Religious Icons: Art, Idolatry or Aids for Prayer?

Deborah Pardo

December 1, 2003

The sanctuary of St. James chapel at Union Theological Seminary posed both as holy and secular space for a recent art exhibit. Icons, dabbed or drenched in 23-karat-gold leaf, hung on walls and glistened in candlelight. The ambience of the room called visitors to prayer and meditation, but the rows of paintings contributed to the feel of a typical gallery.

Photo: Deborah Pardo

The artist responsible for the exhibit, British-born iconographer, Eileen McGuckin, works out of her studio also at the seminary. Saints and biblical characters adorn the walls while she blends bright acrylic hues with spiritual imagery onto a wooden canvass. Her tools include tubes of paint, fish and rabbit-skin glue and a compass to plot the gold-leafed halos that appear in nearly every work.

The finished icons hang in homes, churches and art exhibits, serving as aesthetic pieces and as aids for prayer. "It's both for me," says McGuckin, referring to the dual function of her works. "I'm not a pious person." I do find that when I start to paint my icons it becomes a spiritual exercise in the sense that I'm quiet, I want to be on my own. It's a kind of isolated experience where I work for hours on end."

Icon, the Greek word for image, usually refers to a religious painting on panels of wood that existed in Eastern Orthodox Christian churches after the sixth century. But according to explanations at McGuckin's recent showing in the sanctuary at the seminary, some of the earliest examples appear as wall paintings, or frescoes, in second and third century Palestine. According to John McGuckin, the artist's husband, a professor of religion at Columbia University, the golden age of icons stretched from the 10th to the 14th century. They were produced throughout the Byzantine lands, or the East Roman Empire, which lasted from the 4th to the 15th century.

Renewing the trade in modern times, McGuckin first prepares the board on which she paints. She lays a fine linen cloth and a smooth plaster called "gesso," made from powdered chalk and glue, over a wood surface. It takes three days to apply 16 layers of gesso and to sand the surface until it's smooth. The process not only preserves the painting, but enhances the luminosity of the colors, she says.

The craft of iconography, such as the preparation of the board and the gluing of gold-leaf halos, attracts many people to this art and requires less skill than the painting, McGuckin says.

"Painting requires talent -- to be able to capture the icon; the saint, the face and the folds in the garment," she says.

Once the board is finished, she places books of pictures of icons in front of her easel and begins drawing in pencil before adding color. It usually takes three weeks to complete a 12-inch by 14-inch painting, she says. McGuckin says her works go beyond the mere imitation of paintings done by earlier iconographers. Their prototype serves as a base, but she says she sets out to develop and beautify the original icon. She might change the colors, combine facial features from two different works or add scenes that did not appear in the older version.

She altered the "Hospitality of Abraham," a work done by Andrei Rublev, a 15th century Russian monk. In both McGuckin's and Rublev's work, three angelic figures appear in the foreground dressed in Byzantine imperial robes and gathered around a table. In the biblical story upon which the painting is based, Abraham and his wife Sarah serve food to the three visitors. She adds the two biblical characters, not found in Rublev's -- to the background of her painting.

Each element in an icon offers meaning, she says. The colors, clothes, hand gestures and eyes represent something spiritual. Turquoise blue signifies the divine, the right hand forming the Greek letters of Christ's name signals blessing, and the eyes of Christ stare at the onlooker, but also symbolize his perception of all things.

Photo: Deborah Pardo

Icons often show religious figures in the attire of the period. Christ might be dressed in Byzantine imperial robes wearing a crown and liturgical stole. These symbolize his position as high priest and king, she says.

Eileen McGuckin says that, unlike Renaissance art, icons depict a transfigured state of the body as in a future ideal age and not its naturalistic earthly form. The gold-leaf halos represent the light of the kingdom of God, she says. When the gold scintillates by candlelight, it becomes the focal point of prayer.

Candles set in front of the icon fade the color of the painting over time. Because most of the pictures of icons in books or galleries have lost their brightness, McGuckin tries to imagine the shades.

"I try to bring back the color as it would have been in the original work," she says.

Demand for her paintings has been increasing. At her recent exhibit, she sold 11 icons. Last year three exhibits resulted in the sale of 17 altogether. This year, her highest priced icon, a 29-inch by 23-inch Hospitality of Abraham, sold for $4,000 -- bought by an inter-religious couple -- Jewish and Catholic. People from all faiths buy her works, she says.

McGuckin sold her first drawing of Christ when she was five years old. While in class at a Catholic school in England, she drew a picture of him kneeling and looking upward in the garden of Gethsemane, where he had prayed the night before he was crucified. Her teacher saw the drawing and called the headmaster. Both were astonished at the skill of the young girl. That day in the 1950s, the headmaster paid McGuckin sixpence for her piece. Enough for candies, she says.

"It was interesting that I started out my life as an artist actually painting Jesus, never realizing that I would be an iconographer much later on," says McGuckin.

Eventually, she studied art at New Castle University on Tyne in England, but chose a teaching career. For more than 30 years while she worked in schools, she used the summers to explore her painting. She mainly produced landscapes and English country scenes, and taught herself iconography six years ago, after moving to New York.

Icon painting requires the same technique that she used in her landscapes. She would paint from dark to light, beginning with the shadows and then building up six or seven shades of highlighting. Usually painters prefer the opposite method, she says.

In addition to the thousands of dollars she received for her paintings, she also sells $10 dollar smaller reproductions to religious bookstores.

Auction houses, such as Sotheby's, sell Russian icons two times a year, according to a New York Sotheby's spokesperson. The latest London auction sold 185,000 British pounds or $319,000 in icons. The prices ranged from $412 to $45,321 for one piece.

"There are collectors of icons because they love the genre, but its popular use first and foremost is that it's a religious object," says Kathryn Smith, professor of early Christian art at New York University.

While art dealers and collectors today recognize the worth of icons, they were not always seen as valuable art. John McGuckin says that, after the 15th century, quality standards declined. After the Russian Revolution, he says, savvy art dealers in Paris and Berlin recognized a market for them. They would sell a 300-year-old icon for $50, he says. From the early 20th century, they became objets d'art and increasingly valuable. Since the 1950s, collectors in North America view icons as respectable and valuable works that sell for thousands of dollars.

"You will find them in people's houses or galleries where they are reduced to art," he says. Eastern Orthodox Christians find it shocking that people treat their spiritual objects as commodities, he says.

Throughout the ages, these paintings were not always accepted by the Christian community. Christians, particularly the Byzantine emperor Leo the 3rd, challenged visual representations of their deity during the 8th and 9th centuries. During these iconoclastic - or image breaking -- periods in history, some disputed that icons transgressed the biblical command not to produce graven images and thus destroyed a number of them, he says. They argued that the icon itself was being worshipped.

Art in the ancient world usually related to religious subject matter, McGuckin says. He categorizes pagan, or non-Christian, images in the first five years of the Christian era into three groups: decoration, such as dancing girls; mythology such as the gods; and imperial images. Christians found none of these categories suitable subject matter, he says. Any type of Christian art would have tried to transform these subjects into monotheistic designs.

He says, for example, that in Egypt in the 4th and 5th centuries, Christianity tried to combat paganism by displacing images of gods such as Isis, the mother of Horis, with the first images of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

"I would say that the icon comes out of Egypt and was part of a powerful missionary structure to win over the common people," he says. Christians took elements from pagan culture and adapted them into their own religion.

Father Patrick Kenel, the head of St. Mark's Orthodox Monastery in Manhattan, calls icons "photographs of the great heroes of God." He maintains that icons today serve a memorial role, akin to a picture of a dead relative.

Smith says that the icon functions as more than a vehicle for prayer. Religious people consider it a kind of manifestation of the sacred person in the painting. Legends exist that icons were made by divine intervention and that close copies contain as much spiritual power as the originals.

The McGuckins, who attend a Russian Orthodox church, claim that the icon acts as an intermediary for prayer.

"It isn't idolatry. You're not worshipping the icon as if it's magic; it's a vehicle for prayer," says Eileen McGuckin.

Reporter Deborah Pardo may be reached at dep2103@columbia.edu.

(Updated May 1, 2004)