Enjoyed this article! If I can give you a piece of constructive feedback, you refer at one point to Mary as a “divine being” which could be misunderstood. God bless!
My intent was to speak from the perspective of aesthetics rather than theology, so "divine" here is more of how artists depict saints and angels, and in particular the **blessed** virgin :)
My intent was to speak from the perspective of aesthetics rather than theology, so "divine" here is more of how artists depict saints and angels, and in particular the **blessed** virgin :)
Kahlil, this is quite uncanny. My next book is going to be about the Black Madonna. This is a treasure trove of images and ideas. We really have cross-fertilization in our work!!!
Interesting. Related to the level of realism of sacred images.
“The idol delights in physical existence, in the delight we experience in vision itself, and its highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. In concretizing the splendor of the visible, the idol dazzles and so arrests our vision, confining it within a closed, self-referential system, allowing us to see nothing outside itself. The idol consequently reduces the divine to the measure of the human gaze, arresting the movement of ascent precisely at the threshold of the invisible. The icon, on the other hand, aims neither to satiate vision, nor to restrict it to a particular point, but to free it by confronting it with the invisible, proposing to it that the boundaries of the possible are wider than they seem. In using images to overthrow the power of images, the icon seeks to disrupt habituated ways of seeing, to subvert the hegemony of naturalistic representation, and so summon the eye to a new mode of vision, by opening it up to infinite depth.” - Fr. Maximos Constas, The Art of Seeing.
Enjoyed this article! If I can give you a piece of constructive feedback, you refer at one point to Mary as a “divine being” which could be misunderstood. God bless!
Thank you!
My intent was to speak from the perspective of aesthetics rather than theology, so "divine" here is more of how artists depict saints and angels, and in particular the **blessed** virgin :)
Thank you!
My intent was to speak from the perspective of aesthetics rather than theology, so "divine" here is more of how artists depict saints and angels, and in particular the **blessed** virgin :)
Kahlil, this is quite uncanny. My next book is going to be about the Black Madonna. This is a treasure trove of images and ideas. We really have cross-fertilization in our work!!!
Oh wow. Now I’m even more excited for our next conversation. I was surprised how studies on Marian imagery and devotion were so sparse!
Interesting. Related to the level of realism of sacred images.
“The idol delights in physical existence, in the delight we experience in vision itself, and its highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. In concretizing the splendor of the visible, the idol dazzles and so arrests our vision, confining it within a closed, self-referential system, allowing us to see nothing outside itself. The idol consequently reduces the divine to the measure of the human gaze, arresting the movement of ascent precisely at the threshold of the invisible. The icon, on the other hand, aims neither to satiate vision, nor to restrict it to a particular point, but to free it by confronting it with the invisible, proposing to it that the boundaries of the possible are wider than they seem. In using images to overthrow the power of images, the icon seeks to disrupt habituated ways of seeing, to subvert the hegemony of naturalistic representation, and so summon the eye to a new mode of vision, by opening it up to infinite depth.” - Fr. Maximos Constas, The Art of Seeing.
via https://x.com/duncanreyburn/status/1826479009645166932