SPEECH AT WARMENHUIZEN 2012:  VOICES IN THE NIGHT

Annemiek Hink called me on a Tuesday not long ago to ask if we were participating. Well we were quick to decide because we are a group that is quick to mobilize. It's also the fourth exhibition in two years. We were in Culemborg, Vianen, Amsterdam. In Vianen, by the way, I had forgotten my paper at the opening. Well did I want to give a lecture? I quickly said yes to that. So I thought that Tuesday night: About what???? And I fall asleep, and then in my sleep I hear a loud voice with a slight Amsterdam accent:” Tell me, can you tell us what that actually is, an icon?” I am dreaming! I was sitting upright in bed!

So now I do feel that I have to answer this question here today and the story is about what an icon is, and a little history.

You may know icons from exhibitions. People collect them, buy them at auctions and exhibit them. Old Russian icons, always.

Maybe you know an icon painter who is on a course. Those are icons, too, though they look a little new. The bright colors are a matter of getting used to.

Well, when you enter the Greek church, there's a different perception. Then on a stand there is the icon of the day. That will be St. George of Maleos today and Mary of Egypt tomorrow. People come in, beat a cross toward the iconostasis at the front of the church - kiss the icon and the icon next to it, the icon of the saint or feast from which the church takes its name, say the Annunciation. - also kiss this second icon - light a candle in the stand, bow, beat a cross, and then possibly walk on to the iconostasis to do the same for the icons of Mary and Christ.

For the icon is the door to the saint's dwelling place, heaven, or The Kingdom of God. And you meet the saint in his dwelling place, and the saint you. Through the icon you can say a prayer; the saint lends you his ear. There is exchange. So that is a very holy event, and then I would also bow and pray and make a cross. If you stand before a festive icon, for example the Paschal icon, then through the icon you participate in the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ, which led to the redemption of the world. I am just stating what the Church believes.

- So again. It is not nothing, such an icon, and the Orthodox Church believes in the real contact of the believer with the saint. That's why in the Church we speak of the “holy icons,” and it's not for nothing.

So that's a lot, and what we see with our Western European eyes can only be understood if you go back in history.

The mummy portraits of Fayum, 1st to 4th century AD. First, the face of the deceased had to be on his mummy, otherwise the soul, the Kah could not find the Ba, the person left behind. To go to the afterlife together. They are immensly beautiful and cool faces. Why? They were deliberately painted that way because that's how you went to the afterlife with a beautiful, idealized face.

In icons we also see the cool, idealized faces, but that's because the saints are imagined to be united with Christ, and “glorified” in the Kingdom of God, where they sing God's praises with the angels. And the painters make an effort to make them as beautiful as possible.

Icons were created when Christianity was allowed in 312. That's when the icon was allowed. Because you want to have something of a saint with you if you can, a relic if you can, but they are also unobtainable at a certain time when Christianity was growing, especially in the holy land of Palestine, to which pilgrimages were coming.

And then what do you buy? Souvenirs, an icon engraved on glass, or a shelf with a saint on it. That you can venerate and look at. Those were painted for the pilgrims. They say those painters were monks but I don't believe that. Just artisans.

Was that allowed? Well not from the Jews, they had a ban on pictures, still do. But Christians came from everywhere and they did pictures. It is the worship of Christ, it is not idolatry.

And you pray to Christ at an icon anyway.

There was a bloody iconoclasm from 730-843, All icons were destroyed. Then John Damascene put into words: theologically and devotionally, the formula is that the icon acts as a conduit to the eternal world, so that in the icon man can worship the model in heaven, or send a prayer, or ask for help. Worship of the icon is not an issue, because the icon is only matter. Only the door function of the icon.

What strikes me is that the most beautiful icons were painted at the court of the Byzantine emperors and in the big cities. Yes because there was a reward for a good painter there. Flowering of icons related to capital. Very crazy to connect those two things. Just before the fall of Byzantium in 1453, painters left for Crete, also wealthy, and there the Cretan school arose, the school we follow. Other Byzantines went to work in Russia. The Russian style.

It's fair to say that icon painting in both areas declined hard after 1650. Kind of a time of crisis, centuries, if you look at icons. Russia got an atheist regime in 1917. But two Parisian emigrants, Krug and Uspiensky, got the spirit and inspiration around 1960. Also around 1960, Fotis Kondoglou in Athens rediscovered the Cretan school, my own teacher Neoklis also adhered to it around 1980.

From whom do we descend from the icon studio? We are Cretans through Neoklis. We learn from those old masters. We paint them exactly, and we are not so likely to repaint a modern icon of a colleague, because it is not original.

What is an icon essentially?

Technically, the formula is: a wooden board, covered with linen, primed with natural gesso and painted with egg tempera.

Art historical, the formula is: depictions of Christ, Mary and the saints, biblical scenes and scenes from written sources, as long as it has been seen by human eyes. The Orthodox Church must give its approval to any new icon. After all, the icon belongs to this church. On this the dictionary, and all art historians agree. The icon belongs to the Orthodox Church.

If you, distinguished attendee, can agree with these two definitions, then you may attach whatever theology you like to it, because, after all, you are not Orthodox. An icon was put on the supper table by a Protestant pastor in 1995 in Zwolle. It is allowed. In the Roman Catholic Church you have long seen an icon on a stand at the front of the church in front of the altar. You may pray with icons or meditate on them. You can use them. I have never heard anyone scoff at icons.

Technically and art historically, the icon is what it is, defined and clear. But theologically and devotionally, say in the pious treatment of it, the veneration, we will all differ among ourselves and differ from the Greeks and Russians who are Orthodox.

The Parisian Russian Uspiensky wrote: The materials of creation we bring together in the icon: Metals, pigments, wood, lime, linen. He says: it is a tribute to God.

The painter, he gets very little space. Even an eye, nose, mouth, hand, cheek is only painted in one particular way.

And I think I am forgetting something important: the beauty of the icon is heavenly beauty. That is why the icon we said already has such beautiful unearthly faces and such clothing - how do you think of it, clothing with those light areas - because it must represent heaven, and that is what man, the painter, chooses to depict someone he cannot have seen, the saint in the Kingdom of God. Beauty is the word, and that reminds me of the Orthodox church service, where you also imagine yourself in heaven, through the singing, the colors and the smells. That beauty of the liturgy also has the icon.

Furthermore, the icon is the vessel that brings the Gospel into the world.

I hope you enjoy this exhibition of icons or rather understanding the icons and just enjoy the beauty.