RELIGION AND ART: Icons, Mandalas and the Nude
Icons, like mandalas are not the viewed image in the sense of being a painting or drawing, etc., but the world of intentions, a world of radiant beauty, that leads to the production of the art that in turn refers back to that world. And like the mandala, the icon is not primarily the painting but the spirit, then creation, then human form, then the realization of the devotee. The significance of an icon, like a mandala, is not only the aesthetic form itself but what it evokes in the viewer, in the world. It is a reference point for the meditator, a portal of transcendence for those who understand its function. It is also required for the maker of icons to fast, pray, make pilgrimage or other forms of ascetical discipline in order for those icons to be infused with holy energy. In order to benefit from this type of experience, it is necessary for the viewer to do the same. Put yourself in the presence of God. One commentary on the icon describes the intention like this:
The revelation of this future transfigured corporeality is shown to us in the Transfiguration of our Lord on Mount Tabor. “And he was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matt. xvii, 2). In other words the whole body of the lord was transfigured, becoming as it were a radiant raiment of the Deity. “As regards the character of the Transfiguration,” … “it was not that the Word laid aside His human form, but rather that the latter was illumined by His glory.” …St. Simeon the New Theologian describes his personal experience of this inner illumination in the following words: “In other words, beauty is holiness, and its radiance the participation of the creature in Divine Beauty.1
In the Transfiguration, not only does the God appear to men, but humanity becomes a full participant in the Divine glory. By joining with the Deity, man becomes illumined by His Uncreated light, becoming like the radiant body of Christ.
In the icon, beauty is judged by its conformity of the image to its prototype, of the symbol to what it represents–to the Kingdom of the Spirit. But for an icon, its beauty is of the acquired likeness to God and so its value lies not in its being beautiful in itself, but in the fact that it depicts Beauty. The Fathers of the VII Ecumenical Council say the following:
Although the Catholic Church depicts Christ in his human aspect, it does not separate his flesh from the Divinity conjoined. On the contrary, it believes that the flesh is deified and professes it to be one with the divinity.2
The icon represents not an animate but a deified prototype, flesh transfigured, radiant with Divine light. Represented by material means, the icon is beauty and Glory, represented in physical form and visible to the eyes. A portrait of a saint is not an icon since it portrays his carnal state and not his transfigured state. Liturgical art is not just our offering to God, but also God’s presence amongst us.
Von Balthasar does not avoid the problems associated with traditional Catholicism in his discussion. He admits that western religion has lost much of its gestalt cohesion since the Renaissance, reduced as it often is to pietistic devotions or moralistic obsessions. This ancient tradition, while spiritually deep and true perhaps, was also culturally narrow, xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, patriarchal, and authoritarian. This, of course, like every other religious tradition, was consistent with the cultures in which it was traditionally enmeshed.
The Church is finally denuded of empire, (Pio IX was left a “prisoner in the Vatican”), and must face itself without its imperial regalia for the first time since the fourth century. The mortal body of the church changes… to…? What is left: Singular spiritual insight? When all else is stripped away by the harsh realities of our age, that much remains. We can, given the right state of consciousness, with St. Stephen Protomartyr, see the heavens open and from our physical frame draw forth the icon to focus a beatific vision into the heart of heaven itself. Traditional religion claims that we have a capacity for heaven, Nirvana if you like, or Godhead, the Source, Absolute Value, Being. As well, we have an imagination that can image ultimate reality in radiant terms, suggestive of that which is beyond ourselves and promises satisfaction. What is left is the ability to help draw the two worlds together, which is the heart of the tradition–the heart of any really religious tradition anyway.
The shift of consciousness is a capacity that suggests much about the nature of human personality and perception. As well perhaps, the shift suggests something about the ultimate nature of reality. This is reinforced by Christ’s own sense of intimacy between ordinary reality and the Kingdom, and the part that the shift of consciousness plays as a means of mutual access. Religious art, then, is that which reveals, or evokes the inner-radiance of being, what a Hesychast might call Uncreated Energy. Religious art is both the occasion of and a technique of the shift of consciousness. Icons, or mandalas, are aesthetic tools of such technique to obtain these states of radiant realization that in the past described the parameters of Satisfaction.
For just this reason, there is vast wisdom when such figures–as the Zen archer–say, “if you really understood what is happening when you move your hand from here to here [a few inches], then you would be enlightened;” And the Chinese Taoist rainmaker who ended a severe drought, simply by setting up housekeeping at the edge of the stricken village. Enlightenment, salvation, is inherent in who we are when our temporal and non-temporal capacity is fully engaged. That great opening between the two worlds is the shift into mandalic or iconic realms of ultimate reference that ties the factual world together with its unnamable, mythic context.
The shift of consciousness is an anthropological fact. It is the fundamental agent of the sacrifice that is the underlying format of both religion and art. The shift of consciousness is the function of the physical manifestation of consciousness in the body. The shift is access to meaning through the lace-like folds in the memory of generations, myths, and sacred tradition. It is access to the source of our existence, the always concurrent original moment of consciousness.
In the Roman Catholic Mass there is a section called the memoria. But it exists not just to remember or commemorate the event referenced there. It is there to draw back the curtain, revelo, of time and connect us with the singular, original moment of incarnation/transfiguration/ascension/creation. What we are dealing with here is not a matter of faith, but a quality of human perception that Panikkar talks about in terms of time and non-time dualism. This capacity is an aesthetic function of consciousness necessary, I believe, for satisfaction. The process(es) of this resolution is the great art from which we derive certain catalytic artifacts of the shift, i.e., paintings, sculptures, etc.
Art is a physical extension of the body in the world. Body is the physical extension of the non-temporal world into the temporal. The body is a physical and real vehicle of transcendence, thus, the importance of the nude in art. As such, it is the metaphor of existence, as when the Hesychasm refers to the “way of the heart,” it is using the heart as a symbol of personality, not as a reference to sentimental emotion or anatomical function. In the battle for influence in the hearts and minds of humanity since the Renaissance, the Church resisted the demise of its cosmologies, often symbolically depicted by references to the body. Those cosmologies were the spiritual bond between individuals, society, and the cosmos.
Capitalism and technocracy are without cosmology except the bare requirements of production and consumption. Neither science nor religion seem to have won out, according to Panikkar. We are in the process of not only surviving in the midst of this, but piecing together/preserving an environment for when, possibly once again, the body and psyche of Being are in rhythm.3 A new cosmology must arise that pierces through to the non-temporal heart of time. Modern art and modern humanities in general have been the branch of modern secular culture that attempted to do this. As I recall Fr. yang commenting, “we are in the process of developing a new system of meaningful symbols.”
If God is dead, History ends. As God (Nirvana) is dead, self is revealed just as dead as God. Who remains to be satisfied?
NOTES SATISFACTION PART II
1Ouspensky, L. Meaning of Icons New York: St. Vladimir Press. p.34.
2 Ibid.
3Panikkar, Gifford Lectures, 1989: “Being designates all that there is. We designate it with a verb. Being is flowing, rheon, rhythmic. It moves, but it cannot go anywhere else. Humans have life and conscious life. Life seems superior to or independent of its bearers. Has it a destination…?”
Many years after these ideas and events, the following letter to a different bishop offers something more about this topic- SATISFACTION;
May 1, 2015
St. Joseph
Dear Bishop Kevin,
I wanted to thank you- the information that the plans for the interior renovation of the cathedral are not absolutely final kindles some hope for my art to make a more permanent contribution to the Glory of God in that building whose exterior design is so spectacular- Near genius in a modern sense.
What I hope for my art is that it whispers silently in depths of one’s heart, to each passerby, a grandeur of satisfaction in the Kingdom. For that is the only real satisfaction, an intimation of Union for creation and Creator.
I will be disappointed if I don’t see you at the retreat in La Quinta. We will all be so close, but a few miles is as good as a light year given the mercurial nature of my condition. “Next year, Jerusalem”, fellow sojourners in God have murmured over the centuries. There’s hope- I am so grateful for your patience.
My new place, with room for a studio, and a new, good, doctor, promises much for health, art and spiritually as well. I like it here. Which is something I have not been able to say for quite a number of years.
One of my Art professors said in a letter of recommendation at the end of my time in art school that ‘I could do anything in the arts.’ And given enough space and time to catch the rhythm of the Spirit in my circumstances, I still can.
With the hope of your continued blessing I am yours in the Lord,
(Steve)
Rev. Steve Frost