A horrible ‘film’ of the latest imagination:  “Thousands of zombies actually survived the atomic bombs dropped in the Southern hemisphere. Gorgeous! Also, Stockholm went down, really, through a sink hole but one day later, through legalising euthanasia at UN, ALL the elderly above a certain age in the whole world, freed for good! Is it not beautiful? Still, we are not talking about the fine details of most recent improvements in our lives, such as the production of electricity through own skin, as needed for all house products, and also on the subject of machines which are recycling plastic bags into delicious margarine…  Great, great, great!!!”

Fortunately, all these things are not true, or at least, not yet! The whole twentieth century was a time when all science-fiction stories that people ‘dreamt’ of, were meant to become materialised… and it means materialised in their most wicked destination! When I was an adolescent and then a young man, my ideas about art and the world came together in a wide vision, a ‘timely’ comprehension of everything. This very idea of ‘unity’ emerged not long ago, that is during the time of renaissance and it is about a precise historical perspective always leading to ‘progress, civilisation and better times’!!! In other words, one needs to admire and love the great precursors of certain styles and currents in various philosophies, so the ‘progress’ is identified and then pursued! So to speak, this evolution will be chased with the suggestion that the ‘new’ findings will be always ‘better’ than the earlier ones!

This bog of pagan thoughts and philosophies had been erased through by the Orthodox Faith which gives the clearest possible world view. But the devil, God forbid, always finds his servants who made this development, going ahead with different traps and schemes to catch the ill-equipped! The big ‘sale’ of everything that is ‘cultural’ found so many customers especially if they were vain… Anyone liking the external and the appearance was a definite shopper, for the glory of a ‘superior’ future. I must confess that I was myself such a client! I shall try to remember some of these ‘beautiful’ ambushes, by which I thought that my comprehension became greater, but not worthy of my poor contemporaries – such a delusion!!!

I remember my attraction to the odd and estranged though ‘nice’ possibilities in any art exploration, for  the reason of opening up ‘new’ and ‘higher’ ‘out-of-this-world’ creations… I admired the strange constructions in architecture, an example being Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, which was made up of some unfinished and uninhabitable ‘church’ with wild decorations.  Also in painting, I liked the so-called minimal art, which could hypnotise anyone – literally! In literature I loved the stories full of cynical approaches, as an obvious part of post-modernism. In music, it must have been the atonal compositions of early 20^th century, in comparison with the harmonious sounds of classical music with synchronizations which were removed by new creators, for ‘greater’ achievements.

In things produced live on stage, I admired the absurdity of various stories. In theatre, I loved the crazy ideas of authors such as Ionesco or Alfred Jarry. But let us return to painting, which was my main sphere of interest: the ‘advancements’ found in art movements along the centuries hypnotised me: the ‘wise’ changes from the ‘nebulous’ to concrete, then to realistic and ‘significant’, followed by something else ‘above the bar’, and subsequently to a ‘dream-like attitude’ and finally to… demonic! How is that? Well, the whole story of art, that is the art history, is nothing else but the rejection of Christ, step by step!

The image of Jesus Christ, the Son of God Who became Man, through His Divine Incarnation, was repeatedly denied and ‘detached’ in this wicked art history. These are those steps: from the holy art of painting icons, to the ‘realism’ of renaissance (art through human power, only), then followed by detailed genres during the ‘enlightenment’ (landscaping, portraiture and still-life), and then to a variety of styles leading to the sub-human perspective (cubism, expressionism and futurism) and finally opening the doors to the ugliness, in the imagination of the professional artists who do not see it as demonic. This final chapter that we live today is the preparation for an ‘official’ invitation to be handed in to the…antichrist!

This kind of ‘achievement’ is not just common to painting, but to all the other six arts of music, literature, sculpture, theatre, photography and cinematography. Interesting to notice that these arts are different from the ones of some older times, flowing from pagan philosophies: grammar, dialectic / logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The Trivium method of education, which includes General Grammar (with the questions of who, what, where and when), Formal Logic (with the question of why) and Classical Rhetoric (with the question of how), was used for many centuries by philosophers and thinkers of all sorts. From antiquity to present times, such classical technique would be successful in refining the knowledge of any student. Obviously, the fundamental of having a certain viewpoint (Orthodox or non-Orthodox) is separate from this adopted routine.  Trivium could work ‘well’ even in the case of Satanism!

Added to these three methods, the other four realms of our fallen interests would complete somehow the picture, offering the possibility of embracing beauty and harmony through them. But the new arts of those much more ‘stylish’ specialties (including photography, cinematography, etc.) are moving further away from dignifying systems open to the richness of Faith. My ‘love’ for art and painting in the style of post-modernism was pretty exulted, evolving into religion and touching beyond matter. Self-importance and vanity grew to great extent.  I thought that I could do anything, in no time. Nowadays, thank God, such things are gone for me, but the source of spiritual drunkenness in the world multiplied exponentially. Everything around is an ‘exuberant’ tsunami of images, one worse than the other and fighting to erase EVERYTHING of the Icons of Christ and His Saints.

Presently, the main art of film which is the ‘painting’ of modern times wants not just to imitate reality but craves to replace life. Technically, the events happening right now in any corner of our earth are always compared with some ‘famous’ movies or videos. The déjà vu episodes are immediately recognised by millions of people, as watched on TV screens. Going into the psychology of this scheme will earn you nothing! Instead, it will provoke headaches and depression. The first paragraph of this page imagined some possible near-future scenarios, with the addition of fantasy, to a great extent. But in reality, a reality in the Light of our Redeemer must bring a different vision: “Thousands and thousands of Christians died and resurrected in a second, on this New whole earth. Also, the old one went down in flames, in spite of all things that the devil was trying to do; all the people of the beautiful age of 33 live forever, freed for good from tyranny! Is it not beautiful? Still, we are not talking about the fine details of most recent improvements in our lives: there is no more need of anything, but the sight of our Creator, the Divine Food! Great, great, great!!!”

P