Project Idea: Grisha Mumrikov, Timofey Karaffa-Korbut Implementation: Grisha Mumrikov, Yuri Perunov
This project marks a fundamentally new stage in the art-historical study of the icon. Artists are delving into the process of creating a sacred image and exploring the inner world of the iconographer. As Roman Bagdasarov (historian, religious scholar, culturologist, and publicist) notes, this world can be defined as a state "before the Icon" in terms of content, or a neo-new underdrawing in terms of form.
"Underdrawings are technical drawings, the iconographer's secret 'kitchen,' invisible to the outside observer," explains Bagdasarov. "In the old days, expertly executed underdrawings were valued as much as icons themselves, although they were not icons in their own right."
The project "Entrance to Jerusalem" invites us to view this genre through the inner eye of the iconographer. "If the old-style underdrawing was applied in black ink to oiled paper, the neo-new is traced with a luminous line on a wooden surface," he notes. "It is an underdrawing that exists in the mind of the iconographer, who physically feels how the graphic base and the board attract the colors of the paints. However, they have not yet been distributed on the surface and are compressed into a line. On the one hand, it is less than an icon, but on the other hand, it is more, for the underdrawing contains a whole range of possibilities, of which only one will be realized."