Icon as an expression of transcendental reality of personality: anthropological aspect.

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleИкона как выражение трансцендентной реальности личности: антропологический аспект
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Asliturk, Miriam
5. lemma category Orthodox Anthropology - Orthodox theological tradition and practice > Cult and spirituality - Culture and national identities - Concepts of knowledge and modes of reasoning
6. Publication date 20-01-2017
7. lemma work Бабич, Владимир Владимирович [Author]. Икона как выражение трансцендентной реальности личности: антропологический аспект
8. lemma manifestations Вестник Томского государственного университета. Культурология и искусствоведение
9. Keywords Iconoclasm - Iconodules - Christian anthropology - iconography - Icons
10. Url Click Here
11. Citations
    1. <p>Бабич, Владимир Владимирович (2013). Икона как выражение трансцендентной реальности личности: антропологический аспект. <em>Вестник Томского государственного университета. Культурология и искусствоведение. </em>Retrieved from: <a href="http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/ikona-kak-vyrazhenie-transtsendentnoy-realnosti-lichnosti-antropologicheskiy-aspekt#ixzz4WLkA6JJZ">http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/ikona-kak-vyrazhenie-transtsendentnoy-realnosti-lichnosti-antropologicheskiy-aspekt#ixzz4WLkA6JJZ</a> </p>
12. Lemma body

    1. Today’s technical progress makes it possible to change personality through gender change, plastic surgery, and IT. This change poses new anthropological questions of definition of personality, human nature, and identity. The author argues that the concept of the icon in Christianity can help develop new definitions. Christianity views the world as an image of the transcendent God. Icons in this tradition are symbols, mediums that serve as a link of the visual reality and the non-visible divine existence. God is the prototype of the world, its first object.

       However, the image of God cannot be comprehended by people, and yet throughout time people needed an actual image of God to feel close to him. John of Damascus (676-749 AD) considered the Son to be the living being that carried the invisible God in him. During the period of Byzantine iconoclasm (8^th-9^th centuries AD), supporters of ontological theory of images thought that the icon was not just a didactic tool for illiterate Christians or a simple object of rituals but a true incarnation of God. This was their basis for Christian anthropology: the icon was seen as an image that brings forward the hypostatic prototype (relating to the Trinity).

       French post-modern philosopher Jean-Luc Marion (b.1946) thinks that the icon is beyond the visible world and its nature cannot be reduced neither to utility purposes, nor to entertainment. According to this vision, a painting is independent from the original (painted object) and has value in itself. An icon has a different nature: the original being is transcendent through an icon. The function of an icon thus is to overcome the distance between the visible and the non-visible Other, the original.[1]

       During the Iconoclasm period, iconoclasts considered icons only in terms of resemblance or difference from the prototype. Their opponents, iconodules, thought that even if divided, the actual object of an icon and the original prototype remained linked though hypostasis . Theodor the Studite (759-826 AD) supported the iconodules and referred to the concept of Trinity where each entity of the Trinity was at the same time unique and identical to each other. Therefore the theory of the icon sought to express the being of hypostasis of Christ or of a saint through an image. The hypostasis being appears when the icon is named. In Christian anthropology, the human can be understood with the help of the concept of icon as a carrier of the image of God.

       The author concludes by stating that Christian concept is different from the Ancient Greek and Roman artistic tradition. In Ancient art image was an ideal, the perfection that one could not find in nature. Artists tried to help nature create the final, ideal image of a person. Whereas Christian art tries to show the transcendent hypostasis of the personality of Christ through the icon. Later this approach was used in the Russian avant-garde art of the beginning of the 20^th century.[2]

        

       [1] Jean-Luc Marion Perekrestya vidimogo (The Crossing of the Visible) Moscow 2010, 52, 82-84, 117.

       [2] Levian T.V. Abstraktsiya i ikona: metafizichesky realizm v russkom iskusstve Artikult No.1 2011, 141-187.