Download PDF | The Icon, Image of the Invisible: Elements of Theology, Aesthetics and Technique, By Egon Sendler (1988, 1996).
300 Pages
Introduction
Every work of art manifests an organic unity. In the artist’s vision, the constituent elements of the work are so intimately knit together that they give birth to a new reality. Two factors give value to the work of art: 1) the richness of the components combined with 2) the rigor of their integration. This holds true for the icon as for every other work of art. The icon, however, introduces another dimension to the image, transcendence, and thus projects itself beyond the forms of our world, making God’s world present. The theological, aesthetic, and technical elements come together in this other world where they open themselves up to a new way of seeing things, in faith and meditation. What is more, the icon speaks the language of the Byzantino-Slavic culture and eastern Christian spirituality. In summing up this data, we get a glimpse of the icon’s complexity and also the involved problems of its objective interpretation.
We are conscious of the icon’s organic unity, and we want to work in the spirit of contemporary research as it touches the field of Byzantine art. We have therefore decided to present the “elements” of iconography, not as the result of an analysis that separates its constituent elements from each other, but as the result of an analysis which distinguishes different aspects of one single religious and artistic phenomenon. Our goal is to express the icon’s richness and unity.
When we think about the icon, it is important to keep three dimensions of this one reality in mind: 1) scientific knowledge, 2) artistic value, and 3) theological vision. We close ourselves off from the full meaning of the icon if we ignore any one of these three. By neglecting the theological element, the icon becomes an historical monument or document which transmits valuable information about history or folklore, but as a result it loses its spiritual soul. If we neglect the scientific element, we condemn ourselves to a subjectivity that inhibits our ability to distinguish between what is essential and what is secondary. By failing to make such distinctions, we are in danger of altering the very transcendental truth that the icon is pointing to. To neglect the aesthetic element is obviously to misjudge the icon itself. In admitting that a religious subject requires first and foremost the use of the most advanced artistic techniques and talent in the execution of the work, we do not mean to say that all such works of art are in fact the expression of a culture at its highest point of development. A so-called “primitive” art can also express a very profound idea.
In its soul, the icon is certainly a “religious art”; this expression is perhaps inadequate: we should rather speak of a “theological art.” The icon is part of the great stream of Tradition, that is, the interior life of the Church which is the extension of God’s incarnation. We see this in the fact that the icon comes out of the beginnings of Christianity and the centuries of persecution; it was enriched by the difficult dogmatic deliberations of the councils; and finally it was purified by the testing of iconoclasm. The icon is indeed intimately linked to the gospel and to the liturgy, and there it finds its very roots.
Thus rooted in the heart of the faith, the icon points to a dimension which goes beyond the natural; it pushes out toward the ineffable. This ascension toward the Beyond is a communion with eternity. According to St. Paul, Christ is the visible “image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15); as Greek theologians say, on the other hand, the icon is a “deuterotypos of the prototypos”: the reflection of God’s reality.
In order to understand the nature of the union which the icon seeks to establish with the reality beyond, we are not at all required to think in “Neo-Platonic” philosophical categories. In fact, for a Christian, the spirit is “incarnate” everywhere; God’s Spirit, in particular, is incarnate in words and gestures, in the sacraments which are the source of creative grace for a new reality, for the New Creation. What is more, the basic elements of Byzantine iconography are not, in the final analysis, original. We can in fact find a certain number of them in the medieval art of the West. Finally we note that these constituative or fundamental elements are not always used in the same way by the various schools of Byzantine art. Nonetheless, these elements have given birth to a well defined artistic language which is shared as much by the glorious masterpieces as by the modest shining of the 19th century handicraft icons.
When we speak about artistic language, we do not mean to refer only to principles or abstractions--rules of grammar are not a language--but also to what Schweinfurt called “the Byzantine form.” We are dealing with that factor which gives unity to the diverse Byzantine techniques: the icon, the fresco, the mosaic as well as architecture and the minor arts. The work itself, as a work of art, allows us to verify the unity of the artistic language. We properly insist on the concrete work itself so that we can put back together what has been analyzed and distinguished in the pursuit of a clear, intellectual presentation.
Another question must be asked at the beginning of this essay: How can we speak of a Byzantine artistic language without denigrating the particular values of different countries, their histories, their cultures, the richness of their own proper secular artistic forms? We by no means intend to deny these values, but it is impossible today to claim that the art of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Southern Slavs--an art derived from Byzantine culture--developed independently of the Byzantine source. The economic and social structures of these diverse countries, their common faith, and even their type of creativity show that they remained united in one large family that was able to survive the fall of the Byzantine empire. The unity of the Byzantine world shows itself even more clearly if, for example, we compare romanesque and gothic art in the West with Armenian and Georgian art in the East. This unity, however, did not stop Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian art from manifesting national characteristics. We can see national traits in widely differing icons even when these icons were painted in the same spirit and according to the same technique.
We cannot therefore avoid the following questions: What were the sources of Byzantine art? What were the ideas and structures that created its artistic language? The elements of a formal aesthetic are certainly important: how a particular aesthetic analyzes linear formes, how it conceives space, or how it chooses and organizes colors. Such elements only partially answer these questions, however. Analysis of the formal elements of an aesthetic only touches the surface of a particular work of art.
In order to answer these questions, not exhaustively or definitively of course, but with some precision and objectivity, we present in this book a three-fold study: 1) a theology of the icon along with its history; 2) an aesthetic of the icon with its structures; and finally 3) a technical description of the steps used in creating an icon. In fact, this book is not intended to be just a theoretical presentation of the icon but also an instructional manual for iconographers and those who want to paint icons.
Many of our contemporaries are attracted to icons; many sense in them a great richness which they would like to be able to understand and appropriate; I have written these pages in order to help them enter into the icon’s universe of beauty and faith. The preceding lines are adequate to say that this study does not claim to be more than a guide or an essay intended for those who want to learn what an icon is really all about
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