Byzantine and Russian Icons

Interest in Byzantine iconography has seemed to remain constant for a decade and more now. Later this year we will have a new book form a docent at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, which I visited and greatly enjoyed several years ago now: Visible Image of the Invisible God: A Guide to Russian and Byzantine Icons by Dennis J. Sardella (October 2022), 192pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated guide to Russian icons — the "beating heart of the Christian East" 

Religious icons have been at the spiritual heart of the Christian East for nearly two thousand years. Their mysterious, peaceful quality and almost magnetic power can stop us in our tracks and draw our gaze, without us even knowing why. The sophisticated composition and symbolism of icons emphasize that their subjects are inhabitants of another, transcendent, world. They are not simply the art of the Christian East, but the expression and pulse of its spirituality. And on a personal level for many Christians of all backgrounds, icons are not only objects of admiration, but a deep wellspring of meditation, reflection, and veneration. 

A docent at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, for many years, Dennis J. Sardella now offers an inviting guide to the most famous icons in the collection. This vibrantly illustrated book will:  

• Introduce you to icons and instill a desire for a deeper appreciation of them 

• Teach you about their origin, their historical evolution, their complex symbolic language, and their role in the spiritual and liturgical life of the Eastern Churches, both Orthodox and Catholic 

• Answer your questions about when and where the first icons were created 

• Show the physical and spiritual steps in their creation 

• Explain the different types of icons, the symbolism that is key to deciphering them, as well as their role in Eastern Christian spirituality and liturgy. 

Those who are knowledgeable about Russian icons and Byzantine icons, as well as newcomers, will find Visible Image of the Invisible God to be a treasured resource. 

On Gaining Incomprehensible Certainty, Ambivalently

The Christian East has abounded in images, and celebrates them annually on more than one occasion. But what is an icon exactly? What does it mean to see? How can we see some things and yet be blind to others? Can some see what others regard as beyond sight, beyond materiality itself? Can one see spiritual realities? Can God be seen?

These and other questions are taken up in a thick new tome coming out next month: Thomas Pfau, Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image (University of Notre Dame Press, June 2022), 811pp. 

About this book the publisher crows thus:

Thomas Pfau’s study of images and visual experience is a tour de force linking Platonic metaphysics to modern phenomenology and probing literary, philosophical, and theological accounts of visual experience from Plato to Rilke.

Incomprehensible Certainty presents a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the “image” (eikōn) as the essential medium of art and literature and as foundational for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our “lifeworld,” Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with Plato’s later dialogues, being and appearance came to be understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study positions the image as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and excess reveal to us its metaphysical function—namely, as the visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins, Cézanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology, philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau’s previous book Minding the Modern, Incomprehensible Certainty is a major work. With over fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.

In Search of the Earliest Icons: In Memory of Sr. Wendy Beckett

In honour of her recent passing unto eternal life, I reprint and update slightly the following post from November 2010.

Books about icons continue to pour fourth from a variety of presses, secular and ecclesial; and Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. Orbis Books, whose other recent and generally delightful publication about Marian icons I noted previously, has just put into my hands its latest book:

Sister Wendy Beckett, Real Presence: in Search of the Earliest Icons (Orbis, 2010), 138pp.

As I have noted previously, good, reliable studies, in English, of Coptic iconography are not very numerous--especially when compared to the myriad of books on Byzantine icons. Several earlier books exist in French, but these are not accessible to my students; others seem content to downplay or ignore the theological significance of Coptic art precisely as Christian and iconographic. So it is a happy development to have Real Presence devoted to pre-Iconoclastic icons at the famous St. Catherine's of Mount Sinai Monastery. It confines itself to icons largely before the eighth century (her cut-off is AD 726), but it will nonetheless be useful in giving the general reader and undergraduate a very good introduction to pre-Iconoclastic and proto-Coptic iconography.

It will also be useful, I hope, in overcoming some of the "Byzantine snobbery" I've heard from people who condescendingly dismiss Coptic icons as being but "cartoons" compared to the ineffable splendors of Byzantium. Yes, certain developments did not take place in Egypt, and yes Egypt never produced a Rublev or Theophanes, but such criticism of Coptic art ignores, inter alia, the fact that after the 640s Egypt was ruled by an increasingly hostile power, and Islam of course was then and certainly is now deeply iconoclastic. The Byzantines were unmolested for another 800 years and so could continue to develop their iconographical techniques, which they bequeathed to the East-Slavs, who continued to develop them after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.(I should perhaps confess, as is the fashion today, a certain "bias" insofar as the very first icon I was ever given was a beautiful Coptic icon of the Virgin enthroned, which was sent to me while in hospital by the Coptic priest Fr. Marcos A. Marcos, who almost single-handedly did so much to establish a Coptic presence in Canada and the United States. That icon provided much consolation to me during a long convalescence after a city bus tried to kill me, and I have continued to regard it as my favourite of all the Marian icons I have.)

Sr. Wendy notes that "the Egyptian Christ has not the classic stateliness that was to become the norm in the Byzantine Empire. He is stately, but the countenance is long and often thin, much more semitic [sic] in its poignancy" (35). A little later she notes that "many...Coptic images have an intimacy that clutches at the heart-strings" (40) and she illustrates this with an icon of Christ resting his hand on the shoulder of the Abbot Menas (not St. Menas, she says, but a later monk):

 
Sr. Wendy is no stranger to works on Christian art in general, and iconography in particular, having written an earlier volume on Marian icons from Mt. Sinai: Encounters With God: In Quest of Ancient Icons of Mary 

Real Presence has a winsome narrative describing her visits to Mt. Sinai (as well as Rome and Kiev, where some of the monastery's icons may today be found) and experience of its history, its collections, and its monks. Sr. Wendy writes with a commendably simple, accessible style, making this a fine introduction for those with little background in iconography.

She begins with a brief comment on her title "Real Presence," noting its felicitous reminder of the more common connotations of that phrase to denote Christ in the Eucharist. Both icons and the Eucharist, she rightly notes, make Christ accessible to us. Icons are sacramental--though, of course, in different ways than the Eucharist and other sacraments. (One should recall here that the septinarium is a Western achievement dogmatized at Trent, but lacking comparable authority in the East--which means that there is nothing "official" to prevent icons from being considered in sacramental terms equal to and numbered alongside the Eucharist, inter alia.)

After this, she offers an overview of how she came to be aware of these icons, and of their history. She also narrates, again very briefly, the history of St. Catherine's Monastery, the "oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the Christian world" (12), a monastery that "has become the resting-place of some of the oldest Biblical texts in existence and of the extraordinary collection of pre-iconoclastic icons" (13). That collection, she notes earlier, numbers "over three thousand" (2), and is unique in the entire world in preserving so many icons from the "thorough job of destruction" carried out by Emperor Leo III and others (3). As I am forever telling my students, you cannot understand much of history, religious history especially, until you first understand the geography. These icons were saved largely because they were beyond the reach of the imperial agents of destruction, who seem to have been unwilling to enter deep into a country that had been considered "enemy territory" after Chalcedon, and was, by the time of Iconoclasm, increasingly Muslim in nature. Even if the Iconoclastic agents had gotten as far at Mt. Sinai, there is no guarantee they would have gotten their hands on the icons for they would have been confronted with one of Justinian's architectural wonders: a "fortress monastery, one that could resist hostile attacks...built...so superbly that it stands majestically to this day" (11).

Part of the importance of this collection is that it gives us access to "the earliest icons that we actually have...from the sixth century" (13). Sr. Wendy then gives us a tour through many of the most prominent of these icons, which are reproduced in color and black-and-white plates. She offers commentary on their features, most of which is very illuminating, but in a few places it is trickier to see some of what she sees. And she recognizes this at the end, saying that readers should "look at the pictures of the icons and what I have said about them, and decide whether my comments have been of any use to you" (131).

There are three small infelicities in the text: her one-sentence summary of Arianism is very confused (18); she says the first Council of Nicaea was held "in 383" (18) when of course it was 325; and one icon, whose face has been removed, is, she says, of a monk and not a bishop even though the figure has on an omophor--or so it seems from what we can glimpse of what remains of the icon (105-06). Apart from these, however, this is a lovely and important little book, and we can be very grateful Orbis has brought it out in such charming form and for so affordable a price.

Iconography in the Western Church

Today is the first full day of "Beauty Will Save the World!", a camp for high-school students I am running on the campus of the University of Saint Francis this week. Twenty-five students from five states are attending the second such camp we have run thanks to a grant I secured from the Lilly Endowment. Last year's went fantastically well, and we are even more confident for this year. The grant runs another two years at least, so if you have kids who would be interested, send me an e-mail (adeville@sf.edu) and I can put you on the list to receive word about next year's camp.

The centerpiece of the week is a workshop in Byzantine iconography taught by the lovely and talented Lorie Herbel, wife of the Orthodox priest and scholar Fr Oliver Herbel (whose book you must read!).

They will also be reading Icons in the Western Church: Toward a More Sacrament Encounter by the lovely and talented Sr. Jeana Visel. You can read my review of this hugely helpful and important book here. It is very affordable; and if you are Roman Catholic and can spare it, buy an extra copy and give it to your priest or bishop.

Icons: the Essential Collection

As I have often noted on here over the years, icons have never been more popular than they are today, with workshops regularly filling in churches of all traditions as people are eager to learn not just about icons, but how to paint them themselves.

Released last fall is a little book that deserves attention for making an introduction to icons very affordable: Faith Riccio, Icons: The Essential Collection (Paraclete Press, 2016), 128pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This lovely little gift book about approaching and praying with icons everyday has over 60 full color images of Sr. Faith's icons, each paired with a scripture and an inspirational word. Experience how these beautiful icons help us live a good life, what they have to offer, what they did for Sr. Faith, and what they can do for you. Icons are an invitation to go beyond our world; to take a moment to look as through a window into heaven. The space they create gives us a wonderful and open access to reach out toward God and know him deeply in a new way. They are meant to enrich our spiritual lives. They were created to touch and form us and have an ability to soothe and confront where necessary. They provide a place to gather our wandering attention and direct it toward God.

The Icon Hunter

I watched the movie Monuments Men some time back, and thoughts of it came to mind in hearing of this new book by the Tasoula Hadjitofi, The Icon Hunter: A Refugee's Quest to Reclaim Her Nation's Stolen Heritage by Tasoula Georgiou Hadjitofi (Pegasus Books, 2017), 400pp. The author is a Cypriot, and I have fond memories of visiting Cyprus in the fall of 1993 to see some of its monasteries.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In this powerful memoir, Tasoula Hadjitofi reveals her perilous journey orchestrating “The Munich Case”―one of the largest European art trafficking stings since WWII. With the Bavarian police in place, the Cypriots on their way, seventy under-cover agents bust into the Munich apartment of a notorious Turkish smuggler suspected of holding looted antiquities. Tasoula places everything on the line to repatriate her country’s sacred treasures, unaware that treachery lies in the shadow of her success.

The Icon Hunter is a story torn from the pages of Tasoula's life as she and her Greek Cypriot family lose everything during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Hundreds of ancient Cypriot churches are destroyed, their contents looted and all signs of her Greek Cypriot culture erased as if it never existed. As a refugee, she wants justice. And then fate intervenes in the form of an archbishop and a dubious art dealer in search of redemption.

Even as unspeakable personal tragedy strikes, she never gives up her search knowing the special place these antiquities hold in the hearts of Orthodox Christians. These icons are not just masterpieces―they are artistic manifestations of faith and a gate-way to the divine.

Using family and faith as her touchstones, Tasoula takes on these “merchants of God” as she navigates the underworld of art trafficking. Tasoula believes this to be her calling, and the Archbishop of Cyprus entrusts her―an ordinary woman, wife, and mother―with the mission. In order to succeed, however, she must place her trust in an art dealer known for his double-dealing.

Inspiring and empowering, The Icon Hunter is a gripping story by a remarkable woman that will captivate readers long after the final page.

Icons

After a sustained publishing boom of books about icons, we seem to have been in a bit of a lull for the last 3-5 years. But along comes a new little book, released just this month, to revive interest: Faith Riccio, Icons: The Essential Collection (Paraclete Press, 2016), 128pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This lovely little gift book about approaching and praying with icons everyday has over 60 full color images of Sr. Faith's icons, each paired with a scripture and an inspirational word. Experience how these beautiful icons help us live a good life, what they have to offer, what they did for Sr. Faith, and what they can do for you. Icons are an invitation to go beyond our world; to take a moment to look as through a window into heaven. The space they create gives us a wonderful and open access to reach out toward God and know him deeply in a new way. They are meant to enrich our spiritual lives. They were created to touch and form us and have an ability to soothe and confront where necessary. They provide a place to gather our wandering attention and direct it toward God.

Illuminated Byzantine Gospel Book

In my iconography class last week we were talking about the power of relics and material objects in the life of not only individual Christians, but also between Christian communities--especially monasteries. Such objects sometimes invite less than edifying behavior as people steal relics to take back home and profit from. Think, e.g., of how often the Byzantine sanctoral celebrates the finding of the head of John the Baptist: a full four times if I'm not mistaken. But equally, as the late Pope John Paul II knew in returning stolen relics to the Orthodox, these items can be agents of ecclesial reconciliation and ecumenical progress. A new book suggests the latter motivation was precisely at work in the design of an illuminated gospel book: Kathleen Maxwell, Between Constantinople and Rome: An Illuminated Byzantine Gospel Book (Paris Gr. 54) and the Union of Churches (Ashgate, 2014), 348pp.

About this book we are told:

This is a study of the artistic and political context that led to the production of a truly exceptional Byzantine illustrated manuscript. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, codex grec 54 is one of the most ambitious and complex manuscripts produced during the Byzantine era. This thirteenth-century Greek and Latin Gospel book features full-page evangelist portraits, an extensive narrative cycle, and unique polychromatic texts. However, it has never been the subject of a comprehensive study and the circumstances of its commission are unknown. In this book Kathleen Maxwell addresses the following questions: what circumstances led to the creation of Paris 54? Who commissioned it and for what purpose? How was a deluxe manuscript such as this produced? Why was it left unfinished? How does it relate to other Byzantine illustrated Gospel books?Paris 54's innovations are a testament to the extraordinary circumstances of its commission. Maxwell's multi-disciplinary approach includes codicological and paleographical evidence together with New Testament textual criticism, artistic and historical analysis. She concludes that Paris 54 was never intended to copy any other manuscript. Rather, it was designed to eclipse its contemporaries and to physically embody a new relationship between Constantinople and the Latin West, as envisioned by its patron. Analysis of Paris 54's texts and miniature cycle indicates that it was created at the behest of a Byzantine emperor as a gift to a pope, in conjunction with imperial efforts to unify the Latin and Orthodox churches. As such, Paris 54 is a unique witness to early Palaeologan attempts to achieve church union with Rome.

Aidan Hart on His Splendid New Book about Icons

I was both delighted and dismayed when I received Aidan Hart's newest book, Icons in the Modern World: Sprint, Matter and Beauty (Gracewing, 2014; 288pp.) in the mail: delighted because it is a fantastic book that immediately deserves a place in every library concerned about iconography; but dismayed because the irritating bureaucracy that now surrounds so much of our life made me order books for my fall course back in January. So I couldn't get my students to read this in my course on iconography, but I will definitely adopt it when I teach the class next--if, that is, the publisher finally gets its act together and gets more copies printed and available here in North America. I contacted Aidan for this interview several months back, and have held off running it here while I cajoled the publisher and others into trying to get some copies available on this side of the Atlantic. So far, Amazon.com is showing only one copy, but if you all flood Amazon and demand copies, perhaps that will finally rouse Gracewing from its torpor to get some shipped over here.

This book's virtues are several: there are, of course, dozens of lovely colour plates of his own icons as well as other artwork; and then the chapters are meaty, substantial theological reflections (e.g., on the renewal of sacred art, on beauty and the gospel, on theological anthropology, beauty and the grotesque, and the relationship between sacred and profane art) that would challenge any undergraduate with at least a basic background in theology.

I contacted Aidan, whom I interviewed here about his last book, about this new work of his and here are his thoughts:

AD: Tell us what led you from your last book, which we spoke about on the blog several years ago, to this one. What were you hoping to accomplish with this latest book? 

Aidan Hart: The last book, Techniques of Icon and Wall Painting, was primarily a technical manual for icon painters. I felt the need to write for a wider readership, and to explore contemporary issues as seen through the theology of the icon. For many years I have been very interested in the  way Orthodox theology unites matter and spirit, creation and Creator, and the implications that this has for our understanding of the human person. With its theological treasures, Orthodox Church is under the obligation of love to do all that it can to address contemporary issues, using the wisdom it has accrued over the centuries. So I set out to write a few words about subjects which deal with the relationship of matter and spirit, such as ecology, the nature of beauty, the nature of the human person, abstract art, the meaning of tradition, and the renewal of liturgical art.

AD: Your introduction mentions that in any initial discussions of icons, the worldview which proclaims matter to be good attracts the viewer's attention as it "resonates with our innermost being" (p.5). Tell us a bit more what you mean by that.

AH: Some of the Church Fathers distinguish between our being in the image and the likeness of God. They say that while likeness to God is acquired to the extent that a person walks in the way of Christ, every person, whether or not they believe it, is in God's image. This latter means that truth will resonate with every person's innermost being. How clearly it will resonate admittedly depends on the person's degree of purity - their likeness to God. But nevertheless, truth and virtue are natural to the human person because thy are made in God's image, while falsehood and vice are unnatural. Each person is a union of matter and spirit, soul and body, and our day to day experience shows us how intimately these are bound together.  

AD: You speak of icons as providing a "radical way of seeing" (p.2). Seeing what, and how, and why? 

I have always been enthralled by the story of Moses seeing the bush burning without being consumed, and of Christ's transfiguration. Although we know that this world is fallen, it is still 'upheld by the word of God's power'. Each thing is not only created by a word of the Word, a logos from the Logos, but is directed and sustained by that living word. To the degree that we are purified, we see and hear and feel this indwelling word within each thing. We see the world burning with God's presence yet not consumed. 'The pure in heart shall see God', not just in heaven but through creation. We have a foretaste of Paradise when we see the world imbued with this light and fire, hear the still small voice within each rock, tree and creature. That is the 'what' of your question. How do icons help us see in this radical way? They cannot of course compel us, but they can help. First, the fact that Orthodox kiss icons as a means of honouring the person depicted creates an attitude of veneration towards the whole material world, because we see it as a revelation of divine love, and not just as dead matter. This attitude of thanksgiving recapitulates the world in Christ; we see the cosmos as a garment, or even body, of Christ. Second, the way that icons are painted have a gradual effect on our vision of the world. They are a sort of infra-red camera, allowing us to see energies that are otherwise invisible to the natural eye. The way light comes from within things in an icon stimulate us to look for this light in real life.  

AD: You note that this book, a collection of essays, is concerned with several things including the "insight that icons offer on the contemporary liturgical renewal of art." Especially for Roman Catholics (and others) concerned about renewing their own liturgical tradition after 50 years of change, what iconographical insights would you offer them and others as especially germane? 

I think that the first thing that my Catholic brethren need to consider in relation to liturgical arts, is that it is not only important what is depicted, but how this theme is depicted. This 'how' often has more impact on our soul than the 'what'. From around the time of Italian the Renaissance western Christendom has tended to leave it to artists to decide how they will depict sacred themes. Consequently, the faithful have been at the mercy of current art trends, many of which have no aim to create an atmosphere and state of soul conducive to prayer and worship. I am not saying that the Byzantine way of painting - whatever that is! - is the only way to paint liturgical art. But I am saying that every formal, stylistic element of  liturgical art, be it visual, musical or architectural, must aim to show the world transfigured and to create the right state of soul conducive to prayer. Otherwise, is it worthy to be called liturgical art? This is to say that iconographer should endlessly copy existing works, but that until the Catholic Church establishes clear theological principles to guide its liturgical artists, then its current interest in icons will be a passing fad. The chapter in the book outlines what I think some of these essential principles are. The second related issue regarding the liturgical renewal of the visual arts is the question: What is reality? Liturgical art should be realistic in that it is truthful, but what is the true and highest state of the human person and the world that we are trying to depict in an icon? For the Orthodox this highest state for a human person is unequivocally to be deified, and the material world to be transfigured. Now, although this teaching is implicit in Roman Catholic teaching, I think it is fair to say that it is not so much in the forefront as it is for the Orthodox. This in turn has meant its liturgical art has tended towards naturalism; realism had been equated with naturalism. Or when there has been a reaction against this naturalism,  abstraction has lurched far in the other direction, away from the natural.  

AD: You argue that icons "challenge us and lay bare our inner state" (p.5). Tell us a bit more what you mean by that.  

The world view, the tradition, that produces well painted icons is the world view of the saints. For the icon tradition is prophetic in that it depicts the world seen from the divine perspective and not merely the human. Hence the variety of strange perspective systems that the icon uses, such as multi-view perspective in which an object is depicted seen simultaneously from many view points, as God 'sees' it. To a secular mind this vision of the world seems weird and unreal, to distort reality. But such a critique of the icon is in fact a critique of the critic. It says as much about their own world view as about the icon. Christ crucified, and icons, are 'a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles' (1 Cor. 1: 23).  

AD: You conclude your introduction with a charming story about people in a gallery trying to judge an icon, only to have them told that is in fact the icon which judges us. How is that so?

True judgement is simply reflecting back the truth, not condemning. The icon is like a saint, only in two dimensions. The saint is.  He or she just loves Christ. All his or her words and deeds come out of this inner state of  being, an attitude of adoration and worship. Like the saint, the icon just is. It depicts in its style as well as in its subject matter a world shoot through with the glory of God. It is a world in which both suffering and joy are affirmed, but in which joy has the final word. This paradisiacal life is divine, and as such cannot be comprehended by the rational faculty alone. It is not irrational, but it is certainly more than what the rational brain can comprehend. And so when someone rejects the icon's world as unreal, they are revealing in fact that they are operating merely as 'soulish' person and not a spiritual person. As St Paul writes, 'The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned' (1 Corinthians 2:14). The original Greek usually translated as 'unspiritual man' or 'natural man' is 'psuchikos', which literally translated means 'soulish man'. Paul refers here to people who operate only in the realm of the soul, meaning just the rational faculty, body and emotions, and have not raised these faculties into the realm of the spirit to become what he calls in the next verse a 'spiritual man', a 'pneumatikos'. A natural man is not necessarily an evil or bad person, but one not yet deified, not yet illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

AD: Strikingly, you title your second chapter "The Fresh Air of Tradition," which is not, I daresay, how many people may conceive of it. Tradition, rather, is thought to be stultified, stale, stuffy, stifling. What is fresh here as you understand the role of Christian tradition?  

Without reference to something higher we are slaves to our limited world view. We are free from outside influences, so we think, but are in fact limited to ourselves. A broken branch is free from its mother tree, but it is going to die. Holy tradition, on the other hand, opens the individual to an expansive world, a world of holiness. Also, the human person, being made in the image of the Holy Trinity, is made for relationship. Tradition is merely a word for relationship with the saints who have gone before and who are well and alive in Christ.

Besides, everyone's world view is an extension of some tradition, and we delude ourselves if we think that we can create or act ex nihilo, in a vacuum devoid of any outside influences. The choice therefore is not between having a tradition or not, but which tradition we place ourselves under.  

AD: As a teacher I was especially taken with the aptness of your argument that university students are often "suspicious of tradition in art yet embrace it in science." Why do you think that is? Why do we praise the "cutting edge" artist but think that if you are following, say, Orthodox conventions safeguarding the making of an icon that you are somehow "stifled"?

This is a very important point. I think it is rooted in the fact that loss of faith in God has led to heresy regarding the nature of the human person. Post Modernism has lost faith in absolutes regarding anything but the material world, hence the hegemony of science. And so the artist, who is in a real sense a philosopher expressing his world view in matter rather than writing, is left with no objective truth to seek and reveal. He or she is subsequently only allowed to explore but not to find, experiment but not to conclude, challenge but not to suggest alternatives. If, on the other hand, one has a clear vision of deified man in Christ as the highest end of humankind, then as an artist you know what you are trying to achieve. And so, like a scientist, you experiment but with an objective. And a good iconographer will experiment with new designs, colour combinations and so on. But he or she will measure the results against the objective reality of Christ. Does this or that colour combination accord with life in Christ?  If so, I will use it. If not, I will discard it. The wonderful thing with iconography is that the realities that we are trying to indicate happen to be infinitely glorious and wonderful. They provide endless scope for creative new expression. We are slaves to a magnanimous Master! Every sensible person, be they scientist, craftsperson or artist, wants to learn all they can from their forebears. You then add your bit, like a shoot springing from a big tree.  

AD: I greatly cheered your noting how often East-West discussions of art and iconography degenerate into polemics and caricature, and was very glad your book is free of that. Equally I was glad you did not romanticize the tradition, but instead openly acknowledged that "the icon tradition does in fact change and adapt all the time" (p.71). Give us some examples of healthy change and adaptation you are seeing today in the icon tradition.  

My iconographic muse is Archimandrite Zenon (Teodor). Although we have never met (though we did correspond once), I have been following his work since 1989. He is constantly, even restlessly, searching for new inspiration from different Christian cultures and epochs as well as his indigenous Russian tradition; early Christian, Roman, Romanesque, early Byzantine, Armenian. And he adapts his style and designs to the place for which he paints. Father Gregory Krug is another example of someone entirely within the tradition and yet unique. His unusual personality  (he suffered most of his life from depression) and natural artistic gift, was transfigured by his monastic life to create compassionate, modern iconography which was fearless yet humble. Sadly I have seen few examples of church architecture which have, to my mind, successfully drawn on the best of modem architecture. This is  a field to be developed yet. In general, I think that we Orthodox need to be more intelligent and thinking about how we live out our lives in the 21st century. Having armed ourselves with a deep knowledge of the timeless principles of the faith and the tradition, we need to be more confident. One need only look at the vast range of work within Byzantium and across Russia to see how confident past Orthodox cultures have been in learning from what is around them, then adapting and affirming. As Archimandrite Vasileios of Iviron monastery used to tell me, there are epochs where it is difficult to get this wrong, and there are others where it is difficult to get it right. We are definitely in the latter category, but we need to try our best.  

AD: Tell us a bit about the connections you see, especially in your fourth chapter, between iconography and ecology.  

In Christ 'it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him' (2 Cor 1:19). I think that if a culture the Church is trying to address worships an idol them start with that idol and make it transparent to God. Our materialistic age adores matter, so we need to make matter transparent for it, show that what a materialist loves in the material world is in fact an image of God's love, beauty, wisdom, and expansive creativity. Ecology is a case in point. Because Christianity is based on the incarnation - the creator becoming creature- it cannot but have a tremendous amount to say about ecology. I think ecology is to the 21st century man what the inscription to an unknown God was the Athenians at the time of St Paul. When he was at the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34), despite his indignation at all the idols he saw, Paul began his preaching by affirming the partial good that the Athenians believed in, the inscription to an Unknown God, and then proceeded from there.  Although secular ecology doesn't acknowledge our dependence on God, it does at least acknowledge the interdependence of everything on earth and of earth with the rest of the cosmos.

The icon is micro-ecology, in that the icon painter takes representatives of the whole of creation and transforms them into a bearer of divine grace. He or she takes pigments form the mineral kingdom, wood from the vegetable kingdom, and egg for the animal. As a priest, king and prophet of the creation, the iconographer then transforms these things, respecting each material's unique character but lifting it also to a higher plane, making it more articulate in the praise of God. As such, this making process is both industrial and affirmative, conservationist but also transformationist. As an icon painter I love to use natural pigments. I need to listen to each pigment, know what it can and cannot do. I have learned to look before I make. This attitude of contemplation is fundamental to our ecological crisis. Because we in our consumerist society have forgotten how to feed our souls through contemplation of nature, we effectively treat the cosmos as dead raw material to be fodder for factories. Consumerism is the inevitable disease of  a non-contemplative society. A soul deprived of spiritual food will seek the temporary titillation of buying something new. Until we make our society more contemplative it will have an aching belly and try to satisfy itself by consuming ever more. The icon can help to nurture this contemplative spirit.  

AD: Your sixth and longest chapter is on "beauty and the gospel." Tell us a bit about the connections you see between those two.  

When I was an evangelical Christian I was very struck by Don Richardson's book Peace Child: An Unforgettable Story of Primitive Jungle Treachery in the 20th Century. He and his wife with their child went to live among the cannibalistic Sawi tribe of  what was then Dutch New Guinea. Having learned the language, Don and his wife Carol discovered how extremely difficult it was to communicate the gospel to the Sawi because betrayal was a virtue for them, so much so that in the Gospel story Judas was the hero and Jesus the dupe to be laughed at. But eventually they discovered one tradition among the otherwise warring tribes that provided a way in. The one trust Sawifs would never betray was the exchange of a child between tribes. As long as this freely offered 'peace child' lived, the two tribes would not fight. On this basis, Don began to teach Christ as the peace child, and eventually many of the Sawi people converted. Richardson came to call this principle of incipient truths in each culture 'redemptive analogies'. 

A missionary needs to find and then speak through such analogies. These are images and realities that the people already believe in and which are types of the gospel. I think beauty is one such redemptive analogy for the modern man. For too long in the West discourse about God, sin and redemption has been expressed in legal terms: God sets laws; mankind transgresses them and so must be punished; Christ is punished in our place, and so on. Besides being a very limited view, this Satisfaction Theory of atonement, as it is called, presents a rather ambiguous picture of God the Father. I believe a more accurate, more Orthodox and more communicative image is provided via beauty: Mankind is made in the beautiful image of God and is called to be transfigured, together with the whole material world of which it is priest; man tries to go it alone and so looses much of this beauty and the opportunity of deification; the Logos unite Himself to our fallen nature and thereby reinvigorates it with His divinity and conquers death; through faith and repentance, mankind can be restored to its ancient beauty and become even more radiant still with the indwelling Holy Spirit.  

AD: I was glad to see your next chapter on "beauty and the grotesque" so that Christians are not mistakenly thought to be "mere aesthetes." Why was this an important chapter to include after the previous one? What message were you trying to convey?  

The grotesque operates on many levels. If beauty has any role in the spiritual life it is to awaken us and thereby open our eyes to see more deeply. The grotesque can awaken us by its shock value.  The sublime and awe value of beauty can be lessened if we know nothing but elegant proportion. But, by its marked contrast, occasional encounter with the grotesque reminds us of beauty’s specialness. The grotesque also reminds us that beauty is achieved and is not easy; one adjustment to proportion and things loose their balance of form. The grotesque also hints at the beauty of content independent of the beauty of outer form. In the film The Elephant Man, and I believe too in real life, the physically deformed Joseph Merrick is grotesque in outward form but beautiful of spirit in his inner man. The beauty of his character shines all the more brilliantly in the face of his grotesque outward deformity. Another aspect of the grotesque in nature, I believe, is that it is an expression of divine humour and playfulness. It is an example of the vast variety within God's scheme. The sloth and the gazelle are brethren, and the slug and the swan are in the same drama. God loves to surprise us by both joy and mirth, the yes and the question, the clear and the perplexing.
 
AD: Sum up your hopes for Icons in the Modern World: Sprint, Matter and Beauty

I hope that its essays, which are more excursions into territory than detailed mappings, will encourage others more bright and informed than myself to make more in-depth explorations into the fields that it touches on. It is my little attempt to prod the Orthodox Church to engage in a more positive, frank and nuanced way with contemporary issues than it is tending to. We need to avoid uninformed generalisations. We need to seek out all that is good or partially good in our secular society, and on the other to seek deeper causes for the malaise that assail it. If we are to bring the Gospel to more people, we need to find appropriate mediums and images which strike a chord. We can't be lazy and parrot great truths using moribund terminology or metaphors.  So I hope that this book will help in some little way to stimulate  more of this work.  

AD: Any projects you are at work on now--icons, books, articles?  

Chapel of Gonville & Caius, Cantab.

There is always a pile of commissioned work to complete, about two years ahead at present. I now have a full-time assistant and apprentice, and have trained some others to help in other aspects, such as icon panel making and gilding, so this helps a lot. I have recently finished a large Annunciation icon for Caius College, Cambridge, and am working on two large icons to go on a splendid hand wrought iron screen for an Anglican church in London. I am designing and having made furniture for the Catholic chapel in Cambridge University. 

Earlier this year, my assistant and I completed a seven foot high stone carving of the Mother of God for Lincoln Cathedral. The aim was to make this fully modeled three dimensional sculpture work like an icon, rather than be merely a work of art. Judging by the response it seems to be working! It is polychromed, and for the design I drew on both the Byzantine icon tradition (particularly the icon type, 'Our Lady of the Sign') and on the Romanesque carving tradition. 

I am hoping to have confirmed soon two large mosaic commissions for an Orthodox church in Texas. I am toying with ideas for a third book. Any ideas from yourself!? I like the essay tradition, in part because writing essays fits comfortably into the demands of my icon work. But more importantly, the compactness of an essay has affinities with the icon. An essay can evoke an image, a wholeness, without collapsing under the weight of detail. The trick is to have enough substance for the argument to have gravitas, but not zoom into detail so much that the picture is lost in pixels seen too close. One area that interests me a lot is the relationship of science, particularly physics, and religious vision. This may well be one subject explored in the next book. Many of the more 'esoteric' discoveries in science, such as Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum field theory, have been intuited in religion, albeit evident only in hindsight. If, for example, Christians believe that time is created, which we do, then time must be relative. Only God is not relative. We should not therefore be surprised to find that under certain conditions (movement close to the speed of light, and extreme gravitational force) time slows down. And if man, and indeed all creation to some extent, is made in the image of God the Holy Trinity, then relationship must be at the heart of creation, and therefore of all scientific models. It is not therefore surprising that there appears to be no single subatomic particle, but rather a community of them: quarks, leptons, neutrinos, bosons, and the graviton, gluon, and photon. And regarding the relationship of nature and person and the character of theological discourse we see some parallels with quantum field theory. This theory says that all particles arise out of fields, be it the electromagnetic field, gravitational field, the Boson field or whatever other field. Quantum mechanics says that particles are tiny vibrations or waves in these fields. Whether a particle appears as a particle or a wave depends on how, or rather if, we look. As one writer, Aatish Bhatia succinctly put it: 'Don't look: waves. Look: particles.' In other words, the essence of reality is waves, but when we try to observe them they appear as particles. This is the guts of quantum mechanics.

Perhaps there is a parallel between this quantum field theory and the reality of human nature and human personhood? Personhood is specific, 'compressed', particular, like a particle. And yet the particular person can only exist because there is a single human nature (a human 'field'). And, like quantum mechanics, what we need to emphasize in a particular human circumstance depends on what we are trying to achieve - do we  emphasise nature/fields or person/particles. A totalitarian regime denies the value of the individual against the state, and therefore personhood needs to be emphasized. An individualistic society, on the other hand, will need to hear more about the one human nature that unites everyone, that makes the person possible, and inspires compassion. If I am right, that there is a certain reflection of spiritual realities in physical laws, then might it be possible to speed up scientific discoveries if scientists were to look for insights within the teachings of tried and tested spiritual traditions? And, conversely, might not we Christians find fresh ways of articulating spiritual truths by looking within newly discovered theories of physics? Christ often illustrated His teachings using agricultural experiences that were familiar to his listeners. Today, as more lay people become familiar with modern scientific discoveries, might not the Church fruitfully use these to illustrate spiritual truths?

Icons of Death

Driving home the other day, I turned off the radio in a fury when some nitwit on the local NPR station kept referring to people who recently "passed." To that insufferable recent usage, I always reply with heavy sarcasm: Passed what? wind? the off-ramp on the highway they were supposed to take? a school examination? "Passed away" was bad enough--which I never used not only because I abhor death-denying euphemisms but also because it's shoddy theology--but this "passed" business really is intolerable. People die; when they have done so, they are dead. We are--as Evelyn Waugh noted, in his own myth-busting, euphemism-mocking satire of death and funerals, The Loved One--parched for this kind of straight-talk today, stranded in a desert of denial and obfuscation. The inability or unwillingness to speak candidly about death serves nobody well.

Released this month is a Kindle version of an interesting book that reveals a very different approach to death taken by Eastern Christians, an approach that looks death in the face and avoids the cowardly dodges so many take today. Originally published in 1997 by a leading classicist and historian who is well acquainted with Byzantine iconography is Robin Cormack's Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds.

About this book we are told:

Icons are among the most elusive subjects in the history of art, but at the same time their study constitutes possibly its fastest expanding field, and with the opening-up of the former Soviet Union many new objects are being discovered, studied and exhibited. In this book, Robin Cormack considers the icon as an integral document of society and gives us new insights into the nature of Byzantine art. Painting the Soul explores both the creation and the development of the icon. After the early Christians – like the pagans before them – had come to expect their god to be visually present among them, endless questions confronted both the artist and the Church. What did Christ look like? How should Christ be represented? Should Christ be represented (as he is for example on the Turin Shroud)? Appropriately, Cormack’s study ends with Venetian Crete, where the icon underwent its final development and transformation into the art of the Renaissance. Here, established Byzantine forms of religious art confronted developing Renaissance modes of expression: the first ‘icons’ of El Greco were painted in Crete. Painting the Soul is beautifully illustrated, featuring many little-known works of art. Even so, Cormack treats the icon not as a mere artistic product, but as the symbolic face of medieval Europe. He shows how this new field within the history of art – the study of the icon – will transform our understanding of European art and culture.

As noted, Cormack is the author of Byzantine Art (Oxford UP, 2000), 256pp. as well as Icons (Harvard UP, 2007), 144pp.

Icons and Persons in Time and Eternity

As I have had many occasions to note previously, we continue to see new books about icons constantly emerging from a variety of presses, reflecting a widespread interest in them on the part of Christians of all traditions, Eastern and Western. At the end of this month a new scholary study is set to emerge: Cornelia A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image (Ashgate, 2013), 378pp. + 8 colour + 40 b/w illustrations.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity presents a critical, interdisciplinary examination of contemporary theological and philosophical studies of the Christian image and redefines this within the Orthodox tradition by exploring the ontological and aesthetic implications of Orthodox ascetic and mystical theology. It finds Modernist interest in the aesthetic peculiarity of icons significant, and essential for re-evaluating their relationship to non-representational art.Drawing on classical Greek art criticism, Byzantine ekphraseis and hymnography, and the theologies of St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, the author argues that the ancient Greek concept of enargeia best conveys the expression of theophany and theosis in art. The qualities that define enargeia - inherent liveliness, expressive autonomy and self-subsisting form - are identified in exemplary Greek and Russian icons and considered in the context of the hesychastic theology that lies at the heart of Orthodox Christianity.An Orthodox aesthetics is thus outlined that recognizes the transcendent being of art and is open to dialogue with diverse pictorial and iconographic traditions. An examination of Ch'an (Zen) art theory and a comparison of icons with paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Marc Chagall, and by Japanese artists influenced by Zen Buddhism, reveal intriguing points of convergence and difference. The reader will find in these pages reasons to reconcile Modernism with the Christian image and Orthodox tradition with creative form in art.

The publisher also gives us the table of contents:

Preface; Part I Preliminaries: The need to redefine the Christian image; The exemplary work of art; Enargeia and key concepts.

Part II Theology and Art: The Orthodox icon and modernism; The new iconoclasm; Theological fallacies; Jacques Maritain’s dialogue with modernism.

Part III Orthodox Iconology: Asceticism and iconoclasm; The mystical lives of beings in St Maximus the Confessor; The image in St John Damascene; The living image in Byzantine experience.

Part IV Theophany and Art: Human and divine luminaries; The theophanic icon; Theophany and modernism; Enargeia and transcendence in Zen art; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Rublev's Trinity

Rublev's Trinity is of course the most well known icon in the world. And it has been nicely studied in a book published a few years ago, and just recently released electronically for those who have an Amazon Kindle: Gabriel Bunge, The Rublev Trinity, trans. Andrew Louth (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Many art historians and scholars have described the sublime icon of the Holy Trinity by St Andrei Rublev, but nothing equals this detailed and comprehensive theological explanation by Benedectine monk Gabriel Bunge. In this inspired and utterly sober work, Fr Gabriel aims to make the icon's timeless message accessible to the contemporary praying believer.
The author understands precisely that Russian iconographic art, much more than the Romanesque and Gothic sacred art of the West, represents a theological confession of faith. Icon painters were conscious of this responsibility, and the monk-painters who learned their Orthodox faith through the prayer of the Hours and the Divine Liturgy, through the familiar texts of the hymns and the Gospel readings, reflected the revelation of God in their art. Fr Gabriel, completely attuned to this method of inspiration, upholds the palladium - the sign and meaning of Holy Russia - in this work, and reverently expounds upon the awesome utterance by Pavel Florensky: "There exists the icon of the Trinity by St Andrei Rublev; therefore, God exists."

Do Icons Speak to Your Kindle?

As I have had many occasions to note on here, books about icons continue to be among the most popular today in all of Eastern Christian studies. They pour forth from presses large and small, religious and academic. And now we have a "book" about icons available for downloading on Amazon's Kindle: Anthony Coniaris, Icons Speak: Their Message (Light and Life Publishing, 2012), 325pp.

About this book the publisher briefly informs us:

Introducing the Twelve Great Feast Days of Orthodox Christianity through the written and the visual Gospel (the Bible and Icon) emphasizing their meaning for us today.

Bulgakov on Images and the Divine Name

I have noted on previous occasions the ongoing interest in Sergius Bulgakov, aided in no small measure by Eerdmans commendable willingness to continue publishing English translations of his work. Just last month, they brought out another one, translated (as many others have been) by Boris Jakim: Sergius Bulgakov, Icons and the Name of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Eerdmans, 2012), 208pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In Orthodox theology both the icon and the name of God transmit divine energies, theophanies, or revelations that imprint God's image within us. In Icons and the Name of God renowned Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov explains the theology behind the Orthodox veneration of icons and the glorification of the name of God. In the process Bulgakov covers two major controversies — the iconoclastic controversy (sixth to eighth centuries) and the "Name of God" controversy (early twentieth century) — and explains his belief that an icon stops being merely a religious painting and becomes sacred when it is named. This translation of two essays "The Icon and Its Veneration" and "The Name of God" — available in English for the first time — makes Bulgakov's rich thinking on these key theological concepts available to a wider audience than ever before.

I look forward to seeing this reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

Aidan Hart on Iconography

I drew attention last year to the publication of Aidan Hart's new book Techniques of Icon and Wall Painting, some details of which are available here. As you will see on his website, this book carries some weighty endorsements from, inter alia, Met. Kallistos Ware, the Prince of Wales, and Sr. Wendy Beckett, whose recent charming book on proto-Coptic and ante-iconoclastic icons I reviewed here. I asked Aidan for his thoughts on iconography and his book, and here they are:

AD: Tell us a bit about your background 

I was born in England in 1957 but raised in Auckland, New Zealand. I did a degree in English literature and mathematics and then trained as a secondary school teacher. But at the age of twenty-one I  followed my inclination to become a professional sculptor. It was not such an unusual thing to follow a career in the arts, since, although my father was a civil engineer by profession, he taught sculpting at night school, and there have been many artists on both his and my mother's side of the family. I was seeking to create sculptures that reflected the image of God in man, that united the material and spiritual aspects of his being. This, and a search for deeper prayer, eventually led me to the Orthodox Church, of which I became a member  in 1983. 

At the same time I decided to explore the monastic vocation. To this end the Orthodox monk in New Zealand who baptized me advised me to travel overseas and explore the wider Orthodox world. So I travelled through the USA and Europe, and then settled in Britain. From 1984 onwards I began carving and then painting icons professionally. Visits to Russia, and a year travelling in Greece while studying modern Greek in Thessalonica, all formed part of my training in iconography.

For twelve years I was a rasophor monk (an intermediate stage at which vows have not yet been taken). At first I was with a Welsh monk in Wales, and then, after eighteen months training at Iviron Monastery on

Iviron Monastery

Mount Athos, lived for over six years as a hermit in Shropshire, England. All through this period I was occupied with the traditional cycle of services and cell prayer, as well as iconography, receiving guests, writing articles, reading the Church Fathers, and tending the land.

In 2000, after much soul searching, I decided to leave the hermitage to concentrate on my work as an iconographer "in the world." While working on commissions for icon panels, frescoes, and carving in wood and stone, I began running two five-day icon courses a year. Soon after I was asked by Prince Charles to be the visiting tutor in iconography for Master's students at his Prince’s School of Traditional Arts (PSTA) in London. The teaching for PSTA involved only one week a year, and so I eventually developed a more in-depth course for students of iconography, the Diploma in Icon and Wall Painting. This is a four-year, part-time course. The book in part came out of this teaching experience. While concentrating on fulfilling icon commissions, I have also enjoyed writing articles and giving talks on iconography, the spiritual life, Orthodoxy and the arts and ecology. In 2002 I got married, and we now have two young children.

Aidan Hart at work

AD: What led you to write this book?

A number of factors. It seemed an efficient way of explaining icon techniques and the theology of icons to my own students and those of other teachers. I also wanted to create a book that would have a lot of new material for the more experienced painter.  Iconography can be an insular experience, and so I wanted the book to offer stimulation and new ideas to professional iconographers as well as learners. I also wanted to show that the icon tradition is living, that there is a variety of ways of achieving the same spiritual aims. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, I wanted to contribute what I could to fostering the gradual development of an authentic western icon tradition. To do this meant identifying what was timeless and what was cultural in the rich history of Orthodox iconography.

AD: For whom did you write the book--did you have a particular audience in mind?

I wanted the book to be both "shallow" enough for beginners to wade in and deep enough for the experienced to dive into. Besides this aim, while the main target audience was the practitioner, I included much material to make the book valuable for those non-practioners interested just in the theology, theory, and history of the icon. Seven of the sixteen chapters fall into this category. 

AD: Were there any surprises as you were writing--unexpected discoveries, developments you were not expecting?

I had always been interested in the methods used in the Pompeii frescoes to see if these could be applied to church wall painting. The book provided a reason to spend time searching for scientific papers on these methods. 

Modern technology has unveiled a lot of new material, and sometimes contradicted unquestioned assumptions. I was particularly interested in the methods revealed by recent research to have been used to paint the famous 13th century frescoes at the Protaton, Mt. Athos. Though begun in fresco, from the beginning lime water and an animal glue (probably egg) were added to the pigment so that a seamless continuity was obtained between the stages of fresco and secco (painting on dry plaster). My research into Orthodox church architecture and wall painting, East and West, confirmed to me just how creative and responsive the designers were to theological and local demands. This is something that is vital to understand when designing contemporary churches.

AD: I have noted on the blog many times that there seems to be today an explosion of interest in icons and iconography,  with publications from academic and religious presses, including not just Orthodox but also Protestant and Roman Catholic publishers. Why do you think there is such widespread interest today?

There are many reasons. One is that Roman Catholicism has tended to give artists who work for churches much freer reign than the Orthodox tradition has. While this has some good points, it has tended to leave RC church art more susceptible to secular trends, or to become sentimentalized. The resurgent interest in Orthodox iconography is in part a recognition of it having retained deeper roots in a spiritual vision. The return to traditional iconography is itself a relatively recent phenomenon in Orthodox countries--beginning in the end of the 19th century in Russia when icons began to be cleaned, and in the latter half of the 20th century in Greece through Photius Kontoglou. It was inevitable that this trend would eventually reach non-Orthodox Christians and western scholarship.

Orthodox worship has retained an intimate connection between its visual liturgical arts and its theology, one interpreting and illuminating the other. This has provided a rich source of knowledge for theologians. The image reveals some things that the word cannot, and vice versa. It has brought back the category of the beautiful to theology, and more profoundly, the centrality of man's deification and of all creation's transfiguration.

The icon speaks the language of the spirit, expressed through matter. This union of matter and spirit is something the modern man yearns for. This search is perhaps all the more desperate as our ecological crisis proves that as a civilization we are not getting right this relationship of spirit and matter.

AD: At the same time today conflicts over images also seem more widespread, especially in Islam. Iconoclasm, far from being an 8th-century problem, seems a perennial challenge. Why do so many people seem conflicted over images--including Christians?

Islam emerged from a confusion of polytheism, and responded with a simpler and, it hoped, a clearer "black and white" way. Because images can be misused, they decided to ban them. Also, on a more theological note, Moslems had to refute Christian icons as heretical because Christians defended icons of Christ as affirmations that Christ is God become visible in the flesh, something which Islamic teaching refutes. 

John the Grammarian whitewashing an icon of Christ

The human person is by nature an image/icon-producing and -using creature. It is not therefore a matter of whether or not he uses images, but of what images he uses and how he uses them. An iconoclast Protestant for example, still treats the Bible-- rightly--as an icon, will be happy to have secular portraits, and probably watches television! 

Any image we create reflects what our ideals are. This is true of individuals and of whole cultures. The conflict, then, is not so much over images as such, but over the ideals  held by those individuals or cultures and incarnate in their images. So to some, an icon is an unreal and fantastical idealisation because it shows people shining with light. But to an Orthodox Christian, it reflects reality and the natural way God intended us to be. To a Muslim who does not believe in the Incarnation, images of Christ are naturally sacrilege; to a Christian who believes in the incarnation, these same images honour God.

AD: Many of my students are Western creative arts students, and for them the idea that painting an icon involves personal askesis and fidelity to a received tradition, in which the personality of the artist is heavily downplayed, is very difficult for them to accept. How do you understand the tension between being faithful to a received tradition of icon-making and your own personal skill, insights, or creative desires?

I think that being a fully alive person ultimately involves knowing God, becoming like Him in whose image we are made. This process of deification expands and fulfils all our faculties, rather than restricting them. This relationship is one of love and relationship, of personalism rather than individualism. Much (though by no means all) of modern art has come from individualism rather than personalism. This means that tradition is viewed as a threat and restriction rather than as nourishment and wisdom.

So to answer your question, I feel that my own "personal skill, insights, and creative desires" are fully used in the service of expressing in icons such a sublime and deep thing as the human person's transfiguration. Using these personal attributes is actually part of the tradition rather than in conflict with it. They only enter into conflict with the tradition when I am using them to seek self-aggrandisement, fame, or novelty for its own sake.

Having said this, liturgical art is not of course the only legitimate form of art. There are those who wish to create works for the gallery or aesthetic delectation or for political ends. Clearly, different parameters apply here, although I still think that humility, truth, authenticity, love, and courage should all have a central place in these these art forms. And I think that art history has proven that lasting newness and freshness in art is always a plant grown in the soil of the past rather than a meteor from outer space. 

AD: What has influenced you as an iconographer in the 21st century? Do you see any general trends in iconography in our time that will set it apart from what has preceded it?

Initially I was influenced by 14th/15th century Russian iconography. But then (perhaps the sculptor in me) I was drawn to the more modelled forms of Byzantine works. In the last 10 years the leading Russian iconographer Father Zenon (Theodor) has been my major inspiration. He has drawn from increasingly earlier and Byzantine models, as well as from early Roman works.

There are also some non-liturgical artists of the last two centuries that have been an inspiration rather than a direct influence on my work. The sculptor Constantine Brancusi is such a one, with his search for the essence of things. 

Regarding general trends, our post-modern epoch exposes us to art of all ages and cultures, through travel, exhibitions, and illustrations. This means that iconographers are exposed to a much greater variety of influences than ever before. This could be used to our advantage to synthesize something new and affirmative of the best things of our times.

However, I consider that the current revival in traditional iconography is still immature--we still tend to copy. We are learning iconography as a second language. We have not yet re-entered the depths of the tradition and the spiritual life to enable us to be "free within paradise." Archimandrite Vasileios, the abbot of Iviron monastery on Mt Athos, said to me that there are epochs where it is difficult to get it wrong, and there are epochs where it is difficult to get it right.

Another  contemporary trend is an attempt to revive elements of early western iconography--most notably Romanesque, Roman, Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, and Celtic. This is a good way of helping us forge a way forward.

AD: In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, briefly raised but did not develop his thesis that Western Christianity has never truly received the teaching of Nicaea II in 787 and so there remains a latent stream of a kind of "soft" iconoclasm in much of Western Christianity. What are your thoughts on that?

Probably true, I think. Although the West affirmed Nicaea II, it seems to have done so on a more superficial level than the East. It seemed to restrict the use of images to a didactic role, as books for the illiterate. As long as the subject matter was religious, it was more or less left up to the artist how they depicted the subject matter. In the East, by contrast, there seems to have been an affirmation that the image can help initiate the viewer into a more spiritual way of seeing through the way it depicted things. The "style" had to be theologically informed as well as the subject matter. The soft iconoclasm among Christians in the West, I think, is in part a reaction against the secularisation of liturgical art allowed by this more laissez-faire Western approach.

Iconodule theologians in the East, such as St John of Damascus, also emphasised the matter-affirming nature of the incarnation and icons: "I worship God alone, but I will not cease to venerate the matter by which my salvation was effected." Icons were considered not just a tool to teach, but were themselves a fruit and affirmation of God's assumption of our flesh, and through His flesh, of all the material world. The use of icons, incense, and other material things in worship were therefore not considered optional extras but a natural continuation of the incarnation of God and the transfiguration of matter.

AD: Sum up briefly for us what the main contents and arguments of the book.

- The book provides all the practical instruction needed to make icons and wall paintings, from the design, preparation of pigments, gilding, panel making and egg tempera painting, to wall preparation and fresco. All this technical information is of equal use to the non-liturgical painter as well as for the iconographer.

- Throughout the text, as well as in separate chapters on history and theology, the book sets technical information in the context of the Church's spirituality.

-  Iconography is a tradition that the West possessed up until around the 13th/14th century and can revive, with the help of Eastern Christendom, as an authentic tradition. It can gradually re-develop its own unique but universal form of iconography, in which not only the subject matter but also the way it depicts this subject can reveal a transfigured world. The book lays the philosophical, theological, and technical foundations for this difficult but inspiring task ahead of us.