Nikos
Gabriel Pentzikis is particularly notable for his ecclesiastical realism in
both his paintings and his writings. He
was a ‘modernist,’ adopting the anti-novel in the form of an interior
monologue, a stream of associations with weak logical connections but with coherent
successions of personal experiences and intense symbolism. This form allowed Pentzikis to dwell on the
experiential relationship with the particular, where the personal element of
the relationship consciously transcends the aesthetic for the sake of the
experiential immediacy of the symbolism.
By using such language Pentzikis rids his
spiritual experience of any idealism.
This purification enabled him to appropriate popular ecclesiastical experience
in its material and practical expression: buildings, texts, icons, and daily
customs. He identifies the Greek
Orthodox tradition with its material expression of popular piety, the details of
a popular faith insignificant to the "objective" observer.
For example, Greek Church buildings for Pentzikis
are not simply an aesthetic interpretation of theological symbolism. They express the relationship between the
artist – and every believer – and the tangible reality of creation, which is
ultimately a relationship with the Creator.
Even the hymns are not simply poetic expression of metaphysical truth
but express a dense feeling of erotic experience of communion with the persons
of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints.
The physical sense of this communion is the central motif linking the
chain of recollections in Pentzikis’ monologue.
Orthodoxy and the West
(pg. 261 & 262, trans. By Peter Chamberas and Norman Russell. HCHC Press, 2006)
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