Citizen Columns
Question
What is your religion’s most significant work of art and why?
Answer
The Orthodox churches are almost synonymous with icons. The word “icon” has almost completely been taken over by our computer culture, but there are still vestiges of its Christian meaning. The logo of Icon Films is a detail taken from a Russian Orthodox icon of Mary and the infant Jesus, the 12th century icon known as the Vladimir Mother of God (now in the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow). As with most icons the artist is unsigned and unknown - though tradition ascribes it to the evangelist Luke - because the focus is not on the self-expression of the artist, but on the subject, and how the observer is drawn into relationship with the Person or persons depicted.
There are a handful of famous iconographers, like the 15th century St Andrei Rublev, whose icon of the three angels visiting Abraham (Genesis 18), also hangs in the Tretyakov gallery (both these icons were taken from churches during the Soviet period, and there is still debate over their return).The fact that Rublev is a canonized saint points again to the primary aim of Orthodox Christian art: it is an aspect of worship, deepening the believer’s communion with God and all the saints. This is also true of all the other forms of liturgical art: architecture, vestments and vessels, music, poetry and choreography.
Perhaps the most significant work of art is any icon of Mary and the child Jesus. No Orthodox church or home is without one. It is the image (“icon” in Greek) that more than any other sums up the meaning of Christianity: God enters the world as a child, through the collaboration, love and co-creation of a woman.
God is the supreme artist, and human beings are his finest work. As St Irenaeus said in the second century, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” But by creating us in his image, as his icons, he makes our own creativity possible.
Father John Jillions
|
