New for May 2019

May 1, 2019

New for May 2019

May is the time of year to remember the Virgin Mary. The quartet of Marian-themed works from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection on display this month on The Magnificat page in the The Coming of Christ gallery of The Life of Christ section are the work of Ukrainian Greek Catholic women artists from the city of Lviv in West Ukraine, who are using modernist and folk art motifs to revitalize the ancient art of icon-making. You could line up four contemporary icons made in the conventual way by four different artists and they would be more or less the same in appearance with subtle variations on time-honored prototypes. What makes these four images of the Virgin Mary from the women icon-makers of Lviv so strikingly different is how they reveal the distinctive hand of each artist. Lyuba Yatskiv remains closest to traditional Byzantine iconography in her variation on the theme of The Virgin Who Shows the Way, adding a new dynamism with a warm color palette and sweeping lines that bend the holy figures in emotionally expressive ways. Natalya Rusetska places at the modernistic end of the style spectrum in her version of the same motif (above, left), creating a sense of transcendent weightlessness with delicate, stick-like figures set against a background of muted color washes. Ulyana Tomkevych offers a contemporary take on the much-loved prototype of the Virgin of Tenderness, where Mary is an adoring and fiercely protective mother with eyes only for her son, while Ivanka Demchuk gives us a mysteriously half-hidden Madonna and Child enveloped in gold decoration, suggesting the art of Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession. (John Kohan)