De-constructing The Icon
This blog is mostly about “the onion” and my work in peeling it. However, in order to help my readers understand my occasional references to Byzantine Iconography, I would like to share this essay which I wrote about 5 years ago: De-constructing the Icon.
De-constructing the Icon
Deconstruction is the process upon which a work of art is taken apart piece by piece to show its construction. The work of art in question is slowly dismantled to show how the artist or author put it together, often in an attempt to see a deeper meaning the artist/author was intending to portray. Once the work is deconstructed, each piece or scene from the work is then analyzed and digested in order to gain a better understanding of what significance the part in question has to the larger work and how its role in the larger work effects the other parts of the work. When done properly, the end result of the deconstruction is a much deeper understanding of the work in question, how and why it was created and the importance of the various parts of the work in question. Deconstruction should not be confused with deconstructionism, which is an artistic movement which attempts to take the principles of deconstruction and apply them to various art forms including painting, movies, music, etc, and show the “constructedness” of your average works in that art form.
When I was in college, I had an English professor who I disagreed a great deal with on a great number of things. She was a liberal feminist and I was a young, stubborn conservative who was borderline rigid in my approach to living and thinking. This professor used her 200 level English class to teach many of her ideologies, most of which I disagreed with. We disagreed so much that one day I even walked out on the middle of her class and when she came after me in tears I refused to return until the next class. And yet this professor taught me one the most useful tools that I would need in the coming years when learning iconography. She taught us were the principles of deconstruction. She taught us how to watch a movie and understand why certain scenes are set up a certain way to highlight the star power of a current actor, or to read the scenery in the movie to get the point the director was attempting to make or the mood the director was attempting to set. She taught us how to read names in characters in movies, books, songs, etc and see what the author was saying about the person being portrayed. She taught us that very little in art and literature happen by accident and that most art is very highly constructed in order to get the message the artist or author was trying to make, and that by understanding this, and how to unravel the fabric of the piece you are contemplating, you could learn a lot about what was being said. Little did I know that these things I was learning in English class in the fall of 1995 would be extremely helpful the following fall when I began to learn iconography a year later.
Iconography is by its very nature, constructed. This is a very well known fact in the art world, and is often the source of fear and trepidation to those who approach iconography from the outside. To those who are not experienced working with icons the form of iconography can seem rather rigid and unbending and the idea of creating an icon can seem very daunting. Much of what goes into the icon is put there for a very specific meaning. This construction is not in the icon because the Church has set some canon or another to create the construction, in spite of popular belief. The church has had very little to say officially about the style of iconography. Recent archaeological finds show us that much of the construction of icons dates to the very earliest days of the church and even to the iconography of the Jewish places of worship that predate Christianity by thousands of years. Likewise, some of the construction comes from ancient Egyptian art as well. No matter where it comes from, we can already see the existence of iconographic form with the fresco of St. Paul which the Vatican recently found in the Roman Catacomb. The fresco of St. Paul dates from the 1st century and is believed to be one of the oldest icons in existence, and yet it looks exactly like every other icon of St. Paul! My icon of St. Paul which is depicted here is very similar in structure and style to the Vatican fresco of St. Paul. This is all the more amazing because my icon of St. Paul was painted about 20 years ago and the Vatican fresco of St. Paul was only unearthed in the past 10 years!
The construction of the icon gives form, meaning and consistency to iconography throughout the ages. Once we learn to deconstruct the icon we no longer need to fear it and can learn to appreciate the rich language which the icon speaks and understand everything that an icon is telling us about a particular saint or feast. My favorite analogy to explain this concept is the idea of a football game. Every football player and most football fans know how to play the game of American football, in spite of it’s complicated rules. The rules give form and shape to the game and set the boundaries of what can and can not be done. Once you know the rules you are free to play the game. The same is true with icons. Once you know the language of the icon you are free to learn everything it is telling you.
The first thing to look for when deconstructing an icon is to see who the main character in the icon is. If the icon is an icon of a saint, that is rather easy to do, but for a feast day it is very important to understand. Just like in a play or novel, it is the action of the main character in the festal icon that gives the icon meaning. In icons which depict Gospel accounts, Christ is always the main character, but there are often a second or even third main character who The Lord is interacting with in the icon that gives meaning and form to the feast; just as in literature and art there are often one or more supporting characters in the icon. These are usually people who were to a lesser extent involved in the feast and are in the icon to give the icon it’s form. And then there are the characters who are simply in the scene of the icon as extras. In the Wedding Feast at Cana, Christ and the Theotokos are the Main Characters, they are the ones who do the primary work in the icon. The supporting characters are the waiter who took the wine to the Father of the Bride, the Father of the Bride who drank the miraculously produced wine, and finally the Bride and Groom themselves without whose wedding the miracle would never occurred in the first place. The characters of the wait servants pouring the water into the jars are minor supporting characters. If there were even more characters at the table in the icon they would then be there as extras.
The next thing we must notice in deconstructing the icon of the Wedding Feast at Cana is the setting of the icon. The setting tells us the icon revolves around the table of the Wedding Feast. The table, the food on the table, the utensils all serve to illustrate this fact. The icon is shown with the buildings in the background, which is the iconographic tool to tell you the wedding took place indoors. The bride and groom wear the wedding crowns and both are dressed in white, again to set the tone of the icon. All of these things serve to tell you the setting of the icon and what is going on in the icon. One important aspect of this icon is emphasized in a number of ways: the blessing of the Lord over the occasion. First, the Lord and his mother are present at the wedding. Next, you see in the upper right corner the hand of Christ coming out of Heaven blessing the event. The hand is there to show that not only was the Lord present for the wedding, but he blessed it with his first miracle. The hand of the Lord coming out of Heaven in the upper corner of an icon is always the hand of blessing. If you will look closely at the icon you will also see the Gospel verse which tells us about the event, further emphasizing the blessing of the Lord over the wedding at Cana, and all marriages.
When assessing the use of color in an icon there are 2 important concepts to understand, and these concepts almost always work in conjunction with each other. It is important to take a look at the role the colors in the icon play and how they interact with each other. The first thing to understand is the colors of the robes worn by the main characters are often the colors which have theological importance. Sometimes the colors of the robes worn by minor characters are of importance to the story, but in those cases it is our job to know the feast day well enough to see the importance in these things. The second thing to understand is the role of artistic harmony in the use of color in the icon. As I mentioned in an earlier essay, the artistic harmony is of primary importance to both the festal icon and the icon of a saint. Once the colors which have theological importance have been set, the other colors are often set in such a way as to make the colors balanced an harmonious in the entire icon. Some times when depicting a group of many saints, as in the icon of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, there is no theological reason for the colors of any of the saints in the icon, save Christ. In this case the colors were chosen to give balance and harmony to the icon. If all of the saints on one side had red, and none on the other, or all on the top wore blue but none on the bottom, then the icon would appear out of balance and this lack of artistic harmony is as damaging to the icon as theologically erroneous matters would be. The same can be said of an icon of a single saint, which I will explain shortly. But first we must return to the icon of the Wedding Feast at Cana and finish our discussion surrounding it.
The colors in the Wedding Feast at Cana which are the most theologically important, other than the robes of Christ and the Theotokos, are the white and gold colors of the wedding robes of the bride and groom. The bride and groom and clothed in the white of purity and wear gold jeweled trim to their robes and gold crowns to symbolize they are, as the Orthodox Wedding Service so eloquently puts it, the king and queen of creation. In spite of being the king of creation, you see the groom wearing a red belt to symbolize there is an element of martyrdom involved in the marriage. All of the other colors in the icon of the Wedding Feast at Cana, other than the blue of the sky and the colors which Christ and the Theotokos always wear, are chosen to support the colors of the bride and groom and give the icon artistic harmony.
Now let us take a quick look at how these various items function in the icon of the single saint which is not depicted in a festal type icon. The icon which I have chosen for this purpose is that of St. Innocent, Enlightener of North America. The first thing you will notice about St. Innocent is that he is a bishop. The robes of a bishop change depending on when he lived, and what the iconographer is stressing about the bishop. The bishop is almost always shown wearing his omophorion, the sign of his episcopacy, but this is not always the case. Sometimes a bishop is shown in his monastic cassok without his omophorion. Modern bishops are mostly shown wearing their mantia, which for a bishop is is a magenta robe with white and red stripes. After he did work in America, St. Innocent was recalled to Russia and made Metropolitan of Moscow and it is because of his rank as Primate of the Russian Church that he wears a blue mantia. If he were Patriarch of Russia, the Russian Patriarchate did not exist at the time of St. Innocent due to the actions of Peter Romanov, he would wear a green mantia. Bishops are also frequently shown wearing their liturgical robe. This robe is the attire of the Byzantine Emperor, which bishops adopted from the emperor. One thing the bishop is always shown with is his Gospel book. Bishops are shown holding the Gospel book because it is symbolic of their teaching authority in the Church. Another thing that bishops are almost always shown doing is blessing with their right hand in the Greek monogram of the name of Christ: IC XC. Notice that the colors of the icon, while being theologically important, also balance each other nicely and nothing seems out of place. Gold is used on the mantia, stole, panagia, and Gospel book and white on the klobuk, omophorion and matnia. Everything is both theologically balanced as well as artistically balanced.
One final element of the construction of icons that I would like to take a look at is how a saints status as a martyr is depicted in the icon. There are many different ways to tell that an icon is a martyr. In this very early icon of St. Innocent I chose to give him a red background and have him hold the crown of martyrdom. St. Justin is also shown wearing red robes, as red is the color of matyrdom. The famous Novgorod icon of St. George on the horse killing the dragon is another icon where the red background tells you the saint is a martyr. In a later copy of St. Justin’s icon I chose to depict him holding the cross, which is always a symbol of a saint’s martyrdom. Any saint shown holding the cross of Christ may automatically be understood to be a martyr. Another way Martyrs are often depicted is shown holding the instrument of their martyrdom. St. Lawrence is often shown holding a gate, the instrument of his martyrdom, and St. Barbara a wheel. However, the fact a saint is shown holding something does not necessarily make them a martyr. Often saints are shown holding things which are symbolic of their life. Such is the case with Noah holding the ark, a saint who wrote extensively holding a scroll with his/her writing on it, or St. Andrei Rublev holding the icon of the trinity. In these cases it is key to understanding the construction of the icon to know what the symbol in the saints hands mean and what is being said about the icon.
Hopefully, now that you have an idea of how to read the language of the icon through deconstructing it, you will get a better understanding of the story which the icon is telling you. There is a rich language which is written into the icon and is waiting for the viewer to unravel and learn from.
©2012 Michael Goltz, all rights reserved.
