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Tropical Tale No. 6 -
Vol. 3 - The Art of Icons
When we
lived in Moscow, my mother and I ran
around shopping in antique shops until
our feet hurt. We would buy
"junk," old things nobody wanted
in exchange for American dollars. My
house in Lighthouse Point now looks like a
museum! I have brass horses I use
as bookends, huge brass frying pans with
copper nails that serve as planters, a dainty
yellow cup and saucer belonging to Napoleon's
family in my cabinet, and dozens of samovars
displayed around the house like ghosts of a
bygone era. Some of these antiques,
which the customs official labeled "
your grandma's old stuff,"
entered the US via my suitcases on Dr.
Armand Hammer's private jet, on which I
hitched a ride.
I
had met him at a State Department's cocktail party
for Americans at the Embassy in Moscow,
(writers usually do have credentials for
opportunity) where I started a conversation
with his wife about their impressive private
collection of Impressionist paintings.
We became chummy and she invited me to fly
back with them to Los Angeles, even though I
had my ticket on Pan Am to Miami.
Never one to miss out on an adventure, I
accepted. She was a very charming lady
extremely knowledgeable about all the Impressionist
art, and curious about my icons
wondering how I acquired them. Her
husband had accepted his paintings when
he opened his pencil factory in Russia, and
refusing to take useless rubles, he bartered
for their paintings. I did the
same, only on a smaller scale. I
exchanged American cigarettes and dozens of
bottles of Vodka for the icons.
Between drinking white wine and talking
about Impressionist art and seventeenth
century icons, the nineteen-hour flight just
seemed to fly by, although I did arrive with
a splitting headache. We had left the
wintry snows of Russia behind to arrive in a
balmy star-lit California evening. The
pilots who were friends of my family,
let me sit in the cockpit to see the
landing as a million Los Angeles
lights twinkled in the night sky.
Dr.
Hammer, whom I speak about in my first
novel, Foreign Affairs, is now buried in the
Westwood Cemetery in Los Angeles, in front
of his beloved Occidental Petroleum offices,
next to Eva Gabor and a few feet away from
Marilyn Monroe's grave. My favorite
grave site there is Jack Lemmon's with just
his name and a big arrow pointing down.
He had the last laugh even in death!
Icons are paintings of Christian art.
The Old Testament is more articulate on
matters of forbidden images. Deuteronomy 5,
8, states: ..."thou shalt not make any
graven image, or any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above, or that is in the
beneath, or that is in the waters beneath
the earth." Admittedly, the
Hebrew word for "image" or
"icon" has given rise to different
interpretations and may not correspond
exactly to the proper meaning; so I won't
tempt the experts here in a semantics discussion.
 The
Russian people, both educated nobility and
uneducated serfs, have enjoyed their icons
during their past in good and bad
times. The blessed turn of events
throughout Russian history are credited to
their icons, such as during the liberation
of Moscow from the Poles and from Napoleon.
In Russian homes, prior to Communism, and
especially hidden in the villages, the
saints certainly had their special place.
Icons were used for wedding ceremonies,
baptisms, and prayers as one entered a
Russian home. Monks always thought
workmanship a great merit in the eyes of
God, and so kept busy painting.
Alimpij, a saint, was considered the first
icon painter. In order not to remain
idle, he painted icons and restored them.
Originally, boards were taken from
non-resinous trees, which in order to keep
their shape, were joisted with wooden
cross-boards inserted in joints, so that many
icons have arched surfaces. They would paste
cloth onto wood, sometimes use paper, then
use a base chalk and cement, and the rough
outline was impressed upon it. The
painting was done in egg tempera and was
laid across a protective layer of oil and
resin. This prevented the penetration
of humidity, and brought out the full
colors. However, that also attracted
the dust, incense and soot, contributing to
the dark mysterious colors. The more
affluent Russians also decorated these
icons with precious metals and stones, even
diamonds.
Some beautiful works of this ancient art can
be seen in the Miracle Icon of the Mother of
God of Vladimir, Byzantine, beginning of
twelfth century, that I show here.
Also, exhibited is the
Archangel Gabriel, Novgorod School, end of
fourteenth century; St. George slaying the
dragon, Novgorod school, sixteenth century.
The tiny icon you see on top, of Jesus
painted on tin with the blue background on
top, still has the animal glue on the back
of the small painting. I wish I knew
the history behind this lovely piece of art; but
I didn't speak Russian when I paid my few
kopeks for it. In another Tropical Tale, I
will tell you all about my samovars, and
Palek boxes.
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