A brief reflection on byzantine iconography vs abstract art
In the twenty-one years in which I have studied and painted Byzantine Iconography, I have met countless people who were convinced that iconography must be a very hard medium to work in because of the “rules” that they have heard govern the art. In a previous post I debunked the idea that the Church had anything to do with any of the supposed rules, but at the same time iconography is very much a constructed art form. The construction of iconography has nothing to do with the Church, but never-the-less it would be a lie to deny that the construction exists. Until you start reaching the early Romanesque period of art it is very easy to tell an icon from non-iconographic art. Once you learn the technique of painting icons it is rather easy to compose new icons because you know and understand the way things look in an icon. A wing on an angel looks like every other wing on an angel. A blue robe is painted the same way. The faces are all emotionless, and thus appear the same way. Everything looks the same in iconography, and while there is some roon in iconography for artistic expression, there is much less room than there is in other forms of art which are far less constructed.
Quite the opposite is true of abstract art. Abstract art is the anti-thesis of constructed art. There are myriads of ways to apply a color in abstract art. Do you want to apply it in a solid form, a splattered form, or something in between? What color do you want to apply in the first place because the color which you choose is completely up to you. How do you want the line to look? The choice, again, is completely yours.
These are the things which I am struggling with. As I work to heal my soul from my divorce and be able to paint faces in icons again without having any sort of distress in them, I have been working in abstract art. At first abstract art looks very easy to compose, until you actually sit down to work in it. The problems that I am facing right now is that I don’t quite know how to do with the paintbrush in acrylic paint what I would know how to do in oil paint, even though I don’t work in oil . I don’t know how to do in acrylic paint what I know how to do with pencils because I know how to control a pencil very well and what I am attempting to do in acrylic abstract art is very different than what I know how to do in iconography.
These are just my thoughts as I work on the current painting which is on my desk.
