The Icon and Modernity Mystery, Meaning, Means an interdisciplinary conference October 17-19, 2003 The Harriman Institute at Columbia University Program Exhibit Directions Accommodations News and Events Contact

Program

All events are free and open to the public

328 Milbank Hall, Barnard College

4:00 pm | Icon and Text

Chair: Rebecca Stanton, Barnard College

• Karin Beck, Columbia University
  The Icon and the Idol in Tolstoy's War and Peace
• Sarah Pratt, University of Southern California
  Back to the Future: The Imagined Icons of Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, and Zabolotsky
• Svetlana Rakic, Franklin College
  Deconstructing the Icon: Alexander Markovich in Search of Meaning

Discussant: Robert Maguire, Columbia University

7:00 pm | Keynote Presentation

Krueger Lecture Hall, 405 Milbank Hall, Barnard College

• Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Director, The Harriman Institute
  Opening remarks
• Komar and Melamid
  In Search of Religion

8:30 pm | Reception

The Ella Weed Room, 2nd Floor, Barnard College

About Komar and Melamid Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid's long collaboration began in Moscow, where in the 1960s they pioneered the style known as Sots Art. Working in a variety of media, Sots artists parodied Socialist Realism, combining the familiar symbols of the regime in unsettling new ways. Komar and Melamid emigrated to the United States in 1978 and in 1981 became the first Russian artists to be awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. They live and work in New York City.

Saturday, October 18

All Saturday panels will be held in the Graduate Student Lounge, 301 Philosophy Hall

9:00 am | Breakfast

10:00 am | Icon and Empire

Chair: Mark Von Hagen, Columbia University

• Robert Nichols, St. Olaf College
  Tsar Nicholas II as Patron of the Russian Icon
• Oleg Tarasov, Russian Academy of Sciences
  The Rhetoric of the Late Russian Icon
• Vera Shevzov, Smith College
  Between Purity and Pluralism: The Icon and Anathema in Modern Russia, 1860-1917

Discussant: Richard Wortman, Columbia University

12:00 pm | Lunch

1:30 pm | Curators and Commissars

Chair: John McGuckin, Union Theological Seminary

• Shirley Glade, art historian
  Nasledstvo uchenogo bortsa: Aleksandr I. Anisimov's Unique Role in the Redefinition, Rescue, and Revelation of Early Russian Icons in Late Tsarist and Early Soviet Russia
• John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta
  Moments in the History of an Icon Collection: The National Museum in Lviv, 1905-2003
• Wendy Salmond, Chapman University
  How America Learned to Love Russian Icons: The 1931 Exhibition of Masterpieces of Early Russian Painting

Discussant: Elena Boeck, Yale University

3:30 pm | Canon Flux and Redux

Chair: Vitaly Chernetsky, Columbia University

• Elena Boeck, Yale University
  Strength in Numbers or Unity in Diversity? Compilations of Miracle-Working Virgin Icons
• Jefferson Gatrall, Columbia University
  Merezhkovsky, Polenov, Ainalov: The Quest for the Historical Image of Jesus
• Laura Engelstein, Yale University
  Art as Icon: The Reception of Aleksandr Ivanov

Discussant: Wendy Salmond, Chapman University

5:30 pm | Mixed Media

Chair: Richard Gustafson, Barnard College

• Stephen Hutchings, University of Surrey
  Citing the End: Eschatology, Iconic Vision, and the Rise of the Russian Media
• Douglas Greenfield, Columbia University
  Florensky and the Binocular Body
• Robert Bird, University of Chicago
  The Celluloid Icon? Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Orthodox Aesthetics in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Discussant: Sarah Pratt, University of Southern California

Sunday, October 19

The Sunday panel and roundtable will be held in the Graduate Student Lounge, 301 Philosophy Hall

9:00 am | Breakfast

10:00 am | From the Machine to the Easel

Chair: Brian Baer, Kent State University

• James West, University of Washington
  Icons, Modernism, and Socialist Realism: The Emblematic Idiom of Modern Russian Art
• David Borgmeyer, University of Southern California
  Representing the Divine, Divining the Self: Icons, Self-Portraiture, and Gender in Russian Modernism
• Konstantin Akinsha, art historian
  Icon and Photomontage
• Myroslava Mudrak, The Ohio State University
  Transfiguration of the Revolution: The Iconography of Light in the Avant-Garde

Discussant: Jane Ashton Sharp, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

12:30 pm | Lunch

1:30 pm | Roundtable discussion

Moderator: Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Director, The Harriman Institute

Catered by Food by Rupa

Exhibit
The Harriman Institute is proud to present works of religiously inspired art at the conference. On display for the first time will be paintings and drawings of Alexander Markovich from the Pankovich collection. New York artists Eileen McGuckin, John Walsted, and the masters and students of the Prosopon School of Iconology will exhibit contemporary icons. The exhibit will be held in 301 Philosophy Hall.

About Alexander Markovich Alexander Markovich died prematurely at the age of twenty-seven, leaving a profound record of himself in his painting and drawings. Created during a span of only one decade (1980-1990), these works express an original vision of the dreamlike insubstantiality of life. Markovich's art is close in some respects to Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, whose exponents explored psychological states of entrapment and isolation and evoked existential solitude.

About Eileen McGuckin Eileen McGuckin is a professional iconographer with a studio in New York City. She began painting icons in 1979 and has received the Orthodox Church’s blessing from Archbishop Serafim of the Holy Synod of the Church of Romania for her artistic vocation. Over the last two decades she has executed commissions in England and throughout the United States.

About the Prosopon School The Prosopon School of Iconology was founded by iconographer Vladislav Andrejev, who was born in 1938 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The search for deeper meaning in art and life led Andrejev to solitary travels in parts of the Russian wilderness, and to independent study of icon and fresco painting with a monk icon-writer. The School introduces students to the practice and theory of the ancient Christian art of icon-writing in the Byzantine-Russian tradition. It has received the blessing of Archbishop Peter of New York and New Jersey, and the approval of Metropolitan Theodosius (of all America and Canada).

About John Walsted Father John Walsted received his theological degree from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, and was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood in 1959. From 1982 until his retirement in 1994 he served as priest-in-charge and Rector of Christ Church, Staten Island. Fr. John has completed several hundred icons for churches and private collections. His icons have been installed in the Archbishop of Canterbury's palace, the residence of the Metropolitan of Moscow, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, and dozens of other locations worldwide.

Directions
Our campus is located at 116th Street and Broadway in Morningside Heights. Click for directions to Columbia.

Accommodations
Rooms have been reserved for conference participants at either Union Theological Seminary or The Milburn Hotel. Those staying at Union are within short walking distance of the Columbia campus. Those staying at The Milburn may choose to take a taxi to campus or take the red line 1 or 9 local subway uptown to 116th Street-Columbia University. The station at 79th Street and Broadway is just a few blocks from your hotel.

The Landmark Guest Rooms, Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway at 121st Street, New York, New York, 10027
Find Union

The Milburn Hotel
242 West 76th Street, New York, NY 10023 (between West End Avenue and Broadway)
Find The Milburn Hotel

News and Events
The Art of the Icon
Historical and Theological Interpretations of Proto-Christian, Byzantine, and Slavic Sacred Imagery
A public conference convened by Professor John A. McGuckin
Thursday, November 6, 2003
10:00 am to 4:30 pm, Social Hall, Union Theological Seminary

Holy Russia in Tuscany: Icons from the Collection of Francesco Bigazzi
The Gallery at the American Bible Society
May 15 through September 20, 2003
American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway, New York, NY 10023 (at 61st Street)

ULBANDUS
The Slavic Review of Columbia University
ULBANDUS is now accepting submissions for issue 8 (2004), on the theme Fruits of Evil.
Copies of ULBANDUS 7 (Empire, Union, Center, Satellite) and ULBANDUS 6 (160 Years of Dead Souls) will be available for purchase at the conference.

Contact
Please direct all inquiries to iconconf@columbia.edu