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Since
their debut at the beginning of the 80`s, within
"Workshop 35" in Bucharest, the sculptors Marian
and Victoria Zidaru have developed their art fast,
forcefully, and with a "fatalistic" turn. Even
at that time, their natural force of pathetic
expressionism, which was contorting human forms in stone
or bronze with unusual internal tensions, made them
develop an approach that was different from most artists
belonging to the same generation, even while sharing with
them the same neo-romantic zeitgeist and the same
expressive imagery re-oriented towards the figurative.
Apparently, their subsequent evolution followed an
unexpected, sinuous and "occult" way.
I
know that during the 1980s they got into the habit of
reading esoteric and religious books, as many as it was
possible to get at that time in Romania. Those books
prepared for their discreet withdrawal from public life
where they had already become famous. By the end of the
1980s, the first confusing shock of a revelatory and
"numinous openness" occurred at the monastery of
Ghelari, where the two sculptors carved an imposing
monumental gate in an environment imbued with religious
sentiment. Subsequently, these complex and convulsive
psychic accumulations brought them to discover the special
place at Pucioasa and the small, intensily religious
community living there. In 1990, the Zidaru family built a
small "sui-generis monastery" here, and
organized a "Christian orthodox creation
workshop", becoming their spiritual leaders.
Since
the beginning of the 1990s, Marian Zidaru -closely
followed by Victoria Zidaru- Has uniquely represented an
example of a prophet artist in Romanian culture.
Certainly, prophetism seems to be a definable feature of
creative sensibility, especially of an archaic or
proto-christian type; but during modern times this have
not been obvious at all. Rather prophetism has turned into
an aesthetic visionary trend, which has slowly but
ineluctably led to the profuseness of "personal
mythologies" which modern art has used in practice
for more than a century. Therefore, it seems hazardous or
awkward to speak today about an artistic prophetism with a
spiritual or even a soteriologic feature as in olden
times.
I
think that due to constraining and tormenting social and
historical circumstances which, however extraordinary,
Zidaru dramatically tried to escape from a cultural
environment perceived as being both stagnant and
suffocating: on the one hand the official communist
culture reaching its "ending" phase, on the
other hand the modernist aesthetic paradigm evolving to a
dissolution or a reconfiguration phase with the onset of
postmodernism. Isolated in a world undergoing the process
of "un-modernization" for the sake of an utopian
and artificial modernization, also isolated from
international artistic trends and still being strangely in
harmony with its hidden direction, Zidaru has tried to
avoid this cultural collapse, perceived as
"apocalyptic", through a double return at its
origins. On the one hand, towards the local, native,
cultural and spiritual sources and, on the other hand,
towards the origins of modern art-which too is spiritual,
through its initiators Malevici, Kandinsky, Brancusi, and
Mondrian. In so doing, Zidaru has not differed essentially
from other Romanian artists who during the other half of
the lasr decade and into the present one have been trying
to reach a spiritual interiorization, to attacha religious
connotation to the artistic act, giving birth to the
neo-Byzantine or the neo-orthodox trend.
What
individualizes Zidaru is his radicalism-not only aesthetic
but also existential-, a feature that has pushed him in an
adventure exceeding the boundaries of "reasonable
behavior" and contemporary "cultural
acceptability".
Probably
under the pressure of a sudden and overwhelming
conversion, Zidaru has simultaneously directed himself
towards two extremes: proto-Christian prophetism and
post-modern syncretic sensitivity. Under these
circumstances he has proceeded to the elaboration of an
ambitious program for a new orthodox iconography. The
program puts into play rich imagery and religious parables
coming especially from the Old Testament, Their extremely
plastic formulation combining surprising and creative
vocabularies and techniques pertaining to very diverse
fields, such as modernist abstraction and post-modern
neo-expressionism, conceptualism and folk art, video art
and rural technology, Byzantine hieratism and contemporary
vernacular kitsch. This bold iconographic program is only
a part of an even more ambitious cultural program intended
to create a new artistic paradigm-where it is impossible
to separate the practice of aesthetic act from existential
performance, moral commitment and spiritual devotion.
Being a prophet and an experimenter, an orthodox believer
and an aesthetic pioneer all the same time, Zidaru has
taken his role as a missionary very seriously, using all
the art techniques specific to the end of a two thousand
years Christian era. Foreseeing the probable arrival of an
"improved" new one, an era of real Christian
consciousness in a world which is felt by the artist as
politically savaged and spiritually degraded. In this way,
Zidaru has assumed great risks and has placed himself in a
position where he is socially very exposed. Internally,
Zidaru had to gradually build his "spiritual
personality" and surpass his own inevitable lack of
serious religious culture, within a world that is still
marked by a huge lack of theological education, enormous
religious suspicions and anti-religious prejudicies. If we
analyze his art during the last ten years, we shall
discover hesitations, tensions and temptations; thus, at
the beginning of this new period, the presence of some
recurrent visual motifs (such as the
wyes/breast/wings/multiplied limbs) hints of a certain
religious syncretism which was more indicate of the
pre-Christian cultural alexandrinism than solid and
well-established Christianity.
It
is the presence of such "demonic" visual
elements in his plastic discourse that has made people use
words like "heresy" and "blasphemy"
when speaking about Zidaru`s work, blindly overlooking the
orthodox coherence of the whole- as happened to the
Gnostic and Apocryphal |
Christian works
written during the first three Christian centuries: they
were declared heretic, but now they refresh our historical
perception and our spiritual understanding. I believe that
during the last few years a conceptual and aesthetic
clarification has occurred and it retrospectively proves
that Zidaru`s innovating initiative integrates organically
within the spiritual paradigm of the place he belongs.
Externally the risks were even greater.
After 1989, when
the wish for freedom broke out, the religious artistic
program of the Zidaru couple appeared at the same time
when many other ideological proposals were trying to
replace the totalitarian ideology that has previously
prevailed. That is why Victoria and Marian Zidaru became
seen as troble makers, a reason for fighting and madness
for different professional groups within Romanian society.
To the reporters, they were an almost inexhaustible
"topic" of scandal, huge distortion and
defamation. To artists and art critics, they represented
an insult to their aesthetic opinion and their moral,
political and spiritual lack of commitment.
To the clergy,
they represented an attack against ancient visual dogmas,
especially against the prerogative of the
"institutional" descent of God to earth and the
human souls. To the cultural people at large, they were a
challenge for a self-censorship that was less obvious and
more insidious than political censorship: the
embarrassment or the shame of publicly admitting things
related to sacredness, religiosity, or merely to
spiritualism. And to the publicly committed intellectuals
and politicians, their case was even more complicated. The
neo-traditionalist feature of their visual discourse and
their daily behavior, compromised them before the
"pro-European" party. And their religious
radicalism and declared monarchism estranged them also
from the "nationalist" party, although the
latter had initially been attracted by the same deceptive
appearances. In fact, the only thing Victoria and Marian
Zidaru have been interested in has been their own
"foresighted commitment", which has always been
a risky and awkward mission-and they have utilized for
this mission whatever they could, mostly their own selves
and their own art. They have succedded I surmounting
enormous difficulties, which proves that their inspiring
"force" is more powerful than we would like to
believe. That force has made them not only transfigure
their art, but also lead a small religious artistic
community which is characterized by an unusual, and
extraordinary artistic industry, which for the last few
years has materialized in the form of annual or even
biannual exhibitions, artfestivals and publications. And
that industry does not originate in greed for public
exhibitionism, but an irrepressible eschatological
emergency.
It is true that
for the past few years this emergency related to pure
prophetism has been eased in order to let its artistic
imposition acquire a greater importance-or maybe we have
gotten used to the novelty called Zidaru phenomenon.
Anyway, their eruption within post-Revolution Romanian art
has undoubtedly represented the most spectacular and
highly sophisticated long term event and the most original
and coherent "artistic case", too. One can
consider their kind of complete artistic program either as
part of the neo-traditionalistic trend of post-modernism
or can link it again to an out-of-date religious
anachronism-anyway, it can not be ignored. To its authors,
it symbolizes "an initiatic journey leading to
salvation", to use Marian Zidaru`s words. The
extraordinary visual force of their striking art, obvious
not only to Romanians, but also to foreigners, makes me
believe that we are in front of a phenomenon of original
cultural synthesis that can be compared-proportionally
speaking-to the one that Brancusi dared propose to the
artists` community at the beginning of this century, when
he courageously blended archaic sensitivity and his will
to employ avant-garde forms. In the ame vein, I think,
Marian Zidaru has tried to create an unexpected triple
synthesis, out of the rural, the orthodox and the
modern/post-modern layers of Romanian culture. This
synthesis stays local for the time being, and in spite of
its surprising novelty, which could "twist" many
art critics, It is still part of the visual and spiritual
autochtonous tradition, which through such sublimation is
continuously renewed.
The Zidaru
synthesis, still provocative today, may become classic in
time and may be reproduced in the vernacular artistic
creation of villages and monasteries. And, it could
possibly be part of the anonymous iconography of future
"posthistoric" Romanian culture. |
