What is paradise in art - a promise of harmony and peace or a lost landscape that we try to recreate again and again? During the lecture, we will try to trace how the idea of paradise has changed from medieval mosaics to modern designs, from the biblical Eden to the artificial gardens created by 21st-century artists.
The lecture focuses on how the image of paradise as a garden was formed and transformed in European art - a space of primordial harmony, divine order and ideal nature. This is not about the theological understanding of paradise, but about its iconography, symbolism and philosophical interpretations of visual images. Paradise is considered as an imaginary space in which ideas about man, the divine and the limits of artistic representation are reflected.
During the meeting we will consider:
♦ how the image of the garden as a space of bliss was formed in religious traditions;
♦ medieval ideas about paradise and its reflection in mosaics, miniatures and religious painting;
♦ the Renaissance idea of nature as a manifestation of divine order;
♦ Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" as a complex iconographic system;
♦ Baroque visions of the heavenly garden in frescoes and decorative programs;
♦ Modernist attempts to restore paradise through aesthetic form;
♦ modern interpretations of the garden as a metaphor for ecological and cultural space;
♦ paradise as a metaphor for desire: is it possible outside of a religious context today?
During our conversation, we will try to look at paradise as an intellectual and visual construct in which the issues of iconography, philosophy of nature, and artistic thinking intersect.
WHEN: October 29, at 6:30 PM
WHERE: Artsvit Gallery, Dnipro, Krutogorny Uzviz 21a. Entrance through the glass doors from the side of Uspenskaya Square
Free admission
Yana Kachkovska is an art historian, art critic, journalist, researcher, co-curator of the summer art school for the "Cultural Project". Postgraduate student at the Department of Art History of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Author of texts for the publications "Social Culture", Korydor, Artslooker, LB.ua, Forbes Ukraine.
In his scientific work, he explores private collections as a space for intellectual communication in the culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Photo: Stanislav Pyvonos
