‘All you need is your own imagination So use it that's what it's for Go inside, for your finest inspiration Your dreams will open the door’

Vogue, Madonna
Written by Madonna and Shep Pettibone
 
Reconfiguring familiar images has long been a challenge for artists. Andy Warhol turned major figures of the sixties and seventies, such as Marilyn Monroe and Chairman Mao, into transformed but instantly recognisable images through simplifying and enhancing their appearance. For George Papadopoulos it is the powerful image of the Madonna that, as a child, he found mesmerising and one that has continued to hold his imagination.
 
As a child, during his visits to Orthodox Churches in his native Cyprus, he was surrounded by images of the Madonna, a popular devotional subject across Central Europe for over 600 years. He gazed at it within the aura of solemn ritual, richly decorated vestments, flickering candles, pungent incense and a powerful sense of theatre. Reassuring, reliable and comforting, Papadopoulos found the steady, modest and retiring gaze a welcome signs of security in a rapidly changing world.
 
At the same time he was also aware of the inflexibility of such devotion, of the attempt by the church and other institutions to keep things as they were. Such ideas resurfaced six years ago when he spent time in the all male atmosphere of one of the monasteries in Mount Athos in northern Greece. Here the strict routine, the highly directed day and the formal ritual, while offering a purposeful structure, also seemed to Papadopoulos rigid and inflexible in its determination to resist change.
 
It was with such thoughts in mind that he started to look more systematically and closely at images of the Madonna, whether as prints, paintings or even mosaic.  In the Greek Orthodox tradition, not only was the arrangement of figures significant but there were also rules about line and colour. The features of the face were important, noses, for instance, were made thinner and mouths smaller to
emphasize their spiritual nature. With their explicit depiction of the Virgin, icons are in no sense seen as ‘graven images’, but, as the eighth-century Saint John of Damascus observed, ‘open books to remind us of God.’
 
Undeterred by such a long and well-honed history, Papadopoulos started to investigate how he might make his own representations of the ‘Holy Mother’ in sheet glass.  With a combination of questioning and reverence he started to play about with the image, secure in the knowledge that however far he pushed and pulled it – literally shattering the image – it would retain its magic and mystery.  Using the basic outline of the familiar Madonna, he assembled the layers before carefully cracking the glass to emphasize form and structure. On some he incorporated prints derived from ancient icons, often enhanced by judicious use of gold leaf, to create multi-layered images that glow with life.
 
Later works became bolder, freer and more experimental. Through the use of luminescent colours such as reds, yellows and greens he introduced a new awareness of light that illuminates the image of the Madonna as an icon for our time. While acknowledging tradition, Papadopoulos has used the medium of glass to bring a fresh awareness of the idealised image. His series of works are both a meditation on, and also recognition of, the abiding power of a figure that continues to catch the popular imagination – one that remains an inspiration in ‘opening doors’
 
Emmanuel Cooper is an artist, writer and critic.