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Understanding Paintings: The Icon as a Paradigm.

Anthony Rudd

This paper is published in Religion and the Arts Vol 22 issue 5 (2018):
see https://brill.com/abstract/journals/rart/22/5/rart.22.issue-5.xml. Please refer to the published
version if citing this paper.

Abstract: Hans-Georg Gadamer has claimed firstly, that in religious painting the image
does not merely copy its prototype but is in “ontological communion” with it; and secondly, that
in this respect the religious painting is exemplary for painting in general. I examine these claims
with specific reference to Eastern Orthodox icons, drawing on both classical and modern
Orthodox theological accounts of the icon to support and amplify Gadamer’s claim about
“ontological communion”. I then consider accounts by J-L Marion and by the theologian Paul
Evdokimov of how the icon can be exemplary for painting in general. I argue that Marion’s
discussion leads to some unacceptably conclusions, and that Evdokimov provides a more
convincing account. This commits him to a strong and controversial thesis that all art
(consciously or otherwise and whatever its explicit subject-matter) is in a sense religious.

Keywords: Painting, Icons, Gadamer, Marion, Evdokimov

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People can become fascinated with paintings, absorbed in them. And to be so absorbed

can be a powerfully moving, significant experience. Our lives would be poorer without paintings,

without works of visual art in general. Why is this? What are paintings, what is it that they do,

that they can have such an effect on us? In this paper I will consider the idea that a certain kind

of religious painting – the Eastern Orthodox icon – can serve as a clue to the meaning and value

of paintings in general. The hypothesis might seem strange or extravagant to some, but we

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should bear in mind that most, if not all, art was once religious art; so perhaps it isn’t too crazy to

suggest that what it tried explicitly to do might be taken as a clue to what even officially secular

painting still tries to do – whether consciously or not, and perhaps in significantly different ways.

Strange or not, the intuition that there is something literally iconic about good painting is

one that has occurred to some important artists, as well as to philosophers and theologians.

Matisse was greatly impressed by the icons he saw on a visit to Russia in 1911, and commented

not only that “They are really great art” but also that “from them we ought to learn how to

understand art.” (Cormack, 84) Perhaps he was just referring to questions of style and technique,

finding in the icons such features as stylization of figures, flattening of perspective, bright

contrasting colours and so on that he and other early Modernist artists had been finding their own

way to. But he also remarked that “In these icons the soul of the artist who painted them opens

out like a mystical flower” (84) which suggests that he was thinking about more than just

technique. And in an interview from as late as 1950 he asserted that “All art worthy of the name

is religious. Be it a creation of lines, or colors: if it is not religious, it doesn’t exist. If it not

religious, it is only a matter of documentary art, anecdotal art…which is no longer art.” (Matisse,

192) This suggests not only that the idea of understanding art from the icon may have stayed

with him for four decades, but also that the “understanding” that he talked of was indeed a

metaphysical and not merely a technical one.

Turning from a painter to a philosopher, we find a less radical but still striking claim

being made by Hans-Georg Gadamer – not that all serious art is religious (whatever exactly

Matisse meant by that) but that something essential to all art appears most clearly in religious art.

Gadamer argues that a picture is not simply a copy of the surface appearance of a thing, and nor

is it merely a sign (a conventional designation pointing to the thing). “Rather, the presentation

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remains essentially connected with what is represented, indeed, belongs to it.” (Gadamer, 134)

And he continues “only the religious picture displays the full ontological power of the

picture…the religious picture has an exemplary significance. In it we can see without any doubt

that a picture is not a copy of a copied being, but is in ontological communion with what is

copied.” (137) I shall not, in what follows, be engaging in further exegesis of Gadamer’s own

thoughts about art, but will pursue in my own way two questions raised by his striking, if rather

obscure, claim: firstly, what does it mean to say that religious pictures are clearly in “ontological

communion” with their subject-matter; and, secondly, what would it mean to take them, in that

respect, as “exemplary” for painting in general?

I am approaching these questions by considering one specific kind of religious painting,

the Eastern Orthodox icon, in part because there is a large body of sophisticated theological

reflection, both classical and modern, on the significance of icons in the Orthodox tradition; and

also because there has been a significant recent philosophical interest in the icon, stemming

primarily from the work of J-L Marion.i I do however think that there are striking similarities

between the ontological significance claimed for icons and claims made for other kinds of

religious art, even in quite different religious traditions – for instance, statues of the gods in

Hinduism.ii I shall start by reviewing the theology of the icon in order to explicate the idea that

the icon is in “ontological communion” with what it depicts. I will then consider Marion’s

attempt to take the icon as “exemplary” – indeed as a paradigm by reference to which some of

the shortcomings of modern art can be exposed and assessed. Stimulating as Marion’s account is,

though, I think his argument does in the end go seriously astray. My criticisms of Marion will

lead me to a less well-known thinker, the Russian Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimoviii who, I

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will argue, provides an ultimately more effective attempt to explain what it might mean to take

the icon as exemplary for painting generally.

Icons, in the strict Eastern Orthodox sense, are painted images of sacred personages –

Christ, the Virgin, saints (almost never God the Father) - or events, composed in a stylized

fashion and according to traditionally established models, and intended to be used in liturgical

and devotional contexts in churches and monasteries – or for private devotion in the homes of

Orthodox believers.iv (See Figs 1-3 for some examples, from some quite different times and

places (6th, 14th, and 17th Centuries; Sinai, Russia and Crete). The theological justification for the

use of icons was hammered out in the course of the bitter Iconoclasm Controversy in (and

beyond) the Byzantine Empire. Between 726 and 786, and again from 815 to 843, successive

Emperors banned the use of images in worship and often destroyed or defaced them. Their policy

was bitterly resisted by many and the conflicts brought the Empire close to civil war at various

points. The Iconoclast policy was definitively reversed in 843 – an event that is still celebrated

by the Orthodox Church in the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

For the Iconoclasts themselves (and nearly all their writings were subsequently destroyed,

so we only know of them through their opponents’ quotations or paraphrases) the veneration of

icons was tantamount to idolatry. Their argument was both biblical and Platonic. The Iconoclasts

naturally cited the command in Exodus: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form

of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow

down to them or worship them.” (Exodus 20, 4-5v) The meaning of this injunction has been

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much debated in both Judaism and Christianity. Does it forbid the making of representational

images at all? Or does it only forbid using them for religious purposes? Or only worshiping

them? But underlying the Iconoclasts’ exegetical claims about the Bible, there was a

philosophical (Platonic) conviction, that images take us away from reality, and misrepresent its

true nature. For Plato, ordinary material things are themselves copies or imitations of the pure

transcendent Forms; to then make images of material things is to move further away from the

immaterial realm which is really real (and good) rather than towards it.vi The Iconoclasts’ case

does have an intuitive clarity. If God is invisible, infinite and transcendent, how can He be

represented by a (visible, finite) image? Doesn’t this convey the message that God Himself is

finite and limited – one being amongst others, rather than the Absolute? And even if the image is

that of a saint, surely we should be concentrating on trying ourselves to develop the virtues of the

saints, or to imitate their holy deeds, rather than being distracted by mere images of their

physical appearance?

In response, the defenders of icons (“Iconodules”) agreed that God could not be

represented directly.vii However, they pointed out that God had become incarnate in Jesus Christ,

and argued that it was therefore both legitimate and desirable to have representations of God as

so incarnated. As the leading Iconodule theologian, St. John of Damascus, put it: “I am

emboldened to depict the invisible God, not as invisible, but as he became visible for our sake.”

(St. John of Damascus, 22) viii The Iconoclasts refused to depict Christ on the ground that one could

only depict him as a man, but this would mislead as to his true nature by failing to show his

divinity. In response the Iconodules argued that their opponents were effectively denying the

reality of the Incarnation; by denying that God could be depicted as man, they were effectively

denying that God could have revealed Himself in human form, and therefore implicitly denying

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that he could really have become man.ix (This is why the Iconodules considered their opponents

not just mistaken about an issue of practice, but actually heretical.)The Iconodules agreed that it

would be wrong to offer worship (latreia) to images, whether of Christ, the Virgin, or the saints.

The image is of course different from its original and should be regarded differently. (Hence the

embarrassment the theologians felt at those who treated icons as having magical properties;

expecting, for instance, healing miracles from flecks of paint scraped from them.x) However, the

image conveys something of the nature of its original to our senses, and it is therefore, they

claimed, proper to offer “veneration” (proskynesis) to the images.xi

Underlying these specifically theological claims, there is, again, a fundamental

philosophical assumption. The material world is an expression of God’s nature, through which

we, as embodied beings, can be brought to some comprehension of the transcendent God. In the

words of St. Theodore the Studite:

What place is there where divinity is not present, in beings with or without reason, with or
without life? But it is present to a greater or lesser degree, according to the capacity of the nature
which receives it. Thus if one said that divinity is in the icon he would not be wrong…but
divinity is not present in them by a union of natures [as in Christ]…but by relative participation,
because they share in the grace and the honor. (St. Theodore, 33)

If the Iconoclasts’ argument looked back, consciously or not, to Plato’s critique of the arts in

Republic X, the Iconodules’ counter-argument is ultimately a Christianised version of Plotinus’

vindication of the visual arts. Plotinus, interestingly, turned Plato’s argument against the arts

back on itself. Since material objects are what they are through their participation in the Forms,

images of material things (especially stylized ones which bring out their formal, essential

properties rather than their contingent accidental ones) can lead our minds to contemplation of

the Forms.xii As John of Damascus put it, “We see images of created things intimating to us

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dimly reflections of the divine.” (St. John , 26) For Plotinus the ultimate point of this ascent is to

leave the material world behind; we use material images only as initial steps on a journey which

takes us far beyond them. But this certainly is not the case in the Christianised version. St.

Theodore rejects the idea of a purely spiritual ascent by referring to the bodily nature of the

Incarnation: “If merely mental contemplation were sufficient, it would have been sufficient for

Him [Christ] to have come to us in a merely mental way.” (St. Theodore, 27) St. John of

Damascus insists that “since I am a human being and wear a body, I long to have communion in

a bodily way with what is holy and to see it” (St. John, 43). He goes on to argue that because it is

God’s creation, and is further ennobled by Christ’s material body being taken up into divinity, xiii

the material world “is filled with divine energy and grace”. (29) xiv
An image, therefore, by

depicting a material body in such a way as to show that divine energy and grace shining out from

it, makes manifest to us - in a way that is proper to our own embodied nature - the nature of the

material world as divine creation.

This understanding of the significance of images remains basic to the Orthodox theology

of icons (and to the practice of icon-making). The icon represents the Holy person or event. But

it does so, not in the sense of simply copying it, but in a broader sense of re-presentation as

making present, evoking. This is, of course, the “ontological communion” to which Gadamer

referred. The icon is different from its original but as Leonid Ouspensky puts it, “although the

two objects are essentially different, there exists between them a known connection, a certain

participation of the one in the other.” (Ouspensky, 32) The use of the Platonic term here is

significant; not a mere copying or imitation or similarity, but a participation. What is depicted is,

in some way, mysteriously present in the depiction. Another modern Orthodox theologian, Paul

Evdokimov, emphasizes that the icon isn’t merely a (conventional) sign, but a symbol; that is, it

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“contains in itself the presence of what is symbolized.” (Evdokimov, 16) According to

Evdokimov, the earliest Christian art did consist merely of signs (the fish standing for Jesus etc);

and this remained true of religious art in the medieval West. The Latin Church didn’t usually

have a problem with images as such, but it tended (at least in its official theology) to treat them

in a purely utilitarian way, as teaching aids – and thus merely as signs.xv (Although Evdokimov

does claim that at least early medieval art in the West managed in practice to do more than

that.xvi) By contrast, according to Evdokimov, “the icon is a sacrament for the Christian East;

more precisely, it is the vehicle of a personal presence.” (178) He is careful, though, to

distinguish presence in the icon from Christ’s “real presence” in the Eucharist. Christ is not

present in the matter of an icon; His presence there is conveyed through its representational

content: “There is therefore no question of some ontological presence being absorbed into the

matter of the icon...the presence in no way incarnates itself in the icon, but the icon is

nonetheless a center from which the divine energies radiate out.” (196)

An icon is not concerned with empirical accuracy. The literal rendering of the

appearance of a historical individual is not the point. The icon is, as Ouspensky says, “opposed

to illusion” (Ouspensky, 41); it doesn’t try to deceive us into thinking we are seeing empirical

objects, and it deliberately reminds us of its imagistic nature. But in a deeper sense what it gives

us is realism, though of spirit, not surface appearance. In Christ the image of God in humanity -

we were created in God’s image,xvii though it has been tarnished by the Fall - is restored; and

those who share in Christ (the saints) thus become divinized. (Ouspensky quotes the Orthodox

dictum “God became Man so that man may become god” (Ouspensky 36-7)). Icons present this

hidden divinized reality, not empirical appearance:

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…the icon is a likeness, not of an animate, but of a deified prototype; that is, [it] is an image
(conventional, of course) not of corruptible flesh, but of flesh transfigured, radiant with divine
light….Consequently, everything that reminds of the corruptible human flesh is contrary to the
very nature of the icon…a temporal portrait of a saint cannot be an icon, precisely because it
reflects not his transfigured, but his ordinary state. It is indeed this peculiarity of the icon that
sets it apart from all forms of pictorial art. (36)

Iconographers did in a sense have a concern for “accurate” depiction, xviii and also

included details indicating precise geographical and historical settingsxix– but their point was to

depict the transfigured humanity of the saint, not naturalistic detail. An authoritative Tradition

emerged for how different saints or events should be depicted in fixed (though never entirely

rigid) ways – eventually manuals came to be composed.xx The aim was always to convey the

significance of who the saint was. Individual features remain, but they are stylized in the same

ways (small mouth, large eyes etc) in order to show, “not the earthly countenance of a man, as

does a portrait, but his glorified eternal face.” (Ouspensky, 39) But, according to Evdokimov, in

seeing the deified saint, I am seeing an image of my own telos – which is to become, myself,

deified. So I am being brought into the presence, not only of the saint – or even that of God, via

the deified saint; but also into my own presence – that is, into the presence of my own true

(though currently unrealized or incompletely realized) nature.xxi

The icon communicates, but what it communicates is not simply information. To return

to Evdokimov’s contrast between the Eastern and Western churches, medieval theologians in the

West had regularly argued that pictures could tell stories, make things known.xxii They were

commonly referred to as “the books of the illiterate”. It was also regularly argued that even for

the literate, they could convey the information, tell the stories, in ways which could make them

more vivid. Images focus our attention and move our emotions. But in all these ways, it seems,

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images are being valued instrumentally. As Evdokimov says, they are used as signs - conduits

through which the content of a teaching passes. But what the icon teaches is not simply

paraphrasable in words. This is carefully stated by Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky:

Icons impinge on our consciousness by means of the outer senses, presenting to us

the…supra-sensible reality in ‘aesthetic’ experience…But the intelligible element does not
remain foreign to iconography; in looking at an icon one discovers in it a ‘logical’ structure, a
dogmatic content which has determined its composition. This does not mean that icons are a kind
of hieroglyth or a sacred rebus, translating dogmas into a language of conventional signs.
(Lossky, 22)

Three elements are held here in a delicate balance; the icon conveys a distinctively aesthetic

content; it nevertheless has a conceptual structure which is not simply inarticulable; and that this

articulation doesn’t just involve translating conventional signs back into language.

Ouspensky insists that the icon, beyond conveying information, gives us knowledge by

acquaintance: “…through the icon, as through the Holy Scriptures, we not only learn about God,

but we also know God.” (Ouspensky, 36) It attempts to establish, as it were, an interpersonal

rapport with the viewer. So the icon is not only in “ontological communion” with its prototype,

it aims to draw its viewer into that communion too. This concern to establish a sort of

intersubjective connection with the viewer is, according to Ouspensky, expressed by the

distinctive style and composition of the icon:

…the icon does not cut itself off from the world, does not lock itself up within itself. The fact
that it addresses itself to the world is also emphasized by the fact that saints are usually
represented turned towards the congregation, either full face or three-quarters. They are hardly
ever represented in profile [Even where the composition would warrant it]…In a certain sense
the profile breaks communion, it is already the beginning of absence. Therefore it is allowed

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chiefly in the case of persons who have not yet attained sanctity. [e.g. the shepherds or Wise Men
at the Nativity.] (39)

Despite the best efforts of composition and style, the icon’s drawing us to communion

with its prototype will not be obvious to just anyone who looks at it in just any frame of mind;

the “ontological communion” of icon and prototype will only appear to someone who is willing

to be drawn, him or her self, into that communion – communing with the prototype through the

icon. It is only when one really opens oneself to the icon, that what it makes present reveals

itself. The symbol as Evdokimov says, “appeals to the contemplative faculty of the mind, the

real imagination.” (16) The connection suggested here between contemplative attention and

imagination is important; and Evdokimov’s qualification, “the real imagination”, implies a

distinction between kinds or levels of imagination that seems close to Coleridge’s classic

distinction between imagination, as a principle of ontological insight, and mere fancy.xxiii

Let us sum up the main themes that have emerged from this discussion. The icon establishes

an “ontological communion” or makes present in that:

1) It doesn’t just copy, but evokes or manifests, its prototype, and in some sense

participates in that prototype. The prototype is present in the icon, though this should

not be taken in a crudely literal, physicalistic or superstitious sense.

2) In order to do this, it attempts to evoke the essence of its prototype, rather than to

imitate its surface appearance.

3) Its viewer, if willing to be open to this, is brought into a sort of intersubjective

connection with the icon, and, through the icon, with the prototype.

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4) The icon communicates a definite content, but one that is only fully communicable

through the icon’s own sensuous, aesthetic presentation of it; it is not reducible to any

kind of verbal paraphrase.

The question we need to turn to now is whether and in what sense these characteristics can be

taken as “exemplary” for painting in general.

II

I want to start that inquiry by looking at the way in which Marion has attempted to use

the icon as the basis for a critique of modern secular art. Taking the icon as a paradigm, he uses it

as a standard by comparison with which the short-comings of other types of painting can be

made apparent. In his earlier work, Marion had introduced an influential distinction between an

icon and an idol, but had made it clear that he was doing so neither as a Christian polemic against

“paganism” nor as a contribution to art history. “Icon” and “idol” in his sense do not designate

different classes of object; some objects – and not just objects, but also concepts - become idols

or icons depending on the attitude taken to them; or, as Marion puts it, the nature of the “gaze”

directed at them. “[T]he icon and the idol are not at all determined as beings against other beings,

since the same beings (statues, names etc) can pass from one rank to the other. The icon and the

idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of beings.” (Marion, 1991, 8)

An idol makes the divine visible, but in a way that finitizes it. The idol stops, absorbs, satisfies

the gaze: “In the idol, the divine actually comes into the visibility for which human gazes watch,

but this advent is measured by what the scope of particular human eyes can support…Thus the

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idol consigns the divine to the measure of a human gaze.” (14) An icon, by contrast, makes the

invisible visible as invisible. “The icon summons the gaze to surpass itself by never freezing on a

visible, since the visible only presents itself here in view of the invisible. The gaze…must

rebound upon the visible, in order to go back in it up the infinite stream of the invisible.” (18)

The basic contrast is between what limits the divine, cuts it down to human size, and what opens

up a sense of the divine infinitude; and Marion’s concern in making it is to support his critique of

the idea of God allegedly presented by the metaphysical tradition, rather than to advance an

aesthetic inquiry.

In his later work, however, Marion does discuss painting itself in interesting ways and

considers the “icon” in the more historically specific sense which I have been considering. He

does, indeed, refer to paintings as idols, but not (at least initially) in a pejorative sense. The

painting is an idol in that it fascinates; it is visually so rich that it holds and compels our gaze,

which usually just flits rapidly between objects as practical considerations demand.xxiv Painting

in general Marion understands, not as mimesis of things as they appear but as the effort to render

the invisible visible: “…the painter…makes visible what without him would have remained

definitively invisible.…his gift has nothing to do with his vision of the visible but with his

divination of the unseen.” (Marion, 2004, 25-6)This theme – that painting somehow makes the

invisible visible – runs through a good deal of modern French philosophical aesthetics (including

Merleau-Ponty, Maritain and Michel Henry) as well as the theoretical reflections of artists such

as Kandinsky and Klee. It obviously resonates interestingly with some of the ideas we

encountered in the discussion of icons above. What Marion initially has in mind, however,

doesn’t seem quite as metaphysically or theologically ambitious. Part of his point is that we

normally see things in a dull, stereotypical way. The artist by contrast sees things freshly and, by

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presenting them in a way that expresses that freshness of vision, enables us to see what had

previously been “unseen”. “We look at what is offered by the painter only in order to see a

visible that remains inaccessible to our vision. For if he paints what he sees…he does not paint

what, as a rule, we see at first sight…” (24-5) Elsewhere Marion suggests that painting shows us

the invisible in a slightly different sense; through perspective and other forms of compositional

structure, the painter doesn’t just reproduce objects, but shows or makes manifest to us the

conditions of the possibility of things appearing to us. We only see what is visible – Austin’s

“middle sized dry goods” – because of our capacity to organize our perceptions in depth. Space

(especially depth, but also left/right handedness) is not itself visible, but this invisible makes the

perception of the visible possible. “It is the invisible…that renders the visible real.”(4) xxv

For Marion good painting needs to maintain a subtle balance between what one might

call visibility and invisibility; that is, between the objects it presents, and the way in which we

experience them; which, as noted above, it shows without directly depicting. But this means that

“the painting disappears…when one of the two factors in tension, lived experience, or the object,

disappears.” (14) And Marion argues that the history of modern art has indeed shown a tendency

for painting to lose that balance by exaggerating one or other aspect. On the one hand, it falls

into subjectivism “when the experience itself becomes directly the end of the painting and the

only visible.” (14) This begins with Monet and leads eventually to Pollock’s action painting and

to the loss of intentionality. “The world of intentional objects dies in the action of painting,

which already accomplishes a world in itself.” (16) On the other hand, we have painting that

presents us with an image so simple and ‘objective’ that the interpretative gaze has nothing to do.

A work that does not need experience to complete it, to make it be. (Marion’s examples are

Malevich’s Supremacism and various forms of Minimalism.)

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So art tends to fall apart into excesses of either subjectivity or objectivity. xxvi And

Marion looks to the icon (in the narrower, historically specific sense, not his own earlier broad

sense) to suggest an alternative. He explicitly claims that the icon can be “exemplary” for

painting in general. For it suggests an understanding of the image as neither a superfluous copy

of the original (as in Platoxxvii) nor as something autonomous, cut off from any relation to an

original (as in Nietzsche, postmodernist valorisations of signifiers without signifieds and – most

pervasively – in the image-soaked virtual reality of contemporary culture).xxviii The icon does not

represent the saint it depicts, but evokes the presence of the holy. Moreover it establishes an

inter-subjectivity on which Marion insists in unabashedly realist terms; not only does the devout

viewer see the saint himself through the image; but the saint (or God looking through the saint?)

sees the viewer. There is a “commerce of two invisible gazes – the one from a praying man,

taken through the painted icon to look upon an invisible saint, the other the gaze of the invisible

saint…visible through the painted icon.” (20) Thus, the icon subverts the merely spectatorial

relation we get in ordinary paintings: “The icon definitively withdraws itself from the objectivity

of a spectacle dependent upon consciousness by overturning the relation between the spectator

and the spectacle: the spectator sees himself invisibly seen by the painted gaze of the icon.” (21)

The icon, then, establishes presence as inter-subjectivity. In a sense it does this better –

at least more radically - than traditional perspective painting, although that at least retained

intentionality, and opened a world by creating depth. The icon thus stands as a paradigm of what

we need if we are to avoid being trapped in the dead-ends offered by either impressionism or

supremacism and their respective successors, which collapse the necessary objective-subjective

tension of perspective painting. Marion does not explain in detail how painters who are not

iconographers can learn from icons, but he does seem to suppose that they can, alluding

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favourably to “the contemporary development of the image (in postcubist painting).” (59) He

suggests that what is needed is a certain surrender of autonomy, a renewed emphasis on the

prototype, rather than the image itself. “The truly creative painter, then, is characterized not by a

plastic inventiveness imposing his will, but rather by a passive receptivity which, from a million

equally possible lines, knows to choose this one that imposes itself from its own necessity.” (36)

We need to get over what Marion strikingly calls Modernity’s “loss of non-mastery”.(35) But

what does this involve?

Marion claims that the icon is an image that “dulls” itself, calls attention away from

itself in order to let the prototype gaze through it.xxixAnd that this “theological paradigm of a

kenosis of the image” can be “translate[d] into aesthetic principles.”(62) This leads him to praise

various forms of minimalism and arte povera (and also ready-mades).xxx But one might have

thought that these would have been precisely the sorts of things that would have fallen under his

critique of a banal objectivism. Arte povera and its analogues are not on the face of it dulling

themselves to allow something more to shine through them; and surely a merely dull or

impoverished object, is, well, just dull? But if the “poverty” of such art is such that it allows

something transcendent (even if not in a traditionally religious sense) to shine through; why

couldn’t this be said of Malevich and his successors as well?

But even where specifically religious art is concerned, which is trying to serve as a

medium for the transcendent, Marion’s claim about “dulling” seems dubious. There is indeed

something essentially kenotic about the icon, which is expressed in its austere and stylized

appearance, but this has historically been thought compatible with it having what are nonetheless

very rich and sensuously appealing qualities. Surely Marion doesn’t mean that the more

“dulled”, the more banal, the image is, the better? But he does indeed go on to praise religious

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kitsch (what the French call “Sulplician”). “For ‘Sulplician’ art practices, more than ‘great art’,

the impoverishment of the image and the transfer of veneration from the image to the

original.”(64) He concludes, though, it is only in the context of the liturgy that the icon can do its

work. And we have to choose whether to let it do so – we can turn the liturgy into a mere

spectacle, in which case it becomes an idol.xxxi Paul Crowther comments that “The meaning that

Marion assigns to the icon applies just as well to cheap copies or even to kitschy plaster saints

and crucifixes and the like” (Crowther, 131) and goes on to compare Marion’s position with that

of those who judge art works solely by the political message they express. To be fair, Marion

does raise the real and important question of whether the beauty of a religious work can be a

mere distraction, religiously speaking. (We think of this picture of the Madonna as being a

Raphael rather than being an icon of the Virgin.xxxii) And more generally, we need to think

seriously about the question of whether even banal work can make present in a significant sense

– and whether, if so, this would undermine the idea that the value of a great painting lies in its

ability to make present. All the same, it does seem clear that something has gone seriously wrong

with Marion’s argument. Indeed, with his praise of the ‘Sulplician’ he does seem to end up

treating the icon as a mere sign – a means to an end, rather than a symbol that itself participates

in what it conveys.xxxiii One might perhaps try to save his thesis by arguing that the principle: the

more banal the better! is true of the icon regarded simply as an aid to piety, rather than as an art-

work. But in that case, his attempt to “see how the theological paradigm of a kenosis of the

image translates into aesthetic principles” would obviously have failed.

The icon calls the viewer into a communion with the prototype with which it is itself in

ontological communion. This can certainly be described as kenotic – the icon sets itself aside in

order to allow a transcendent reality to become present. And I think Marion is right that this

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could be “exemplary” for painting in general, that its guiding principle should be to make

manifest what is essential in its subject matter, rather than either simply copying surface

appearances or becoming narcissistically enclosed in itself (the post-modern non-signifying

signifier). And in this it needs to be guided by a respect for its subject-matter; it needs to recover

from the “loss of non-mastery”. But Marion seems to take a wrong step in assuming that any of

this requires the icon – or the painting in general - to become impoverished or dulled. I would

want to suggest, on the contrary, that it is through being what it can be most fully - as an

aesthetic, sensuously presented image - that an icon or other painting manifests or makes present

the transcendent reality.

It is important at this point in the argument to clarify an ambiguity in the claim (made

by both Gadamer and Marion) that an icon is or can be “exemplary” for painting in general. This

might simply mean that there is an analogy, a structural parallel. On this interpretation – call it

the weak claim - all painting is supposed to do something like what religious painting is clearly

and explicitly meant to do – that is, to make its subject-matter present to the viewer. On this

(weak) claim such making present isn’t in itself a religious act, nor is what gets made present

itself necessarily of religious significance. The claim would still be quite substantive; that

paintings, whether or not religious, are not just copies but are “in ontological communion with

what is copied”. However, there are stronger interpretations, according to which what is made

present (however ostensibly secular) is itself of religious significance; or that the notion of

presence or “ontological communion,” which applies to all painting, is itself essentially a

religious one, or at any rate one that only makes sense in the context of a broadly religious

world-view.xxxiv I think Gadamer intended only to make the weaker claim, and even Marion, I

think is only intending to claim that arte povera accomplishes something analogous to religious

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art, not that it is a kind of religious art. But the stronger claim has certainly been suggested by

various thinkers – notably, George Steinerxxxv – and as we have seen, by artists, even ones such

as Matisse who are not usually thought of as being particularly “religious”. It will be useful to

bear this distinction in mind as we turn to Evdokimov’s attempt to show the exemplary nature of

the icon.

III

Evdokimov argues that art in general seeks to evoke the deep, underlying essences or

meanings of things: “…every art worthy of the name never seeks simply to copy what is real but

aspires to reveal its meaning, to unravel its secret message, to seize its logos…”(Evdokimov,

204) Here is another sense, somewhat different from Marion’s, in which art may be supposed to

“make the invisible visible.” On this definition of art the icon is an art-work, and indeed, a

paradigm for art generally: “As a symbol, the icon goes way beyond art, but it also explains

art.”(89) Interestingly, Evdokimov goes on to say that “[a]part from certain exceptions, art as

such will always be more perfect than iconography because the iconographer does not attempt to

attain artistic and aesthetic perfection.” (89) But this is a back-handed compliment! Too much

effort at aesthetic perfection in an icon would be distracting. But it seems Evdokimov is arguing

that it may be damaging to all art; beauty and art get short-changed when they are taken up

merely aesthetically – and that is when (superficial) beauty can become a cloak for evil and

falsehood. It is only when beauty, truth and goodness are seen as necessarily belonging together

as aspects of divinity, and thus of God’s creation, that beauty can be properly appreciated. xxxvi

The “aestheticisation” of art becomes its downfall. If art aspires to reveal the essence of its

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subject-matter, then too much attention to the superficial perfection of its visual surface, may

work against this aim. In this sense, and up to a point, Evdokimov might agree with Marion

about “dulling”. But the right balance between “dulling” and “perfecting” must be the one that

best serves the artistic aim of revealing essence or making the invisible visible. “Dulling” cannot

be a worth-while artistic goal simply as an end in itself - or as a mere anti-aesthetic gesture.xxxvii

For Evdokimov non-iconic art expresses the “earthly Sophia”, (90) that is, the ideal,

structural, formal elements in the world, as they make themselves manifest in and through

matter. But beyond that is the heavenly Sophia of which the earthly one is only an “ambiguous

mirror.”(90) What icons express is not just the earthly Sophia; as visual, material works, they do

of course express that, but they express it in such a way as to show the heavenly Sophia shining

through it. How should we understand this distinction between the icon and the “mere” art-work?

We might argue for a division of labour account - art should stick to the earthly Sophia and icons

to expressing the heavenly one. There would still be at least a structural parallel. The icon aims

to make its figures present in a way which presents their underlying essences to the viewer; but

so does secular art. The difference is that what icons aim to make present are divine, not just

worldly essences. So secular art is in a sense less ambitious than the icon – but it is still trying to

do the same kind of thing as the icon does. (This is a form of the “weak” thesis I mentioned

above; other forms would deny that there is a heavenly Sophia, while still taking the account of

what icons were supposed to do as suggesting a way of thinking about the participatory and

revelatory qualities of art generally.)

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This “division of labour” approach would go naturally with a theology which accepts the

autonomy of the natural world and its separation from what has now come to be regarded as the

“supernatural”. But such a theology would not be acceptable to Evdokimov, for whom the

natural world can only be fully understood or appreciated if it is seen as participating in and

expressing the “heavenly Sophia.” This is not a peculiarity of Evdokimov’s approach (or of

Eastern Orthodoxy) but, I think, essential to any theism that has properly understood itself.

Alasdair MacIntyre is quite right to say:

To be a theist is to understand every particular as, by reason of its finitude and its
contingency, pointing towards God. It is to believe that, if we try to understand particulars
independently of their relationship to God, we are bound to misunderstand them. It is to hold that
all explanation and understanding that does not refer us to God, both as first cause and as final
end is incomplete… (MacIntyre, 23)
This does not, of course, mean that God should be brought in to explain e.g. particular

scientific phenomena. (An “incomplete” explanation can be perfectly good as far as it goes, and

entirely adequate for some particular purpose.) But if art is, as Evdokimov affirms, concerned

with making manifest the essential natures of things; and if it is part of the essence of anything

that it is created and sustained by God and directed to God; then it follows that art needs to

understand things (if only implicitly) in their relation to God. Evdokimov concludes that an art

which loses its reference to the “heavenly Sophia” will also tend to lose even the earthly Sophia,

and decline into a merely “aesthetic” celebration of the artist’s subjectivity:

Every purely aesthetic work of art is a triptych whose panels open to show the artist, the
work itself and the person who looks at the work. The artist executes his work; he plays on the
keyboard of his genius, thus bringing out an emotion of admiration in the soul of the spectator.
The whole is enclosed in a triangle of aesthetic immanentism…In the presence of an icon, we
sense a fourth principle, fourth in relation to the previously mentioned triangle; we sense the

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appearance of the transcendent whose presence is attested to by the icon. The artist fades away
behind Holy Tradition; the art object gives way to a theophany. (Evdokimov, 179-80)

I noted above that Evdokimov thinks that early medieval art in the West achieved

something like the symbolic effect of Eastern icons; but he claims that, after Scholastic theology

came under Aristotelian influence in the Thirteenth Century, Western art (as well as theology)

went downhill. Aristotle gives us an immanently intelligible universe, but loses transcendence.

(This is why Plato’s attack on the arts cuts deeper than Aristotle’s defence of them. Aristotle

didn’t see art as liable to miss or corrupt anything, because he didn’t see anything beyond the

formal element in the earthly.) Reflecting this, Western art from Cimabue on becomes more

naturalistic –it turns from (Platonic) participation to Aristotelian mimesis. As a result, “Sacred art

degenerates into nothing more than religious art”. (169-70) And this ultimately leads to the

renewed iconoclasm of the Reformation (though most of the images it destroyed were not

themselves true icons); to Calvinist austerity and whitewashed churches. Descartes and Locke

take us further away still than Aristotle from the Platonic philosophy of transcendence and

participation; we have the triumph of the sign over the symbol and, in art, an increasing

obsession with a merely naturalistic realism. Obviously this sweeping historical narrative raises

all sorts of questions; but rather than engaging with them here, I want to note how Evdokimov

sees modern (Western) art as continuing this trajectory into a radical immanentism and

subjectivism.xxxviii “In the past, things questioned the artist. They were waiting for him to answer

and bring them to life under his creative glance…The modern artist, however, questions his own

soul, then looks to the world and applies his disintegrating vision to things.” (78) Modern

Western art, for Evdokimov, tends to lose even the Aristotelian sense of form expressed

harmoniously through matter. Instead it tends either to wallow in a brutally de-sacralised matter,

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or to set off on a Gnostic quest for pure form.xxxix Commenting on the latter, and presumably

with Mondrian and Kandinsky in mind, Evdokimov writes that

[f]or the great founders of abstract art, the desire to penetrate behind the veil of the real
world is obviously ‘theosophical’ and occult in nature….Is this the new era of the knowledge of
God? Perhaps, but if it is, it is a knowledge that knows nothing of the incarnate God. It is a
knowledge of the ideal and abstract deity, which sets aside the divine Subject himself. (83)

Whether or not one wants to take that specifically theological point, Evdokimov’s

critique of modern abstraction does bring out by contrast an ideal of true art, which expresses the

spiritual in and through the material. “The presence of an ideal content in a sensible form, and

their harmony, condition the aesthetic aspect of being which the artist reads and comments on.”

(86) This does seem to offer an ideal for art in general, and not just that of the icon, and it thus

suggests that there can be an art which is neither simply iconic nor “purely aesthetic” and

therefore ultimately subjective. It would be an art that makes present the “earthly Sophia.” In

terms of Evdokimov’s image above, it adds to the “triptych” of painting, artist and viewer the

necessary fourth element; the subject-matter, made present in its essential nature.

This does not, however, simply return us to the division of labour view. If it is true that

the earthly Sophia is what it is only because it derives from and mirrors the heavenly Sophia,

then an art work that truly expresses the former will necessarily express something of the latter

as well, whether or not its creator was conscious of that. (This is why, as Evdokimov insists,

losing the heavenly Sophia entails that one will lose the earthly one too.) So, on this view, an art

that wants to make the earthly Sophia present will - in its own way and whether intentionally or

not - have to do what icons do; that is, evoke the divine beauty through worldly beauty. The

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difference between such art and iconography becomes one of emphasis; the icon uses the earthly

Sophia in order to evoke the heavenly, whereas secular art sets out simply to evoke the earthly

Sophia but, in order to do so it unavoidably (even if sometimes unintentionally) expresses

something of the heavenly also. But this means that, to use the distinction I made above, the

“weak” thesis collapses into the “strong” one. Art can only do something analogous to the icon

(make things present in their essential natures) if it does in a sense do what the icon does (make

the divine present).xl There would also remain the possibility of genuine sacred art (as distinct

from mere “religious art”) which explicitly aims to evoke the divine through the material,

without necessarily doing so in the way that traditional Orthodox icons do. Such sacred art would

be neither secular painting with a notionally “religious” subject matter, nor Sulplician kitsch. I

think that, from Giotto through Rouault and beyond, this has (at least sometimes) been

successfully achieved.

IV

It seems then that Evdokimov does have a coherent account of how icons can be

paradigmatic for art; one that is an alternative to the division of labour view, and which makes

icons paradigmatic in a stronger sense than that of mere structural parallelism. It suggests a sense

in which all genuine art is, as Matisse claimed, at least implicitly religious; even if its creators

may be unaware of this (and even if they would be horrified by it if they were). And it seems to

be a view that is in principle more receptive to post-Cimabue artistic developments than

Evdokimov himself is.xli His view depends on something like a Platonic philosophy/theology of

participation;xlii though (surprisingly perhaps) I don’t think it need in its basic outlines depend on

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anything specifically Christian.xliii I think that such a philosophy is more defensible than it is

often assumed to be these days; however, it is obviously controversial, to say the least. I have

argued above that, for a theism that is aware of its implications, the weak thesis collapses into the

strong one; but the weak thesis would still be available for someone who rejects theism and its

“Heavenly Sophia.” So for an atheist it could still be the case that reflection on what icons were

intended to do – to make present the essential natures of their prototypes - can suggest an

account of painting in general that is plausibly more fruitful than naturalistic realism, narcissistic

self-referentiality or a merely “dull” minimalism.

Any view of art, however, is at least implicitly a metaphysical view,xliv and even the weak

thesis involves controversial presuppositions. The first of these is that things have essential

natures – that there are “real essences” or natural kinds; that classification is not simply arbitrary.

In other words, the weak thesis involves a rejection of the radical nominalism of much

postmodernism. Secondly, if the Gadamerian claim about “ontological communion” is to explain

why painting can and should matter to us, it must account for the worth of what it brings us into

the presence of. So if there is to be a real analogy between icons and secular art, even the weak

view must suppose, not only that paintings can bring their viewers into communion with their

prototypes, but that those prototypes are such that they are worth communing with; that they

have a deep value. This means, I think, that the “weak” thesis will need to be committed to a

pretty robust kind of evaluative realism; value is there in the world, it is not just a human

projection or construction. So the “weak” thesis - even if it rejects the idea that the rational order

of the universe (the earthly Sophia) is itself a reflection of a transcendent divine order - remains a

metaphysically substantive and controversial one. And proponents of the strong thesis might

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argue that we cannot, in fact, make sense of the metaphysical presuppositions of the weak thesis

without appealing to some transcendent source of rational order and value. I think there is a

compelling case to be made for such a claim; but that is a topic for another occasion.

Works Cited

Cormack, Robin. Icons. London, The British Museum Press, 2007

Crowther, Paul, How Pictures Complete Us: The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Divine. Stanford
CA, Stanford University Press, 2016

Eck, Diana, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. Columbia University Press, 3rd ed, 1998

Evdokimov, Paul, The Art of the Icon: a Theology of Beauty, translated by S. Bigham, Redondo
Beach, CA Oakwood Publications, 1990
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method. 2nd edition, translated by W. Glen-Doepel, revised by
J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall., London and New York, Continuum, 2004

John of Damascus, Saint, Three Treatises on the Divine Images, translated by A. Louth.
Crestwood, NY, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003

Lossky, Vladimir, ‘Tradition and Traditions’ in The Meaning of Icons, edited by Leonid
Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, Crestwood, NY, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,1999

MacIntyre, Alasdair, ‘On Being a Theistic Philosopher in a Secularized Culture’ Proceedings of

the American Catholic Philosophical Association Vol 84 (2010)

Marion, Jean-Luc, God Without Being, translated by Thomas Carlson. Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1991

Marion, Jean-Luc, In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena, translated by R. Horner and V.

Berraud. New York, Fordham University Press, 2002

Marion, Jean-Luc, The Crossing of the Visible, translated by J. Smith. Stanford CA, Stanford
University Press, 2004.

Matisse, Henri, ‘Interview with Georges Charbonnier’ in Matisse on Art edited by Jack Flam.
Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1995

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, ‘Eye and Mind’, translated by Michael Smith in The Merleau-Ponty
Aesthetics Reader edited by Galen Johnson. Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1993

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Ouspensky, Leonid, ‘The Meaning and Language of Icons’ in The Meaning of Icons, edited by
Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, Crestwood, NY, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,1999

Steiner, George, Real Presences, London, Faber, 1989

Steiner, George, Grammars of Creation. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 2002

Theodore the Studite, Saint, On the Holy Icons, translated by C. Roth. Crestwood, NY, St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981

i
See Marion (1991) especially Chs 1 and 2; and Marion (2004).
ii
See Eck, passim
iii
Paul Evdokimov (1901-1970) was a Russian emigre philosopher and theologian who spent most of his life in
France. His Art of the Icon: a Theology of Beauty was originally published in French in 1970. I will draw on
Evdokimov in explicating the traditional theological understanding of the icon in section I and then return to him in
section III to consider his account of how the icon can be understood as exemplary for thinking about art in general.
iv
Of course many icons today are reproductions of painted originals. It has become increasingly common to see
icons in the Eastern Orthodox style used in non-Orthodox (Catholic, Protestant) churches; and original icons are
now often to be found in art museums, presented as objects of aesthetic appreciation. And some people who are not
Orthodox believers may have icons in their homes, which they appreciate in a part-aesthetic, part-spiritual way,
while others may enjoy them simply as art-works.
v
This quotation is from the New International Version of the Bible.
vi
See Plato, Republic, Book X. The study of Plato (and Aristotle) never died out in the Byzantine empire; but
whether or not the Iconoclast theologians drew on Plato directly, the theology of the early Greek Fathers, to which
all parties to the Controversy appealed, was itself steeped in Platonism.
vii
Interestingly, the Western Church has generally been quite content to admit images of God the Father, or of the
Trinity, while Eastern Orthodoxy has always refused to do so. But then the Western Church has generally had a
different understanding of the role and significance of images. I will touch on this further below.
viii
See also St. Theodore the Studite, 21: “Christ is depicted in images and the invisible is seen.” St. John and St.
Theodore were the most influential of the Iconodule theologians; their polemical treatises in defence of icons were
written during the Iconoclasm controversy.
ix
See St Theodore, 22-3, 78-99
x
See Cormack (op cit) 29
xi
See St John (op cit) 25, 27-8; St Theodore (ibid) 38
xii
See Plotinus, Enneads I.6; V.8 (Any edition)
xiii
See St. John,, 22, 29
xiv
To deny this, St. John continues, is Manichean – see 30.
xv
Which is why it wasn’t characteristically bothered by depictions of God the Father.
xvi
See Evdokimov, 168
xvii
See Genesis 1. 26-7

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xviii
Ouspensky mentions stories such as the one that traces certain authoritative depictions of the Virgin to an actual
portrait of her by St. Luke. See 25, 37n, 39n.
xix
See Ouspensky, 37-8, 40
xx
See Ouspensky, 37
xxi
See Evdokimov, 237-8.
xxii
I should note that my main concern is to distinguish these two different ways of thinking about images, rather
than with the exact historical accuracy of Evdominov’s claims about East vs West; although I think it is in fact
broadly accurate.
xxiii
See S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (any edition) Part One, Ch 13
xxiv
See Marion, 2002, 60
xxv
Marion refers to Kant on the ideality of space, and Nietzsche on perspectivism in this connection, though there is
also at least an interesting analogy with Wittgenstein’s argument in the Tractatus that linguistic representation
depends on conditions that cannot themselves be directed represented but only “made manifest”.
xxvi
It’s not clear to me whether Marion thinks this is the fate of modern art specifically, or whether he thinks it is a
threat to which all art is exposed. One might suspect a background argument that it is the decline of religion in the
modern West that has led to the failure of modern art to hold the elements of objectivity and subjectivity together
properly; but Marion does not make this explicit.
xxvii
Or at least the Plato of Republic X, taken at face-value.
xxviii
See Marion, 2004, 46-54
xxix
See 61-2
xxx
See 28, 62-3
xxxi
See 64-5
xxxii
See 64-5
xxxiii
Marion is Catholic, not Orthodox; Evdokimov might comment sadly at this point on the Western churches’
continuing tendency to think in terms of signs rather than symbols.
xxxiv
One could also, of course, accept the traditional account of icons without supposing it to be exemplary for art
generally , in either the weak or the strong sense. But my concern in this paper is with the exemplarity claim.
xxxv
See Steiner (1989); but also a number of his subsequent works, especially Steiner, 2002
xxxvi
See Evdokimov, 24
xxxvii
As, I fear, in a good deal of recent Minimalist and Conceptual Art
xxxviii
See Evdokimov, Ch 7
xxxix
It is interesting to compare this account with Marion’s claim that modern art tends to fall into undesirable
extremes of either subjectivism or objectivism. The two analyses are not identical, but there are obvious and
significant similarities between them.

xl
This argument, of course, takes theism as a premise – or perhaps, more generally, the thesis that there is a
heavenly Sophia and that the earthly Sophia, the order immanent in the material world, is ultimately intelligible only
by reference to the heavenly one.

xli
Not, to be fair, that he is ever purely negative; and his critiques of subjectivism and (some?) abstractionism are
certainly worth taking seriously.
xlii
I might just mention that Thomism would certainly be such a philosophy. A theistic Aristotelianism remains in a
deep sense Platonic.
xliii
The similarities between the theology of the icon and Hindu thought about the images of the gods are quite
striking and rest on what are, I think, ultimately similar philosophical visions of the material world as participating
expressively in the divine. See Eck, passim.

xliv
“Every theory of painting is a metaphysics” Merleau-Ponty, 132

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