The Orthodox Icon as Non-Verbal Communication (original) (raw)
Although one might characterize the twentieth century as the era of the image, taking into account the invention of the television, cinema, etc., images have been used for communication purposes since the earliest periods of human interaction. Their properties for symbolizing, for reifying, for teaching, and for inspiring have been recognized and employed throughout cultures and civilization. The significance and potency of images is perhaps best described by the well known saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One particular image, uplifting the communication process to its highest form-prayer and veneration-is the icon. The icon is one of the primary methods of non-verbal communication in worship. It also possesses other capacities in the realm of the educational, historical, artistic... Most commonly found, and ascribed its greatest importance in the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, it plays a primary role in prayer and worship services. Icons must be present in every Orthodox church and arranged in a particular order. One would be pressed to find a household of Orthodox Christian faithful devoid of these icons.
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The word "icon" (and the adjective "iconic") is not an unfamiliar concept to the contemporary reader. It is used to denote things like the "icons" of our pop-culture (i.e. "stars") or the "icons" that we find on our computer screens. Although the meaning of these "icons" is different from the way this concept is used in Christian art and theology, it is not completely unrelated to the ancient connotations of the term "icon/iconic". Both in its Christian and in the pop-cultural contexts the "icon" implies a specific relationship between the spectator, the image (visual medium), and the message (i.e. the "original") that the medium/image communicates. This article primarily examines the Orthodox Christian understanding of the image (icon) and its function within the context of the Orthodox Church and her theology. Based on this, the article also explains the aesthetic elements of traditional Orthodox Christian iconography in connection with the complex web of mutual exchanges and influences (both theological and visual/stylistic) between Orthodox Christianity and Western European religious and artistic tradition.
2000
The word 'icon' comes from the Greek word for 'image' and has come to refer specifically to the sacred images of the Orthodox Church.
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