Icontroversy : Russian Religious Treasures Are for Sale at an Anaheim Gallery, Prompting Ethical Concerns

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s 1991 decree that Russian religious treasures be returned to the church may seem a distant problem in a distant place. Yet its moral implications reach all the way to Anaheim, where a collection of 80 icons dating from the 14th to 19th centuries are on display, and for sale, at a commercial art gallery.

“I’ve had people come in here and scold us,” said Lori Kaye, owner of the gallery that bears her name. “‘These belong in Russia!’ they say, ‘These belong in the church. They’ve all been stolen.’ I go into great depth with them, explaining that they weren’t stolen per se. Many were legally sold under Communism. Armand Hammer brought back shiploads (of icons) andsold them in department stores.

“These icons have been out of Russia for a long time. How can you ask people to respond today to what was legal back then?”

Icons are religious paintings created in countries of Orthodox faith, usually by a monk or pious layman who fasted and prayed before working. Images of Christ, Mary and the saints were themselves worshiped and believed to effect cures. Icons have also been massively destroyed throughout history, most recently by the Soviets.

The collection at the Lori Kaye Gallery includes a 14th-Century example depicting the life of Elijah priced at $35,000, and a 19th-Century triptych once owned by Czar Nicholas II, offered for $120,000. An “Ascension of Christ” is offered at $395. All are owned by Svetlana Nenov of Mission Viejo and are being sold on consignment.

According to Kaye, Nenov escaped from the Soviet Union after World War II on a student visa and ended up in West Berlin. Soviet diplomats, who could come and go with impunity, actively dealt in icons at the time, hoping to redeem them for much-needed hard currency.

“(The diplomats) would go to Berlin to try to sell their icons,” Kaye said, “but often they’d be scratched getting them out, or they were broken when a church was destroyed. The icons were often cut out of the iconostasis wall with a saw, so there’d be rough edges.

“The diplomats had to have the icons cleaned, identified and restored before they could sell them, and Svetlana was an icon restorer. But they only had their local currency to pay her, which she didn’t need since she was living in Berlin. So she’d restore, say, five icons and, by way of payment, keep one or two. Then they’d sell the rest.

“Basically, she built her collection on a trade.”

Reached by phone, Nenov responded curtly when asked to confirm the story of how she acquired her collection.

“My father (in Russia) . . . my mother made the collection--what’s wrong with that?”

As to Yeltsin’s recent request that anyone in possession of icons return them to the Russian Orthodox Church, Nenov said, “(If) he will pay me, I will return them. They are mine.”

Kaye, who has operated her commercial gallery in Orange County for 10 years, at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers for the last two, continued the story firsthand.

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When the hotel hosted a religious conference almost two years ago, she put out a work by a contemporary Romanian painter and restorer of icons and frescoes, Ioan Sarbu--”a traditional starving artist” living locally but with little local demand.

“How many frescoes need to be restored around here?” Kaye said. A Fullerton dermatologist bought the icon, then asked if she could also find him older icons.

“My husband was born in Bulgaria and had heard of a Bulgarian who was restoring icons (and who, in turn,) made the connection to Svetlana,” Kaye said. “The doctor was elated. He’s active in his church and believed in the power of icons. He put one in every (examination room).”

Nenov’s collection was recently on display between animation cels of Woody Woodpecker and a lithograph by Winston Churchill’s daughter, Sara.

The legal status of icons has constantly flip-flopped.

Exportation was absolutely illegal at the end of the ‘80s, for instance; then the “icon border” opened again with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin’s pronouncement initiated a tug of war between Russian museums, galleries and churches, a holy war of the arts that remains unresolved.

“The church has always said that icons are works of reverence and should strictly be used to pray to,” Kaye said. “(The Communists) disregarded (what they felt was) the church’s nonsense. . . . They systematically ruined many churches, said the icons were works of art and lifted them for museums, strictly for their ‘historical significance.’

“Now icons are again (considered) religious artifacts rather than works of art. The (art) historians are screaming, saying the church doesn’t know how to care for icons, that they won’t be kept temperature-controlled, that they’re going to start burning candles in front of them and pouring hot oils on them, all the ritualistic stuff that ruins them.”

Kaye characterized Nenov as devoutly religious, yet Nenov had made it clear she had no intention of returning the objects.

Kaye could see her point.

“It’s a fine line,” Kaye said. “I look at it this way. These (icons) have changed hands so many times, each time somebody bought them from somebody who bought them from somebody. . . . The church has to recognize that along the way people paid a lot of money for these, that they acted within the laws of the land at the time, that there wasn’t reverence for icons at the time. If the church wants them back, it should make an offer to buy them.”

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The ethical aspect of dealing in such artifacts continues to arise. Kaye said she’s next planning a buying trip to Poland, where “all these things from synagogues that were desecrated (under Communism) are now for sale. . . . The scrolls, the cover for the Torah . . . we can pick those things up for $100 to $500, artifacts hundreds of years old that technically belong to somebody’s synagogue. . . .

“They’re wonderful. How they came (to be put up for sale), of course, is so tragic--I’d rather see them end up in the hands of a Jewish family that survived,” she said.

Laws in most European countries prohibit the export of items more than 50 years old, but Kaye said: “As long as we can get them out, we will. It’s one of those laws like the speed limit: Everybody knows it’s 55 and everybody drives faster, and if you’re caught . . . the worst that can happen (in this case) is confiscation.”

* Svetlana Nenov’s icons remain on display through March at the Lori Kaye Gallery in the Anaheim Hilton and Towers, 777 Convention Way, Anaheim. Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays. (714) 750-3047.