Iconological Paragraphs

These paragraphs encompass a theoretical meditation on the icon from the painter’s perspective. They treat the icon as a creative act, in light of its aesthetic implications, contemporary challenges, possibilities, and ambiguities. They aim not so much to answer questions as to explore them, in the hope of elucidating facets of the icon as a work of art that perhaps might go unexplored within a more systematic and polemical approach in current theological debate.

1. Diligently search the theological treatise, and you will be hard-pressed to find aesthetic solutions to pictorial problems. Ironically, thinking too theologically about icon painting can get in the way and stifle the creative act. Clues are to be found in the icons themselves, solutions in the act of painting itself. The task involves more than just illustrating theological propositions. The icon should be given space to speak in its own terms: aesthetically.^[1] Yet it is all too common to bypass the aesthetic facts. Does the painting work or not? What is form doing? Solutions are to be arrived at through unique and unrepeatable creative acts, which bespeak of ever-renewing ecclesial life. Ready-made formulas do not suffice. No method, style, or ‘school’, ancient or modern, guarantees good results. As Shih-T’ao puts it, ‘…he who is unable to liberate himself from methods winds up inhibited by them’. The method we are after is the ‘non-method’ stringing together all icon painting methods. When the painting works—that is, when it acts as the locus of an encounter with the living presence of the deified ones—theology has happened.
2. The icon as a likeness is more than just forensic mimesis, a photographic taxidermy—simulacra. Likeness is more than ‘an imitation of nature which tries to be nature.’^[2] The aim is to capture more than what meets the eye, to make the intangible tangible, to capture a living likeness.^[3]
3. Form is stylised, description abbreviated, some features exaggerated, in order to get at the kernel, the main idea of the subject, those integral characteristics that clearly identify and define it.^[4] Some describe this pictorial approach as an attempt at capturing the ‘essence’.
4. What the painter figuratively calls ‘essence’ is not to be confused with the theologian’s ousia, for the essence of beings is undepictable. Perhaps we can speak of the ‘essence’ of the subject as its mysterious heart, encountered as we commune with it in its act of existing, directly known in its activity without it being entirely known. Something is revealed that remains hidden. In other words, the painter aims to plastically express the subject’s logos (its inner voice)^[5] as manifest in its unique character and distinctiveness. Hence the painting can be seen as the pictorial equivalent of the painter’s heart, as it reverberates in response to the voices of the living beings he depicts.
5. That which transcends sense and resides within sensible beings can be apprehended noetically through sensation (aesthesis). Hence that which transcends mere likeness, such as character or personality, is manifest through and therefore representable in the subject’s likeness. For likeness is nothing other than the radiance of the inner person. The challenge is to capture the full person, the inner and outer man. How does the painter realise this? By entering into prayerful communion with the saint in the act of painting. By pondering on his or her unique pattern of life. By acquainting ourselves with the various interpretations of their likeness within Tradition. This process initiates a noetic encounter, leading to identification with the saint. Thereby an aesthetic synthesis gradually unfolds, and the precise form of the saint begins to takes shape, from the inside out; what is internally apprehended by the painter becomes concretised and seen in the unrepeatable actuality and vividness of the painting. For in it the noetic and sensible finally coincide and are inextricably united.
6. The capturing and conveying of character mostly remain a mystery that unfolds unconsciously in the act of painting. However, it could be said that it is mainly accessible through the rendition of the subject’s unique gaze and countenance, along with its physique and posture. In the icon of St Michael (fig. 1), for instance, he looks directly at us somewhat sternly, with alert and fearless eyes, a slight frown and wrinkled forehead, in full awareness of the moment. He is youthful and slender, and assertively lifts his sword with his right hand, with a firm grasp, in perfect command of himself, as if ready to strike suddenly without hesitation. Archangel Gabriel (fig. 2), on the other hand, looks at us with a gentle gaze, with slightly raised eyebrows and a rounder face, as if full of concern and trepidation. He is less threatening in appearance, with a fuller torso, and turns more frontally towards us while gently holding his staff on the right hand and a crystal globe on his left. He seems ready to deliver a divine message but gazes at the recipient of revelation with tenderness, as if fully aware of its consequent powerful impact.

They each bear characteristics that accord to their respective service and differentiate them as unique hypostases rather than interchangeable types. Moreover, ‘the graphic, etching-like hatching technique of the light on the faces produces an expressive result and combines light with form. It makes one think of the idea that only with the approach and activity-movement (enargeia) of light is the true character of a thing—a body, a face, a person—revealed, and like the proverbial iron in the fire, we can’t fully ascertain whether we are looking at matter or light, looking at an Archangel’s face or perceiving the movement of grace in it’.^[6] In other words, the handling of form in these icons does not only bring out their distinctive character, but it also actualises their presence as living beings.

 

Figure 1: Archangel Michael, Hieromonk Silouan, 2019.
Sepia and white chalk on toned paper (detail), 62.23 x 148.59 cm.

 

7. Before beginning to paint a saint I first research the various versions of his likeness found in the Tradition, looking for the salient features that tie them all together. I then select the samples of best quality, the most eloquent and clearly executed, those that resonate with me and that suggest the overall sentiment I would like to emphasize. A drawing is then executed in which the distinctive character of the saint is sought after by way of intuitively synthesizing the best components of the previously selected versions. The direct duplication of any one of the versions should be strictly avoided. Rather, while interpreting, personal temperament should dictate the nuances of proportion, shaping of form, quality of line, etc. In the drawing process a sense of movement or animation of line and form is sought after. The figure should be instilled with a sense of innate energy, even if it stands still. The three-quarter view of the face is important in helping to achieve this effect. Moreover, a sense of dynamism is arrived at by positioning the figure obliquely to the picture plane. But the full-face frontal or hieratic pose, although obviously meant to establish a relationship with the viewer, rather instills the image with a sense of timeless stillness, if not monotony.

 

Figure 2: Archangel Gabriel, Hieromonk Silouan, 2019.
Sepia and white chalk on toned paper (detail), 62.23 x 148.59 cm.

 

In general, the work should hold together among its constituent parts with rhythmic unity and the figure should be perceived as coming forward from the picture plane towards the viewer, establishing a relationship. Once this begins to happen in the conceptualisation of the drawing, a feeling of close proximity to the saint begins to unfold—we sense that he has been made present. The drawing then has reached resolution. The sense of presence is made more and more apparent in the painting process, when colour is introduced and volume appears in the process of highlighting, further enhancing the sense of concrete corporeality of the figure depicted. This approach then achieves its culmination when the eyes are painted and we get the sense that the figure is full of consciousness, that the person looks out into our world, or that we are being looked at by the living saint.

8. The process just described must be achieved by the abbreviation of form—aimed at the clear and direct articulation of the saint’s characteristics—keeping a balance between abstraction and naturalism. Too much abstraction, on the one hand, will render the model a conceptual ‘type’, depleted of its existential uniqueness as a person. Too much naturalism, on the other hand, will bring the figure too close to a sense of our mode of corruptible and temporal existence. The balance to be sought aims at avoiding unnecessary and distracting details that hamper the sacred function of the icon while giving the viewer a sense that the saints, although entering into our space and time, nevertheless inhabit a trans-temporal existence.
9. All representation involves ‘abstraction’, a ‘drawing out’. Nature presents a multitude of facts to the painter’s eye, from which he must select according to his feeling and conception. ‘Subtract the mind, and the eye is open to no purpose’.^[7] In selecting there must be an interpretation that translates the three-dimensional observable facts into a synthetic order within the two dimensions of the picture plane.^[8] This translation is what we call ‘abstracting from’ what is perceived in the act of representation. Hence all art is abstract. Representation is abstraction, abstraction is representation.^[9]
10. ‘Likeness’ in the icon is to be achieved on a level surpassing mere empiricist ‘accuracy’, since the aim is to convey meaning through a mode of representation encompassing both sensible perception and truths known noetically.^[10] Hence retinal and intellectual conception should be brought to a synthesis and coexist complementarily within the pictorial articulation. Sensation is conveyed by naturalism as an index of observable facts, intellection by abstraction as evincing interpretive thought.^[11] This synthesis, however, is accompanied by feeling, through which we arrive at a poetic reconfiguration of reality. Thereby pictorial form in the icon acquires the flexibility capable of suggesting not only historical facts but also eschatological realities.
11. Neither the ‘Academic’ nor ‘Byzantine’ styles guarantee anything.^[12] No style has a monopoly as to the most sacred in import.^[13] The weight lies in the content carried, the sentiment conveyed, the coming together of idea and feeling, by whichever stylistic manner. However, poetic or analogical pictorial conception, such as we see in medieval painting,^[14] is always preferable, as it is much more flexible in expression than mere empiricist verisimilitude.^[15]
12. Nuances of aesthetic form have the capacity to influence the viewer’s emotive and intellectual response to the icon. They can challenge, transform, and elevate our understanding of reality and its multiple ontological levels.^[16] Thus the conveying of meaning in the icon unfolds not just along a semantic level—in the ‘reading’ of the narrative—but also through the specific way the image has been embodied pictorially. The challenge for the painter is to find just the right mode of embodiment, wherein semantic and formal means effectively coincide and augment each other in the conveying of meaning.
13. Imagination—the mental image, the sister of memory to be kept in check by the nous—is indeed involved in solving pictorial problems, for techne is an imaginative act—the infusing of form (eidos) into matter (hyle).^[17] Stifle the imaginative act—the constant consideration of the multiple possible answers to pictorial problems—and the icon suffers; nourish it, and it flourishes. The work unfolds from imagination to the actuality of the painting and back again to the imagination, unceasingly, until the work is resolved. The icon painter is to work both from an external and internal prototype. The idea must be embodied, seen, and tested in order for it to be clarified, revised, and perfected. In the end there is no dualism. The inner and external, sensible and noetic, come back together in pictorial embodiment.
14. Unlike most icons of St Innocent of Alaska (fig. 3), this one depicts him as a young priest, rather than as an older bishop in hierarchical regalia. We see him in a dynamic frontal pose, with torso and epitrachelion running parallel to the picture plane, while his head slightly turns towards the viewer’s left. A miniature landscape scene of his missionary activities in Alaska unfolds behind him. Above his right-hand shoulder we see him preaching to the local Aleut, while on the other side we find him sitting as an evangelist in his study, reminding us of his Gospel translation into the local dialect and his catechetical treatise, ‘Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven’. He holds a scroll with his right hand and gently gestures towards it with his left, on which is perched an American bald eagle turning and gazing up towards him. The eagle’s tail and scroll slightly extend into the framing border of the icon, suggesting that its world enters into our space and time, an idea that is also suggested by the halo which extends beyond the frame above. The halo’s fiery cinnabar colour extends down to the richly ornate epitrachelion, giving the composition a strong vertical thrust from top to bottom, as if the radiating grace of his priesthood cascades down from head to toe. This vertical ‘strip’ forms a flat ‘colour field’ that complements and helps to accentuate the volumetric forms of the face, eagle, hands, and scroll at the bottom of the icon. Moreover, St Innocent wears a dark cassock, composed of warm proplasmos and cool bluish highlights that project out from the picture plane, giving the saint a sense of concrete corporeality. His cassock also stands in stark contrast to the lighter ochre, lemon yellow, green, orange, sienna, and white tonalities of the background. Hence the saint is thrust forward towards the viewer, while the scenes from his life recede to the background, perceived as if drenched in their own environment of light. The border is a dark azurite blue, lighter in value than the cassock, functioning as a window-like frame through which we encounter the saint. It could be said that this framing device, the concrete plasticity of the volumetric forms, and the treatment of space in the image all imbue it with a subtle illusionism that enhances the sense of the saint’s palpable presence. St Innocent’s face is gentle and bright, composed of cool green earth tones in the proplasmos and warm ochres in the highlights, giving his countenance a subtle golden glow. The seamless transitions of tonalities in the face from cool to warm contribute to give it an air of peacefulness. The white, fine highlights, following the form and radiating out and around the most prominent features, are arranged in rhythmic order. The same principle is extended to the other highlights around the icon, instilling the work with inner energy and unity. Furthermore, the cinnabar colour of his halo can also be discerned on the periphery of the saint’s face, his eyelids, and his lips, as if reflecting the radiance of the halo, if not emerging from the face itself. He is young and appears wise, full of vigor and alert, as you would expect of the brilliant and vibrant missionary that he was. He stands still, yet turns slightly and gestures, as if captured in a moment of peaceful conversation. Although he looks to the side, his eyes do not appear vacant and unaware of us. It is as if he is reminiscing with us of his experiences as a missionary, his memories unfolding behind him as we commune with him.

 

Figure 3: St Innocent of Alaska, Hieromonk Silouan, 2012.
Egg tempera and gold on wood panel, 45.72 x 81.28 cm.

 

15. The fact that St Innocent is depicted as a young priest rather than an older bishop and that the composition includes a bald eagle—which he nursed back to life as a missionary—makes this icon one of a kind. Another unique component is the fact that the scenes from the saint’s life unfold as part of a continuous landscape background, arranged according to vertical perspective, rather than in sequences of vignettes relegated to the border, as seen in most biographical icons. Also worth noting is how the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and missionary saints Cyril and Methodios are depicted in his epitrachelion, reminding us of the saint’s great status as Equal-to-the-Apostles. More could be said, but I think that the totality of the composition, with all the various pictorial elements discussed here, makes it clear that in this icon we encounter not just the duplication of a predetermined ‘type’, but rather the manifestation of the living saint in the distinctiveness of his unique personal characteristics, as interpreted by the painter.
16. The icon of St Onouphrios the Great (fig. 4) is also unique in conception, with no specific prototype serving as a point of departure. Its theme is drawn from the saint’s hagiography, which tells us how an Angel of the Lord came every Saturday and Sunday to administer to the anchorite the Holy Eucharist. The scene unfolds in a desert having some signs of life and vegetation, including the spring and date palm tree that supplied the saint with physical nourishment in the wilderness. The background consists of a colour field of malachite green, slightly lighter at the horizon, which sets the mood of the composition, suggesting a cool, calm, and still morning twilight, almost dreamlike in quality. The Eucharistic themes of distribution and reception, and the idea of ‘procession and return’,^[18] are conveyed by the composition’s substructure, which combines diagonal and circular movements. The movement begins diagonally with the blessing hand—signifying divine power—emerging from the radiating disk on the upper left-hand corner, passes through the central depiction of the fiery Seraph, descends from St Onouphrios down to the bottom of the composition, follows the horizontal path of the spring, and returns vertically via the date palm back to the blessing hand. Thus we are led back, full circle, to where we began—the Source of every good gift. There is also a gradual progression from the geometric flatness of the disk, to the hieratic shallow form of the angel, parallel to the picture plane, and finally to a more pronounced plasticity of form in the depiction of the saint’s body. In other words, we go in visual analogy from simple to composite, from the incorporeal to the corporeal. Although the centrality and chromatic intensity of the Seraph—its colour and shape implying the radiance of the Chalice—command our attention, it nevertheless lacks volume in comparison with the saint. St Onouphrios appears closest to us in the foreground, with a concrete bodily presence, as if asserting in his corporeality the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ. This effect is realised by depicting him in a dynamic three-quarter view, projecting out diagonally, breaking the flatness of the picture plane. St Onouphrios is seen as if caught in the very moment of movement, taking a step forward with his left leg towards the Eucharist. He also seems to be stepping towards us, with his foot extending beyond the bottom edge of the composition, into the space of the viewer. This stance enhances the subtle illusionism, accentuating his living presence. The saint’s white beard gently flows down to his ankles, as if suggesting the pure flow of Eucharistic grace of which the totality of his being partakes. The beard’s verticality also parallels the verticality of the trunk of the date palm, on the opposite side, as if to suggest the staunch stability of dispassion the saint has attained. Moreover, the beard’s flow brings our attention to the flow of the blue, crystalline spring under him, reminding us of the Lord’s words: ‘He that believeth in me…out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water’ (John 7:38).

 

Figure 4: St. Onouphrios the Great, Hieromonk Silouan, 2015. Egg tempera and gold on wood panel, 45.72 x 81.28 cm.

 

17. The icon of St Onouphrios pulsates with a rhythmic unity that combines stillness with vitality. The use of green throughout the composition, along with the blooming flowers under the saint’s feet, imparts to the icon a feeling of refreshment and a sense of rejuvenation. With the streams of his tears he has irrigated the barren desert and now it bears life. Although set in a desert, it could be said that the scene is imbued with a paradisiacal atmosphere. The saint paradoxically inhabits both a rugged terrain and a blissful garden. He dwells simultaneously in the Kingdom of God and on earth. He has transcended the limits of corporeal, mortal existence yet in doing so has not turned into a discarnate abstraction of himself. Rather, he displays his palpable body—youthful in appearance despite his old age—as the assertion of his participation in divinity through the Eucharist. All of these layers of meaning emerge from a meditation on the icon’s pictorial actuality, and not just from an imposition of a priori concepts.
18. Bringing into the icon a priori assumed meanings can inadvertently lead to a disregard for its aesthetic integrity.^[19] We should bear in mind that not all distortions of form convey a transfigured state of deification. Neither does the handling of light in all instances necessarily intimate participation in the Uncreated Light. Gold, in fact, can often have a purely decorative effect and purpose. The denial of specificity of form—on which symbolic interpretation should be grounded—can lead to the tyranny of arbitrary concepts over the icon’s concrete being as a work of art, hence the danger of imposing theological interpretations and descriptions that bypass, and therefore bear no conformity whatsoever, to the aesthetic actuality of a given work. There are ideas of what the icon is ‘supposed to be’, but there is also what a given icon actually does or accomplishes in its aesthetic specificity.
19. The dogmatisation of style mainly results from the misapplication of mystagogical interpretation. It often takes the form of an overemphasis on simplistic one-to-one symbolic readings of the technique and stylistic features of icons. The mystagogical approach in and of itself is not the problem. It hardly needs demonstration that the patristic consensus takes mystagogy for granted. If mystagogical interpretations are legitimate when it comes to Nature, the Divine Liturgy, and Scripture, so it must be with the icon. The problem then lies not so much in lack of precedent for this approach as with the ‘hardening’ of symbolic readings.^[20] In this latter tendency can be seen an attempt to thwart the alteration of any minutia of the stylistic tropos of traditional icons—mainly masterpieces from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries—considering any alteration as the compromise of theological meaning and therefore the betrayal of the revealed truth of Tradition. Consequently, the practice of icon painting becomes stultified, stripped of its creative dimension and reduced to nothing other than the endless mechanical copying of older prototypes, guaranteed as containing the ‘correct’ symbolic stylistic code embodying irreproachable dogma.
20. In dogmatising style some have failed to make the distinction, implied by the Church Fathers, between the essential and secondary aspects of the icon.^[21] The first is unalterable, consisting of the icon—the bodily image—that already exists hypostatically in the form that Christ took in becoming incarnate.^[22] The second is alterable, having to do with the flexibility that exists, clearly evident throughout the history of the icon, in rendering artistically the external characteristics of this already established form. In other words, the patristic theology of the icon suggests that, contrary to the current misconception, there is no crucial need of a specific technique or style for there to be a truly authentic representation of Christ, since his bodily form itself is already an icon par excellence. This fact even relativises the Byzantine style as the only legitimate mode of ecclesial representation.
21. However, the danger lies in going to the opposite extreme and inadvertently dismissing altogether the theological implications to be found in the pictorial principles tying together different styles within Tradition,^[23] and how aesthetic nuances and qualitative differences, existing between stylistic forms, inevitably affect the viewer’s response on an emotive and intellectual level.^[24] Hence, pictorial principles and stylistic properties do indeed stir the viewer either towards or away from an Orthodox ecclesial ethos.
22. The living spirit of Tradition is to be sought and experienced here and now, as at once both contemporaneous and timeless.^[25] Possibilities and clues to pictorial solutions, already implicitly present in the icon, may be found both in the sacred art of the world’s traditional cultures and even modern art.^[26] For those who have eyes to see, Tradition may be found in the most unlikely places.^[27]
23. The relativity of the Byzantine style renders it possible to look into the various cultures of the world for pictorial ideas deemed to be adaptable to the icon. In Japanese screen paintings, for instance, we can find analogies between aesthetic and spiritual realities, particularly in the treatment of golden space, which can be interpreted from an Orthodox perspective. As can be seen in this screen (fig. 5), the sumptuous gold leaf functions simultaneously as positive and negative space, foreground and background, shifting throughout the composition from designating emptiness to that of corporeal form in Nature. Thereby the treatment of space suggests the Void (Śūnyatā) giving way to manifest existence and their transcendent union. At the top, for example, the image reads as both empty space and clouds, obscuring the view of the mountain landscape on the left-hand and the tree branches on the right-hand side of the composition. Similarly, the gold at the bottom functions in three simultaneous levels: as emptiness, clouds obscuring the rocky path, and the path itself, through which the figures tread. The emperor, dressed in white under the umbrella, and his assistants appear to float in a realm of heavenly radiance yet retain a sense of weight and gravity. They seem to stand firmly on the threshold between Heaven and earth, dream and reality, being and becoming. The figure-ground ambiguity and suggestion of expansive space thus give the composition an air of suspended animation, reminding us of the mutability and ephemerality of manifest existence. Rather than an inert symbol, consigned to the background, here the gold is an active component of the composition, dynamically relating with both landscape and figures. It designates not so much utter ‘emptiness’ as living presence, active rest, and fecund potentiality. It is as if silence is given substance.

 

 

Figure 5: Meeting between Emperor Wen and Fisherman Lü Shang, Attributed to Kano Takanobu, ca. 1600.
One of two six-panel folding screen; ink, colour, and gold on gilded paper. 168.8 x 379.7 cm.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Public Domain.

 

Perhaps these paradoxes, forming an integral part of the pictorial structure of this screen, can serve as clues for the icon painter, in his or her attempt to somehow aesthetically convey beings as expressions of the divine Logos. The treatment of gold and spatial ambiguity found here can then be interpreted as the uncreated radiance of the Logos, suggestive of the co-inhering of created beings with their transcendent Source in a state of deified existence. Through the incorporation of pictorial paradox, the icon would thus convey the fact that ‘in Him we live, and move, and have our being’. The focus would not be so much the Void and the insubstantiality of illusory existence, as the audible silence of the Logos permeating and sustaining all things in their hypostatic integrity: the Logos in the logoi and the logoi in the Logos—our ontological grounding in divinity.

24. What makes the manner of traditional Indian and Persian miniatures less viable as a stylistic option for icon painting? They unveil to our eyes a vision of Nature imbued with Edenic splendor. The sweet fragrance of tender flowers and lush trees, each in their unique variety, seems almost accessible. Every colour in its purity sparkles as a glimmering jewel in a heavenly crown. The figures are not overburdened with weight. Line, in its crispest clarity, defines the body with delightful grace. Even war and action are accompanied with stillness. Decorative pattern tends to prevail. Classic Persian painting seems composed of precious stones, whereas Indian painting appears as if formed from flower petals. There are indeed a variety of ways of depicting a transfigured world full of poetic charm and joy.
25. In this painting attributed to Purkhu of Kangra (fig. 6) we find a depiction of Nature in its Edenic glory. We encounter a lush grove of trees, every one of them unique in the shape and green shade of its leaves, speckled here and there with little, tender flower blossoms in a variety of colours: scarlet, white, and yellow. Birds can also be spotted perching on the branches, beneath the shady canopy. Noticing their elusive presence is just enough to conjure up the sound of their melodious chirping and singing. Rolling hills, carpeted with grass, can be seen in the distance between the trees, giving the scene an atmosphere of idyllic isolation. The use of rich greens and accents of bright orange conjure up the sensation of spring fertility and the nurturing of rainfall. The light of the scene is simultaneously soft and crisp, reminiscent of an approaching noonday brightness. At the bottom, a flowing silver river, graceful in its undulating rhythm, underlines the whole scene. What is of interest for us here is not so much the narrative theme as the pictorial articulation. The rendering of the vegetation, although imaginary, never becomes predictable in its stylisation. Upon close inspection, in addition to the subtle and refined use of line and tones, we find a rich variety of shapes and patterns in the construction of the image. Abstraction here, instead of depleting the subject, actually enriches its vividness and optical vibrancy. The space is shallow, parallel to the picture plane, without dramatic illusionism; nevertheless it breathes as a convincing environment for the figures. It all comes together as a true representation of nature, almost implying botanical precision, yet without turning into a mere scientific illustration. Everything seems to pulsate with vitality. Here we are clearly not dealing with the depiction of a mundane reality, but rather a poetic interpretation of Nature. Indeed, the general feeling captured aesthetically is that of a vision of paradisiacal bliss. Why not take the pictorial clues suggested here and apply them to the icon? This miniature cannot be easily dismissed as completely alien and lacking in consonance with the inner spirit of the icon painting Tradition.

 

Figure 6: Krishna Flirting with the Gopis, to Radha’s Sorrow. Attributed to Purkhu, ca. 1810-20. Opaque watercolour and gold on paper. 25.1 x 32 cm. Museum Rietberg Zürich. Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

 

26. In the Persian miniature from the fifteenth century (fig. 7) we can also find pictorial clues for the Edenic depiction of Nature. Similar to Byzantine icons, the composition is developed without depth, through vertical perspective, whereby the elements are stacked up and organised parallel to the picture plane. This lack of depth, in conjunction with the large irregular areas of colour, gives the image strong spatial ambiguity. Nevertheless, the overlapping craggy hills, with areas of dark green grass nestled in between, work well as a convincing organic environment wherein the various animals of the wilderness play and rest. Stylisation is very pronounced, yet the distinctive traits of each depicted animal are clearly apparent, attesting to a keen observation of nature. The delicate rendition of trees, leaves, bushes, and flowers enhances the overall decorative charm and engaging variety. Everything is animated with dynamic interaction, whether it be animals, birds, plants, or rocks. At the top right and left-hand side, the image even bursts out of its frame into the decorated border, adding vitality to the scene. Colour, at once assertive and gentle in its cool brightness, and line, lyrical and crisp, predominate. Here the initial impact of the image is more abstract in its general effect than in the Indian miniature, yet there is no lack of naturalism. Broad patches of colour and organic flat forms first command our attention. However, the minutely detailed execution draws us in, inviting close, intimate inspection. Thereby we become immersed in the bucolic scene wherein an ascetic engages harmoniously with the wild beasts, having regained the paradisiacal state. One might object to how the depicted elements lack in plasticity and weight. Nevertheless, it could also be argued that the use of abstraction here is not excessively reductive and therefore does not deprive the beings depicted of their substantiality. They are indeed rendered refined and subtle, unencumbered by temporal existence, but not as to make them completely vacuous and discarnate. Thereby the miniature acquires an air of the transcendent, as if we were beholding a materialised vision of a ‘new heaven and a new earth’. In the end, it cannot be denied that all the formal elements come together to create a feeling of gentleness, calm, and peace. So even this kind of composition contains pictorial elements worth pondering as applicable to icon painting, in its task of conveying Nature in its Edenic glory.

 

Figure 7: Majnun in the Desert, illumination from Nizami Ganjavi’s, Layla and Majnun (1543–44), by Aqa Mirak. Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

 

27. Prototypes are open to inexhaustible possibilities of pictorial modes of articulation.^[28] The task for the painter entails more than the mere replication of old pictorial interpretations and solutions. Rather, the challenge is to discover and reveal the new ones suggested by the prototype but which have remained overlooked, or poorly expressed, by previous generations. Thereby contemporary icon painting can become a witness to the inexhaustible facets of the living and ever-renewing Tradition, which have always been present but await to be uncovered and rendered brilliant in splendor.
28. I paint like myself—now—reflecting my individuality, in continuity and in oneness of mind with those that have preceded and exceeded me in pictorial wisdom. The icon should be a pictorial equivalent to the unique, internal and authentic, personal encounter of the painter with the prototype.^[29] If I drown out my individuality, I drown out the icon’s iconicity. If I fail to paint with mastery, I becloud the icon’s aesthetic voice and translucency.^[30]
29. The icon’s aesthetic is one of paradoxical translucency: an image opening into an ontological reality beyond itself (the prototype) and yet not leaving the concreteness of the aesthetic object behind.^[31] Disregard for the stuff of the icon’s materiality undermines its sacramental and incarnational modality. The icon should work as a painting in which the nuances and complexities of its pictorial actuality are clearly apparent. This quality is crucial, especially today, surrounded as we are by an endless sea of disembodied, digitally mediated imagery. The image becomes disposable, fleeting, the icon another simulation, as ephemeral as any other in the endless proliferation of reproductions—faux artifice lacking in aesthetic vitality.^[32] Has the icon become alien to its own body?
30. Ironically, the more image-saturated our consumer culture becomes, the more does the image become an insubstantial mirage. It is not enough, however, to consider the icon as purely an image in the abstract—nothing more than a discarnate mental concept. To do so would blunt its aesthetic being of efficacy as a witness to its incarnational basis. The icon encompasses not only the image depicted but also the materiality of the medium of representation. The materiality of the medium imparts its own energy to the image. The latter, if considered in isolation, is adaptable to various modes of embodiment: some viscerally direct, others filtering and distancing in effect. Image and material embodiment augment each other and come together as the totality of the aesthetic experience, encompassing both feeling and meaning, sense and intellect. The manipulation of materials serves as an index of the painter’s human hand and activity, enabling us to retrace the creative act and process of manufacture. In the manipulation of raw materials, through theanthropic synergy, unfolds the transfiguration of matter. Matter thus becomes a vehicle of divine grace. Nuances derived from the manipulation of materials—the sheen of gold leaf, pigment texture, viscosity, translucency and opacity of the paint, etc.—cannot be underestimated in imparting to each icon its unique physical presence, whether this be perceived consciously or unconsciously. Viewing an icon through a photograph or a computer screen does not have the same impact as encountering it in its palpable and immediate actuality. The former mediums lack, in their cold and distant mechanical anonymity, the felt presence of matter manipulated by human touch and its corresponding affective results. The process of bringing the image to its physical substantiality and potency can be called the actualising of the incarnational modality of the icon’s aesthetic being.
31. In the late nineteenth-century the experiments of modernist painting and the invention of photography inaugurated the reassessment of the classical mimetic standards of representation as handed down by the Renaissance and codified by the European academies of art. The avant-garde then began to value non-European, so-called Primitive, forms of artistic expression as more authentic, if not more sophisticated, than the ossified classical canon. This reassessment, moreover, fueled the revaluation of the artistic merit of folk and medieval forms of art, such as the icon.^[33] What had been at one time considered products of the crude and backward Dark Ages were now hailed for their unique artistic sensibility and genius. Medieval art became a form of proto-modernism. This paradigm shift, of course, had its problems. But it is ironic and impossible to deny how modern art has played a role in development of the twentieth-century revival of the traditional icon.
32. It cannot be denied that to the modern eye the icon appears non-naturalistic. But, when speaking of the traditional icon as ‘abstract’ in style, are we not projecting onto it our own aesthetic misconceptions?^[34] Did not the Byzantines consider their exemplary icons as ‘lifelike’ and living images?^[35] Has the icon, then, been co-opted and ‘reinvented’ along the lines of modernist aesthetics? To a large extent the twentieth century avant-garde experimentation with the icon can be characterised along these lines. Perhaps it could also be said that, because the necessity did not present itself within the historical limits and conceptual framework of Byzantine culture, what was pictorially implicit went undiscussed in the past: the icon’s challenge to limited conceptions of mimesis. Now, however, the advantage of hindsight and the advent of modern art’s aesthetic discourse have made this fact more explicit. The icon reminds us, in other words, that there is much more to a living image than conformity to post-Renaissance standards of naturalistic representation. Indeed, an icon can be considered as a realistic, living image and yet employ abstraction in the actualisation of this very fact.^[36] Therefore, if it is problematic to impose on the icon modernist readings of abstraction, so likewise we should be cautious not to misinterpret the Byzantine ekphraseis of living icons to mean images displaying our own standards of photographic ‘accuracy’.^[37]
33. The contemporary icon painter unavoidably finds himself in a tension—not always antagonistically—between Tradition and modernity, working in the middle of two opposing conceptions of art: one pre-Kantian, the other post-Kantian. We look through our ‘period eye’, or rather, more precisely our ‘period eyes’.^[38] Hence, we slip from interested to disinterested aesthetic contemplation of the image. We value, on the one hand, the liturgical function, acknowledging the manifest presence of the saint here and now in the icon; on the other hand, the aesthetic formal properties for their own sake, independent of the subject depicted. We look for both a tasteful, aesthetically satisfying icon, and yet know that our encounter in prayer is not relegated to mere taste. We vacillate between functionalist and formalist readings.
34. But why should the aesthetic be seen as merely a matter of ‘taste’, whereas the icon as something much more lofty and ‘spiritual’, and therefore beyond the category of art? To disparage the aesthetic is to disparage the ‘body’ of the icon, that through which ‘spirituality’ is manifested in the configuration of form. Hence, as C.A. Tsakiridou puts it: ‘If something is art and is also “spiritual”, it is spiritual as art or to the extent that it is an art object (i.e., not the actual physical object made of wood, gold, tempera, etc. but what is painted and shown on its surface, the aesthetic object at hand). A painting that expresses spirituality does so by putting forth a certain kind of form. In the absence of that form, nothing (spiritual) is expressed’.^[39]
35. The interpretations and standards of style currently taken for granted as ‘canonical’ and ‘traditional’ in fact go no further back than the twentieth-century ‘theology of the icon’, as articulated by the pioneers of the icon revival. Among these interpretations we find ideas concerning the Uncreated Light of icons, the transfigured body, reverse perspective, the absence of shadows, the depiction of eschatological existence in icons, etc. Although these and other interpretations—some admittedly more tenable than others—have only been articulated recently, that does not make them by default unrepresentative of the ecclesial mind concerning icons. Yet given the lack of evidence, it is very unlikely that ancient iconographers consciously thought of style and systematically sought to realise, in the same theological terms, the ideas these interpretations expound. Nevertheless, some of these ideas have by now become to many, for better or for worse, somewhat definitive perimeters for icon painting. This hardening of thought has led to much misunderstanding and confusion. It should be kept in mind, however, that although some of these interpretations imply the possibility of intimating aesthetically spiritual realities and states of deified existence, not every single icon actualises such a lofty goal in every case. Unfortunately, much theological discussion and speculation about icons fail to make this distinction, taking for granted that all icons accomplish this great feat. Furthermore, the theological ideas listed above are in fact open to pictorial realisation in a variety of stylistic methods. They need not be restricted by the standards of style as dogmatised by the pioneers of the icon revival. Herein lies the creative challenge for the contemporary iconographer: the development of a painting method true to himself and his time, yet imbued with the ecclesial mind. For the theologian, on the other hand, the challenge lies in respecting, acknowledging, and speaking from a clear perception of the aesthetic actuality of each individual icon, not just a speculative ideal.
36. Not all icons actualise their aesthetic potential in manifesting the prototype to the same degree. Some stand out as exemplary, full of enargeia.^[40] The exemplary icon closes the gap, so to speak, between the image and prototype. It embodies and manifests vividly, in a living way, with utmost clarity and eloquence, the subject re-presented, within the framework of its aesthetic actuality. It is no longer simulacra we are dealing with—an image of an image, degraded in the process of reproduction—a stereotypically approached icon. It instead becomes a site in which ‘image and reality converge’.^[41]
37. After photography, film, the digital image, and virtual reality, we find ourselves within quite a different relationship to mimesis. And in hindsight, reflecting on all the art historical developments that have preceded us, we have more to choose from as possibilities of representation. We are not confined within the walls of Byzantium, medieval workshop conventions, the archives and collections of an emperor’s court, or the exigencies of Greco-Roman visual culture. The boundaries have become more porous in our information age, the images more eclectic and omnipresent, immediately accessible, easily alterable, even disposable and fugitive, in what has been called our ‘global village’ and ‘society of the spectacle’.^[42]
38. The contemporary icon painter, surrounded as he is by a plethora of modes of representation in a fragmented hyper-visual culture, must inevitably confront the arduous task of his pictorial choices. Why choose one style over another? Which pictorial mode can be said to embody most eloquently an ecclesial conscience? Which one is to function liturgically most efficiently? What is the painter communicating through his stylistic choices? How is he hoping to transform our perception of reality? There are neither easy answers nor ready-made formulas guaranteeing good results for the creative act. The temptation is to retreat from cultural fragmentation into a stubbornly insular and purist practice of icon painting, based on a romantically conceived, unblemished uniformity of the past.^[43] It is indeed crucial to avail ourselves of the time-tested pictorial principles of the icon painting tradition. These principles should serve as the foundation for further creative development and constant renewal. But an approach which seeks to freeze, dogmatise and endlessly replicate a generic ‘Byzantine style’, as the only legitimate ‘sacred style’, is not the solution.^[44] We should be careful not to mistake ‘Byzantinism’ for Tradition.^[45] Thereby the creative act is only smothered and the icon dies, ceasing to bear witness to the ever-renewing life of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Instead, how about we begin to look at the unprecedented access we now have, within our post-modernity, to an endless supply of images and pictorial traditions of other cultures, as an asset rather than a threat? Why not take the challenge of wisely discerning and implementing pictorially what can be integrated harmoniously with the icon? In the end, the painter himself, creatively guided according to an ecclesial conscience, becomes the mediating centre through which the disarray of our hyper-visual culture can be brought into a transformative and harmonising contact with the charismatic life of the Church. Icon painting thus becomes authentically contemporary, bearing witness to our current experience of genuine and living faith, rather than the sterile duplication of what has been experienced by others in the past. But how this unfolds remains a mystery of the creative act. It can never be artificially codified, mechanically systematised, or depersonalised.
39. The iconodule Fathers of the eighth and nineteenth centuries did not say all that needs, or will ever need, to be said about the icon. They dealt with the problem of images as it came articulated by the iconoclasts. It was necessary to refute them within the given perimeters of the arguments presented at the time, mainly focusing on the theory of the image as it pertained to the Incarnation, not on the nuances of the icon’s aesthetic dimension. Hence, they made neither proscriptive nor prescriptive statements about style per se. We, on the other hand, have to grapple with the formal implications of the icon, given that we now find ourselves within an unprecedented multitude of images, incongruent stylistic options, and the privilege, if not burden, of a broader art historical hindsight not limited to Greco-Roman precedents.
40. These paragraphs neither define, prescribe, nor proscribe, but rather describe, without exhausting, some aspects of icon painting. Some icons conform and live up to these theoretical considerations, while others will come short of the envisioned ideal standards, yet they will still, nevertheless, remain icons. We should, however, pay close attention to all of them and listen to what they have to say in their own terms, according to their unique aesthetic voices.

 

^[1]  By the term ‘aesthetic’ I mean, as defined by C. A. Tsakiridou, ‘that approach to things that looks at their sensuous existence, at the way in which they make themselves perceptible and present to our senses. The aesthetic object is a product of this kind of vision: a record of a thing’s self-presentation registered on a panel, wall or other surface’. C. A. Tsakiridou, ‘Aesthetic Nepsis and Enargeia’, in Seeing the Invisible: Proceedings of the Symposium on Aesthetics of the Christian Image, eds Neda Cvijetić & Maxim Vasiljević (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2016), 27–43; at 28.

 

^[2]  Maurice Denis, ‘Definition of Neotraditionism’, in Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley, CA: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 94–100; at 94.

 

^[3]  In speaking of living likeness, I have in mind the concept of enargeia as elaborated in C. A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013), 49–71. Similarly, in traditional Chinese painting, according to The Six Canons of Hsieh Ho, the painter’s task is not merely to show the outward appearance (hsing), but rather to reveal the breath of life (ch’i) or capture the ‘spirit resonance’ of his subject through the correct use of the forms of Nature. See Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1956), 14–20. On the concept of ch’i in The Six Canons see notes 5 and 6 in Mai-mai Sze, ed. and trans., The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 19. On the parallels between ‘spirit resonance’ and enargeia see C. A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity, 300.

 

^[4]  As noted by Gloria Thomas: ‘In manuscript illumination and medieval painting and sculpture, only those attributes which are necessary to the identity of each thing and its role in the story are depicted. This is the key to the simplifications of form we see in medieval art’. Gloria Thomas, A Primer of Pictorial Devices in Medieval Painting (New Hope, KY: St. Martin de Porres Lay Dominican Community, 2012), 3.

 

^[5]  Here I prefer to use ‘inner voice’ rather than ‘inner principle’ as to imply a living relational reality rather than a conceptual abstraction. As C. A. Tsakiridou puts it, ‘Although intelligible, logoi should not be understood theoretically or abstractly but as the given act of a thing’s existence…Logos is the living reality of a thing, not its explanation or concept’. C. A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, 70.

 

^[6]  This statement was made by the iconographer Dn. Nikita Andrejev in private correspondence with the author on Oct 24, 2019.

 

^[7]  Meister Eckhart, as quoted by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, ‘The Philosophy of Medieval and Oriental Art’, in Traditional Art and Symbolism, ed. Roger Lipsey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 43–70; at 43.

 

^[8]  As Maurice Denis’s famous dictum reminds us: ‘It is well to remember that a picture—before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote—is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order’.

 

^[9]  In other words, representation is inevitably interpretative and therefore relies on pictorial conventions meant to convey specific meanings. This leads E. H. Gombrich to point out that the simplistic demand for artists to just ‘paint what they see’ is self-contradictory and did not really dawn until the Renaissance. We never really completely surrender to sense impressions in our act of representation, since ‘we can never neatly separate what we see from what we know’. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (New York, NY: Bollingen Foundation, 1965), 393–396.

 

^[10]  Cf. Gloria Thomas, A Primer of Pictorial Devices in Medieval Painting, 1–2.

 

^[11]  It could be said that the system of pictorial principles of what is generally referred to as the ‘traditional’ or ‘Byzantine style’ of icon painting arose from a synthesis between late antiquity abstraction and classical naturalism. G. Kordis, Icon as Communion, trans. Caroline Makropoulos (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010), 51; On the synthesis of naturalism and abstraction, also see C.A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity, 208.

 

^[12]  The question is whether the one or the other are striking the right aesthetic chord and functioning as they should within the liturgical context, whether they aid or hinder prayer and convey an Orthodox phronema. It could be said that the Church, considering things in a hierarchy of efficacy, has acknowledged the superiority of the traditional icon, yet in its oikonomia it has not dogmatically rejected the naturalistic icon when imbued with an air of sobriety and piety, also bearing in mind that some of them, in spite of their style, even manifest the power of God through miracles.

 

^[13]  The question of what constitutes a ‘sacred’ style and whether or not the ‘Byzantine style’ could be considered as the only one acceptable in the ecclesial sphere is explored by Markos Kampanis, in ‘Is there a sacred style?’, paper delivered at The Sacred and Secular in Life and Art: A Workshop Dedicated to the Memory of Philip Sherrard, Oxford, July 14–17, 2016. Academia.edu, accessed April 14, 2020, https://www.academia.edu/39724501/MARKOS_KAMPANIS_Is_there_a_sacred_style

 

^[14]  Gloria Thomas, A Primer of Pictorial Devices in Medieval Painting, 1–4.

 

^[15]  Henri Maguire cautions that the Byzantine descriptions of images as ‘lifelike’ should not be confused with our contemporary ideas of illusionistic verisimilitude. According to Maguire, a portrait of a saint was spoken of as ‘lifelike’ when it had ‘accuracy of definition’ or conformity to an established typology and set of attributes. See Henri Maguire, Icons of their Bodies: Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 15–16.

 

^[16]  Orthodox Arts Journal (website); ‘Today and Tomorrow: Principles in the Training of Future Iconographers, Part 1’, by Aidan Hart, posted May 19, 2016, https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/today-tomorrow-principles-training-future-iconographers-pt-1/

 

^[17]  Hieromonk Silouan, ‘Imagination, Expression, Icon: Reclaiming the Internal Prototype’, Sacred Web 39 (2017): 61–94.

 

^[18]  Here we have in mind ‘procession and return’ as reconfigured by St Maximos the Confessor. See Maximos Constas, ‘Maximos the Confessor, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the Transformation of Christian Neoplatonism’, Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies 2, no 1 (2017): 1–12.

 

^[19]  See C. A. Tsakiridou, ‘Theological Fallacies’, in Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity, 130–135.

 

^[20]  Symbols are multivalent. Hence the symbolic import of the icon’s pictorial devices is open to multiple interpretations that are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although some might be problematic, if not completely unfounded.

 

^[21]  See George Kordis, ‘Creating a Christian Image in a Postmodern World’, in Seeing the Invisible: Proceedings of the Symposium on Aesthetics of the Christian Image, eds Neda Cvijetić & Maxim Vasiljević (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2016), 52–53. On the dogmatisation of style see G. Kordis, ‘The return to Byzantine painting tradition: Fotis Kontoglou and the aesthetic problem of twentieth-century orthodox iconography’, in Devotional Cultures of European Christianity, 1790–1960, eds Henning Laugerud & Salvador Ryan, (Portland, OR: Four Court Press, 2012), 122–130.

 

^[22]  In his ‘Chapters against Iconoclasts’, St Theodore the Studite says that ‘the shape of His body, namely the form carrying the features of his face and all the other external characteristics is the unique artistic icon of Christ, and that is why this icon has His name’. Similarly, in ‘Letter 8’ he says that Christ ‘had already been depicted derived from the womb of His Mother Theotokos, otherwise he could not be a real and shaped man’. Both passages as quoted by G. Kordis, The return of the Byzantine painting tradition, 128; This aspect of St Theodore’s thought is in continuity with St John of Damascus, who emphasises the possibility of depicting the form of the Son, in so far as he made himself visible through the Incarnation: ‘When the invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw His likeness’. St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images: Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1980) 18; The same understanding finds expression in the Seventh Ecumenical Council: ‘The one, therefore, which is uncircumscribable and the one which can be circumscribed are seen in the one Christ. The icon resembles the prototype, not with regard to the essence, but only in regard to the name and to the position of the members which can be characterized’. As translated in Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm (Toronto, CA: University of Toronto Press, 1988) 77.

 

^[23]  G. Kordis says: ‘According to Patriarch Germanos of Constantinople, the Orthodox Christian church is a heaven on earth, where God resides and walks. The church building as a whole is for Germanos a representation of the Resurrection of Christ. Germanos stresses that the church needs to express the presence of God in the world and therefore to express ecclesiology—that is, the way the faithful relate to God and each other. Understandably, Orthodox Christian icon painting has the same aim…’ Hence, according to Kordis, the pictorial devices forming an integral part of the Byzantine painting system, such as rhythm, absence of depth, plasticity of form, and relational perspective, have been developed in order to best accomplish the aim of expressing ecclesiology. G. Kordis, Creating a Christian Image, 57; Also see, G. Kordis, Icon as Communion, 48–51.

 

^[24]  See A. Hart, op. cit.

 

^[25]  In other words, for us icon painting according to Tradition presupposes creativity and ‘ceaseless renewing’ in modes of expression, arising from inexhaustible life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. As Lossky puts it: ‘The dynamism of Tradition allows of no inertia either in the habitual forms of piety, or in the dogmatic expressions that are repeated mechanically like magic recipes of Truth, guaranteed by the authority of the Church. To preserve the “dogmatic tradition” does not mean to be attached to doctrinal formulae: to be within Tradition, is to keep the living Truth in the Light of the Holy Spirit, or rather—it is to be kept in the Truth by the vivifying power of Tradition. But this power preserves by ceaseless renewing, like all that comes from the Spirit’. Vladimir Lossky, ‘Tradition and Traditions’, in The Meaning of Icons (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1989), 18–19; For Lossky Tradition in its pure notion is best understood as supra-formal Silence. He develops this understanding based on St. Ignatius of Antioch’s saying: ‘He who possesses in truth the word of Jesus can hear even its silence’. Ibid., 15. Tsakiridou elucidates: ‘Thus, tradition is the reality in which the Church encounters the mystery of its own existence. It therefore exists in what we may call a horizontal epiphany and a vertical theophany…Hesechia or silence (in this context) is the timeless and inexhaustible vitality and communicative plenitude of the divine word, of which the human word is only an incomplete and temporal expression’. C. A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, 63.

 

^[26]  As M. Kampanis notes, ‘The result is totally different if we mix, for example, impressionistic details with characteristics of a Cretan icon to make something looking contemporary or if we find within traditional Byzantine painting impressionistic elements and use them as a new starting point’. M. Kampanis, op. cit., 40.

 

^[27]  For the transcultural dimensions of the icon, see C. A. Tsakiridou, Tradition and Transformation in Christian Art: The Transcultural Icon (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019).

 

^[28]  By ‘prototypes’ in this context we mean the given iconographic types, subjects, or themes.

 

^[29]  As St Sophrony puts it, ‘When you make an icon, do not copy it exactly. Not because you will not be able to do it as well as the original, but because it has already been done, it already exists in history—one should not repeat’. As quoted in Sister Gabriela, Seeking Perfection in the World of Art: The Artistic Path of Father Sophrony (Essex, UK: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 2014), 158–159.

 

^[30]  St Sophrony tells us: ‘One has to know technique, but one also needs to know art. An icon should be like a ‘painting’, like a prayer written with beautiful letters…Paint your icon as a poem, where every word is weighed and considered in harmony…There are many craftsmen, but few real iconographers. Make an icon, a beautiful icon, not like a worker, but like an artist’. As quoted by Sister Gabriela, Seeking Perfection in the World of Art, 169.

 

^[31]  The contrast made here between the capacity of an icon to point to itself in its existential concreteness and its referent meaning (prototype) relates to Kubler’s concept of self-signals and adherent signals in works of art. See George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1962), 24–26.

 

^[32]  On the problem of icon reproductions see Hieromonk Silouan Justiniano, ‘The Degraded Iconicity of the Icon: The Icon’s Materiality and Mechanical Reproduction’, in IKON: Journal of Iconographic Studies, Vol. 9 (2016): 29–40; Although we take exception to his unwillingness to venerate reproductions, Fr Stamatis Skliris has also touched on the problem of icon prints from an ecclesiological angle. He notes that the soteriological life of the Church consists of the deifying participation in Christ of specific historical events and unique persons. Thus, the icon should not only depict unique ecclesial facts, but the act of painting itself should also bear witness to a unique expression of personal creativity, ascetic effort and participation within ecclesial life. According to Fr Stamatis, ‘This…explains the authentic Byzantine practice whereby not only did an icon-painter never copy an older icon, he also never duplicated his own icons if he happened to paint the same theme several times over. He believed apparently, that each new icon is also a new, unique act of communion between the Church and the depicted saint’. He also adds, ‘This is the most fundamental reason why we should not have and venerate icons in churches that are mechanically printed reproductions of other icons. It is equally wrong, however, to paint icons by copying older models, without the painter taking the trouble to participate in the ecclesial event with his own labor and ascetic effort’. Fr Stamatis Skliris, ‘From Portrait to Icon’, in Synaxis, Vol. II: Icon and Person (Montréal, CA: Alexander Press, 2006), 89–91.

 

^[33]  See Meyer Schapiro, ‘Style’, in Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society (New York, NY: George Braziller, Inc., 1994), 51–101; at 57–59.

 

^[34]  On the problem of modernist readings of the icon’s style and the ‘invention’ of tradition, see Evan Freeman, ‘Rethinking the Role of Style in Orthodox Iconography: The Invention of Tradition in the Writings of Florensky, Ouspensky, and Kontoglou’, in Church Music and Icons: Windows to Heaven, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, June 3–9, 2013 (Joensuu, FI: The International Society of Orthodox Church Music, 2015), 350–369.

 

^[35]  See C. A. Tsakiridou, ‘The Living Image in Byzantine Experience’, in Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity, 11–223; Also see Evan Freeman, ‘Flesh and Spirit: Divergent Orthodox Readings of the Iconic Body in Byzantium and the Twentieth Century’, in Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition, eds Alexis Torrance & Symeon Paschalidis (London, UK: Routledge, 2018), 142–151.

 

^[36]  Speaking of the conventional standards through which the Byzantines viewed their images, Tsakiridou notes: ‘…to see art through conventions is not necessarily an unreasonable and uncritical act. What appears abstract from a naturalistic standpoint is realistic by the standards of an iconography that seeks a particular kind of transcendent simplicity in form and composition’. Ibid., 208.

 

^[37]  According to Grigg, ‘Byzantines may, in some sense, have been mistaken in regarding their art as lifelike and natural, but the point at issue is their perception’. He cautions that what we have to bear in mind is their ‘psychological receptiveness’ to their images as ‘exact likenesses’, treated as sentient beings. Robert Grigg, ‘Relativism and Pictorial Realism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 42. No. 4 (Summer, 1908): 397–408; Similarly, Maguire notes: ‘The difference between the present-day and the Byzantine viewer is not that of sophistication as opposed to naiveté, for no people have been more sophisticated in their approaches to images than the Byzantines. Rather, the difference is one of expectation. When a modern viewer speaks of an image being “lifelike”, the expectation is that it will be illusionistic, with realistic effects of lighting and perspective, like a photograph. The Byzantines, however, did not seek optical illusionism in their portraits, but rather accuracy of definition. Their expectation was that the image should be sufficiently well defined to enable them to identify the holy figure represented, from a range of signs that included clothing, the attributes, the portrait type, and the inscription. For the Byzantines, these features together made up a lifelike portrait’. H. Maguire, op. cit., 49.

 

^[38]  On the concept of the ‘period eye’ see Michael Baxandall, ‘The Period Eye’, in Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988), 29–108.

 

^[39]  C. A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity, 11.

 

^[40]  See C. A. Tsakiridou, ‘The Exemplary Work of Art’, in Icons in Time, 27–48.

 

^[41]  Ibid., 41.

 

^[42]  On the ‘global village’ phenomenon see Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (Toronto, CAD: University of Toronto Press, 1962). On the ‘society of the spectacle’ see Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, (Detroit, US: Black and Red, 1970).

 

^[43]  On the problem of insularity in icon painting, see C. A. Tsakiridou, ‘The Greek Icon’, in Tradition and Transformation in Christian Art, 166–180.

 

^[44]  M. Kampanis, op. cit.

 

^[45]  Speaking of the need to approach icon painting creatively, beyond of the sterile duplication of older models, and proposing some strategies to do so, Fr Stamatis points out: ‘As far as the faithful are concerned, the benefit lies in that it is more able to reveal to them – even psychologically – a living presence rather than a stylized, lifeless design. An icon like this, despite its originality, is closer to the Orthodox tradition than an icon which conforms technically to a traditional model, but is not in fact part of the Orthodox tradition because it does not express either the iconographer or the ecclesiastic community’. He also adds, ‘In this manner, iconography can rediscover the ancient tradition without needing to “Byzantinize.” It can freely introduce aspects from every era, aspects that are of course transfigured by the light of the Orthodox icon and incorporated into the tradition of the Church. Any Orthodox icon-painter, American or African, can be part of this scheme of things, without needing to become Byzantine (by copying them) before he can become Orthodox’. Fr S. Skliris, op. cit., 98.