A Comment on Icons

From “Saints at a Cultural Crossroads” by Holland Carter (NY Times, 19 November 2009):

We see it in the very last painting in the show, a 1603 oil study for a “Coronation of the Virgin” commissioned by the Hospital of Charity in the town of Illescas. The composition has an iconlike symmetry. The figures, in their expressive abstraction, are as much Byzantine as Mannerist. And the picture scintillates with light, illusionistically painted rather than reflected from gold. Even cherubs tumbling around like kittens can distract from the picture’s nuclear focus: this is an image meant to promote, as music can, time-suspending, space-vivifying contemplation.

Exactly this psycho-sensual dynamic lies at the heart of how icons, as spiritual utensils, function. I wish the exhibition made something of this; had taken, as its third theme, the reality of these objects, not just as historical artifacts illustrating the progress of a culture or a famous career, but also as living and interactive energy sources, designed to embody and radiate charisma.

It’s interesting to see this kind of evaluation of icons appearing in what may be considered one of the world’s major outlets of secularism, of essentially everything that stands against the Church.

If anything, it shows that there is still the ability amongst even the nearly hopeless urbanites, bereft of the light of Christ, to recognize power where it lies. Undoubtedly there is a kind of superiority felt by such people recognizing “spiritual” value, thinking they are somehow more developed than those who know these icons intimately in Orthodox Christian worship. I would say it’s rather the opposite. Those who are not familiar with them, with the theology and the mentality lying behind reverence of the icons, and yet who instinctually recognize their power, are little more than animalistically and non-rationally acknowledging the power that the superior Divine, human, and rational theology of the icon describes. It is again a case of the intellectuals straying so far from the Christian roots of Western civilization (all Christian roots lie in the East!) that they have become little more cognizant of the reality of the Church than are animals. They can sense the power, but cannot describe it or react to it rationally. More’s the pity.

It sounds like a great show on Domenikos Theotokopoulos (“El Greco”) and other Cretan artists of the Mannerist period. If you’re in New York and have the time, check it out: “The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete” remains at the Onassis Cultural Center, 645 Fifth Avenue, near 52nd Street, through February 27.