2004 Fall.Vol25.#3.pdf - Coptic Church Review

ART AND COPTIC ICONS:
TWELVE YEARS LATER
John Watson
After more than two decades of contributions to the Coptic Church Review, it
now seems important to recall the examination of ‘transfigured matter’ in the
Summer issue of this journal in 1992. 1 Iconography, with a contemporary Christian
appreciation of the relationship between Art and Theology may, for many, occupy a
central place in modern Coptic and recent ecumenical thought.
A number of significant volumes were reviewed in the CCR Vol. 13 No. 12, 2
but in the past decade many more related publications have received careful attention
throughout the Christian world. Not all of these contemporary works were
specifically theological or Christian, but both iconography and modern art deserve
more than a little scrutiny because both have an authentic place in devotion and
general religious thought. The brief phrase ‘Transfigured Matter’, which became
the title of the CCR piece in 1992, has a certain force when we think of Christian
and especially Orthodox icons, but, in the survey that follows, these two words
should also be understood as significant not only for Iconography but also for the
personal psychology of the iconophile, iconodule 3 or anyone who looks at any art
anywhere.
In recent years there has been a considerable demand for icon prints, and for
books about icons and their meaning. Perhaps one of the most accessible texts is
that by Jim Forest, a convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, who is able to illustrate,
mainly through a series of careful meditative reflections on classical icons,
the importance of the eye and the heart in the mutual movement between icon and
viewer. Forest’s book is packed with pertinent comment: “The icon shows the
1 Coptic Church Review. Volume 13. Number 2, Transfigured Matter: A Theology of Icons, John
Watson, Summer 1992.
2 Icons, Ed. Gennadios Limouris, WCC, Geneva 1990: Voicing Creations Praise, Jeremy Begbie,
Edinburgh, 1991: Imago Dei, Jaroslav Pelikan, Princeton, USA, 1990: Towards Contemporary
Coptic Art, Jacqueline Ascott, Cairo, 1988: Coptic Iconography, Stephan René, London 1990.
3 The term ‘iconophile’, translated as ‘lover of icons’ is used by Michel Quenot The Resurrection and
the Icon, SVS Press, NY, 1997 though ‘iconodule’ is more familiar and can be translated as ‘icon
worshipper’ though ‘worshipper with icons’ might be preferred. (See. John Baggley, Doors of
Perception, Mowbray, Oxford 1987. pp.19, 21.).
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