ic n and devotion Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia oleg tarasov Icon and Devotion Icon and Devotion Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia oleg tarasov Translated and edited by Robin Milner-Gulland reaktion books For Pauline Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 79 Farringdon Road London ec1m 3ju, UK www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published in English in 2002 English translation ©Reaktion Books 2002 English translation by Robin Milner-Gulland All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Designed and typeset by Libanus Press, Marlborough Printed and bound in Singapore by CS Graphics Tarasov, Oleg Icon and devotion : sacred spaces in Imperial Russia 1. Icons - Russia (Federation) - History 1. Title 246.5'3'0947 ISBN 1 86189 118 0 Contents Foreword by Robin Milner-Gulland 9 Introduction 23 Part One: The Icon and the World 35 1 Venerated Image: The Sacred in the Everyday 37 The Burden of Numbers, 38 – The Details of Ritual, 57 – Miracles, 85 2 Dispute about Signs, Dispute about Faith 119 The Ambivalence of Symbols, 120 – The Complications of Renaming: A Tract Concerning the New Devotion, 134 3 In a World without Grace 143 The Shadow of Antichrist, 144 – The Sacralization of the Icon Painter, 167 – The Theology of the People, 184 Part Two: The Icon and Popular Culture 199 4 East and West 207 Face and Countenance, 224 – Landscape, 232 – Word, Emblem, Heraldry, 249 – The Portrait Icon, 280 5 The Middle Ages Delayed 301 Concealed Montage, 302 – Myth and Mystification: Self-awareness in the Icon-painting Experience, 326 6 Icons and Popular Art 345 The Aesthetics of Sensibility, 345 – The Spirit of Religious Tradition, 351 – The Projection of Signs: Icon, Lubok, the Avant-garde, 361 References and Editorial Notes 383 Bibliography 391 Index 403 Editor’s Foreword It rarely happens, but when it does it is enriching and astonishing: that a subject you thought you knew something about is illuminated from a quite new angle, casting light on different features, bringing out new signifi- cances and connections that you feel you should have recognized all along, but never did. This was what I felt when I first encountered Icon and Devotion. There are plenty of serviceable accounts of Russian icon painting, several excellent museum collections that anyone interested in the topic will know, plenty of attractive illustrated albums; but the picture they conspire to give can seem repetitive and limited, concentrating overwhelmingly on a rather small number of fine, demonstrably early works (pre 1500), treated mostly from the viewpoints of style and iconography. Oleg Tarasov’s approach declares its difference from the start. Certainly he has at his fingertips the tools and methodology of conventional art history, as also a great knowledge of theology and iconography, all of which are put to good effect. But his aim emerges as nothing less than to rewrite the cultural history of Russia since the 16th century. This he achieves through close study of the belief systems, the religion, in which every pre- modern or early-modern Russian’s world outlook was rooted, and above all of the icons that were its constant ‘objective correlative’, its visible aspect and in certain respects even its motive force. At the same time he grapples with the ever-intractable problem of artistic change – how and why old codes are supplanted by new ones, or are themselves revived in new circumstances. Out of this emerges a sort of intimate social history of Russia, pri- marily ‘from below’, revealing the innermost concerns of the supposedly 9 inarticulate masses. Yet the cultural history that is being explored is by no means exclusively Russian: particularly in its second half, Tarasov’s study continually evokes Western European (and Oriental Orthodox) experience, demonstrating how apparently specific Russian cultural phenomena were often part of far more extensive movements. At the end of the book the narrative is carried forward to the 1917 Revolution and beyond, showing how ‘iconicity’ affected the luminaries of Russian modernism as well as mass-circulation prints and posters. For anyone familiar with previous icon literature, the range and nature of the large amount of illustrative material that Tarasov provides and analyzes must be astonishing. The showpiece medieval icons are completely absent (even the quasi-obligatory Rublyov ‘Old Testament Trinity’!); instead, the popular icon-art of the three centuries preceding the Revolution – deeply unfashionable in the 20th century, generally dismissed by art history as styleless and repetitive – is displayed in all its variegation and (often) strangeness, and set in a context of ‘high’ art, of popular prints, book illus- trations, vernacular Western painting, etc. None of this material is familiar, much is published for the first time: the reader may well feel as if invited onto a huge untrodden territory. Since negotiating this territory is best done with a fairly clear idea of what the word ‘icon’ implies, what follows is a brief account that may help the Western reader to get his or her bearings in the topic: naturally, many of the points touched on are greatly amplified in the course of Tarasov’s study. Thereafter I attempt to sketch its historical and cultural context. Icons An ‘icon’ means an image (it is a Greek word, taken over into Russian and other Slavonic languages as ikona). Early in the Christian period it came to imply the image of a sacred person or event used as a focus for prayer. Legend has it that Christ miraculously produced the first such icon, the self-image ‘Not Made By Hands’, on a cloth sent to heal King Abgar of Edessa; St Luke was supposedly the first icon painter. Icons were thought of as accurate, realistic representations of holy personages and events from 10 icon and devotion biblical times and subsequently; medieval people, visited by saints in their dreams, would recognize them from their iconic images. Icons almost occasioned a civil war in the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire, when in the early 8th century the state and Church authorities – follow- ing the Second Commandment, against ‘graven images’ and ‘likenesses’ (Exodus 20:4) – banned them, so instigating the long period of iconoclasm. This was resisted by the poor and unprivileged, by monks, by women, by provincials, and ultimately (in 843) the iconoclast elite capitulated: icons were restored in what was commemorated as the Feast of Orthodoxy. Since then icons have been (in theory, at least) not superstitiously worshipped, but venerated as a two-way channel of communication with the supernatural world. For the Orthodox believer, ‘seeing was believing’: every saint has to have an iconic image. Icons – accessible to all classes of a largely illiterate society – were an enormous force for social cohesion in the Orthodox lands, which stretched from Venice to Eastern Siberia (even Alaska), and from the Nile to beyond the Arctic Circle. The term icon can have a broad sense, including devotional objects of many kinds, wall-paintings, mosaics, whole buildings, monasteries, cities (above all Constantinople and Jerusalem), certain written texts and musical compositions, even holy persons. More commonly and more narrowly, though, it applies to paintings for veneration of sacred subjects on portable wooden panels. This is not surprising: millions upon millions of them were produced, above all in Russia (for centuries the one free Orthodox country, whose people perceived it as sanctified and protected by the heavenly grace that flowed through its countless churches and icons). The ‘icon- screen’ (iconostasis), with its ‘royal doors’ leading through to the sanctuary, became the focal point of Russian church architecture. Icons often depicted other icons and the miracles they wrought; icons of icons of icons are not uncommon. Panel icons consist of one or more boards (usually of lime or cypress wood) secured at the back by wooden struts, sometimes with the facial side slightly hollowed; with time the panel would usually become ‘bowed’ i.e., convex, though this was not intended. Painting would be done in egg tempera on a carefully prepared fine plaster base; then an olive oil-based varnish (which would usually darken in a few decades) would be applied. editor’s foreword 11 Old icons would seldom be discarded, but either scraped down for reuse or, more often, overpainted, perhaps many times. From the painter’s point of view he was ‘revealing’ an already extant image rather than exercising his own creativity. He was performing a tradi- tional task in an established way, and images were not subject to alteration at whim. Nevertheless, stylistic changes did happen over the course of time, and many variant local manners and types of icon evolved. All, though, are ultimately rooted in Byzantine artistic practice, itself a development of the classical art of late antiquity. However stiff, stylized or anti-naturalistic icons may sometimes look to us, their clear, harmonious colours, rhythmic poses, their ordering of gesture, folds of drapery and so on speak of a classic heritage. The strangest aspect of their pictorial language is the so-called ‘reverse perspective’ often apparent in the settings of iconic figures: unlike in post-Renaissance ‘true’ perspective, there seems to be a vanishing-point projected forward from the picture surface, drawing the spectator into a transcendental realm. Icons may be ‘gateways into another world’, but they are also emphati- cally physical objects: their materials – wood, sometimes elaborate metal casings, even jewels, pigments – are ‘obvious’ and unconcealed. Domestic icons were objects of household utility, indeed almost members of a house- hold (thanked when things went well, occasionally blamed when they went badly): guests would greet them and be seated near them.