Noli Me Tangere

by Dmitry Ozerkov

When the artist Dmitry Margolin told me in the spring of 2020 that he was planning to paint a provincial church, I was sincerely happy for him. It is not often that a contemporary artist in the purview of critics and art historians in the capital suddenly goes to a rural wilderness to paint a church. His idea of secluding himself away in a village to paint a functioning church seemed utopian and crazy, but also worthy of respect. After all the pandemic restrictions were conducive to solitary life. Dmitry spent the summer with his family in the village of Rozhdestvo, in the Pskov province, where he worked daily on the paintings of this seasonally-used chapel. The photos from there looked like the arena of a spiritual trial. The small, newly-built Church of St. John the Baptist was like a skete where the Petersburg artist decided to withdraw from worldly temptations, and where he managed to bring to the wall paintings his particular style and the heat of his palette. In the autumn, I received another call. Dmitry said that the work was done, but that the patron, or local community, were categorically opposed and wanted to whitewash the murals. He asked for support. A discussion ensued with art critics and parishioners in the church, which I could not attend. So I wrote a letter to the church rector, Fr. Alexander, with the support of the artist. I reproduce the letter as follows:

Dear Fr. Alexander, I have not yet had the good fortune to visit the church of St. John the Baptist in the village of Rozhdestvo, but I have examined Dmitry Margolin’s paintings from the photographs he sent to me. I also watched with great interest the recording of a recent discussion about these paintings. I would like to first take note of your great courage to invite a contemporary artist to paint a church — an act that merits respect both for you and for the church community. I am familiar with the work of Dmitry Margolin, I have been to his exhibitions and in his studio, I have seen various subjects and motifs that interest him as an artist. In my opinion, these paintings in Rozhdestvo are some of his best works to date. Work on the painting has transformed the artist, the creative process has given him deep experience of the texts and images with which he worked. The result is a powerful ensemble that brings the words of Holy Scripture to the viewer’s mind and commands deep thought and engagement. These works are both canonical and modern, an almost impossible and unique combination in today’s world. And this is why today they are the source of such controversy and generate such contradictory judgments. Some motifs make the viewer think of Italian primitives (first of all, Giotto’s Scrovengni Chapel, and the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo), and of Balkan and ancient Russian frescoes. I am reminded of the frescoes of Novgorod, Theophanes the Greek’s paintings of the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina. Dmitry Margolin leads us to God not only by canonical, but also by modern means. His figures are alive and active, as if they came to the walls from today’s world and were transformed under the temple’s dome.

Я уверен, что художник Дмитрий Марголин находится лишь в начале творческого пути. У художника огромный потенциал, что, как ни странно, редкость на сегодняшнем столичном горизонте. Слава и известность ещё найдут его. Уже сегодня мы активно обсуждаем включение его работ в выставку в Государственном Эрмитаже [речь о включении гравюр «Апокалипсиса» в выставку о Дюрере] и активно планируем его участие в работе петербургского Дома Радио — нового общественного творческого кластера в центре Петербурга, созданного вокруг репетиционной базы коллектива «musicAeterna» Теодора Курентзиса. Работы Дмитрия Марголина из серии «Апокалипсис» я показываюстудентам программы art&science ИТМО, которой руковожу, и включаю в публичные лекции — в арт-школе «Мастерс» и на Петербургском телевидении. На мой взгляд, эксперимент, столь благородно поставленный Вами, оказался успешным. Художник выполнил заказ по-христиански, не впав ни в искушение, ни в праздность. Марголин — сильный художник, он полностью выложился в этой работе. Мне кажется, этой росписи не стоит бояться. За ней — будущее. Уверен, если сегодня роспись удастся сохранить, то в храм будут приезжать, чтобы специально посмотреть на его необычный, уникальный декор, столь свежий и столь сильный, столь современный и столь традиционный. Диспут, который идёт вокруг храма сейчас, напоминает мне другие обсуждения в России рубежа 19 и 20 веков. Ругали и требовали уничтожения храмовых росписей Васнецова и Врубеля, христианских картин Репина и Ге. Эти разговоры всегда заставляли зрителей смотреть и думать, всегда показывали, что живопись может породить размышления о сути главных христианских вопросов. Этим письмом хочу выразить Вам своё уважение за Ваше начинание и произнести слова поддержки художнику. Убеждён, что сейчас наступил тот важный момент, когда роспись должна быть сохранена для будущего. Быть может, она требует более широкого обсуждения, которое пойдёт всем на пользу и поспособствует христианскому смирению. Со своей стороны я был бы готов принять участие в таком обсуждении, например, на страницах профессиональной искусствоведческой периодики, если на то будет Ваше решение и благословение».

I did not receive an answer to this letter, but Dmitry Margolin said that the rector had read it. The issue of whitewashing the church, however, has not passed away. In the spring of 2021, when I write these lines, the murals’ fate has not been resolved. Perhaps even now they is being carefully painted over by someone’s sheltering hand. This singular feat of a contemporary artist has now become ground for discussion and mutual understanding. Yet, Dmitry himself has been against making a scandal out of this situation. And in this he again differs from the average contemporary artist, striving for rapid success and notoriety. I would be very sorry to lose these highly original works so, in addition to the above letter, I will add a few thoughts for a book about this church, which in any case will play some role in preserving the paintings for the future. I reached the Pskov village of Rozhdestvo in December 2020 The journey from St. Petersburg took half a day. Without Dmitry’s instructions, I would not have found the small, pretty wooden temple, crowned with a single dome and equipped with white double-glazed windows. Dimitri waited on the road to point the way. The church is hidden among bare trunks. A wooden, stepped porch is attached the roof. Stacked high by the entrance was scaffolding, probably removed after painting was completed. The painting is all inside the building. The church’s interior design is traditional: there is a passage under the choir loft, the main sanctuary with the Saviour in glory in the dome, the apostles on the sides of the iconostasis, the Eucharist behind the altar, angels in pendentives and the symbols of the four evangelists between them. On the walls are narratives gospel stories. But it is not this that catches the eye at first, but the brightness and fury of the colour. There is so much rich red and blue, yellow and green. The colours seem to be condensed, somehow compressed in their chemical composition, creating a feeling of their incredible density and oversaturation. The blue of the sky is heavy and menacing, the tension is already read in the kind of fervour of the heavenly background itself. Byzantine and Old Russian words begin to swarm in my head: hesychasm, stylites, The Light of Mount Tabor, the image of the Saviour with the Stern Eye. However, the contrast of colours and their temperature is important: it seems that in all this painting there is not a single cool tone, even in the gaps! At least, this is the impression. And then the psychology of human faces begins to unfold. They are severe and seem to be closed in their severity. In them there is no kindness, neither is there any malice. They are enclosed in themselves, in their search and heroism, in their Christian struggle for the universe, for the realisation of their place and their role in the world. For their salvation and ours. They seem to be somewhere else, not in the earthly pale. They are tense in their concentration and restrained in their emotions, but these are not earthly emotions and feelings. Their struggle takes place under some other circumstance. This is not a simple temple — not sentimental, cloying, covered in gold leaf. It is a place of spiritual work, “the work of thought”, from where the path of prayer and concentration can lead to other planes of being and time. Only the Saviour’s face is clear: in the dome, the apse, and in the scene of the “Baptism”, is he calm and peaceful. However, in the Eucharist, the Saviour is also somewhat tense. What is it — severity, pain, dislike? Not at all! It’s about focus, consistency, and seriousness. All the faces in the temple are above all serious, there is not a shadow of braggadocio, flippancy, unnecessary arrogance in them. Everyone is playing their role here, creating a mission to save humanity here and now.

Dmitry Margolin does not use tracing paper, blueprints, or other old fashioned methods of transferring studies. Each composition he creates anew. They are not completely similar to the well-known Byzantine or Old Russian prototypes to which they sometimes only nod. For example, in the scene “Noli me tangere” (the artist himself calls this painting “The Apocalyptic marriage of Christ and the Church”), where the Saviour is open and attentive to Mary coming to Him. He does not pull away from her, saying, “Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father” (Jn 20:17), but stretches out his arms to her, as if in an responsive embrace. What is this, a violation of the canon? Not at all. Dmitry Margolin portrays the previous episode of the meeting, when Mary is just getting to know Jesus. At the open coffin, she searches for His body to retrieve It. “Jesus said unto her, ‘Woman, why weepest thou?’ Whom seekest thou?” She, thinking He was the gardener, said to Him: “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away” (Jn 20:14–15). She still does not realise that it is He as His appearance seems to be different from what she is used to. And then He calls her by name, and she recognises Him by His voice: “Maria!’ She turned and said to Him: ‘Rabbuni!’ – which means ‘Teacher!”(Jn 20: 16). And she rushes to Him. And only here does He warn her: “Touch Me not.” In Margolin the image simply depicts that moment before those words were uttered. And this whole episode takes place in the Garden of Eden, which, obviously, was invoked by the mention of the gardener in the Gospel passage. Here are “all herbs and flowers; animals of unprecedented beauty walk there.” The tiger does not attack the hind, and the “blue ox full of eyes” reclines on the ground solemnly and with dignity. Birds of the sky of incredible colours feel at ease at the feet of the Saviour. This is a story about Dante’s “love that moves the sun and the stars”. The composition of this whole scene goes back to the motif of the meeting of man and woman, central in the work of Dmitry Margolin, revealed by him both in painting and in sculpture. His Christ and Mary are like the heavenly Adam and Eve, like the beautiful and abstract kouros and kore that meet under the heavenly apple trees. The prototype of this painting was the sculptures of the ancient Greek kouros and kore, which the artist interprets in his own way and to whom he gives Christian attributes. And Margolin’s painting “The Groom and His Bride “(2018), where kouros-Adam meets kore-Eve in the garden. This is the beginning and the end, the coming fall and the promise of salvation.

Where is the “terrible modern art” with its irony and reversals of meaning, with its political implicativeness and lurid scandal? There is no room for all this in the church. Dmitry Margolin left all this at the threshold. However, what it was that he did bring inside was still enough to prompt a wholesale rejection. Its very creation, not according to the familiar canons of Andrei Rublev, is a gesture of modern art. This gives him the right to compile textbook subjects from various iconographic elements in his own way. It would seem that, for Dmitry Margolin, only the “Last Judgment” is modern, placed, as it should be, on the western wall. It is an urban panorama, where, in addition to buildings, you can discern factory chimneys, blast furnaces, and countless factory cranes. This whole world is ablaze with hellfire, and it is contrasted with the eternal blooming calm of the garden of Eden on a symmetrical stage. The demon is cast into hell, and the Saviour triumphs in the walls of Heavenly Jerusalem. Ancient iconography is read in a modern way with the addition of themes of ecology and the hell of machine production.

One could find elements of modernity in other scenes, but their appearance only speaks to the artist’s ability to think beyond the set limits. If the whale in the scene with Jonah is completely textbook and originates from somewhere in the Yaroslavl paintings, transferred from the Piscator Bible, then the rough peasant faces of the Pskov shepherds in the Nativity alert us to their “realness”. They are like modern faces, which relates them to the entire history of the image of this subject in the world art. The simplicity of the faces contrasts with the advent of a miracle. Margolin’s faces reveal the entire Russian poetic tradition of the story of Christmas – from Pasternak to Brodsky, from “the shaft in the snowdrift”. The centurion Longinus in the “Crucifixion” is also contemporary. He is not wearing a helmet, and his shaved head and protective uniform give him the appearance of a modern security officer. However, the inscription “SPQR” on his jacket and the canonical outfits of the other characters leave no doubt about the evangelical nature of what is happening.

Important in this temple painting is its monumental unity from the smallest detail, such as the plumage of a bird in “Noli me tangere”, to the entire three-dimensional composition of the whole. Here there is a programme, there is a canon, and there is its interpretation in colour. There is a careful and intelligent reading of the canonical text, prayerful reflection on it, and its contemporary interpretation. There is no malicious intent to shake foundations, rather there is a desire to show that Christian history is alive and more than modern. Aside from basic education and performing rituals, today incredible concentration and high morals are demanded of the artist and ordinary parishioner alike that they may continue to call themselves Christians.

From Dmitry Margolin. Murals of the Church of St. John the Baptist in the Village of Rozhdestvo. St. Petersburg: Svoe Izdatelstvo, 2021.