Windows into Heavenly Light: The Iconography of Dr. George Kordis

While we have not covered Byzantine-inspired iconography here a great deal to date, that is not because it is not appreciated. It is rather solely for the reason that our focus here at LAJ has been to attempt to help people in the Latin rite better know and appreciate their own rich liturgical patrimony in the Latin West. But as I say, ti is not for lack of appreciation. The Eastern Roman liturgical patrimony of Byzantium is rich and worthy of your attention as well (and of course, where it comes to architecture particularly, we can find much commonality between East and West). 

Today we are going to step a little outside our usual box then and showcase the work of a contemporary iconographer who recently caught my attention. The reason it caught my attention is because it struck me as a beautiful mixture of tradition and (healthy) creative innovation.  The iconographer in question is Dr. George Kordis who is based out of Athens, and we are featuring today a detail of an icon of the Virgin and Child (Theotokos) that he made for St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts. 

Dr. Kordis' goal is to create a "contemporary school of iconography – educating a way to uphold and express a truly Byzantine approach…  challenging our expectations with the icon — bringing life and on-going continuum to the Byzantine icon tradition within a modern framework." His approach has gained him the accolades of no less than the Patriarch of Constantinople himself.  Dr. Kordis is not only an iconographer in practice, he is also a teaching academic who has both studied and taught the history, theology and practice of the Byzantine iconographic tradition and he has a particular interest -- so I gather at any rate -- in the idea of the representation of light (in fact, he has written at least one dedicated book on this very subject, Color as Light in Byzantine Painting). 

As you will no doubt see here, this particular icon has a very luminescent quality to it -- stunningly so -- and it is precisely this quality, a vibrant, living quality, that drew my attention to his work and inspired our feature today. 

Some further details to better help showcase this quality in his iconography.

This is truly stunning work, worthy of the phrase that is so often attached to icons in Byzantine theology as "windows into heaven." 

Dr. Kordis in his own words:

Painting concerns the surface (epiphaneia) of objects. The epiphaneia, however, is not simply a surface, nor is it a vacuum or an empty space. Rather, in Byzantine art the epiphaneia is the manifestation of the hypostasis [underlying substance/reality] of the depicted object, which is at once both revealed and hidden. Indeed, its existence is revealed while its essence remains hidden. 

The aim of my painting is to create an embrace between the depicted object and the viewer. Each artwork is created in direct reference to the viewer. In this way, the beholder becomes part of the artwork and the artwork part of the beholder... The aim of my art is realized through the traditional principles and ideals of Byzantine painting, and specifically through the Byzantine principle of rhythm. Everything in a picture is energy: line, colour, movement, and so on.  In Byzantine art, these energies are reconciled and exist in a ‘perfect’ way, that is, in a state of dynamic balance. Through rhythm, images become manifestations of a state of love and create a peaceful space-time here on Earth. Rhythm transforms everything into a new reality and manifests a desire for a new world where conflict and hatred are replaced with love and peace. 

If you'd like to see more of Dr. Kordis' work, do visit his website.  I think you'll agree it is quite striking and that he is one the pre-eminent iconographers of our time. 

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