Although I have read many of the best books on Icons I always find most of them a bit unconvincing. That goes for the discussions on Icons in Christopher Barnetts, From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Soren Kierkegaard, too. Barnett quotes a lot from Jean Luc Marions, God Without Being, which is worthy of some reflection, yet writing like the following still perplexes me: 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 can never rest or settle if it looks at an icon; it always must rebound upon the visible, in order to go back in it up the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense the icon makes visible only giving rise to an infinite gaze (GWB 18). Perhaps its just because as an icon-maker I find it hard to step back from own work and assign to it the many phenomenological and/or metaphysical agencies that others ascribe to them? Or maybe its because I have a lingering suspicion that the God of Moses really doesnt cotton to having a bunch of twitchy artists making up pictures of Gods face, or putting faces on any of Gods critters either. Like the 4th commandment says: “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; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Well, encouraging my 6 year old grand daughter to break the fourth commandment may be cursing my progeny or at least another 4 generations if were going to apply a fundamentalist reading to the commandments. Then again, maybe I am just concerned that america may not win the wars against the Taliban or ISIS, in which case theres a good chance that as an infidel/idolator Im likely to have my head chopped off on live TV (although why making videos doesnt break the 4th commandments I dont know, I reckon like all fundamentalists they pick and choose their own interpretations). Sabbath blessings all, shalom.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 18:29:02 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015