Representations of the Sacred in Romanian Visual Art: The Garden, Utopia, the Temple, and the City
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This study reads sacred architecture as an open process rather than a finished object, one that begins with the divine prototypes revealed in the Bible (the Garden of Eden, the Tabernacle, the Temple, Jerusalem, and the New Jerusalem) and continues in every encounter between a building and those who enter it. The first part traces four archetypes through European culture: the Garden, from the Sumerian *hortus conclusus* to Versailles and the utopian communities of the industrial age; Utopia, understood through the episode of Babel and its Apocalyptic punishment; the Temple and the Church, with Jacob's Ladder as the founding hierophany; and Hell as the absence of architecture. The second part identifies these forms in modern and contemporary Romanian art. Balcic, the artists' colony around Queen Marie, is analyzed as an incarnation of Arcadia; the Poiana Mărului group and Horia Bernea's Museum of the Romanian Peasant as recoveries of the landscape as *temenos*; the Sigma group as a constructivist utopia; the Prolog group, Arsenie Boca's iconography at Drăgănescu, and the Catholic church at Orșova as returns to the Church; and Romanian memorial architecture, from Brâncuși to post-1989 projects, as a secular counterpart of the sacred. Throughout, Mircea Eliade's concept of hierophany supplies the interpretive frame. Working paper (preprint). English version of a text first written in Romanian by the author; translated and edited for this deposit, with corrected references. Not yet peer reviewed. Comments and citations welcome; a journal version may follow.
Author: Bădescu, Dalina
Language: English
Subfield: Architecture
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214520665
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