory about what he calls “cosmic Christianity” in Aspects du Mythe [The Aspects of Myth] (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) (Eliade 1963). 57. Ion Cordoneanu, “Cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade’s Hermeneutics of Mioriţa: The Possibility of a Cognitive Perspective on the Sacred in Traditional Romanian Culture,” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 63 (2012): 129 (Cordoneanu 2012).

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58. Joseph G.  Muthuraj, “The Significance of Mircea Eliade for Christian Theology,” in The International Eliade, ed. Brian S. Rennie (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 76 (Muthuraj 2007). 59. Istvan Eröss, “Rediscovering Nature in Eastern European Art”. 60. Andra Frăti̧ lă, “Interview with Octavian Nemescu.” RevistaMuzica 1/2016: 3–21. http://www.ucmr.org.ro/. Available at: http://www. ucmr.org.ro/Texte/RV-1-2016-1-Interviuri-AFratila.pdf (08 February 2020) (Frăti̧ lă 2016). 61. Miron Ghiu, “A Short Journey through Imaginary Music with Octavian Nemescu.” 62. Tom Block, “Prophetic Activist Art: Activism beyond Oppositionality,” The International Journal of the Arts in Society 3(2) (2008): 19–25. 63. Ibidem. 64. Ibidem. 65. To substantiate my claim that Octavian Nemescu’s spiritual music created during Ceauşescu’s regime was directed toward a universal functional beauty—understood in the light of the new paradigm of socially engaged prophetic activism—I draw on the Kantian philosophical distinction between free beauty (pulchritude vaga) and dependent beauty (pulchritude adhaerens). In his third Critique—The Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S.  Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987)—Immanuel Kant argues that dependent beauty (beauty of art) is beauty with a certain function. Unlike the formalist theories of art—which misinterpret Kant’s aesthetic theory for philosophically grounding the idea that art (and beauty) has to be appreciated for its own sake—Kant does not see beauty and function in art as mutually exclusive. I have developed at large this argument in MariaAlina Asavei, “Beauty and Critical Art: Is Beauty at Odds with CriticalPolitical Engagement?,” Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 7(1) (2015), https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v7.27720. 66. According to Environmental Humanities, ecologies of affect—including nostalgia, memory, hope, and desire—have a vital role in forming the identity of places (especially imaginary and ideal places). For more on ecologies of affect see Tonya K. Davidson, Ondine Park, and Rob Shields, Ecologies of Affect: Placing Nostalgia, Desire and Hope (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011).

References Apel, Will. 1969. Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap of Harvard University Press. Asavei, Maria-Alina. 2015. Beauty and Critical Art: Is Beauty at Odds with Critical-­ Political Engagement? Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 7 (1): 1–15. https:// doi.org/10.3402/jac.v7.27720.

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Betancourt, Roland, and Maria Taroutina. 2015. Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as a Method in Modernity. Leiden: Brill. Block, Tom. 2008. Prophetic Activist Art: Activism beyond Oppositionality. The International Journal of the Arts in Society 3 (2): 19–25. Calhoun, Gloria. 2014. Saints into Soviets: Russian Orthodox Symbolism and Soviet Political Posters. Master of Arts Thesis, College of Arts and Sciences: Georgia State University. www.scholarworks.gsu.edu. Accessed 7 February 2020. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=hi story_theses. Conomos, Dimitri. 2010. A Brief Survey of the History of Byzantine and Neo-­ Byzantine Chant. https://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/. Accessed 20 February 2019. https://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/History.htm. Cordoneanu, Ion. 2012. Cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade’s Hermeneutics of Mioriţa: The Possibility of a Cognitive Perspective on the Sacred in Traditional Romanian Culture. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 63: 129–135. Crotty, Joel. 2007. A Preliminary Investigation of Music, Socialist Realism, and the Romanian Experience 1948–1959: (Re)-Reading, (Re)-Listening and (Re)-Writing Music History for a Different Audience. Journal of Musicological Research 26 (1–2): 151–176. Davidson, Tonya, Ondine Park, and Rob Shields. 2011. Ecologies of Affect: Placing Nostalgia, Desire and Hope. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1963. Aspects du Mythe [Aspects of Myth]. Paris: Gallimard. Eröss, Istvan. 2012. Rediscovering Nature in Eastern European Art. Internationaler Waldkunstpfad. https://2012.waldkunst.com/. Accessed 9 January 2020. http://2012.waldkunst.com/redner/istvan-eroess. Flora, Gavril, Georgina Szilagyi, and Victor Roudometof. 2005. Religion and National Identity in Post-Communist Romania. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7 (1): 35–55. Frăti̧ lă, Andra. 2016. Interview with Octavian Nemescu. Revista Muzica 1: 3–21. http://www.ucmr.org.ro/. Accessed 8 February 2020. http://www.ucmr. org.ro/Texte/RV-1-2016-1-Interviuri-AFratila.pdf. Gheorghiţă, Nicolae. 2015a. Nationalism through Sacred Chant? Research on Byzantine Musicology in Totalitarian Romania. Studia Musicologica 56 (4): 327–342. ———. 2015b. Musicological Research on Byzantine Music during Romanian Totalitarianism. Revista Muzica 7: 39–58. Ghiu, Miron. 2015. A Short Journey through Imaginary Music with Octavian Nemescu. Revista Arta, 30 September 2015. http:// revistaarta.ro/. Accessed 30 January 2020. http://revistaarta.ro/en/ column/a-short-journey-through-imaginary-music-with-octavian-nemescu. Grabar, André. 1967. The Art of the Byzantine Empire. New York: Graystone Press.

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Hotoran, Anamaria Mădălina. 2015. The Psaltic Byzantine Chant in Paul Constantinescu’s Creation and its Relevance for the Romanian Composers of the 20th Century. In The Psaltic Art as an Autonomous Science (Proceedings of the 1st International Interdisciplinary Musicological Conference 29 June–3 July 2014, Volos, Greece), ed. Konstantinos Charil, Karagounis and Georgios Kouroupetroglou. Department of Psaltic Art and Musicology: Academy for Theological Studies of Volos. www.researchgate.net. Kant, Immanuel. 1987. The Critique of Judgment. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kind, Amy, and Peter Kung. 2016. Knowledge through Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lalitos, Emily. 2018. Becoming Byzantine: Modernization and Tradition in the Liturgical Music of the Greek Orthodox Church. Relics, Remnants, and Religion: An Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies 3(1): 1–35. https:// soundideas.pugetsound.edu/. Accessed 9 February 2020. https://soundideas. pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=relics. Marin, Laura. 2017. Octavian Nemescu on Romanian Avant-Garde Music. The Attic, November 2017. http://the-attic.net/. Accessed 5 February 2020. http://the-attic.net/features/2174/octavian-nemescu-on-romanian-avant_ garde-music.html. Mocănescu, Alice. 2012. National Art as Legitimate Art: National between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania. http://www.ox.ac.uk/. Accessed 7 February 2020. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/ papers/Alice_Mocanescu.pdf. Muthuraj, Joseph. 2007. The Significance of Mircea Eliade for Christian Theology. In The International Eliade, ed. Brian S. Rennie. Albany: State University of New York Press. Nemescu, Octavian. 2017. Metabizaninirikon (1984): Practicing Music at Transcultural Altitude. Revista Muzica 8: 23–32. Plantega, Bart. 2004. Yodel—Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling around the World. New York: Routledge. Rucsanda, Mădălina Dana and Maria Cristina Bostan. 2011. The Sacred Music from the Byzantine Tradition and the Romanian Folklore. http://www.wseas. us/. Accessed 7 February 2020. http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2011/Brasov2/MCBANTA/MCBANTA-38.pdf. Stan, Lavinia, and Lucian Turcescu. 2007. Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania. New York: Oxford University Press. Țiplea Temeş, Bianca. 2010. The Annunciation in Paul Constantinescu’s Christmas Oratorio: Musical and Iconographic Decoding. Studia Universitatis Babeş-­ Bolyai, Musica 55 (1): 165–182.

CHAPTER 6

Contemporary Aesthetic Mysticism and Religious Revitalization Movements

6.1   Introduction Philosopher Giorgio Agamben elaborates on Western philosophy’s distinction between bios (the mere life of humans, animals and Gods) and zoe (political life) and argues that in a state of exception these two seemingly opposite Greek words that connote different ways of life concur. Reading Victoria and Marian Zidaru’s corpus of spiritual art through this theoretical framework, we can state that Christian believers like the Zidarus, do not actually live a double life in the contemporary world—that of natural existence and political life—but a single life of exception. In what follows, this chapter focuses on Victoria and Marian Zidaru’s art of religious and spiritual inspiration produced between 1985 and present day. The argument put forth is that during both the communist era and currently, their artistic production keeps a consistent focus on the dimension of artistic revelation of the transcendent truth, without ceasing to be an art that is politically concerned and engaged. Although Victoria and Marian Zidaru are not necessarily the first names that would pop-up on the reputable curators’ list of preferred artists, their artistic creation has a peculiar degree of politicality and criticism that might offer existential rejoinders to a manifold set of present social, political, economic and epistemic concerns. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Marian and Victoria Zidaru remained consistent with the artistic revelation of social, political and spiritual descent from the earlier decade. Since their spiritual artistic © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_6

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practice perseveres after Nicolae Ceauşecu’s regime, many opponents have started to criticize their artistic production on the grounds that this peculiar type of art is disrespectful towards the official Romanian Orthodox Church and its religious canons on the matters of sacred art production. In addition, the artists’ cultural production was also refereed for being poisoned with offensive nationalism, in light of the fact that the Zidaru’s provocative body of spiritual art is still associated with an informal religious revivalist movement: the “New Jerusalem”.1 Yet, as this chapter argues, the artists’ prophetic activism, both during communism and after the fall of the regime in 1989, reveals a constant search for ethical amelioration and social justice in the contemporary world. Currently, Marian Zidaru’s corpus of religiously inspired art is either understood as a form of “offensive nationalism” or as a dissident instance of religious art that rather conforms to popular Christian Orthodoxy than to the dogmatic one. Against these interpretations, the argument put forth, in what follows, is that the Zidarus’ art revisits and refreshes the meanings of “religion” being triggered by a peerless form of artistic prophetic activism. The artists are not troubled by marginalization and exclusion but rather confront with artistic and spiritual humbleness the new post-communist cultural hegemony that inclines to dismiss the artistic production considered “too parochial” and “too traditional” in the name of purported European and global contemporary art trends. This “confrontation” of the new hegemony is not essentially oppositional but rather existential in nature. At the same time, their corpus of religiously inspired artistic production is not culturally and politically acceptable for the custodians of the national art, because of its radical and non-dogmatic religiousness. Thus, on the one hand, their atypical “proto-Orthodox Christian” art is hard to assess and pigeonholed by the contemporary art world and its institutions because contemporary art and religious practice are regarded as distinct cultural fields, which exist alongside but do not usually overlap. Apart from the fact that religious art is taken to be the domain of amateur culture and folk taste—whereas contemporary arts deal with experimental, political and conceptual formats—contemporary art oftentimes engages in religious affairs critically in order to dismiss it for obscurantism, parochialism, backwardness and primitivism. On the other hand, the Zidarus’ religious ardour and declared monarchism distanced them from the nationalist official institutions of culture too. As such, how should we assess the

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artistic creations of these radical prophetic activists of our times who display through visuals instantiations of their “personal use” Paradise? Yet, Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s art of religious and spiritual inspiration can also be regarded as a frank contribution to assisting others to ease the weight of the communist ordeals, as well as the alienating transition from communism to the neoliberal order. The transcendent ameliorations their art fosters can be understood as spiritual revolutions with palliative effects for those who are looking for spiritual relief and personal salvation from a puzzling and disorienting global new order. Marian Zidaru is an internationally acknowledged visual artist born in Baloteṣti in 1956. His artistic debut happened in 1983, with a personal exhibition within Atelier 35  in Bucharest. He graduated from the Art Academy in the 1980s and his first studio was in the house of an ethnic Hungarian retired pharmacologist who lived on Alexandru Sahia Street (now Jean Louise Calderon) in Bucharest. Although Zidaru was not a member of the communist art organization, later he received a studio from the Romanian Artists’ Union. When a reporter asked him whether the beginning of his artistic career coincides with a dark and unsettling time interval when Romanian art was “thrown into Socialist Realism,” Marian Zidaru answered without hesitation that art is “thrown away…” today too (in 2017) and there is no significant difference between then and now.2 However, he adds that during Ceauṣescu’s regime the artist’s work in her/his studio was private and nobody intruded in this artistic intimacy, unlike the artists who wanted to exhibit her/his disobedient art to the public. Zidaru posits that it is not difficult to create contemporary art inspired by the Western developments in this cultural area, but it is much more demanding to produce the kind of contemporary art that stems from the old thematic clusters of the Romanian folkloric culture whose main tenet is the Christian Orthodoxy (Fig. 6.1).3 At the same time, the contemporary art of Christian Orthodox inspiration is not void of social or political concerns. Unlike many instances of the traditional Romanian folkloric ethos, the artistic production displayed by Marian Zidaru is impregnated with the voice of an active contemplation of a spiritual way of confronting past and present-day moral, social and economic calamities. The artist’s pieces are usually large sculptures that address the viewer’s contemplative state of mind. This interpellation seems for many contemporary art critics obsolete, on the grounds that the art of our time is typically an art of movement and action, where contemplative modes of appreciation are a matter of aesthetic disinterestedness.

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Fig. 6.1  Marian Zidaru, Heruvim Ucis/Killed Cherubim (2011). (Source: Custody of the artist)

Nevertheless, Marian Zidaru’s body of work elicits a contemplative mode of attending to it that may ground moral and political action. His art is not concentrating on occasioning a contemplative withdrawal of the viewer (as in certain Christian instances of language of interiority) but rather overcomes “the pervasive division of life (between natural and political, ‘bare’ and ‘autarchic’, zoe and bios) upon which modern politics is premised.”4 In 2005, art historian Ioana Vlasiu wrote about both Marian and his wife Victoria Zidaru’s exhibition entitled ANOtimpurile (in English The Seasons) at the Anaid Art Gallery in Bucharest, stating that “The Zidaru (Marian and Victoria) phenomenon, or case, as it was called, exploded, after 1999, in the Romanian artistic environment (which was more and more marginalized, in fact), but also in larger spheres.”5 Their art includes multimedia, works of sculpture, drawings, installations, textile art and performances of a peculiar proto-Orthodox inspiration. Like other NeoOrthodox artists, Marian Zidaru’s work is not only exhibited in art and cultural institutions but also in the middle of nature, in the most unexpected places, such as in the forests or on the top of the mountains. Marian Zidaru envisions his work in terms of a spiritual ecology of hope and reawakening from social, economic and political devastations. Exactly like

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in other artists’ work explored in this volume, the recurrent return to nature is one of the most important tropes in his artistic production too. Under Ceauṣescu’s rule, Marian Zidaru created a body of artistic work that condenses his spiritual journey, as well as his declared Christian mission to return to the crucial values of the human existence against all odds. As I will elaborate later on, one of the recurrent thematic clusters in his artistic production is the emphasis on the value of sacrifice in the name of the genuine faith. His series of sacrificial works debuted with an outstanding exhibition displayed during the communist era in 1985 at the Village Museum in Bucharest. The notorious exhibition curated by Anca Vasiliu was titled Remembering, or Blood-Stained Christmas. The exhibited works of sculpture alluded to the violence of woodcutting, piercing and contorting against a climate of cold winter. Actually, Marian Zidaru’s sculptures also recollected the narratives of Christ’s cross as a tree that becomes the symbol of supreme sacrifice.6 The art critic Erwin Kessler commented on the unprecedented message of this artistic event stating that the exhibition can be understood as “An artistic prophecy of the dramatic social transfiguration that was possible through the sacrifice of 1989 (the Romanian Revolution). His visionary-apocalyptical sculptural dialogue speaks mostly through the carving of wood: the wood is submitted to cutting, mincing, cleaving, breaking, piercing, contorting, it falls victim to the violence of reshaping, the refined violence of polymorphic eroticism which makes its Manichean message surface.”7 Through the symbolic carving of wood, Marian Zidaru’s exhibition was regarded as an artistic-political prophecy about the violent anticommunist Romanian Revolution during December 1989 when more than 1000 people lost their lives. Since the period of civil unrest against Ceauṣescu’s regime debuted right before Christmas time, the BloodStained Christmas exhibition installed by Marian Zidaru in 1985 can be interpreted as an excruciating lieu de mémoire of Christian sacrifice and at the same time as a preemptive memory about the violence of future political developments.8 Just two years later, in 1987, Marian Zidaru exhibited one work of art again in a group exhibition. This time the exhibition took place at the Căminul Artei gallery in Bucharest. The art piece displayed in 1987, within a group exhibition, was later called by the artist “a violent anti-communist artwork entitled The Scheme of Consciousness Manipulation in Children’s Minds between three to five years old.”9 According to him, this art piece did not remain without political consequences at the time when it was shown at the Căminul Artei gallery in Bucharest. Marian Zidaru

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posits that after a member of the Securitatea (the Communist Secret Police) asked him to get rid of the art piece from the exhibition, the Zidarus’ studio from Academy Street in Bucharest was put under continual surveillance. There is no other source, apart from Marian Zidaru’s confession, that would grant us access to what really happened between Securitatea and the artist. However, after this disastrous event, the Zidarus left Bucharest for Ghelari Orthodox monastery in Hunedoara. There, Marian and Victoria Zidaru dedicated their lives to the practice of Christian Orthodox rituals. For several months, praying and reading Filocalia (meaning “love of the good and beautiful” from the Greek Philokalia) was the only thing that they were doing all day long.10 This comes as no surprise, as the religious book they were reading refers to both beauty and moral goodness, and this spiritual exercise ignited their religious-artistic imagination. Originally written in Greek for monks between the fourth and the fourteenth century, this writing is an anthology of ascetic writings. During communist Romania, there circulated a Romanian version of Philokalia where theologian Dumitru Stăniloaei, added some texts “exploring the theological, doctrinal and mystical foundations of hesychasm.”11 The spiritual practice proffered by the Zidarus at the Ghelari Monastery was not only a way of dis-identification from the realities of communism but also a deeper connection with ancient Christian ascetic and theological writings and lifestyles. The most prominent artistic product which resulted from the spiritual experience of those years spent at the monastery is a carved wooden gate, inspired by old Romanian folklore representing Saint George fighting the Dragon. Marian Zidaru points out that this Romanian traditional gate sculpted in wood epitomizes his fight with communism: “This piece of sculpture epitomized my revenge for all demolished churches and traumatized consciousness.” (Formula As magazine, 2014). Scholars of the Byzantine period posit that Saint George was at first represented in the folk culture “on a horseback killing a man (the emperor Diocletian?). The earliest certain picture of Saint George killing a dragon is in the Church of Saint Barbara, Soganli, Cappadocia (1006–1021).”12 In this vein, Marian Ziaru’s Saint George traditional gate symbolizes a righteous, spiritual entity who fights the reptilian carnivore (communism) exactly as the earliest representations of Saint George killing the dragon were interpreted, as a saint’s combat against Diocletian (notorious for persecuting Christians during the Roman Empire).

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Along with fighting communism through sculpture, the Zidaru couple also declared that they experienced multiple mystical experiences, including “hearing voices” during their stay at Ghelari monastery.13 The memories of these experiences are also revealed in their artistic creation. For instance, after the fall of the communist regime, Marian envisioned an artistic revelation. The installation, Ionah’s Whale (1995), was exhibited outdoors in the form of a modular tent filled with wooden carved oblique crosses. The first question that comes to mind after seeing this art piece in the context of the transition from communism to democracy and free market is, of course: Who is the “Whale” of Romania’s transition? Other art exhibitions from the same period remind the viewer that she always has to make a choice between “Good” and “Evil” (The Choice Exhibition, 1995). At the same time, the artists finally felt unconstrained to express their religiously fuelled emotions through art. Two exhibitions testify to the Zidarus’ aesthetic joy that untainted religious feelings can finally be contemplated in the Romanian cultural public sphere. Marian Zidaru presented the trajectory of faith from one hegemonic political regime (communist) to the new one (within the exhibition Unsealing, the Ion Mincu Institute of Architecture, Bucharest, 1992) and his hundreds of crosses as epitomizers of political sacrifice and religious victimhood within the exhibition, The Liturgy of Joy (Bucharest, 1994).

6.2   The New Jerusalem’s Art Studios and Aesthetics Immediately after the collapse of the communist regime in 1990, the Zidarus had to find a new home again, this time because the Orthodox priest who supported them at Ghelari monastery passed away. The couple found refuge in the tiny spa town Pucioasa from Dâmboviţa County in Southern Romania. They took with them the large folk gate sculpted while at Ghelari monastery. At Pucioasa they soon became prominent members of a religious revitalization movement that was not homologated by the official Orthodox Church of Romania. The underground religious community was known in some circles as the “New Jerusalem.” The religious movement had a spiritual vision of life characterized by a convoluted amalgamation of messianic nationalism and Christian Orthodox soberness. The foundation of this religious revitalization movement was a humble woman from the countryside, known as Saint Virginia. The “New

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Jerusalem” members believed that Virginia had the gift of prophecy and they venerated her for her alleged sainthood. First-hand testimonies collected and published in 1995 by the New Jerusalem members under the title The Word of God in Romania (in Romanian, Cuvântul lui Dumnezeu in România) expose how Virginia was not only a simple woman but also the vessel of God (“the Trumpet of God”) from 1955 until her death in 1980. The followers of this religious revitalization movement are convinced that the Romanian language is the divine language of angels and God and that Virginia spoke with God in Romanian.14 In line with this belief, the “New Jerusalem” holds that in the future the entire world should learn Romanian in order to apprehend God’s pronouncements.15 Some followers of the “New Jerusalem” movement testify to Virginia heaving healed terminal cancer and other diseases and bringing dead people back to life. Although Virginia’s reputation did not equal Baba Vanga’s symbolic capital (Vangelija Pandeva Dimitrova was a Bulgarian clairvoyant and moral authority), the tumult triggered around Virginia’s persona did not go unnoticed by the communist tutelage. Consequently, Virginia and her husband were maltreated by the regime for prompting turmoil and for gathering followers around her cultic milieu. Members of the “New Jerusalem” have testified that after Virginia’s death in 1980, the word of God persisted to be heard through her sister’s mouth. However, even if communists persecuted Virginia for her religious beliefs, the Orthodox Church of Romania does not acknowledge Virginia either as official saint or as martyr. The “New Jerusalem” followers disseminate an apocalyptic narrative according to which Romania will be the “new Israel” and the primeval home of the spiritual replenishment of humanity. The followers of Virginia’s cult also embrace firm eating habits, abstaining from any type of meat and alcohol consumption. The same strict rules of abstaining from consumption apply to any kind of “un-natural” food.16 In principle, the adepts of this religious revitalization movement practice a stricter form of asceticism (constant prayer, donation of material possessions, constant fasting) than what the official Romanian Orthodox Church conventionally expects Orthodox believers to do. Although the religious movement repeatedly stressed its respect for Romanian “Orthodox long-standing traditions,” the official Orthodox Church of Romania does not recognize the “New Jerusalem” as “Orthodox.” Thus, for the official Orthodox Church of Romania, the New Jerusalem’s severe monasticism and informal religious practices are rendered heretical by the Holy Synod decree

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110 and 294  in 1993. The same highest authority of the Romanian Orthodox Church (the Holy Synod) released a new decree in 1997 condemning again the practices of the New Jerusalem: “Concrete canonical measures are taken against the activity of the sectarian group ‘New Jerusalem’. The Ministry of Culture will intervene in relation to the relocation of the church from the museum complex, as well as against the organization of cultural practices of religious character by the sectarian movement the ‘New Jerusalem.’ The Ministry of Interior was also notified by the Romanian Patriarchy about the illegal wearing of monastic robes by the adepts of the ‘New Jerusalem’ (Holly Synod Decree 3326/1997).”17 The Zidarus have become involved with the New Jerusalem platform and all their artistic production from those years was created as a form of missionary art. The incentive for this visionary ethos was the belief in the ancient customs of the pre-Orthodox Christian religion. Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s national and international reputation as contemporary artists has actually made possible the construction of the New Jerusalem Monastery at Pucioasa in 1992. The Zidarus were also in charge of establishing and leading an art studio (called Christian-Orthodox Art Workshop) that complemented the Pucioasa church and the complex of small houses for the adepts of the New Jerusalem within the perimeter of the church. Although Victoria Zidaru worked on Marian Zidaru’s religious artefacts, she also produced her own corpus of embroideries, textile installations, collages and drawings. The artist incorporated folkloric elements from Romanian traditional women’s’ dress into contemporary fashion design. In line with her artistic practice and interest in working with textiles and natural materials, she created traditional peasant costumes in collaboration with the artisans from the “New Jerusalem” compound. This common quest to create ritualistic clothes from natural materials produced as “homemade” emerged in the context of post-communist Romania as a form of resistance to the newly imported consumer goods and their symbolic power. Anamaria Iosif Ross argues that in honour of the precommunist ethos “members of the New Jerusalem dress in traditional peasant costumes, and I have been told that they weave the cloth themselves. The men usually wear big white shirts, dark pants, wool vests, and full beards. The women wear long cotton and linen garments (usually white), vests, and head wrappings.”18 Similarly, this self-fashioning disrupts the new capitalist consumption practices striving to achieve certain freedom from the new dictatorship of consumption. Following a Foucauldian argument after conducing

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ethnographic research, Ross points out that what “the ‘New Jerusalem’ members perform, are actually practices of the self, an exercise of self upon self by which one tries to develop and transform oneself, and to attain a certain mode of being.”19 This self-fashioned mode of being in the world against all odds has nevertheless political and critical significance. The spiritual practices employed by the artists are unremitting connections with an understanding of personhood from an Orthodox Christian standpoint, which is deeply dissimilar with the modernist/Cartesian understanding of persons and relationships among them.20 As I have argued elsewhere, not only the traditional peasant materials and costumes are reiterated as home-made artefacts within the Pucioasa revivalist religious movement but also alternative, utopian theories and initiatives about socialist communities from the nineteenth century.21 In this light, the members of the New Jerusalem movement built their own small villages within the village where the church was located. They practiced an interesting style of life where money had no significant value (at least at the beginning). Inspired by Charles Fourier’s design principles for phalanstére, as well as an interesting type of gift economy that can be associated with Marcel Mauss’ theory, the adepts of the movement had a common ownership of all their belongings.22 Besides the religious ethos, the New Jerusalem inception years aimed at organizing and designing an ideal, self-contained community, where the rich and the poor would live next to one another. Since artistic production of various sorts played an important role in the philosophy of the religious revitalization movement, the guiding principle of the New Jerusalem community recalls, to a certain extent, Charles Fourier’s “ideal community that he called a phalanstére (or phalanstery), and published the details of the model in his work Theory of Four Movements and the General Destinies (1808). The phalanstery, a four-level residential complex, is based upon the structure of a phalanx.”23 This utopic design envisioned communal life as guided by “the spontaneity of the twelves passions which comprise the five sensual passions (taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell) and the four affective passions (friendship, ambition, love and paternity).”24 However, the New Jerusalem only partly adhered to this guiding principle since maternity was an affective “passion” more accredited among the adepts of the movement than “paternity” (due to Saint Virginia’s cult). Similarly, the sensual passions are not so much connected with sensual pleasures as such, but rather the five sensual passions intercede the pleasures of the soul and conscience. Apart from the religious

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movement’s brochures and supposedly collectively authored, anonymous book Noul Ierusalim, Cuvântul lui Dumnezeu in România (The New Jerusalem: God’s Word in Romania), there remained few traces that document the history and biography of the Pucioasa (Glodeni) spiritual community. One of the most watched video documents about the “New Jerusalem” is the video reportage presented by the private Romanian TV channel PRO TV.25 The report was entitled “The Holly Community New Jerusalem from Pucioasa” and was created by the well-known journalist and television presenter, Cristian Tabără.26 Broadcasted on 30 March 2008, the report lasted about 25 minutes and triggered vivid reactions of both repudiation and admiration as evinced on Romanian speaking social media. Unlike other religious movements that flourished after the collapse of communism, the “New Jerusalem” can also be analysed from an aesthetic perspective. All the perceptible features of the religious movement bring to the forefront a compulsory interrogation about the formal aspects of the spiritual practice from Pucioasa. The church of the “New Jerusalem” has 33 arches that form the architecture of a building that resembles a lotus flower. Perhaps the most significant landmark of the Pucioasa religious complex is Marian Zidaru’s exquisitely sculpted gates that took shape during his stay at the Ghelari monastery before relocating at Pucioasa—Glodeni. The adepts of the movement cook their own food that was arranged in the form of a cross. In the reportage realized by Cristian Tabără, the viewer can see the peculiar process of bread and pastry making within the community’s communal kitchen. Women dressed in homemade, beautiful white attire are shown baking various types of pastries beautifully decorated with colourful nuts, spices and herbs. The plates look like oil painting masterpieces that display biblical narratives cast in nuts, olives, dry fruits and vegetables. The whole complex, as well as the spiritual practices of the “New Jerusalem” community, offer an elaborate repertoire of aesthetically appealing forms. Compared to other religious movements from the same geographical space, the “Pucioasa phenomenon” strikes as a peculiar amalgamation of asceticism and aestheticism. While the adepts of this religious movement proffer their commitment to an abstemious lifestyle deprived of sensual pleasures, their practices and artefacts can be analysed through the lens of an aesthetics of beauty. According to traditional, Kantian aesthetics, beauty is a feeling of disinterested pleasure we take in the immediate experience of the perceptual features an object displays to

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our senses.27 Since two artists (Marian and Victoria Zidaru) conceptually and formally designed the “New Jerusalem,” it comes as no surprise that we can employ an aesthetic approach for investigating religious movement as a sensory and art mediated practice. Thus, we can draw on aesthetics “as a theory of sensory knowledge” since it “offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the sociocultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them.”28 Drawing on the conceptual framework put forth by Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnston for the study of religious practices from an aesthetic perspective, the plethora of material religion displayed by the “New Jerusalem”—as well as the choreography of their spiritual performances—indicate a reiteration of perception and aesthetic perception as crucial aspects of religious behaviour “that have previously been downplayed in favor of approaches that foreground text and doctrine.”29 As property, household and other goods were communal, the artistic production of religious inspiration (icons, garments, furniture, crosses, religious artefacts, collages) emerged from Târgovişte and Pucioasa art studios under the Zidarus’ tutelage was displayed in exhibitions as collective, anonymous work. The individual authorship of art production that is so much cherished in Western culture was substituted with collective ownership/authorship in an exercise of humbleness or as Romanian art critic and theorist, Călin Dan, pointed out “an interesting economy is surrounding the activities of the couple, who are never claiming clear authorship of their production. The Zidarus are employing (in a barter system) the members of the Pucioasa community to execute their design for wood sculptures, furniture and clothing, and to perform in the public performances. The revenues coming from this business that seems to be successfully flying on the local and international art markets is allegedly put back into the community.”30 Yet, apart from the “collective” artworks created within the art studios of the “New Jerusalem,” the Zidarus continued to exhibit their artistic production under their individual signature both in Romania and abroad (e.g. Ludwig Forum of Aachen, or Sao Paolo Biennale 1991) on a regular basis.

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6.3   The Zidarus’ Art: Between Detractors and Enthusiasts The reputation of Marian and Victoria Zidaru as the supposed founding members of the religious revivalist movement from Pucioasa increased after the 1990s. As a result, some critics started to refer to the “New Jerusalem” with the derogative appellative “The Zidarus’ Sect”—although the Zidarus were not the founders of the unofficial religious movement which was initiated around the late 1950s by the un-canonized Saint Virginia’s followers. The appellative “sectarian” ascribed to Zidarus’ artistic production is nonetheless belittling, as well as the comparison with Rasputin and “cultural Rasputinism.” The religious art produced at Pucioasa by Marian and Victoria Zidaru was pigeonholed by Romanian art critics and contemporary artists as “persistent protochronism” and “retrograde localism,” on the grounds that their creation can be inscribed in the category of nationalist kitsch of popular religious inspiration.31 The celebrated intellectual and visual artist Sorin Dumitrescu—who, after the fall of communism, ran the most visible Christian Publishing House (“Anastasia”) and Christian art gallery (“Catacomba”) in Bucharest—also referred to Marian Zidaru’s art with the appellative “sectarian”, although he acknowledged that the artist possessed an incontestable charisma.32 Correspondingly, Sorin Dumitrescu did not invite Marian Zidaru to exhibit within the cultural venues dedicated to sacred art after the collapse of communism. The reasons substantiating Sorin Dumitrescu’s reluctance to exhibit Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s artistic production are disclosed by the gallerist/artist himself in the magazine România Liberă (21 January 1995) where he claimed that Marian Zidaru’s art is “sectarian” and does not follow the path of conventional Orthodoxy. The article published by Sorin Dumitrescu was an unapologetic diatribe directed against both Marian Zidaru and the art critic Erwin Kessler (who celebrated Marian Zidaru’s art in an article entitled “Despre Ţară, Artă ṣi Credint ̣ă” [About Nation, Art and Faith] published in 22 Magazine on 11–17 January 1995). Sorin Dumitrescu formulates his criticism against the art theorist Erwin Kessler’s promotion of the artist in deleterious terms, calling Marian Zidaru “Kessler’s disciple”, and assessing his creation as “flexible lollipops made of innumerable materials and a few bronze sculptures painfully calling to mind a moment of sanity in the career of Marian Zidaru that seem to symbolically re-invent the most authentic Christianity in its Orthodox version.”33 In a similar vein, the article reminds readers that Marian

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Zidaru’s artistic production of religious descent is an “audio-visual style of sectarian importunity.”34 The Romanian Orthodox Church also sometimes distanced itself from the artistic production displayed by Marian Zidaru, especially regarding those artworks of religious descent created during the period when the Zidaru couple lived at Pucioasa. As stated by official representatives, the Romanian Orthodox Church, in its capacity of supreme authority of Romanian Orthodoxy, does not acknowledge the “New Jerusalem” as an acceptable religious movement on the grounds that the members of this group practice “an original ‘orthodoxy’ that comprises serious deviations from the traditional precepts.”35 Călin Dan also points out that after the 1990s, religion became the main device of nationalist ideologies as endorsed by the Zidarus: “Since in 1990 religion became the official substitute for the former ideological instrument of national communism, Zidaru and his wife could come on stage and perform, through exhibitions, amateur theatre performances, publications etc. An interesting economy is surrounding the activities of the couple, who are never claiming clear authorship of their production.”36 The journalist, Victor Roncea, also comments on his personal blog about Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s “anti-orthodox art” and calls the artist “Mamona” (an alternative name for Satan).37 In the same blog post, the journalist mocks Zidaru’s family name by calling him “Zugravu” (in Romanian “zugrav” means “house painter”). Because “Zidaru” in the Romanian language means “Builder,” Roncea tries to demystify it (mainly mocking the predestined aura of this name for the artist’s missionarism) by substituting it with the more mundane “Zugravu” (“The House Painter”). In the same condescending register, other bloggers criticize Marian Zidaru’s religious art. In one blog post about Marian Zidaru, dated 18 January 2011, Estera Anca Margareta claims that the Zidarus have been a “perfect victim” of the religious sect and that both Victoria and Marian were simple “hay puppets” in the hands of the puppeteers, the true leaders of the religious revitalization movement from Pucioasa (“the couple Mihaela Tărcuţă and Nicolae Nedelcu”).38 Yet, some Romanian art critics and theorists hold an opposite view on the Zidarus’ corpus of religious art. Some theorists address Sorin Dumitrescu’s unquestionable disavowal of Marian Zidaru’s art of religious descent and his reluctance to exhibit the artists “works within the Orthodox Christian Art gallery ‘Catacomba’”. For instance, Alexandra Titu posits that Sorin Dumitrescu positioned himself as the “the theoretical ideologist of neo-Orthodoxism defined as a program” whose agenda

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differed from “the group from Pucioasa, run by sculptor Marian Zidaru, an artist frequently selected and integrated into the collections of European art, monopolized by the radical theological debates, the organizer of a phalanstére with religious coherence.”39 In the same vein, Erwin Kessler and the art historian Magda Cârneci interpret the Zidarus’ corpus of religiously inspired art as an exquisite contribution to the postmodern cultural condition. Erwin Kessler deftly argued that Marian Zidaru “is the only complete artist of contemporary Romanian culture who aspires to become a human model of perfection without being ascetic.”40 The catharsis imagined for his own self-redemption coincided in his art with “Romania’s catharsis” after the harmful anti-religious campaigns of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s regime and the first gloomy years of transition to the “new Paradise”: The free market economy and its deleterious consequences. In a very poor country—which at the time of communism’s collapse was struggling to understand its role and position in the world—the religious revitalization movements came to designate an indicator of political and ethical entropy. Similarly, for art historian Magda Cârneci, Marian Zidaru embodies the most original and remarkable case in the Romanian post-1989 art scene. The peculiarity of Zidaru’s artistic creation rests, according to Cârneci, in his assumed condition of missionary artist or artist prophet who is capable of galvanizing through his art religious, social, political and cultural polemics.41 After nearly 20 years of devoted artistic practice for the New Jerusalem community, Marian and Victoria Zidaru decided to leave the movement and moved back to Bucharest in 2006. Nobody really understood what triggered this unexpected change in the Zidarus’ life trajectory. Marian Zidaru elucidates the sudden relocation in 2014 in an interview for the popular magazine, Formula As. He explained that apparently, the relationship between them and the New Jerusalem started to deteriorate when the artists realized that the complex’s courtyards “were full of cars” and the houses “were full of computers.”42 In the same interview for the magazine Formula As with the journalist Valentin Iacob, Marian Zidaru posits that the relationship with the New Jerusalem depreciated when he pointed out that God’s commands have nothing to do with economic interests.43 In another interview, in 2017, the artists elaborated on rationale behind their separation from the religious revivalist movement.44 According to Marian Zidaru, although the New Jerusalem was unique in Romania (in what regards the concatenation of artistic and religious practice), art was no longer endorsed by the movement as one of the missions towards the

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salvation of the soul.45 The artists could not accept the pressure from the leaders of the revivalist movement to give up artistic preoccupations and to practice mere monasticism because for them devotion to art and devotion to spiritual work overlap. In the same interview, the artists also underlined their distrust in dogmatisms and pointed out that the New Jerusalem emerged as an expression of creative Christianity but ended up as dogmatic as any other dogmatic religious practice. As Marian recalls, “We started our work as a creative Christianity, in absolute freedom, motivating our actions by the fact that if you esteem the laws of the Church, you are free to manifest yourself in any way you think fit, because the spirit of God dictates you how to behave [sic]… the main occupation of Pucioasa was art. That’s what we were doing: making art and everyone from the New Jerusalem was working on our art projects …”46 Although the artists repeatedly acknowledged their inclination towards universal asceticism, also understood as joining a coenobium (community of individuals) who practice similar lifestyles—the kind of asceticism they endorsed precluded institutionalized monasticism. This political theology proffered by the Zidaru couple does not jettison fostering secular learning and betterment of the spirit by transmitting to others intellectual and philosophical skills and cultural artefacts that mirror these firm beliefs. After they left or were expulsed from the New Jerusalem, Zidarus did not give up their artistic and spiritual mission and decided to refurbish Victoria’s childhood house from Liteni village, in North-East Romania, extending it to function as an “Art Farm.” The old, traditional house was built in a vernacular architectural style and hosts artists residencies from all over the world, irrespective of their religious belonging and beliefs. Apart from the quest for reviving through artistic creation the inexorable connection between nature and human being, the traditional farm also functions as a secular coenobium (monastic community) where artists profess and practice similar spiritual goals circumventing—as much as possible—the vicinity of dogmatism and institutionalized religiosity. In this vein, the Art Farm does not encourage religious leadership or dogmatic religiously mandated performance (orthopraxy). It seems that for the Zidaru couple, this type of spiritual-artistic activism was also expected to proliferate from joining the coenobium of the New Jerusalem. Since this ideal was not achievable after 20 years of dedication to the unofficial religious revitalization movement, they have decided to persist in pursuing the chosen path of faith and art practice at the Art Farm in Liteni as well as in their big studio in Bucharest. However, their art studios at the

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New Jerusalem did not cease to influence the cultural production of the religious movement after the Zidarus left the community. In a video report from 2014 produced and presented by Valentin Grigore—suggestively entitled “To be Young” and broadcast by the ‘Foundation for Youth Dâmbovit ̣a’—the now thriving New Jerusalem community appeared on TV to talk about their religious practice and intentions. The report lasts 52:32 minutes and consists mostly of long questions and answer sections between Valentin Grigore and the adepts of the religious movement. Women wear white linen attire strikingly similar to Victoria Zidaru’s ceremonial textile art while men wear traditional Romanian clothes. It comes as no surprise that at the end of the report, for almost two minutes, many cultural artefacts produced by the adepts of the “New Jerusalem” are displayed. Most of these artefacts recall the Zidarus’ infallible spiritual art style. The artists’ artistic legacy is mostly noticeable in the stylistic variety of crosses, as well as in the way the graphic images are combined meaningfully with the written text. Victoria Zidaru’s artistic trace is also present in the way the crosses carved in wood are heavily painted with little wildflowers.47 Although it is not specified in the reportage, some artworks presented at the end undoubtedly belong to the Zidarus from the period they were prominent members of the community. Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s association with the “New Jerusalem” religious revitalization movement and its underground status vis-a-vis the official church of the country prevented the artists from being invited to exhibit their creation of spiritual descent at the major exhibitions organized by the Prolog group after the fall of the communist regime. Their presence at exhibitions of traditional sacred art is still avoided, in spite of the fact that some of the Zidarus’ religious artworks are exhibited both in Romania and abroad, at major contemporary art events. Nearly 30 years after the fall of the communist regime and 10 years after the Zidarus left the “New Jerusalem” and Pucioasa community, the national exhibitions dedicated to sacred art continue not to invite the artists to exhibit their work within group exhibitions, such as the recent major itinerant exhibition entitled, The Cross: From Community to Communion. 100 Crosses in 100 Years. The exhibition received the blessing of Patriarch Daniel of Romania and travelled from Alba Iulia (November 2017) to Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu, Timiṣoara, Iaṣi and Bucharest (2018), as well as Chiṣinău (Republic of Moldova). The exhibition displayed a variety of crosses materialized in both traditional and contemporary art formats. Among the artists invited

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by the organizers to exhibit their crosses were many former members of the Neo-Orthodox group Prolog, as well as other artists and artisans. The number of invited artists was quite impressive, including: Ion Grigorescu, Constantin Flondor, Mihai Sârbulescu, Horea Paștina, Ovidiu și Ștefana Bădescu, Gheorghe Berindei, Horia Bernea, Vasile Gorduz, Mihai Horea Paul Gherasim, Ion Nicodim, Marin Gherasim, Ion Grigore, Dacian Andoni, Péter Jecza, Alexandru Antonescu, Ilie Boca, Ana Maria și Mihai Ariciu, Ioan Burlacu, Toma Chituc, Mircea Cantor, Marian Dobre, Delia Corban, Cristian Dit ̦oiu, Remus Dragomir, Sorin Dumitrescu, Andreea Flondor Palade, Cosmin Frunteș, Dan Gherman, Mariana Gheorghiu, Ana-Maria Goilav, Ruxandra Grigorescu, Ana Guduruza, Angela Hanc, Gheorghe Ilea, István Kancsura, Matei Lăzărescu, Vasile Lefter, George Mircea, Dan Mohanu, Grupul Noima, Silviu Oravitzan, Valeriu Paladi, Marius Pandele, Christian Paraschiv, Ovidiu Paștina, Ioan Popa, Grigore și Mirela Popescu-Muscel, Cristian Porumb, Silvia Radu, Andrei Rosetti, Valentin Scărlătescu, Daniela Scurtulescu, Sorin Scurtulescu, Ovidiu Simionescu, Șerban Sturdza, Su Yan, Dorin Ștefan, Paul Timofei, Viorel Toma, Constantin Țînteanu, Zoe Vida Porumb, Bogdan Vlădut ̦ă, Tudor Zbârnea, Simion Zamșa, Ion Zderciuc, Nicolae Muntean și Teo și Ioana Bindea. While the itinerant exhibition approached the symbolism and materialization of the cross from as many artistic perspectives as possible, Marian Zidaru did not appear on the list of participating artists, neither were any of his crosses displayed within the exhibition space. Given his long-term collaboration with an underground religious revitalization movement, this noticeable omission came as no surprise. Still, for the researcher of the phenomenon of sacred art in Romania, this omission is striking since Marian Zidaru, more than any other Romanian artist, created an impressive aggregate of wooden and stone crosses, “ranging from book-size to human-size to monumental, often curved and twisted like growing branches, images of an eye repeated like reflections of a kaleidoscope (reminiscent of Escher), long hand-written scrolls of the Word of God, and the contemporary contour map of Romania appear again and again…”48 Marian and Victoria Zidaru have remained faithful to their art of spiritual inspiration both during and after the New Jerusalem episode. Their new project reveals a constant search for God’s word in the artists’ concerns, as well as an indefatigable quest for social and political change.

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6.4   Art of Resistance and Persistence Irrespective of the “New Jerusalem” Influence After the fall of the communist regime, apart from the New Jerusalem, other religious revitalization movements engaged in the creation of artistic repertoires of spiritual descent. To mention just one example I recall having participated in a mysterious workshop where a spiritual leader—a former artist and art teacher—mesmerized the large audience with discourses about “salvation” and “spiritual healing.” Both the spiritual leader and his cultic milieu consisting of a large number of followers wearing archaic attire, resembling the outfit of the first Christians. I found out later that his name was Francisc Maitreya (born Francisc Horvath), the leader of a spiritual revitalization movement called the “Sons of Light” born in his hometown Deva. The spiritual movement practiced yoga, a strict vegetarian diet and artistic activities. Francisc Horvath claimed that he is the seventh avatar (son) of God and this divine lineage explains his healing powers. Among other commandments, he was instructing his disciples not to trust science-based medicine and to avoid any kind of medication. After 1995 Francisc (became Maitreya) formed a community of “Sons of Light” whose ceremonial practices took place in a cave in Roṣcani. After he published several volumes about the spiritual movement he initiated, Francisc Horvath died of cardiac failure in 2003, allegedly because he refused to eat. His followers posited that their spiritual leader was very sad because “he was misunderstood,” and like Jesus, not taken seriously by the people.49 Like Saint Virginia from the New Jerusalem, Francisc Maitreya also managed to gather a community of people ready to re-fashion their identity from the bottom-up. In both cases, these people were attempting to find their own narrative about the meaning and value of life in a society that confronted post-communist poverty and disillusion with the present and the future. Romania’s transition to democracy and capitalist economy opened the door to new worries and social, economic and epistemic injustices. Thus, the impulse to resuscitate local traditions, spiritual healing strategies, and to challenge imported “modernities” can also be understood in social and political terms. Against this gloomy background, “the sacred has been revived in Romanian art.”50 The explorations of what political and cultural social factors underpinned the emergence of numerous religious revitalization movements are largely ignored in the academic literature dedicated to this issue. Most studies on this topic—mainly written by the

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representatives of the Romanian Orthodox Church—are too quick to label these grassroots religious revivalist movements as “heretic” and “schismatic,” overlooking the social and political struggle underlying the advent of these movements in the first place.51 Since this exploration falls behind the main scope of this chapter, I would only add, following Anamaria Iosif Ross, that “the link between religion and healing runs very deeply” in Eastern Europe, and “the diversification of religious and healing movements is among many things an act of ‘privatization’ of the symbolic domains of the body and the self, which had become completely controlled by the political apparatus of socialism prior to December 1989. This re-appropriation of the symbolic and experiential domain of the body and its potentials for transformation is significant as a step in the creation of a “civil society” and the re-creation of identities from the bottom up.”52 The artistic re-evaluation of the sacred and the rural after 1989 could also be understood as a reconsideration of art history with ethical accents. The Zidarus’ artistic “Cleansing of Romania” (artistic performance from 1994 in the mountain when the artists crowned the trees with wigs and crosses carved in a folkloric manner) is not without political and ethical connotations. We cannot overlook the Zidarus’ persistent reinforcement of a peculiar cultural component of what they appreciate in their work as a form of artistic national identity. Unsurprisingly, the critics of Zidarus’ “protochronist nationalism” are more often than not progressive artists and intellectuals who militate for a cultural and artistic production aligned to Western standards, trends and styles. At the same time, those thoroughly coupled with the Romanian Orthodox Church also discard the Zidarus’ “offensive cultural nationalism” but for different reasons. The official church of Romania has always claimed to hold the authorized formulations of Romanian cultural identity and national consciousness. This moral authority might see in Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s art a disobedient way of representing the canon. However, what the Zidarus’s artistic creation reveals to the public is just one form of artistic identity among others. They never pretended that their way to personal fulfilment is the “Golden road” and the unique path to follow. Unlike the officially sanctioned narrative of the “Romanian cultural identity”, these artistic movements illuminate a struggle of the innovative, self-constructing efforts “of post-socialist Romanian persons trying to elaborate new projects of meaning and value amidst multiple narratives of one’s place in the Balkans, Europe and the world.”53

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While the Romanian art theorists and intellectuals (both the enthusiasts of the Zidarus’ works and the critics) endeavoured to label stylistically their corpus of “unsettling” artistic production, Marian Zidaru openly admits that he envisions their artistic practice as a form of “Spiritual Romanticism.”54 On the official website of the art gallery H’art, Marian Zidaru eloquently posits, “the main thing is not setting foot outside the workshop and diligently chasing the vein you’ve uncovered. When I was young, I was interested in form, now I am interested in concept. But my theme has remained the same—‘spiritual purity’. That’s how I ended up with mystical romanticism.”55 The prophetic literary writings of Romanticism (e.g. the prophetic John Milton’s work linked to the Romantic poets) inspired the Zidarus’s creation and the mystical dimension of the Romantic imagination is professed through many of their artworks and exhibitions. One example of this is the exhibition entitled “The Victim” (displayed at the H’art Gallery, Bucharest, 2014) focused on “spiritual purity.” The purity is conceptualized in artistic formats that epitomize a peculiar form of pureness that does not necessarily allude to Christian Orthodox holiness. The exhibition consisted of a huge body of drawings produced by Marian Zidaru over the last 30 years. “The Victim” displays a large drawing entitled, ‘Eli, eli, lama sabahtani’ (‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’—Matthew 27: 46). The drawing reveals a baby boy (symbolizing the purity of childhood) with eyes shut and an enigmatic smile (half-blissful and half-scary) who has both hands immersed in the mouths of a two-headed snake. The threatening reptile has only one body and two mouths at both ends. As the curator of the exhibition, Dan Popescu, points out, “many would smirk when recognizing the knob of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchal cane in the two headed snakes. I see here a wonderful diagram of man’s ontological situation: caught between two transforming infinities, self-aware of his own finiteness, made to interrupt creation’s hiatus, within the infinite.” (Fig. 6.2).56 Thus, this piece of art is not a confrontation of the Orthodox Church of Romania—as it might be understood at first glance—but an instance of the artistic impersonation of a blissful victim. “The Victim” exhibition also suggests that the “blissful victim” consents to the sacrifice of living in a sacred interval at any cost. Without necessarily opposing the “system” and its set of multifarious dogmas, “The Victim” exposes a political exceptional state of being in the world. This state of exception captures the artists’ pursuit to bring God to life in this desecrated world through

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Fig. 6.2  Marian Zidaru, The Victim Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani (2011). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

personal action. Marian Zidaru submits to the status of a “blissful victim” who consents to her ontological situation by indulging the role of her anguish and torment as a price for living. This acceptance and approval of the ontological condition ought not to be connected with resignation and impassiveness. On the contrary, the acceptance of sacrifice and torment is a political exceptional condition. Moreover, this very political exceptional condition is revealed through committed self-sacrifice at any cost. There is a form of radicalism against any hegemony imbedded in self-sacrifice. As Vasile Ernu argues when he theorizes the sectarians’ political radicalism against any system of hegemonic power, to sacrifice your Self for the others is the supreme deliverable one can accomplish in terms of the elevation of the soul.57 Dogmatic Christianity typically does not accept this theoretical position. Vasile Ernu’s puzzling formula according to which “Stalinism is the last Golden Age of Christianity” is illuminated in his study by the eagerness with which a “sectarian” religious community from Bugeac (from Odessa Oblast of Ukraine) succeeded to overcome the Soviet Union’s anti-religious crusades. As the sectarians from Odessa Oblast, the Zidarus submit to suffering for their faith against all odds, as the most exceptional political goal one can achieve in life. By embracing faith with all stubbornness and by all means, the Zidarus, like Vasile Ernu’s “sectarians,” take advantage of the ultimate occasion to become blissful victims for their devotion to spiritual purity. Thus, as Vasile Ernu deftly demonstrates, for “sectarians” from

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Bugeac, communist hegemony has been the last circumstance to allow them to become martyrs for their faith.58 Correspondingly, they became the most radical anti-system rioters without even proposing to fight against the communist system as such. Like the Zidarus, “sectarians” from other pockets of resistance from behind the Iron Curtain saved their souls by not giving in. Through their unremitting spiritual practices and existential program, they actually resisted the communist system without any manifest political intent and without demanding (after the fall of the communist era) any symbolic recognition or reparations for their “anti-communists” struggle. Therefore, as this chapter suggests, an investigation of the anticommunist insurgents and their “dropping out” of spiritual practices should compel a reassessment of those who are habitually treated as anticommunist dissidents by including “the sectarians” and other religious revivalist communities that are usually disregarded in the mainstream academic studies on communist dissidence. After the fall of communism, the Zidarus’ corpus of religiously inspired art continues to testify to the artists’ quest for spiritual awakening. Apart from the constant metaphors of Angels, Thrones, Victims and Divine Fire, the artists enlarged the panoply of spiritual tropes to include also vegetal elements remembering the Paradise lost and regained (Victoria Zidaru), the Road of Cross (Marian Zidaru) and “interchangeable support between the tree and the cross of the sacrificial schema subjected to some dramatic increasing tensions and the hybridization between the vegetal, ophidian, even human universes, as in the representation ‘Saint George Fighting the Dragon,’ made from an intertwinement of roots and in which, with a subtle touch, the world’s homogeneity at the level of matter offers a dramatic link to the conflict between good and evil.”59 The artists approach the well-known religious symbols in their peculiar way, disregarding the strict rules of the Byzantine Herminia (the Christian painter’s instruction manual). As Marian Zidaru posits, this spiritual, artistic and political choice ought not to be regarded as defiance or oppositional to the official canon of Orthodox dogmatic art but rather as a journey for total communion with the symbol. He recalls one of his works from 1994 (“The Siberian Way”): “The work consisted of a series of horizontal, curved crosses which struggled to stand up. They were dragging on the ground. Those crosses were crosses in physical and spiritual sufferance, crosses in motion, human being-crosses, and soul-crosses. I could not achieve this effect with Church dogmatic vertical crosses. These horizontal crosses epitomize the tragedy

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of the Christians deportations to Siberia.”60 Other works display crosses that resemble the Red Cross symbol omnipresent in the campaigns of humanitarian activism. The cross in Zidaru’s artistic production is not only the conveyer of Christ’s sacrifice, but also the vessel of nature and beauty as in the little wood carved crosses, vibrantly painted by Victoria with wildflowers, or Marian’s sculptures Cross Flowers from 1993. On her personal blog, Alina Ṣtefănescu recalls her encounter with one of the Zidaru’s Cross Flowers carved in wood by Marian and diligently painted by Victoria with colourful little flowers. At the bottom of the field of wildflowers, it is written calligraphically “Cross with Wild Flowers.”61 Its purchaser describes the little artefact as follows: “A cross of flowers—the way meadows crown gravestones with wildflowers, the tiny little nails to remind us of the unbearable ones […] I feel like this little cross deserves an entire wall of its own […] Whenever I try to put it next to something else, it seems to overpower it. I’m still fascinated.”62 The artistic repertoire where the cross is the main subject also includes Cross Bodies. Recently (in 2018), Marian Zidaru won a creative contest for the “New Constantin Brâncoveanu Trophy”. The Alexandrion Foundation that organizes the Constantin Brâncoveanu Gala every year organized this contest as well. Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688–1714) was the ruler of the historical Romanian province of Vallachia, largely commemorated in Romanian cultural memory for his martyrdom—together with his four sons and wife—for his Christian faith (Eastern Orthodoxy) at the hands of the Ottomans. Crucea Trup (Cross Body) created by Marian Zidaru as a trophy for the commemorative gala epitomizes, in the eyes of the Alexandrion Foundation and jury of art critics, “the idea of Martyrdom, the idea of Christianity, of growth and solidarity.”63 This prize for a cross (Crucea Trup/Cross Body) awarded to Marian Zidaru, as well as his recurrent artistic repertoire where the cross is the main theme, signals as at least a “major omission” in his absence from the wide-ranging list of artists invited to exhibit at the itinerant exhibition, The Cross: From Community to Communion. 100 Crosses in 100 Years (2017–2018). Another persistent theme in the artists’ cultural production is the omnipresence of the angels. The Zidarus’ angels have been displayed at the Gallery Ho (Seoul) in 2007 within a group exhibition entitled, Seasons of the Angels, in New York (at the Gallery 49 and at the Romanian Cultural Institute) in 2000, and in Düsseldorf (at Kulturampt Düsseldorf) in 2011. Perhaps the most revealing project where the thematic cluster of angels encompassed the artists’ predilection for terrene angels is the artistic

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performance displayed in Düsseldorf. There, Marian Zidaru presented his artistic project, The Wandering Angel (2011). The artist carved in wood huge, distressed angel wings and attached them to his body as a natural body part. Then he wandered with these angel wings into the German town. He knew nothing about this foreign location. This ritual gesture was conceptualized as an appellation of the sacred to come back into the modern, industrialized and tiring city. The artistic performance was documented photographically and then exhibited in art galleries both in Düsseldorf and in Bucharest. The thematic cluster of angels in Zidarus’ work of spiritual inspiration is not only persistent but also stylistically eclectic. Their angels might belong to more than one religion and the messages they convey might even conflict with each other. However, this variety of symbols and meanings ascribed to the presence of angels does not seem to worry the artists. In this vein, Marian Zidaru posits, “all religions have angels, and this is a common point of reconciliation among them. You can find angels in Egyptian art, Assyrian art, and Byzantine art. You can find angels with wings in every religion… All religions start from a common point, accepting some essential things…”64 These “essential things” are over and over again proffered by the Zidarus’ art, and also these “essential things” allow us to interpret their cultural production as a form of “prophetic activism.” As Tom Block elaborates on this concept, “prophetic activism” does not refer to the oppositional type of cultural creation that is common in activist art.65 Prophetic activism does not polarize society into “us” (friends) and “them” (enemies) but rather brings God to our world through action and pursuing universal values like love, compassion, truth and justice. Romanian art historian, Ioana Vlasiu, also endorses this new paradigm of prophetic activist art, when she claims that the Zidarus’ body of work “goes beyond the rupture,” because “their work does not contest, does not mock, does not search, but, with each new exhibition keeps on affirming the assumed religious belief, with an unaltered conviction, and calm (but not resigned) perseverance.”66 Their multifarious crosses, sacrificial lambs, wandering angels and thrones are not displayed to the public to support or to condemn a certain religion or religious practice but rather to provide a contemporary spiritual enrichment for their fellows’ souls, both in the Romanian post-communist context and internationally. The “Wandering Angel” on Düsseldorf’s streets and wherever else brings spirituality back to the desacralized, consumer suffocated and desensitized urban settings. Thus, Zidarus’ prophetic activist art revolves around

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universal ideals such as the spiritual revival of humankind, integration of nature back into daily life, the practice of freedom, transcendence of self and social justice. Unlike the anchorites, Marian and Victoria Zidaru do not direct their creative energy to promote only their own spiritual elevation but channel their creative effort towards their community wherever they settle. For example, when they moved abroad to pursue their artist residency (e.g. in Düsseldorf), their artistic prophetic activism has been directed towards the spiritual alleviation of those communities. This seems to be also the main goal of their artistic production from the New Jerusalem period or from the Art Farm in Liteni (Suceava). Victoria and Marian Zidaru’s religiously inspired work has to be analysed and understood in a contemporary, political-critical perspective. One of Marian’s recent exhibitions, entitled prophetically, ePOCALIPS@ (27 October 2017—28 February 2018, Craiova Art Museum, Marin Sorescu National Theater and Craiova “Art” Gallery), encapsulates—perhaps the best—the artist’s spiritual symbolism employed in his political art to critical ends. As art critic, Mihaela Velea, pointed out, ePOCALIPS@ is both a visual and conceptual construction that became workable through “the amalgamation of two notorious terms: epoch and Apocalypse.”67 The exhibition displays artefacts that recall vernacular material culture of the Romanian peasants’ ethos to criticize contemporary society and the neverending hypocrisy of present-day politics, institutionalized religion and political practices that disregard questions and concerns about deeper truths and morality of the action. Within the exhibition, Marian reperforms one of his Angels artistic actions (entitled The Wandering Angel) staged for the first time in 1994 on the top of the Bucegi Mountains. He reiterates his previous artistic action in the streets of Craiova city, transporting on his shoulders heavy angel wigs carved in wood. The artistic performance impersonates a religious liturgical procession with apotropaic undertones. As the artist recalls, the Wandering Angel performance from 1994 was intended as an apotropaic mission of political magnitude, meant to purge the image of the Romanian mountains from the label of “communist’s abundance of natural resources” to be replaced with the epitome of the “sacred mountain,” that is omnipresent in various religious narratives and myths (Fig. 6.3).68 Like Alexander Jodorowsky’s cinematic mystical journey at The Holy Mountain (1973), Marian Zidaru’s Wandering Angel (2018) can be regarded as a bitter satire on consumerism, exploitation and damage of moral values in contemporary society. Other art pieces presented within

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Fig. 6.3  Marian Ziadaru, Wandering Angel performance at Museum of Art Craiova (2018) (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

ePOCALIPS@’s exhibition resemble toy guns and virtual worlds, as well as dystopic worlds and traditional conceptual sculptures (installations) on which the viewer can read the words “PEACE” and “HORIZON.” The exhibition displays installations, photo-wall papers, sculptures, painting and video art. Marian Zidaru approaches the concept of “toy gun” from the standpoint of the toys that resemble guns and from the perspective of the guns that visually imitate the toys. The artist masterfully elucidates aesthetically this ambivalence and ontological and political in-betweenness of both the “guns” and the “toys” by labelling this work, “Keep away from children!” The well-designed race-car toys that are easy to manipulate by children have a bomb attached to each of them. On each bomb is written calligraphically “PEACE” in different languages (Russian and Chinese among them). The artist discloses, by the means of the childish games, the hypocrisy of political slogans that claim that all of the efforts of the super-powers are directed to establish world peace, while actually “peace” connotes the opposite of what we might mean in common parlance.

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All of the exhibited art pieces testify an existence in the anteroom of the contemporary apocalypses (including the apocalypse of communication via new online media). Thus, the exhibition employs religious tropes to signal certain techno-social concerns of our contemporary world. The main danger is the unavoidability of leaving a desecrated life where technology and artificiality reigns. In this vein, Silviu Pădurariu analyses those “contemporary aspects in the exhibition that pertain to the Anthropocene.”69 The viewer of the exhibition may notice that the word “Horizon” occurs recurrently within ePOCALIPS@. Marian Zidaru elucidates the meaning and significance of the concept of “horizon” in the economy of his artistic political theology, pointing out that typically a horizon separates two divergent entities, such as sky-earth, happinesssufferance, good-evil, sacred-profane, life-death, nature-technology and so on.70 The exhibition also attempts to engage the visitor in meaning making by exposing an installation that represents a tablet (called ePocalipsa) where visitors and anyone else can share a mystical experience or a deeply personal story or dream at an e-mail address created purposefully for this occasion: [email protected]. While the art pieces performed and displayed on the top of the Bucegi Mountains after the fall of communism in the 1990s addressed the urgencies of that political and social moment, ePOCALIPS@ zooms in on a different set of political and social concerns that correspond to present-day dangers and moral-political evils. Marian Zidaru’s declared monarchism was also revealed in many artworks produced for the Bucegi Mountains artistic actions. Most significantly in this respect is a suitcase that was packed with different wooden pieces that took the shape of the Romanian map. The artist saw the suitcase as King Michael I’s nostalgia for his country. Michael I was the fourth king of the Hohenzollern dynasty who reigned in Romania before the communists forced him to abdicate in 1947. Marian Zidaru was one of the supporters of the king’s return after the fall of the communist regime. Although ePOCALIPS@ reiterates certain topoi from the Bucegi Mountain episode, the 2018 exhibition brings in new food for thought and critical devices. One of these refers to the “gift-giving” paradigm of the cultural exchange. Craiova Art Museum—as one of the cultural institutions that hosted Marian Zidaru’s exhibition—send him a linden tree to Bucharest as a gift. The artist decided to reciprocate the gift to the museum and created a sculpture (entitled The Museum’s Tree, 2017) out of the linden tree. The appearance of the sculpted tree is carbonized and alludes

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to the idea of carbonized culture. The free has also attached two sculpted black birds. The metaphor of carbonized culture is part and parcel of the artist’s apocalyptic series where authentic cultural production is envisioned on the edge of extinction, exactly the two carbonized (black birds) that used to thrive in harmony with the living tree from its natural habitat, before being turned into carbonized culture. The Museum’s Tree distressingly encapsulates the political emotion of nostalgia for the Paradise lost. This approach is nevertheless very risky, and, as curator and gallery owner, Dan Popescu, posits on his professional blog, “I don’t think there’s anything more backwards from the standpoint of the current curatorial system than an artist with vision. If, alongside vision, the artist happens to also exhibit a mystical side, then the odds of him being pegged as either a fundamentalist, or a traditionalist, are sky-high. And, as we know, today, the terms ‘fundamentalist’, or ‘traditionalist’, or ‘nationalist’ are the conceptual scarecrows of the new ideological manipulation.”71 Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s body of artistic production from 1985 to the present day remains persistent in backing up the idea that art continues to be a revitalizing force for social change. Grounded in indefatigable spiritual practice, their artistic corpus augments “the spiritual life of humanity” to incorporate new sets of concerns. The use of vernacular-religious peasant motifs in their artistic production ought not to be exclusively interpreted through the lens of a pursuit for cultural national identity, but also as a state of spiritual liberation and personal spiritual betterment which might stimulate and gather people both virtually and physically in offline and online communities of both admirers and detractors. As Erwin Kessler posits, Marian Zidaru became the frontman of a notorious revivalist movement because he “sculpts the community around him. He is the author of churches, monasteries, houses, clothing, furniture, instruments, events, film and literature for this community. For Zidaru, the artist, the work is the art of living responsibly and radically—everything is put at work for the spiritual elevation for the others.”72 The Zidarus’ prophetic art is a form of activism and “social engineering” which addresses the political and the social from the atypical standpoint of the spiritual. The fact that the artists’ militant art relies on religious and spiritual tropes and motifs (even of Christian Orthodox descent) does not necessarily mean that this type of artistic production encapsulates the official art canon of the Romanian Orthodoxism and its dogmas. Unlike the nationalist art created and exhibited by the Neo-Orthodox artists associated with the sanctioned Christian Orthodox art galleries, the Zidarus’

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“nationalism” is “paradoxical, ahistorical and dystopian.”73 This paradoxical and dystopian nationalism is also transparent in the Zidarus’ current artworks. While the contemporary Neo-Orthodox artists employ in their artistic creation an exclusive autochthonous iconography and symbolism, Marian and Victoria Zidarus’ “abstract nationalism” does not exclusively rely on enhancing “Romanian spirit or essence” but on conceptual and generic nationalism as it is exposed in the Bible by the Old Testament’s prophecies of God’s chosen people. Thus, their prophetic activist art attempts to disseminate a spiritual palliative strategy for the troubled human soul and consciousness, irrespective of the religious bearings of those who contemplate it. The artists are, therefore, more concerned with spiritual elevation rather than with fulfilling the requirements of Orthodoxies (or any other religion) as such. Their artistic practice encapsulates a peculiar cultural memory, defined as nostalgia, for a state of spiritual liberation where Christianity—or any other religion—is not envisioned in terms of categories and dogmas pervasive in the Western European space but rather in terms of what Marian Zidaru labels “a creative/poetic Christianity” specific to the rural populations but applicable to humanity at large. Social justice is co-constitutive of this “creative Christianity” expressed strikingly through Zidaru’s art. As Marian posits for the popular magazine Formula As, he believes in “a poetic Christianity, rather than in a dogmatic one […] I believe that the primordial World was a world of poetry. I think that the poets and artists have no idea of the great power they have to change the world.” (Formula As, May 5, 2014) Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s prophetic activist artistic production in the last 40 years reconsiders the meanings of “religion”, revealing a peculiar form of religiosity (open to everyone) that is grounded in the relationship between God, human being, and nature. Their corpus of prophetic art employs spiritual coping strategies, which advance the restoration of humanity’s highest hopes and ideals from authoritarianism, devastations, and social injustice. This palliative attention combined with advocacy for political and social change remains consistent in their cultural practice from the communist period to the present day. The artists’ radical redefinition of the “religious” can be regarded as a form of cultural and political resistance against both the atheistic communist regimes and the tough years of the transition from communism.

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6.5   Cloths for the Soul: Victoria Zidaru’s Ceremonial Textile Art Victoria Zidaru (born in Liteni, Suceava, 1956) is a versatile visual artist who works in a multiplicity of media, ranging from performance, sculpture and textiles (embroidery, weaving, stitching) to painting, collage, land art and graphics. Although she produced a consistent body of spiritual art her poignant predilection for textile art and ritualist scenography triggered the art world’s interest in her exploration with natural materials (such as wood, cotton, hemp and linen cloth, straw, rush and ropes made from jute). These materials are produced in a great variety of natural and dyed colours. Her art is a very distinctive form of ceremonial, sacred textiles whose display reveals the nostalgia for the Paradise and its economy of hope. At the same time, the art pieces created by Victoria Zidaru tenaciously reveal the spiritual and political identity of the artist. Her paradisiacal clothing, tapestries and textile installations remind us that textile garments “hold a unique position in ceremony beyond utilitarian value. They are used between the human hand and the Gospel books; between corruptible flesh and the cross.”74 The symbolic design of her textile pieces reflects the idea of a second skin that reduces the distance between God and human beings and their anatomical skin. In this spiritual register, Victoria Zidaru’s textile art does not mirror the traditional Christian Orthodox late Byzantine canons of religious art that mentioned “The sumptuous use of gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones and also stressed textiles as a legitimate method of depicting the life of Christ and the essential elements of Christian historiography.”75 The artist’s choice of humble natural materials is meant to render the bond with sacredness accessible and reachable for everyone, everywhere. The highly personal nature of clothing and textiles—as garments that are closely associated with the body—is reiterated in artistic formats that recall the spiritual dimension of these items, whose desecration by consumerism and fashion industry renders them banal objects of daily use that are easily replaceable by other mass-produced replica. Victoria Zidaru’s textile pieces recall the old Christian precepts of the body as temple of the soul. Apart from textiles, the same concept is materialized in other artistic media. For instance, Body-Temple I (1991, bronze on travertine base) reveals the feminine shape of a maternal body, while the sculpture Body-Temple II (1991, bronze on white marble base) exhibits a body without a clear shape that has a punctured cross in the middle.76

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For this sacred body that continues to remain the temple of the soul, Victoria Zidaru creates ceremonial attire that have a voice of their own. In this transcendent register, the exhibition Zis ṣi Cusut (in English, ‘Said and Sewn’, H’Art Appendix Gallery, Bucharest, 2016) displays the ecological spirituality of those materials that are found easily in nature but are often ignored by Romanian contemporary artists. The same return to the essence of cloth, wood and hay is present in another exhibition from the same year (Florilegiu, Tipografia Gallery, Combinatul Fondului Plastic, Bucharest, 2016). Many sacred signs and symbols from illo tempore (that ideal, paradisiacal time) are revealed through stitching and embroidery on cotton and hemp fabric. An installation of textile art is particularly revealing in this sense: a wall made of textile bricks has on each unit sewn the word of affirmative decision Da (Yes). Other pieces exhibit large pockets of white cloth filled with lavender, basil, tea flowers, thyme, rosemary and other aromatic plants. The installation appears like a wall of textile compartments, each of which hosts a glimpse of the smells of Paradise. Thus, the memory of Paradise is not only materialized in visually displayed artefacts but also through the participation of visitors’ olfaction. The artist testifies that she took inspiration for her work from childhood when she used to manufacture her toys out of cloth, wood and hay.77 Childhood time is then an illo tempore that marked the artist’s relationship with both God and nature. Another piece of art from the exhibition Forilegiu (curated by Alexandru Davidian) consists of a bunch of tree branches attired by a white linen that looks like a baby wrapped in a blanket. The entire construction was hanging on the gallery’s wall. The bundles of wood carried in the peasant’s back with the help of a rug is not an uncommon representation in Romanian visual art. What Victoria Zidaru’s artwork reveals as conceptually unique and resourceful is the written expression IARTĂ -MĂ (Forgive Me) impregnated into the white cloth. In the communicative register of the spiritual ecology that the artist is aiming to communicate to the viewers of her exhibitions, the bundle of branches wrapped up in the white linen that reads “Forgive Me”, the human being asks forgiveness from the wooden branches (and implicitly from nature). As stated in a previous chapter, “nature is never only ‘natural’; it is always fraught with a religious value.”78 Thus, nature is in Victoria Zidaru’s art—as in other NeoOrthodox artists’ work—demarcated by an “ecology of transfiguration.”79

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As noticed by Doinel Tronaru, both exhibitions are dominated by the non-colour white, as a universal symbol of purity.80 The ethical category of purity is part and parcel of the moral code of many religions (including in ancient Judaism). That might be one of the meeting points between the Old Testament and The New Testament of the Bible in Victoria Zidaru’s ceremonial textile art. The same prevalent occurrence of the white tones is also present in the catalogue of the exhibition, Zis ṣi Cusut.81 The same whiteness of cloth is reiterated by Victoria Zidaru in a 2018 exhibition entitled, Hortus Deliciarum (Sala Foyer, National Museum of Romanian Peasant, Bucharest). The exhibition was inspired by the twelfth-century sacred music of the Medieval Benedictine nun, Hildegard von Bingen. This is the reason why Victoria Zidaru decided to accompany her solo art exhibition with the sacred music about which she claimed the Benedictine abbes was one of the heavenly revelations she experienced (Fig. 6.4).

Fig. 6.4  Victoria Zidaru, Hortus Deliciarum (2018). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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Victoria Zidaru’s Hortus Deliciarum reveals an atypical vision of the Garden of Eden that does not resemble other gardens of earthly delights from art history and contemporary arts (e.g. Hieronymus Bosch 1510 or Mladen Miljanovic 2013).82 While Hieronymus Bosch’s garden of delights depicted mostly bodily pleasures and Mladen Miljanovic’s installation displays a revisionist concept of pleasure and its contemporary disheartening representations, Victoria Zidaru’s Hortus Deliciarum alludes to the pleasures of the soul and conscience. Neither Hieronymus Bosch nor Mladen Miljanovic’ gardens of delight refer to prophetic pleasures of conscience. On the contrary, most of the artworks created in the footsteps of Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece address the possibility of living in a society unfettered of moral constrains. Perhaps, apart from Hieronymus Bosch, the Indian artist, Raqib Shaw has the most intricate representations of the contemporary gardens of delights populated by amoral, hybrid creatures. His Garden of Earthly Delights (2004) employs a sophisticated technique that combines synthetic polymer paint with stones, crystals, rhinestones, glitter and gems on board. Although his art pieces combine various techniques and media (including textiles), the content and the message conveyed is diametrically opposite to Victoria Zidaru’s spirituality of the garden of delights. In order to render the message of Hortus Deliciarum as accurate as possible, Victoria Zidaru relies on mostly white textiles displayed in installations combined with other natural materials. Antagonizing with audacity other more famous gardens of Eden, the artist exhibits an unfamiliar garden of serenity that invites the visitor to interact with the artworks that have no titles and facilitate synesthetic sensations. For the spectator of Hortus Deliciarum, hearing Hildegard von Bingen’s celestial music may produce a sensation of white or the shape of Victoria Zidaru’s textile trees may be sensed as a smell of basil, thyme or rosemary. None of the artworks exhibited have titles because all of them are “parts of a unique work called Proposal for Paradise.”83 Each untitled object emboldens the proliferation of various interpretations and connotations, recalling a certain ahistorical time reflection on a certain state of the soul. The significance of scents in connection with the garden of Paradise is vividly highlighted by Victoria Zidaru’s solo exhibitions by the means of combining visual perceptions with olfaction. As Erwin Kessler, argues, the artist’s textile installations are sculptures in the most imponderable material, the scent.84 No other artistic rendering of the garden of Paradise takes the scent as a modus operandi in transfiguring nostalgia for illo tempore

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into a glimpse of imaginative presence hic et nunc. The scent is impregnated in the homemade white fabrics that Victoria Zidaru indefatigably collects from Moldavian villagers like aunt Aurica in her beloved Bucovina.85 The omnipresent homemade white fabrics are not only used as the main medium of the more or less static art installations but also employed as part and parcel of elaborated ceremonial choreographies where contemporary dance encounters theatrical enactments. Several artistic events conceived by Victoria Zidaru engaged homemade cloth as a “return to normalcy.”86 For the artist, waving cloth in one’s home is like a prayer where the mind is absorbed in the handmade process of giving birth to immaculate cloth (Fig. 6.5). With the advent of capitalism, mass production and cheaper synthetic textiles that can be purchased from everywhere, for very little money, the traditional practice of weaving homemade fabrics has started to perish. For Victoria Zidaru, working with natural fabrics is like restoring normalcy and spiritual beauty from the destructive hands of the fashion industry and textile industry. The leitmotif for these choreographies with textiles is “the thread” as symbol of simplicity and normalcy. As the curator, Alexandru

Fig. 6.5  Victoria Zidaru, Palatul Mogoşoaia/Mogoşoaia Palace (2010). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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Davidian, argues, the simple thread is the constitutive element of both material and spiritual wrap, and, at the same time, the immaterial thread also connects God and human being.87 Thus, this artistic cluster pervasive in Victoria Zidaru’s art refers to a “thread” that performs as a symbol of both material and immaterial connections. In this vein, her exhibition, In Fire (Acvariu Room, National Museum of Romanian Peasant, 2017), displayed mostly homemade dresses that had been interpreted by the Romanian press as “a Heaven of floating butterflies.”88 These mostly feminine garments bear the simplicity and beauty of the traditional peasant costume. Yet, they are not simulacra of the traditional folk costumes but contemporary expressions of the traditional ethics of living in harmony with nature. The artist underlined that her dresses are not inspired by Romanian traditional folkloric costumes but rather from the South-East European aesthetics of traditional costumes (like the old dresses from Greece and Orient).89 Part of the exhibition was the video performance, Spălătoreasa (the Washerwoman) that visually enacted the ritual bath that is commonplace in many primeval stories and myths. The same ritualist purification of the body and soul was performed outside, in the courtyard of the museum, on the last day of the exhibition. The ritual scenography, entitled Înveṣmântare, was made up of women of all ages who were dressed up with the clothes exhibited within the In Fire exhibition. The performance lasted for approximately 34 minutes while the dresses exhibited within In Fire exhibition were 35 pieces. By wearing the textile pieces on skin, the ritual of purification goes beyond mere performativity.90 The performance also includes elements of ethno-choreography. The women that performed the dance movements focused on the symbolic gestures of wrapping the body—of the newborn or dead—in cloth, walking on long, immaculate carpets, washing clothes by the river, and blessing the work of the hands that wave and sew. All these staged purification rituals took place against a background of folk and sacred music. The folklore source in its ancient forms is nevertheless extant in the choreographic sequences that emphasize the most important channels that a man can cross in a lifetime, “every passage meaning a new fulfilment: birth, initiation, wedding, self-sacrifice and the long bridge to Beyond.” (Fig. 6.6).91 The choreography creates an original body language that is expressed through the peculiar handmade white garments. Victoria Zidaru’s work reminds us of Ion Tugearu’s choreographies from the 1990s, especially of Puntea (the Bridge). Like Tugearu’s “universal line of common life, seen

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Fig. 6.6  Victoria Zidaru, In Fire (2018). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

through the specific rituals of the Romanian folklore” Victoria Zidaru’s, Inveṣmântare, is “not to be classified as a certain style.”92 The same crossing of existential bridges in a woman’s lifetime are also displayed in Victoria’s ceremonial choreography that ends up with the self-sacrifice theme of a young woman who is wrapped in white cloth like a mummified body by three older women. This ritualistic choreography reminds the viewer that the thin line between life and death is sanctified by the presence of ceremonial cloth. Not all Victoria Zidaru’s pieces of textile art are wearable. For instance, her embroideries on hemp and cotton cloth titled, The Body-Sanctuary, Seraph, Epitaph, and Wing, encapsulate a vision about the connectedness between body (body covering) and spirit. These art objects are exhibited as they appear to the eye, as static constructions that talk mostly to the faculty of prophetic imagination.

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6.6   Political Art of Religious Inspiration The Zidarus’ corpus of artistic production is nevertheless the most enduring example of political art of spiritual inspiration that emerged during Nicolae Ceauṣescu’s regime and then recuperated as a form of resistance to a new set of concerns after the 1989. The artists’ persistent quest for spiritual and mental security in the desacralized world of communism and unchallenged capitalism is sometimes perceived in the Romanian cultural press as “radical” or “sectarian.” Yet, as argued in this chapter, their art pieces reveal an undomesticated nostalgia for a lost paradise that is constantly instantiated through a newly discovered freedom of creation, precluding any dogmas of institutionalized religion. There are no analogous forms of political art of spiritual inspiration in other post-communist countries from the region. The “prophetic activism” displayed in their artistic production can be understood as a progressive religious justice movement without the all-too-familiar concessions made to conservative Christianity.93 This explains Marian Zidaru’s recent daring sculptures painted in soft pink that display a “glossy” moveable phallus (entitled “Brâncuṣi’s phallus” 2017) mounted on wheels and tied up with a rope fastened around a heavy stone. The phallus is neither pornographic nor a suitable representation in line with the ethics of institutionalized religion. However, in Marian Zidaru’s work, the symbolic presence of a lower body part—usually associated with frivolity—comes to mean balanced life aligned with the cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice). Thus, the link between religion/spirituality and politics in the Zidarus’ art goes beyond conservative Christianity, revealing counternarratives of religious identity that resist religious conservatism.

Notes 1. I also tackled this issue in Maria Alina Asavei, “Art and Religious Revitalisation Movements in Post-Communist Romania: the Zidarus’Case,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 18(2) (2017): 157–174 (Asavei 2017). 2. Video interview with Marian Zidaru for ‘Ateliere de Arta Deschise în Bucuresti’ [Open Studio Art in Bucharest]—Editia Enescu 2017. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=990GpQB89to. (Accessed 22 February 2020). 3. Ibidem. 4. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (California: Stanford University Press, 1998) (Agamben 1998).

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5. Ioana Vlasiu, Beyond the Rupture. Anaid Art Gallery. 2005. Press Release—ANOtimpurile, Zidaru. Available at: http://anaidart.ro/en/ expozitii-media/2004-2/anotimpurile/ (11 February 2020) (Vlasiu 2005). 6. For more on the narratives of Christ’s cross as tree see Nicole Fallon, The Cross as Tree: The Wood-of-the-Cross Legends in Middle English and Latin Texts in Medieval England, PhD Thesis in Medieval Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2009) (Fallon 2009). 7. Erwin Kessler, “Marian Zidaru.” Sculptura X Architectura (2015). Available at: http://www.recombinat.ro/mzidaru.html (3 November 2016) (Kessler 2016). 8. According to Pierre Nora, lieu de mémoire is a concept that refers to collective memories. Both physical and non-physical spaces can have special significance in the economy of how the past is remembered. For more on this issue, see Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7–24 (Nora 1989). 9. Marian Zidaru, quoted in an interview with Valentin Iacob for the popular Romanian magazine Formula As in 2014. Valentin Iacob, “Ca artist, nu poţi să fii rece. Tot ceea ce faci trebuie să aibă fervoare mistică”—de vorbă cu sculptorii Marian şi Victoria Zidaru [As an artist, you can’t be impartial. Everything you do must have mystical fervor—interview with sculptors Marian and Victoria Zidaru]. Formula AS 1120 (2014). Available at: http://arhiva.formula-as.ro/2014/1120/lumea-romaneasca-24/ca-artist-nu-poti-sa-fii-rece-tot-ceea-ce-faci-trebuie-sa-aiba-fervoare-mistica-devorba-cu-sculptorii-marian-si-victoria-zidaru-17816 (22 February 2020) (Iacob 2014). 10. Ibidem. 11. Paul Ladoucer, Modern Orthodox Theology: Behold I Make All Things New (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 168 (Ladoucer 2019). 12. Christopher Walter, “The Origins of the Cult of Saint George” Revue des Etudes Byzantines 53 (1995): 320 (Walter 1995). 13. Valentin Iacob, “Ca artist, nu poţi să fii rece.” 14. Noul Ierusalim, Cuvântul lui Dumnezeu in România [The New Jerusalem, the Word of God in Romania] (Bucharest: Editura RO-Emaus, 1995) (Noul Ierusalim 1995). 15. Ibidem. 16. Ibidem. 17. The Romanian Orthodox Holy Synod’s decrees referring to the New Jerusalem can be consulted in Ciprian Marius Cloṣca, Ortodoxia ṣi Noile Miṣcari Religioase [Orthodoxy and the New Religious Movements] (Iaṣi: Lumen, 2009), 336–337 (Cloṣca 2009).

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18. Anamaria Iosif Ross, “Cradle, Manger, Granary: Carving the Body from the Nation Sacred Flesh,” Journal of Religion and Society 8 (2006): 5 (Ross 2006). 19. Idem, 8. 20. Ibidem. 21. Maria Alina Asavei, “Art and Religious Revitalisation Movements”. 22. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 2002). 23. Jaeho Kang, Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle of Modernity (Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2014), 159 (Kang 2014). 24. Ibidem. 25. Information about the TV reportage on the “New Jerusalem” can be consulted at: https://www.gandul.info/magazin/taina-noului-ierusalim-2492598 (20 February 2020). 26. Cristian Tabără, Cetatea Sfântă Noul Ierusalim Pucioasa—Reportaj [Holy Fortress New Jerusalem Pucioasa—Reportage] (2011). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYtAd-ycLhU. (27 February 2020) (Tabără 2011). 27. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. P.  Guyer, and E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) (Kant 2000). 28. Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnston, Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017), 2 (Grieser and Johnston 2017). 29. Kayla Rush, “Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept,” Material Religion 15(4) (2019): 514–515 (Rush 2019). 30. Călin Dan, “East Art Map Romania.” Stroom den Haag. Available at: http://www.stroom.nl/media/dan.pdf. (27 February 2020) (Dan 2020). 31. Luiza Barcan, Angoase ale Privirii (Bucharest: Ideea Europeană, 2004) (Barcan 2004). 32. Sorin Dumitrescu, Neputinţele tânărului Kessler [The Young Kessler’s Inaptitudes]. România Liberă, 21 January 1995 (Dumitrescu 1995). 33. My translation from Sorin Dumitrescu, “Neputinţele tânărului Kessler.” 34. Ibidem. 35. Ṣtefăniṭa Neculai, Organizare și Lideri la Gruparea Noul Ierusalim [Organization and Leaders in the ‘New Jerusalem’ Movement]. 2013. Bachelor Thesis in Theology, Faculty of Orthodox Theology “Justinian Patriarhul”: Bucharest (Neculai 2013). 36. Călin Dan, “East Art Map Romania.” 37. Victor Roncea, ‘Secta ICR: De la Antisemitism la Antiortodoxie. Patapievici defileaza cu Zidaru si “Noul Ierusalim” pentru “reînnoirea naţională spiritual-religioasă’ [The ICR sect: From Anti-Semitism to Anti-Orthodoxy. Patapievici parades with Zidaru and the “New Jerusalem” for the “national

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spiritual-religious renewal”]. 29 October 2008. Available on author’s blog at: http://victor-roncea.blogspot.cz/2008/10/secta-icr-de-la-antisemitism-la.html. (27 February 2020). 38. The blogger signs her posts with Estera Anca (or sometimes Maria) Margareta. She dedicated more than 500 posts (from 2009 to 2015) to what she calls “Independent Research on the Religious Phenomenon the ‘New Jerusalem’: The Radiography of a Sect.” The 500 articles on The New Jerusalem religious movement can be consulted online: http://nipnoulierusalimdelapucioasa.blogspot.cz/2011/01/279-cine-este-marianzidaru.html. (20 February 2020) [Estera 2009–2015]. 39. Alexandra Titu, “A Difficult Process—Creative Assumption of Liberty,” Anthology of Essays by the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. Belgrade 11–12 (2007): 393–401 (Titu 2007). 40. Erwin Kessler, Despre Ţară, Artă ṣi Credinṭă [About Nation, Art and Faith]. 22 Magazine, 11–17 January 1995 (Kessler 1995). 41. Magda Cârneci, “Le sculpteur: Marian Zidaru, Disciple de Brancusi ou artiste Prophete?” [The Sculptor: Marian Zidaru as Brâncuṣi’s Disciple or Prophet Artist?]. Ligeia 57-59-59-60 (January–June 2005): 239–251 (Cârneci 2005). 42. Valentin Iacob, “Ca artist, nu poţi să fii rece.” 43. Ibidem. 44. Doinel Tronaru, “Interviu. Marian and Victoria Zidaru, artiști vizuali: ‘Spațiul românesc este un spațiu mistic.’” [Interview. Marian and Victoria Zidaru, Visual Artists: The Romanian space is a mystical space] Adevarul, 7 January 2017. Available at: https://adevarul.ro/cultura/arte/interviumarian-sivictoria-zidaru-artisti-vizuali-spatiul-romanesc-spatiu-mistic1_586fd1c15ab6550cb8265369/index.html (14 January 2020) (Tronaru 2017a). 45. Ibidem. 46. Ibidem. 47. Valentin Grigore, Să Fii Tânăr [To be Young]. Columna TV Dâmboviṭa, 15 February 2014. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OffGwWbwwOU (25 February 2020) (Grigore 2014). 48. Anamaria Iosif Ross, “Cradle, Manger, Granary”, 6. 49. His writings (or the writings about his mystical philosophy) that circulated in the 1990s in Romania are: Ionel Pîrvan, Jurnalul meu: IJ.  Francisc Maitreya [My Diary: I.J.  Francisc Maitreya] (Craiova: Hyperion, 2003) (Pîrvan 2003); Francisc Maitreya, Prima Evanghelie [The First Gospel] (Bucharest: Editura Safire: 1995) (Maitreya 1995a); Francisc Maitreya, Drumul spre Iluminare [The Road to Illumination] (Arad: Editura Arhetip, 1996) (Maitreya 1995b); Francisc Maitreya, Sutrele Initị erii [Initiation Sutras] (Baia Mare: Editura Witz, 1999) (Maitreya 1999).

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50. Adrian Guṭă, “Riders on the Storm-Performance Art in Romania between 1986 and 1996,” in Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Center for Contemporary Art, 1997), 86 (Guṭă 1997). 51. Religious grass-roots movements declared “sectarian” by the official church are tackled in Ciprian Marius Cloṣca, Ortodoxia ṣi Noile Miṣcari Religioase [Orthodoxy and the New Religious Movements] (Iaṣi: Lumen, 2009) (Cloṣca 2009) and in Cristian Bădiliṭă and Otniel Vereṣ, Biserici, Secte, Erezii? Dialoguri fără Prejudecăt ̣i despre Marile Tradit ̦ii Creștine [Churches, Sects, Heresies? Dialogues without Prejudices about the Great Christian Traditions] (Bucharest: Editura Vremea, 2011) (Bădiliṭă and Vereṣ 2011). 52. Anamaria Iosif Ross, “Cradle, Manger, Granary”, 8–9. 53. Idem., 8. 54. Marian Zidaru, quoted in Dan Popescu, “The Blissful Victim”. Hart Gallery’s website, 2014. Available at: http://www.hartgallery.ro/events/ the-victim-106 (27 February 2020) (Popescu 2014). 55. Ibidem. 56. Ibidem. 57. Vasile Ernu, Sectanţii (Iaşi: Polirom, 2015) (Ernu 2015). 58. Ibidem. 59. For a more exhaustive analysis of the religious symbols employed by the artists, see Alexandra Titu, “Critical Review.” Centrul Cultural Meta, 2014. Available at: http://www.sculpture.ro/fisa.php?id=655&lang=EN (29 January 2020) (Titu 2014). 60. Adrian Guţă, “The 1980s Generation in the Visual Arts Twenty Years Later,” Arta 5 (2012): 83 (Guţă 2012). 61. The Cross Flower sculpture can be seen in Alina Ṣtefanescu’s blog post “See my little cross by Marian Zidaru.” Alina’s Adventures [In Everything]. Available at: https://alina_stefanescu.typepad.com/_patrick_and_alina_ weddin/2011/11/every-time-i-chased-milla-past-that-cross-it-left-avivid-imprint-on-my-mind-a-cross-of-flowers-the-way-meadows-crowngrav.html. (19 February 2020) (Ṣtefanescu 2011). 62. Ibidem. 63. “The sculptor Marian Zidaru wins the design contest for the Constantin Brâncoveanu trophy.” Fundația Alexandrion [Alexandrion Foundation], 9 July 2018. Available at: https://www.fundatia-alexandrion.ro/en/thesculptor-marian-zidaru-wins-the-design-contest-for-the-constantin-brancoveanu-trophy/ (27 February 2020) [Alexandrion Foundation 2018]. 64. Adrian Guţă, “The 1980s Generation,” 82.

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65. Tom Block, “Prophetic Activist Art: Activism Beyond Oppositionality,” Journal of The Arts in Society 3(2) (2008): 19–26. http://www.tomblock. com/. Available at: http://www.tomblock.com/prophetic_activist_art (29 February 2020) (Block 2008). 66. Ioana Vlasiu, “Beyond the Rupture.”Anaid Art Gallery, 2005. Press release—ANOtimpurile, Zidaru. Available at: http://anaidart.ro/en/ expozitii-media/2004-2/anotimpurile/ (11 February 2020) (Vlasiu 2005). 67. Mihaela Velea, “ePOCALIPS@ este acum,” [ePOCALIPS@ is now]. Mozaicul XXI, 1(231) (2018): 14. Available at: https://revista-mozaicul. ro/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Mozaicul_1_2018.pdf. (27 February 2020) (Velea 2018). 68. See Marian Zidaru’s speech about ePOCALIPS@ exhibition for the TV program Telejurnal TVR Craiova, 27 October 2017. 69. Silviu Pădurariu, “Marian Zidaru: ePOCALIPS@,” Arta 32 (2019): 12–14 (Pădurariu 2019). 70. Marian Zidaru’s presentation of ePOCALIPS@ in Daria Ghiu, “Arte frumoase la Radio România Cultural. Din arhivă: Florin Mitroi.” 4 Noiembrie 2017. Available at: https://www.mixcloud.com/daria-ghiu/arte-frumoase-la-radio-rom%C3%A2nia-cultural-4-noiembrie-2017-marianzidaru/ (27 February 2020) (Ghiu 2017). 71. Dan Popescu, The stunning presence, translated into English by Flavia Yasin, 26 November 2017. Available at: https://psihopompex.blogspot. com/2017/?view=classic (29 February 2020) (Popescu 2017). 72. Erwin Kessler, “Marian Zidaru.” Sculptura X Architectura (2015). Available at: http://www.recombinat.ro/mzidaru.html (3 November 2016) (Kessler 2015). 73. Erwin Kessler, “Zidaru—Dans Werk von Marian & Victoria Zidaru” [Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s Work] (Essen: Klartext Verlang, 2011), 176 (Kessler 2011). 74. Ronald T. Marchese and Marlene R. Breu, “Sacred Textiles: The Hidden Wonders of the Armenian Orthodox Church Collections of Istanbul,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 7(2) (2004): 92 (Marchese and Breu 2004). 75. Idem., 95. 76. Both sculptures are part of the works of the exhibition The Body—Temple of the Holy Spirit (Art Gallery, Bucharest, 1991). 77. See Victoria Zidaru’s statement about her childhood: Victoria Zidaru, Catalogul Expoziṭiei Zis ṣi Cusut [‘Said and Sewn’ Exhibition Catalogue], ed. Alexandru Davidian (Bucharest: Editura Vellant, 2016). Available at: ARTWALL, http://artwall.ro/events/zis-si-cusut-victoria-zidaru/ (27 February 2020) [Zidaru 2016a].

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78. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), 116 [Eliade 1959]. 79. John Chryssavgis, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013) (Chryssavgis et al. 2013). 80. Doinel Tronaru, Cartea de Arta Viktoria (Nike) Zidaru, o mare artistă care tace ṣi coase [The Book of Art Viktoria (Nike) Zidaru, a great artist who does not speak and sews]. Adevarul.ro, 28 December 2017 (Tronaru 2017b). 81. Catalogul Expoziṭiei Zis ṣi Cusut [‘Said and Sewn’ Exhibition Catalogue], ed. Alexandru Davidian (Bucharest: Editura Vellant, 2016). 82. Hieronymus Bosch’s famous Garden of Earthly Delights is analyzed in quite a few academic books and articles. One of the most thorough explorations of the triptych is offered by Hans Belting. In his view, Bosch’s masterpiece is a utopian parable showing how the world and its pleasure would exist had the Fall of Man not happened—see Hans Belting, Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights (Munich: Prestel, 2005) (Belting 2005). Mladen Miljanovic’s installation (metal engraving on granite) with the same title is inspired from Bosch’s triptych but it reflects on personal indulgence and pessimistic collective life rather than on bodily pleasures and “delights.” 83. See Cristina Andrei’s video report for TVR 1’s programme Universul Credinṭei: ‘Hortus Deliciarum—Expozitie Victoria Zidaru,’ 2016. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE0-ikxQP00 (27 February 2020). 84. Erwin Kessler, “Sculptură în miresme” [Sculpture in Fragrances]. Catalogul Expoziṭiei Zis ṣi Cusut [‘Said and Sewn’ Exhibition Catalogue], ed. Alexandru Davidian (Bucharest: Editura Vellant, 2016), 6 (Kessler 2016). 85. Victoria Zidaru mentioned “aunt Aurica” as one of the main providers of the homemade fabrics she uses in her art (Mimi Nicula, Moment Art: Victoria Zidaru. TVR1. 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2musEVCCtF0 (27 February 2020). 86. Alexandru Davidian quoted in Andrei Radulescu, “Îmbrăcămintea care sfinṭeṣte” [The clothing that sanctifies]. Cotidianul.ro, 23 May 2017. Available at: https://www.cotidianul.ro/imbracamintea-care-sfinteste/ (27 February 2020) [Radulescu 2017]. 87. Ibidem. 88. Valentin Iacob, “Rugăciune pe o pânză de cânepă: VICTORIA ZIDARU— ‘Portul popular şi pânza ţesută în casă m-au atras ca un magnet’” [Prayer on a hemp cloth: VICTORIA ZIDARU—‘The popular port and the homemade woven textiles attracted me like a magnet’]. Formula AS 1271 (2017). Available at: http://arhiva.formula-as.ro/2017/1271/planeteculturale-30/rugaciune-pe-o-panza-de-canepa-victoria-zidaru-portul-

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popular-si-panza-tesuta-in-casa-m-au-atras-ca-un-magnet-22454. (27 February 2020) (Iacob 2017). 89. Ibidem. 90. The ritual scenography can be watched in a 35 minutes video: Victoria Zidaru, Înveșmântare [Vesting], 20 October 2016. Available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt0Zc3EEA_g. (27 February 2020). 91. Liana Tugearu, “Experimentalism in Romanian Choreography of the 1960s through the 1990s,” in Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 468 [Tugearu 1997]. 92. Ibidem. 93. For an illuminating stance on progressive religious justice see Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Prophetic Activism: Progressive Religious Justice Movements in Contemporary America (New York: NYU Press, 2011) (SlessarevJamir 2011).

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Stanford University Press. Asavei, Maria Alina. 2017. Art and Religious Revitalisation Movements in PostCommunist Romania: The Zidarus’ Case. Politics, Religion & Ideology 18 (2): 157–174. Bădiliṭă, Cristian, and Otniel Vereṣ. 2011. Biserici, Secte, Erezii? Dialoguri fără Prejudecătị despre Marile Tradit ̦ii Creștine [Churches, Sects, Heresies? Dialogues without Prejudices about the Great Christian Traditions]. Bucharest: Editura Vremea. Barcan, Luiza. 2004. Angoase ale Privirii [Anguishes of Looking]. Bucharest: Ideea Europeană. Belting, Hans. 2005. Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights. Munich: Prestel. Block, Tom. 2008. Prophetic Activist Art: Activism beyond Oppositionality. Journal of the Arts in Society 3(2): 19–26. http://www.tomblock.com/. Accessed February 29, 2020. http://www.tomblock.com/prophetic_activist_art. Cârneci, Magda. 2005. Le sculpteur: Marian Zidaru, Disciple de Brancusi ou artiste Prophete? [The Sculptor: Marian Zidaru as Brâncuṣi’s Disciple or Prophet Artist?]. Ligeia 57-59-59-60, January–June: 239–251. Chryssavgis, John, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. 2013. Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation. New York: Fordham University Press. Cloṣca, Ciprian Marius. 2009. Ortodoxia ṣi Noile Miṣcări Religioase [Orthodoxy and the New Religious Movements]. Iaṣi: Lumen.

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Dumitrescu, Sorin. 1995. Neputinţele tânărului Kessler [The Young Kessler’s Inaptitudes]. România Liberă, January 21. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ernu, Vasile. 2015. Sectanţii. Iaşi: Polirom. Fallon, Nicole. 2009. The Cross as Tree: The Wood-of-the-Cross Legends in Middle English and Latin Texts in Medieval England. PhD Thesis in Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto. Ghiu, Daria. 2017. Arte frumoase la Radio România Cultural. Din arhivă: Florin Mitroi [Beautiful Arts at Romanian Cultural Radio: From the Archive: Florin Mitroi]. 4 Noiembrie 2017. Accessed February 27, 2020. https://www. mixcloud.com/daria-ghiu/arte-frumoase-la-radio-rom%C3%A2nia-cultural4-noiembrie-2017-marian-zidaru/. Grieser, Alexandra, and Jay Johnston. 2017. Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Grigore, Valentin. 2014. Să Fii Tânăr [To be Young]. Columna TV Dâmbovitạ , February 15. Accessed February 25, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OffGwWbwwOU. Gut ̣ă, Adrian. 1997. Riders on the Storm—Performance Art in Romania between 1986 and 1996. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Guţă, Adrian. 2012. The 1980s Generation in the Visual Arts Twenty Years Later. Arta 5: 12–16. Iacob, Valentin. 2014. “Ca artist, nu poţi să fii rece. Tot ceea ce faci trebuie să aibă fervoare mistică”—de vorbă cu sculptorii Marian şi Victoria Zidaru [As an artist, you can’t be impartial. Everything you do must have mystical fervor—interview with sculptors Marian and Victoria Zidaru]. Formula AS 1120. Accessed February 22, 2020. http://arhiva.formula-as.ro/2014/1120/ lumea-romaneasca-24/ca-artist-nu-poti-sa-fii-rece-tot-ceea-ce-faci-trebuie-saaiba-fervoare-mistica-de-vorba-cu-sculptorii-marian-si-victoria-zidaru-17816. ———. 2017. Rugăciune pe o pânză de cânepă: VICTORIA ZIDARU—‘Portul popular şi pânza ţesută în casă m-au atras ca un magnet’ [Prayer on a Hemp Cloth: VICTORIA ZIDARU—‘The Popular Port and the Homemade Woven Textiles Attracted Me Like a Magnet’]. Formula AS 1271. Accessed February 27, 2020. http://arhiva.formula-as.ro/2017/1271/planete-culturale-30/ rugaciune-pe-o-panza-de-canepa-victoria-zidaru-portul-popular-si-panza-tesuta-in-casa-m-au-atras-ca-un-magnet-22454. Iosif Ross, Anamaria. 2006. Cradle, Manger, Granary: Carving the Body from the Nation Sacred Flesh. Journal of Religion and Society 8: 1–12. Kang, Jaeho. 2014. Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle of Modernity. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.

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Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kessler, Erwin. 1995. Despre Ţară, Artă ṣi Credinṭă [About Nation, Art and Faith]. 22 Magazine, January 11–17. ———. 2011. Zidaru—Das Werk von Marian & Victoria Zidaru [Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s Work]. Essen: Klartext Verlag. ———. 2015. Marian Zidaru. Sculptura X Architectura. Accessed November 3, 2020. http://www.recombinat.ro/mzidaru.html. ———. 2016. Sculptură în miresme [Sculpture in Fragrances]. Catalogul Expozit ̣iei Zis ṣi Cusut [‘Said and Sewn’ Exhibition Catalogue], ed. Alexandru Davidian. Bucharest: Editura Vellant. Ladoucer, Paul. 2019. Modern Orthodox Theology: Behold I Make All Things New. New York: Bloomsbury. Maitreya, Francisc. 1995a. Prima Evanghelie [The First Gospel]. Bucharest: Editura Safire. ———. 1995b. Drumul spre Iluminare [The Road to Illumination]. Arad: Editura Arhetip. ———. 1999. Sutrele Iniṭierii [Initiation Sutras]. Baia Mare: Editura Witz. Marchese, Ronald T., and Marlene R. Breu. 2004. Sacred Textiles: The Hidden Wonders of the Armenian Orthodox Church Collections of Istanbul. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 7 (2): 86–99. Mauss, Marcel. 2002. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. Neculai, Ṣtefăniṭa. 2013. Organizare și Lideri la Gruparea Noul Ierusalim [Organization and Leaders in the ‘New Jerusalem’ Movement]. Bachelor Thesis in Theology, Faculty of Orthodox Theology “Justinian Patriarhul”, Bucharest. Nicula, Mimi. 2018. Moment Art: Victoria Zidaru. TVR1. Accessed February 27, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2musEVCCtF0. Nora, Pierre. 1989. Between Memory and History: ‘Les Lieux de Mémoire’. Representations 26: 7–24. Noul Ierusalim. 1995. Noul Ierusalim, Cuvântul lui Dumnezeu in România [The New Jerusalem, the Word of God in Romania]. Bucharest: Editura RO-Emaus. Pădurariu, Silviu. 2019. Marian Zidaru: ePOCALIPS@. Arta 32: 12–14. Pîrvan, Ionel. 2003. Jurnalul meu: IJ. Francisc Maitreya [My Diary: I.J. Francisc Maitreya]. Craiova: Hyperion. Radulescu, Andrei. 2017. Îmbrăcămintea care sfint ̣eṣte [The Clothing that Sanctifies]. Cotidianul.ro, May 23. Accessed February 27, 2020. https://www. cotidianul.ro/imbracamintea-care-sfinteste/. Roncea, Victor. 2008. Secta ICR: De la Antisemitism la Antiortodoxie. Patapievici defileaza cu Zidaru si “Noul Ierusalim” pentru “reînnoirea naţională spiritualreligioasă” [The ICR Sect: From Anti-Semitism to Anti-Orthodoxy. Patapievici

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Parades with Zidaru and the “New Jerusalem” for the “National SpiritualReligious Renewal”]. October 29. Accessed February 27, 2020. Available on author’s blog at: http://victor-roncea.blogspot.cz/2008/10/secta-icr-de-laantisemitism-la.html. Rush, Kayla. 2019. Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept. Material Religion 15 (4): 514–515. Slessarev-Jamir, Helene. 2011. Prophetic Activism: Progressive Religious Justice Movements in Contemporary America (Religion and Social Transformation). New York: NYU Press. Tabără, Cristian. 2011.Cetatea Sfântă Noul Ierusalim Pucioasa—Reportaj [Holy Fortress New Jerusalem Pucioasa—Reportage]. Accessed February 27, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYtAd-ycLhU. Titu, Alexandra. 2007. A Difficult Process—Creative Assumption of Liberty. Anthology of Essays by the Faculty of Dramatic Arts 11–12: 393–401. Belgrade. ———. 2014. Critical Review. Centrul Cultural Meta. Accessed January 29, 2020. http://www.sculpture.ro/fisa.php?id=655&lang=EN. Tronaru, Doinel. 2017a. Interviu. Marian and Victoria Zidaru, artiști vizuali: ‘Spat ̦iul românesc este un spat ̦iu mistic.’ [Interview. Marian and Victoria Zidaru, Visual Artists: The Romanian Space Is a Mystical Space] Adevarul, January 7. Accessed January 14, 2020. https://adevarul.ro/cultura/arte/ interviu-marian-sivictoria-zidaru-artisti-vizuali-spatiul-romanesc-spatiu-mistic1_586fd1c15ab6550cb8265369/index.html. ———. 2017b. Cartea de Arta Viktoria (Nike) Zidaru, o mare artistă care tace ṣi coase [The Book of Art Viktoria (Nike) Zidaru, a Great Artist Who Does Not Speak and Sews]. Adevarul.ro, December 28. Accessed February 24, 2020. https://adevarul.ro/cultura/arte/cartea-artA-viktorianike-zidaru. Tugearu, Liana. 1997. Experimentalism in Romanian Choreography of the 1960s through the 1990s. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Velea, Mihaela. 2018. ePOCALIPS@ este acum [ePOCALIPS@ is now]. Mozaicul XXI, 1(231): 14. Accessed February 27, 2020. https://revista-mozaicul.ro/ wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Mozaicul_1_2018.pdf. Vlasiu, Ioana. 2005. Beyond the Rupture. Anaid Art Gallery. Press Release— ANOtimpurile, Zidaru. Accessed February 11, 2020. http://anaidart.ro/en/ expozitii-media/2004-2/anotimpurile/. Walter, Christopher. 1995. The Origins of the Cult of Saint George. Revue des Etudes Byzantines 53: 295–326. Zidaru, Victoria. 2016a. Catalogul Expoziṭiei Zis ṣi Cusut [‘Said and Sewn’ Exhibition Catalogue], ed. Alexandru Davidian. Bucharest: Editura Vellant ———. 2016b. Înveșmântare [Vesting], October 20. Accessed February 27, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt0Zc3EEA_g.

CHAPTER 7

The Body in (Post-)Communist Art: A Site of Salvation and Resistance

7.1   Introduction The artistic renderings of the human body analysed in this chapter display a vision of the physical body as a site of religious rituals and sacraments, yet the body is also understood as an entity decidedly equipped for the realization of the highest human potentiality for freedom and salvation through the enhancement of life. Besides the connection between the human body and the body of Christ that is ubiquitous in Christian cultures and transparent in many art pieces under scrutiny here, there are other cultural productions on the Romanian contemporary art scene that envision the physical body as a site of political subversion. In addition to these renderings, other artworks reveal the impossibility of the physical body to replicate the mystical one, enlightening the dramatic tension of two distinct forms of corporeality. The argument put forth is that the body is revealed as a multidirectional site for salvation and resistance in Romanian religion-­ inspired contemporary art. Apart from its biological dimension and functions, the body is understood and apprehended as a political entity that pertains to the substantiation of both collective and individual pain, as well as a marker of national identity and political legitimization.1 The political uses of both the living and dead body are explored in numerous studies—which are beyond my purposes here—focusing on the symbolic immortality of the martyrs’ bodies, on the two bodies of the king, on necropolitics and so on.2 Without any pretensions of dealing with © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_7

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this convoluted topic from a theological or politico-theological perspective, this chapter’s main aim is to disentangle the means and meanings of artistic renderings of the body, via its various instantiations and discursive functions, in light of both political and spiritual concerns. A caveat is in place from the outset: although the political and religious potentialities of the physical body can be approached from a variety of perspectives in the social sciences as well as from various philosophical and theological traditions, the present chapter exclusively focuses on the artistic renderings of the body, avoiding any definition of what the body is. Laura Grünberg posits that the body has become a cultural project whose instantiations can be approached in multifarious ways. In light of this, the theoretical positions range from “concerns for the body as object (what the body is submitted to) to those relating to the body as subject (how the body acts in society), from the empirical experience of the body to the body as metaphor, from the body as prison of the soul to the body as means of expressing freedom, will, power, the reflections on the body have been quite diverse.”3 All of these takes on the assorted instances of reflecting on corporeality reveal the impossibility of approaching it directly because the body avoids all particular definitions that could set it in stone.

7.2   The Collective Body During Late Romanian Communism As in other countries from the former Eastern bloc, the status quo used vast mass assemblies to celebrate historical and political events. Handling this large number of people was the task of the “physical education teachers working with obedient and manageable masses previously educated and prepared through physical education.”4 During late Romanian communism, the “collective body” of the nation encapsulated the supposed singleness of individual aspirations and aims. Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni posits that “the collective body had a highly function within the communist regime. Socialist art, sport and military parades were praising the collective body as a wholesome concept. The concept allows the individual body only to be a part of it without recognizing a private realm. Therefore, the individual body in its privacy represents a counter-position to the collective body.”5 One of the most telling cultural instantiations of the “collective body” could be grasped at the yearly national festival Cântarea României (Song

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to Romania) held from 1976 to 1989. The cultural festival displayed mass performances comprising sport parades, folk dance and music, poetry contests and grand scale choreographies of human bodies moulding various “celebrated” messages, such as “Ceauṣescu and the People” and “the Party, Ceauṣescu, Romania” (PCR is the acronym of the Romanian Communist Party). Thousands of children, students, soldiers, peasants and workers formed various crafted propagandistic messages and official portraits of Nicolae and Elena Ceauṣescu with their bodies. The staged, disciplined bodies in synchronous movements served the party as sites of ideological materialization. This collective experience was quite demanding, both mentally and bodily. The “collective body” was expected to perform the choreography scheduled for Song to Romania in the open air many days in a row, and this exhausting rehearsal sometimes would end up in dehydration, fainting or other serious conditions threatening the individual body (and mind). Unfortunately, there are no academic studies on how the individual bodies of the festival participants articulated their states of mind, political emotions and feelings about themselves. The docile yet strong and trained body could become “a useful force only if it [was] both a productive body and a subjected body.”6 The notorious episode of megalomaniac mass parades organized on the occasion of the communist cultural festival Song to Romania has been re-­ enacted in 2004 by the artist Cristian Pogăcean in the video-installation entitled The Actors of Subliminal History. The art piece (video, 2.5 minutes) juxtaposes the hard to forget images of mass parades—where bodies formed Ceauṣescu’s official portrait—with the same chorographical format that only replaces the official portrait with the dead body of Ceauṣescu. The video displays the antiportrait of the former communist leader for only one second. The dead body of Ceausescu recalls a media image that circulated numerous times on TV in the aftermath of December 1989, when the Ceauṣescus were fatally shot after a mock trial in the city of Târgoviṣte on Christmas Eve. Pogăcean’s The Actors of Subliminal History is an inquiry about the role of the individual as well as the masses in history and collective memory. Cosmin Costinaș contends that “during one of the dictator’s celebrations, the platforms handled by the masses obliged to get together on the stadium, depicting glorious images of the president, show for a prophetic second, the image of his corpse, immediately after the execution.”7 What strikes the viewer is also the liminal physical and temporal space between a “glorious” body and a dead one, both of which rendered visible by a mass of staged bodies.

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7.3   The “New Man’s” Body at Work The individual body was refused a private life and participated in the communist well-being scheme of the collective body. In this vein, the realm of physical culture and sports was cherished by the regime on the grounds that physical well-being would advance health and labour productivity.8 The cultural phenomenon of physical education in kindergartens, schools, universities and factories emphasized the importance of the body’s well-­ being, sometimes separated from the body-intellect bond.9 The “massification” of sports (mass sports phenomena) became obligatory, and physical education ranked high on the agenda of communist ideologues.10 The regime designed a sports-oriented infrastructure with swimming pools, sports clubs and tourism activities to keep individual bodies under surveillance and to control the free time of Romanian communist workers.11 Drawing from the sports magazine Stadion (1947–1949), Pompiliu-­ Nicolae Constantin and Valentin Maier argue that “by engaging workers in the mass sports activity, a new type of sport appeared: trade union sport (sportul sindical). From the point of view of physical education and sport, to be a good sportsman was not enough, you also needed to have a working place and to do your best there also.”12 Simona Petracovschi points out that the physically educated body was controlled “through continuous scrutiny and routinized coercion, to ensure adherence to expectations regarding time (rhythm, tempo, pace), space (assembly, alignment), and movement (posture, gesture), without allowance for personal style.”13 This description fits perfectly with Foucault’s understanding of “docile bodies” in the sense that tight physical education ensured “strong bodies for work and economic advantage, in fostering political strength and engagement.”14 Thus, the more physical education was presented by communists as a “beneficial,” compulsory activity, the less were citizens eager to engage with the politics enshrouding sports. In schools and factories, “The ideological dimension of the sport project was an element hard to embrace and for this reason the sport in factories was not always a story of success. Often, this practice, which should be just a way to relax the worker and to maintain him in good shape, became a continuous search for Stakhanovism models.”15 This state-regulated policy of physical well-being to support the productivity of work was challenged by the anti-work attitude of Romanians, explained by Gheorghe Boldur-Lăt ̦escu as the consequence of a “dramatic weakening of the capacity for physical effort, which was the direct result of

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malnutrition, substandard medical care, and other miserable conditions.”16 Although there are other arguments grounded on explanations that emphasize the lack of financial incentives for the workers, the malnutrition argument can also illuminate why sports, as a recreational activity, was not relaxing for many Romanians and how, in extremis, they can be read as corporeal punishment. Starting with the 1980s, the communist state encouraged women to participate in maintaining gymnastics (which later on became aerobic gymnastics) on the grounds that “women could through these practices reap a double benefit, fulfilling their duty to the nation while at the same time working to become ‘modern.’ The government accordingly promoted maintenance gymnastics as a form of emancipation (i.e. advancement toward modernity) for women under communism.”17 However, this emancipation came with some costs for women’s corporeality and status. While the formal emancipation of women’s status included the detraditionalization of gender, “The equality produced was mainly formal because it could not reach all the parts of the country such as rural areas which remained patriarchal to a certain level. Also, women’s work and participation in public life overlapped their family role. Therefore, emancipation was more a duty in service to the nation and the regime rather than trying to fight old values per se.”18 Since women were expected to perform both productive and reproductive work, their mass participation in maintaining gymnastics was seen as a national duty. Having a well-­ shaped, robust and healthy body was also part and parcel of the national duty. After all, these bodies were expected to serve the nation, and any non-conformity with the canon was regarded as negligence and lack of patriotism. The fit body was appreciated and supported through the massification of sport. The official artistic production of those years abounds in representations of vigorous, desexualized and active bodies.

7.4   Desexualized Bodies The communist ideology desexualized bodies to the extent that most official visual representations displayed women driving tractors and ploughing the fields or wearing construction hats. At the same time, from an excess of the uniformity depicting this corporeality and “gender hyper-­egalitarian” ideology, the body was subjected to coercive measures.19 As a consequence, the body was not supposed to be seen. Any forms of nakedness or trace of sexuality had to be obliterated or “camouflaged in uniforms or

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working overalls. The desired model was that of the ‘comrade’ asexual communist. The body could not be seen and could not even hint at it behind the uniform that masked it and made it look identical to all the others. Nothing had to be spectacular, nothing flashy, and nothing provocative.”20 In the same ideological framework, the body did not belong to individuals but to the state. Accordingly, in this new structure of belonging, anybody was treated as a replaceable object that was void of sexuality, desire, spirituality, and flesh and bones. In Ceauṣescu’s pro-natality campaign from 1966, the woman’s body was regarded as a machine for the incubation of babies and as a bearer of the “Heroin Mother” Medal of Honour. Thus, the body was regarded as a dismembered entity, “Separated from sexuality, and completely surrendering itself to its social function … belonging in a certain way to the state, because even the ‘foetus’ was, according to Ceauṣescu’s statement ‘the socialist property of the whole nation’ while giving birth was seen as a patriotic duty.”21 Denisa-Adriana Oprea identified two stages in the hegemonic regimes of representation of women during the pro-natalist communist regime: “(a) 1966–1971/1972, Almost the ‘Eternal Feminine’ and (b) 1973–1978/1979, The ‘Steel Woman’ and the ‘Maternal Glory’.”22 After the fall of the communist regime, the body of a woman was no longer the property of the nation “but is seen as a commodity whose value is determined by the market. Instead of repossessing her body after the revolution, we see the female accepting a new type of alienation. The female body becomes a commodity.”23 Although significant, this aspect falls outside the limited scope of this chapter.

7.5   The Other Bodies: Masculine/Feminine Against this background, artists did not give up the employment of corporeality as the main medium of their spiritual and political exploration of human identity. In this paradigm, the body was revitalized and decamouflaged from the ubiquitous uniforms and working overalls. The rediscovery of the body in its spiritual dimension was also one of the concerns of some important artists who have thoroughly engaged with this topic since the 1980s. The interest in employing corporeality as a faculty of knowing the world, ourselves or even God continued after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. Against the official communist stance that desexualized and deindividualized the human body for collectivist and nationalist

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purposes, the artists addressed these issues from the perspective of being a body and not having one. Their conceptual and visual exploration of the body’s potentiality for freedom and salvation sometimes overcome the long entranced dichotomies between body and mind, as well as the view that the physical body is a mere container for the soul. More importantly, the artists who addressed these issues in their cultural productions understood that the communist hegemony underrated the strength and resilience of the body. In attempting to desexualize the human body for “gender equalitarian” purposes and to turn it into a natality machine for reproducing the nation, the communist tutelage failed to realize that human bodies cannot be staged and disciplined ad infinitum while neglecting corporeality’s resilience and will to power. One of the most significant contributions to the revitalization of the interests in the body’s potentialities for salvation and resistance is Christian Paraschiv’s work. The artist is one of the founding members of the Neo-­ Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox group Prolog, whose religiously-inspired art production is one of the main topics under scrutiny in this volume. For him, being a body takes precedence over having a body. In this vein, for Paraschiv, “Having a body” is an inexact statement because “when looking more carefully at the gigantic exhibited body, one is immediately struck with the strangeness of seeing not an exterior body nor an organic shell which we, those from within that body, those who own a body, think it belongs to us, but a body as an emerging entity, a content instead of a container as previously thought.”24 The artist approaches the topic of personal identity with a critical lens, at the same time resisting the institutionalized Christian Orthodox religion’s embargos regarding how corporeality is supposed to be understood and approached. In this vein, Paraschiv’s Feminine/Masculine series overcome these limitations and “are a manner both of questioning identity, and at the same time of challenging social normalization and socialist orthodoxy of dictatorship along with the spiritual orthodox culture in its blockages and prohibitions.”25 The series of works consist of photographs, paintings and installations of naked bodies in various combinations. The communist authorities censored Christian Paraschiv’s Feminine/Masculine exhibition in the 1980s on the grounds that “nakedness” was not a revolutionary topic that might have interested the Romanians and their “revolutionary vision” of the body. As the artist recalls, the meditation on religion, the original sin and life’s source triggered his interest in corporeality (both feminine and masculine). His insatiable search for revealing the mystery of

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life-giving through the mediation of feminine and masculine bodies urged him to address the sexuality issue with Orthodox priests, who, in his view, might have had a relevant answer for his set of pressing existential concerns. Yet, although the priests he contacted avoided the topic of sexuality, Paraschiv was utterly interested in the relationship between body and geometry and could neither accept the lack of reaction from the Orthodox Church’s members nor the communist censorship of the subject under scrutiny.26 Paraschiv’s first exhibition dedicated to the human body was displayed to the public in 1978. Metaphorically entitled Tumulus, it reflected on life, death, the body and becoming. Other artists investigated the metamorphoses of the body, as in Doru Tulcan’s Anamorphoses (1979), which just so happened was produced in collaboration with Elena Tulcan. The art piece displays a feminine nude in black and white photography with concentric slices of light that make the delicate body look like a zebra. Marilena Preda-Sânc explores with her own corporeality through the space-time-memory axis in her action My Body is Space in Space, Time in Time and Memory of Everything (1983). Another artist associated with the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox art group Prolog—Horia Bernea—is acknowledged as the painter of religious banners (prapori in Romanian) because his work comprises a significant number of pieces where the banner (a liturgical textile flag, carried during the Orthodox Christian processions) is the main subject-matter. However, in his artistic production, Horia Bernea was referring to the banner motif earlier than his “pious banners” that became well-known since his Prolog period. As early as 1977, the artist employed the coordinating axes motifs “which, paradoxically, will form the basis of the much-adored Banners” by employing the nude body (including masculine genitals), as appears in the series of photographs The Axes Crossed, Studies for Banners.27 As Ruxandra Balaci points out, Bernea’s photographs with coordinating axes demarcate a fragmentary series of nudes where the masculine body—and its less pious parts—precede the iconographic “sign.”28 As the art historical records posit, “Bernea, in general, complements his painting with photography towards the end of a cycle, when he exhausts an ‘iconographic’ sign; only in the case of the Banners does the photography precede the elaboration of the ‘sign’ in painting, constituting, to a certain extent, the basis of his creation.”29 This exploration of Bernea’s work before his Neo-­ Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox phase reveals the centrality of the body in the elaboration of the banner’s methodology and spiritual aura. The Axes

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Crossed, Studies for Banners emphasizes the divine geometry of the human body that is able to act as a model for religious rituals. Ion Grigorescu displays a recurring interest in the spiritual and political dimension of masculine/feminine motifs in his religiously-and politically-­ inspired art series Masculine/Feminine (1976) and Delivery/Birth (1977). During the communist era, he experimented with corporeal art, whereby his own body functioned as an instrument of transgression and inquiry into the power structures vis-á-vis gender relations. Piotr Piotrowski elaborates on Grigorescu’s interrelated works Masculine/Feminine (an 8 mm short film) and Delivery/Birth (photographs).30 Both works display the artist’s genitals in positions imitating child delivery. The sexual transgression operated by Grigorescu’s art pieces by feminizing the male genitals reveals an anti-masculinist stand that challenges the traditional European culture where “the male body has been associated with action, while the female one with exposure, adopting a pose superimposed by the phallocentric culture.”31 The subversive dimension of Grigorescu’s art pieces is also tackled by Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni, who claims that he experimented with his body “in stark contrast to the socialist paradigms of gender identity and the collective body.”32 Thus, Proksch-Weilguni’s argument, as she puts it, goes beyond resistance to a gender identity paradigm. In her view, Grigorescu’s employment of his own body is put to a different political end than gender identity, namely, “By taking over agency of his own body, Ion Grigorescu’s performance challenged the subordinate role of the body within the state apparatus… With the camera’s agency Grigorescu introduced a self-empowering process. Destabilizing biological gender determinations, he challenged the individual basis of the collective body’s paradigm.”33 Yet, Grigorescu’s artistic experimentation with corporality does not only encapsulate the subversive/resistance potential of the body but also its propensity for salvation and spiritual adaptations. The artist’s renderings of the multifaceted abilities of the body—from contestation to elevation—are the most transparent in his art pieces after 1989, which will be analysed in the next section. It is significant, however, to mention that at the same time as Masculine/Feminine and Delivery/ Birth, the artist’s experimentation with the body materialized in yet another short film entitled Ame-Animus-Anima (1977). One of the most radical and subversive art pieces of Grigorescu, Ame-Animus-Anima (The Soul) is particularly revealing for the way in which “skin takes over the soul.” The first image shows the artist lying down on the grass. Then, the

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camera moves to focalize on his chest, somewhere towards the left side, where the heart is situated. The viewer learns that Ame-Animus-Anima is about “the ideology of the living body” from the early stages of childhood to adulthood. It is also an introspection of the body-soul. Filmed in Bucharest (Fundeni, Colentina), Grigorescu’s piece of body documentary-­ performance puts forth a painful to watch circumcision (the artist performs a self-circumcision). After this bloody sequence, the expository intertitle reads “Ne-am obişnuit sa căutăm sufletul intr-un enchevêtrement/Aici se concentrează viaţa” (We are used to look for the soul in an enchevêtrement/Here is the concentration of life). By employing the French term enchevêtrement (intricacy) in the intertitle of his mute film, the artist reveals the inseparability between body and soul (âme). This mystical bond is revealed through the next floating intertitle that reads “This is the soul of the body.” What the text connotes is not that the body is a container of the soul but a rather different message, namely “the body is a soul.” In support of this interpretation of Ame-Animus-Anima, we can also consider the succeeding drawings of the internal anatomy of the body-soul and the interposed texts about “seraphic food,” “the mother’s womb” and “the miraculous act of mastication.” One of the most intriguing drawings displays an angel who is located in the palatine uvula. One important art event that dealt with the spiritual potential of the human body was the group exhibition Sexul lui Mozart (The Sex of Mozart), opened in Bucharest on 5 December 1991 and dedicated to the bi-centenary of Mozart’s death. On this occasion, Ion Grigorescu sharpened his confrontational visual language and daringly addressed a difficult topic. As he points out, he “wanted to confront such difficult images as that of the divine and of the human, of the friendship between Jesus and Martha, Mary and Lazarus, with the convulsions of resurrection day. Jesus Christ’s inner turmoil and Martha’s repulsion: ‘Lord, he has started to smell!’”34 Artist and art critic Theodor Redlow posits that these forms of artistic-political expression were not unforeseeable because “it is commonplace knowledge that during the long years of Romanian ‘spiritual resistance through culture,’ mystics and erotica have been taboo subject matters, only seldom approached in the form of disguised involvement. To this effect what did really happen after the execution of the dictator? To put it bluntly, sex and religion have been let loose.”35 After the fall of the regime, the exhibition Sexul lui Mozart proposed a revitalization of the perennial question of why “nobody has seen a nude angel for 2000 years. Nobody agreed to have met one during Mozart’s lifetime but everybody

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agrees that angels are sexless.”36 This reference alludes to the downgrading of sex from a human condition and its association with negative aesthetic and ethical judgements (such as ugliness and moral deprivation). The exhibition did not only revealed the long-lasting engrained taboos about sexuality as such, but it also hinted at the spiritual dimension of sexuality that disengages from pure sensual pleasure.

7.6   Of Bodies and Souls The interest in the artistic explorations of the limits and potentialities of the body is also revealed in other artists’ work after 1989. Most of these works rely on body art strategies or self-historicizing practices, documented in the format of body archives.37 This theoretical approach emphasizes the relevance of photography in documenting and archiving the political body in Romanian performance art since the 1960s.38 Geta Brătescu, Ion Grigorescu, and Dan and Lia Perjovschi—among others— employed their bodies in performance art pieces displayed in the shadows of their private studious. More often than not, the only spectator (beholder) was the camera, and this specific detail was interpreted as “photo-performance.”39 After the fall of the communist regime, “the individual body” was back to the central stage. Alexandru Antik exorcised the evil in his 1996 performance Throwing Away the Skin. He cut a synthetic skin nailed around his body into pieces as a metaphor of the second skin. In the same performative register, Uto Gusztav and Konya Reka hang their bodies on a wall in an artistic action entitled Umbrella (1996). Bob Josef stages the performance Unjustified Discourse about my Body’s Conversation with a Dead Performer (1996). Seen from a different angle, the individual body is politicized, retaining its spiritual energy at the same time, such as in Gheorghe Ilea’s performance Garbage Dump (1994), where a man is literally buried in raw garbage. Christian Paraschiv became internationally renowned for his bio-art that focuses on the limits and glory of the body. In one of his major exhibitions that reunites works of art produced over the last 20 years—Skin & Body (Belgrave Square, London, 2012)—the artist reveals his spiritual quest to unpack the body’s potentialities. Art critic Adrian Guţă points out that Paraschiv “traces the concepts of corporeality and identity to our biological core: in the specific form of bio-art that he practices, his own cells, prelevated in a laboratory, give birth to an artificial skin, fixed in latex and wood resins. For Paraschiv, the skin is the contour of the body in the

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world, an ensemble of signs which can be technologically represented: if scanned, it is the trace of corporeality decomposed into fragments—body-­ in-­pieces—like a puzzle making up a new body, another individual.”40 Recently, Paraschiv organized group exhibitions in Romania under the title Les Amis de Christian Paraschiv en Roumanie (Christian Paraschiv’s Friends in Romania) at Benești, Romania. One of the most striking pieces that opened the series of artistic events in September 2018 has been poetess Nitcheva Osanna Fiorentini’s performance entitled Toilette Intime. She sat at a table reading from her intimate diary about intimacy, body in distress and hiding from dangers in the toilet’s space, which became a pure place where confession takes place. Apart from the artist’s diary, the public could see a series of photographs documenting the most intimate actions of cleaning the body (especially its intimate parts). One of her diary notes reads that “the toilet is a pure place, a return to childhood and to paradise.” The body needs this comfort zone of purity and safety for its well-being and for overcoming political and social dangers. The public’s perception of “toilets” and “intimate hygiene” is anything but related to “purity” or “safeness.” Toilette Intime renders these spaces pure and mystical, and even capable of displaying body-political concerns. The artist sees the body as an ally in resisting totalitarian politics, religions or injustices. In this vein, the meaning of the Toilette Intime exceeds the boundaries of hygiene as such and co-opts mystical understandings of purity and redemption after catastrophic encounters, personal traumas and political injustices. In addition to that, for Nitcheva Osanna Fiorentini, the openness to encounter God or Absolute Otherness should not be restricted to certain spaces (e.g. places of worship within institutionalized religions); this process can happen anywhere, including in a toilet. By the same token, her performance reveals that there are no “impure” or “shameful” parts of our bodies that cannot communicate our nostalgia for paradise lost. Ion Grigorescu’s recent exhibitions display the body in a variety of instantiations, which establish a hermeneutical key that the artist calls “The Handbook of the Soul’s Anatomy.” Several of his older art pieces that have the body at central stage have been photocopied and imprinted on large pieces of white cloth. The intriguing textile installation recalls the imagistic of Christian Orthodox ceremonial banners, as well as the traditional skill of painting on cloth. All these large photographs imprinted on textiles have been presented together within the Cabinet of Curiosities (2018) exhibition in the Eastern Romania city Bacău. In Grigorescu’s “cabinet of curiosities,” the human body remained an enigmatic content

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that could not be deciphered without being aware of the “soul’s anatomy.” The recurrent topic of the soul’s anatomy has been tackled by the artist since the 1970s, starting with his utterly enlightening 8  mm film Ame-Animus-Anima. Since then, the theme of the soul’s anatomy has been repeatedly approached by the artist in an attempt at resisting scientific materialism’s vision on the human body as seen through the lens of medicine and scientific anatomy. One of the most intriguing recent exhibitions is titled What the Other Says: The Body Seen by People and not by Machines (Ivan Gallery, Bucharest, 2018). Together with the younger artist Ştefan Sava, Grigorescu exhibited a highly spiritual view of the body, including “a symbolic inventory” of its anatomy.41 This image of the human body does not follow the recent trends in contemporary body art that envision it as a medium of technological extension.42 Grigorescu’s artistic renderings of the body have nothing in common with the augmentation, “extending the body, whether via prosthetics or the Internet” as renowned body artists used us to approach this topic.43 He is not interested in the adjustment of the human through technology (like the Australian performance artist Stelarc) or in Orlan’s Self-­ hybridation (1989).44 Likewise, in his attempt to draw an anatomy of the soul in relation to its body, Grigorescu is not necessarily interested, like many contemporary body artists, to test the limits of endurance of the physical body.45 The Anatomy of the Soul (2018) is a series of drawings where body parts and body organs are displayed accompanied by a short text, which encapsulates the symbolic and spiritual meaning of this non-­ scientific anatomy of the body. In the exhibition space (What the Other Says: The Body Seen by People and not by Machines), there are other installations that refer to the body-soul as a religious-poetical-political key (Fig. 7.1). Ionuţ Cioană interprets the exhibition’s message about the body in a philosophical manner and argues that we can understand the human body by imbricating two readings that are prevalent in both Western and Eastern cultural histories.46 The first view is that put forth by medicine and science, according to which the human body is void of a soul (although it contains a heart). Within the exhibition, Ştefan Sava displays a video piece about a metallic dissection table seen as the epitome of the medical view of the body. The second image of the body, entrenched in the cultural history of both West and East, is the broadly understood “religious” view positing that discourse on the body has gradually been dismissed since the Renaissance, and more thoroughly, starting with the Enlightenment,

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Fig. 7.1  Ion Grigorescu, Porţi şi Vicleşuguri/Gates and Ploys (2017). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

when the body became an object that could be dissected and cured.47 From this moment on, “An implicit ghost is to abolish the body, to simply erase it; nostalgia for a human condition that owed nothing to the body, which became a place of fall.”48 Ion Grigorescu’s art about the body rectifies this view. He does not see the body as a fallen morphology. With the 2018 exhibition, the artist displayed a painting of a hand that waves to the sky. Although it looks like the hand of a lifeless body, it still transcends this condition and does not appear as a damaged anatomical body part.49

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Perhaps one of the most controversial artists who addresses religiously-­ inspired topics through the prism of the human body is Alexandru Rădvan. His artistic production zooms in on the human dimension of the divine. In this spiritual register, Rădvan paints robust and colossal hands, feet and heads that partake to unfolding mythological and biblical narratives. His paintings of Christ remind the viewer that the divine body is a body in pain and distress without ceasing to act as an ideological device. One of his paintings reveals a naked Jesus Christ with the crown of thorns before crucifixion who is breastfeed by a giant breast. Unlike the iconological representations of the crucifixion scene or the visual renderings of the mother of God and baby Jesus, Rădvan’s piece reminds the viewer that Christ is also human, as was his mother. The nakedness of mother and son challenges the taboos of how to represent the divine. The body is thus invested with the ability to disclose the strength of life and humanity. The painting does not negate the celestial aura of the divine mother and child motif, but it strips the clothes from the body, revealing an extolment of pain that incarnates Christian symbolism. It is exactly this incarnation that renders the human dimension of the divine powerful. The body is also seen as an ideological device in Rădvan’s androgynous representations of Christ. In the same semantic register, some of his paintings of crucifixion (e.g. Devotus, 2006) display an image of Christ’s body that has little in common with the familiar iconic representations perpetuated through popular culture (such as Franco Zeffirelli’s or Mel Gibson’s movies), nor with the ecclesiastic rigor of depicting Biblical scenes. In Rădvan’s Devotus, Christ resembles Fernando Botero’s bodies from his series “Abu Ghraib.” The curvaceous, chubby body of Christ appears as radically distanced from the skinny silhouettes of a long-haired Jesus Christ agonizing on the cross. Rădvan’s short-haired and reasonably overweight body of Christ facilitates the identification of everyone with the sufferance of Christ. The artist did not aim to communicate a “correct” Imago Dei but rather a redemptive one that humanizes Christ to the extent that everyone can identify with his torment. The diverting route from a “correct” cultural representation of Christ’s body is also revealed in Rădvan’s painting of the crucified Christ breastfed. This representation also brings us closer to Botero’s panoply of bodies in pain. Philosopher of art Arthur Danto pointed out that “Abu Ghraib, in Botero’s rendering, also evokes Baroque prisons, like those one sees in the paintings titled Roman Charity, where a visiting daughter breast-feeds her

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chained father in the gloomy light of his cell. Although the prisoners are painted in his signature style, his much-maligned mannerism intensifies our engagement with the pictures.”50 To a certain extent, Rădvan’s bodies in pain also invite the viewer to reflect on the human condition and on the inescapability of distress through a spiritual lens, which does not exclude the political-critical undertones. One of the most expressive instances of this stance is revealed in his painting Great Christ, 2010. The painting exhibits a disproportionate Christ with empty eyes and robust feet who firmly holds a pair of pliers in one of hand while removing a nail from the other. The body of Christ is represented as rather rough, hairy and unbalanced. The very short hair and undersized neck refuse both photographic realism and idealization or romanticization that monopolize the visual culture of crucifixion. Rădvan’s Ecce Homo draws attention to the mundanity of sacrifice and resistance without idealization. There is no separation between the divine and the human body of Christ as there is no exacerbation of any of them. At the same time, the painting does not emphasize the futility of resistance as far as the humanity of Christ is concerned.

7.7   The Body and Its Teandric Morphology Unlike the artworks explored above, this last section zooms in on an instance of religiously inspired artistic production that juxtaposes the “flesh and blood” anatomy of a hand that belongs to a natural (physical) body and the hand as it appears depicted by the iconographers in the Byzantine icons who follow the herminia (the Orthodox painter’s manual). The case study puts forth an aesthetic theology of teandric morphology that envisions the human body as a damaged (fallen) anatomical entity which can be restored to its godly anatomy through the teandric features of the icon. Sorin Dumitrescu (an artist associated with the Neo-Orthodox art group Prolog) is the proponent of this aesthetic theology. The artist both created a new iconic model of depicting (saint) martyrs and wrote theoretical studies on iconology.51 His introductory studies on the theological pillars of icon making tackle an aesthetic theology of likeness that mostly refer to the iconic resemblances between what the icon depicts and its models (Mother of God, Jesus Christ, angels and saints). Against this background, Dumitrescu distinguishes between the traditional icon and the art paradigm of the religiously inspired painting.52 In the footsteps of Hans Belting, he puts forth 32 studies of iconology where the likeness to God might be interpreted as God’s presence within holy images.53

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The artist’s interest in iconology evolved gradually, starting with the 1980s after “abandoning his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit while on pilgrimage to Mount Athos, he was rewarded with two visions of the Virgin Mary, which still inform his avant-garde icons.”54 Sorin Dumitrescu’s iconographical style remains informed by the Eastern Orthodox (Byzantine) tradition, but it also incorporates metaphysical elements that strike the viewer as atypical. Christopher Merrill suggests that the artist expanded his artistic vocabulary to make room to usually banished foci, themes and plastic formats like the Pietá and Noah’s ark.55 Enlarging the thematic foci and the visual language of the icon also made room for philosophical considerations about the transfiguration of images. The artist was commissioned by various monasteries and churches, both in Romania and abroad, to paint his vision of various Biblical topics. One of these visions concerns the Revelation materialized in a “brightly coloured icon where Christ and the Seer form a circle. From a black triangle in the upper left-hand corner streams a silver light, which forks above Christ’s shoulder; the Seer’s head is bowed as he takes down his words.”56 Another work of Dumitrescu’s displays an elongated painting of Christ that recalls The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger (1521–1522). Like Holbein’s oil painting on lime wood, Dumitrescu’s Christ draws one’s attention to the body of the saviour, and also like Holbein’s Dead Christ in the Tomb, the dead body’s allegorical composition “enhances the salvational scheme: the body, flattened if looked at straight on, acquires a third dimension if seen from the low left angle… The painting stages the very process of flesh turning back into the World which it had once embodied.”57 Apart from elongated Christs, Dumitrescu also paints atypical angels. Dominique Fernandez and Ferrante Ferranti point out that the painter displays a predilection for painting large paintings of angels “glorious in their androgyny.”58 We are told that “Dumitrescu feels that androgyny is the seal of God. He took a traditional icon as a starting point, and rather than replicating the image, set out to create an exegesis, emphatic and merry, of the other worldliness ignored by early icon painters. The chin of the angel is prominent: a sign of masculinity, he insists, but at the same time, there is a relaxedness: a sign of the feminine. And the nose: effeminate, although sharp as a saber.”59 What concerns this chapter most is one of Sorin Dumitrescu’s conceptual art pieces that tackles the issue of the body. The artist exhibited a series of painted hands that hold a sceptre alongside enlarged photographs

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of hands that hold a metal bar (The Hand of Archangel Michael, 1993). The drawings and photographs reiterate the hand of the Archangel Michael as it appears rendered in the Byzantine icons dedicated to the saint. Within the exhibitions after 1990 that displayed Sorin Dumitrescu’s installation, both the drawings and photographs of hands appear as copies of a model (like a type specimen) of the “mystical anatomy of the Archangel Michael’s hand.” The artist draws attention on the hand that belongs to the Archangel Michael as it appears depicted in the icon and urges the viewers to “look carefully at this hand holding a metal rod… It is an incredible hand whose anatomy seems abnormal; but you will not see the proportion of the anatomical derogation till you try to extract this detail from the morphological context of the icon in order to compare it to how the hand making a similar movement really looks.”60 The artistically reproduced hands by the artist attempt to perform the same kind of movement the hand in the icon performs, allegedly lacking the ability to mimic the exact posture of the mystical hand. The point made by Dumitrescu through this artwork is that it is impossible for the “natural” anatomy of a human body to replicate the “strange motricity” of the hand rendered in the Byzantine icons. Thus, we are faced with two ire conciliatory anatomies “which determine you to suppose they belong to radically different anthropological types.”61 In this framework, the hand depicted in the canonical icon of Saint Michael is regarded as ontologically superior to the real hand that might have served as a model. Dumitrecu insists on the dichotomy between the anti-entropic anatomies of the saint’s hand versus the human hand with its inferior ontological status. These Platonic considerations might have triggered unexpected reactions and aesthetic emotions in the viewers who are not comfortable in conceding that our anatomies, conveyed by nature, are “fallen morphologies, damaged anatomical coherences” and materializations of “the Falling (…) Simpler said, the Fall put its mark on our body.”62 Against potential critical positions on this matter, the artist posits that the icon is able to render visible “the cured morphology, of the restored human.”63 However, as previously mentioned in this chapter, for other artists of the same period, the mission of restoring humanity did not rely on depictions of a cured morphology of a fallen body but rather on the sacred geometry of the body (e.g. Horia Bernea) or on the body-soul’s artistic and theological renderings (e.g. Ion Grigorescu, Christian Paraschiv). Dumitrescu’s teandrinc morphology theses concede less power of resilience and strength to pursue salvation to the body as such (in its

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natural state) but rather supports a view which prioritizes what he calls “an ontological dilatation of the human accomplished by the Holy Spirit (which, nevertheless, eludes our understanding), according to which the indefinitedness of nature can enter and can be expressed without rest through the definiteness of human nature.”64 Thus, a teandric body entails a double dimension, both divine and mundane.

Notes 1. Elaine Scarry, Bodies in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) (Scarry 1985). 2. See for example Katherine Verdery, The Political Life of Dead Bodies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 54 (Verdery 2000); Eric Santner, The Royal Remains: The People’s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 48 (Santner 2011); Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15 (2003): 11–40 (Mbembe 2003). 3. Laura Grünberg, “Body-Art-Society,” in Art Embodied: Romanian Artists from the 80s, ed. Mihai Lucaci (Bucharest: UNArte, 2011), 11 (Grünberg 2011). 4. Simona Petracovschi, “Teaching and Touching in Physical Education in pre-­ and post-communist Romania,” in Touch in Sports Coaching and Physical Education: Fear, Risk, and Moral Panic, ed. Heather Piper (New York: Routledge, 2015), 107 (Petracovschi 2015). 5. Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni, “Performing Art History: Continuities of Romanian Art Practices in Post-Communist Performance,” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 27(1) (2019): 107–108 (Proksch-Weilguni 2019). 6. Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 26 (Foucault 1979). 7. Cosmin Costinaș, “The Actors of Subliminal History,” 2004. https:// werkleitz.de/. Available at: https://werkleitz.de/en/the-actors-of-subliminal-history. (20 January 2020) (Costinaș 2004). 8. Pompiliu-Nicolae Constantin and Valentin Maier, “Sport and Physical Education in Communist Factories: from the Soviet Union to Romania,” Romanian Journal of History and International Studies 2(2) (2015): 217–232 (Constantin and Maier 2015). 9. Irina Makoveeva, “Soviet Sports as a Cultural Phenomenon: Body and / or Intellect,” Studies in Slavic Cultures 3 (2002): 9–32 (Makoveeva 2002). 10. Constantin and Maier, “Sport and Physical Education in Communist Factories”, 217.

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11. Idem, 221. 12. Ibid. 13. Petracovschi, “Teaching and Touching in Physical Education,” 106–107. 14. Idem, 107. 15. Constantin and Maier, “Sport and Physical Education in Communist Factories”, 230. 16. Gheorghe Boldur-Lățescu, The Communist Genocide in Romania (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2004), 78 (Boldur-Lățescu 2004). 17. Simona Petracovschi and Jessica W. Chin, “Sports, Physical Practice, and the Female Body, 1980–1989: Women’s Emancipation in Romania under Communism,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 36(1) (2019): 35 (Petracovschi and Chin 2019). 18. Lutjona Lula, “Gender and Traditional Values During and After Communism: Detraditionalisation and Retraditionalisation in Albania and Romania,” Analize  – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 9 (2017): 126 (Lula 2017). 19. Codruṭa Cuceu, “Gender, Body, and Politics during Communism,” Journal for the Studies of Religions and Ideologies 10 (2005), 198. http:// www.jsri.ro/. Available at: http://www.jsri.ro/old/html%20version/ index/no_10/codrutacuceu-articol.htm (29 March 2020) (Cuceu 2005). 20. Idem, 198. 21. Ibid. 22. Denisa-Adriana Oprea, “Between the Heroine Mother and the Absent Woman: Motherhood and Womanhood in the Communist Magazine ‘Femeia’,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 23(3) (2016): 281–296 (Oprea 2016). 23. Florentina Andreescu, “The Changing Face of the Sacrificial Romanian Woman in Cinematographic Discourses,” Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review 11(4) (2011): 672 (Andreescu 2011). 24. Adriana Oprea, “Christian Paraschiv,” in Art Embodied: Romanian Artists from the 80s, ed. Mihai Lucaci (Bucharest: UNArte, 2011), 40 (Oprea 2011). 25. See Christian Paraschiv’s statement on his personal website: http://www. christianparaschiv.com/ (29 March 2020). 26. See Medeea Stan, “Interviu Christian Paraschiv, artist vizual: ‘În Occident, a trebuit să încep prin a înțelege sistemul: ce este un cont bancar, ce sunt impozitele’” [Interview with Christian Paraschiv, visual artist: In the West I had to start by understanding the system: what is a bank account, what are the taxes] Adevarul, 24 June 2017. https://adevarul.ro/. Available at: https://adevarul.ro/cultura/arte/interviu-christian-paraschiv-artistvizual-In-occident-trebuit-incep-intelege-sistemul-cont-bancar-impozitele-1_594dea4d5ab6550cb87898fb/index.html (29 March 2020) (Stan 2017).

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27. Ruxandra Balaci, “Photography  – A Possible Chronology of An Experimental Chapter,” in Experiment in Romanian Art since the 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 70 (Balaci 1997). 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Piotr Piotrowski, “Male Artist’s Body: National Identity vs Identity Politics,” in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, eds. Laura Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 230. (Piotrowski 2002). 31. Ibid. 32. Proksch-Weilguni, “Performing Art History”, 106. 33. Idem, 107. 34. Ion Grigorescu, cited in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996): 320 (Stiles and Selz 1996). 35. Theodor Redlow, cited in Kristine Stiles, “Ion Bitzan’s Desire.” Available at: https://cdn.panopticoncr.com/ionbit001/catalogue_uploads/ Bitzan's%20Desire.pdf (29 March 2020) (Stiles 1992). 36. Ion Bitzan Foundation, Exhibition: Sexul lui Mozart [Exhibition: Mozart’s Sex], 1991. Artexpo, Bucharest. Ion Bitzan’s Catalogue Raisonné. https://www.ionbitzan.com/. Available at: https://www.ionbitzan. com/exhibitions/entry.php?id=33. (3 March 2020) (Bitzan 1991). 37. Proksch-Weilguni, “Performing Art History”, 99–120. 38. Ibid. 39. Idem, 107. 40. Adrian Guţă, quoted in Romanian Cultural Institute, “The Glory and the Limits of the Body: Bio-art Exhibition by Christian Paraschiv.” http:// www.icr-london.co.uk/. Available at: http://www.icr-london.co.uk/article/the-glory-and-the-limits-of-the-body-experimental-bio-art-by-christian-paraschiv.html (24 March 2020) (Guţă 2011). 41. Ionuţ Cioană, “Ce spune celălalt / Corpul văzut de oameni, nu de aparate / Ștefan Sava, Ion Grigorescu / Galeria Ivan,” (What the Other Says/ The Body Seen by Humans, not by Machines/ Ștefan Sava, Ion Grigorescu / Ivan Gallery), 6 July 2018. https://medium.com/. Available at: https:// medium.com/@ionut.cioana/ce-spune-cel%C4%83lalt-corpulv%C4%83zut-de-oameni-nu-de-aparate-%C8%99tefan-sava-iongrigorescu-galeria-344663c99805. (7 January 2020) (Cioană 2018). 42. For an account on the body as a medium of technological extension see Sita Popat, Sarah Whatley, Rory O’Connor, Abbe Brown & Shawn Harmon, “Bodily Extensions and Performance,” International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 13(2) (2017): 101–104 (Popat et al. 2017).

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43. Gabriella Giannachi, Virtual Theaters: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2004), 55 (Giannachi 2004). 44. Contemporary French artist Orlan’s controversial body art employs acts of bodily transformation via aesthetic surgeries and computer generated images in which “her head is digitally hybridised with the ‘head-sculptures, bone-structures, decorative prostheses and make-up of Mayan beauties (Ince 2000: 87). Likewise, in 1990 Orlan posed for a portrait photograph in which she wore the wig and make-up of the Bride of Frankenstein.” (Giannachi 2004: 54). 45. Among the contemporary artists who work with their body to test the physical endurance limits, we can mention Marina Abramovic, Ana Mendieta and Rebeca Horn, among others. 46. Cioană, “Ce spune celălalt / Corpul văzut de oameni [What the Other Says/ The Body Seen by Humans].” 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Arthur Danto, “The Body in Pain. Fernando Botero’s latest series of paintings, inspired by the Abu Ghraib photos, immerse us in the experience of suffering in a way the original photographs never did,” The Nation, 9 November 2006. https://www.thenation.com/. Available at: https:// www.thenation.com/article/archive/body-pain/ (29 March 2020) (Danto 2006). 51. See for example Sorin Dumitrescu, Noi şi Icoana (Bucharest: Fundaţia Anastasia, 2010) (Dumitrescu 2010). 52. Ibid. 53. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) (Belting 1994). 54. Matthew Milliner, “Where the Icons Aren’t Yet Dry,” First Things, 24 May 2016. https://www.firstthings.com/. Available at: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/05/where-the-icons-arent-yet-dry (22 February 2020) (Milliner 2016). 55. Christopher Merrill, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016), 137 (Merrill 2016). 56. Idem, 138. 57. Olga Solovieva, Christ’s Subversive Body. Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics (Evanston Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2018), 125 (Solovieva 2018). 58. Dominique Fernandez and Ferrante Ferranti, Romanian Rhapsody: photo 0.jpg (New York: Algora Publishing, 2000), 178 (Fernandez and Ferranti 2000). 59. Ibid.

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60. Sorin Dumitrescu, “Archangel Michael’s Hand, A few Intuitions on Teandric Morphology,” in Experiment in Romanian Art Since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Center for Contemporary Art, 1997), 144 (Dumitrescu 1997). 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Idem, 145.

References Andreescu, Florentina. 2011. The Changing Face of the Sacrificial Romanian Woman in Cinematographic Discourses. Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review 11 (4): 661–674. Balaci, Ruxandra. 1997. Photography – A Possible Chronology of an Experimental Chapter. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Belting, Hans. 1994. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bitzan, Ion. 1991. Sexul lui Mozart [Exhibition: Mozart’s Sex], 1991. Artexpo, Bucharest. Ion Bitzan’s Catalogue Raisonné. https://www.ionbitzan.com/. Available at: https://www.ionbitzan.com/exhibitions/entry.php?id=33. Accessed 20 September 2020. Boldur-Lăt ̦escu, Gheorghe. 2004. The Communist Genocide in Romania. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Cioană, Ionuţ. 2018. Ce spune celălalt/Corpul văzut de oameni, nu de aparate/ Ștefan Sava, Ion Grigorescu/Galeria Ivan [What the Other Says/The Body Seen by Humans, not by Machines/Ștefan Sava, Ion Grigorescu/Ivan Gallery]. Medium, 6 July. https://medium.com/. Available at: https://medium.com/@ ionut.cioana/ce-spune-cel%C4%83lalt-corpul-v%C4%83zut-de-oameni-nu-deaparate-%C8%99tefan-sava-ion-grigorescu-galeria-344663c99805. Accessed 7 January 2020. Constantin, Pompiliu-Nicolae, and Valentin Maier. 2015. Sport and Physical Education in Communist Factories: From the Soviet Union to Romania. Romanian Journal of History and International Studies 2 (2): 217–232. Costinaș, Cosmin. 2004. The Actors of Subliminal History. https://werkleitz. de/. https://werkleitz.de/en/the-actors-of-subliminal-history. Accessed 20 January 2020. Cuceu, Codruṭa. 2005. Gender, Body, and Politics during Communism. Journal for the Studies of Religions and Ideologies 10: 194–201.

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Danto, Arthur. 2006. The Body in Pain. The Nation, 27 November 2006. https:// www.thenation.com/article/archive/body-pain/. Accessed 20 September 2020. Dumitrescu, Sorin. 1997. Archangel Michael’s Hand, A few Intuitions on Teandric Morphology. In Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Center for Contemporary Art. ———. 2010. Noi şi Icoana [The Icon and Us]. Bucharest: Fundaţia Anastasia. Fernandez, Dominique, and Ferrante Ferranti. 2000. Romanian Rhapsody: Photo 0.jpg. New York: Algora Publishing. Foucault, Michael. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Giannachi, Gabriella. 2004. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Grünberg, Laura. 2011. Body-Art-Society. In In Art Embodied: Romanian Artists from the 80s, ed. Mihai Lucaci. Bucharest: UNArte. Guţă, Adrian. 2011. The Glory and the Limits of the Body: Bio-art Exhibition by Christian Paraschiv. Romanian Cultural Institute. http://www.icr-london. co.uk/article/the-glory-and-the-limits-of-the-body-experimental-bio-art-bychristian-paraschiv.html. Accessed 19 September 2020. Ince, Kate. 2000. Orlan: Millennial Female. Oxford: Berg. Lula, Lutjona. 2017. Gender and Traditional Values During and After Communism: Detraditionalisation and Retraditionalisation in Albania and Romania. Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 9: 115–128. Makoveeva, Irina. 2002. Soviet Sports as a Cultural Phenomenon: Body and/or Intellect. Studies in Slavic Cultures 3: 9–32. Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15: 11–40. Merrill, Christopher. 2016. Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain. Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Milliner, Matthew. 2016. Where the Icons Aren’t Yet Dry. First Things, 24 May. https://www.firstthings.com/. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/05/where-the-icons-arent-yet-dry. Accessed 22 February 2020. Oprea, Adriana. 2011. Christian Paraschiv. In Art Embodied: Romanian Artists from the 80s, ed. Mihai Lucaci. Bucharest: UNArte. Oprea, Denisa-Adriana. 2016. Between the Heroine Mother and the Absent Woman: Motherhood and Womanhood in the Communist Magazine ‘Femeia’. European Journal of Women’s Studies 23 (3): 281–296. Petracovschi, Simona. 2015. Teaching and Touching in Physical Education in pre-­ and post-Communist Romania. In Touch in Sports Coaching and Physical Education: Fear, Risk, and Moral Panic, ed. Heather Piper. New  York: Routledge.

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Petracovschi, Simona, and Jessica W. Chin. 2019. Sports, Physical Practice, and the Female Body, 1980–1989: Women’s Emancipation in Romania under Communism. Critical Studies in Media Communication 36 (1): 35–57. Piotrowski, Piotr. 2002. Male Artist’s Body: National Identity vs Identity Politics. In Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, ed. Laura Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl. Cambridge: MIT Press. Popat, Sita, Sarah Whatley, Rory O’Connor, Abbe Brown, and Shawn Harmon. 2017. Bodily Extensions and Performance. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 13 (2): 101–104. Proksch-Weilguni, Stefanie. 2019. Performing Art History: Continuities of Romanian Art Practices in Post-Communist Performance. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 27 (1): 107–108. Santner, Eric. 2011. The Royal Remains: The People’s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. Bodies in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Solovieva, V. Olga. 2018. Christ’s Subversive Body. Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics. Evanston Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Stan, Medeea. 2017. Interview with Christian Paraschiv. Cultura Magazin. index. html. Accessed 20 September 2020. Stiles, Christine. 1992. Ion Bitzan’s Desire. https://cdn.panopticoncr.com/ionbit001/catalogue_uploads/Bitzan%27s%20Desire.pdf. Accessed 20 September 2020. Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Selz. 1996. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Verdery, Katherine. 2000. The Political Life of Dead Bodies. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 8

Religion Inspired Art and Politics: NeoOrthodoxism as Neo-Traditionalism?

8.1   Introduction Immediately after the collapse of the Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime in December 1989, some art critics were eager to point out the emergence of ubiquitous exhibitions of painting within which both amateur and professional artists “re-discovered” the religious values and the great political promises of “religious art.”1 Romanian artists of all stripes jam-packed the art galleries and cultural public spaces with artistic productions heavily saturated with ecclesiastical rhetoric and visual repertoires to an extent that “You could not enter any art space without being greeted by waves of blood and bales of barbwire intertwined in crowns, as well as forests of crosses and tons of nails.”2 After the collapse of any totalitarian regime, changes in the arts and cultural production’s directions and content are expected to be far-reaching and radical, as allegedly the longed for “freedom of imagination” is finally liberated from censorship’s constrains. Against this background, this chapter surveys the Neo-Byzantine (or as it is called after the fall of communism, “Neo-Orthodox”) stylistic tendencies recuperated in the post-communist Romanian cultural sphere. The first section argues that this expectation does not entirely apply to the Romanian post-communist cultural sphere. Some styles and thematic clusters of religious inspiration (of Neo-Byzantine descent) that emerged in the 1980s as a peripheral cultural phenomenon in relation to the official culture of Ceauṣescu’s national communism (e.g. the Prolog art group) © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_8

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were recuperated and developed after the fall of the regime, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. The second section critically explores the Prolog art group’s odyssey as reflected in recent Romanian art history and critical art discourses. The section particularly focuses on the Prolog artists’ cultural routes from the beginning of the group in 1985 to the present-day Romania. This exploration includes a critical survey of what was called, during communism, “Neo-Byzantinism,” and its moves towards the post-communist denominations of “Neo-Orthodoxism” and “Neo-Traditionalism.” Thus, this chapter asks whether these denominations accurately reveal the Prolog artists’ set of concerns.

8.2   The Prolog Art Group: From Periphery to the Central Stage and Back The art collective entitled Prolog is the longest-lived artistic project from present-day Romania. The group had numerous exhibitions and consistent endorsements from both the Orthodox Church of Romania and the Romanian Cultural Institutes (ICR) after the collapse of the communist regime.3 One of the most acclaimed Romanian Orthodox theologians, Dumitru Stăniloaei, wrote a text that reflected on the artists’ activities for an art catalogue published by the Romanian Cultural Institute in 2009, while numerous art critics, historians and theorists dedicated exhaustive texts on the Prolog’s “mission” in the cultural press of post-communist Romania.4 Yet, not all Prolog artists benefited from the same positive attention from the religious institutions of post-communist Romania. Although the Prolog’s artistic production may have played a peripheral role during communism, it is still understood as having prompted an emancipatory role in the sense that it preserved art and the autonomy of religious practice from the official culture. Art historian, Magda Cârneci, calls the artistic practice of the Prolog an “existential alternative” to state socialism as a form of “centripetal orthodoxism.”5 Indeed, some artists associated with this artistic/spiritual milieu started in the 1980s to create an art of religious inspiration understood as a return to the Byzantine era rendering of the sacred. The artists who chose to employ the visual rhetoric of the Byzantine Empire, including its religiously loaded connotations, were called Neo-Byzantines during the communist era. One of the Prolog artists, Marin Gherasim, focused on imperial gates, thrones and “sacred Byzantine architecture.”6 Another pervasive element

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in his art of religious inspiration is the apse as it appears in the architecture of the Byzantine churches. Although the artist employs religious symbols and artefacts as subject matter, the execution of his artworks is inscribed within the trends of contemporary art (including experimentalism). Marin Gherasim was an active member of two artist collectives born in the 1980s (namely, 9 + 1 and Prolog) both of which dealt with religious and spiritual topics. Marin Gherasim’s voracious need to re-enact the cultural memory of the Byzantine architectural elements can be understood as a resistance technique directed against the imposed oblivion of the sacred imposed by the communist regime. As Codrina Laura Ioniṭă points out, Marin Gherasim’s painting is always a confession and a witness of how the “memory of the apse” can act as a “symbolic rescue” of the Christian Orthodox values bulldozed by the communists.7 Thus, painting as confession can become a form of resistance by acting out a “form of symbolic reconstruction of churches and apses at a time in Romania when the communists were tearing them down.”8 Through this interpretative lens, the “memory of the apse” becomes the “triumph of the apse” (to paraphrase Horia Roman Patapievici) against the imposed oblivion of the communist atheism.9 The apse is not only an element of sacred Byzantine architecture but also lieu de memoire whose symbolic power reminds the viewer of the spiritual heritage that cannot be obliterated. Many of these religiously inspired paintings reveal the interiority of the artist as much as the work becomes a commentary about the world around him. Alex Popescu points out that the artist “understands painting as an expressive language with pronounced autobiographical notes”: “Te pictezi pe tine” (You paint yourself). “I conceive painting as a diary of my life”, wrote Marin Gherasim in an exhibition catalogue from 1969. Art, he argues, needs to be integrated “organically among all our other acts,” to be part of “our whole being, our moral being.”10 This “moral being” was seen as a performance of interiority and integrity. During the communist regime, he exhibited several times, including together with the 9 + 1 group. In 1981, the first 9 + 1 group exhibition was displayed at the Simeza Gallery in Bucharest, followed shortly by a second 9 + 1 exhibition at the National Peasant Museum in 1982. After the fall of the communist regime, Marin Gherasim’s art gained momentum on the Romanian cultural scene. One of the best-documented exhibitions is entitled, “Gherasim, Mitroi and Dup” (2002), organised by the Centre of Culture, “Palatele Brancovenesti de la Portile Bucureṣtiului.” The exhibition reunites the works of three interconnected artists (Marin Gheraim,

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Florin Mitroi and Darie Dup). Art critic, Pavel Ṣuṣară, wrote the conceptual text for the exhibition’s catalogue.11 Beside important participation in group exhibitions, the artist also exhibited his work individually both in Romania and abroad. Marin Gherasim was awarded numerous prizes, including the National Order “Steaua României” as a Chevalier in 2000; the Grand Prize for Lifetime Achievement awarded by the Union of Plastic Artists of Romania in 2002; and the National Order “Steaua României” as a Commander in 2008. Another artist associated with the Prolog is Paul Gherasim. His profoundly ascetic relationship with cultural creation triggered an artistic production of utmost humility where the spiritual universe of Romanian rural life takes central stage. The Church is the main topic of many of his paintings, as well as various elements that are associated with nature and vegetal life. Demonstrating a relentless nostalgia for Paradise, his art pieces reveal a deep longing for a rustic, simple life. Together with Mihai Sârbulescu, Horea Paṣtina, Constantin Flondor and Christian Paraschiv, he initiated the Prolog group. Subsequently, other artists joined the religiously inspired community (e.g. Horia Bernea, Sorin Dumitrescu, Ion Grigorescu, and others). Paul Gherasim’s relationship with the Church and Orthodox Christian faith continued to consolidate after the fall of the communist regime. As Costion Nicolescu recalls, “Paul’s relationship with the Church must have been old, but since I was more around, I know he was very attached to Stavropoleos. He had a prime role in the revival of the monastery since December 1989. He supported the return to the Psaltic music at Stavropoleos. He was a tireless isokratis in the pioneering chanting group that was formed there in the early 90s.”12 Before his death in 2016, Paul Gherasim conceived the last Prolog exhibition entitled, “White.” As the title suggests, all the works exhibited alluded to material sublimation to such an extent that boundaries of the things represented were difficult to disentangle. Translating elements from Christian symbolism into abstract art, the exhibition signalled the “ecclesiastic architecture” of Paradise, marking the “boundary between the visible and the invisible, between absence and presence; as a recollection of that first ever exhibition, the paradisiac garden with apple trees in bloom, dressed in the white of the feast, in the light of the Logos.”13 Like Marin Gherasim, he was awarded numerous prizes and exhibited his work abroad and nationwide. Horea Paṣtina joined the Prolog group from the beginning. His paintings and drawings recall the garden of Paradise, inviting the viewer to

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meditate and remember a state of celestial purity. As in the art of the other Prolog artists, Paṣtina’s paintings are inspired by nature and ecologies of hope. After the fall of communism, he dedicates more space in his art for flowers, as in the painting Irises at the Mont Athos (2011). Together with other Prolog members old and new (Mihai Sârbulescu, Constantin Flondor, Paul Gherasim, George Mircea, Alexandru Antonescu, Ion Grigorescu, Andrei Rosetti, Sorin Scurtulescu, Nicolae Badiu, Costion Nicolescu and Dan C. Mihăilescu among others), he participated in “expeditions” that rather resembled pilgrimages to Mount Athos in Greece in 2006 and 2011. The artistic visions inspired by the “expeditions” materialized in the group exhibition entitled, “Et in Athos Ego” (displayed Cuhnia Mogoṣoaiei, Bucharest, 2015). Mihai Sârbulescu is also interested in celebrating the beauty of nature and sacred architecture in his art. Like Horea Paṣtina, he painted Irises as well as other series and pairs of paintings. Vasile Petrovici dedicated a recent catalogue to Mihai Sârbulescu’s artistic production in which he posits that just like Matisse, Monet or Paṣtina, Sârbulescu’s consecrated titles of picture series are Irises, Balchik, Courtyard at Sibiu, Stella Maris, Bell and Vessel.14 From these series of paintings, bells stand out as being “figured on square canvases expressing equilibrium, while those painted on the vertical render elevation. An inverted bell could be mistaken for a vessel—and vice versa. The bells are almost monochrome: some are white, others are black.”15 Perhaps one of the most multifaceted artistic productions of spiritual/ religious inspiration from a Prolog member is the exquisite and conceptually sophisticated body of work created by Christian Paraschiv from the 1970s to the present day. The artist is one of the founders of the Prolog art collective in 1985. He takes the human physical body as a starting point to reveal the state of the human soul, the relationship between life and death, the state of consciousness, the mystical link between human body and geometry and the concatenation between body and politics. His bio-­ art is a striking instance of religiously inspired cultural production where biology is harmonized with spirituality. He left communist Romania in 1986 because he did not accept the censorship of his work Feminine/ Masculine and moved permanently to Paris where he continued his artistic practice through the extension of his series of bio-art, as well as shaping the investigation of the triangle: memory, identity and exile through various performative gestures where his own body takes central stage. In Paris, Christian Paraschiv is represented by the Oudin Gallery. In the artist’s view, art is not about religion, but art is religion. His friendship

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with another artist associated with Prolog (Ion Grigorescu) is often mentioned by the artist in association with his work: “From the very beginning, there has been a search for identity, marked by my initial position towards a dictatorship that crushes as well as drives many people into ‘a state of waiting’, a state which had often been favoured by the orthodox culture which has pushed towards the acceptance or the martyrology as my friend, Ion Grigorescu, often used in his discourse.”16 Paraschiv states that the experience of exile tightens the urge to artistically investigate the relationship between memory and identity through the reconstruction of personal histories.17 Besides the constant invocation of the body as a living trace of eternity the artist also employs in his works the metaphors of the shepherd, the heard, and the sheep, all of which allude to Biblical narrations. Yet, these metaphorical instantiations of Biblical tropes carry more than religious connotations. As the artist posits “the themes of the sheep, the herd, the shepherd and the wolf represent an efficient and transversal metaphor, both religious, social and political.”18 This is particularly relevant in the context of post-communist Romania if we scrutinize the public discourse of various politicians who employ the Biblical metaphor of the shepherd in their speeches to political ends. These politicians’ aspirations—especially of the far-right populist entrepreneurs such as George Becali and Vadim Tudor—underline their “divine mission” to shepherd the Romanian nation to redemption from spiritual, social, economic and political devastations. Some Romanian politicians’ perseverance to shepherd a country of deferential and compliant Orthodox Christian people towards the so-called national redemption is the focus of other political artworks, too. Correspondingly, the employment of the shepherd visual trope in many works of contemporary art is not accidental. The auto-proclaimed “saviours of the Romanian nation,” who allegedly, like Jesus Christ, are “good shepherds” pasturing their “people” (sheep), constantly relied on these religious thematic clusters. As theological studies point out, the visual trope of the “Good Shepherd” was one the most notorious depictions of Jesus Christ in early Christian art, but has slowly been replaced “by the images of Christ as teacher and as king—images that had become increasingly important in the iconography of Christ.”19 The use of this specific iconography was extended from theological to political discourse. Thus, the artistic employment of the heard or shepherd visual tropes in Christian Paraschiv’s art is not limited to religious connotations. One of the most noticeable personal exhibitions of Christian Paraschiv in post-communist Romania was a retrospective of all of his

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creations that comprised 300 artworks (exhibition organized by Mihai Oroveanu at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, 2007). Sorin Dumitrescu is a prolific visual artist and university professor that joined the Prologue group during communism. After the fall of the regime, he founded an NGO called, Anastasia, dedicated to the exploration of the relationship between Christianity and culture through art exhibitions and publications supported by Anastasia Publishing House. In addition, Sorin Dumitrescu opened the art gallery, Catacomba (1992–2001), in Bucharest becoming at the same time its chief curator and manager. The Anastasia Foundation was established in 1992 and became an NGO through a Romanian Government decision from 18 March 2004. The blog of the Anastasia Foundation clearly explains that this public cultural institution’s main aim is to reconnect the rupture between the Orthodox Church and the secular (laic) culture after the rupture that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.20 During 20 years of cultural activity, Anastasia Publishing House printed 550 books on metaphysics, literature, theological literature, culinary books and 12 art catalogues. On the official website of The National Museum of Romanian Peasant, it is stated that the Catacomba art gallery functioned as a pilot art gallery of the National Museum of Art, which has organized more than 60 art exhibitions since 1992.21 In addition, Anastasia formed a biographic archive consisting of the cultural and religious activities of both artists and clergy.22 The Anastasia Foundation’s Pinacoteca consists of more than 900 pieces of art donated by the artists who exhibited within the Catacomba’s exhibitions between 1992 and 2003, including; Corneliu Baba, Horia Bernea, George Apostu, Ion Murnu, Vasile Gorduz, Paul Neagu, Sorin Dumitrescu, Paul Gherasim Peter Jacobi, Horia Paştină, Silvia Radu Ştefan Câlţia, Vladimir Zamfirescu, Sorin Ilfoveanu, Florin Niculiu, Bogdan Vladuţă, Constantin Flondor, Sorin Neamt ̦u, Benedict Gănescu, Ovidiu Maitec, and many others.23 Sorin Dumitrescu prolonged his earlier interests in the “archaeology of Byzantine art” and transfigurative art of religious inspiration attempting to offer artistic rejoinders to the question of how someone can be a Christian painter in the twenty-first century. Catacomba gallery exhibited numerous artists interested in the artistic renderings of the sacred. Erwin Kessler and Pavel Ṣuṣară elaborate on the “mission” of two important art galleries after 1989, both of which were functioning as NGOs: Catacomba Gallery (part of the Christian foundation, Anastasia, led by Sorin

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Dumitrescu), and the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art which supported the work of experimental, contemporary artists who produced art pieces in line with Western trends.24 Art theorist Călin Dan managed the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. According to Kessler, the artistic production endorsed by these galleries reflects the cultural and political tensions of the post-communist Romanian society.25 At the same time, both cultural institutions aimed to overcome the statist model of the Union of Romanian Artists (UAP) that prolonged its prerogatives after the fall of the communist regime. Sorin Dumitrescu’s cultural activities at the Catacomba gallery are discussed in Adrian Marino’s autobiographical book, Viaṭa Unui Om Singur sau Despre Sensul Autobiografiei Ideologice (“The Life of a Single Man or on the Meaning of Ideological Autobiography”) in less than praiseworthy terms.26 According to Marino, Sorin Dumitrescu was preaching once a week at the Catacomba gallery, and although he was “congenial,” “picturesque” and a brilliant painter, his fanaticism felt as though it were drawn from another era.27 At the same time, the manager of the Anastasia Foundation received panegyrics to honour his artistic creation. In this vein, the periodical, Tabor (a monthly Cultural Magazine of Tradition and Romanian Spirituality in the Orthodox Church), constantly mentioned the artists’ contribution to the cultural dimension of Orthodoxy. Observator Cultural also refers to Sorin Dumitrescu as one of the most representative artists of Romanian modernism with the strength and audacity to establish “truer” cultural institutions that were not vassals of the consumerism of transition from communism.28 Constantin Flondor was born in Cernăut ̣i (Bucovina). In addition to Prolog, he is one of the founders of several art groups during communist Romania. In addition to his artistic activities, he also served as an art teacher at the Timișoara’s Fine Arts High School. Together with his students, the artist experimented with various artistic constructions at the intersection of art, science and nature.29 Before his association with the Prolog art group, Constantin Flondor co-founded one of the first experimental art groups in Romania as early as 1966: Group 111 (with Ștefan Bertalan and Roman Cotoṣman). The artist collective dissolved after Cotoṣman’s decision to leave communist Romania after the Nürnberg biennale exhibition in 1969. In 1970, Flondor and Bertalan initiated another art group called, Sigma. Sigma group was finally founded by the artists Ștefan Bertalan, Constantin Flondor, Lucian Codreanu, Ioan Gaita, Doru Tulcan and Elisei Rusu. The newly established art collective

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continued exploration with kinetic constructivist visual experiments employing film and photography, industrial aesthetics and geometry, and bionic study. The passion for the experimental urged some of the group’s artists to return and “rediscover” painting. Around the 1980s (during which time the Prolog group was created) Constantin Flondor started to work with the intense expressiveness of the newly re-discovered “traditional painting.”30 Before this re-discovery, the artists in the Sigma group had undertaken experimental work based on nature as their central point. Thus, the mathematical and geometrical experimental constructions they were employing as a modus operandi and main artistic methodology were produced in collaboration with nature. As stated earlier in this book (see the previous chapters on nature, spirituality and art), nature is not “out there” or a passive “landscape” that may serve as a foreground for art, but it is art’s partner. As Ștefan Bertalan (a member of both the 111 and Sigma groups) wrote to Constantin Flondor in an intimate letter dated Friday, 14 June 2007, when nature is envisaged as a collaborator of art, nature’s responses did not fail to reveal the meaning of life. Flondor pointed out that Bertalan’s letter was “both warm and exciting, and dramatic we could say.”31 The letter recalls the artistic actions performed in nature with the artists’ pupils in the 1970s at the Făget village. The memories of the art project entitled “Nature as Partner” are materialized in a discourse that emphasizes both the nostalgia for the artistic activities of their youth and a certain bitterness expressed in relation to contemporary art critics who failed to enhance the group’s diligence and prophetic activism. The letter reveals the artist’s view on nature’s beauty and complexity as reflected in the Sigma group’s activities. It also discloses his dissatisfaction with the fact that the major contemporary transnational art exhibitions (e.g. Documenta in Kassel, Germany) which focused on the artist’s role in proposing creative solutions to people and planet destruction, overlooked the answers given by the Sigma artists to these set of concerns stemming from the 1970s. In Bertalan’s words (read aloud by Constantin Flondor), the current Documenta exhibition, “Stands under the sign of the first aid that artists should offer to the planet and to people. What is to be done? How could this would be bettered? How could people, the public, be influenced about the state of the world today, burdened by wars, poverty and climate changes? So, exactly what we were doing many years ago. It was a concept that art critics did not make public worldwide, because they were

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not visionaries but retrogrades…” when it came to understanding “the visionary sense of our projects and actions.”32 Although the members of these art collectives constantly exchanged ideas, they worked mostly individually. Oana Tănase noted that in one of the catalogues about the Timișoara artist groups, she found a beautiful definition of the 111 Group: “Threefold Solitude.”33 Constantin Flondor further clarifies how the 111 Group was actually working as 1 + 1 + 1.34 The newly constituted group Sigma extended the artistic research of the 111 and made room for the inclusion of other issues less manifest in the former group’s practice. Constantin Flondor mentions both the resilience and nature as a medium of resistance as one of the conceptual pillars of the Sigma group activities. Flondor points out that Ștefan Bertalan had a stronger social dimension to his art than his own.35 In this vein, his bionic art took inspiration “From the resistance of grass and from there we could create models on a social level.”36 In other words, nature offered exemplary models for both art and politics. For instance, “a leaf’s birth and ramification can be used as a model for the urban system… in this sense we were closer to the architects with this type of teaching but the relationship with nature was always sine qua non.”37 All these considerations support our approach to disentangle Constantin Flondor’s contribution to the Prolog semi-program. After a long period of experimentations with technologies of image (photo, video, multimedia) and repulsion towards traditional painting, he re-discovers the passion for giving birth to geometric forms codified from the natural world through painting. This return to paining is not without spiritual and political connotations. His religion/spirituality inspired art after the 1980s follows his earlier interest in geometrical forms revealed by nature. One of these naturally occurring constructions is the snowflake that inspired the artist’s current cultural production. Recently, he exhibited his materialized vision of the relationship between snowflakes and crosses within the itinerant exhibition, The Cross from Community to Communion (2018–2019). The travelling exhibition was organized to celebrate the centennial of Romania’s Greater Union (1918–2018). The cultural events conceived on this special occasion reflected, to various extents, the nationalist ideology. Ethnologist Costion Nicolescu pointed out that the symbolic connexion between Christian crosses and snowflakes is not facile because the cross is associated with heaviness, solidity, and hardship while snowflakes are related to imponderability, lightness, and entertainingness.38 For Constantin Flondor, the snowflake carries a divine dimension (related to

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Jesus Christ’s birth in December). At the same time, the artist acknowledges the inspiration he took from Mihai Eminescu’s poems, especially from those verses in Fragmentarium, where the poet posits, “The Byzantine cross is like a snowflake / A little representative of the Universe.” The artist translates the perfect geometry of the snowflake into the artistic representation of the cross. This very recent preoccupation with parallel geometries that converge reflects his Prolog period and “the return to nature” seen as a collaborator in creating art of religious inspiration. Another significant and recurrent thematic cluster employed by Constantin Flondor in his art is white flour in its spiritual undertakings. Both associated with a daily basic diet and Christian sacraments, flour is omnipresent as image and symbol in the artist’s work since 1977. White flour is found in many Christian rituals and narrations, ranging from communion bread (wafer) and Christmas sweets to Biblical verses where “bread is a gift from God” and symbolized in “the five loaves and the two fish” parable (Luke 9:16). Interestingly, Flondor’s approach offers physical space for flour to take shape in its bare, natural form, before being cooked. He is primarily interested in the visualizations of the form of flour that is sifted. Correspondingly, his recent solo-exhibitions deal with Sifting (at BARIL, Paintbrush Factory Cluj, 2012). The concepts of “Sifting / Snowing” are paired thematically in Constantin Flondor’s recent work by disclosing the ethical value of purity that both the flour and snowflake motifs have in common.39 Art critic Cătălin Davidescu points out that the wheat berry symbolizes terrestrial purity, while the snowflake relates to the celestial purity.40 In this interpretation, Constantin Flondor, the scientist/artist is interested in the “vital materiality” of the wheat berry and in its ancestral, axiological dimension as life enhancer. Artist and BARIL Art Gallery founder, Sorin Neamt ̦u, also elaborates on Flondor’s use of wheat flour as “an element of organizing perception (concave/convex), for then to become the very of nostalgia and desire (space of a longed for land).”41 In Cătălin Davidescu’s reading, flour’s form achieves perfection and beauty in a solid-state when it is combined with another vital element of life, water. Sorin Neamt ̦u moves this argument a step further, and points out that when combined with water, flour “develops a range of polar meanings and relationships: hunger thirst; compact expansive; corpuscular undulatory; feminine masculine; static, moldable dynamic labile; opaque transparent; conical spherical.”42 Constantin Flondor admits that he also sees in the presence of flour a landscape, “a container of the space and time” of his

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childhood, where “Flour is connected to snow falling, heaven, snowflakes, Christmas.”43 His artistic experiments with flour precede the Prolog period. In a recent interview for Arta Vizuală 21 (Visual Art 21), the artist recalls one of his first artistic experiments with flour, namely the concave/convex modelling that took place during the communist era at the Peasant Museum in Bucharest. Flondor notes that one of the art magazines of the moment wrote a critical piece about his employment of wheat flour in his art. He recalls that during the late Romanian communist’s food rationalization, flour was not easy to find/buy in stores and one person could only buy one kilo of flour per month, available exclusively based on food coupons.44 Since Flondor needed 6–7 kilos of flour for his art piece, he asked one of his students (Sorin Vreme) to buy flour too.45 According to the artist’s recollections, the art critics of the communist era reported about his art show in a newspaper of the time, stating that “Flondor was doing something ‘esoteric,’ using flour… yes, Flour!”46 The exclamation mark speaks volumes about the official reception of the piece. The flour thematic cluster interest lasted throughout the years in Constantin Flondor’s art. As a key element in his work, flour is conceptualized by the artist as “a pure matter, ethereal, full of air, full of something breathable and cool, and it allowed me to represent it through photography, film, objects, pastel, ink, gouache and oil.”47 The link to nature is also omnipresent. As the artist confesses, “In an exhibition in 1978 called Studiu (The Study) I exposed the first results of my interest in modelling flour. I made associations between the way the hills at Moldoviţa were perceived (at different times of the day: 7:30, 11:08, 17:25) and studio models of flour landscapes.”48 Horia Bernea was the founder and chief curator of the post-communist established The National Museum of Romanian Peasant (1990) erected on the ruins of the former Museum of the Communist Party. The denomination “National” was added to the Museum of Romanian Peasant more recently (after the 2000s when Horia Bernea passed away).49 The Bernea-­ backed agenda of this popular museum is not without critics. Perhaps the most virulent critique is that the museum focuses deliberately on the ethnic-­ Romanian peasant’s worldview and culture, disregarding other Romanian peasants (e.g. Roma, Jewish, ethic-Hungarian, German and so on). Horia Bernea, who is associated with the Prolog art group, left a consistent body of work of religious inspiration. Unlike many of the Prolog artists, his art pieces focus more on the intrinsic link of religious motifs to the Romanian rural universe. Many of his artworks display prapori (church

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processional flags); Orthodox Church interiors and frescos; and rural landscapes. His Neo-Byzantinism does not revive the tradition as such, but rather “The motifs of his paintings can be classified as postmodernist interpretations of religious themes. He painted interiors of churches and peasant houses, trying to retrieve their lost atmosphere.”50 His Triptych (produced in 1978–1979, part of Sorin Costina’s private art collection) is an exquisite attempt to put together, in the same unpretentious wooden frame, three paintings that display apparently different themes.51 This triptych encapsulates Horia Bernea’s artistic and conceptual modus operandi very well. The artwork in three panels consists of a Self Portrait (1979), Prapori (1978) and Food with Candles (1979). Although produced in different years, all three paintings from the Triptych are of identical dimensions (35  ×  35  cm). The three panels cannot be folded shut as a traditional triptych. The paintings are deliberately hung together. Although each of which alludes to a religious state of affairs (including the Self-Portrait that hints to religious identity), the triptych does not strictly resemble the early Byzantine carved panels in which we find the middle one is typically the prevalent and the largest. Similarly, Horia Bernea’s Triptych also recalls religious triptychs that are not strictly religious but are abundantly populated with art history from Hieronymus Bosch (The Garden of Delights, 1503–1504) and Godfrey Miller (Triptych with Figures, 1944–1950) to contemporary photography installations such as Bill Viola’s Nantes Triptych (1992). The contemporary form of spiritual iconography displayed in Viola’s triptych reveals the journey from birth to death seen from the perspective of the human body. His triptych consists of three video screenings, each of which has its own sound: On the left side we see the video footage of the birth of a child (presumably Viola’s son); a floating body is screened in the middle video panel, and video footage of the artist’s mother as she was lying in a coma before her death is displayed on the right side of the triptych. The video footage act as memory markers of the living human being on her way to eternity. The same concerns with death, memory and contemporary forms of spiritual iconography are revealed in Horia Bernea’s Triptych too, although he worked and lived in a different context than Bill Viola. Bernea’s Self Portrait (on the left of the piece) functions as a Memento Mori, while the central panel, Prapori, and Food with Candles (on the right side) refer to the religious commemorations of the dead in the Christian Orthodox tradition. According to the online archive, Courage Connecting Collections,

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“Food with Candles was painted on the very day on which one of the most promising contemporary Romanian poets, Daniel Turcea, died at the age of just thirty-three.”52 Religious commemorative practices of Eastern Orthodox descent include a procession that accompanies the dead person from his home to the cemetery, as well as “sharing food and drinks at the graveside or during or following the ritual service.”53 The liturgical textile banners (prapori in Romanian) are carried during the religious procession organized on the day of the burial. All these forms of religiously inspired cultural memory of the dead are depicted in Horia Bernea’s work. Yet, apart from the devotional and commemorative dimension of this piece of work, we have to keep in mind that Bernea’s paintings that form his Triptych were sold by the artist to the art collector, Sorin Costina, in the 1970s for quite a significant amount of money (3000 Lei). The artist is also known in recent Romanian art history for his Banners (Prapori), Gardens, Columns, Church Interiors and Church Tower series.54 By re-interpreting Christian Orthodox ceremonial objects in art formats, he attempted to secure both their symbolism and materiality. The same artistic reinvestment of Orthodox ceremonial objects was displayed within several permanent exhibitions installed under Horia Bernea’s guidance at the Museum of Romanian Peasant after 1990. One of the main exhibitions, entitled Crucea (The Cross), was understood as a sudden re-­ discovery of the Christian dimension of the Romanian peasants’ life after atheist communism, which can be “traced to an interwar (extreme) right-­ wing tradition. However, the discourse that the museum was proposing, at least at the time of the opening of ‘The Cross,’ was very much a-­historical.”55 As Horia Bernea pointed out, the newly established institution is “a museum about the European traditional man, profoundly Christian, formed in continuation of ancient civilizations, organically bound to the Mediterranean world, to civilizations that can be traced back from India to Brittany.”56 While this argument was convincing for some intellectuals, others emphasized Horia Bernea’s right-wing lineage going back to the interwar ultranationalist ideology of “the holly legionary youth,” among whom Horia’s father, the ethnologist Ernest Bernea, wrote for the magazine Rânduila (The Order of Things).57 The magazine explored, among other topics, what the Youth Generation was allegedly interested in (e.g. literature, arts, Orthodoxy). According to some social scientists, Horia Bernea wanted to create an ethnology museum that his father had always longed for, and although Ernest Bernea is “not often mentioned in connection

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with the visual discourse of the museum […] his ideas about the peasant world are there.”58 This does not mean that we should take for granted and fallaciously the assumptions that Horia Bernea’s vision coincides with his fathers’ singularly because he founded a Peasant Museum. Ion Grigorescu is perhaps one of the most acclaimed Romanian artists who created a body of political-critical art during the Ceauṣescu regime.59 His most well-known art pieces that engaged with the hardships of living under dictatorship have been displayed widely, both in Romania and abroad (including at the Tate Gallery in London, Documenta Biennale in Kassel, the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art and MoMA and Ludlow 38  in New  York, among many others). His notorious Dialogue with Ceauṣescu (8 mm film, black and white, silent film, 1978) is one of the most talked-about art pieces from the former Eastern bloc that critically addresses the impossibility of having a dialogue with power. The black and white film exhibits a show that Ion Grigorescu performed alone in front of the camera in his studio during the Ceauṣescu era. The artist performs an imagined dialogue with the Romanian communist leader. He acts in double, impersonating Ceauṣescu who wears a huge mask, hiding his face. Grigorescu and Grigorescu-as-Ceauṣescu conduct their dialogue against a black background, seated, facing a defective, second-hand, 8 mm camera. The first sentence of the silent film appears as overlaid text on the screen; “If the people cannot rule, they should at least criticize!” Dialogue with Ceauṣescu (1978) has been re-enacted / re-performed in 2007 as Post-­ Mortem Dialogue with Ceauṣescu. Although Ion Grigorescu is the author of numerous pieces of political art that addressed life under dictatorship from various existential, conceptual and social angles, “The powers that be must have decided that Grigorescu was harmless; he was neither persecuted nor confined to complete invisibility. In an interview he explained Ceaușescu’s cultural politics in the 1970s as pitting potentially subversive professionals against presumably more loyal amateurs in all fields.”60 The artist himself admits that he was asked to paint a Nicolae Ceaușescu’s portrait as a member of the Romanian Artists’ Union (UAP). Grigorescu’s portrait turned out to be more of an anti-official-portrait of the communist leader. His 1979 portrait displayed three Ceaușescus in a semi-dialogue with each other. The “committee of guidance” rejected this peculiar portrait because it did not conform to the expectations of an official portrait. During a recent video interview, Ion Grigorescu confessed that he has a problem with the “official kinds of things” that do not fit his personality. He added succinctly

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“Neither with the church nor with officials.”61 The artist recalls that Mr. Dobrescu, the head of the exhibitions’ bureau, was quite surprised to see the peculiar portrait and remarked, “Well, you made three of them, but I haven’t seen a painting like this until now… if you want keep only the one in the middle. And so I did. On the same canvas these parts became landscape.”62 As the artist recalls, he did not intend to de-mythologize the dictator, but to render a realistic image of him as a peasant and a hesitant person. Although Ion Grigorescu is acknowledged as one of the most diligent Neo-Avant-Garde artists of Romania, who produced an impressive amount of politically engaged art, he is also a fervent producer of religion-inspired art. However, this artistic identity of Ion Grigorescu is less addressed in the studies dedicated to Romanian contemporary art. The artist is seldom identified with the Prolog art group and the art gallery Catacomba, although he exhibited constantly with both, and published critical art texts in the Anastasia Foundation’s publications.63 He worked during communism and after the collapse as a restorer of church frescoes and as an iconographer. This religion-inspired side of Ion Grigorescu’s artistic production ran parallel to his politically loaded art pieces both during national communism and after its fall. As Anders Kreuger eloquently argues, “Religious thought has remained a strong presence in his work, sometimes provoking unease in the same observers who embrace the earlier ‘critical’ work.”64 As in other cases, this “uneasiness” is the consequence of a certain polarized understanding between the Neo-Avant-Garde (critical-political art) and religion-inspired art (dogmatic, outdated, and conservative). This does not mean, however, that religion-inspired art cannot be progressive, revolutionary and critical-political too. Ion Grigorescu’s ritualized artistic-political actions remind us of the religious rituals linked to the existential concerns of the contemporary world. In 2018, the official TV channel of the Romanian Orthodox Church (Trinitas TV) aired a video interview titled “Ion Grigorescu: From Contemporary Art to Christian Iconography.” The interview reveals that iconography (sacred art) has no place in contemporary art because, as Ion Grigorescu puts it, “Contemporary art fights against the clergy.”65 Although individual artists who tackle religious topics in their work may be accepted by the art world, their faith-inspired art is not homologated by the most significant art institutions, biennales and acclaimed curators of the moment.66 Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Venice Biennale, Documenta, MoMA and Tate Gallery expressed interest only in Ion

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Grigorescu’s “critical-political” art of social inspiration, overlooking his burgeoning and fascinating corpus of religion-inspired art. In 2007, I met the artist in his apartment in Bucharest to conduct an interview on his politically loaded art that made him famous worldwide for his “cultural resistance” to dictatorship. I was basically following the mainstream trend in critical art, searching for provisory answers to questions pertaining to the concatenation between art and politics during communism. All my questions referred to his famous politically concerned pieces: Dialogue with Ceauṣescu (1978), The Cultural Revolution (1971), Realising the Plan Is within the Power of the Collective / Discussing and Fighting about Things That Should Normally Just Work (1972), and Electoral Meeting (1975). At one point, he was showing me some of his older drawings, when his left hand inadvertently uncovered an old wooden window frame that looked like it belonged to a vernacular house from the countryside. The artist said that somebody gave it to him in a village in the Southern part of the country (Fig. 8.1).

Fig. 8.1  Ion Grigorescu, Patru Scene/Four Scenes (2006). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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It was just an old relic of what it used to be—a traditional house, now bulldozed to make room for a new construction. Ion Grigorescu added that this old window did not deserve to be thrown away as disposable trash because “this is not just a window” but it encapsulates a spiritual meaning, like “an eye to the interior.” Then, he complained about “the throw-away” consumerist, capitalist society. The old wooden window has received the blessing of Ion Grigorescu, the artist’s hand, and has been turned into an icon in which both biblical scenes and mundane scenes are commingled. This artistic gesture has both spiritual and political connotations: the return to natural ways of life and critique of consumerist society, which alienates human beings from nature, from themselves, and from their cultural traditions. The wooden window painted by Ion Grigorescu with biblical scenes was waiting on a narrow corridor, waiting to be uncovered by a slip of his hand. I noticed its discrete presence only because I kindly asked the artist to show me other works that better captured the intricacies of my research question. At that time (in 2007), most of the studies that dealt with Ion Grigorescu’s artistic production completely disregarded his religion-inspired art, as well as his belonging to the Prolog art group and its existential concerns. The artists whose works are analysed above constitute the nucleus of the Prolog cultural semi-movement. Some of these artists founded the art group in 1985, including Paul Ghersaim, Mihai Sârbulescu, Horea Paștina, Constantin Flondor and Christian Paraschiv. Later, further artists joined the Prolog group (Sorin Dumitrescu, Ion Grigorescu, Marin Gherasim, Horia Bernea) and Prolog kept growing, as newcomers linked their existential concerns to the group’s general raison d’être (e.g. Ioana Bătrânu, Gheoghe Berindei, Ion Nicodim, Ruxandra Grigorescu, and many others). Some of the cultural producers associated with the Prolog art group hold positions of significant symbolic power in the post-communist cultural public sphere of Romania: for example, Andrei Pleșu (the Prolog’s theoretician) acted as the Minister of Culture in the 1990s; Sorin Dumitrescu was the manager and chief curator of Anastasia Publishing House and Catacomba Art Gallery; and Horia Bernea ran the Museum of Romanian Peasant from 1990 until his death in 2000. Although the religion-inspired art of the Prolog artists is visible within theological and other church-related circles (including many major state-­ sponsored cultural institutions), this kind of artistic production that

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focuses on faith and religious motifs are not on any shortlists of the mainstream curators of contemporary art. As Ion Grigorescu argues, although religion-inspired art of the last decades is a contemporary art that invokes the spiritual to address present and everlasting experiential human concerns, the art world is not eager to engage in exhibiting these kinds of art pieces.67 After he mentions the most influential transnational art events in Europe (e.g. Documenta, Venice Biennale) and their reluctance in co-­ opting religion-inspired art to their cultural-political agendas, Ion Grigorescu posits that religion-inspired art cannot compete with secular contemporary art because it cannot benefit from the same kind of advertising campaigns.68 It is indeed illuminating in this sense, that curators deem Ion Grigorescu’s political-critical art as “daring enough” to be selected for the Romanian Pavilions at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, whereas his religion-inspired art, as political-critical as it is, did not see the “light” in these major international contemporary art events. This is why the title of this section is the Prolog art group: from the periphery to the central stage and back.

8.3   Prolog: From Neo-Byzantinism to Neo-­Orthodoxism and Neo-Traditionalism? Some of the Prolog artists had to resist aggressive censorship of their work. For example, the communists closed down Christian Paraschiv’s exhibition, Feminine / Masculine three days after its vernissage. This triggered the self-exile of the artist to Paris in 1986. In the same repressive context, Sorin Dumitrescu (according to his confession in 2011) had a file at the Securitate (communist secret police), which, the artist points out, ends when Securitatea stopped following him upon noticing that the artist failed to attend art events and restaurants anymore.69 Sorin Dumitrescu explains that he started to avoid attending cultural events when he discovered that going to church functioned as a form of spiritual survival.70 According to Constantin Flondor, his file at the Interior Ministry reveals several informative notes on “the lack of realism” from his art-related ideas as well as his supposed “conservative conceptions, outdated and non-­ aligned to the current requirements” (informative notes from Timiṣoara, 20 March 1985).71 In the same register, the informative notes indicate that Professor Flondor Străin Constantin does not attend the mandatory Communist Party meetings on Mondays and prefers to work in his studio

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instead.72 Caterina Preda also posits that Paul Gherasim was investigated for several years for his “religion-inspired artworks.”73 Yet, although the Securitatea blacklisted one of the Prolog initiators (Paul Gherasim), this did not prevent him from exhibiting art of religious inspiration together with the other artists in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1989 (all the Prolog exhibitions were displayed at the “Căminul Artei” Gallery in Bucharest). Magda Cârneci posits that Neo-Byzantinism (the style proffered by the Prolog art group) was to a certain extent tolerated on the margins of the official culture of national communism because it offered “refined arguments in support of the protochronist theory” embraced by the national communist regime.74 Similarly, the denomination of “Neo-Byzantine” did not sound objectionable to the national communist authorities since their valued search for “national specificity” in art production was also linked to the Byzantine cultural heritage (among other heritages). Moreover, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s personality cult spectacle employed an aesthetics of Byzantine ancestry. For example, to mark his election by the Romanian Communist Party as the President of the country in 1974, Ceauṣescu received a sceptre and a sash. The political ritual of the investiture ceremony recalled the Byzantine panegyric court culture.75 Let us now return to the Protochronist cultural ideology advanced during Ceauṣescu’s rule. This cultural directive proposed the emphasis on the so-called Romanian specificity in all cultural and scientific production that also anticipated avant la lettre the similar and better-known developments from the rest of the world.76 This entailed that Romanian scientists and artists’ discoveries and creations anticipated and heralded prominent art styles and scientific discoveries from the West. Against this ideological background, the Prolog’s artistic production can be understood as being perceived ambivalently by the regime. On the one hand, the communist cultural tutelage might have regarded it as a visual repertoire of “pure Romanian ancestry” (conceding the Byzantine, albeit religious representations) could support the much-cherished idea of “Romanianess.” On the other hand, the artworks of religious inspiration that emphasized spiritual heritage, but attributed it to a transcendental incessant presence, may have been interpreted as a threat to the canonical communist atheism. This convoluted, double positionality of the communist authority vis-­ a-­vis the Prolog’s art is not easy to disentangle. The incentive to pursue this topic was art theorist Călin Dan’s statement that there was an ambivalence in how the communist power treated sacred art.77 He recalls that during the 1980s, the artists who thoroughly engaged in the art of

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photography were quarantined by the regime because the officialdom feared the reality as it was accurately displayed in art, preferring the kind of idealized reality that was endorsed through propaganda.78 At the same time, Dan notes that “honourable people like those from the Prolog, who had an agenda against the grain of the official art policy, were enjoying the promotion. I looked at this with some suspicion.”79 I contend that the artistic repertoire of some artists associated with the group could have passed as “ideologically safe” as long as their work displayed Romanian peasants, “autochthonous” landscapes, vegetation and even traditional Orthodox churches. Recall that, as paradoxical as it may seem at first, during the notorious Romanian National Communist “de-­ churching,” the artists associated with the Prolog group were allowed to take photographs with churches if the cross on the roof was indiscernible.80 This illustrates how the communist hegemony delegitimized certain forms of spirituality while endorsing others on the grounds of cultural Romanian specificity. However, the artistic productions of the Prolog artists did not display specific “qualities” that would qualify the group or their art as a fit candidate to aid in fuelling the protochronism delirium of the 1980s. There are no references to the autochthonous Dacian mythical heroes that challenge Roman “imperialism (the Western ergo)”; no specific reference to the doctrine of “Romanieness above all” and “national epopee”; and none to the ethnic group or other peculiar characteristics emphasized in the foundational text published by the literary aesthetician Edgar Papu (in his notorious article “Romanian Protochronism: Neagoe Basarb’s Teachings and the Orient-Occident Synthesis in the Old Romanian Civilization” published in the cultural magazine Secolul XX in 1974).81 After the collapse of the communist regime, the artistic production of religious inspiration associated with the Prolog group was dubbed in Romanian cultural press and academic literature as a “Neo-Traditionalist” tendency in art.82 In addition to the critical art discourses that emphasized the “Neo-Traditionalist” direction in recent Romanian art, Erwin Kessler curated an exhibition in 1995 titled Neo-Traditionalism/Neo-­ Avantgardism (at the Căminul Artei, Bucharest). According to the curatorial concept, the exhibition displayed art pieces representative of both tendencies. Thus, the label “Neo-Orthodoxism” and “Neo-Traditionalism” came to mean a certain tendency in Romanian cultural production that aims to revive old cultural traditions, including those of religious descent that conceptually entail a certain degree of contestation against all the

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dangers that might disrupt the ontological security of those born as Romanians. In this conceptual framework, religious practices and traditions were also regarded as a form of spiritual security.83 Still, if we understand “Neo-Traditionalism” in its political and sociological dimension, it has to be noted that the concept also entails the myth of the rebirth of the nation, “anti-Westernization, isolationism, and, accordingly, the revitalization of the enemy image.”84 By the same token, “Neo-Traditionalism” is a deliberate recovery of old cultural practices that can “serve as especially useful tools to consolidate group identity in circumstances of rapid and confusing social change and critique of ‘high modernity.’”85 In this light, the artistic production of the different cohorts of Neo-Orthodox artists had been politicized after 1989, in the sense of employing them in the “pro or anti-European integration” disputes or in axiological considerations that focused on “the Orthodox values against the Western corrupted culture dispute.”86 The label “Neo-Traditionalism” seems to exceed historical art considerations, rather occupying the space of political debates. Since many of the artists associated with Prolog claim a cultural-­religious identity, rendering everyday practices “spiritual,” they oftentimes were labelled pars pro toto as “Neo-Traditionalists” after the fall of the communist regime. However, those pronouncements that baptized the Prolog members as “Neo-Traditionalists” fail to clarify what precisely is politically at stake—apart from reviving cultural traditions and overlapping them with artistic modernity—in their supposedly “Neo-Traditionalist” cultural practice. As pointed out in this book, the artists associated with the Prolog group are largely notorious for their predilection for approaching topics and motifs that pertain to iconography, ecclesiastical artefacts, nature as God’s revelation (especially landscapes and flowers) but also, the human body is seen from the inside (e.g. Christian Paraschiv and Ion Grigorescu’s work analysed in Chap. 7). In addition, one should also take into account Paul Gherasim’s interest in painting peasants (among other thematic clusters) that might be interpreted as a “healthy” return to the origins and “traditions” of the Romanian spiritual identity. Yet, according to the present available resources, there is no art piece associated with the Prolog art group that unwaveringly reveals peasants as strictly Orthodox. Although few individual artists associated with the Prolog semi-movement expressed publicly the intentions of their artworks (intention auctores) the artworks themselves await the viewers to homologate and re-create their meaning.87

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To further support for this argument, it is worth mentioning Alina Hambara’s art historical research on the Prolog artists; she claims that “the Prolog group rejects the ‘neo-orthodox’ label applied by some art critics.”88 Mihai Sârbulescu also stresses that although the Prolog’s artists practice Orthodox rituals and go to church, their artistic production avoids ostentations in this respect, preferring discretion.89 Apart from Marian Zidaru, who is not strictly a Prolog member, no other artist displays nationalist symbols concatenated with religious representations. Claiming a religious identity is an emotional process that does not preclude the potential for resistance and opposition. Thus, most of these artists are more interested in how they feel subjectively—living what they call “an authentic form of life”—rather than in any myth of rebirth of the nation as a form of ontological security. Although they create as a group, the political emotions are as individual and unobtrusive as the artistic countenance each one of them prioritizes (e.g. for Christian Paraschiv it is the physical body; for Mihai Sârbulescu it is the sacramental object; for Paul Gherasim it is nature above all. Even if their artistic productions were enacted under the banner of a group (Prolog), it had a very individual character. At the same time, it would be accurate to stress that most of the artists associated with this semi-movement produced multifaceted art that cannot be nailed down to a singular purpose and message. The Anastasia Cultural Foundation, with its two subdivisions, Anastasia Publishing House and Catacomba Art Gallery, managed by Sorin Dumitrescu, were regarded as cultural institutions associated with the activities of the Prolog that disseminate the ideology of traditional values and Romanian spirituality. However, as Andrei Pleșu pertinently points out, the Orthodox Church of Romania does not sponsor the Anastasia Foundation and, perhaps more importantly, the publishing house does not publish on Christian Orthodoxy exclusively. Pleṣu mentions that the Anastasia Publishing House also published books on ecumenism, theology of post-modernity and Arab philosophy of history, as well as culinary books, and writings by Claudel and Rilke.90At the same time, Father Constantin Galeriu, a Theology Professor at the University of Bucharest and Dumitrescu’s mentor, declared that “the Orthodox Church should openly promote luminaries known as the ‘nation’s consciousness’ as candidates for parliament.”91 He posits that Anastasia was born from the torment of 1989, to serve the Orthodox Church’s tradition.92 It is no surprise that Constantin Galeriu (Father Galeriu) wrote an endorsement for Anastasia, as it is well-known that Sorin Dumitrescu is his disciple.

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Catacomba gallery was conceptually and spatially reminiscent of the early Christian catacomb art that depicted saints rejected by the world. These details further complicate the attempt to illuminate the grey zones that are taken to stand for traditional cultural values. In the landscape of the public cultural sphere of post-communist Romania, there were voices that commented on the Prolog’s art, labelling it “obsolete” and too “traditionalist.” We have to keep in mind that these religiously inspired works were produced alongside pieces of art created by other Romanian contemporary artists that addressed conceptual and political positions in various mixed media and formats, ranging from performance, installation and street theatre to body art. Compared to these “progressive” and anti-conventional artistic formats and aesthetics, the art produced by the Prolog might have appeared to have been superseded by other art, and “traditional” in its quest for restoring spiritual security. What these critics usually fail to point out is that there is a certain “decision making” and “responsibility taking” in relation to tradition—especially in its dimension of ontological security. We are constituted by the traditions that are alive within us (or, more accurately put it: we are what we have made out of these traditions when we apply them to our own situation). According to the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer, there are two philosophical approaches to the problem of “tradition.”93 One approach emphasizes the oppressive character of a cultural tradition, especially the despicable practical consequences of blindly adopting its dogmatic guidelines. The other approach (endorsed especially in German philosophical romanticism) holds that turning our attention to tradition could be a very enriching experience: we can discover hidden meanings, lost senses and fruitful ideas. Gadamer elaborates on the second approach and claims that we never take our tradition for granted. In talking, writing and thinking about tradition, we interpret it; we introduce new meanings in it. In this way, we enrich it and we pass our tradition enriched with new meanings to new generations, which will enrich it in their turn. If we apply the lens of art history/theory in attempting to disentangle the underlying assumptions of the entrenched polarization between the reinvestment in religious tropes (Neo-Orthodox art) versus the Romanian artistic neo-avant-garde (New-Media, Intermedial, Experimental art), we can detect a certain steadiness in associating Prolog with “traditionalists” that are harshly criticized by the post-moderns as “dogmatic” and “retrograde.” This theoretical approach is proposed more recently by Alina Hambaras (among others), who claims that all the indictments directed

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against the Prolog art group can be inscribed within the “postmodernism pathology”, but can easily be overcome through what she calls “an exercise of imagination.”94 Whatever this “exercise” is supposed to entail, we should rather approach both Neo-Orthodox art and Neo-Avant Garde art according to the modus operandi of postmodernism. As Adrian Guṭă argues, instead of deepening the narrative about the recurrent conflict between “the ancient” (retrograde) and “the modern” (progressive), we have the occasion to reconsider “Byzantine and post-Byzantine codes of representation on the background of re-evaluation of the sacred” that “could be interpreted as a sui-generis revision of art history with ethical accents.”95 This brings us back to the idea unpacked above about the re-evaluation and re-interpreting of tradition (including the historical and theoretical art traditions). Thus, the re-evaluation (through interpretation and valuation) of its own tradition is not foreign to postmodernism’s modus operandi. At the same time, the artistic production of the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-­ Orthodox artists is as contemporary as the “contemporary art” of the Neo-Avant Garde because “The term ‘contemporary’ is not attached to a historical period, as are modern and postmodern, but instead simply describes art ‘of our moment.’”96 It is also critical to point out that some of the Prolog artists (e.g. Sorin Dumitrescu) stated publicly in 2004 that the Romanian contemporary artists (whom he labels “synchronists”) are responsible for the “anti-­ Romania campaigns” and for the anonymity of Romanian art because these artists mimetically follow Western art trends in an attempt to secure a place in art biennales and exhibitions.97 He contends that these artists sell to the art world the kind of art production that is dictated by the aesthetic ideologies of the West without considering the detrimental consequences this endeavour occasions to Romanian art.98 His diatribe against “synchronists” also refers to the tutelage of the Western worldview in relation to which the contemporary Romanian artists manifest an “irresistible axiological orgasm.”99 Nevertheless, these perorations address an autochthonist view on cultural production and values. Still, while some artists associated with the Prolog art group insisted on the importance of emphasizing a specific difference and detachment vis-á-vis the Western art world’s canons, others chose to address the spiritual in their art through the modus operandi of the Neo-Avant-Garde, including the immense importance of the political and artistic experimentalism attached to it (e.g. Ion Grigorescu, Constantin

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Flondor and Christian Parschiv). Moreover, a genealogical lens applied to Constantin Flondor’s artistic production enables us to detect an initial repugnance towards the traditional medium of painting that is intentionally overcome and replaced with art practices that require more “progressive” technologies (e.g. film, photography). Once the artist co-founds Prolog, the return to traditional painting is invested with a spiritual dimension. As he recalls, the reverse happened in his art practice when compared to art history’s commonalities, namely that artists went from painting to photography and not the other way around.100 What is crucial to take into account is that Constantin Flondor has abandoned the traditional, “obsolete” medium of painting, but through the photographic and film media, he has returned to it.101 This return to the traditional medium of painting is not, however, as pristine as it may seem as the images displayed via painting are filtered through their reception through other media. Thus, the traditional medium of painting is recuperated through the mediation of “progressive” art technologies. From this moment on, for Constantin Flondor, nature became an art subject matter that “slid from an analysed matter to a contemplative one.”102 Thus, the “return” to tradition in Flondor’s case is not so much about a restorative drive but rather a way of seeing nature with the inner eye of the soul after the experiential knowledge mediated by the Neo-Avant-Gardes’ technology. Thus, religion-inspired art is not necessarily reliant upon traditionalism in art-making but can be arrived at via experimentalism too. As Cătălin Davidescu aptly posits, it would not be accurate to assess the artist’s trajectory from constructivist artistic experiments (manifested during the 1 + 1 + 1 and Sigma groups period) to the Neo-Byzantine Prolog as a radical fracture.103 In other words, not only the return to painting from the Prolog period has to be associated with a form of spirituality but also his entire artistic practice, including the constructivist, experimental searches. The whole artistic trajectory of Constantin Flondor (from 1  +  1  +  1 to Prolog) can be evaluated in synchrony with Western art trends without overlooking his return to painting in light of the Neo-Byzantine concerns exhibited by the Prolog art group. Flondor’s art is a relevant instance of artistic synchronism that does not preclude the traditional to instantiate its renewed energy. Thus, Flondor’s renewed attention to the tradition of painting from the Prolog period is, nevertheless, a very enriching experience. He discovered hidden meanings, vanished senses, and achieved prolific ideas in turning to

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traditional painting with an experimental eye. This way, he could gaze at particular aspects of nature in an unexpected, scientific way, without giving up the religious or spiritual lens. Throughout all of this enterprise, he did not take “tradition” for granted and ad litteram but interpreted it, introducing new, unforeseen meanings in it. Thus, Constantin Flondor’s contribution to all three art groups (1 + 1 + 1, Sigma and Prolog) was a “living ensemble” with existentialist undertones, where a “balanced respect for tradition floated above it, along with the spirit of the sober and courageous experiment, free from any prejudices or other snobbish claim.”104 However, while Constantin Flondor, Ion Grigorescu, Horia Bernea and Christian Paraschiv (to mention only a few) engaged with Neo-Avant-Garde formats in their artistic production of religious or spiritual inspiration, other Prolog artists did not show as much interest in what these “new art languages” may have had to offer conceptually, politically and spiritually. Yet, it cannot be assuredly stated that the Prolog artists proffered an “anti-modernist” perspective on culture either.

Notes 1. See for example Pavel Șușară cited in the online magazine Cultural Life, 18 March 2014. http://www.culturalife.ro/credo/religiosul-in-artacontemporana/ (12 January 2020). 2. Ibidem. 3. See the 236 pages of documentation in the catalogue: Andrei Pleșu, Ioan Alexandru, Livius Ciocârlie and Dumitru Stăniloaie (eds?), “Studiul 3 Prolog” [Study 3 Prolog] (Bucharest: Institutul Cultural Român, 2009). Andrei Pleșu, Ion Alexandru, Liviu Ciocârlie and the Orthodox theologian, Dumitru Stăniloaie, wrote the theoretical texts accompanying the artworks. 4. See for example Andrei Pleșu, “Mereu reînceputul ‘Prolog’” [“Prolog”’s Perpetual Beginning], Dilema Veche 585 (30 April–6 May 2015) (Pleșu 2015); Alexandra Titu, “Prolog, o atitudine” [Prolog, An Attitude], Arta 1 (2000): 17 (Titu 2000); Dan Hăulică, “Purpură pentru Logos” [Purple for Logos], Preface for the catalogue Paul Gherasim (Pro Logos: Palatul Brâncovenesc Mogoșoaia, 2005), 16–19. http://patzeltart.ro/. Available at: http://patzeltart.ro/v/GHERASIM+PAUL/ GHERASIM+PAUL+005.jpg.html (28 February 2020) (Hăulică 2005). 5. Magda Cârneci, Artele Plastice în România: 1945–1989. Cu o addenda 1990–2010 [Plastic Arts in Romania: 1945–1989. With an Addenda 1990–2010] (Iaṣi: Polirom, 2013), 134 (Cârneci 2013).

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6. Alexandra Titu, Experimentul in Arta Româneasca dupa 1960 [The Experiment in Romanian Art after 1960] (Bucharest: Editura Meridiane, 2003), 178–179 (Titu 2003). 7. Codrina Laura Ioniță, “Religious Themes in Contemporary Art,” in Multiculturalism and the Convergence of Faith and Practical Wisdom in Modern Society, ed. Ana-Maria Pascal (Hershey: IGI Global, 2016), 209 (Ioniță 2016). 8. Ibidem. 9. Horia Roman Patapievici, “Triumful Absidei. Un Cântec la Moartea lui Marin Gherasim (1937–2017)” [The Triumph of the Apse. A Song at Marin Gherasim’s Death (1937–2017)]. Contributors.ro, 29 March 2017. http://www.contributors.ro/. Available at: http://www.contributors.ro/cultura/triumful-absidei-un-cantec-la-moartea-lui-marin-gherasim-1937-2017/ (28 February 2020) (Patapievici 2017). 10. See Alex Popescu, “Marin Gherasim.” Tyler Collection of Romanian & Modern Art, University of Tasmania. December 2016. https://tylercollection.omeka.net/. https://tylercollection.omeka.net/items/ show/898. (21 December 2019) (Popescu 2016). 11. Pavel Ṣuṣară, “Marin Gherasim and His Guests,” România Literară, 17 (2002): 24–25 (Șușară 2002). 12. Costion Nicolescu, “Paul Gherasim, un Pictor Anahoret,” [Paul Gherasim, An Anchoret Painter] Tabor. Revista de Cultura si Spiritualitate Româneasca [Tabor. Magazine of Romanian Culture and Spirituality] 1 (2017): 37 (Nicolescu 2017). 13. Paul Gherasim cited in Ioniță, “Religious Themes in Contemporary Art,” 209. 14. Vasile Petrovici, Mihai Sârbulescu, Pictura, Grafica [Mihai Sârbulescu’s Painting and Graphics] (Iaṣi: PIM, 2018) (Petrovici 2018). 15. Idem., 9. 16. See the artist’s statement on http://www.christianparaschiv.com/. 17. Ibidem. 18. Ibidem. 19. Boniface Ramsey, “A note on the disappearance of the good shepherd from early Christian art,” The Harvard Theological Review 76(3) (1983): 375–378 (Ramsey 1983). 20. Foundation Anastasia’s blog. Available at: http://www.anastasiaonline. ro/blog/2018/01/30/fundatia-anastasia/. (20 December 2019). 21. See The National Museum of Romanian Peasant’s website. Available at: http://www.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/home/pinacoteca-interzisa-en. html. (2 January 2020). 22. Ibidem. 23. Ibidem.

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24. Erwin Kessler, X:20. O Radiografie a Artei Româneṣti după 1989 [X:20. A Radiography of Romanian Art after 1989] (Bucureṣti: Editura Vellant, 2013). Pavel Șușară, “Plastică: Nuclee si Tendinṭe,” [Visual Arts: Nuclei and Tendencies] România Literară, 27, 2001. https://arhiva.romlit.ro/ index.pl/. Available at: https://arhiva.romlit.ro/index.pl/nuclee_i_tendine (28 February 2020) (Șușară 2001). 25. Ibidem. 26. Adrian Marino, Viat ̣a Unui Om Singur sau Despre Sensul Autobiografiei Ideologice [A Lonely Man’s Life or About the Meaning of Ideological Autobiography] (Iaṣi: Polirom, 2010), 385 (Marino 2010). 27. Ibidem. 28. Constantin Abaluta, “Iconostasul Roman de la Scala Coeli” [Roman Iconostasis from Scala Coeli]. Observator Cultural 322, 25 May 2006. https://www.observatorcultural.ro/. Available at: https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/iconostasul-roman-de-la-scala-coeli-2/ (28 February 2020) (Abaluta 2006) 29. See Andrei Pleșu, “Un Liceu de Artă Plastică ṣi Câteva Ȋntrebări” [An Arts High School and a Few Questions], in Creatị e ṣi Sincronism European. Miṣcarea Artistică Timiṣoreană a anilor 60’–70’, eds. Ileana Pintilie, Ștefan Bertalan, Constantin Flondor and Doru Tulcan (Timiṣoara: The Art Museum, 1991) (Pleșu 1991). 30. For a detailed excursus on Constantin Flondor’s artistic production from 111 to the Prolog period see the catalogue: Constantin Flondor, Georg Lecca, and Dana Crăciun, Flondor, de la “111”  +  “Sigma” la “Prolog” [Flondor from “111”  +  “Sigma” to “Prolog”]. (Cluj-Napoca: Idea Design & Print, 2005) (Flondor et al. 2005). 31. Oana Tănase, “Interview with Constantin Flondor,” Witnesses XXI, Revisiting the Past. A Collection of Video Interviews, 2012. Concept by Aurora Király, based on a concept developed together with Iosif Király, min. 18:59. https://aurorakiraly.weebly.com/interview-with-constantin-flondor-by-oana-t259nase.html. (3 January 2020) (Tănase 2012). 32. Idem., min. 21:12 to 21.55. 33. Idem., min. 0:26. 34. Ibidem. 35. Idem., min. 34:13. 36. Idem., min. 35:06. 37. Idem., min. 41:37 to 42:04. 38. See the video interview of Costion Nicolescu with Constantin Flondor, in Costion Nicolescu, “De vorba cu artistul Constantin Flondor” [Chatting with the artist Constantin Flondor]. 1 November 2018. https://www. youtube.com/. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zSLrGqBIiwM (4 January 2020) (Nicolescu 2018).

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39. For an elaborate argument on thematic synthesis, see Cătălin Davidescu, “Constantin Flondor. ‘Cernere/Ningere’” [Sifting/Snowing]. România Literară 51–52 (2019). https://romanialiterara.com/. Available at: https://romanialiterara.com/2019/12/constantin-flondor-cernereningere/ (28 February 2020). 40. Ibidem. 41. See Sorin Neamțu’s “Considerations on Constantin Flondor’s solo exhibition, Sifting (2012),” on the Facebook page of the BARIL Art Gallery in Cluj-Napoca (founded in 2012 by Tiberiu Adelmann and Sorin Neamțu) https://www.facebook.com/pg/baril.ro/community/ (3 March 2020) (Neamțu 2012). 42. Ibidem. 43. Ibidem. 44. Andrei Rosetti and Grigore Roibu, “Constantin Flondor: Toată viața mea a fost o lecție de pictură” [Constantin Flondor: All my Life was a Painting Lesson], Arta Vizuală 21 (13 April 2014). https://artavizuala21.wordpress.com/. Available at: https://artavizuala21.wordpress. com/2014/04/13/interviu-cu-constantin-flondor-toata-viata-mea-afost-o-lectie-de-pictura/ (4 January 2020) (Rosetti and Roibu 2014). 45. Ibidem. 46. Ibidem. 47. See “Constantin Flondor. Sifting” on BARIL Art Gallery’s website. Available at: http://www.baril.ro/publications#/constantin-flondorsifting/. (20 February 2019) 48. Ibidem. 49. According to Gabriela Nicolescu, the denomination “National” attached to museums was uncommon after the fall of the communist regime. However, she points out that starting in the 2000s, the Ministry of Culture determined that some museums could add this denomination as a recognition of their value: “all the employees of ‘national’ museums received an increase of 25% of their budgetary salaries. In the legal context, this increase was highly significant and many employees were quite fond of the new appellation.” Gabriela Nicolescu, “Art, Politics and the Museum: Tales of Continuity and Rapture in Modern Romania,” PhD thesis in Anthropology (Goldsmith College: University of London, 2015): 33 (Nicolescu 2015). 50. Luiza Barcan, “Bucarest’s Curtea Veche Gallery,” ARTmargins, 1 November 2002. https://artmargins.com/. Available at: https://artmargins.com/bucarests-curtea-veche-gallery/ (7 January 2020) (Barcan 2002). 51. The art piece entitled Tryptic by Horia Bernea can be viewed online on the website of the research project Courage: Connecting Collections. See

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Cristina Petrescu and Cristian Valeriu Pătrăsc̦ oniu, “Bernea, Horia. Triptych, 1978–1979. Painting.” Research project Courage: Connecting Collections (2019). http://cultural-opposition.eu/. Available at: http:// cultural-opposition.eu/registry/?uri=http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/n42344 (28 February 2020) (Petrescu and Pătrăsc̦ oniu 2019). 52. Ibidem. 53. See Paul Fieldhouse, “Christianity Death Rituals and Ceremonies,” in Food, Feasts, and Faith. An Encyclopaedia of Food Cultures in World Religions, ed. Paul Fieldhouse (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2017), 147 (Fieldhouse 2017). 54. See the catalogue edited by Mihai Oroveanu, Horia Bernea 1938–2000 (Bucureṣti: Noi Media Print, 2007) (Oroveanu 2007). 55. Gabriela Cristea and Simina Radu-Bucurenci, “Raising the Cross: Exorcising Romania’s Communist Past in Museums, Memorials and Monuments,” in Past for the Eyes: Cinema and Museums in Representing Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989, eds. Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008), 298 (Cristea and Radu-Bucurenci 2008). 56. Horia Bernea quoted in Cristea and Radu-Bucurenci, “Raising the Cross”, 289. 57. Roland Clark, Holly Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 132 (Clark 2015). 58. Cristea and Radu-Bucurenci, “Raising the Cross”, 289. 59. For an overview of Ion Grigorescu’s artistic production, see Alina Șerban, Ion Grigorescu: Omul cu o Singură Cameră / The Man with a Single Camera (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013) (Șerban 2013). 60. Anders Kreuger, “Ion Grigorescu: My Vocation is Classical, Even Bucolic,” Afterfall 41 (2016): 24 (Kreuger 2016). 61. Magda Radu, “Măr turii XXI—Ion Grigorescu.” Video interview with Ion Grigorescu, concept by Aurora Kiraly and Iosif Kiraly, 2012. Minute 52.20. https://www.youtube.com/. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNmjf3yWIJ8 (28 February 2020) (Radu 2012). 62. Ibidem. 63. See for example, Ion Grigorescu, “Politics, Religion and Art Facing Crime” (Bucharest: Galeriile Catacomba—Fundația Anastasia a Muzeului Național de Artă a României [Anastasia Foundation of the National Art Museum of Romania], 1992) (Grigorescu 1992). 64. Ibidem. 65. See the documentary “Artistul Ion Grigorescu de la Arta Contemporana la Iconografia Crestină” [The artist Ion Grigorescu from Contemporary art to Christian Iconography]. Lumină din Icoană [The Light from

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Icon], Trinitas TV, 17 January 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqHfT2VZIm0. (11 January 2020) (Grigorescu 2018). 66. Ibidem. 67. Ibidem. 68. Ibidem. 69. Petre Mihai Băcanu, “Sorin Dumitrescu la 65 de ani: ‘Am fost păcălit aproape 20 de ani’” [I was cheated for almost 20 years]. Parohia “Sf. Nectarie Taumaturgul”—Coslada (Spania [Spain]), 18 March 2011. https://www.sfnectariecoslada.ro/. Available at: https://www.sfnectariecoslada.ro/2011/03/18/sorin-dumitrescu-la-65-de-ani%E2%80%9Cam-fost-pacalit-aproape-20-de-ani%E2%80%9D/ (2 January 2020) (Băcanu 2011). 70. Ibidem. 71. Rosetti and Roibu, “Constantin Flondor: Toată viața mea a fost o lecție de pictură.” 72. Ibidem. 73. Caterina Preda, Art & Politics under Modern Dictatorships: A Comparison of Chile and Romania (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 258. 74. Cârneci, Artele Plastice în România, 134. 75. For a detailed account of the investiture ceremony, see Lucian Boia, Romania, Borderland of Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 129 and Vladimir Tismiineanu, “Byzantine Rites, Stalinist Follies: The Twilight of Dynastic Socialism in Romania,” Orbis 30(1) (1986): 65–90. 76. For a detailed account on Romanian protochronist theory see: Robert Adam, Două Veacuri de Populism Românesc [Two Centuries of Romanian Populism] (Bucureṣti: Humanitas, 2018); Ilie Bădescu, Sincronism European ṣi Cultura Critică Românească [European Synchronism and Romanian Critical Culture] (Bucureṣti: Editura Ṣtiinṭifică ṣi Enciclopedică, 1984); Kathrine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), especially Chap. 5, 167–209; Eugen Negrici, Iluziile Literaturii Române [The Illusions of Romanian Literature] (Bucureṣti: Editura Cartea Româneasca, 2008). 77. See Medeea Stan, “Interviu Călin Dan, Directorul Muzeului Naṭional de Artă Contemporană: În Noaptea Cutremurului din ’77 am Ajutat la Degajare” [Interview with Călin Dan, the Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art: In the Night of the Earthquake in ’77 I helped to Clean Up]. Adevărul, 30 November 2019. https://adevarul. ro/. https://adevarul.ro/cultura/arte/interviu-calin-dan-directorulmuzeului-national-arta-contemporana-In-noaptea-cutremurului-77-ajutat-degajare-1_5ddfe66e5163ec427181a942/index.html (10 January 2020) (Stan 2019).

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78. Ibidem. 79. Ibidem. 80. Christian Paraschiv (one of the founding members of the Prolog) pointed out during an interview with Medeea Stan that actually the Neo-Byzantine artists were allowed to depict churches under certain conditions (e.g. the cross on the roof to be invisible). See Medeea Stan, “Interviu Christian Paraschiv, artist vizual: ‘În Occident, a trebuit să încep prin a înțelege sistemul: ce este un cont bancar, ce sunt impozitele’” [Interview with the Visual Artist Constantin Flondor: ‘In the West, I had to start by understanding the System: What is a Bank Account, what are the Taxes’]. Adevarul, 24 June 2017. https://adevarul.ro/. Available at: https:// adevarul.ro/cultura/arte/interviu-christian-paraschiv-artist-vizual-Inoccident-trebuit-incep-intelege-sistemul-cont-bancar-impozitele1_594dea4d5ab6550cb87898fb/index.html. (5 January 2020) (Stan 2017). 81. Edgar Papu, “Protocronismul Românesc” [Romanian Prothocronism], Secolul XX 5–6 (1974): 8–11 (Papu 1974). 82. See for example Constantin Prut’s entry on “Sorin Dumitrescu” in Dictionar de Artă Modernă ṣi Contemporană [Modern and Contemporary Art Dictionary], ed. Constantin Prut (Iaṣi: Polirom, 2016) (Prut 2016) and Sabina Crisen, “National Identity and Cultural Self-Definition: Modern and Post Modern Artistic Expression,” East European Studies 55: 16–17 (1999). Available at: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/ default/files/media/documents/publication/CRISEN55.pdf (28 February 2020) (Crisen 1999). 83. For a detailed exploration of religion as a form of spiritual security, see Anna Ozhiganova, “Spiritual and Moral Education in Russian Public Schools: Constructing a Neo-Traditionalist Identity,” FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education 5(1) (2019): 107–125. 84. Idem., 110. 85. Ibidem. 86. Alice Mocănescu, “National Art as Legitimate Art: National between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania.” Paper presented at the conference ‘The Contours of Legitimacy in Central Europe: New Approaches in Graduate Studies’, European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Available at: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/papers/Alice_Mocanescu.pdf. (10 January 2020). 87. See Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

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88. Alina Hambaras, “Studiu de Caz: Grupul Prolog”. n.a. https://www. academia.edu. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/37681832/ Studiu_de_caz_grupul_Prolog.docx. (29 December 2019) (Hambaras n.a.) 89. Mihai Sârbulescu cited in Hambaras n.a., 52. 90. Andrei Pleșu on Fundat ̣ia Anastasia’s blog http://www.anastasiaonline. ro/blog/2018/01/30/fundatia-anastasia/ (20 December 2019) 91. Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-­ Communist Romania (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 124. 92. Constantin Galeriu on Fundatị a Anastasia’s blog http://www.anastasiaonline.ro/blog/2018/01/30/fundatia-anastasia/ (20 December 2019) 93. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2013). 94. Hambaras, “Studiu de Caz: Grupul Prolog,” 51. 95. Adrian Guță, “Notes on the Romanian Arts of the 90’s.” Moscow Art Magazine 22 (1998). Available at: http://old.guelman.ru/xz/english/ XX22/X2219.HTM (29 December 2019). 96. See more on this debate: Megan Gambino, “Ask an Expert: What is the Difference Between Modern and Postmodern Art?,” Smithsonian Magazine, 22 September 2011. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/ask-anexpert-what-is-the-difference-between-modern-and-postmodernart-87883230/. (23 December 2019). 97. See Ioana Malamen’s interview with Sorin Dumitrescu: “Actul de a face icoane este un act neuman” [The Act of Making Icons is a Non-human Act]. Ziua 3166, 8 November 2004. http://www.ziua.ro/index.php. Available at: http://www.ziua.ro/display.php?data=2004-11-08 &id=161929 (28 February 2020). 98. Ibidem. 99. Ibidem. 100. Oana Tănase, “Interview with Constantin Flondor,” min. 46:40. 101. Ibidem. 102. Dust Magazine Online, http://dustmagazine.com/blog/?p=9766 (23 September2018). 103. Cătălin Davidescu, “Constantin Flondor.” 104. Andrei Pleșu cited in Victor Neumann, Between Words and Reality: Studies on the Politics of Recognition and the Changes of Regime in Contemporary Romania (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2000), 47.

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Bibliography Abaluta, Constantin. 2006. Iconostasul Roman de la Scala Coeli [Roman Iconostasis from Scala Coeli]. Observator Cultural 322, May 25. https:// www.observatorcultural.ro/. Accessed February 28, 2020. https://www. observatorcultural.ro/articol/iconostasul-roman-de-la-scala-coeli-2/. Adam, Robert. 2018. Două Veacuri de Populism Românesc [Two Centuries of Romanian Populism]. Bucureṣti: Humanitas. Băcanu, Petre Mihai. 2011. Sorin Dumitrescu la 65 de ani: ‘Am fost păcălit aproape 20 de ani’ [I Was Cheated for Almost 20 Years]. Parohia “Sf. Nectarie Taumaturgul”—Coslada (Spania), 18 March 2011. https://www.sfnectariecoslada.ro/. Accessed January 7, 2020. https://www.sfnectariecoslada. ro/2011/03/18/sorin-dumitrescu-la-65-de-ani-%E2%80%9Cam-fost-pacalitaproape-20-de-ani%E2%80%9D/. Bădescu, Ilie. 1984. Sincronism European ṣi Cultura Critică Românească [European Synchronism and Romanian Critical Culture]. Bucureṣti: Editura Ṣtiinṭifică ṣi Enciclopedică. Barcan, Luiza. 2002. Bucarest’s Curtea Veche Gallery. ARTmargins, November 1. https://artmargins.com/. Accessed January 7, 2020. https://artmargins. com/bucarests-curtea-veche-gallery/. Boia, Lucian. 2001. Romania, Borderland of Europe. London: Reaktion Books. Cârneci, Magda. 2013. Artele Plastice în România: 1945–1989. Cu o addenda 1990–2010 [Plastic Arts in Romania: 1945–1989. With an Addenda 1990–2010]. Iaṣi: Polirom. Clark, Roland. 2015. Holly Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cristea, Gabriela, and Simina Radu-Bucurenci. 2008. Raising the Cross: Exorcising Romania’s Communist Past in Museums, Memorials and Monuments. In Past for the Eyes: Cinema and Museums in Representing Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989, ed. Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor. Budapest: Central European University Press. Davidescu, Cătălin. 2019. Constantin Flondor. ‘Cernere/Ningere’ [Sifting/ Snowing]. România Literară 51–52. https://romanialiterara.com/. Accessed February 28, 2020. https://romanialiterara.com/2019/12/ constantin-flondor-cernere-ningere/. Eco, Umberto. 1994. The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fieldhouse, Paul. 2017. Christianity Death Rituals and Ceremonies. In Food, Feasts, and Faith. An Encyclopaedia of Food Cultures in World Religions, ed. Paul Fieldhouse. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.

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Flondor, Constantin, Georg Lecca, and Dana Crăciun. 2005. Flondor, de la ‘111’ + ‘Sigma’ la ‘Prolog’ [Flondor from ‘111’ + ‘Sigma’ to ‘Prolog’]. Cluj-­ Napoca: Idea Design & Print. Gadamer, Hans Georg. 2013. Truth and Method. London: Bloomsbury Press. Gambino, Megan. 2011. Ask an Expert: What Is the Difference Between Modern and Postmodern Art? Smithsonian Magazine, September 22. https://www. smithsonianmag.com/. Accessed December 23, 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/ask-an-expert-what-is-the-difference-betweenmodern-and-postmodern-art-87883230/. Grigorescu, Ion. 1992. Politics, Religion and Art Facing Crime. Bucharest: Galeriile Catacomba (Fundat ̦ia Anastasia a Muzeului Nat ̦ional de Artă a României [Anastasia Foundation of the National Art Museum of Romania]). Gut ̦ă, Adrian. 1998. Notes on the Romanian Arts of the 90’s. Moscow Art Magazine, 22. Accessed December 29, 2019. http://old.guelman.ru/xz/ english/XX22/X2219.HTM. Hăulică, Dan. 2005. Purpură pentru Logos [Purple for Logos]. Preface for the Catalogue Paul Gherasim. Pro Logos: Palatul Brâncovenesc Mogoșoaia. http://patzeltart.ro/. Accessed February 28, 2020. http://patzeltart.ro/v/ GHERASIM+PAUL/GHERASIM+PAUL+005.jpg.html. Ionit ̦ă, Codrina Laura. 2016. Religious Themes in Contemporary Art. In Multiculturalism and the Convergence of Faith and Practical Wisdom in Modern Society, ed. Ana-Maria Pascal. Hershey: IGI Global. Kessler, Erwin. 2013. X:20. O Radiografie a Artei Româneṣti după 1989 [X:20. A Radiography of Romanian Art after 1989]. Bucureṣti: Editura Vellant. Kreuger, Anders. 2016. Ion Grigorescu: My Vocation is Classical, Even Bucolic. Afterfall 41: 23–37. Malamen, Iolanda. 2004. Actul de a face icoane este un act neuman [The Act of Making Icons Is a Non-human Act]. Ziua 3166, November 8. http://www. ziua.ro/index.php. Accessed February 28, 2020. http://www.ziua.ro/display. php?data=2004-11-08&id=161929. Marino, Adrian. 2010. Viatạ Unui Om Singur sau Despre Sensul Autobiografiei Ideologice [A Lonely Man’s Life or About the Meaning of Ideological Autobiography]. Iaṣi: Polirom. Mocănescu, Alice. 2012. National Art as Legitimate Art: National between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania. Paper presented at the conference ‘The Contours of Legitimacy in Central Europe: New Approaches in Graduate Studies’, European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Accessed January 10, 2020. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/ papers/Alice_Mocanescu.pdf. Negrici, Eugen. 2008. Iluziile Literaturii Române [The Illusions of Romanian Literature]. Bucureṣti: Editura Cartea Românească.

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Neumann, Victor. 2000. Between Words and Reality: Studies on the Politics of Recognition and the Changes of Regime in Contemporary Romania. Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Nicolescu, Gabriela. 2015. Art, Politics and the Museum: Tales of Continuity and Rapture in Modern Romania. PhD thesis in Anthropology. Goldsmith College: University of London. Nicolescu, Costion. 2017. Paul Gherasim, un Pictor Anahoret [Paul Gherasim—A Hermit Painter]. Tabor. Revistă de Cultură și Spiritualitate Românească 1: 37–46. Oroveanu, Mihai. 2007. Horia Bernea 1938–2000. Bucureṣti: Noi Media Print. Ozhiganova, Anna. 2019. Spiritual and Moral Education in Russian Public Schools: Constructing a Neo-Traditionalist Identity. FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education 5 (1): 107–125. Papu, Edgar. 1974. Protocronismul Românesc [Romanian Prothocronism]. Secolul XX 5–6: 8–11. Patapievici, Horia Roman. 2017. Triumful Absidei. Un Cântec la Moartea lui Marin Gherasim (1937–2017) [The Triumph of the Apse. A Song at Marin Gherasim’s Death (1937–2017)]. Contributors.ro, March 29. http://www.contributors. ro/. Accessed February 28, 2020. http://www.contributors.ro/cultura/ triumful-absidei-un-cantec-la-moartea-lui-marin-gherasim-1937-2017/. Petrescu, Cristina, and Cristian Valeriu Pătrăşconiu. 2019. Bernea, Horia. Triptych, 1978–1979. Painting. Research project Courage: Connecting Collections. http://cultural-opposition.eu/. Accessed February 28, 2020. http://culturalopposition.eu/registry/?uri=http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/n42344. Petrovici, Vasile. 2018. Mihai Sârbulescu, Pictura, Grafica [Mihai Sârbulescu’s Painting and Graphics]. Iaṣi: PIM. Pleșu, Andrei. 1991. Un Liceu de Artă Plastică ṣi Câteva Ȋntrebări [An Arts High School and a Few Questions]. In Creaṭie ṣi Sincronism European. Miṣcarea Artistică Timiṣoreană a anilor 60’–70’ [Creation and European Synchronism. Timiṣoara Art Movement between 1960’ and 1970’], eds. Ileana Pintilie, Ștefan Bertalan, Constantin Flondor, and Doru Tulcan. Timiṣoara: The Art Museum. ———. 2015. Mereu reînceputul ‘Prolog’ [‘Prolog’’s Perpetual Beginning], Dilema Veche 585 (30 April–6 May). Pleșu, Andrei, Ioan Alexandru, Livius Ciocârlie, and Dumitru Stăniloaie. 2009. Studiul 3 Prolog [Study 3 Prolog]. Bucharest: Institutul Cultural Român. Preda, Caterina. 2017. Art & Politics under Modern Dictatorships: A Comparison of Chile and Romania. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Prut, Constantin. 2016. Sorin Dumitrescu. In Dictionar de Artă Modernă ṣi Contemporană [Modern and Contemporary Art Dictionary], ed. Constantin Prut. Iaṣi: Polirom.

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Ramsey, Boniface. 1983. A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art. The Harvard Theological Review 76 (3): 375–378. Șerban, Alina. 2013. Ion Grigorescu: Omul cu o Singură Cameră / The Man with a Single Camera. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Stan, Lavinia, and Lucian Turcescu. 2007. Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania. New York: Oxford University Press. Șușară, Pavel. 2002. Marin Gherasim şi invitaţii săi [Marin Gherasim and His Guests]. România Literară 17: 24–25. Tismăneanu, Vladimir. 1986. Byzantine Rites, Stalinist Follies: The Twilight of Dynastic Socialism in Romania. Orbis 30 (1): 65–90. Titu, Alexandra. 2000. Prolog o atitudine [Prolog, An Attitude]. Arta 1: 17–19. ———. 2003. Experimentul in Arta Româneasca dupa 1960 [The Experiment in Romanian Art after 1960]. Bucharest: Editura Meridiane. Verdery, Kathrine. 1995. National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 9

Art as Resistance to the “Religious Affair” and Consumerist Religion in Post-­ Communist Romania

9.1   Introduction This chapter puts forth an exploratory analysis of the most momentous artistic productions from post-communist Romania, where the religious symbols, rituals and practices are envisioned and employed with the aim of redefining the spiritual as a form of cultural and political resistance to various hegemonies: from the nationalist hegemony to the neoliberal hegemony and its theology, the hegemony of the art market and the hegemony of institutionalized religion. Most of these artistic productions, subversively for the most part, employ religious imagery and tropes with the aim of converting them to political ends. Contemporary artists deploy traditional religious imagery as rhetorical devices featured in the “secular agora” for their political-ethical potentialities. To succeed in this undertaking, a politics of imagination is exercised through a variety of artistic media and mixtures of media forms. Thus, the diversity of post-­communist artistic practices, as well as the heterogeneity of media, messages and concepts put forth, reveal a pervasive continuity of the artistic quest for religious/spiritual considerations applied to political, social and economic concerns. However, it is still a matter of debate whether the employment of religious imagery in contemporary critical-political art relates in any way to the traditional understandings and significance of religious visuals. After the fall of the communist regime, the majority of artists associated with the Neo-Byzantine (now re-baptized as Neo-Orthodox) group © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_9

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Prolog continued their spiritual-artistic journey through art’s intermediation. Some artists (e.g. Marian and Victoria Zidaru) became involved in unofficial religious revitalization movements and pursued religiously inspired artistic promises, yet from a different spiritual route than the Prolog members; meanwhile, others—here implying the more-or-less younger generation of Romanian contemporary artists—employed religious themes and tropes in their work for markedly different ends and on different grounds. These contemporary artists also employ thematic clusters and repertoires of religion and spirituality in order to challenge it (or at least to challenge “institutionalized religion” or the “religious affair” in Romania and beyond). Thus, the all-too-familiar Byzantine imagery— icons, crosses and other religious symbols and visual memorabilia that belong to the material culture of Christianity—is featured and incorporated in newly fangled, defamiliarized contexts and approaches. Through this process of critical irony and defamiliarization, the viewer and art consumer are faced with an unexpected, critical-political perspective. Unlike the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox semi-movement, contemporary artists of post-communist Romania who deal with religiously inspired topics, clusters and tropes in their work are not necessarily interested in revealing “true spirituality.” They do not belong to a unique movement, ideology, program or platform. Yet, as the earlier Neo-Byzantine movement explored in the previous chapter of this volume, their art can be understood as a form of political resistance through the invocation of “the religious.” Thus, the artists this chapter engages with are not concerned with “true spirituality” as a way of reacting against the status quo (as many of the Neo-Byzantine/Neo-Orthodox artists did). Instead, religiously directed topics and tropes are reinvested with critical meanings to make a diversity of political ends that cannot be nailed down to a singleness of aim but, in place of this, can be understood as a critical strategy of resisting neoliberal theology and its consequences. Thus, many of the contemporary artworks scrutinized in what follows employ religious symbols (mainly of Eastern Christian Orthodox descent, but not exclusively) to resist the official “religious affair” in present-day Romania, while others use religious symbols to different political ends, such as opposing the new “consumerist religion” of Romania’s transition from a communist to a post-communist economy or to resist environmental degradation at the hands of neoliberalism and other contemporary evils.

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9.2   The Romanian Orthodox “National” Church After 1989 Literary comparatist Adrian Marino recalls the political and cultural atmosphere of post-communist Romania in his ideological autobiography, positing that after the demise of the Marxist-Leninist atheism, it was somehow unsurprising to notice “the unbreathable air of omnipresent invented saints, religious anathemas, and televised religious spectacles.”1 What he found more noxious than the cavalcade of public mysticisms and religiously loaded electoral discourses was the resurfacing of the ideology of extreme right-wing politics from the interwar period against a background of a total lack of liberal, critical thinking.2 Thus, Marino was not terrified of the inflation of religiosity in the cultural public sphere and accepted it as a human right to freedom of thought and expression, but he would have preferred the prioritization of “saving” Romanian society from poverty and insalubrity first.3 As he recalls in his autobiographical book, “In a civilization of houses of mud and straw, with toilets in the backyard, without running water and electricity in all the villages of the country, we have instead an abundance of ‘mysticism’ and ‘spirituality.’”4 This “abundance” of religious representations, discourses and symbols was also reflected in the post-1989 compulsory religious education to all primary, secondary and high school pupils. Before 1945, the constitution recognized the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) as the national church. After the collapse of communism, the 2006 Romanian Law on Religious Denominations did not recognize the ROC as a state church. However, regardless of this lack of recognition, “The funding system that the state set in motion for religious denominations provides the ROC with substantial financial aid not only for partial clerical remuneration and restauration of old churches, but also for erecting new ones.”5 Perhaps one of the most imposing projects of the ROC after the collapse of communism was to undertake the “Christianization of the Centrul Civic” of Bucharest by erecting an enormous cathedral, suggestively called “The Cathedral of National Salvation.”6 Some intellectuals regarded this project as “the ROC’s inability to adapt to the realities of the contemporary society.”7 The “national” cathedral was inaugurated on 25 November 2018  in the presence of more than 30,000 Romanians who trampled each other to get inside the giant building, which is 120 meters tall (allegedly the tallest Orthodox Church in the world). Both Romanian and the international media reported on the inauguration of what was

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expected to function as a material and spiritual re-confirmation of Romanians’ national identity. Many criticized this nationalist dream, mostly because the state had channelled huge amounts of public money into the Cathedral of National Salvation in a country where there were not enough public hospitals, schools or decent modes of public transportation. The newspaper Balkan Insight reported the citizens of Bucharest’s reactions about the newly established religious institution of “national salvation,” including some bitter jokes: “Soon we’ll be able to pray like normal people, not like poor people. I hope they bring many of those miracle-making icons!”8 One year later, the newsletter Orthodox Times reports on “remembering the historical consecration ceremony” of the giant cathedral, stating that the red brick building is “the most important national project dedicated to Romania’s Great Union Centennial, a symbol of the unity of faith and of nation of Romanians.”9 The “national church” also had an important role in the proliferation of a public visual culture of religious descent, which had at the same time been shaping “Romania’s democratization during the last 20  years.”10 Still, the role of the Orthodox Church in the process of democratization is far from precise, and many times negative. As Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu argue, “This is because many Orthodox leaders view democratization as a threat to their Byzantine view of church-state relations and the state is unwilling to relinquish its traditional centralist coordination of religious life.”11 Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu also aptly address the genealogy of the national church’s collaboration with the former repressive regime as well as the national church’s reluctance to admit its collaboration with communist tutelage.12 In the same vein, the political scientist Sorin Bocancea argues that after the fall of the communist system, the Orthodox Church endeavoured to rewrite the past and cast itself as a martyr and victim of communist oppression.13 Apart from these historical and political considerations, the Romanian Orthodox Church was also criticized for not being able to tackle social exclusion and poverty in one of the poorest countries of Europe, despite the fact that, theoretically speaking, the official church had a developed and complex system of institutions as well as the “financial and human resources required to tackle social problems from poverty and disease to the immediate needs of disadvantaged persons or groups.”14 The collapse of state socialism brought an increased taste for both travelling abroad and securing a better paying job in Western Europe. As Remus Gabriel Anghel points out, “After decades of coercive control of

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mobility exerted by the Romanian socialist state, Romanians after 1989 became ‘crazy to travel’ (Sandu et al. 2004). But for more than ten years, the mobility of Romanians was severely restricted by West European states until deposition changed in 2002 and they were able to travel freely in the EU.”15 There are three important shifts in Romanian migration patterns: the strict control of migration during communism and a relatively relaxed bout still controlled migration in the 1990s; “strong irregular migration between 2002 and 2007”; finally, unobstructed migration after 2007 when Romania, together with Bulgaria, joined the European Union.16 In 2001, Radio Free Europe reported, “Already poor in 1989, Romanians over the following decade only grew poorer compared to a majority of their Eastern European neighbours, due to difficulties in implementing market reforms.”17 The dire economic situation forced Romanians to live on an average salary of less than 100 dollars per month.18 A country report on Romanians’ migration abroad after 1989 points out that “temporary migration abroad is a post ’89 social innovation that followed the law of diffusion for any social innovation. The phenomenon is new, complex and with very high dynamics. As a result, the empirical evidence for this topic is rather poor.”19 Orthodox theologians of post-communist Romania did not engage with practical theology concerns, that is, offering possible answers and ameliorations to the stringent societal problems of massive Romanian migration to Western Europe and the situation of those groups disenfranchised and discriminated against (like the Roma ethnic minority). All these difficulties could very well shape and inform contemporary Romanian theology. Yet, these contextual theologies with practical incentives could not be effortlessly incorporated by the Romanian Orthodox theologians because of the dogmatic precincts enforced by a hermeneutical model based on the traditional readings of the Church Fathers. At the same time, the Romanian Orthodox Church was not ready yet to embrace ecumenism, and this prompted a certain degree of religious intolerance vis-a-vis the unofficial religious movements (the so-called sectarians). Yet, it is also worth mentioning that Romanian theologians and church leaders (e.g. Patriarch Teoctist) facilitated the first encountering with the Pope of Rome John Paul II as early as 1999 when the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch and the Pope celebrated together the Divine Liturgy in Bucharest.20 However, the criticism of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s inability to cope with social injustice has shadowed the positive actions undertaken by the official church after the fall of communism. In addition,

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as Alexandru Mihăilă has demonstrated, while political correctness manifested its presence by prompting the avoidance of anti-Judaic speech in the Protestant and Catholic world, the Romanian Orthodox Church did not avoid the offensive anti-Judaic pronouncements from the liturgical texts and from the ritual of the Holy Week.21 The features that inform the Eastern Orthodox tradition, as well as other political issues, prevented both the recognition and incorporation of contemporary practical and contextual theologies that do not assume that the church’s social action is superior to other forms of action.22 Baptist theologian and Pastor Teodor Ioan-Colda aimed to offer a contextual (local) theological dimension to the sociological and anthropological discussions about Romanian migration to Western Europe after 1989.23 His interest in shading light on a context-dependent theological perspective was triggered by the fact that the Romanian press dubbed the rampant migration phenomenon “the Romanian Exodus.” Ioan-Coda’s practical theology focuses on post-communist Romania, with an eye on the social, political and economic problems of the transition period. Among these issues, “the Romanians Exodus” occupies the central stage. Compared with the exodus of Israelites after leaving Egypt (from the Old Testament), the massive waves of migration of Romanians after the 1990s also marks a “turning point in history, which completely changed the data of their previous social existence.”24 Seen in this light, the Romanian exodus is interpreted as a way of regaining human dignity after dehumanizing deprivations and the precariat status of Romanians. Adequate theological positions might illuminate “the Romanian society with its ‘equivocal condition,’ best expressed in the high level of religiosity and high level of corruption.”25 Thus, some theologians who do not belong to the Eastern Orthodox tradition emphasized the inadequacy of the Romanian Orthodox theology vis-á-vis the pressing economic, social and epistemic injustices occasioned by a lengthy and painful transition.

9.3   Contemporary Art Against the “Religious Affair” in Post-Communist Romania After the collapse of the communist regime in the 1990s, the artist Marcel Bunea organized a multimedia artistic action (entitled Between Calling and Contempt) at the National Theatre Gallery in Bucharest. He exhibited paintings of lyrical-abstract inspiration and a video projection with

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musically solemn background. The theme of this artistic action was sacrifice. The multimedia installation ended with a violent happening, “With the painted surfaces as victims and the climax symbolically marked the remorse of those who repeal spiritual values.”26 In spite of bringing revitalized religious traditions and myths to the forefront, these contemporary art pieces reveal the “progressive” aesthetics of the sacred. In this vein, performing a traditional Byzantine icon and video recording it, as well as broadcasting a theatrically performed sacrifice, were, however, condemned by other artists as sacrilegious. One of the main demurrals against this “unorthodox” approach of the sacred was that Christian Orthodox values cannot be revealed artistically through the mediation of multimedia artistic approaches because the intervention of technology renders the spiritual meaningless or de-sacralised. This cluster of contemporary art pieces that refresh the ways traditional Byzantine icons look like and perform their symbolic functions was embraced by several contemporary artists for political-­critical ends. One of these ends was the artistic critique of the “official” religion and its hegemonic narratives. In what follows, the chapter will consist of an analysis of the post-­ communist cultural production that challenges the institutionalized religion in Romania. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, sometimes contemporary artistic practice engages the visual repertoire of religion so as to resist the “religious affair” in post-communist Romania. The offensive uses of Christian iconography by some Romanian contemporary artists is interpreted by Cristian Nae as having the ability to reveal the existing social tensions as well as resisting “new forms of authoritarianism in countries whose recent public spheres are divided by the confrontation between conservative Christian religiosity and secularized socialist ideals in an expanding capitalist economy of images.”27 Nae does not concede that what he calls initially “iconoclastic gestures” might have a destructive potential; rather, he understands them as forms of “iconoclash” (conflicting symbols) that can occasion a renewed “discursive field which aims to release existing cultural tensions, to expose the imbrication between religion and politics, and thus, to play a critical social function.”28 In this way, the Iaṣi-based visual artist Dan Acostioaei employs the symbolism and other instances of religious imagery of traditional Byzantine icons in his art in a defamiliarizing way. From 2004 onwards, he has produced a controversial series of light boxes (translucent surfaces) analogous to the light signs used outdoors or indoors in shopping malls, airports and railway stations in order to assist passers-by in finding their way in or out.

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The translucent boxes (entitled Logos) show stylized Christian symbols and Biblical characters. These religiously-oriented signs are meant to function as any other signal from the economic public sphere. The religious image/symbol is then defamiliarized and detached from its habitual context in which we regularly perceive it. The ontological in-betweenness of Acostioaei’s translucent signs allude to the official church’s marketization of religious services. As Diana Ursan points out, “The critique of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s real and excessively displayed power goes further in the Logos installation, conceived like the signage of a range of services offered by saints, angels, The Holy Mother and the Child and Christ himself, all represented in a flat, simplified, advertised manner on blue light-boxes fit to serve the nearby future religious-mall.”29 Another piece that addresses the “religious affair” is the 2015 video Blowing in the Wind that displays a kite with the face of Jesus Christ flowing above the notorious construction site of the Cathedral of National Salvation/Redemption. Probably the most striking instance of political-­ critical art that employs religious images to resist the ideology of institutionalized religion in Acostioaei’s series is the art piece Banner, which merges two apparently opposite visual tropes: a communist symbol (a red tie scarf, associated with the pioneers organizations) and Jesus’ face as it appears in the Byzantine icons imprinted on the red scarf. Unlike Horia Bernea’s Banner series analysed in the previous chapter, Acostioaei’s piece invests the object with the opposite connotation, unmasking the aesthetics of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s propaganda. In the same critical register, the artist conceived a Prayer Book (2016) that is visually indiscernible from the Orthodox artefacts commercialized by the religious institution in Romania. Although the seemingly religious art object replicates the graphics and formal aspects of an “actual” prayer book, the contents of the message of Acostioaei’s prayers address the most pressing issues contemporary art workers confront in Romania (and beyond). There is no secret that most artists in Eastern Europe are living a precarious life that impedes their artistic production to various degrees. Typically, the official explanation for precarity is the never-ending narration of the financial crisis. Yet, as Ṣtefan Voicu argues, precarity in Romanian art networks should not be justified by the financial crisis because “precarity is a position within hierarchical power relations of neoliberal politics, in a given situation, rather than a collateral effect of the ‘free market.’”30 In this vein, Prayer Book displays various litanies that invoke the curator, the open-call for art

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projects, the biennale of contemporary art, the owner of the art gallery, the sponsor (“mecena”) and so on. As in other art pieces, Prayer Book employs a vernacular religious artefact as a strategy of a multisided critique ranging from resistance to institutionalized religion and its hegemony to issues of overlapping injustices (economic, social and epistemic). Ciprian Mureṣan employs a critical re-contextualization of religious symbols and rituals in his recent work too. In a video from 2011 (Untitled/ Monks), the artist asked a group of young people to wear a Catholic monk’s attire and to copy (imitate) works of art created by Mondrian, Malevich and Duchamp as well as art theoretical texts from exhibitions catalogues. The artist employs an image related to institutionalized religion (the monk) to critically comment on a set of issues related to the economy of art images in the contemporary art world. At the same time, he considers the “post-Communist era in which artists easily enter the economic system of the art market in today’s globalized world and proposes an ironic comment on the diffusion of images in this internet age.” (Kadist.org) (Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1  Criprian Mureşan, Monks (Video Still, 2011). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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Monks also critically alludes to the precarious condition of the post-­ communist artist who escaped the less-free art market of communism only to enter the globalized art market of today’s art world, where no one cares about them. Revealing in this regard is also a stencil, which circulated on the walls of the city of Iaṣi. The stencil displays a Jesus-looking artist who begs seated on the side of the road. The artist with Jesus’ face holds a glass jar for coins and looks distressed and kind of dizzy too. The most significant part of the stencil is the written message Vreau și eu să fiu artist (I want to be an artist too). The stencil is a critical commentary on the precarious condition of the artists in contemporary Romania (Fig. 9.2). The critical reaction of several artists materialized in visual productions difficult to overlook. One instance of this radical artistic rendering of the hegemonic regime of the official institutionalized religion is revealed in the controversial painting (150 × 140 cm) of Adrian Preda depicting the huge Cathedral of National Redemption against a pink background. What strikes the viewer the most is the presence of a malformed red devil carrying a trident who enters the controversial building. The choice of pink for the background is not politically inadvertent either. In the contemporary aesthetics of protest, the choice of pink reverberates the need for change and critical hope for the disenfranchised. The current politicization of pink in gender-fluidity movements and anti-war protests gained momentum and became a symbol of global resistance to injustice and political violence. Initially associated with femininity, pink exceeded the confines of gender specificity and has started to be featured as a symbol of resistance within a variety of movements and art-related media, ranging from the carnivalesque performances of the Pussy Riot wearing pink balaclavas31 and the Monument to the Soviet Army from Sofia (Bulgaria) painted in pink32 to the pink tanks of David Cerny in the Czech Republic.33 Adrian Preda’s Cathedral of National Salvation addresses a new critical dimension to the long list of pink’s political connotations. In this vein, the pink of protest replaces the blue sky that would naturally be perceived as a photographic background of the gigantic building. The art magazine Scena 9 reveals that Adrian Preda’s painting was censored by the director of the Revolution Museum (Traian Orban) in Timișoara. The exhibition MAD(e) in Romania (2018) was supposed to display the recent artworks that tackle the topic of social movements and protests in Romania. On this occasion, the director of the museum just replaced Adrian Preda’s

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Fig. 9.2  Unknown Author, Vreau și eu să fiu artist/I want to be an artist too. (Photograph by the author)

supposedly “offensive” cathedral with an “inoffensive” representation of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Timișoara surrounded by believers who were lighting candles and kneeling. Although the background of the artwork is also pink, a different artistic rendering of the Orthodox Cathedral of National Salvation is displayed by Dumitru Gorzo who created a visual installation (The Cathedral of the Nation Made of Bacon, 2006) that depicts a tractor with a trailer (the trailer is actually represented as a cathedral made of bacon pieces). The

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critical irony is instantiated in this piece of art through the employment of bacon as an epitome of excess (or gluttony) of the National Orthodox Church. As in other art pieces, the employment of bacon in a defamiliarised context draws attention to the concerns about public money and donations to the national church. Likewise, Mind Fk employs manufactured dolls and puppets made of iron and paper that resemble the statues displayed in public spaces. One particular puppet was installed ad-hoc in front of the Orthodox Cathedral in Cluj-Napoca in 2014. The statue-­ looking figurine exhibited a kneeling man who prays in front of a money suitcase. The daily newspaper Adevarul (February 3, 2014) shows a photograph from the unauthorized, ephemeral art event, in which an Orthodox priest—among other passers-by—approaches the installation with curiosity and hesitancy. Other artistic actions concern the Orthodox Church’s involvement in anti-human rights campaigns and manipulations of historical memory about the communist past. In this framework, the filmmaker Alexandru Solomon performed an artistic protest in front of the Bucharest Orthodox Cathedral (on 26 October 2017). The artist protested against the visit of the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (a notorious supporter of Vladimir Putin), who was invited by the Romanian Orthodox officialdom to officiate a religious ceremony in Bucharest. Alexandru Solomon came to the advertised religious event prepared with a penknife and a golden necklace made of the portraits of the Russian political-religious leaders (Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow) as well as their Romanian counterparts (Patriarch Daniel and Liviu Dragnea). The self-manufactured necklace visually recalls the Orthodox ecclesiastic heraldry but displays “icons” of political ideology instead of the Orthodox pectoral chest cross. Alexandru Solomon declared that he found Patriarch Kirill’s visit cynical and unsettling, especially because his participation in the liturgy ceremony was promoted as “a tribute to the victims of communism … while both [Romanian and Russian] religious institutions collaborated with the repressive regimes.”34 The artist cut his left palm with the penknife and when the blood came out of the three cuts he threw Romanian RON and Russian roubles on the ground for people to pick them up. This performance reminds us of Marina Abramovic’s performance from the 1970s (entitled Thomas Lips) when she cut a five-pointed star into her stomach. While Marina Abramovic’s performance alludes to religious rituals of atonement as a purifying elucidation of the body, Alexandru Solomon’s palm cutting

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recalls the violence of the perpetrated injustice and history’s mystification in the name of institutionalized religion. The significance of this symbolic gesture is disclosed by the artist himself when he told the policeman—who came to re-establish public safety— that he had made “a gift of money and blood for all the victims of Romanian and Russian communism.”35 The police officer asked the artist to lower his arms because he was standing in a Christ-like posture.36 The artistic-political performance was difficult to pigeonhole, and the policemen took Alexandru Solomon to the Alex Obregia Psychiatric Hospital. His “abnormal” behaviour was diagnosed with “adaptive disorder”: “Like during the communist regime, political dissidence has been medicalized (phenomenon known as medicalization of dissent or ‘sluggish schizophrenia’).” The artist’s performance in front of the Bucharest Orthodox Cathedral can be understood as political and theological aesthetics inherent in the radical Christian tradition of the holly fools whose feigned madness was regarded as “a powerful cultural device for speaking truth to the power.”37 While the artistic portrayals of the “holy fool” might be familiar to Russian audiences—from the Soviet and Russian cinema of Sergei Eisenstein, Pavel Lungin and Andrei Tarkovsky as well as from the hagiographic writings—the Romanian public cannot easily decipher Christ-­ posing performances combined with odd paraphilia and self-inflicting pain. The subversive visual discourse put forth by Alexandru Solomon is not necessarily and strictly speaking a holy fool’s performance, yet it can be interpreted as a contemporary translation of the holy fool which exceeds the boundaries of “its original Christian hagiographic model into other … stylized variants of the figure, lacking some paradigmatic features.”38 However, Romanian authorities “responded to his performance with ‘psychiatric’ rather than ‘cultural’ means, not solely to downplay its significance but also because Romania is not used to one sacrificing their comfort in order to fight power. To do that, after all, you would have to be mad.”39 For most of human history, what is called “psychiatry” or “mental disability” has been understood as “madness”: The medicalization and politicization of madness remains an instrument of oppression. By demedicalizing mental illness, we can extend the analysis of it to situational, political, cultural and economic aspects of its production. The temporary confinement of Alexandru Solomon in a mental institution for his radical artistic performance triggers imperative questions about madness as a form of subtle resistance to authority whose political dimension is less explored in the academic approaches on the issue. The political

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invocation of “madness” and “psychiatric care” has nevertheless a certain type of resistance potential by instantiating a critical response to an over-­ politicized society. What kind of politic(s) are at work in this relationship and who is the “real mad” and how is he/she produced and reproduced as “mad”? Alexandru Solomon’s political art is understood as “madness” because this form of cultural production is not seen as art in the first place: “From ‘threatening’ to ‘suicidal,’ Solomon went through a mechanism of sanitary sentencing operated by those engaging with his proposed performance from a psychiatric paradigm. This act—the interaction between art and power—became a performance in its own right. Kirill and the protest against him were the background for an art that not only opposed state-­ sponsored religious tycoons but went against entire the idea that art requires ‘approval.’”40

9.4   Resistance Through Art to Consumerist Religion and Neoliberal Theology After the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, the “priests of prosperity” more-or-less successfully implemented neoliberal reforms in the region that dramatically transformed the post-communist world.41 During the harsh years of transitioning, Romanian society was situated at the junction of drastic neoliberal reforms and an overwhelming revival of religious practices. Political theorists described the sacralization of the market as a “kind of faith,” “secular religion” and “idolatry of money.”42 As Mavelli contends, “The outcomes of the neoliberal ‘sacralization’ of the market has been the emergence of so-called ‘post-truth politics.’ The latter can be conceptualized as a neoliberal ‘truth market’ of news production, circulation, and consumption that is governed simultaneously by logics of commodification and belief.”43 Thus, the birth of consumer culture and neoliberalism reshaped our understandings of religion. On the one hand, “All of the world’s major religions are at least superficially devoted to themes that do not fit well with neoliberalism—e.g., cooperation, community, reciprocity, love. As a major influence on thought, religion could thus be deemed, and in fact has been deemed, a threat to the neoliberal order.”44 On the other hand, both the understanding and practice of “religion” have changed over time, and sometimes they might be instrumentalized for consumerist purposes, as in the case of the commercialization

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of various Christian saints’ days or pleasantly packaged vacations and fivestar pilgrimages to various religious locations that have become heritage sites. 9.4.1   Consumerist Religion and Neoliberal Theology Beside five-star pilgrimages to various graveyards and the massive commercialization of religious souvenirs, a relatively recent religious practice established in post-communist Romania consists of the blessing of consumer goods. Some Orthodox priests agree to perform a religious ceremony that bears a resemblance to the ritual of the sanctification of the Byzantine icons (as to confer them more religious validity). The Orthodox clergy officiates blessing rituals where all kinds of consumer goods, ranging from cars and motorbikes to apartments and electronics, are “sanctified” within a religious ceremony. The list of blessible items can be extended to public institutions, football pitches, water tanks, canteens, shopping malls, boats, vineyards, fire trucks, swimming pools and electronics. The newly opened Romanian Kitsch Museum in Bucharest (2017) dedicates a section to religious kitsch. In the museum’s conception, “When religion stops being spiritual and becomes materialistic, it turns into kitsch.” The religious kitsch section displays artefacts of religious inspiration dedicated to public consumption, and photographs reveal the opulence of the national church’s religion, whose clergy drives luxury cars. Another item displayed is a screenshot from a news agency (News 24) positing that ten Orthodox priests have been excommunicated for blessing sex shops and brothels. There is no proof, however, that this information published by the news agency was actually accurate. Although in the Eastern Christian Orthodox tradition there is nothing disreputable in blessing material things—for example, blessing water on the day of the Epiphany—the new religious practice of extending the plethora of material things to consumer goods strikes one as unorthodox. After a brief examination of Romanian media, one can identify a considerable number of newspapers that address the diligence of some priests in performing blessing ceremonies for various types of personally owned vehicles, as well as for the newly purchased trash truck “consecrated” on 7 January 2020 in the village of Lumina within the presence of the mayor (daily news from Realitatea.net, 8 January 2020). For the argument put forth in what follows, it is less significant as to whether the priests who perform this ritual charge money or not (although more often than not this service is not pro bono). The Orthodox Christian blessing services of

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material things had, in the past, a connotation associated with “objects set aside for a distinct purpose.” The reference to holy material things appears often in the Old Testament and less often in the New Testament. However, only through the blessing ritual can earthly things become holy (e.g. the sanctified water of the Epiphany on 7 January). In order to acquire the status of holiness, these material things have to be used for a special purpose that is in line with God’s love. In this way, man-made objects and natural kinds of material (like water) “are brought under divine sanction, and protection is made possible by Orthodox teachings that consider ‘salvation made by Christ [as] enable[ing] material things to act as sacraments of communion with God.’”45 In a similar vein, the material culture of Orthodoxy and its orthopraxy (canonical ingrained correct practice) emphasizes that “objects become blessed through their ritual use.”46 Peculiarly, some new religious practices (e.g. blessing vehicles and other consumer goods) are slowly entering the official platform of the Orthodox rituals endorsed by the Romanian Orthodox Church. This official validation of the new religious praxis is even advanced in the new edition of the 2013 Molitfelnic (Euchologion) published by the Romanian Patriarchate with the approval of the Holy Synod and the blessing of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel, the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church.47 The liturgical handbook comprises all the liturgical texts needed by the priests for the regulation and the correct practices of the sacraments. Among the traditional prayers, the 2013 edition of the Molitfelnic comprises a newly crafted prayer for the benediction of cars and other vehicles. Opinion polls (undertaken by the Romanian Institute of Evaluation and Strategy in 2013) reveal that 55% of Romanians expressed their wish to have their vehicles blessed by a priest. This practice has already become a tradition since “vehicles and other transportation devices [carts, ships, boats] were blessed long before the introduction of a special prayer for them. The prayer, which was then used was the same as for the blessing of a house, the text being adapted by the priest for the occasion.”48 The growing urge to have personally owned vehicles blessed by a clergy member proliferated after the fall of the former regime. Before 1989, the communist authorities failed to supply enough cars to Romanian citizens who asked for a certain lifestyle and “consumer rights.”49 During the late communist period, the growth in consumer aspirations was obstructed by official state retail policies. After the fall and the years of deprivation, many Romanians migrated to Western Europe as a workforce and started to send money back home, thereby contributing to the growth of resources.

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As studies on Romanian migration show, “One of the first purchases made by the Romanian emigrants is a personal vehicle. Resource growth can be associated with the purchase of a car.”50 The birth of neoliberalism and consumer culture in post-communist Romania remodelled the renderings of religion and religious practices to expectable ends, accommodating “consumer goods” and a “consumer culture” as part and parcel of the canonical orthopraxy. In a cynical sense, personally owned vehicles and other consumer goods became consecrated through their ritual use. One of the very few analyses of the relationship between neoliberalism and Orthodox theology in post-communist Romania is Alexandru Racu’s book enticingly and polemically entitled The Anti-social Apostolate. Theology and Neoliberalism in Post-communist Romania.51 The study consists of an exploratory analysis of various discourses uttered by mainstream Romanian intellectuals and theologians after 1989 that backed up cultural and religious arguments for the legitimation of neoliberalism. According to Racu, the right-wing intellectuals of post-communist Romania self-­ labelled as “Christian Orthodox,” and from this standpoint, they have launched a campaign of support for the implementation of neoliberal reforms in the country. However, the study does not claim that the invoked “theological arguments” are in line with the canonical precepts of Orthodox Christianity (orthopraxy) but rather envisages these arguments as a sort of heretical deviation in rapport with Orthodox theology, which through its Patristic tradition has emphasized the principles of parsimony, modesty and social care (help for the poor). While Western European political-cultural spheres are not unacquainted with studies that illuminate the relationship between politics, economy and theology—for example, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben and Max Weber—Alexandru Racu’s book approaches a convoluted topic that is hardly ever addressed in contemporary Romanian political theology.52 One of the sub-arguments advanced by Racu is that before the socio-economic order of modern capitalism, “wealth” was not seen as a virtue but as a sin repudiated by the political theologies of the moment. The novelty of Racu’s approach rests in addressing the theology of neoliberalism through the exploratory discursive analysis of post-1989 statements displayed by both clergy (Radu Preda and Ioan Ică) and conservative intellectuals (like Horia-Roman Patapievici, Mihail Neamt ̣u, and Theodor Baconschi). The amalgamation of libertarianism and pseudo-Orthodox doctrines in the public discourses of the above-mentioned public figures had a long-term influence on a certain perception of the post-1989

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changes that put forth an uncertain reconciliation between the spiritual and capital. Contemporary Romanian artists also reacted to this state of affairs by employing political art’s strategies to disclose the pervasive mechanism through which the neoliberal order monopolizes daily life and consciousness, as well as “public religion” to consumerist ends. 9.4.2  Politically Concerned Art Facing Consumerist Religion In what follows, we will engage in an exploratory analysis of the most momentous artistic productions that disclose the internal mechanisms and modus operandi of consumerist religion. Exercising Failure (2013) is a video installation—produced by Dragoṣ Alexandrescu—that merges religion with politics in a political-lyrical way. The video starts with a triptych-­ like close-up of three books that are newsworthy for humanity: The Holy Bible (Christianity), The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels (Marxism) and Capitalism and the Historians by F.A.  Hayek (Neoliberalism). A hardly visible hand rips out page by page of each of the three books. A paper cutter (post-industrial) machine takes care of the ripped pages, knitting them into threads (Fig. 9.3).

Fig. 9.3  Dragoş Alexandrescu, Exercising Failure 1 (Video Still, 2013). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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The whole visual narrative is set in a dystopian setting where an angelic blond little girl engages in the knitting activity of contemporary society’s failure. The three important books of humanity are then knitted together in a human-all-to-human manner by the means of a quotidian hobby (knitting) that acquires a craftivist aura in Dragoṣ Alexandrescu’s piece. The craftivist dimension is also illuminated by the politicality of knitting with scraps of “holy” books. Craftivism emerged as a reaction to the repression of women’s rights, the neoliberal hegemony, and other social troubles. The term craftivism was coined in order to unite two separated spheres: activism and crafts. For the artists and other cultural producers associated with this movement, the hobby-like activities of sewing or knitting in a public space is an activist practice meant to reveal that we have to produce our own goods and try to avoid consumption.53 Yet, this desideratum goes against contemporary economic liberalism. Are there any ways then to reconcile religion, capitalist economy and Marxist ideology in a dystopic imagistic? (Fig. 9.4). While Exercising Failure addresses the miscarriage of contemporary society at large, Action at the Mall AFI Palace Cotroceni in Bucharest (2010) reveals the Romanians “proto-nationalism” with Christian Orthodox accents.54 The Presidential Candidate collective (Florin Fluieraṣ and Ion Dumitrescu) managed to infiltrate a grandiose spectacle organized in one of the biggest shopping malls in the former Eastern bloc. In

Fig. 9.4  Dragoş Alexandrescu, Exercising Failure 2 (Video Still, 2013). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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coalescing the critique of local productions of neoliberalism and institutionalized religion, Florin Fluieraṣ and Ion Dumitrescu performed an artistic action of hijacking existing events in the public sphere, such as the celebration of December 1st (the Romanian National Day) at the AFI shopping mall in Bucharest. The celebration of the Romanian National Day coincided with the pompous opening of the shopping mall. The artists posit on their blog that they managed to get permission from the PR to enter the spectacle organized for the national day by lying about how they were going to perform a “modern dance.”55 They recall that before their performance, “On stage, were little dancers (at most 12) from the National Opera Experimental Studio. After us acrobats and Holograf (a famous Romanian rock band) were due to follow, and last but not least in the end of the day there was a raffle with prizes for everyone.”56 The artists are part of a critical art movement, Post-Spectacle, that tackles hegemonic nationalism by unmasking its subterranean “ideological ramifications in the Orthodox Church and European discourse. To introduce the stage for the artists’ tactics, Fluieraș dressed up as a priest who celebrated the mall as a place for achieving a spiritual transformation. He mimicked the priests’ glorification of consumerism and drew connections between the national day and the nationalistic project of building a huge orthodox cathedral in the heart of Bucharest.”57 Their performance took place on a stage that faced a huge, newly inaugurated ice rink. The shopping mall is also notorious for its odd interior design where tacky artificial waterfalls and cave-like walls entertain the shopping mood. The artist collective started their performance by addressing the frenetic skating crowd with the words “Hello! We live spectacularly here! How great, let’s rejoice … keep turning, keep turning.” After this intro at the microphone, “Father” Florin Fluieraṣ stepped on the stage chanting a fragment from orthodox mass that is typically held for the consecration of a new church. His preach emphasized the shopping mall as the “place of our souls” as well as the “cathedral of Romanian spirituality” and even that Jesus would return on earth in exactly that place because “the contemporary soul is there.”58 The critique of consumerism discloses that “practically everybody is dancing now to the rhythms of a totalitarian disco. And the dance is definitely not over.”59 Through their ad-hoc performance, the artist collective unmasked the national and global shift towards a consumerist religion. Their artistic-political intervention was interrupted by the organizers of the spectacle after more than 25 minutes, when they realized what was actually happening on the stage.

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My exploratory analysis of The Presidential Candidate’s performance and artistic-political tactics is guided by François Gauthier’s sociology of religion, which states that neoliberalism and consumerism “have shaped religion” to an extent that religion is no longer what it used to be.60 In this vein, “The last half-century has not been a shift from religion to no religion—what we commonly refer to as ‘secularization’—as it is a shift from one type of religion to another… It is fascinating that scholars of religion have all but ignored the obvious: the incredible rise of economics as a dominant and structuring social force in the beginning of the 1980s.”61 The managerial culture of capitalism also incorporates religion to an unprecedented extent. It would be enough to mention the relevant example of the commercialization of Saint Parascheva day in the North-Eastern Romanian city Iași, which brings about a yearly religious pilgrimage. People queue for hours, sometimes under heavy rain, to touch the relics of Saint Parascheva or the tabernacle at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Iași. The largest Orthodox pilgrimage in Romania takes place every year on October 14. In addition to the religious pilgrimage, the authorities organized food and religious art fairs as well as entertainment activities for the Romanian and international pilgrims (e.g. sport, music and dance). In addition, tourism companies organized vacation packages that included full day tours to Iași for those interested to pray in front of Parascheva’s tabernacle. All these religious-commercial initiatives have become familiar for the Romanian Christian Orthodox believer, and it has changed the face of Orthodoxy. This transformation of religion, as François Gauthier aptly demonstrates, follows the global neoliberal and consumerist trend. The Orthodox commercialization of the Saint Parascheva’s day resembles the emergence of other capitalism-driven religious events, such as the “extension of the halal market (including sharia-friendly packaged vacations and five-star Mecca pilgrimages), the emergence of fashion or integral veil wearing, as well as the rise of a new globalization-friendly, capitalism-drenched Muslim pride, are only some of the phenomena which have transformed the face of Islam.”62 Furthermore, quantitative research—employing statistical data from the National Institute of Statistics on hotel occupancy during the pilgrimage time—also demonstrates that the pilgrimage in Iași is beneficial for the local economy, and “everyone benefits from the celebration of Saint Parascheva.”63 In addition, the study suggests that, “Compared with other religious sites, Saint Parascheva pilgrimage could be a point of attraction for foreign tourist, and it should be implemented a plan of development

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to make known this religious destination not only in Europe, but at a global level.”64 Thus, The Presidential Candidate’s performance at the shopping mall AFI Palace Cotroceni in Bucharest foremost addresses this set of concerns, illuminating the discursive mechanisms through which Orthodox religion gets commercialized, along with the increasing spectacularization of commerce and nationalist feelings. Addressing the crowd of consumers at the shopping mall on the national day with the formula, “Hello! We live spectacularly here! How great, let’s rejoice … keep turning, keep turning,” the artist collective signals the inescapability of this political economy. In the same critical-political register, in the art piece entitled Playing Blessed (2009), Dan Acostioaei displays a media player supposedly literally blessed by an Orthodox priest. The installation also consists of a framed document that looks like an official certificate emitted by the Romanian Orthodox Church’s clergy that attests to the act of blessing. Seen from a distance, the certificate looks like a fiscal receipt alluding to a controversial relationship between believers-customers and the Romanian Orthodox Church as a supplier of “holy” services. Playing Blessed is a critical reaction to the new religious practice of blessing consumer goods that is not uncommon in contemporary Romania. It suggests that the precincts between worshipers and customers of religious services are permeable and predicable. Another piece of contemporary political art (Incorrigible Believers, 2009) by Ciprian Mureşan consists of eight black pews (recalling both the pews from classrooms and churches) and an altar piece. The altar and the pews are visually and conceptually connected with easily recognizable religious artefacts. The artist employs these religiously material culture items in an unfamiliar installation, generating a defamiliarizing effect by displaying a copy of Franz Kafka’s novel The Castle that substitutes the familiar Bible on the top of the altar. Incorrigible Believers invites multiple readings. Firstly, it signposts people, urging them to have faith in something (even in Kafka’s unfinished novel). Secondly, Kafka’s unfinished novel replaces the Holy Book of Christianity because people do not live according to ideological voids. Thus, the vacuum left by one specific ideology has to be expeditiously filled with another ideology, even when the new one is neo-­ liberalism and its “brave new consumerism.” The clue behind this installation is that every ideology is both unavoidable and replaceable. As the artist states, “I actually made those black benches the size of small children. The idea was to parallel the play places created for children in

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shopping malls. But here, a viewer comes into gallery to see the exhibition, and these small benches are there for his or her child to play on—or rather, to pray on! It is a self-reflexive, perverse work. Who is the incorrigible believer?”65 Incorrigible Believers reveals the expediency and effectiveness of religious beliefs. At the same time, it alludes to the pitfalls of the new-fangled consumerist religion. The idea of refabricating the playgrounds for children from shopping malls is comingled with a critical inquiry of why we are “incorrigible believers” at our adult stage and struggle for the same promises from a capitalist economy (Fig. 9.5).66 In a similar vein, another art piece entitled Refrigerator (2009), displayed in New York within the exhibition The Generational: Younger than Jesus (New Museum, 2009), consists of a familiar household good (a banal refrigerator). Mureșan takes this familiar object, associated with our daily

Fig. 9.5  Ciprian Mureşan, Incorrigible Believers (2009). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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routine, and displays it as a vertical sarcophagus coloured in black paint. The coffin-looking refrigerator reminds the viewer of the imminence of death through the spray-painted stencil of a big cross on its door. As in other political art pieces previously analysed in this chapter, Mureșan’s Refrigerator employs the Brechtian defamiliarizing strategies to reveal the double burden of the transition to capitalism: a lack of food (for some people) and the epitome of the seven capital sins, namely death by what occupies the belly in excess (Gluttony). Roman Tolici produced a series of paintings entitled The Gospel According to Santa Claus (2006). In this series of hyper-realist paintings, the white, fluffy, plush rabbit of our childhood impersonates Jesus and the symbol of sacrifice. Valentina Iancu elaborates on the main meaning of The Gospel According to Santa Claus: “The white rabbit can be related to the imaginary pagan of Menebuch’s personifications, it is the leitmotiv of the series. The artist intervenes in the sacred image, replacing Jesus with the White Rabbit (Menebuch)… The presence of the myth which traces the roots of Christianity back to the pagan cults: the sacrifice of Menebuch is considered the pagan equivalent of the Crucifixion (Gilbert Durand).”67 The White Rabbit is represented with bloody stains on his fur, tormented on the cross in a Christ-like pose. All the New Testament scenes, from the nativity to the crucifixion, are represented through the semantic transfer from Jesus to a plush toy. Apart from transgressing the “recognizable sacred” and the Christian ethics,68 Roman Tolici’s series also meditate on the consumerist spectacularization of the well-known Christmas and Easter Markets and of the desacralisation of the religious practices in the era of neoliberalism. Several art media outlets emphasized that The Gospel According to Santa Claus revisits the Christian imaginary, both Orthodox and Catholic, by interchanging the main character with a symbol of consumerist society (the Bunny). In this process, Roman Tolici’s White Bunny is no longer a toy but has become a character that reiterates an initiatory path, raised to universal values in contemporary society.69 Gallerist and curator Dan Popescu also supports the view that “regarding the new exhibition, having a title similar to the documentaries on Discovery, The Gospel According to Santa Claus, I find myself more in a predicament. Roman proposes a series of works in which the iconic moments of the history of the New Testament are reinterpreted but the main characters are: the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.”70

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9.5   The Strength of Religious Rhetoric in Art Production All the above instances of artistic production deploy religious symbols, tropes and representations in order to adjust them to political-critical ends. This diversity of post-communist artistic practices, as well as the heterogeneity of media, messages and concepts put forth, reveals a pervasive continuity of the artistic quest for religious/spiritual considerations applied to political, social and economic concerns. The politically concerned Romanian artists and their work that have been scrutinized in this chapter demonstrate that there is a critical strength in recent cultural productions that discloses the economic, social and epistemic injustices concealed or overlooked by official religious channels. Their art criticizes the marketization of religion and religious rituals (the obliteration of the boundaries between worshipers and customers of religious services), the lack of social involvement by the Romanian Orthodox Church, the consumerist spectacularization and desacralization of the religious celebrations of Christmas and Easter and the rebirth of nationalism with Christian Orthodox inflections. The religious imagery displayed in the contemporary artists’ political art provides an entrance point to a rejuvenated understanding of the Christian symbols ingrained in popular culture and art history, which go far beyond the acceptance of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Although not yet disentangled, the extent to which the religious imagery employed in contemporary critical-political art relates to the traditional understandings of the Christian visual symbols; conservative religious media has been initiating a virulent attack (culture war) against art and artists who use religiously-inspired representations in contemporary unorthodox aesthetics. At the end of the day, it is not the religious imagery itself critiqued by the artists introduced above but the participation of this iconology in a crisis of organized religion that failed to socially engage with issues in order to help the deprived but did not go astray in fuelling the radical right entrepreneurs’ kit of religiously loaded visual rhetoric and the neoliberal theology. In other words, the employment of religious imagery to subvert “religion-­ as-usual” reveals the renewed political-ethical possibilities of familiar iconography. In this vein, the artists who use religious idioms claim to speak on behalf of divine justice, smuggling this visual discourse “outside the precincts of the church into the broader realm of culture and politics.”71 All the religious imagery featured by contemporary artists

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approaches Christian material culture, saints, monks and the figures of Christ as well as the mother of God as “ideological operators.”72 The strength of religious rhetoric should not be underestimated, and every instantiation of a religious trope in an unfamiliar and “unorthodox” context might account for a certain “metaphysics of belief.”73 Instead of precipitated conclusions pertaining to how contemporary art invests religious imagery with secular infusions to political-critical ends, I follow Olga Solovieva’s take on Dostoevsky’s repudiation of institutionalized religion and rather assume that contemporary Romanian artists featured in this chapter replaced the traditional religious symbolism “with an ethically differentiated public consciousness [that] can be heard in Harvey Cox’s vision of the ‘secular city’ with its civil ethics of internalized Judeo-­ Christian values.”74 The artistic production analysed in this chapter highlights the incongruence between Orthodox Christianity (with its focus on love, compassion and community) and the neoliberal order and its theology of prosperity. This is not unexpected since “Church Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great were dealing with these everyday social tasks and calling for an ascetic ethic. They argued that wealth is a gift from God. They also insisted, however, that when wealth creates inequality—a cleavage between the rich and the poor—it must be denounced as unjust.”75 In disclosing all the overlapping injustices that organized religion turns a blind eye upon, contemporary artists rely on the rhetorical vigour and democratic dissent of religious imagery that populates the cultural sphere well beyond the precincts of the church.

Notes 1. Adrian Marino, Viatạ Unui Om Singur sau Despre Sensul Autobiografiei Ideologice [A Lonely Man’s Life or About the Meaning of Ideological Autobiography] (Iaṣi: Polirom, 2010), 384 (Marino 2010). 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Simona Sav, “Religion and Politics: A Summary of Perspectives,” in Religion and Politics in the 21st Century: Global and Local Reflections, eds. Natalia Vlas and Vasile Boari (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 5 (Sav 2013). 6. Duncan Light and Craig Young, “Urban Space, Political Identity and the Unwanted Legacies of State Socialism: Bucharest’s Problematic Centru Civic in the Post-Socialist Era,” in From Socialist to Post-Socialist Cities,

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eds. Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen (New York: Routledge, 2015), 29–50 (Light and Young 2015). 7. Sav, “Religion and Politics.” 8. Ana Maria Luca, “Heavy Price Tag Overshadows Romanian Cathedral’s Ceremonial Opening,” Balkan Insight, 23 November 2018. https://balkaninsight.com/. Available at: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/11/23/ heavy-price-tag-overshadows-romanian-cathedral-s-ceremonial-opening-11-22-2018/ (14 March 2020) (Luca 2018). 9. See “Remembering the historic consecration ceremony of the National Cathedral in Bucharest,” in Carousel Front Page, Patriarchate of Romania,” Orthodox Times, 26 November 2019. https://orthodoxtimes.com/. Available at: https://orthodoxtimes.com/remembering-the-historic-consecration-ceremony-of-the-national-cathedral-in-bucharest/ (22 January 2020) (Orthodox Times 2019). 10. See Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, “Religion and Politics in Romania: From Public Affairs to Church-State Relations,” Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective 6(2) (2012): 97 (Stan and Turcescu 2012). 11. Idem, 107. 12. Idem, 97–110. See also Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, “The Devil’s Confessors: Priests, Communists, Spies and Informers,” East European Politics and Societies, 19(4) (2005): 655–685 (Stan and Turcescu 2005). 13. Sorin Bocancea, “The Political and Ideological Repositioning of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Post-Communism,” in Religion and Politics in the 21st Century: Global and Local Reflections, ed. Natalia Vlas and Vasile Boari (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 274–308 (Bocancea 2013). 14. For a detailed overview of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s potential ability to provide social services to those in need see Dan Sandu, “Social Assistance: The Philanthropic Vocation of the Church,” in European Societies in Transition: Social Development and Social Work, ed. Dan Sandu (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010), 422 (Sandu 2010). 15. Remus Gabriel Anghel, Romanians in Western Europe: Migration, Status of Dilemmas, and Transnational Connections (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 4 (Anghel 2013). 16. Ibid. 17. Eugen Tomiuc, “Romania: Poverty Compounds Population Drop (Part 4),” Radio Free Europe, 19 October 2001. https://www.rferl.org/. Available at: https://www.rferl.org/a/1097762.html (22 January 2020). 18. Ibid.

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19. Dumitru Sandu, Cosmin Radu, Monica Constantinescu, and Oana Ciobanu, “A Country Report on Romanian Migration Abroad: Stocks and Flows After 1989,” A Study for the Multicultural Centre Prague, November 2004. Prague: Multicultural Centre Prague. https://migrationonline.cz/. Available at: https://aa.ecn.cz/img_upload/f76c21488a048c95bc0a5f12deece153/Romanian_Migration_Abroad.pdf (14 March 2020) (Sandu et al. 2004). 20. Some studies argue that, to the contrary, the Romanian Orthodox theologians have inaugurated the ecumenical dialogue between East and West since 1948. For this perspective see Mihai Săsăujan, “Romanian Orthodox Theologians as Pioneers of the Ecumenical Dialogue between East and West: The Relevance and Topicality of Their Position in Uniting Europe,” in Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Thomas Bremer (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 146–165 (Săsăujan 2008). 21. Alexandru Mihăilă, “Facing Anti-Judaism in the Romanian Orthodox and the Liturgical Texts?,” Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 11(2) (2019): 237–252 (Mihăilă 2019). 22. Theresa F.  Latini, The Church and the Crisis of Community: A Practical Theology of Small-Group Ministry (Michigan: William B.  Eerdmands Publishing Company, 2011), 184 (Latini and Theresa 2011). 23. Teodor Ioan-Colda, “Is There a Theological Side to the Romanian Exodus? The Phenomenon of Migration,” In Proceedings of Harvard Square Symposium, eds. Ioan-Gheorghe Rotaru, Denise E.  Simion and Viorica Burcea (Cambridge, MA: The Scientific Press, 2016) (Colda 2017). For a detailed view on contextual or indigenous theology, see also Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2004), 80 (Bevans 2004). 24. Idem, 309. 25. Idem, 311. 26. Alexandra Titu and Magda Cârneci. Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Center for Contemporary Art, 1997), 92 (Titu and Cârneci 1997). 27. Cristian Nae, “Revisiting Iconoclash Postsecularism, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Art from Romania,” IKON Journal of Iconographic Studies 11 (2018): 185 (Nae 2018). 28. Ibid. 29. Diana Ursan, “Critical art from Iași: between artistic hopes and anxieties,” Revista-Arta, 5 April 2016. https://revistaarta.ro/en/. Available at: https://revistaarta.ro/en/critical-art-from-iasi-between-artistic-hopesand-anxieties/ (14 March 2020) (Ursan 2016).

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30. Ṣtefan Voicu, “Contemporary Art Workers: Precarity and Alternatives in Romania,” Radical Anthropology 1(2013): 39 (Voicu 2013). 31. Greg Martin, Understanding Social Movements (London: Routledge, 2015) (Martin 2015). 32. The Monument dedicated to the Red Army was painted pink by an anonymous artist. In addition to paint, the monument’s meaning was also resignified by graffiti written in pink reading “Bulgaria Apologizes,” in both the Bulgarian and Czech languages, referring to a belated political apology on behalf of the Bulgarian armed forces’ intervention in Prague’s Spring (1968). For a detailed account see also Kiril Avramov, “When the ‘Red Army’ goes Pink: Remodelling Bulgarian Public Monuments in Times of Civic Unrest,” European Consortium for Political Research Conference Proceedings (Glasgow: ECPR, 2014). https://ecpr.eu/. Available at: https://ecpr.eu/Events/PaperDetails.aspx?PaperID=16627&Even tID=14 (14 March 2020) (Avramov 2014). 33. See Jenelle Davis, “Marking Memory: Ambiguity and Amnesia in the Monument to Soviet Tank Crews in Prague,” Public Art Dialogue, 6(1) (2016): 35–57 (Davis 2016). 34. Laura Ștefănuț and Ioana Păun, “Protest on my mind: why did one performance land a Romanian artist in psychiatric hospital?,” The Calvert Journal 22, 13 December 2017. https://www.calvertjournal.com/. https:// www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/9362/protest-on-my-mindpolitical-performance-romania. (19 February 2020) (Ștefănuț and Păun 2017). 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Alina Birzache, “Casting Fire onto the Earth: The Holy Fool in Russian Cinema,” in Religion in Contemporary European Cinema: The Postsecular Constellation, eds. Costica Bradatan and Camil Ungureanu (New York: Routledge, 2014), 29 (Birzache 2014). 38. Idem, 27. 39. Laura Ștefănuț and Ioana Păun, “Protest on my mind.” 40. Ibid. 41. Juliet Johnson, Priests of Prosperity: How Central Bankers Transformed the Postcommunist World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016) (Johnson 2016). 42. Luca Mavelli, “Neoliberalism as Religion: Sacralization of the Market and Post-truth Politics,” International Political Sociology 14(1) (2020): 57–76 (Mavelli 2020). 43. Ibid.

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44. Jason Hackworth, “Religious Neoliberalism,” in The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism, eds. Damien Cahill, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings, and David Primrose (London: Sage Publications, 2018), 323 (Hackworth 2018). 45. Alexandra Antohin, “Holy Water, Healing and the Sacredness of Knowledge,” in The Material Culture of Failure, eds. Timothy Carroll, David Jeevendrampillai, Aaron Parkhurst, and Julie Shackelford (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 79 (Antohin 2017). 46. Timothy Carroll, “The Ethics of Orthodoxy as the Aesthetics of the Local Church,” World Art, 7(2) (2017): 363 (Carroll 2017). 47. Molitfelnic [Euchologion] (Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic ṣi de Misiune Ortodoxă, 2013), 707–714 (Molitfelnic 2013). 48. Ibid. 49. See Luminiṭa Gătejel, “Appealing for a Car: Consumption Policies and Entitlement in the USSR, the GDR, and Romania, 1950s–1980s,” Slavic Review 75(1) (2016): 122–145 (Gătejel 2016). 50. Marius Lupșa Matichescu, Alexandru Dragan and Daniel Lucheș, “Channels to West: Exploring the Migration Routes between Romania and France,” Sustainability 9(10) (2017): 9 (Matichescu et al. 2017). 51. Alexandru Racu, Apostolatul antisocial. Teologie și neoliberalism în România postcomunistă [The Anti-social Apostoloate. Theology and Neoliberalism in Post-Communist Romania], (Cluj-Napoca: Act Publishing House, 2017) (Racu 2017). 52. For Western studies on this issue see Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Soveranity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) (Schmitt 2006); Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013) (Agamben 2013); Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015) (Agamben 2015), and Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2005) (Weber 2005). 53. For more on craftivism see Betsy Greer, Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014) (Greer 2014). 54. Xandra Popescu, “Heroism Rises from an Open Call,” Revista-Arta, 21 May 2015. https://revistaarta.ro/en/. Available at: https://revistaarta. ro/en/heroism-rises-from-an-open-call/ (14 March 2020). (Popescu 2015). 55. “The Candidate”, https://postspectacle.blogspot.com/2010/12/presidential-candidate-at-mall-during.html (25 January 2020). 56. Ibid.

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57. Bogdan Popa, “How to Interrupt Happy Nationalism: From Butler Performativity to Radical Cosmopolitanism,” in Re-Grounding Cosmopolitanism: Towards a Post-Foundational Cosmopolitanism, eds. Tamara Cărăuș and Elena Paris (New York: Routledge, 2016), 250 (Popa 2016). 58. “The Candidate”, mins. 4:46–4:58 (25 January 2020). 59. Ibid. 60. François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen, “Introduction: the marketization of religion,” Religion 48(3) (2018): 361–366 (Gauthier and Martikainen 2018). 61. François Gauthier, “Religion is not what it used to be. Consumerism, neoliberalism, and the global reshaping of religion,” 6 October 2017. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2017/10/religion-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-consumerismneoliberalism-and-the-global-reshaping-of-religion/. (27 January 2020) (Gauthier 2017). 62. Ibid. 63. Alexandra Georgiana Parasca and Ionel Muntele, “The impact of Saint Parascheva Pilgrimage on Tourism in Iaṣi County,” Ecoforum 4 (2015): 179 (Parasca and Muntele 2015). 64. Ibid. 65. Emily Nathan, “Strange Days: An Interview with Ciprian Mureşan,” Artnet. http://www.artnet.com/. Available at: http://www.artnet.com/ magazineus/features/nathan/ciprian-muresan-7-20-11.asp. (10 March 2020) (Nathan n.d.). 66. I tackle this issue from a slightly different angle in my forthcoming chapter “Cultural Memory and Political Resistance through Religious/Spiritual Art in (Post) Communist Romania” in Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture, eds Maria Sabina-Draga Alexandru and Dragoṣ Manea (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming) (Asavei forthcoming). 67. Valentina Iancu, “Transgression – A Discourse of Actuality in Romanian Contemporary Art?” Samizdat Online, 26 November 2014. http://www. samizdatonline.ro/. Available at: http://www.samizdatonline.ro/transgression-in-contemporary-art/ (21 February 2020) (Iancu 2014). 68. Ibid. 69. Several art magazines and newspapers wrote chronicles dedicated to Roman Tolici’s series of paintings. See for example Dana Altman, “Roman Tolici: Evanghelia După Moș Crăciun [Roman Tolici: The Gospel According to Santa Claus],” Observator Cultural 363: 15 March 2007 (Altman 2007). 70. Valentina Iancu, “Transgression.”

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71. Olga Solovieva, Christ‘s Subversive Body. Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2018), 5 (Solovieva 2018). 72. Idem, 6. 73. Idem, 253. 74. Ibid. 75. Peter Pavlovic, Beyond Prosperity? European Economic Governance as a Dialogue between Theology, Economics and Politics (Geneva: Globethics, 2017), 90 (Pavlovic 2017).

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Mihăilă, Alexandru. 2019. Facing Anti-Judaism in the Romanian Orthodox and the Liturgical Texts. Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 11 (2): 237–252. Molitfelnic [Euchologion]. 2013. Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic ṣi de Misiune Ortodoxă. Nae, Cristian. 2018. Revisiting Iconoclash Postsecularism, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Art from Romania. IKON Journal of Iconographic Studies 11: 185–196. Nathan, Emily. n.d. Strange Days: An Interview with Ciprian Muresan. Artnet. http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/nathan/ciprian-muresan-7-20-11_detail.asp?picnum=1. Accessed 20 September 2020. Orthodox Times. 2019. Remembering the historic consecration ceremony of the National Cathedral in Bucharest. 26 November 2019. https://orthodoxtimes. com/remembering-the-historic-consecration-ceremony-of-the-national-cathedral-in-bucharest/. Accessed 20 Sepetember 2020. Parasca, Alexandra Georgiana, and Ionel Muntele. 2015. The Impact of Saint Parascheva Pilgrimage on Tourism in Iași County. Ecoforum 4: 176–179. Pavlovic, Peter. 2017. Beyond Prosperity? European Economic Governance as a Dialogue between Theology, Economics and Politics. Geneva: Globethics. Popa, Bogdan. 2016. How to Interrupt Happy Nationalism: From Butler Performativity to Radical Cosmopolitanism. In Re-Grounding Cosmopolitanism: Towards a Post-Foundational Cosmopolitanism, ed. Tamara Cărăuș and Elena Paris. New York: Routledge. Popescu, Xandra. 2015. Heroism Rises from an Open Call. Revista-Arta, 21 May. https://revistaarta.ro/en/. https://revistaarta.ro/en/heroism-rises-from-anopen-call/. Accessed 14 March 2020. Racu, Alexandru. 2017. Apostolatul antisocial. Teologie și neoliberalism în România postcomunistă [The Anti-social Apostolate. Theology and Neoliberalism in Post-­ Communist Romania]. Cluj-Napoca: Act Publishing House. Sandu, Dan. 2010. Social Assistance: The Philanthropic Vocation of the Church. In European Societies in Transition: Social Development and Social Work, ed. Dan Sandu. Berlin: LIT Verlag. Sandu, Dumitru, Cosmin Radu, Monica Constantinescu, and Oana Ciobanu. 2004. A Country Report on Romanian Migration Abroad: Stocks and Flows after 1989. A Study for the Multicultural Centre Prague, November. Prague: Multicultural Centre Prague. https://migrationonline.cz/. https://aa.ecn. cz/img_upload/f76c21488a048c95bc0a5f12deece153/Romanian_ Migration_Abroad.pdf. Accessed 14 March 2020. Săsăujan, Mihai. 2008. Romanian Orthodox Theologians as Pioneers of the Ecumenical Dialogue between East and West: The Relevance and Topicality of Their Position in Uniting Europe. In Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Thomas Bremer. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Sav, Simona. 2013. Religion and Politics: A Summary of Perspectives. In Religion and Politics in the 21st Century: Global and Local Reflections, ed. Natalia Vlas and Vasile Boari. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Schmitt, Carl. 2006. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Solovieva, Olga V. 2018. Christ‘s Subversive Body. Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Stan, Lavinia, and Lucian Turcescu. 2005. The Devil’s Confessors: Priests, Communists, Spies and Informers. East European Politics and Societies 19 (4): 655–685. ———. 2012. Religion and Politics in Romania: From Public Affairs to Church-­ State Relations. Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective 6 (2): 97–110. Ștefănuț, Laura, and Ioana Păun. 2017. Protest on my mind: why did one performance land a Romanian artist in psychiatric hospital? The Calvert Journal 22, 13 December 2017. https://www.calvertjournal.com/. https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/9362/protest-on-my-mind-political-performance-romania. (19 February 2020). Titu, Alexandra, and Magda Cârneci. 1997. Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960. Bucharest: Soros Center for Contemporary Art. Ursan, Diana. 2016. Critical art from Iași: between artistic hopes and anxieties. Revista-Arta, 5 April. https://revistaarta.ro/en/. https://revistaarta.ro/en/ critical-art-from-iasi-between-artistic-hopes-and-anxieties/. Accessed 14 March 2020. Voicu, Ștefan. 2013. Contemporary Art Workers: Precarity and Alternatives in Romania. Radical Anthropology 1: 38–45. Weber, Max. 2005. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 10

Looking Forward: Looking Back Through the Three Lenses of Art, Politics and Religion

How and to what ends the relationships between politics, religion and artistic production evolved in (post-)communist Romania? In light of these questions, this book focused first on the late communist hegemony’s ambivalent political approach to religion-inspired artistic production. A survey of the relationship between political art and Eastern Christianity after the fall of the regime in 1989 is of utmost importance for concluding this book. In addition to the contemporary art pieces that critique the religious affair, we can speak of a peculiar type of “Christian political art” in post-communist Romania. This is mostly transparent in the approaches that focus on the relationship between political art and religion in post-­ communist Romania, but from the perspective of the secular-ecclesiastical synthesis expressed through artistic formats. Despite the omnipresence of contemporary profoundly secularized societies, which is also reverberated in the modus operandi of contemporary arts and culture, religion and religious emotions do not cease to inform the ways we grasp politics, culture and well-being. While ignorance about what religion is or does might make everything of religious inspiration appear awkward, backward, irrational or even dangerous, there are still under-researched phenomena where religion-inspired culture and artistic production foster solidarity, hope and social justice. There are still disagreements regarding what being religious entails, but also a pervasiveness of social sciences that support the secularization of religion. Seen through these lenses, religion and religious phenomena can be © The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_10

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understood through the “secular” world views of cultural psychology, identity politics, political economy and even political theology. Thus, we can also illuminate the links between politics and religion through the mediation of artistic production.

10.1   Communists’ Ambivalence Concerning Religion Inspired Art After revisiting the late Romanian national communism’s cultural canon through the three lenses of arts, politics and religion, this study has put forth that there was ambivalence regarding what the communist tutelage deemed as politically “acceptable” in the production of religion-inspired art. Departing from the position held by many studies dedicated to Romanian communism, which emphasize Nicolae Ceaușescu’s total war on religion and the reluctance of the regime to accept religious/spiritual cultural production in the cultural public sphere, this book has demonstrated that there also existed a grey zone, where what I call “Godless” religious art was accepted, tolerated or even encouraged. Communist cultural-political hegemony allowed certain religious and spiritual tropes to materialize in artistic productions as long as they backed the national communist ideology and the treasured idea of “Romanianess” and “national culture,” concomitantly obliterating those cultural productions of religious inspiration which did not advance Romanian specificity and heritage. In some cases, the idea of “national specificity” was intrinsically linked with the concept of Byzantine cultural heritage. As bewildering as it may seem at first glance, communist nationalists needed Orthodox Christianity’s visual rhetoric to advance an argument about the endurance and prominence of the Romanian culture, as well as about the ancestral existence and continuity of the Romanian people. From a different theoretical angle, the portrayal and self-portrayal of Romanian communism as the enforcer of secularization and the opposite to anything pertaining to the sacred or religious feelings, has recently been confronted by Zsuzsánna Magdó, who claims that “the sacred provides a key analytic rubric for understanding the lineaments of socialist modernity.”1 In this understanding, the socialist sacred is defined as “an overarching structure that emerged at the intersection of normative patterns of discourse, morality, space, and ritual culture.”2 Magdó advances an innovative argument—substantiated with evidence from new archival material

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and oral histories—arguing that the regime advanced a socialist spiritual culture by “offering its citizens a so-called ‘Romanian spirituality’ as a path for self-fulfilment and transcendence.”3 Along the same lines, Sabina Păuţa Pieslak persuasively argues that the state argued for the longevity of the Romanian nation and this enterprise may suggest that Romanian culture was rooted in Christianity.4 The cultural policy in late communist Romania did not back a religious-aesthetic utopia, as in late socialist Bulgaria, but selected particular artworks of Byzantine inspiration or at least works of art that formally resembled the Byzantine iconology and its ethos. Thus, “Godless” religion-inspired art of Romanian national communism was sometimes rendered a necessary cultural form of production in support of the protochronist ethos of the moment, discounting the fact that the ancient symbols, tropes and materials this cultural style employed were actually of Christian heritage through and through. This book demonstrates that the return to the “ancient roots” of the Byzantine tradition as a source for the artists and cultural producers was not at odds with the cultural policies of the moment. By the same token, the double-standard approach of the Christian religion-­ inspired art of the communist regime reveals a convoluted and multidirectional relationship between politics and religion during the late communist era. This comes as no surprise because “before 1945, the Constitution recognized the Orthodox Church as the national church.”5 Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu argue that unlike the Western conception of separation between church and state, Romania displays the opposite scenario.6 Correspondingly, Romanian Orthodox theologians justified the church’s collaboration with the communist regime “by resorting to the Byzantine concept of symphonia, cooperation between church and state in the fulfilment of their goals, each supporting the other and none being subordinated to the other. The concept binds the state and the church so closely together that the latter becomes a state church, while other religions enjoy considerably fewer rights.”7 Sorin Bocancea advances an argument according to which the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) felt pressure to “fill the empty seat” left by the communist power “that glorified the Romanian nation and gave it a spiritual allure by proclaiming the ROC as the depositary of Romanian spirituality and salvation enabling it to gain an unprecedented position and repeatedly claim the status of national church.”8 Returning to how communism endorsed cultural production of Byzantine descent on political grounds, this volume has shown that the

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cultural policy in late communist Romania retained selectively certain thematic clusters of Byzantine descent, because they could contribute to the valorization of the ancient Romanian heritage that was part and parcel of the process of fostering national communist culture. Thus, the communist status quo relied on Orthodox Christianity and its Byzantine legacy, to substantiate an argument about the prolonged existence and prominence of the Romanian culture in the “whole world” (sic!). This protochronist ideology could not fully dismantle the religious Byzantine heritage of the Romanian state, and this reveals a neglected complexity in academic studies dedicated to the culture of Romanian national communism. Communism is reputed for having expelled religion and religious practices, symbols and visual tropes from the public sphere, but little is known about its own subliminal and political spiritual meanderings. These considerations open new horizons that have to be illuminated, or as Sabina Păuţa Pieslak posits, the communist state could not ideologically support the idea of the Romanian nation’s longevity unless it admitted—even partly—that Romanian culture was imbedded in Christianity.9 The controversial thin line between art of religious inspiration in service of the regime’s ideology and subversive (while technically innovative) religious art that resisted its power needs further investigation, as this line was not only “thin” but also sometimes porous. The Neo-Byzantine artists associated with the Prolog group (established during late communism) continued their cultural production of religion-inspired art after the collapse of the communist regime in 1990. Many of them honoured the return to simple, “primordial life”, beauty (of nature) and spirituality, against a background of economic precariousness and overlapping injustices, but deflected from advancing ethno-religious pitfalls. Marian and Victoria Zidaru—who actually were not strictly associated with the Prolog yet produced religion-inspired art in the same period (the 1980s)—chose a different route by joining a religious revitalisation movement (The ‘New Jerusalem Movement’ from Pucioasa) that is not endorsed by the Romanian Orthodox Church which labels the movement as heretic. This shows that religion-inspired art and faith-grounded resistance manifested in post-communist Romania both within and outside of the official Christian Orthodoxy and its “national church.” However, there are critical voices that contest the political or resistance potential of the artistic production created by the Neo-Byzantine artists during national communism. For instance, Călin Dan argues that the artists associated with the Prolog group turned their back on the dire daily reality of

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communism and “retired” to Tescani (in Bacău county in the Eastern region of Romania). They were painting humble subjects for themselves only and did not display them at the Dalles Exhibition Hall in Bucharest.10 Călin Dan adds that “It was a kind of opposition but Ceaușescu’s regime— like any dictatorship—was not afraid of symbolic resistance, but of reality.”11 The artist mentions the regime’s distrust in the genre of photography and points out that the regime did not allow artists to exhibit photography “not because they portrayed Ceausescu unpleasantly, but because they showed the real world.”12 Like in other former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the official doctrine when it came to the production of culture and images required photographers to display and reflect upon the “socialist reality” in its revolutionary development and to refrain from neutral observations of everyday life. A neutral (mechanical) snapshot of everyday reality was regarded as a politically negligent attitude and even as a potential threat to the regime’s ideology. As the curator and art historian Olga Ştefan points out, “Film and photography were perceived by the authorities as a potential threat, a way for the common person to denigrate socialism by recording and showing the dismal reality that actually existed.”13 However, “realism” can be seen as a proclivity of certain kinds of photographs—artistic and vernacular—rather than inextricably associated with the medium of photography as such (the so-called photography indexical quality). Ion Grigorescu’s photographs (including pictorialist photography) accurately illustrate this point. Pictorialism was a photographic movement born at the end of the nineteenth century “in reaction to the growing standardization and commercialism of photography in general.”14 This art movement aimed to go beyond “high art” photography “by including interventions by hand on the surface of the print.”15 Communist cultural ideologues did not homologate this type of photography either. It would not be accurate to call Ion Grigorescu’s photographs stricto sensu “pictorialist.” His artistic production is very diverse, ranging from mixtures of the traditional medium of oil paint with photographs inserted onto the canvas, to various appropriations of others’ photographs and their re-conceptualization. However, the combination of painting and photography was not well received in official art exhibitions because, as Ion Grigorescu mentioned during a conversation we had in his studio in Bucharest in May 2006, “It was a general conception according to which the medium of painting is very different from the medium of photography. In painting the artist has

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a role, has a mission because she or he transforms the reality in a revolutionary way. The reality is not an ‘average’ one because art has a high scope in intervening in reality. In this interpretation reality becomes ‘more real’.”16 He added that, in painting, the artist strives to find his own terrain and modes of expression whereas in the case of photography, “The author is pulverized or, in other words, the photography explodes the author.” Thus, in a socialist interpretation, photography which is blended with painting is “ideologically dangerous” because a document (the photograph) is distorted by the intervention of a hand of the artist.”17 This might be one of the reasons why Călin Dan does not acknowledge any potential for resistance in the Prolog group’s paintings. For him, painting an apple blossom (as the Neo-Byzantine artists did programmatically) and the beauties of the landscape was less ideologically dangerous than a photograph taken on the subway, “even when it was a cross somewhere in the background of the apple blossom scene and not in the background of the subway photograph.”18 This observation takes us back to the initial claim of this volume that the late communist cultural tutelage displayed an ambivalent position vis-á-vis what was rendered “acceptable” and what was deemed “strictly forbidden” in religion-inspired artistic productions.

10.2   Christian Political Art? After the fall of communism, religion-inspired artistic production started to conquer the cultural public sphere. This emergence and proliferation of religion-inspired culture has been interpreted as a revenge on the former regime or as recuperation effect meant to compensate for the harsh years of communism when churches, monasteries and religious locations were bulldozed. Several group exhibitions displayed numerous religion-inspired art pieces both in Romania and abroad (e.g. Filocalia, Artexpo [Bucharest, 1991]; Catacomba exhibitions [Bucharest, 1992, 1996]; and Sacred in Art, Parliament Palace [Bucharest, 1999]). Apart from Neo-Byzantine (Neo-Orthodox) artistic renderings of the sacred, Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s cultural production of religious and spiritual inspiration touches upon world religions and prophetic activism’s potentialities, irrespective of the Orthodox official canons. The artist couple associated their artistic production with an unofficial religious revitalization movement (The New Jerusalem) and revived ancestral (proto-Orthodox) spiritual tradition. Some of the Neo-Orthodox artists associated with Prolog milieu rejected this expression of missionary art embraced by the Zidarus on the

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grounds that this form of artistic production can be rendered “sectarian” because it does not follow the footpath of official Orthodoxy.19 Correspondingly, although Marian and Victoria Zidaru’s impressive artistic creations became well-known worldwide, the national group exhibitions dedicated to religion-inspired art refused to show their work as part of the Neo-Orthodox’s body of creations. This did not prevent the artists organizing their own exhibitions and to gain momentum on both national and international contemporary art scenes. Their corpus of spiritual art brings to the forefront and revives old religious traditions and narratives that emphasize the mission of angels, Biblical herd and other mythological helpers, as well as the tropes of the “lost paradise,” and the political benefits of living an unpretentious and just life. Although the Zidarus’ work abounds in references to world religions and spiritual lifestyle, it is not void of a potential for resistance as in their artistic creation the quest for spiritual salvation of the soul overlaps with the quest for social, political and economic justice. As elaborated earlier (Chap. 6), Marian and Victoria Zidaru are both appreciated and criticized in post-communist Romania for their missionary art, prophetic activism and political imagination. In this vein, their religious-inspired art is either interpreted as a form of bellicose nationalism or as an unorthodox instance of religious art that endorses popular Christian Orthodoxy and not the official, institutionalized one. To complicate things further, the Zidarus’ religious devotion and affirmed monarchism distanced them from the nationalist official institutions of culture as well after the fall of communism. This state of affairs even worsened when King Michael of Romania experienced a convoluted relationship with the new hegemony of the country which was afraid that the monarch would reclaim his throne. As demonstrated earlier in this volume, the Zidarus’ art is difficult to evaluate by art critics and theorists mostly because their cultural production reveals an exceptional format of Christian political art. Usually, artistic production of Christian inspiration reveals the mystical dimension of faith while not addressing or putting forth political-­critical imperatives. Yet, since the early Christians started to decorate catacombs with frescoes, religion inspired art proliferated and touched upon “a wide range of other subjects: history, politics, theology, philosophy, to name but a few. Christian art began within the restricted confines of minority communities, initially persecuted for their beliefs.”20 Although for 2000  years Christian artistic imagery proliferated and has become “part of the fabric

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of western culture”, and has extended its influence to mediums in the film industry, advertising, mass produced design and so on, “this world is an increasingly secular one. It is termed by some—even by some Christians—a post-Christian world, which is not to say that Christianity no longer has any relevance, but that Christianity is no longer so vastly dominant in religious, intellectual, and cultural terms as it once was.”21 Despite the fact that Christian imagery populated the Western cultural sphere for two millennia, contemporary art is nevertheless the most disengaged domain from traditional Christian artistic imagery. More often than not, Christian artistic imagery is recycled by contemporary art in ironic or transgressive notes that are put to different ends than the customary ones. Correspondingly, the major themes of Christian art (e.g. the Virgin Mary, the resurrection of Christ, the body of Christ) are tackled by contemporary artists on different grounds and for different ends, displaying divergent meanings of the conventional representations of Christian imagery.

10.3   Secular-Ecclesiastical Syntheses in the Romanian Contemporary Art Post-communist Romania’s cultural public sphere is no exception when it comes to this tendency of employing Christian imagery in political-critical art. To take only one example, within the Orthodox is Better (Oradea, 2014) exhibition, “a room was transformed into a rustic cave made entirely out of polyurethane foam. The trashy look was barely recognizable in the darkness and was just suggested when images of saints were projected randomly on the walls. These symbols of early Christianity appeared transparent, ethereal and fugitive. They were there to remind us of the origins of religion in a simple but powerful installation.”22 Sculptor Maria Sicoie conceived of and built a wall of polyurethane foam (of approximately 6 m × 3 m), onto which Daniel Răduţu projected with a video projector an iconographic collage familiar to the Orthodox believers, displaying saints and angels and Jesus Christ. The installation appears at first glance a kitschy artefact that derides the popular culture industry of religious inspiration, as well as the commercialization of “religious souvenirs.” Yet, the very same installation can also be understood as a truly Christian form of political art that reveals “No more institutions, no more discourses... just plain faith. After all, isn’t that the only reason we turn to those kinds of practices, to try to understand our brief stay on this earth?”23 The

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catacomb made of polyurethane foam is an art installation that displays all the attributes of Orthodox kitsch popular culture, yet triggering an intense spiritual emotion that is not inferior to the emotional import awakened in front of traditional Christian art. At first glance, the viewer is tempted to perform an ambivalent reading of this installation—disregarding the exquisite dialogical nature of the contents put forth by the art piece. Thus, as curator of the exhibition Olimpia Bera posits, “If dialogue is understood in the Romanian society as a forced juxtaposition of two self-­ sufficient entities, Orthodox Is Better suggests a series of secular-ecclesiastical syntheses by producing objects, spaces and architectural projections which forcedly combine the views that are not looking for appeasement in a debate which cannot exist from a conceptual point of view.”24 The exhibition places religious artefacts and symbols (candles, glass icons, charity boxes, angels, holy books) into secular contexts of multimedia installations and architectural devices. Once placed into a secular, profane space, these artefacts are reinterpreted and designed to serve apparently different ends than their original usage within Eastern Orthodox culture. Some of them mock the institutionalized religion and disclose the commercialization of faith (e.g. the installation The Factory of Angels). Yet, the Orthodox is Better exhibition is not directed exclusively against the Romanian Orthodox Church nor against contemporary believers, but rather the concept-objects and installations displayed “generate ideational syntheses by intending to acquire impossible or useless functions, of which the sole purpose is to reconcile industrial and relativist modernity with dogma and canon.”25 This reconciliation is nevertheless political through and through. If we return to the polyurethane foam installation that recalls a cave on the walls of which Biblical images are projected, the same reconciliatory politics rests at the basis of the arguably ambivalent readings: the cave of ignorance and projected illusions or copies of the perfect forms (Plato) versus the catacomb of plain faith that saves us all, irrespective of which Church to which we belong or do not belong. Apart from several artists associated with the Prolog semi-movement (Sorin Dumitrescu, Horia Bernea, Paul Gherasim, and Marin Gherasim among others), the national church (the Romanian Orthodox Church) has little interchange with the contemporary artists in regard to entering a dialogue in order to bridge the gap between the cultural-political (the secular) and the ecclesiastical. There are, however, several exceptions that cannot be discounted. One of these exceptions is the Orthodox Church Sfântul Ilie [St. Elijah] from Cluj-Napoca which from 2009 hosts a gallery

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of contemporary art called ‘Horeb’. The gallery organizes temporary exhibitions of contemporary art that tackle the religious through a secular angle. Another example is the Greek-Catholic Church, Buna Vestire [Holy Annunciation] in the Western city of Oradea. The church accommodated a contemporary art exhibition in 2013 curated by Alina Staicu.26 The cult artefacts which hung on the church’s walls remained in their initial settings and had only been accompanied by photo-galleries, paintings, graphics and installations created by contemporary artists. The exhibition also displayed a fashion shoot that is unprecedented in Romanian ecclesiastical spaces. Designer Astrid Ţârlea explained that the fashion models (epitomizing undisputable secularism) integrate into the ecclesiastical space “either infiltrating discreetly, as if they always belonged to this scene, or they are outlined as an intruder seeking comfort and meaning in this clash between the secular and the divine. The result is a shooting in which the character either levitates, seeking the elevation, or becomes one with the earthly ones, being confused with the works of art.”27 At the church’s entrance door, the artists exhibited a large scale painting displaying the Inferno and the Paradise. Although the exhibition reserved the space for the entrance door to this Biblical representation—in light of the Byzantine tradition—the visions of both Hell and Paradise are purely subjective. Unlike the vast majority of contemporary art exhibitions where the visiting public is formed by urban cultural elites and art connoisseurs, the exhibition displayed within the Buna Vestire Church was dedicated to the villagers and church goers.

10.4   Contemporary Political Art against Religion in Post-Communist Romania? Unlike artistic production that deploys Christian artistic imagery to challenge contemporary ills like consumerism, exploitation, racism, and overlapping injustices, and unlike art that aims to reconcile secular and ecclesiastical worldviews, there is another stream of politically concern art in post-communist Romania whose main target is institutionalized religion and religious ideology. Contemporary artists tackle religious topics subversively, critiquing the lack of social involvement of the Romanian Orthodox Church (e.g. Mindbomb, 2002); the commercialization of religious practice and artefacts (Dan Acostioaei, Logos, 2004 Playing Blessed, 2009 and Blowing in the Wind, 2015); the enormous amount of money

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spent by the official church to build The Cathedral of National Salvation in a country where the medical system is collapsing (Adrian Preda, Cathedral of National Redemption, Dumitru Gorzo, The Cathedral of the Nation Made of Bacon, 2006) and the hegemony of the church leaders (Ciprian Mureşan, The end of the Five Year Plan, 2004). The political relevance of these art pieces rests in their deployment of religious imagery and rhetoric to subvert the hegemony of the religious institutions in post-­ communist Romania. A particular instance of politically concerned art that tackles religious related issues is the artistic production that focuses on religion and consumerist culture (Figs. 10.1 and 10.2). The critical stance towards consumerism embraced by the Romanian Orthodox Church is displayed in several art pieces that tackle mass produced (usually in China) religious artefacts (icons, plastic crucifixes, amulets, rosaries and the like). Consumerism has conquered religion and religious practices to an unprecedented extent, and the young Romanian artists question the de-sacralization of Christian cult objects. At the same time, they lament the decline of the traditional Eastern Orthodoxy paradigm of icons and cult objects. Alina Staicu posits that, “the monasteries have lots of land that gives work to the nuns, so the Chinese help is welcomed. Voroneţ Blue produced in Shanghai, glowing crucifixes and Saint

Fig. 10.1  Dan Acostioaei, Blowing in the Wind (2015). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

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Fig. 10.2  Dan Acostioaei, Logos (2004). (Source: Courtesy of the artist)

Paraschiva key chains cost just as much as a bowl of rice per kilo, but it brings back millions. The visitor leaves with the souvenir, the nun doesn’t have to chop off the tree from the garden to make the icon, and the cult object reaches the population freely.”28 In the same critical register, Staicu points out that believers do not seem to be bothered by the endless mass produced cult objects, ranging from napkins with the Mother of God to plastic crucifixes, because most of them are unaware of how consumerism converted and reshaped the holy object in a totally new paradigm.29 She assumes that “a sound installation with liturgy and semantron would probably be more blasphemous than a bathroom towel with the Holy Mother on it (and this is no exaggeration, this is for real).”30 In spite of these critical considerations, contemporary aesthetic mysticism proliferates, as well as the believers’ search for devices designed for salvation. At the end of the day, for the believer does not really matter if he enters in the possession of an “authentic” icon painted on wood by a human hand or a mechanically reproduced image. In an era of endless mechanical reproductions, “authenticity” comes to mean different things. Yet, this does not mean that the very understanding of “authenticity” in the realm of culture

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cannot be critically evaluated. Part of this critical evaluation has to do with a specific understanding of authenticity, according to which “authentic” art or traditions imply exclusivity: if one type of art or cultural tradition is deemed authentic, then others must be counterfeit (inauthentic). For many it makes more sense to overcome the symbolic violence inherent in the idea of authenticity and rather consider the ways in which a cultural product acquires an aura of authenticity. In Walter Benjamin’s “decay of the aura” the idea of the multiple copies replaces the idea of the unique, authentic work of art. This means that “authenticity” is not a quality present in the artwork. By the same token, the work of art has no essence (it has no nucleus). In his attempt to deemphasize the concept of “original” (authentic) image by replacing it with multiple copies (mechanical reproduction) Benjamin hopes to increase the “exhibition value” (the accessibility to the masses) of the art object and to annihilate its supposed authority.31 I would like to suggest that even if the advent of technological reproduction jeopardizes the idea of art object’s authenticity, this jeopardy does not count as a radical eradication of the authenticity. Benjamin wanted to prevent the aesthetization of politics and he believed that one way to do this is to wither art’s aura. Benjamin hopes to increase the “exhibition value” of the art object. In other words, he attempts to shift the way in which the work of art is valued and perceived. The work of art should not be valued for its “cult value”. This means that the work of art should not be considered valuable only because few elites or connoisseurs consider it as such. This “cult value” also means that even if the artworks are theoretically exposed to all people in the museum, its destination is to be “aesthetically appreciated” only by few connoisseurs. Benjamin argues that “cult value” should be replaced with the “exhibition value” and this is a progressive social function of art. This replacement by the means of mechanical reproduction makes the art more manageable, more approachable and more visible for the masses. In the era of photographic techniques the question of authenticity of an image needs to be rethought. The “aura” of an image is vanished by the advent of mechanical multiplying. This multiplication deemphasizes the authority of the original. But the “age of images” is different from the “age of art”. Benjamin implicitly accepts this when he defines “aura” with reference to natural objects. The authority of an image in religion or magic practices differs from the authority of an art work in several aspects. Benjamin does not punctually discuss what the “cult value”, “theology of

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art” and “the ritual function of the work of art” mean and why they mean what they mean. From the beginning humankind venerated images, especially religious imagery. The archetype was venerated even in copies (i.e. the icons of deities). This means that the original is instantiated in every single copy. Since the religious man venerates the archetype in its replica, we cannot speak of the authority of an image in terms of uniqueness. The duplication of an original image would extend its power. Benjamin claims exactly the opposite. He thinks that the authority and the power of an original work of art are based exactly on its independent existence as a unique being and his effort is directed towards the ruination of this “aura” of the unique (of the original). He argues that mechanical reproduction (photographs, films) is the only possibility through which the viewer is freed from the tyranny of the “auratic” image. On the other hand, he clearly states that manual reproduction preserves all original’s authenticity being mimetic. The difference between manual reproduction and mechanical reproduction is, in my view, the difference between: likeness and presence. The problem posed by this distinction (manual vs. technical reproduction) leads us to the following argument: since the mechanical reproduction is the only alternative by means of which the aura of a work of art (or an object, image) is bankrupt, then an image made by human hands is still “auratic” (being dependent on the original). This means that the image obtained through mechanical reproduction is still an acheiropoietos image.32 Thus, even the Shanghai mechanically reproduced images of the saints and Christ can be regarded as traces of authenticity. The mechanical reproduced image is an object without author (in the sense of creator), it is made without human hands. The technological reproduction is both part of the scientific tradition and humanities. Benjamin suggests that mechanical reproduction reduces the distance between object and viewer because it can bring the copy of the original into situations inaccessible to the eye.33 Whether this argument sounds convincing or not to those who cherish the presence of cult objects and their culture is far from clear. However, irrespective of the accepted approach, there is an art and politics of how sacred images are distributed and appropriated. This book leaves the exploration open for further considerations on how art, politics and religion can overlap and to what ends.

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Notes 1. Zsuzsánna Magdó, The Socialist Sacred: Atheism, Religion and Mass Culture in Romania, 1948–1989. PhD Thesis in History (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016), 265 (Magdó 2016). 2. Ibidem. 3. Idem, 20. 4. Sabina Păuța Pieslak, “Romania’s Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige,” Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2&3) (2007): 232 (Pieslak 2007). 5. See Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, “Religion and Politics in Romania: From Public Affairs to Church-State Relations,” Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective 6(2) (2012): 98 (Stan and Turcescu 2012). 6. Idem, 99. 7. Ibidem. 8. Sorin Bocancea, “The Political and Ideological Repositioning of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Post-Communism,” in Religion and Politics in the twenty-first Century: Global and Local Reflections, eds. Natalia Vlas and Vasile Boari (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 276 (Bocancea 2013). 9. Pieslak, “Romania’s Madrigal Choir”, 232. 10. Medeea Stan, “Interviu Călin Dan,” [Interview with Călin Dan], Adevărul, 30 November 2019. https://adevarul.ro/. Available at: https://adevarul. ro/cultura/arte/interviu-calin-dan-directorul-muzeului-national-arta-contemporana-In-noaptea-cutremurului-77-ajutat-degajare1_5ddfe66e5163ec427181a942/index.html (10 January 2020) (Stan 2019). 11. Ibidem. 12. Ibidem. 13. Olga Ştefan, “Freedom in the Grey Zone,” Art in America 103(8) (2005): 124 (Ştefan 2005). 14. Gordon Baldwin, Architecture in Photographs (Los Angeles: Paul Getty Museum, 2013), 12 (Baldwin 2013). 15. Ibidem. 16. Personal communication with Ion Grigorescu, 13 May 2006, Bucharest, Romania. 17. Ibidem. 18. Stan, “Interviu Călin Dan.” 19. Sorin Dumitrescu, “Neputinţele tânărului Kessler,” [The Young Kessler’s Inaptitude], România Liberă, 21 January 1995 (Dumitrescu 1995).

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20. Beth Williamson, Christian Art. A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1 (Williamson 2004). 21. Idem, 14. 22. Carlos Carmonamedia, “Highlights from the ‘Orthodox is Better’ Exhibition,” Samizdat Art and Culture Magazine, June 2014: 37 (Carmonamedia 2014). 23. Ibidem. 24. Olimpia Bera and Gabriel Miloia, “Orthodox is Better,” Samizdat Art and Culture Magazine, June 2014: 11 (Bera and Miloia 2014). 25. Idem, 14. 26. The ‘Buna Vestire’ [‘Holy Annunciation’] Church is located in Vadu Crişului village in Oradea County, Romania. 27. Astrid Ţârlea, cited in Oana Maria Zaharia, “Arta şi Modă într-o Biserică din România” [Art and Fashion in a Romanian Church], Vice, 7 February 2013. https://www.vice.com/ro. Available at: https://www.vice.com/ ro/article/nzvq9b/arta-si-moda-intr-o-biserica (4 April 2020) (Zaharia 2013). 28. Alina Staicu, “Icons and Other Wanders from Neverland,” Samizdat Art and Culture Magazine, June 2014: 58 (Staicu 2014). 29. Ibidem. 30. Ibidem. 31. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility,” in Art and its Significance, ed. Stephen David Ross (State university of New York Press, 1994). 32. According to Hans Belting acheiropoietic images are images which are not made by human hands. For example, the Holly Shroud is an acheiropoietic image of Jesus (for more on acheiropoietic images see Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 213. 33. Benjamin “The work of art, “1994.

References Baldwin, Gordon. 2013. Architecture in Photographs. Los Angeles: Paul Getty Museum. Belting, Hans. 1994. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benjamin, Walter. 1994. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility. In Art and Its Significance, ed. Stephen David Ross. New York: State University of New York Press. Bera, Olimpia, and Gabriel Miloia. 2014. Orthodox is Better. Samizdat Art and Culture Magazine (June): 11–17.

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Bocancea, Sorin. 2013. The Political and Ideological Repositioning of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Post-Communism. In Religion and Politics in the 21st Century: Global and Local Reflections, ed. Natalia Vlas and Vasile Boari. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Carmonamedia, Carlos. 2014. Highlights from the ‘Orthodox is Better’ Exhibition. Samizdat Art and Culture Magazine (June): 35–39. Dumitrescu, Sorin. 1995. Neputinţele tânărului Kessler [The Young Kessler’s Inaptitude], România Liberă, 21 January 1995. Magdó, Zsuzsánna. 2016. The Socialist Sacred: Atheism, Religion and Mass Culture in Romania, 1948–1989. PhD Thesis in History. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Păuṭa Pieslak, Sabina. 2007. Romania’s Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige. Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2&3): 215–240. Staicu, Alina. 2014. Icons and Other Wanders from Neverland. Samizdat Art and Culture Magazine (June): 57–59. Stan, Lavina, and Lucian Turcescu. 2012. Religion and Politics in Romania: From Public Affairs to Church-State Relations. Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective 6 (2): 97–110. Ştefan, Olga. 2005. Freedom in the Grey Zone. Art in America 103 (8): 124–134. Williamson, Beth. 2004. Christian Art. A Very Short Introduction. New  York: Oxford University Press.

Index1

A Abstract art, 38, 214 Acostioaei, Dan, 255, 256, 270, 294, 295 Activism, 1, 19, 24, 127, 129, 152, 160, 165, 267 Adorno, Theodor, 2 Aesthetic mysticism, 1, 2, 137–174, 296 Aesthetics, 6, 9, 13, 30n36, 41, 44–47, 50, 67, 101, 102, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 125, 128, 133n65, 139, 143–148, 172, 195, 200, 202, 206n44, 219, 230, 234, 235, 255, 256, 258, 261, 273, 287 Agamben, Giorgio, 137, 265 Alexandrescu, Dragoş, 266, 267 Alternative, 1, 28n16, 51, 80n11, 146, 150, 298 Amateur art, 12 Amateur culture, 24, 138

Anastasia Publishing House, 217, 228, 233 Ancient roots, 70, 287 Antagonistic, 26 Apel, Will, 117, 131n29 Apocalypse, 162, 164 Art and politics, 2, 9, 19–21, 39, 47, 211–237, 298 Artefacts, 1, 11, 12, 14, 21, 41, 42, 44, 48, 65, 96, 97, 145–148, 152, 153, 160, 162, 168, 213, 232, 256, 257, 263, 270, 292–295 Artist collective, 19, 20, 98, 106n39, 118, 213, 218, 268, 270 Art pour l’art, 47 Autochthonous nature, 23, 90, 91, 94 Autonomy, 11, 13, 17, 36, 47, 212

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 M. A. Asavei, Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7

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INDEX

B Babeti, Coriolan, 50, 97 Badiou, Alain, 15 Băndărau, Neculai, 49 Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch, 19 Beauty, 49, 80n11, 91, 128, 133n65, 142, 147, 160, 171, 172, 206n44, 215, 219, 221, 288, 290 Benjamin, Walter, 297, 298 Bernea, Horia, 27n12, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 101, 154, 192, 202, 214, 217, 222–225, 228, 237, 256, 293 Bertalan, Ştefan, 44, 98, 99, 105n25, 218–220 Bevans, Stephen, 276n23 Bitzan, Ion, 40–42 Bizantinology, 22, 64, 69 Block, Tom, 19, 22, 103n1, 127, 161 Body art, 195, 197, 206n44, 234 Body-soul, 194, 197, 202 Body’s potentialities, 191, 195 Bogardo, Florin, 94, 95 Botez, Mihai, 39 Bryzgel, Amy, 43 Bunea, Marcel, 254 Byzantine heritage, 22, 64, 74, 76, 77, 115, 117, 118, 213, 230, 286, 288 music, 23, 69, 70, 73, 74, 76, 111–129 purists, 23, 111, 114, 127 C Cârneci, Magda, 18, 97, 102, 151, 212, 230 Catacomba, 28n12, 149, 150, 217, 218, 226, 234, 290 Catechism, 5

Cathedral of National Redemption, 258, 295 Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 2–4, 6, 9, 16, 22, 24, 25, 36, 38–42, 44, 54n14, 54n16, 64, 65, 68–76, 79, 80n12, 89, 92–94, 97, 100, 102, 111–129, 139, 141, 151, 174, 187, 190, 211, 225, 230, 286, 289 Censorship, 12, 41, 64, 69, 70, 75, 115, 192, 211, 215, 229 Central Historical National Archives of Romania, 7, 19, 64 Christian heritage, 22, 63, 67, 287 Christmas Oratorio, 115 Christological mystery, 103, 125 Chryssavgis, John, 19 Collective body, 186–188, 193 memory, 20, 79, 175n8, 187 Constantinescu, Paul, 115, 117, 118, 122 Consumerism, 162, 167, 218, 268, 269, 279n61, 294–296 Consumerist religion, 249–274 Corporality, 193 Cosmic Christianity, 90, 103, 125 Costina, Sorin, 44–46, 223, 224 Crucifixion, 112, 199, 200, 272 Cultural opposition, 44 resistance, 15, 17, 21, 22, 35–53, 128, 227 Cultural Canon, 38, 39, 41, 67, 286 D Dan, Călin, 148, 150, 218, 230, 231, 288–290 Desexualized bodies, 189–190 Dissent, 22, 47, 89, 274

 INDEX 

Divine, 91, 112, 144, 155, 193, 194, 199, 200, 203, 220, 264, 273, 294 Docile bodies, 188 Dukhovnost, 67, 80n11 Dumitrescu, Sorin, 4–6, 27n12, 44, 45, 51, 101, 149, 150, 154, 200–202, 214, 217–218, 228, 229, 233, 235, 293 Duncombe, Stephen, 15 E Easter Actions, 50 Eastern Europe, 5, 9, 16, 38, 44, 53n4, 70, 128, 156, 256, 262, 289 Ecocritical art, 99 Ecological art, 23, 90, 97–99, 119, 120, 128 Ecologies of faith, 22, 89 of transfiguration, 89–103, 128, 168 Ecopoetic love, 22, 89 Ecumenical, 111, 122, 276n20 Educated body, 188 Eliade, Mircea, 103, 125 “Energetic archetypal stairs”, 119 Environmentalism, 89, 91 ePOCALIPS@, 162–164 Eucharist, 47, 48 F Feminine/masculine, 167, 172, 190–195, 201, 215, 221, 229 Flondor, Constantin, 44, 45, 50, 101, 154, 214, 215, 217–222, 228, 229, 235–237

305

Folk, 6, 12, 24, 44, 48, 68, 70–74, 78, 94, 115–119, 122, 138, 142, 143, 172, 187 Folkloric, 6, 14, 22, 64, 67, 68, 71–73, 94, 95, 104n8, 114, 118–120, 139, 145, 156, 172 Foster, Hal, 9 Fourier, Charles, 146 G Gardens, 18, 98, 101, 102, 126, 170, 214, 224, 296 Gheorghiţă, Nicolae, 70, 74, 117 Gherasim, Marin, 47, 51, 154, 212–214, 228, 293 Gherasim, Paul, 4, 44, 45, 47, 97, 101, 154, 214, 215, 217, 230, 232, 233, 293 Glodeni, 147 Godless religious art, 22, 63–79, 286 Golden Age, 69, 79, 158 Gottlieb, Roger, 89 Green industrialization, 91 nationalism, 91 patriotism, 23, 90, 91, 93, 95–97 Gregorian music, 116 Grieser, Alexandra, 148 Grigorescu, Ion, 3, 7, 13, 27n5, 41, 44, 45, 97, 101, 103, 154, 193–198, 202, 214–216, 225–229, 232, 235, 237, 289 Groys, Boris, 43 H Herminia, 159, 200 Hesychasm, 142 Holiness, 157, 264

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INDEX

Holly Community New Jerusalem from Pucioasa, 147 Holy Spirit, 115, 203 Holy Synod, 116, 144, 145, 175n17, 264 Hortus Deliciarum, 169, 170 I “Iambic energetic pulse,” 119 Iconography, 18, 39, 78, 112, 166, 216, 223, 226, 232, 255, 273 Icons, 1, 7, 26, 64, 65, 67, 68, 73–79, 112, 148, 200–202, 228, 250, 252, 255, 256, 260, 263, 293, 295, 296, 298 Ideology, 9, 15, 16, 22, 38, 63, 64, 68, 71, 75, 77, 150, 189, 194, 220, 224, 233, 235, 250, 251, 260, 267, 270, 286, 288, 289, 294 Illo tempore, 168, 170 Imagination, 2, 42, 48, 94, 112, 123, 124, 142, 157, 173, 235, 291 Incipit, 119 Ioniṭă, Adrian, 49, 50 Iron Curtain, 43, 159 J Johnston, Jay, 148 K Kessler, Erwin, 141, 149, 151, 165, 170, 217, 218, 231 L Lieu de mémoire, 141, 175n8, 213 Liturgical music, 113, 114, 129n11

M Madrigal Choir, 8, 70 Maitreya, Francisc, 155 Marino, Adrian, 218, 251 Mauss, Marcel, 146 Messaggio Terra, 98 Metabizantinirikon, 122–125, 127, 128, 132n48 Meta-Byzantine, 23, 24, 111–129 Militant, 4, 15, 165 Modoc, Emanuel, 99, 100 Molitfelnic, 264 Monodic, 114, 116 Monotheistic, 52 Mureşan, Ciprian, 257, 270–272, 295 Mystical, 25, 75, 117, 119, 120, 122, 142, 143, 157, 162, 164, 165, 175n9, 177n49, 185, 194, 196, 202, 215, 291 N National art, 24, 78, 138 communism, 2, 3, 14, 15, 17, 21–23, 25, 26, 47, 52, 63–79, 89–103, 111, 112, 127, 150, 211, 226, 230, 286–288 culture, 22, 43, 64, 77, 79, 286 specificity, 14, 71–73, 117, 230, 286 Nationalism, 6, 52, 57n60, 70, 73, 115–117, 138, 143, 166, 268, 273, 291 Nature, 11, 35, 68, 89–103, 111, 138, 202, 214, 288 Necropolitics, 185 Negrici, Eugen, 93 Nemescu, Octavian, 23, 111, 118–128, 133n65

 INDEX 

Neo-avant-garde, 9, 11, 17–19, 102, 111, 118–120, 127, 226, 234–237 Neo-Byzantine, 4–6, 14–18, 25, 26, 35, 64, 97, 100, 112–115, 117, 191, 192, 211, 212, 230, 235, 236, 243n80, 249, 250, 288, 290 Neoliberal neoliberalism, 250, 262, 265, 266, 268–270, 272, 279n61 theology, 250, 262–273 Neo-Orthodox, 3–6, 13, 16–19, 22, 23, 25, 27n5, 27n12, 35, 37, 45, 47, 50, 89–91, 99–103, 140, 154, 165, 166, 168, 191, 192, 200, 211, 232–235, 249, 250, 290, 291 Neo-Traditionalism, 26, 211–237 New Constantin Brâncoveanu Trophy, 160 New Jerusalem, 24, 138, 143–155, 162, 175n17, 290 Non-spectacular, 122 Nostalgia, 5, 22, 89, 91, 100, 102, 125, 128, 129, 133n66, 164–167, 170, 174, 196, 198, 214, 219, 221 O OCL–Octav/Cornel/Lucian, 118 Oneiric, 37 Opposition, 5, 12, 15, 18, 36, 97, 118, 128, 233, 289 Orthodoxy Orthodox Christian aesthetics, 2 “Orthodox is Better,” 292, 293 proto-Orthodox Christian, 24, 138 unorthodox, 255, 263, 273, 274, 291 Orthopraxy, 114, 129n10, 152, 264, 265

307

P Panegyrics, 73, 95, 218, 230 Paradise, 5, 17, 21, 23, 25, 89, 91, 93, 102, 139, 159, 165, 167, 168, 170, 174, 196, 214, 294 Paraschiv, Christian, 44, 45, 64, 98, 101, 154, 191, 192, 195, 196, 202, 204n26, 214–216, 228, 229, 232, 233, 237, 243n80 Patriotic, 92, 93, 95, 190 Păuṭa Pieslak, Sabina, 67, 71, 287, 288 Phalanstére, 146, 151 Philokalia, 142 Philosophy of music, 119 Phinalis, 119 Pintilie, Ileana, 50 Pleşu, Andrei, 46, 102, 228, 233 Political theology, 9, 25, 152, 164, 265, 286 Polychronia, 114 Popular culture, 11, 23, 29n29, 51, 90, 199, 273, 292, 293 Prayer, 20, 49, 50, 144, 171, 256, 264 Prislop Monastery, 50 Prolog, 2–4, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27n5, 35, 45, 47, 64, 100–103, 106n39, 153, 154, 191, 192, 200, 211–237, 243n80, 250, 288, 290, 293 Prophetic activism, 3, 19, 22, 24, 89, 100, 103n1, 111, 128, 133n65, 138, 161, 162, 174, 219, 290, 291 Protochronist, 22, 39, 63, 64, 67, 71, 77, 156, 230, 242n76, 287, 288 Purification, 98, 172 R Racu, Alexandru, 265 Radio Free Europe, 253 Rădvan, Alexandru, 199, 200

308 

INDEX

Religion and politics, 4, 255 Religion inspired art, 2, 4, 20, 21, 23, 24, 47–53, 64, 211–237, 286–291 Religious revitalisation movements, 288 Resistance, 1–5, 14–16, 21–23, 25, 26, 27n5, 35–53, 72, 91, 97, 103, 118, 145, 155–166, 174, 185–203, 213, 220, 233, 249–274, 288–291 Revival, 2, 112–114, 120, 162, 214, 262 Rituals, 14, 23, 25, 26, 47, 50, 65, 72, 89, 94, 111, 112, 116, 118, 120, 128, 142, 161, 172, 173, 185, 193, 221, 224, 226, 230, 233, 249, 254, 257, 260, 263–265, 273, 286, 298 România Liberă, 149 Romanian Artists’ Union (UAP), 7, 8, 10, 28n18, 28n20, 64–66, 139, 218, 225 Romanian Kitsch Museum, 263 Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC), 3, 114, 116, 138, 144, 145, 150, 156, 226, 251–254, 256, 264, 270, 273, 275n14, 287, 288, 293–295 Routledge, Paul, 2, 19 S Sacred chant, 70, 74 Saint Mural, 77–79 Saint Virginia’s cult, 146 Scărlătescu, Valentin, 3, 27n6, 101, 154 Sectarian, 145, 149, 150, 158, 159, 174, 178n51, 253, 291 Securitatea, 142, 229, 230 Self-empowering, 193

Socialist exhibitions, 40 neorealism, 38 realism, 38, 54n16, 73, 118 Solomon, Alexandru, 260–262 Solovieva, Olga, 274 Sons of Light, 155 Soul’s anatomy, 196, 197 Spiral, 120, 123 Spiritual awakening, 15, 24, 37, 89, 100, 102, 111, 112, 117–129, 159 ecologies, 89, 111–129, 140, 168 Spirituality, 6, 9, 12, 23, 26, 51, 67, 80n11, 90, 102, 122, 123, 161, 168, 170, 174, 190, 215, 219, 220, 231, 233, 236, 250, 251, 268, 287, 288 Stan, Lavinia, 116, 252, 287 Stăniloaei, Dumitru, 142, 212 Symbolic, 9, 21, 42, 50, 51, 91, 94, 95, 101, 103, 112, 127, 141, 144, 145, 156, 159, 167, 172, 174, 185, 197, 213, 220, 228, 255, 261, 297 T Teandric Morphology, 200–203 Thematic foci, 38, 201 Todorova Zhivkova, Lyudmila, 28n16, 67, 80n11 Tolici, Roman, 272 Traditionalist, 35, 101, 165, 234 Trinity, 119 Turcescu, Lucian, 116, 252, 287 U Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania, 118, 122, 131n32

 INDEX 

V Verdery, Katherine, 81n12 Victim, 51, 141, 157–159, 252, 255, 260, 261 von Bingen, Hildegard, 169, 170 Votive portrait, 73 W Wandering Angel, 161 Wooden language, 75, 92

309

Z Zamolxe, 52 Zidaru, Marian, 5, 19, 24, 44, 47, 48, 56n45, 137–143, 145, 147–154, 156–166, 174, 175n9, 233, 250, 288, 290, 291 Zidaru, Victoria, 5, 24, 137–140, 145, 148–154, 156, 159, 160, 162, 165–173, 175n9, 250, 288, 290, 291