Twilight Icons

Could you first explain the reason for the title of the collection?

Indeed, this is key. First of all, it is important to note that these images are not “works of art” in the sense that Romanticism gave to this expression. They are icons in the sense that the word is given in the Orthodox tradition, that is, they are artifacts created to incite meditation, reflection or, more precisely, the contemplation of a mystery. They are images created with the intention that their owner, in this case the collector, fixes his gaze on them until a void is created in his mind – a silence – from which the inspiration of an idea can emerge. I do not want to leave anything unsaid: it is indeed the inspiration of an idea from a higher plane. I am talking about intellectual intuition, of νόησις in the Platonic sense.

I am not naive and I know that our age is characterized by speed, the dizzying bombardment of information inputs and, therefore, superficiality. The images that define our culture are instantaneous flashes that dull the physical eye to close the inner eye. These images of mine, so broken, so humble, want to be the exact opposite. They must be opened with the eyes like the shell of a nut to extract the fragment of truth they carry within. They need time.

So it is up to the collector to decipher their meaning?

I would not use the term “decipher” because they are not riddles or visual puzzles that have to be cracked like an encrypted code. They are icons and therefore cannot be read or understood with, say, the analytical intelligence a computer can mimic, for example. They can only be read with the highest part of the soul, with the spirit. It is a creative process. It's something a computer or a person in a hurry could never do. The physical eye is only an instrument, a medium. There are no hidden meanings, in fact, many times what appears on the icon is explicitly stated.

For example, in #100 it is clearly stated that what we are seeing is the Irish round tower -Cloigtheach- of Glendalough. The collector or anyone else who wishes to can go to Wikipedia or the Wicklow County Tourist Board site and find out what these things  were. This clue is necessary so that the collector knows what he has before his eyes. Not telling him anything would be dishonest from a certain point of view. It would be playing with esotericism. On other occasions, such as #003, it is not necessary to say anything. It's just a broken power line. Explaining this in a comment would be indelicate and that is why I leave the icon “silent”.

And the “twilight” part of the collection’s title?

Indeed. That is the adjective that thematically centers the entire collection: these icons are glimpses of the twilight of the world, images of a world that is dying because, as the Bible verse that heads the collection says, “the shape of this world fades away.” They are snapshots of a world that is about to disappear. About to dissolve. It is not always a tragic look that reveals these scenes to us. Many times it is a peaceful fading away, like the lonely bird in #092. In some icons there are references to a cataclysmic event that destroys the natural balance of our planet, like the meteorite of #001 or #004, other times you can feel the ravages of a collapse of life similar to the one that Cormac Macarthy does not make explicit in The Road, as in #030 or #063. But more often than not it is not a question of material destruction but of substantial dissolution, of the exhaustion of our civilization, of the dead end of a culture, of the death of our collective soul.

In The Road, it is not explained what has caused the destruction of the world. What has caused the general withering of everything in the world of “Twilight Icons”?

Very briefly: "we have forgotten the face of our father". This amazingly inspired sentence is uttered by Roland Deschain, the protagonist of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. The same idea can be expressed in many ways, but they all point to the same fact that seems incontrovertible to me: we are a tree that scorns its roots. We have turned our backs on God and, as a consequence, the hearts of many have grown cold. We have become The Hollow Men. And the result is all this desolation that the bird in #015 fails to understand. That is why most of the things that appear in the icons are dead. You could say that all the icons are scholia of T. S. Eliot’s famous line: “This the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” In fact, that verse could also be the one that heads the collection, but the one by Saint Paul points more to the metaphysical reality of the event than to the role of man in it, and that is why I preferred it. But I will insist on one point: this aesthetic is not gloomy, mournful or desperate, like the one probably inaugurated by Poe and later developed by H.P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake and, finally, Thomas Ligotti. Quite the opposite. Everything here may be withered, but the feeling that endures is hope.

What do you mean hope?

If one is honest and sees reality as it is, even though the panorama is bleak, there is a certain sense of peace in finding the truth, don't you think? In truth, the fact that things are so... worn out at this moment in history - undoubtedly the final Kali Yuga, to use Hindu terminology - only means that the moment of the great regeneration of the world is approaching, of a new Creation, of the advent of the Kingdom, to use Christian terminology. Death can be awaited with resignation, with calm. Even in peace. That is in fact the attitude with which it is received not only by the true saint, but also by the mere sage. And that peace comes to them from knowing that death is the moment of definitive birth. I would like to think that something of this spiritual climate can be intuited or intellectually grasped - again the νόησις - by meditating on some of these icons.

What if no one gets it?

Well, that is a possibility that haunts all poetry and all art that comes from the heart of man throughout history. Every verse is a message in a bottle that is thrown into the infinite sea without knowing if it will ever reach its destination. That is why when someone receives the message, when they open their heart and their inner eye to it and their soul vibrates on the same wavelength as the sender, a kind of miracle occurs, a kind of truly ineffable communion, that is, one that cannot be transmitted with words. That is the original motivation that has moved me to create these icons.

But to answer the question: it doesn't really matter.

And why NFTs?

Because of the possibility it offers of transferring absolute ownership of the icon to the collector. The emotional approach you have towards something that belongs to you completely is different from the approach you have to an image that was painted, for example, for a king of the past and that you see in a museum, that is, in a house that is not yours. Imagine, for example, that Titian, instead of painting The Glory for Charles V, had painted it for you. Imagine that no one else in the world could see that image except you. We know that the Last Emperor died in Yuste contemplating this canvas, absorbed. We could say that at the moment of his death the image took him from the earth to the world where the realities shown on that canvas exist. Such a visceral, personal and profound relationship cannot be had with something that does not belong to you or, to put it another way, it is easier for this to happen when you are the absolute owner of that image. With this technology it is possible for this to happen. Of course I know that many people are just looking to buy and sell these works of art to make a profit. The same goes for physical art. But at least it is possible for this feeling of ownership to actually exist and that is something I find amazing. Not to mention the possibility that direct contact can be established between the collector and the creator (under the pseudonym "A. Criptana") through a simple email (in my case a@criptana.xyz). I am convinced that many of the greats – for example Velázquez, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, van der Weyden, Ribera… – would all have appreciated this possibility.

Which artists have influenced you the most?

Well, the list I just made may give you a clue. For many years, I was lucky enough to work just 5 minutes walk from the Museo Nacional del Prado. I have been going to this dream palace for as long as I can remember and I suppose that, in a secret way, all the giants that live there have shaped my soul in some way. Obviously these icons are like little insects compared to these great works but I like to think that the hours spent in front of the works of Poussin and Lorena in El Prado may have left some trace.

More closely, I think I should mention a school of Spanish painters led by Benjamín Palencia that adopted several names throughout the 20th century in Madrid: first it was called the School of Vallecas (which is a suburb of Madrid), then, after the war, the group called itself El Convivio (after Dante's work). This group, which gathered at the foot of El Greco's works in El Prado, included Álvaro Delgado, Gregorio del Olmo and Carlos Pascual de Lara, among others. None of these painters, despite being masters in my opinion, are very well known outside Spain, of course, which has some advantages: among them, that their works are available at a price that is not stratospheric. Thanks to this, in my house I have, enthroned in a place of honour, a portrait of Álvaro Delgado, a true jewel (Not the one that appears next to these lines).

How long do you think it will take to complete the collection?

The first 115 icons took a year to paint. But the first steps are always more complex. It is very difficult to predict anything with absolute certainty but I believe that the 1000 icons that will make up the collection will be finished in approximately 4 years, that is, by the end of 2028.

Something that I think should be known in order to understand the full context of "Twilight Icons" is that for many years I have been writing a book... a very complex book... a kind of Lord of the Rings meets the history of the human race. One of the main characters in the novel, (an old man who despite being a world eminence in the field of hypnosis lives in the middle of a junkyard) paints small faded paintings of a twilight world to, apparently, earn a living. Thouse paintings are, obviously, these "Twilight Icons". That's not how I conceived the idea for the collection (how it came about is explained in the comment for the first icon #001) but I decided very soon to incorporate them into the literary project, something that, perhaps, some collectors will like. I say all this because the completion of one project could be related to the completion of the other.

And what about physical icons?

Of course, it is essential, in line with what I was saying before about the personal relationship with the icon, to have it physically in your hands. Well, I don't know if it is essential, but it is certainly an advantage. Regarding the possibility of them being physically available, there is no general answer since each icon has a particular history.

For example, there are icons that do not exist physically (or only the background exists) like #062. Or there are others, like #105, that have peculiar characteristics or errors in their physical origin that were corrected digitally. It also happens that two icons are painted on both sides of the same piece of paper, so in this way they form a curious diptych. On the page of each icon there is a reference to availability, but I suggest that if anyone is interested in the physical object, they contact me at a@criptana.xyz before acquiring the NFT.