Слике које тумарају: О рађању иконе из кризе иконичког поретка
The Wandering Images: On the Birth of Icon from the Crisis of Iconic Order

Summary/Abstract: As communicational modes radically defining our cognitive horizon, images and letters/writing have been interfering and mutually supporting throughout entire European history. Attempts to subvert the everlasting partnership between those two media have had occasionally happening, but mostly without any success. Moreover, this partnership seems to be functioning for good — whether “in good” or “in bad”. In spite being simultaneously persecuted by no less figure than Plato himself, who defined both as insufficient, mutely wandering, and totally inferior to the power of living voice/speech, fulfilled and protected by the spirit and the presence of the author/father, Christian culture will make a radical and yet-unexplored cognitive turn, simultaneously taking of this initial “curse” from the both mediums. Truly, unlike ancients, medieval Christians — like no other culture before — have been obsessed by writing practices, producing objects which defined what we consider to be the medium of the book today. On the other hand, while trying to denigrate the painted images, byzantine iconoclasm (after its collapse) actually resulted in their upgrading on the cognitive scale, defining icons as the medium equal to the writing (medium of the book) in every respect. Being based on the hypothesis that what will be designated here as “iconic order” or “iconic logics” can be found in the very basis of Platonic worldview, and that Plato’s denigration of mimetic arts is at least partly inspired by the need for protection of exclusive property in this (metaphysical) domain, present research tries to recognize the similar kind of need behind the iconoclastic relation towards the art of icon. This way, not only the roots of iconoclastic crisis might be illuminated in novel way, but some curiosities of specifically Christian (medieval, Byzantine…) need for images might get better understanding. If we approach the iconoclastic movement from this perspective, it will be possible to demonstrate that its well recognized centralizing tendencies actually reveal the attempt of overtaking the control over the “iconic order” — through direct elimination of its peripheral, material, bodily, emotional (…) aspects, which were not highly compatible to the mechanisms of cognitive/theological control. On the contrary, defenders of icons recognized exactly those peripheral cognitive spheres as especially important for Christian worldview: the capacity of visual media to directly affect the body of the beholder was recognized as communicational model which was able to enliven the theology of Incarnation in the most profound and most persuasive way. This is why the “Victory of Orthodoxy” (over the iconoclasm) was celebrated by renewal of the portrait of Virgin with Christ in the apse of Constantinopolitan Agia Sophia church, and this is why — consequently — entering (almost) any post-iconoclastic (byzantine) church faces the beholder with the same kind of image — which, of course, conveys the doctrine of Incarnation to our visual field. Becoming, thus, the medium which could “touch” the mystery of Incarnation of Christ in the human body as close as it was possible, icons became the final check point for this basic Christian doctrine.

• Details
• Contents