Abstract

This practice-oriented research examines the presence of the image in an artistic vision from the Byzantine perspective of an icon-maker. To do so, I extract a list of Byzantine canonic guidelines and explain how the technical (realistic) and conceptual (symbolic) construction of an iconic/idolic vision performs at the level of an aesthetic judgment.

Using the epistemological definition of the image affirmed by the Second Council of Nicaea (787 CE) in conjunction with Jean-Luc Marion�s phenomenological framing of the icon and idol, I outline three underlying modes of artistic vision that expose the metaphysical issues of representation within today�s spectacle of technological screens: 1) a symbolic (Platonic) seeing of the invisible as totally absent from the visible, 2) a realistic (Nietzschean) seeing that claims the invisible as really present in the space defined by a viewer�s perspectival gaze, and 3) a symbolic-realistic (Byzantine) vision of evoking the presence of an absent, invisible image through a tangible creative experience�specifically, although the image stays ontologically transparent, it becomes a visible trace of its absence left on a frame for representation.

While delineating the three visions in terms of abstract and naturalistic depictions, I also present my own Byzantine-inspired method of painting on wood panels to point key iconic elements for evoking an image in a concrete aesthetic context. I particularly do this through a performative inquiry (as video documented in Portrait of an Icon Maker and Performing the Icon) into a canonically contextualized aesthetic experience that is sensitive to the Incarnational dimension of the image. This Byzantine artistic framework opens up an interdisciplinary field of artistic research into the metaphysics of presence that bridges visual criticism, performance theory, and Byzantine theological convictions pictured by a range of contemporary thinkers, such as Fischer-Lichte, Nanna Verhoeff, Eric Jenkins, John Lechte, and Nicoletta Isar. It not only places visual criticism inside of what it means to iconically craft an image, but also allows image-makers to see, in a non-referential way, how the symbolic and realistic visions look through a kind of keyhole towards images of reality in order to constitute them in a metaphysical perspective.