Hierotopy between Art History and Religious Studies (original) (raw)
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Hierotopy. The creation of sacred spaces as a form of creativity and subject of cultural history
Hierotopy. The creation of sacred spaces as a form of creativity and subject of cultural history. In the book: Hierotopy. Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium and Medieval Russia. Edited by A. Lidov. Published by “Progress-tradition” in Moscow, 2006, p. 32-58. , 2006
In this article I introduce a reader to the concept of ‘hierotopy’ which is understood as the creation of sacred spaces regarded as a special form of creativity as well as the field of historical research which reveals and analyses particular examples of that creativity. One way to explain hierotopy is through making a distinction between hierophany (direct manifestation of the sacred) and hierotopy (creation of the sacred space by human hands to commemorate a specific hierophany). This can be illustrated by the example of Biblical patriarch Jacob who erected the altar (hierotopy) at the place of his Divine vision (hierophany). Hierotopy shows a new way to look at the history of art: it considers all the individual objects of art constituting a sacred space as elements of a hierotopic project. Hierotopy focuses on the inspiration of the creators of sacred spaces, such as famous Abbot Suger (creator of the first Gothic cathedrals), whose masterminded the whole hierotopic project and conceived its kernel concept, which would define it as a unique work of art, give it purpose and meaning and unify its elements. The perception of sacred spaces is described in terms of ‘image-paradigms’, which are evoked by the sacred space in its entirety rather than any particular image or symbolic object. Hierotopy is not a philosophical concept, but rather a form of vision that helps to recognize the presence of a special stratum of cultural phenomena, which should be historically reconstructed.
Hierotopy between Art History and Religious Studies. Compendium of Abstracts
A. Lidov, N. Isar, R. Demchuk, B. Leal, S. Olianina, O. Osadcha, A. Simsky. Hierotopy between Art History and Religious Studies. Abstracts of EASR-2017 conference, Hierotopy section, 2017
This is a compendium of abstracts submitted for the annual conference of the European Association for the Study or Religion, EASR-2017, Leuven, Belgium, September 2017. Hierotopy is the creation of sacred spaces viewed as a special form of human creativity and also a related area of research where specific examples of such creativity are studied. This concept was first formulated some fifteen years ago by Alexei Lidov in the context of Byzantine studies and has grown into a fully developed academic field spanning the disciplines of art history, study of religion and cultural anthropology. Hierotopy accounts for the variety of ways in which versatile media work together to form and organise a sacred space as a unified whole and to communicate its spiritual message. Authors: A. Lidov, N. Isar, R. Demchuk, B. Leal, S. Olianina, O. Osadcha, A. Simsky
Image-paradigms in Hierotopy: Sacred Spaces as Communicating Media
Andrew Simsky. Image-paradigms in Hierotopy: Sacred Spaces as Communicating Media / Annual conference of the European Association of the Study of Religion, EASR-2017, 18-21 September, Leuven, 2017
The concept of the image-paradigm was introduced by Lidov as an instrument to analyze the imagery of sacred spaces. It was successfully used in a number of case studies, but its theoretical aspects received little attention. In particular, its ontological and functional aspects remain to be clarified. In this report, I lay down some general groundwork to help better understand this novel concept.
The Temple Veil as a Spatial Icon Revealing an Image-Paradigm of Medieval Iconography and Hierotopy
A. Lidov. The Temple Veil as a Spatial Icon Revealing an Image-Paradigm of Medieval Iconography and Hierotopy. ICON, 2014, 7, p. 97-108., 2014
The author argues that the imagery of the Sacred Veil separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was a very powerful spatial icon which considerably influenced art and culture of the Byzantine world and the Latin West. The paper deals with new approaches to the history of art, and the crisis in traditional methodology which does not work in some cases. First of all, it concerns the concept of hierotopy (the creation of sacred spaces), recently proposed by the author of this paper and elaborated in several publications by the international group of scholars (www.hierotopy.ru). These studies have revealed an important theoretical issue. In many cases the discussion of visual culture can not be reduced to a positivist description of artifacts, or to the analysis of theological notions. Some phenomena can be properly interpreted only on the level of “image-paradigms”, which do not coincide with the illustrative pictures or ideological conceptions. This special notion seems a useful instrumentum studiorum, which helps to explain a layer of phenomena. That image-paradigm was not connected with the illustration of any specific text, though it was a part of a continuum of literary and symbolic meanings and associations. This type of imagery is quite distinct from what one could call an iconographic device. At the same time the image-paradigm belonged to visual culture, it was visible and recognizable, but it was not formalized in any fixed state, either in a form of the pictorial scheme or in a mental construction. In this respect the image-paradigm looks similar to the metaphor that loses its sense in retelling, or in its deconstruction into parts. It does not concern any mystic but a special type of consciousness, which determined several symbolic structures as well as numerous concrete pictorial motives; it challenges our fundamental methodological approach to the image as illustration and flat picture.
The Image-paradigm of Jerusalem in Christian Hierotopy
A. Simsky. The Image-paradigm of Jerusalem in Christian Hierotopy // Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 101-113, 2018
Image-paradigms are non-pictorial mental images of the sacred. They are engendered in the viewer's imagination by means of organized ensembles of iconic, symbolic and typological elements of sacred spaces and emerge from a manifold of interrelating associations. In this paper I elucidate this complex notion by studying the example of one image-paradigm of fundamental importance , namely, the Holy City of Jerusalem, which appears to the religious imagination as the synthesis of an idealized historical city-relic and its celestial counterpart – the Heavenly Jerusalem. This Jerusalem is both the 'navel' of the world and a place of God's immediate, living presence. The Church as a whole, as well as individual churches, are identified with Jerusalem, which reflects their primary function of serving as meeting places with God. While participating in the liturgy and integrating into the liturgical space, the faithful feel themselves to be in the midst of the Heavenly Jerusalem, a feeling which clearly cannot be reduced to or evoked by a simple two-dimensional picture. The image-paradigm works by means of a 'spatial icon', that is, a thoughtfully arranged spatial system of pointers, including architecture, an iconographic program , as well as the entire liturgical performance, including the very presence of the congregation absorbed in pious contemplation. An image-paradigm belongs to the religious tradition as a whole and takes shape in individual minds through a wide variety of religious experiences, including training, reading, prayer, liturgical life, mysticism, etc. In this paper, I begin with a brief review of iconographic strategies employed in conjuring the image-paradigm of the Holy City in Christian churches. In particular, the Celestial City can be represented in icons by means of earthly architecture including either recognizable motives of Constantinian Jerusalem or idealized and even fantastic patterns. Next, I move on to New Jerusalems, that is, Medieval reconstructions of the Christian Jerusalem, which were used as sites of virtual pilgrimage. Finally, I discuss possible links between Russian onion domes and the cupola of most prominent Jerusalem churches: the Holy Sepulcher and the Dome of the Rock. Particularly, I show how the famous cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed in Moscow was designed to represent Jerusalem as a city of multiple and diverse churches. In closing I turn to the Western tradition and provide a summary characterization of Gothic architectural icons of the Holy City and compare them to the Byzantine strategies.
A. Simsky. The Discovery of Hierotopy // Visual Theology, 2020, No 1. P. 9-28, 2020
This paper outlines the genesis of hierotopy, a notion serving to conceptualize the creation of sacred spaces as a particular form of human art. The concept encompasses the entirety of the multifarious components employed in Byzantine sacred spaces and analyzes the ways in which their cooperative interaction results in the formation of a 'spatial icon', or a kind of sacred ambiance. The very notion of a 'spatial icon' draws upon the central place of icons and iconicity in the Eastern Christian worldview. In Byzantium, icons were seen as windows opening out onto an otherworldly reality, or, rather, as doors opening up a two-way communication; in this way, the icon was understood as a means or a place, of immediate contact with the divine, or a sort of platonic chora, in which ideal divine forms assimilated material contours. Within the context of a sacred space, the icon appeared not only as a principal meaning-making agent, but also as a conceptual key for understanding the way in which other components, as well as the sacred space as a whole, effectively worked; each component was thus understood and experienced as being 'iconic', or icon-like, in the sense of providing other points (or, rather, spaces) of contact between the earthly and the divine. As this paper recounts, Alexei Lidov made his first steps towards forging the concept of hierotopy while studying the design, as well as the perception, of Byzantine iconographic programs; as his studies revealed, icons acted not simply as images, but also with the full deployment of their wonder-working potential evincing a powerful expression of religious meaning, particularly when purposefully employed together with wonder-working relics. Lidov's next step was to realize the fully performative nature of spatial icons by taking into account the crucial role played by the surrounding liturgical context, in which each beholder, or liturgical participant, played an active role in giving life to the spatial icon. Hierotopy was thus discovered (and formally defined) as a special form of art involving the performative creation of spatial icons. The paper also discusses the concept of 'image-paradigms' as multimodal units of meaning within sacred spaces, or as compound mental constructs combining together dogmatic ideas, imagery and holistic emotive components (so-called atmospheres).
The Creation of Sacred Spaces as a Form of Creativity and Subject of Cultural History
2006
As a number of scholars recently realised, the most significant aspect of relics and miraculous icons was the role they played in the creation of particular sacred spaces. In many cases relics and venerated icons were established as a core, a kind of pivot in the forming of a concrete spatial environment. This milieu included permanently visible architectural forms and various pictures as well as changing liturgical clothes and vessels, lighting effects and fragrance, ritual gestures and prayers, which every time created a unique spatial complex. Sometimes the environment could form itself spontaneously, yet there are several examples when we are able to speak of deliberate concepts and elaborated projects, which should be considered among the most important historical documents. In our view, very few studies in this direction have appeared so far, because an adequate notion covering this field of creativity has been lacking. The widespread term 'sacred space' did not functi...
Let me turn to specifics now, addressing the most powerful Byzantine examplethe view of the 'Great Church' of the Empirethe cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople dating back to 6 th century A.D. Even in its current state of preservation, when we are able to see only the material shell of the building, it is clear that we are not only dealing with a masterpiece of the world architecture or a mystical place of divine presence, but with a particular project of spatial imagery, which was created by concrete people in concrete historical circumstances. The project included immovable architectural forms and sacred images, as well as changing of liturgical vessels and ritual gestures, dramaturgy of lighting and olfactory effects (various incenses), resounding words and recollections of miraclestories -all woven together into one single whole. This specific creativity consisting in formation of spatial imagery has been called hierotopy.