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Art, Nature and Ecologies of Transfiguration during Romanian National Communism

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Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania

Part of the book series: Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe ((MOMEIDSEE))

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the communist renderings of nature in both popular culture and art. It begins with an exploratory survey on those instances where nature is represented as hypostatizations of “green patriotism” and “autochthonous nature.” In this vein, the representations of nature had less to do with natural life as such but rather with an ideologization of what the natural environment was supposed to entail. The chapter contrasts this official approach with several instances of religion-inspired art from the 1970s to the 1990s the main concern of which was to re-establish the archetypal bond between nature and human beings. Unlike the artists who dealt with “mere nature” or “national nature,” for Neo-Orthodox artists, nature is not only “natural” but impregnated with God’s presence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Tom Block’s concept of prophetic activism refers to overcoming the polarizations between us and them in art that is politically concerned. A prophetic activist art is that form of cultural production that envisages the future through the lenses of universal, humanist values of universal appeal (such as love). For more on this conceptualization see Tom Block, “Prophetic Activist Art: Art beyond Oppositionality.” International Journal of the Arts in Society 3(2) (2008): 19–25 (Block 2008).

  2. 2.

    Roger Gottlieb, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (London: Oxford University Press, 2006) (Gottlieb 2006).

  3. 3.

    Jennifer Ayres, “Cultivating ‘Unquiet Heart’: Ecology, Education and Christian Faith.” Theology Today 74(1) (2017): 57 (Ayres 2017).

  4. 4.

    Land art refers to those artistic practices that take the environment as the main artistic medium and concept. The art movement emerged in the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic. For a detailed history of land art movement see Ben Tufnell, Land Art (London: Tate Publishing, 2007) (Tufnell 2007).

  5. 5.

    For more on Orthodox Christian views on ecology of transfiguration see John Chryssavgis, Bruce Foltz, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013) (Chryssavgis et al. 2013).

  6. 6.

    Jurretta Jordan Heckscher, “A Tradition that Never Existed. Orthodox Christianity and the Failures of Environmental History,” in Chryssavgis et al. 2013, 137 (Heckscher 2013).

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 146.

  8. 8.

    This is a notorious apophthegm of folkloric inspiration.

  9. 9.

    Adrian Cioacă and Mihaela Dinu, “Romanian Carpathians Landscapes and Cultures,” in Landscapes and Societies: Selected Cases, eds. Peter Martini and Ward Chesworth (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 267 (Cioacă and Dinu 2010).

  10. 10.

    Dan Drăghia, Dumitru Lăcătuṣu, Alina Popescu, Caterina Preda and Cristina Stoenescu, “Ideologie, Propagandă ṣi Norme de Creaṭie Artistică” [Ideology, Propaganda and Artistic Norms], original source: ANIC, fond UAP, file 11/1950, ff.126–129. In Uniunea Artiṣtilor Plastici din România în documente de arhivă [Union of Visual Artists in Romania in Archival Documents], eds. Dan Drăghia, Dumitru Lăcătuṣu, Alina Popescu, Caterina Preda and Cristina Stoenescu (Bucharest: Editura Universităṭii Bucureṣti), 113 (Drăghia et al. 2017).

  11. 11.

    Eugen Negrici, Literatura Romana sub Comunism: 1948–1964 (Bucureṣti: Cartea Româneasca, 2016) (Negrici 2016).

  12. 12.

    Ibidem.

  13. 13.

    Ion Manolescu quoted in Emanuel Modoc, “Nature Writing in Romania during the Post-war and Post-Communist Period.” Metacritic Journal of Comparative Studies and Theory 3(2) (2017):78–79 (Modoc 2017).

  14. 14.

    Ibidem.

  15. 15.

    Cincinalul in Patru Ani ṣi Jumătate (“A Five-Year Plan done in Four and Half Years”) song referred to a Stalinist invention (the “Five-Year Plan”) meant to organize the achievement of industrial production in advance for five years. The song Cincinalul in Patru Ani ṣi Jumătate “was an urge to work harder and better which sounded like a bad joke, a cruel thing to say, if we are to consider the pathetic state the country was in.” See a detailed analysis of the song in Maria Bebis, Translating and Analysing Songs: Three Songs in the Context of Communist Romania. Master Thesis in Translation, Interpretation and Intercultural Studies (Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma di Barcelona, 2009), 37 (Bebis 2009).

  16. 16.

    Mihaela Alina State, “The Vision of Death in Romanian Culture,” in The World of Bereavement: Cultural Perspectives on Death in Families, eds. Joanne Cacciatore and John DeFrain (London: Springer, 2015), 121–131(State 2015).

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 122.

  18. 18.

    Otilia Hedesan, “Bridges and Ritual Values: A Case Analysis: Brodice,” in From One Shore to Another: Reflections on The Symbolism of the Bridge, ed. Sanda Bădescu (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 144 (Hedesan 2007).

  19. 19.

    Ana Suciu, Consolations in E Major (Bloomington: Booktango, 2015) (Suciu 2015).

  20. 20.

    Bebis, Translating and Analysing Songs, 44.

  21. 21.

    Silviu-Radian Hariton, “Nationalism, Heroism and War Monuments in Romania 1900s–1930s,” in New Europe College Yearbook 2010–2011 (Bucharest: New Europe College,2011), 198 (Hariton 2011).

  22. 22.

    See for a chronology of these art events: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 210–225 (Experiment in Romanian Art, 1997).

  23. 23.

    Magda Cârneci, “The 80s in Romanian Art”, in Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960 (Bucharest: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, 1997), 54 (Cârneci 1997).

  24. 24.

    Olivia Niṭiṣ, “Gender and the Environment in the Romanian Art Before and After 1990,” The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 8(2) (2013): 72–73 (Niṭiṣ 2013).

  25. 25.

    For a detailed art historical account on Ṣtefan Bertalan’s work see Ioana Pintilie, Drumuri la Răscruce (Timiṣoara: Triade, 2010) and Coriolan Babeṭi, “The Bertalan Case: The Artistic Experiment as an Exercise of Neurotic Sublimation,” in Primary Documents, A Sourcebook for Eastern European Art since the 1950s, ed. Laura J. Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl (New York: MOMA, 1999), 53–56.

  26. 26.

    Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, Experiment in Romanian Art, 27.

  27. 27.

    Niṭiṣ, “Gender and the Environment,” 72.

  28. 28.

    I developed this argument in my chapter entitled “Art and ‘Madness’: Weapons of the Marginal during Socialism in Eastern Europe”, in Maria-Alina Asavei, Dropping out of Socialism: the Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, ed. Josie McLellan and Juliane Fürst (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 63–83 (Asavei 2016).

  29. 29.

    Paul Lindholdt, Explorations in Ecocriticism: Advocacy, Bioregionalism, and Visual Design (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015) (Lindholdt 2015).

  30. 30.

    For more on ecocriticism see Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1996) (Glotfelty and Fromm 1996); Dana Phillips, “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology,” New Literary History 30(3) (1999): 577–602 (Phillips 1999); Serenella Iovino,“Posthumanism in Literature and Ecocriticism,” Relations Beyond Anthropocentrism 4(1) (2016): 11–20 (Iovino 2016); and Michael Cohen, “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique,” Environmental History 9(1) (2004), 9–36 (Cohen 2004).

  31. 31.

    For a detailed account of all these issues see Hubert Zapf, Handbook of Ecocriticim and Cultural Ecology (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016).

  32. 32.

    Modoc, “Nature Writing in Romania”, 74.

  33. 33.

    Ibidem.

  34. 34.

    Niṭiṣ, “Gender and the Environment,” 69.

  35. 35.

    Idem., 76.

  36. 36.

    For a detailed exploration of the concept of “ecology of transfiguration” see Chryssavgis et al., Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration.

  37. 37.

    “Practical ecocriticism” refers to grounding the literature on ecocriticism in natural sciences (especially in evolutionary biology). For more on this position see Glen A. Love, Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology and the Environment (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2003) (Love 2003).

  38. 38.

    Valentin Iacob, “Pictorul Constantin Flondor: Pentru mine floarea de măr inseamna învierea,” [Painter Constantin Flondor: For me the apple’s flower means resurrection]Formula AS, 1213, 2016 (Iacob 2016).

  39. 39.

    Beside Prolog , Constantin Flondor was part of several artist collectives (“111”, and “Sigma Group” from Timiṣoara, Romania). With “111” he participated in 1969 at the Nüremberg Constructivist Biennale. His experimental art about nature consisted of scientific studies on nature translated into artistic formats.

  40. 40.

    Constantin Flondor quoted in Iacob, “Pictorul Constantin Flondor”.

  41. 41.

    Cârneci, “The 80s in Romanian Art”, 52.

  42. 42.

    Andrei Pleṣu’s text for the Catalogue of the Prolog’s Exhibition (1989) quoted in Mihaela Modoveanu, Stravezime/Prolog/Inviere, https://www.sensotv.ro/arta-plastica/eveniment-6904/stravezime-prolog-inviere/.(Pleṣu 1989).

  43. 43.

    Andrei Pleṣu, “Natura ca Loc de Intâlnire” (Nature as Meeting Place), Arta 4 (1987): 11 (Pleṣu 1987).

  44. 44.

    Andrei Pleṣu, “Natura ca Spatiu de Aṣteptare” (Nature as Waiting Space), Arta 3 (1988): 17 (Pleṣu 1988).

  45. 45.

    Hans Ulrich Obrist, Suzanne Pagé and Mircea Cantor, “A Conversation with Ion Grigorescu,” Idea Artă + Societate [Idea Art + Society] 23 (2006): 58 (Obrist et al. 2006).

  46. 46.

    Ibidem.

  47. 47.

    Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959).

  48. 48.

    Ion Cordoneanu, “Cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade’s Hermeneutics of Mioriţa: The Possibility of a Cognitive Perspective on the Sacred in Traditional Romanian Culture.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 63 (2012): 129–135.

  49. 49.

    Mircea Eliade,The Sacred and the Profane, 116.

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  1. Department of Russian and East European Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Maria Alina Asavei

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Asavei, M.A. (2020). Art, Nature and Ecologies of Transfiguration during Romanian National Communism. In: Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-)Communist Romania. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56255-7_4

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