This April I recieved an award from the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust for my proposal to embark on a study of Orthodox religious icons and their use of time. Icon painters strove to create an image free from time, in 1990 Bill Viola, a prominent American Video artist wrote “One of the most striking things about medieval religious art is that the landscape (for us the material prima; the physical, hard, “real” stuff of the world) appears as a backdrop subordinate to the religious vision… Space is a radiant gold and is substantially less real than the spiritual reality… From our point of view, the inner and outer worlds have reversed their roles.” (P.478. Video Black – The Mortality of the Image. Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video.) In icons the sacred events are not located in earthly space and time. Icons do not convey the rhythms and energy of ordinary life; instead there is an absence of agitation; angels, saints and apostles enact scenes against a background of silence and eternity. Light and shade are not rendered in the western way because, in icons, Christ and the saints are themselves the source of illumination. Unlike contemporary culture icons maintain their relevance by remaining the same for centuries.
In September I will travel to Moscow and Istanbul Athens and Thessalonica.
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