Iconic
For a while I have been occupied with narrative iconic images of
saints (of the period of late Gothic/early Renaissance). Direct
results were the series like Transitions, To
the Morning Star, Gaps. The question for me was how to
'save' and transpose this interesting medium of sacral/sacred art
into a contemporary context - without having to subdue either to
the clerical ideology they are derived from, or to the rejection
this medium suffers within the framework of modern art.
The subjects
of those medieval paintings were mainly concerned with the lives
of saints and were used as altar or side altarpieces.
Dramatic
and static in the same time, they depict the saint as an individual
being aware of or being one with the reality of inner light,
their own divinity. The dynamic
between
a
'knowledge'
- which is normally concealed and is
granted
by the divine, revealed through enlightenment -
and its clash with the real world of political structure is depicted
strongest in the images of martyrs. Here 'enlightenment' sets the
individual
apart from society's norms and tells a story about the forming
of society itself.
On some
level the knowledge
of other realities must be a genuine threat to the
political
establishment
- otherwise
there
wouldn't
be
a need
to kill or
silence ' enlightened ones' almost ritualistically. On the
other hand the
saints themselves and their suffering become in the context
of static imagery in the church the justification for the foundation
of the
churches as political power.
I understand
the saint's enlightenment as a vision of freedom, of a 'force'
above justification of hierarchies and therefore
as an
experience of oneness within humanity. It is a kind of dilemma
that the transcendence of such an experience - which essentially
forms
a threat to the rigidity of any power system - becomes available
as a political instrument through its fixation in an image
(here for the church).
.
The main focus in such images is a solitary figure or some
figures, the made physical 'idea' of an individual, suffering
from knowing
about the unrightfulness of hierarchies, incorporating that
aspect of humanness that transcends those hierarchies. Their
knowledge
or 'enlightenment' is the promise of the right of an existence
of dignity,
lived to the full, for everyone. The iconic image shows the
human as inhabiting and being different realities. Thus the
physical
body of the saint appears as the condensation of a gold that
enfolds him
or her, showing them recognising the divinity of their being.
The executioner - always a man who does nothing more than
to represent and execute certain political structures -
is totally
unaware of
an aura i.e. the connectedness of himself to other realities.
The ritual of punishment he executes is built upon a somehow
cynical
interpretation of the divine's need for a body to express
and experience itself. It stages methodically the possible
disintegration
of bodies
proving that the divine's power has its limits on this
plane.
The execution's power comes to a halt when the destruction
can't go further than having extinguished the physical
life. Perhaps
an intuitive knowledge about this limit is the reason
for the ritualistic precision and cruelty of his work. Then
the ritual
functions as
the
attempt to damage and cut into the punished individual's
soul through fear, to damage the aura, to extend the
physical punishment
to
a more inner and intangible level. Thus the political
structure tries
to reach onto the stream of light in his victim and to
cut into the presence of intangible life force and vision
of
freedom (the
gold).
Thus it tries to touch something that had to be denied.
On a deeper level those who establish and profit from
rigid power structures
may desire and envy the promise of enlightenment for
themselves; one could say, with the ritual of the execution
they stage
what
they have done to these dimensions in themselves.
Out of it's context of functioning as illustration
of power and justification of the church, the iconic
image
holds
a great potential
of critique
on power itself. For me, it is a reminder of questioning
the structures of power in connection to the vast
realities that
we are and carry
in ourselves, the conflicts of the world outside
and within.
Those paintings - seen out of their context - can
still be manifestations of (also political and
spiritual) hope and
reconciliation; their
crude and sometimes repetitive depictions of the
effect
of spirit upon (physical/real) life and vice versa
reveals the
mechanisms
of power but, at the same time, the powerful limitless
dimensions of
each individual and it's possibilities to do something
with this knowledge.
This is the reason why people want to touch icons,
and why icons themselves desire to touch people
to the point
where
the icon
virtually vanishes with the thousands of hands
reached out and pulled back,
absorbing its' material: as reminders of the
worlds between the Other and oneself.
© Marius
von Brasch 2006
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