by Lidiya Lozova | ελληνικά | Русский

Icon painting is rightly considered to be the visual expression of the Orthodox tradition. The icon speaks of the Gospel, the liturgy, the hymnography, the saints, the dogmas, and the pedagogy of the church. Icons testify to the reality of God’s Incarnation, the image of God in each of us, and mystically lead us into a transfigured, eschatological state of man and the world—“heaven on earth.”
And yet, icons are created and exist on earth, in particular cultures and societies. If so, do they have a social ethos? The general assumption seems to be that the social ethos of the icon should be “apophatic”: because it presents an ethic not of this world, it should keep away from muddling with society’s concrete challenges. However, given the circumstances of the current war in Ukraine, where Orthodox people fight on both sides, icons cannot escape the conflict. On March 13, 2022, on the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Patriarch Kirill presented the Russian Guard with a WWI icon of the Mother of God and by doing so practically blessed the Russian military aggression against Ukraine. Meanwhile, icons scratched on the walls by Ukrainian prisoners were found in a Russian torture chamber in the formerly occupied Vovchansk, Kharkiv region, after it was liberated by Ukrainians.
Icons that are created in the times of war may say something socially cataphatic, while their social ethos may turn out to be crucial for their iconic quality as such.
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