“Iconography is not a science, where you follow the formula and someone has an encounter with God,” said artist Emanuel Burke.
“That’s not the way it works.”
Burke ought to know. The 33-year-old artist, who works under the pseudonym Alypius, recently saw one of his icons of Jesus shared on social media.
But far from encountering God, dozens of viewers jeered at his work and called him a fake Christian who was trying to undermine the Church. He had depicted Christ with large eyes and a small head, rather than with the prominent brow that often signifies wisdom in icons.
Burke, who is a convert to and a seminarian in the Eastern Orthodox church, found it especially discouraging to face personal attacks from his fellow believers. But he tried his best to respond with humility and a kind of radical acceptance.
“We long to be right in an argument, not to be perceived a certain way. But there’s a lot to be gained from being a fool, from being slandered and misunderstood,” he said. “I don’t know how that will shake out for me and for others, but in the end, it’ll be blessed.”
An art teacher at Canongate Catholic High School in Arden, North Carolina, Burke knows some of his icons are unusual and don’t conform to every standard of the art form. Though he doesn’t have any formal training in fine art, he’s very familiar with the traditions that dictate the spiritual significance of color, shapes and gestures in Eastern iconography. But he said these traditions have developed over time and are not as inviolable as some might believe.
“They are not dogmatics, in the same way as the Trinity or the hypostatic union or something like that is,” he said.
Burke rejects the idea, popular in some circles, that “if it doesn’t look like it was painted in the 9th century, it’s not an icon.” In fact, he thinks an icon that strives primarily to look like it is ancient fails in what iconography is intended to do.
“The thing about iconography is it’s always contemporary. It’s not supposed to be stuck in the past,” he said.
Instead, it is intended to speak to, and to be received by, the people who will actually encounter it.
Contemporary — but not modern
There’s a vast divide between the modern understanding and the ancient Christian understanding of art, Burke said, and he didn’t immediately grasp that difference. As a result, his first icons were a clumsy blend of traditional imagery and modern sensibilities. He ended up sanding down his first attempt to show the face of Christ and painting over it.
“The telltale sign (of a modern understanding of art) is the overemphasis on individualism. ‘This is the way I see things or how I feel about it,’” he said.
Then each viewer brings his or her subjective interpretation to the work, and it becomes even more individualized and fragmented in meaning, he said. “Whereas with the approach of a Byzantine or Orthodox iconographer, we do this with the mind of the Church. It’s never about me or another individual in a very rigid sense,” he said.
The artist is involved by necessity because he, too, is venerating the icon even as he paints it. Burke speaks of the work of painting as a work of self-discernment.
“But I don’t see myself as the only participant,” he said.
The viewer is just as important, and in a sense, the work is incomplete until it has been beheld. The face of Christ that got Burke so much unwelcome attention online was the 21st installment in a series he undertook during Advent, which the Orthodox treat as a “Little Lent.” As a discipline, he tried — but did not quite manage — to make an image of the face of Christ every day for the 40 days leading up to Christmas.
Some of the images were painted with egg tempera; some were etchings done while he was experimenting with a cold wax technique, which uses a combination of paste and paint. He also works in ballpoint pen or even with Procreate, the digital painting app. He sees the value in making digital art that’s easy to edit and share, though he’s more drawn to the “very human” natural and tactile materials of egg tempera.
Burke admires some of the new styles of icons being produced in the Eastern Orthodox churches, especially in Ukraine. He likes their bold colors and use of geometric shapes. But he doesn’t like everything new he sees. Some innovations in modern iconography go further afield than he’s comfortable with. However, he doesn’t feel that he’s qualified to say that they’ve gone too far.
“These things get worked out over time. The openness to do something that’s a bit different helps move things away from that sort of robotic, printing-press approach to religious art,” he said.
Journey into untamed territory
Burke recently watched “Stalker,” a 1979 Soviet sci-fi film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It deals with a man who’s gone into “a wilderness that has been taken over with the modern innovations that were brought on by the Soviet Union.” He said that the film suggests that the experience of God is like this: It’s wild and untamed territory, and “not always a pleasant experience,” but sometimes a necessary one.
Burke himself was somewhat shaken when he first encountered the faith he now hopes to serve as a priest. He and his wife were raised Southern Baptist, although his wife, who was born in Thailand, also has early memories of practicing Buddhism. They were “freaked out” when they attended their first Divine Liturgy….Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor.
